Love it . . . Nicking it . . . Linking it

Love it . . . Nicking it . . . Linking it

Hat tip to Fat Man on a Keyboard.

The Original Cockney Red

Before Karl Marx's Normblog Profile, there was his 'interview' with the Socialist Standard from 25 years ago.

Vote SSP in the forthcoming US Presidential election

You must understand that I'm only posting this video made on behalf of the SSP - the Sarah Silverman Party - because Marx and Coca Cola's JM was kind enough to bring it to my attention. Regular readers of the blog know that Sarah Silverman is someone I don't usually care for.

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

'This morning Matthew I will post a joke I should have posted months ago but it was dated even then.'

Strachan riffs: 'McCourt gets on the bench once he finishes the Kasabian tour.

Now the half-time air was sweet perfume

Just in:

Celtic look to sign that bloke from American Pie.

Attila the Gloater

That's gloater, not goater.

And why not. Man City may have the big time charlie aspirations for the near future, but last night's defeat to Brighton in the League Cup must have really hurt. It'll be a good few years before City can even begin to kid themselves on that the League Cup doesn't matter for them. Nice to see that Celtic might-have-been, Adam Virgo, scored one of the decisive penalties.

Attila the Gloater? Noted Brighton fan, Attila the Stockbroker, celebrates the victory with considered ill-grace over at his MySpace blog. Yep, why not.

Jimmy Sirrel

Shame that.

Always had a soft spot for Notts County, and I'm sure it's because of Sirrel.

Nice post on Jimmy Sirrel over here that I stumbled across via google.

Murder can be bad for business

Chilling report from India reported in Tuesday's (London) Times but this is the quote that caught my eye from the piece:

A spokesman for the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry said: “Such a heinous act is bound to sully India’s image among overseas investors.”

It's important that the PR Dept puts the tragedy in the proper context.

From the Velvets to the Voidoids - A Pre-Punk History for a Post-Punk World by Clinton Heylin (Penguin Books 1993)

Being 'more suburban', they had something in common with other CBGBs favourites that existed largely outside the scene. The Shirts, like those other local faves the Tuff Darts, were more interested in securing a record deal than in reviving rock & roll.

Annie Golden: We were the hicks from Brooklyn, never aspiring to go across the bridge, but we had read about the Mercer Arts Centre, which had just crumbled, and the back room at Max's, and we went down to see Patti Smith at CBGBs . . . We were holed up in Brooklyn, we all had day jobs, we were rehearsing eight to ten hours into the morning, saving money for equipment. Bands in Manhattan were doing it another way. They were like artists; they were doing minimalist rock and they were starving. But we had this big light show and a big PA.

American Gothic

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (65)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 65th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1352 friends!

Recent blogs:

All at sea

Exporting Crime

The end of capitalism -- or just of "neo-liberalism"?

Coming Events at SPGB Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North):

A Season of Free Film nights from Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November at 52 Clapham High Street, London.

All films start at 4 p.m.

Sunday 28 September: Who Killed the Electric Car?

Sunday 12 October: Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on trial

Sunday 26 October:The Corporation

Sunday 9 November: Zeitgeist

Sunday 23 November: The War on Democracy

Quote for the week:

"Well you got me workin' boss man

Workin' round the clock

I wanna little drink of water

But you won't let big Al stop

Big boss man now can't you hear me when I call? All right

I said you ain't so big, you know you're just tall that's all"

As sang by Elvis Presley, 1967.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Departs when 50% + 1 of the seats are filled

Via Ragged Trousered Philanthropist blog:

As someone once said, "A picture is worth a thousand words", but here's a few thousand words anyway:

The case for and against reformism

Do Anything Now?

Is protest really enough?

What about the meantime?

That month's paper sale went down a storm outside Toys 'R' Us

Probably my favourite Socialist Standard front cover from the 1990s.

800 not out

Just noticed that it's the 800th post on the blog of the unofficial Socialist Standard page on MySpace.

First post dates from February 20th 2006, and was the editorial from the Socialist Standard of the previous month.

The last post dates from early Saturday morning, and is a cut and paste job from Graham's blog.

From Pete Shelley to Hefner in two and a half years. I think I've grown as a person.

Here's to the next 200.

All the 1's

*Cough* Do I even need to write this post?

Within a minute of coming on as a substitute Derek Riordan - wearing 01 as a shirt number - scores the only goal of the game for an away win for Hibs against the Hamilton Accies.

His first goal on returning to Hibs . . . his first of many.

Hibs versus R*ngers next Sunday. Wonder if there's a Hibs pub in NYC?

(Football) Quote of the Day

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.

Please don't forget that wanker also directed Blur's execrable Country House video

I don't know a lot about art, but I know a brilliant Ronnie Radford goal when I see one.

Who's chairing this meeting?

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (64)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 64th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1336 friends!

Recent blogs:

Capitalism: boom & bust

Is Obama a socialist?

Our peace policy

Coming Events at SPGB Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North):

Saturday 20 September, 6pm

Which Way the Revolution - What are our differences?

Ian Bone (Class War) and Howard Moss (Socialist Party)

Forum followed by open discussion.

Chair: Bill Martin (Socialist Party)

A Season of Free Film nights from Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November at 52 Clapham High Street, London.

All films start at 4 p.m.

Sunday 28 September:
Who Killed the Electric Car?

Sunday 12 October: Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on trial

Sunday 26 October:The Corporation

Sunday 9 November: Zeitgeist

Sunday 23 November: The War on Democracy

Quote for the week:

"‘Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number—

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you—Ye are many—they are few.’"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy, 1819.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

The dark haired bloke from the romcom films reads Eugene Debs

From a public performance of Howard Zinn's Voices of a People's History of the United States, Mark Ruffalo reads excerpts from Eugene Debs' 1918 Canton, Ohio anti-war speech. A speech for which Debs was arrested under the 1917 Espionage Act and sentenced to ten years in the Atlanta Penitentiary.

The full text of Debs' 1918 speech is available here.

More speeches from Zinn's Voices of a People's History of the United States - performed by the likes of Alfre Woodward, Danny Glover, Josh Brolin, Sandra Oh and Marisa Tomei - are available here.

The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi (Penguin Books 1990)

I soon realized that Eleanor's main guardian and my main rival for her affection was man called Heater. He was the local roadsweeper, a grossly fat and ugly sixteen-stone Scot in a donkey jacket whom Eleanor had taken up three years ago as a cause. He came round every night he wasn't at the theatre, and sat in the flat reading Balzac in translation and giving his bitter and big-mouthed opinion on the latest production of Lear or the Ring. He knew dozens of actors, especially the left-wing ones, of whom there plenty at this political time. Heater was the only working-class person most of them had met, So he became a symbol of the masses, and consequently received tickets to first nights and to the parties afterwards, having a busier social life than Cecil Beaton. He even popped in to dress rehearsals to give his opinion as 'a man in the street'. If you didn't adore Heater - and I hated every repulsive inch of him - and listen to him as the authentic voice of the proletariat, it was easy, if you were middle class (which meant you were born a criminal, having fallen at birth), to be seen by the comrades and their sympathizers as a snob, an elitist, a hypocrite, a proto-Goebbels.

I found myself competing with Heater for Eleanor's love. If I sat too close to her he glared at me; if I touched her casually his eyes would dilate and flare like gas rings. His purpose in life was to ensure Eleanor's happiness, which was harder work than roadsweeping, since she disliked herself so intensely. Yes, Eleanor loathed herself and yet required praise, which she then never believed. But she reported it to me, saying, 'D'you know what so-and-so said this morning? He said, when he held me, that he loved the smell of me, he loved my skin and the way I made him laugh.'

When I discussed this aspect of Eleanor with my adviser, Jamilla, she didn't let me down. 'Christ, Creamy Fire Eater, you one hundred per cent total prat, that's exactly what they're like, these people, actresses and such-like vain fools. The world burns and they comb their eyebrows. Or they try and put the burning world on the stage. It never occurs to them to dowse the flames. What are you getting into?'

Clever

Via Zazzle.com

From the WSPUS website: Is Obama a socialist?

"She's hanging onto one of the Willie Miller brothers!"

Found in a secondhand bookshop in Brooklyn Heights.

In answer to my earlier question . . .

Zaki will score one goal this week.

Five goals in five games. The bloke's on fire.

Knocking Dame Mirren off the top of the table

Motherwell 2 - 4 Celtic

Samaras with five goals in his last three games, and Motherwell's John Sutton scoring his third league goal in as many games.

R*ngers losing 1-0 to Kilmarnock at Ibrox? Make it last. Not for my sake you understand . . . for Jim TNR

Question of the Day

What's Helen Mirren doing on the front cover of the NME back in '76? (Looking like Hazel O'Connor in the grainy image, I might add.)

Just stumbled across that startling fact via this anorak page over at wiki. That page would be a thousand times better if the person who wrote up the page also scanned in a few of the front covers as well. I had to find the grainy image to your left via eBay. The paper is yours for a fiver, apparently. Get clicking.

Update

OK, did a bit of internet digging, and I'm guessing that Helen Mirren is on the front cover because of 'Teeth 'N' Smiles', a David Hare play from the mid-seventies that's apparently "a searing look at the madness and excesses of the rock n’ roll years.". (More tangential info about 'Teeth 'N' Smiles' over here.)

CIA's George Orwell's Animal Farm

A Season of Free Film Evenings

From Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November

Radical Film Forum - 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North)

- Tired of mainstream films?· Bored of the blockbuster?

- Want more than just passive consumption?

Find out about other films featured in the Radical Film Forum season here.

The Manhattan Rangers Supporters Club take time out to audition for Tony Scott's remake of The Warriors

Thought for the day

Dream in dub. You remember so much more.

How many will Zaki score this week?

Glad that that daftness is out the way for another month. I don't care what anybody says: Internationals get in the way of proper football. The actual final tournaments are great, and all that (what else are you going to do in the summer months when the proper football isn't on?) but the qualifying rounds are just a pain in the arse.

Couple of thoughts from last night's games:

Ashley Cole, Lampard and Terry are on the pitch and the only Chelsea player to get an elbow in the face is Joe Cole? Croatia deserved to lose for that alone.

It pains me to write it but that swine, Kirk Broadfoot, was first class against Celtic the other week so I won't begrudge him his goal against Iceland. Nice to see that ex-XTC front man, Barry Robson, was also on the score sheet last night. I hope that means he starts the next game for Celtic. The bloke lifted the Celtic team immeasurably when he came on against Rangers the other week. (See, Reidski, I can now get past the pain and mention that 4-2 defeat.)

Result of last night by far. It's always heartening when the minnow tax haven for the parasitic rich gets one over on the big daddy tax haven of the same parasitic rich bastards.

Footballer feels sorry for himself shocker. The nation collectively replies 'Lee who?'

What was so great about England's stunning victory in Zagreb last night was that so few English supporters actually saw it. More people watched a repeat of The Brittas Empire over on UK Gold last night.

Since when did Lithuania get so good? I'm away down the bookies to put a tenner on Hearts of Midlothian winning the 2010 World Cup.

The Story Of Crass by George Berger (Omnibus Press 2006)

While Steve Ignorant had no qualms about describing himself as an anarchist back then, he's more reticent now. "I've realised now that I don't know what to call it, where my political thing comes from. My 'anarchism' - or whatever it was - didn't come from an anarchist background. I tried to read Malatesta once and I just got bogged down in it. And I've never read Kropotkin and Bakunin or any of those people, it just didn't appeal to me. It didn't make sense to me. I know that for reference if I need to look at those books I can, and I know they're making important points, but I know that for me, where I was coming from was the black and white sixties movies like A Taste of Honey, John Osbourne and a film called To Sir With Love.

"One day we were talking about books around the table," continues Steve. "Pen was talking about Tolstoy and I chipped in with To Sir With Love, and was met with roars of laughter, it was quite a joke. When there was the yearly clear-out of books, out it went. But the Maigrets stayed. That book To Sir With Love is about one of the first black men to go into the East End of London and teach unruly white kids how to respect themselves and other people as human beings. Which I thought was the basis of anarchism, wasn't it? . . .

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Barbara Cartland cassette

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (63)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 63rd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1333 friends!

Recent blogs:

Freedom from profit

To Dream the Impossibilist Dream

News from Here

Coming Events at SPGB Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North):

Saturday 20 September, 6pm

Which Way the Revolution - What are our differences?

Ian Bone (Class War) and Howard Moss (Socialist Party)

Forum followed by open discussion.

Chair: Bill Martin (Socialist Party)

A Season of Free Film nights from Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November at 52 Clapham High Street, London.

All films start at 4 p.m.

Sunday 14 September: Animal Farm

Sunday 28 September:
Who Killed the Electric Car?

Sunday 12 October: Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on trial

Sunday 26 October:The Corporation

Sunday 9 November: Zeitgeist

Sunday 23 November: The War on Democracy

Quote for the week:

"This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. ... An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career." Albert Einstien, in Why Socialism?, 1949.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

That US Presidential Election coverage in full

I promise that I will wake up in time for the debates but, in the meantime:

Via Faithful Progressive blog, Anne Kilkenny's Sarah Palin E-Mail: 'A Wasilla Resident Speaks Out'

A link found via Marx and Coca Cola blog, Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean”

And for a bit of political balance, from Louis Proyect's blog, Obama disappoints

*Insert Mekons song title here*

I think I first spotted this meme over at Iain Dale's blog a few weeks back, and made a mental note to follow it up but I never got around to it.

However, since then, the meme keeps cropping up here, there and everywhere, so it must be a sign from the blogging gods for me to delve into the memory bank and rewrite my personal history.

Where were you?

Princess Diana's death - 31st August 1997

I remember that I had finished some knackering shift at a warehouse I was working at. (Being a Saturday night, it was job and knock.) As was my want when coming home from working in the chill section packing lettuce, milkshake base and sandwich sauce for McDonalds restaurants around the South East of England, I would flop on the bed, falling asleep fully dressed. At some point I woke up and switched on the tv, and was met with news reports coming from Paris that Princess Diana had been in a car crash. I don't want to appear callous - and it wasn't even any sort of incipient anti-monarchism on my part kicking in - but I just went back to sleep.

The Sunday morning when it was confirmed that Diana (and others) had died in the car crash, it was the rest of the country that decided to go to sleep at that point. Don't get me wrong, I felt sorry for her kids and her family for their loss but the collective hysteria and mass bullshit that gripped that country for the following few weeks was nothing short of oppressive . . . and I'm not even referring to 'Candle In The Wind' being at number one for 5 weeks.

Hack journos opined that interflora and kleenex's profits going through the roof was a sure sign that Britain had become a gentler nation that was now more at ease with itself in showing its true emotion but I seem to remember that most people got bored of it all after a few weeks and soon enough workmates were wondering why the local station was no longer playing Inxs's 'Suicide Blonde' on the radio.

Margaret Thatcher's Resignation - 22nd November 1990

I was at Lancaster University, sleepwalking through my first year of university, reading James Kelman and adapting to a diet of marmite sandwiches and inquorate Branch meetings of the Lancaster SPGB when I heard the news.

I'm afraid there was no pomagne on ice or bunting in place to unfurl from my window in celebration. Just an indifferent 'she's gone'. I knew it would it would be her own Party who would bring her down.

I'm with JJ on this, in that the most vivid image of that time was the incident a few days before - after the result of the first ballot was announced - when Thatcher and her Press Secretary came down the steps of the British Embassy in Paris to inform the press that she was chuffed to bits that her own Party had just kicked her in the teeth. The Press Secretary being Bernard Ingham, of course, who proceeded to shoulder barge BBC's John Sergeant ever so gently out the way.

People can claim that there was euphoria when she was finally gone, but I honestly can't remember that sense of joyful celebration when she exited. Maybe it'll be different when she mets her next big exit.

Attack on the twin towers - 11 September 2001

In a busy sportswear shop in Whitechapel, East London, buying a pair of green ellesse trainers.

The news came over the radio that the first plane had hit one of the towers. Maybe it was because people were hearing it on the radio, rather than seeing it on the television screens, but it wasn't one of those moments where everyone stands around looking at each other, realising that this is one of those moments in life that you'll never forget. People went about their business. The DJ continued to play whatever song was in the charts that week, and the enormity of 9/11 was only to impact on us all later in the day.

England's World Cup Semi Final against Germany - 4 July 1990

At home, in Hemel, watching it on TV. As I remember it, I wasn't actually willing England to lose the game. If anything, I was just caught up in the game itself. It was one of the better matches in what was overall a piss poor World Cup and, of course, it was only in the aftermath of Gazza's tears that we witnessed - what sport sociologists now term as - 'the bullshitification of the beautiful game'.

And can we take time out for a minute to remember how badly England played in the early rounds of that tournament? The group that included England, Holland, Egypt and the Republic of Ireland puked up some of the mind numbingly boring football games this side of Sam Allardyce's compilation DVD, 'Newcastle Utd: the glory weeks'.

Even at the stage when England were playing Cameroon in the quarter finals, and I was listening to the game over the tannoy of the Warehouse I working in, most of my (English) work mates were half-indifferent to the game. Not because they didn't love their football. But, because up until that point, a lucky volley from David Platt did not a good World Cup make. The mythology came later.

President Kennedy's Assassination - 22 November 1963

I was in the study, holding the candlestick and standing over the bloodied corpse of Aldous Huxley.

German language impossibilsm

Wiederaneignung

'Fraid babel fish doesn't really help . . . in case you were wondering.

On the day of his greatest triumph, Andy Murray takes time out to reflect

'I bet the bastards still think I'm Irish.'

In passing . . .

Must blog more.

Any old pony will do. Failing that, overdose on the SPGB linkage routine. It always works for a day or two.

Sarah Silverman says: 'Please donate to the war'

Via Roseanne's blog:

I'm still having difficulty breathing. Please give generously.

How Soon Is Never? by Marc Spitz (Three Rivers Press 2003)

We were all a little high-strung. "Hand in Glove" had been elusive. For nearly two weeks, we'd been obsessing about it like only teenagers can. I wanted to hear it because John wanted to hear it. Jerome, Maria and Richie wanted to hear it because I wanted to hear it. And everybody wanted to be the first one to get it on tape and make themselves a hero to the rest. The days of sitting by the radio for hours waiting for the DJ to play one song are long over for me (and you too, thanks to shit like downloading) but damn if it wasn't a perfect, temporary existence for all the frustration it put us through at the time. That rush of anticipation when the ad ends and the start of a new half-hour block of music takes over was amazing. I didn't even know what I was listening for. Just something called The Smiths. I told myself if I'd know it when I heard it. You know, I can't listen to the radio for ten minutes now. It's all ads and no rush at all.

Palin's ripping yarns

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (62)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 62nd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1322 friends!

Recent blogs:

How we could feed the world

Capitalism or Socialism?

Are you an abstainer?

Coming Events at SPGB Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North):

Saturday 20 September, 6pm

Which Way the Revolution - What are our differences?

Ian Bone (Class War) and Howard Moss (Socialist Party)

Forum followed by open discussion.

Chair: Bill Martin (Socialist Party)

A Season of Free Film nights from Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November at 52 Clapham High Street, London.

All films start at 4 p.m.

Sunday 14 September: Animal Farm

Sunday 28 September:
Who Killed the Electric Car?

Sunday 12 October: Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on trial

Sunday 26 October:The Corporation

Sunday 9 November: Zeitgeist

Sunday 23 November: The War on Democracy

Quote for the week:

"To clamour for equal or even equitable retribution on the basis of the wages system is the same as to clamour for freedom on the basis of the slavery system." Marx, Value, Price and Profit, 1865.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Some people have random YouTube clips, I fall back on random 25s

Leave him be. He's got a book to sell

An inside source reliably informs me that I shot in like a bullet at #377.

Looking out for shirt number 01

Yeah, I know he won three titles in a row and I'm not going to get on his case for Sunday's bad result, but it's a crying bastard shame that Strachan could not have made more use of Derek Riordan's obvious talents in the two bit years the bloke was at the club. Riordan is a class act on the pitch and he could have been a great in the hoops.

I'd have been happier if Riordan had gone to somewhere like West Brom (if only because it's easier to download Match of the Day off the internet), but I hope, in returning to Hibs, it's more a Mark Hughes than an Ian Rush return to former pastures. (Can't be arsed to spell that analogy out. You either get it or you don't.)

According to the BBC Sports website, Hibs will next be playing Celtic (at Parkhead) on Saturday, October 25th. I have to be honest that I'd raise a smile if Riordan had the opportunity to turn it on against Celtic, scoring a goal and maybe having a Proustian moment by running over the Celtic bench and momentarily touching one of the plastic seats that he parked his arse on for those lost Parkhead years.

And it would be a 'raise a smile' moment rather than a raise my voice moment. The latter would probably guarantee a Manhattan transfer down the wooden stairs of the Jack Demsey pub.

Thanks for the memories, Derek. Now, please just sod off and get a decent haircut before I tear up.

Warriors by Sol Yurick (Grove Press 1965)

Dewey did a cartwheel, the pin in his hat glittering in a circle. The Junior tried it and the war cigarette fell out of his hat. He picked it up and was about to stick it back into the band of his hat when he had an idea. He turned and ran to Hinton, kneeled, and gave it to him. Hinton took it, held it for a second, and put it into his mouth. The Junior lit it for him. Hinton puffed it once, twice, hard and cool, and then let the smoke dribble out of his mouth and nose to be caught, whipped away, and feathered into nothing by the sea wind. He pinched out the cigarette and stuck it back into The Junior's hatband. Dewey looked on and nodded. Then Dewey and The Junior took out the war cigarettes from their hatbands and gave them to Hinton who put them into a half-empty pack of his own. The war party was over. Hinton turned and began to walk to the Boardwalk. The others followed. It was understood. Hinton was now Father.

'The Homer of the Cesspit'

Interesting overview of life and work of Emile Zola from this month's Socialist Standard.