The ConservaLaboural Democrats

Welcome to the new political system in the United Kingdom, folks, initiated in 1997 when Tony Blair and his bunch of wet 'Noo-Labour' colleagues swept to power in one of the biggest landslide victories ever seen in the UK.  I call them the 'ConservaLaboural Democrats'.  This means that there is one single party with three wings - a left, a right, and an 'I'll go with whoever's in charge'.

In essence, you can't tell the difference between our three main political parties.  The Conservatives, Labour and LibDems merged in 1997 when it was decided that a single policy of flushing the British way of life down the toilet for evermore would guarantee success for whichever party got into power in a General Election, who would then simply continue the policy of the previous Government, but wear different coloured ties.

Actually, the seeds of this merging were sown even earlier, when John Major took office back at the tail end of 1990, but it was Blair's first attempt at targeting the 'middle England' vote that sealed it.  Since that time, the price of property began to go up and up and up and it was bound to burst one day.

It did.  In 2008.

Someone in America realised that you can't loan people money for a property that they don't have a cat in Hell's chance of paying back.  Oh, how I bet they wish they'd kept quiet.  Stock markets tumbled the world over, and this was great because everybody could now say that the recession was a global one and it was always somebody else's fault.

And on that ticket, the British Conservative Party swept into power via a landslide hung parliament that demonstrated fully the British public's complete indifference to any of the political parties, because they were all essentially the same.  That was in 2010.  When David Cameron asked the Liberal Democrats to join them in a 'coalition', they couldn't believe their luck.  They said, 'Oh, yes please, we quite fancy a spell in Government, it could be the only chance we ever get.  Policies?  What policies?'

If we thought Labour under Gordon Brown were bad, and they were, we were in for a rude shock.  The Conservatives have showed us in three short years just was inept government really looks like.  Their essential means of 'debt reduction' was to make some what they called 'very difficult decisions' because 'we're all in it together.'  Both of these statements have been proved to be a lie.

First, those 'very difficult decisions.'  What were they, exactly?  Oh yes, to aim their sights at the poor, weak and vulnerable and fire everything that they had at them.  Disabled, sick, elderly, unemployed and public sector workers were all shot at.  Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers were made redundant in an effort to get them employed in the 'private sector,' except that didn't work, did it, because there were no jobs for them.  Businesses couldn't afford to pay them because the banks weren't lending them the money to do so.  Then, some bright spark in Ian Duncan Smith's Department for Work & Pensions had the genius idea of restructuring the benefits system, because if you rename the benefits then you've got an excuse to make everybody re-apply for it again.  Go through all that humiliation that many sick and disabled feel again just to get a few quid off the Government because they've changed its name.

But that wasn't the best bit.  No, the best bit was to tell all those already suffering that, if they didn't do what the government told them, they would lose that few quid each week (that they'd probably paid for themselves anyway through years of National Insurance and work health care plans) unless they worked for nothing at whatever jobs they were told to do.  Thus, wheelchair-bound sufferers were told that, if they could move their arms a bit, there's no reason why they couldn't pack people's shopping at Morrisons.  See?  Get the poorest in society to give something back to those who are clearly superior to them because they are putting money into a large business' coffers.

Ian Duncan Smith has had the balls to suggest that disabled people doing such work are being paid by the taxpayer to do so.  He does this without even blinking.  They are not even getting a minimum wage, they are being forced into Soviet-style labour camps to receive the benefits they were getting in the first instance.  Brilliant.  Big business is laughing, because they get free employees thanks to the Conservatives.  Yeah, that was a 'really difficult decision.'

Don't forget, middle-England and marginal seats are where the votes are to be had, so any political party will amend its policies to buy their votes.  Hence, the Conservatives added a strong dose of The Politics of Envy into their 'difficult decisions.'  They justified the above by telling voters that why should such-and-such on benefits have a flatscreen television and a car when Joe Bloggs works so hard and can't afford as nice a car as their neighbour has.

But the Politics of Envy will backfire on the Tories.  After all, there are many millions of people wondering why it is they work so hard while millionaires in Government fiddle the rules so that they can claim mortgages from the taxpayer, and hundreds of thousands of pounds in expenses for things like food and paperclips.  A nurse doesn't get her travel to and from work paid for by the taxpayer, why should an MP?  A teacher can't travel first class to school, why should an MP?

MPs expenses amounted to a whopping £89 million in 2011-12!  That's 26% more than the previous year, and totals £160 million in just two years.  Every time an MP buys an iPad, you pay for it.  Oh, and corporate tax-dodging has cost you, the taxpayer, £700 billion in the last decade.  How's that for the politics of envy?

And that's before I even start on the amendments to the Health & Social Care Act 2012, which comes into full force on 1 April this year.  Oh yes, folks, say goodbye to Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts, they're all going and essentially any health service or department is up for sale to private enterprise who can see profit in it.  I'm sure it's just coincidence that over 140 members of the House of Lords and even more of the House of Commons have interests in companies that would profit from the demolition of the NHS, including Baroness Bottomley, a director of BUPA!

Don't get me started on the Bedroom Tax, either.  Look, middle-England, Joe's brother Fred Bloggs has a spare bedroom and he's on benefits!  Cut his welfare!  Of course, the DWP can justify this by saying that the taxpayer pays for his benefit, so they have the right to cut it if they can think of a reason.  And yet the Queen, and other members of the Royal Family, live in palaces so large, with literally hundreds of spare bedrooms, swanning around claiming millions of pounds worth of state benefits each year, and we let them carry on.  Thousands of corporate business men and women, bankers, lawyers, stock market gamblers, and companies like Google and Starbucks take billions of pounds from the mouths of starving middle-Englanders in unpaid taxes, but I don't see George Osborne and his cronies going after them.  No, that would be a really 'difficult decision.' x

Diary Entry Number 1

When you belong to so many online forums, blog sites and social networking sites, it is sometimes difficult to keep up with it all because you don't want to have to keep writing the same things several times over. Therefore you find that things like blog sites get left by the wayside. I am going to try and address this situation by putting the more mundane elements of my life in this blog. Day 1.

Here I am sitting on my own in my living room because I'm in too much pain to do anything. The pain is in my shoulders my arms my legs and my back. I am actually lying on a bean bag on the floor in my living room. I am using my phone to write this blog because it has a speech recognition function which means I can speak the text and I don't have to write it. My hands tremble too much for me to write a text on the phone.

Those of you who are used to my perfect grammar might be slightly disappointed to see some grammatical errors on this blog. I apologize in advance for this and can only put it down to errors in the speech recognition, as well as my own inability to understand how things work on this phone.  For example, I have no idea how to make this phone do a full stop. Every time I say the word full stop it writes it in full instead of putting a full stop. So I have to stop writing and put 1 in. I also have to correct things where the speech recognition device gets it wrong and I may miss some things. Once again, I can only apologize for this.

As I said before, it is not very likely that I'm going to get much done today. Some days, the cocktail of painkillers that I take just don't seem to work. I sit here trying to read but the pain prevents me from holding a book properly. Some days I could just weep. I just wanted to tell you that. Otherwise not much else is happening. So I will sign off for now and perhaps write some more later. X

TIntern Abbey

Yesterday my dear wife Jane and I visited Tintern Abbey, one of the first Cistercian monasteries ever established in Britain.  Today, it is known as one of the Great Monastic Ruins of Wales.  It is situated not far from the A466 and the A 48, south west of the Forest of Dean; frankly, it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen within the United Kingdom (with the possible exception of the Highlands of Scotland).  It takes about 45 minutes to get there from our house in Drybrook, Gloucestershunt.

It was a gloriously sunny day yesterday, and I had promised my wife that we would go somewhere local, which would mean that the journey was short and therefore not too painful for my medical condition.  I drove, which is painful for my leg but better than the pain of going over an unexpected bump in the road - at least I have some control knowing when the bumps are about to hit.

Anyway, back to the Abbey.  According to Wikipedia, the Abbey was founded on 9 May 1131, by Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow.  It is the inspiration of poetry by scribes as diverse as William Wordsworth, Alfred 'Lord' Tennyson, and Allen Ginsberg.  It is only the second Cistercian foundation in Great Britain, and the first in Wales, the first British one being from Waverley, Surrey, in 1128.  It is an extraordinarily beautiful place, but not a great deal of the original buildings remain.  Most of what we see today dates from the 14th Century, including the magnificent Abbey building that is the centrepiece of the present-day site.  Unfortunately Tintern, as did every other monastery in Great Britain, fell victim to Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, which began in 1536, in which all the monasteries were disbanded, their buildings and assets sold off, and an eventual whopping total of (in 2012 financial terms) almost £500 million was raised for government (and therefore the King's private) funds.

Nevertheless, Henry VIII could not destroy the building itself, which, although left to ruin, has lost none of its magnificent power.  The Cistertians could not have chosen a better site.  The surrounding forestry is beautiful, and the subsequent village is also a beautiful one.  The River Severn flows nearby, and Jane spent a wonderful 20 minutes or so sat on a wall just enjoying the sound of the river flowing behind her.  Next, we went for a tour of the building.  Oh, and the car park machines were not working (I suspect these machines date from a later period than the Cistercians), so we got free parking, and through my disability got free entry as well.  So all in all it cost us - nowt!

Upon entering the site, the first areas you pass through are the more 'domestic' ones.  These include the kitchens, the servery and the 'latrines.'  Few of the walls remain, but there is a lovely serving hatch still there which gives a vivid reminder that real people once lived here.  It is a favourite habit of mine, when going through historic sites of any kind, to imagine myself with those whose habitation this once was.  Actually being there at the time that the site was active, so to speak.  And it is usually little things like serving hatches that help to bring places like Tintern to life.  What was once the kitchen is now nothing more than a cement floor, all but the wall with the serving hatch are now gone.  Other non-religious parts of the Abbey include the monks' Dayroom, which still shows the bases of four stone pillars that apparently once supported a vault.

To the church itself.  Well, as a non-religious person, I can only say that it is one of the most beautiful ruined churches that I have ever seen.  Jane was concerned for the health and safety of those who had built it, given that the roof of the church would have been so high (there is nothing of the original church roof left). What is amazing is that a building such as this was ever left to ruin. Many of the building's original window frames are still in place, but not the glass.

I don't know what I'm doing...

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Simultaneous Blogging Baby!

Check this out, folks, I'm actually writing two blog posts at once!  I'm actually blogging here, at The Life of Meaning, and over at Word Press, where I'm equally disinterested in life, the Universe, and most things.  You see, when one has nothing better to do all day than sit and stare at the wall, these crazy ideas tend to pop into one's head.

Any road, up, I am spending this Sunday morning copying films from my Sky Plus Planner onto DVD.  Let those corporate pigs try and stop me!  BBC 2 seem to have struck some deal to buy up loads of films from the RKO Radio archive.  Last week we had the 1935 Katharine Hepburn film Sylvia Scarlett, and on Saturday it was the turn of Fred Astaire in The Sky's the Limit (1943) and Cary Grant in Every Girl Should Be Married (1948).  They've all gone on DVD, thanks very much, Auntie.  Oh, and that's not to forget the season of Fred & Ginger movies the Beeb have been showing over the last 8 weeks - every last one from Flying Down to Rio  (1933) to The Story of Vernon & Irene Castle (1939).  Of course, any film buff worth their salt will know that does not represent the entire body of work those two made together, because there is one more film, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) that the two made together over at MGM.  This film did not begin life as a Fred & Ginger vehicle; it was supposed to co-star Fred with Judy Garland, but the then Mrs. Minnelli was so addicted to prescription painkillers that she was not deemed fit enough by producer Arthur Freed to star in the film.  So, in came Ginger Rogers.  Incidentally, it wasn't the last time Judy Garland was kicked off a film - in 1950 she had filmed over half of Annie Get Your Gun before being fired.  Things had to be serious to get booted off a production - all studios panicked about costs, and to do that to a major star meant some serious shit was going down.  That same year her contract was torn up by the studio and she made just one more film in the next decade - A Star is Born in 1954 at Warner Bros.  But I digress.  The Barkleys of Broadway is not an RKO film but it does appear in my boxed set of Fred & Ginger movies - a great set that is too.

So, thank you, BBC2, for continuing to show these great films.

Speaking of digressing, that reminds me - a great-looking film is out in January - entitled The Artist, it is a brand new film from director Michel Hazanavicius about a silent movie actor's fears as the whole of Hollywood adapts to the coming of sound.  Movie buffs, especially those of the "Classic" film, will notice a certain similarity with the 1952 musical classic Singin' in the Rain, but here's where The Artist is different.  It is a 100%, bona fide silent film - possibly the first made during the sound era since Chaplin's Modern Times in 1936.  I say possibly because no-one can be 100% sure, and I'm sure that one of the many thousands of you will correct me if, as is quite likely, I am wrong.  And, if the buzz surrounding Oscar is to be believed, it could be the first film to win the coveted Best Picture Academy Award since Wings in 1928 to be completely devoid of dialogue and, indeed, sound effects - viz., to be silent.  I hope it wins

Well, blog-watchers, I'll stop for now because, as I mentioned, I'm actually writing two at once today.  I've no idea how to link to one blog whilst writing another.  All I can tell you is to go over to WordPress and look up stephenbutler.
x

It's Oscar Time!

Dear Blogwatchers:

So much for my promise to keep updating this blog on a more regular basis. Since I last wrote to you, so much has happened outside my window that I just had to sit there for hours on end and stare at it. Early in December, it snowed. Early in January, it went all foggy. How much more exciting could it possibly get than that?

Anyway, the announcement today of this year's Oscar nominations made me think of both of you, and I resolved to blog upon this subject for your edification.

First off, let me make it perfectly clear that the Oscars were never meant to get this big. The first ceremony, which took place in 1929 I believe, was a reasonably formal dinner in some hotel in Hollywood when, at some point during the evening, a few announcements were made giving the Tinseltown community's views on what the best films of the previous 'season' were. All the winners were known prior to the ceremony; there was no surprises, no gushing speeches, no red carpet and no E! Entertainment channels making 3-hour programmes on the nominees' dresses.

This year, there are 10, yes ten, nominees for Best Picture. The Academy's choices are now so stale and predictable that you can practically name them all the day after the previous year's awards.

For the record, here are my predictions for the year's winners in the major categories. Bear in mind that there cannot be a 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' style clean sweep of the major awards this year:

BEST PICTURE The King's Speech

BEST DIRECTOR Tom Hooper (The King's Speech)

BEST ACTOR Jeff Bridges (True Grit)

BEST ACTRESS Natalie Portman (Black Swan)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Christian Bale (The Fighter)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Helena Bonham Carter (The King's Speech)

BEST SCREENPLAY (Orig.) David Seidler (The King's Speech)

BEST SCREENPLAY (Adap.) Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)

BEST MUSICAL SCORE Alexander Desplat (The King's Speech)

BEST SONG Randy Newman ('We Belong Together' Toy Story 3)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Matthew Libatique (Black Swan)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Alice in Wonderland

BEST ART DIRECTION Alice in Wonderland

BEST COSTUME DESIGN The King's Speech

BEST FILM EDITING Black Swan

BEST MAKEUP The Wolfman [only 3 nominees???]

BEST SOUND EDITING Tron: Legacy

BEST SOUND MIXING Inception

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE Toy Story 3

So there we have it. Even I can't take this as gospel though; if Jeff Bridges wins, he will become only the third actor in human history, after Spencer Tracy & Tom Hanks, to win Best Actor two years in a row, so that in itself makes it unlikely, no matter how good he is. And Bridges always delivers. Speaking of True Grit, one must also consider the merits of a remake gaining so many major nominations. It begs the question...why? Academy voters, I can assure you (because I know one or two of them) will be reluctant to go for Bridges since John Wayne won his only Best Actor award for the original film. Wayne's Oscar was seen very much as a sympathy one, after years of far superior performances failed to gain even a single nomination. The same accusation cannot be levelled at Bridges, since, as I have mentioned already, he already has one statue on his mantlepiece, for last year's Crazy Heart.

According to my predictions, The King's Speech will win 6 Oscars, Black Swan will win 3. Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland will win 2 each, with one each for Tron: Legacy, True Grit, The Social Network, The Fighter and Inception.

Of course, I could be completely wrong, but I fear Danny Boyle will walk away empty-handed this year, as will the makers of Winter's Bone, and The Kids Are All Right. Despite the predictability of the nominations, some categories are still a complete mystery: why, for example, only three nominees each for Best Makeup and Best Animated Film. Certainly in the latter category, there has been such an enormous deluge of CGI 'animated' films in 3-D that I could come up with more than three nominations without even thinking. Where, for example, is Shrek: Forever After, a far superior film to Toy Story 3. Yes, you heard it here first. Well, probably not first, as I would expect many other sad and lonely bloggers to be writing exactly the same on their unread dissertations.

There are a couple of categories where I was a little unsure about my decision. Best Supporting Actress could go any one of the five ways; I picked Helena Bonham Carter because of the fact that 'life partner' Tim Burton is up for several awards for his Alice in Wonderland, and it could make for some great photo opportunities at the after-show party. Best Original Screenplay is quite a strong category this year, and again it could go any one of the five ways here.

It would be silly of me to speculate on the categories for Best Documentary, Best Short Documentary, Best Foreign Language Film etc., etc., because I haven't seen a single one of them.

Hey ho, we look forward to February 27. The Oscars this year are sponsored by Hyundai, by the way.

Oh, you asked for it...

Yes, folk:

Just a brief note to inform you that, as of today, I hope to be updating this here blog on a far more regular basis. Why? Because I can. And I should. I have discovered over recent months that places like Facebook, as fun as they are, are not the place for the likes of me to be posting impotent rants about the state of the world and the world of the State.

Plus, it's almost time for me to nominate my now-annual Stephen Butler Prize for the album of the year. Start baiting your breasts and wait for the opening of That Envelope. I would do one for Film of the Year, too, but I've only seen three and they were all in 3-D and they were all animated. I could pick a winner out of those three if you like.

Remember the old adage, folks: Smile, and the world goes 'What the f*** are you smiling at?'

I'll be back sooner than you fear...I mean, think.

England, Oh England

Was there ever going to be any other result? Other than a 15-minute spell either side of half-time, England were so woeful across the park that Germany were able to crush the mighty Three Lions without breaking sweat.

There are two reasons why this happened. First, and perhaps most obviously, the manager must accept full responsibility for the failings of his team and resign. He insisted on playing a system that the players were not used to, he played individuals out of position and ultimately cost himself the respect of the players that he so desperately craved.

Second, we have the players themselves. Half the players are, I believe, world class and the equal to any Brazilian, Spaniard, Italian or whatever. I'm talking about Rooney, Gerrard, both Coles, Terry, Ferdinand, and Beckham (if fit). Cappello should have looked at the players he had, then built the system around them, instead of forcing them to play a system that virtually none of them (except possibly Dafoe) play at club level. How hard can that be? But equally the players should have made more of an effort, instead of giving up at the first hurdle. We can't do this, so we can't be bothered. That's the truth of the matter, not the noncommittal 'we don't know' that Gerrard gave when questioned about it after the Germany defeat.

We need a new manager, new players and new commitment. Otherwise they will have to look at replacing the Three Lions on the shirt with Three Blind Mice.

Jumping Through Hoops

I'll give the Tories some credit, they didn't lie to us about it. They promised to 'review' the benefits system in order to make efficiency savings and cut the country's deficit just that little bit more. Of course, there were not that many benefits they could target once they promised to protect pensioners and the vulnerable, such as single mothers and so on. So, once again, the axe falls upon those receiving incapacity benefit and Disability Living Allowance.

I should point out from the outset that these are precisely the two benefits that I am in receipt of, being my only source of income once I was signed off from work in 2005. I have a condition that they call Fibromyalgia. This, folks, is a condition that affects, well, everything ultimately. If you want a more detailed definition, I suggest you look it up on Wikipedia.

To cut a long story short, it took four years to finally gain some form of credibility with the Department for Work and Pensions, when they finally recognised the fact that this was a condition from which I have suffered for many, many years, even before I ever thought I was 'ill,' if you see what I mean. I was diagnosed with this condition in 2007, and it was after that that many of my earlier episodes throughout my life started to make sense.

Benefits are not something that I take for granted, or take lightly in any way. I am very serious about our benefits system, as I would be whether I was receiving them or not. I believe that we are astonishingly fortunate in this country to have the benefits system that we do. (If, by some miracle, there is someone reading this outside my own country, I am talking about the United Kingdom.) I also recognise, however, that we are in the middle of a workshy generation, largely started by people my age and younger, whose sole use of their brains has consisted of concocting methods by which they can lie and cheat their way into claiming benefits for ailments they do not have; or simply brazenly living off welfare without any attempt whatsoever to find work. It is they who take our benefits system for granted; they grow up with the idea that somehow the government owes them something for doing nothing so that they end up actually believing it.

So what's a government department to do? What any self-respecting government department would do, of course, and punish the whole class because of the mis-behaviour of a few. Consequently people like myself and many others in far worse situations are forced to jump through hoops in order to claim, what, £50 a week in some cases? Let's face it, we're not talking Donald Trump here.

I'll not go into the why's and wherefore's of the Conservative Party's ascent to power at the May, 2010 General Election. I'll save that for another blog. The fact is they're here, they're having an affair with the Liberal Democrats, let's just deal with it and move on for now. And George Osborne, the first Chancellor in history to be younger than me, announced in his Emergency Budget on June 22 that he would force all new and existing claimants of Disability Living Allowance to be re-assessed to see if they can go back to work or not. In 2013. This is supposed to make savings this year? How does that work?

And today, June 28, he announced that Incapacity Benefit claimants are to be re-looked at in a summer spending review to see if they can go back to work or not. Are you starting to detect a pattern here? That's right. George Osborne, Eton born and bred, doesn't like the oiks who are on benefits and is now using the protection of 'legitimacy' in order to smash and kick them when they are down.

Part of me says right, fine, bring it on. I have nothing to hide and for that reason am more than willing to go through all of those government hoops again. But my wife had to go through all of the hoops with me, and indeed many of the hoops on my behalf, and now she must do it all again for me? And she is working! That's right, Young Master Osborne forgets that those who are genuinely incapacitated need carers to do those things for them, and now working people must re-do all the form filling, hospital and JobCentre Plus visits, and angry phone calls to civil servants already pissed off because their pay and pensions have been frozen for two years.

And that's a right bloody encouragement to go back to work, isn't it? I worked for 14 years in Libraries. A public servant working in the public sector, that's right. The department for whom I worked were pioneers in spending reviews, cuts and staff restructurings that led to lower and lower grade staff taking on more responsibility for the same pay. And they were proud of it! Eventually, after 14 years of it, they wore me down and burnt me out to a point where I was no longer able to work.

What's this, I hear you cry, are you actually blaming local government for your illness? Well, no, but let's face it the government are about as responsible for my condition as I am for their fucking deficit.

What irks me most about these politicians, from whatever political persuasion they may come, is that they refuse to accept any responsibility for any of their actions. No, we are all in this together, but it is the taxpayer, and now the benefit recipient, who must pay for past mistakes by bankers who still receive their bonuses. And MP's can still claim for their expenses! This country is £155 billion in debt and Diane Abbott still feels justified in claiming for cab fares because she's going home late at night. Well boo-bleedin'-hoo. They're the ones telling us that we must tighten our belts because we've got to make savings. Well, Miss Abbott, as long as those savings don't include taxi fares, eh? Here's a radical idea: how about paying for your own bloody taxi like everyone else has to?

If I went to the JobCentre Plus (TM) to try to claim, on top of my opulent benefit payments, for a taxi back from somewhere because I am disabled and not able to walk home, imagine the response I would get. Paying for taxis is a luxury and not something you can expect just by blustering your way through the justification. Am I less entitled to claim for a taxi because walking causes me pain that if, say, it was late and I was afraid of the dark?

So George Osborne and his Liberal Democrat bedfellows want to 'encourage people who can work to work.' The implication is, of course, that there are people who can work saying that they can't work which may well be true, but I want to encourage MPs who can pay for their own taxi fares and other sundry expenses to pay for their own taxi fares and other sundry expenses.

Bring it on.

Classic Movies

Today I joined a Facebook group, and a blog as it goes, entitled Bring Classic Horror Back to Television. This blog lists the classic horror double bills of the 1970's and 1980's and reminds us, in stark black and white (well, blue), of the great films that are no longer shown on the box. And it got me thinking: what about all the other classic movies that now no longer receive an airing?

It seems that, with the advent of multi-channel satellite and freeview television services, many of these films have all but disappeared off the radar. There are channels devoted to film, such as Turner Classic Movies and Sky's Classics channel, but these once-proud stations are now reduced to showing the same films over and over again and the ones that they do show are not what I call 'classic.'

So as of today I would like to make it my life's work to restore regular showings of movies from 'Hollywood's Golden Age' on our screens. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of current film too. But I remember the glory days when BBC2 would have an early Cagney season, or a Bogart season, an afternoon of Bette Davis movies or similar. Or, as my friend Cyberschizoid points out, a good old-fashioned horror double bill of a Saturday night.

Before I continue my rant I would like to give credit where it's due, specifically to Channel 4, who have recently begun at least to show some of the old Warner Bros. movies from the 1940's [most recently the 1943 Errol Flynn film Edge of Darkness, with a wonderful score by Franz Waxman].

The biggest criminal, as far as I am concerned, is Turner Classic Movies [UK]. When I first discovered satellite television, in 1999, one of the main reasons I decided to take the plunge was TCM. It was great. Much of their library at the time was taken from the back catalogues of Warner Bros., MGM and, I think, RKO. A morning of Warner B-movies might be followed by an afternoon and evening showing of, I don't know, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, Now, Voyager and The Great Ziegfeld. That's telly heaven right there.

Then, in October, 2000, something very bizarre happened. Glancing through the monthly schedule, I noted 63 films that I fancied watching that month. As the month wore on, with each bright shining new day, each and every single one of the films got cancelled, and replaced with mega-epics like Love Among the Ruins, Stand By Me, Can't Buy Me Love, etc. etc.

TCM has never been the same since. Yet, in the US, the station continued to delve deep into its extensive library, a policy it continues to this day. The other key change that destroyed TCM in dear old blighty was the introduction of adverts - TCM in the US continues to show its films 'uncut and commercial-free.'

Over the last 5 years or so I made a number of visits to the US, and always made sure that my wife and I stayed in hotels and/or other accomodation that had TCM on its list of stations. Over there they continue to demonstrate a deep love of film that in the UK just became lip-service.

I have been told by the powers that be that many of the films no longer can be shown in Europe because it violates the conditions of their copyright. They can't be released on DVD over here either. Warner Bros.' fantastic Archive Collection series of DVDs remain US-only releases, and you can buy them from TCM's online store - except you can't if you live abroad because they ship to US addresses only. I have friends who have offered to get the DVDs shipped to their address and then they will ship to me. Another contact has offered to record direct from TCM and then ship the DVDs to me. But, as grateful as I am for their help, why should I? Are my eyes any different from those of our American cousins? Is there a reason why films that can be anything up to 80 years old can't be shown over here? We're talking about films like Sunny Side Up and Gold Diggers of Broadway not Iron Man 2 or Kick-Ass.

BBC2 this week are showing a brief Norman Wisdom season. Great, if you like that sort of thing, but what about a Gable season showing films that are not regularly screened, like Idiot's Delight, or Forsaking All Others? Unfortunately we live in an age when our television schedulers must appeal to the lowest common denominator. So Channel 5 must show its made-for-TV dramas every afternoon, because they're cheap.

I'm not saying newer films shouldn't be shown, of course not - I like to sit down and wallow in Steven Seagal kick-fest like anybody else. But let's have some balance here. And TCM, pull your finger out and get hold of your library.

Time For a Change?

Well, the country has spoken...but what did it say? That we want change? Well, yes. That we want Gordon Brown, that lying, cheating weasel, slung summarily out of office? Um, kind of. That we want the Liberal Democrats, those paragons of change and a fresh start, to rule instead of the two 'old parties'? Er, no.

Here's what happened, in a nutshell: just below 30 million votes were cast yesterday; of those, 10 million (or one third) voted Tory, 2 million less than that voted 'Labour', and 2 million less than that voted Liberal Democrat. This means that in a Parliament comprised of 650 seats, the split should be: Conservative 220 seats give or take; 'Labour' 210 seats and the Liberal Democrats 200 seats. The remainder can go to the 'others'. That's right, n'est pas? No. Of course not. The Tories ended up with 306 seats, 'Labour' got 258; the Liberal Democrats a distant third with 57 seats, less than they polled in the 2005 election.

How the bloody hell is this possible, you may ask. God knows I have. Well, a quick glance at the election nap, sorry map, provided by the BBC News website will give you the answer. Most of England is now blue, most of northern England and Southern Scotland now red, and the Highlands, pockets of the South West and Midlands of England now yellow, or orange, or whatever it's supposed to be. It's basically down to constituency sizes and populations, all made up and changed at will by previous Conservative and Labour governments, both of whom have one common interest: squeeze out the Liberal Democrats. That's why the LibDems have been banging on for years about Proportional Representation - without it they haven't had a hope of sharing government.

Until now.

What gets me most of all, I think, is that political parties of all colours and persuasions using varying interpretations of fairness to suit their own ambitions. Politics is a game; it's theatre, and don't let them tell you any different. In fact, not only is it theatre, it's pantomime, with voters shouting 'behind you!' to Gordon Brown as he boos and hisses his way towards a General Election defeat.

It is impossible to get a straight answer out of any politician. None of them will tell you exactly what they would do if they get into government, and if they say they are telling you the facts, they are lying. How do I know this?

Take the three leaders' debates. At the first, Nick Clegg came out the clear winner and put the Liberal Democrats forward as genuine government contenders, or at the very least opposition. It was a crazy few days after that. Everyone was walking around going 'I agree with Nick!' at any opportunity. Brown was criticised for cosying up to the LibDems in a less-than-subtle attempt to gain a coalition should there be a hung parliament. It was sad to watch in a way. It was a political tactic and it misfired. Brown had been advised badly. Also, Clegg addressed many remarks to the camera and, when other leaders were speaking, he turned to them and listened.

Cue the second debate. What happens? Brown no longer 'agrees with Nick,' and Cameron looks straight down the camera and turns to the other leaders and listens when they speak. Ha! Pathetic! Not only that but now that Clegg is doing so well in the media that the other leaders decide that the Liberal Democrats' policies are weak and deserve exposing through scrutiny. And Gordon Brown smiles that smile. That smile that says 'Say that again and you're DEAD!' smile. Brown must think the British public have just crawled out from under a stone if he imagines that we're going to believe that smile.

So now we're supposed to believe that the country has spoken and sent back a hung parliament, but how did we do this? Almost thirty million people huddled around discussing tactics? We are where we are because a large number of people voted for the party they've always voted for, myself included. I voted Liberal Democrat despite the fact that I don't agree with them on Europe, I don't agree with them on immigration and I don't agree with them on the Euro. I'm anti-Europe, but I can't vote Tory. I'm anti-corporate greed and pro-union but I can't vote Labour. I'm anti-war and pro-fairness for everyone. We should all have the right to access free healthcare that is of the highest standard. Abandon private 'NHS' trusts whose only ambition is profit. Give ulitities, transport, health & education back to the state. But allow those who wish to make money in business to do so, and fairly.

So, guys, cut out this media posturing and find a party system that actually gives voters what they want, instead of continually having to pick the best of a rotten bunch. As I write this Cameron and Clegg are busy picking out curtains, so it remains to be seen what kind of a government we shall get. Interesting times ahead.

Silly Question and other musings of the week

I know this is daft, yeah, and could probably be answered by many hundreds of thousands of people who read The Guardian far more regularly than I (I don't), but I have what to me is a very simple question, and it is this: if there's a credit crunch, yeah, and a recession and that, after years of apparent prosperity, OK, where's all this money gone?

If you go to the shops and you buy, for example, a copy of this week's Jackie, you hand over your 50p to the newsagent, what, does it disappear into the ether? I would have thought, after a brief spell in the shopkeeper's till, it would then somehow make its way to the bank and then off to some other bank and then...where? My point is this: surely there is exactly the same amount of money on planet Earth as there always was, more if you factor in Quantitative Easing, not less, so how come everyone's short of money? Who's got it?

I'm not thick or anything, but I do think it odd that we have these periods of 'boom & bust' and when it's the latter, where is all the cash that suddenly re-appears when the former returns. The dosh has got to be somewhere. Is this how a recession ends - someone goes 'Look! There it is!' and pulls a huge bag of 20p coins out from behind the bookcase? We shall see. I'm usually right about these things.

Why just the other day I was musing with my wife's father that our beloved Great Leader, Comrade Brown, has actually lost his marbles and is in danger of needing the services of the very same National Health Service he has spent the last 12 1/2 years bleeding dry. I truly believe the guy is actually crazy and the truly awful fawning over him at the Labour Party Conference by those who happen to be in front of a camera at the time showed itself to be nothing more than the stage-managed show of affection that it was.

Why do those in public life continue to imagine that, if they show the public something, like loads of ambitious ministers clapping a leader whose job they want, that we're just gonna swallow it and go 'what were we thinking? And there was us imagining that Gordon Brown was an incompetent, unbalanced old fool!' DO THEY THINK WE CRAWLED OUT FROM UNDER A FLIPPIN' STONE?

Anyway, my point was: there I was going on about how unhinged Gordon Brown is, and the next day, right, Andrew Marr asks him if he's on any medication because quite frankly he doesn't look well, does he? [Gordon Brown, not Andrew Marr.] Well, you could have knocked me down with a fork lift truck. I mean, I must be a sidekick or something. Mark my words, dear readers - yes, both of you - if Gordon Brown makes it to the next General Election as leader, I will lean forwards in my wheelchair, stick my head up my poop chute and sing a chorus of 'My Way' to my appendix.

Well, reader, it's getting to that time of year. Leaves are falling, days are getting shorter, the sky is a dull grey [what's new there?] , and the wind has already begun to howl around my chuffy bits. In order to combat the sheer misery that is autumn, I start to ponder the more important matters in life, such as...I don't know...the album of 2009. And this year has seen a bumper crop of contenders, but this week I think I may have found my Album of 2009. What is it, I hear you yawn? Step forward Reunited by Cliff Richard & the Shadows. One dodgy live album from 1979 aside, this is actually their first album of new studio material for an astonishing 41 years! Granted, 19 of the album's 22 songs are re-recordings of their greatest hits, but no matter. When I heard it, I couldn't believe it. Breath of fresh air doesn't even cover it. This album is the chalk to Muse's cheese; the Yin to Porcupine Tree's Yang. Two tracks in, and the sound of 'The Young Ones' in crystal clear stereo played to perfection by the band that influenced everyone from Mark Knopfler to The Beatles was a reminder to every single little oik that's ever followed in their wake and committed their angst to record that this is what pop music was and should be about.

My only gripe with the album is the inclusion of 'Move It' which is not strictly a Cliff Richard & the Shadows hit, now is it, lads? In July, 1958, when the song was originally recorded, not one member of The Shadows appeared on the recording. Indeed, the first single to feature Hank Marvin & Bruce Welch was 'Livin' Lovin' Doll', recorded in November of that year. Drummer Brian Bennett is the relative new boy of the band, having joined as recently as January / February of 1962. Now you've got me started on this subject, you might be interested to learn that Bennett replaced one Tony Meehan, who, along with bassist Jet Harris formed a successful duo after they left The Shadows in December, 1961. It took almost 28 years for them to patch up their differences with Cliff, who allowed them to share a stage with him when he sold out two shows at Wembley Stadium in June, 1989.

One final fascinating piece of information about this album [Reunited by Cliff & the Shadows in case you had forgotten] is that it isn't as 'reunited' as you might think. Yup, in true 'Duets' stylee, Cliff recorded his vocals in Florida, USA, whilst Hank recorded his guitar parts from his home in Perth, Australia. That's three continents for 5 musicians, because 'everything else' was recorded at Brian Bennett's home studio in Hertfordshire, England. But, in spite of that, I am awarded this much-coveted award for The Stephen Butler Album of the Year 2009 to:

Reunited by Cliff Richard & the Shadows!

It would be at this point that I turn my attention to the Movie of the Year, but since I haven't been to the pictures in more than a year I'll not bother.

Did either of you see Kelly Rowland, formerly of Destiny's Child, funk up her recent Number one smash hit single at the MOBO Awards t' other day? Afterwards, she took quite a swing at the event organisers, berating their poor organisation for allowing her to perform with such poor sound, which of course meant that she was unable to hear the backing track. Well, I was so inflamed by this blatant example of i'm-a-big-star bullpoo that I went over to her Twitter page and politely reminded her that, having watched her performance, I heard nothing wrong with the sound and I implicitly put the suggestion to her that perhaps she had simply cocked-up the song good and proper. If the sound was so bad, why was she loudly urging the crowd to wave their hands in the air like they just didn't care, instead of perhaps encouraging them to keep quiet so that she could hear the backing track? I have yet to receive a response from her, which seems odd to me.

Now, Books I Have Got on the Go Part I:

These are the books I am reading at the moment. They are:

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. The World's Funniest Novelist Ever returns with yet another book which focuses on a dweeb with no friends who has an obsession with obscure seventies music. I'm only on Chapter Two at the moment. Chapter One was quite funny, if you like reading about hopeless dweebs with folk-rock fixations.

The Fears of Henry IV by Ian Mortimer. This guy Henry the Fourth was King of England from about, oh 1387 or thereabouts, a long time ago anyway, and came from a time when people, men usually, fought like cat and second cat over who should be King. With me so far? Well, Henry beat the shit out of some bloke called Richard the Second, and took over Kingship for a while. He did quite well at it, lasting a full nearly 14 years before he breathed his last. He was succeeded by Laurence Olivier, who of course film buffs will recall was played by Henry the Fifth in that flag-waving World War II epic of 1944.

Prince Rupert by Charles Spencer. Spencer, as the man who used to be Princess Diana's brother, is already more famous than anyone on the planet outside of the Jackson family, so why he bothered writing a book about Charles the Second's cousin or nephew or something is beyond me. Still, you don't get many Prince Rupert biographies to the pound, so this one is at least welcome, if a little pedestrian, read.

Hester by Ian McIntyre. Samuel Johnson took a liking to this lady called Hester who didn't seem to mind his Tourette's. She also didn't mind his habit of barking like a doggie and writing dictionaries.

Got plenty of others lined up, so more later. x

How is this possible?

Hello again, dear reader:

Not a single blog for three months, and now two in as many days! Just like London buses! This day, my ire is directed towards young Michael Owen, former Liverpool / Newcastle striker, now plying his 'trade' with Man Ure. On Sunday afternoon, Man Utd played a tense thriller against arch-rivals Man City, which finished 4-3 in United's favour. Three times United took the lead, and three times City equalised. That is, until six minutes into stoppage time when United scored their fourth. the goalscorer being - you guessed it - Michael Owen. That's his sixth for this season, very nearly as many, in two short months, as he managed in four seasons at Newcastle. How, as my title suggests, is this possible? Has his move to a super-rich world-class club on a free transfer coincided with a miraculous return to full fitness?

I don't doubt Owen's credentials as a world-class striker. But there must be more to this story than meets the eye. My verdict is that he is a time waster. He has wasted over half his career getting over injuries very slowly indeed in order to get out of a contract he is unhappy with. He did it at Liverpool, at Real Madrid and Newcastle. I'm not saying he hasn't had genuine injuries. Anyone who saw him hit the deck a few minutes into an England game in the 2006 World Cup would have winced, as I did, knowing that that was going to hurt. In the end, he was out for pretty much the whole of the following season. And who's to say that, as soon as he has his first tiff with Sir Alex Ferguson, he won't do the same at Manchester United? I'd get as much mileage out of him as I can now, Sir Alex.

It's a Crazy World Part 1

How do you enforce a rule that is basically unenforceable? The other day I was in Sainsbury's with my wife, and we bought two packets of their own-brand paracetamol each. Except that the staff at the checkout wouldn't let us - the rule is only two packets, unless bought at the pharmacy. The reason being that the staff should be protected from making the decision whether someone is likely to kill themselves with it. To be fair, this is not an issue with Sainsbury's - all the major High Street supermarkets operate by the same tenet. There are, however several flaws:

1. If my wife and I had not been talking to each other, we could have given the impression that we were not related, bought the paracetamol each, and sailed through.

2. Each time I have questioned the staff about it, they have not been able to provide one shred of written documentation of this policy or clarify the regulation clearly enough to determine whether the rule is two packets per person or per household.

3. Had my wife and I gone to the self-service checkout separately we could have easily purchased the medicine without question.

4. If we went to the same store the following day, we could have found a different member of staff who would not have stopped us from buying the medication.

5. Suppose we did just buy two packets a day for a week? Would that not be enough medication to kill myself with, if that was my intention? And am I right in thinking that there is nothing that their legislation could do about it?

6. Since the medication is on the open shelves, you would think there would be some form of notification of the limitation, right? Wrong.

Someone needs to get some consistency in this, because people like me who need the stuff for pain relief are treated like criminals when there are far more potent items on the shelves that I could buy and do myself in with - bleach, cough medicine, or Tesco Value Bakewell Tarts.

In the blink of an eye

In the Blink of an Eye

Isn’t it funny how history repeats itself? The death of Michael Jackson, on June 25, 2009, will have, if what I fear took place actually did take place, many parallels with the death of his hero and one-time father-in-law, Elvis Presley. Firstly, it was a shock but not a surprise. It came out of the blue all right, as Presley’s death did in 1977, but, if we’re honest, how many of us didn’t actually see it coming? Second, the singer’s family tried to go into immediate damage limitation, with a press announcement stating that he ‘probably’ died from ‘cardiac arrest.’ Third, there is the involvement of a ‘dodgy’ doctor, who, after Jackson’s death at which he was allegedly present, went on the run, and it took the LAPD over 24 hours to track him down. Fourth, it seems that the police seized bagfuls of prescription medication from Jackson’s rented mansion. Sound familiar, Elvis fans? Granted, in Presley’s case, it wasn’t the police; his friends and family got to Graceland and cleared the place from top to bottom before the police even got there. But you get the picture. Fifth, you have the concept that Jackson was so much larger than life that even his own family couldn’t believe that he could die. Family members were heard to shout at the hospital ‘You’ve got to save him!’

Here’s basically what I think happened, and we need to back-track a little here. Michael Jackson, showing prodigious talent from the age of five, was groomed for stardom by a bullying and greedy father, who forgot to instil in him the value of money or the consequences of one’s own actions. Cue many years of profligate and irresponsible spending, coupled with lawsuits filed by parents of children that he slept with, and Jackson finds himself some four hundred million dollars (!) in dept with no hope of repaying it, because of the wasteful dogshit that passes for a recorded output over the last fourteen years – a grand total, by the way, of just two studio albums that cost an estimated fifty million dollars to make. Enter some dodgy fly-by-night concert promoter who convinces him to perform 50 shows in London having been out of the limelight for almost eight years. Jackson, being the sort of guy that he was, must have jumped at the chance to reclaim some of the love that he craved from his fans; and will no doubt have worked his can off to try and get himself in mental and physical shape for this extraordinary run of concerts.

Allow me to digress a little here, but it is at least partially relevant. Much has been made of the possible mental and physical strain that Jackson may have endured as a result of the upcoming concerts. I don’t believe a word of it. Indeed, since I am inviting comparisons between the death of Elvis Presley to that of Jackson, allow me to throw in a few contrasts between the careers of the two men. Jackson’s run of 50 shows was to take place over a massive eight-month period, and yet Elvis Presley, between 1969 and 1973, performed 57 shows in four weeks in Las Vegas, twice a year. That’s 104 shows in two months. In fact, in 1972 that total went up to 110 shows and, on September 2, 1973, Presley performed 3 1-hour shows on the same night. At the time, Presley was 38 years old, and nowhere near as fit as Michael Jackson. He [Presley] was one month away from his first two-week hospital stay in a series of ultimately futile attempts by those close to him to detox his system of drugs. So, despite Jackson having hit the half-century last August, I don’t believe he was physically incapable of completing the run. Just ask Sir Paul McCartney or Sir Mick Jagger about the pains of performing in one’s advanced years.

But it is all too easy to come to rely on medication to see oneself through even the slightest of pain and stiffness. It is a reliance upon which I can speak from personal experience. If I take my painkillers even an hour late, the pain throughout my whole body is intolerable. For someone like Michael Jackson, who was surrounded by people whose sole purpose is to grant his every whim, the temptation to get hold of the most serious painkillers known to man must have been to hard to resist. Enter the unscrupulous doctor with the BMW, and you have a recipe for disaster. Give me that shot of Demerol or I’ll find someone who will. ‘OK,’ says the doctor, ‘but…’ and before you can say ‘Bubbles!’ Michael Joseph Jackson has been blasted into the middle of next week. The doctor panics, does a runner and that brings us right up to where we are now. Sadly, nothing about Michael Jackson’s life was ever simple, and his sad and tawdry death will have been no different.

Perhaps the saddest part of all is the fact that, between approximately 1970 and 1988, Michael Jackson, as an artist, was unstoppable, with every single thing that he did, except The Wiz, a lesson from a master on how it should be done. What a gut-wrenching shame that he spent the next twenty years pissing all of that up the wall. You’re a long time dead, someone so rightly said, and now that Jackson is himself in that state of eternal nothingness, he might as well have lived for five seconds as fifty years because it has all passed by in the blink of an eye.

This One's For the (Music) Lovers!

Hello, dear reader:

In a break from my traditional rantings, I would like to begin by bringing to your attention a small vignette concerning my musical activities of the last twenty years or so. Back in January, 1990, I was given the opportunity by a lecturer at my University (it was a plain old 'college' then) to make use of a recording studio that was sitting idle in the back arse end of the Music Department. I was utterly overjoyed. I unlocked the door (I have by-passed the fact that I was first given the key), to discover a whole new world which, at the time, seemed like a paradise to me but that I now look back upon with amusement as the equipment list in this 'studio' was basic, to say the least. In addition to an upright piano and monophonic synthesiser, there were 2 Otari 2-track reel-to-reel tape recorders, a cassette deck and quite a bit of fungal growth around the skirting boards.

Over the next two months, I proceeded to spend as much time as was humanly possible recording what was to become my first proper 'album.' In a way it proved to be the perfect statement of everything that's good and bad about being left to run riot entire on your own in a recording studio.

First, I had no knowledge or experience of anything at all to do with music recording. I didn't know how to work a synthesiser, and I sure as hell had no clue about the tape machines. I had to supply my own acoustic guitar, and a cheap microphone, plug it directly into the tape machine, and go. Nobody showed me how to work anything. I don't think anyone else knew, to be honest, which is why the studio had lain idle for so long. The first song I recorded was a song that my friend Michael and I had written several years before, entitled 'Whatever Happens.' It seemed appropriate, somehow. I recorded a basic rhythm guitar track on one of the tape machines. But wait - I had no bass, so I used the acoustic and thumbed out a bass line on the lower strings and hoped for the best, whilst simultaneously playing the acoustic guitar track from one tape machine to the other I 'laid down' the bass line.

Anyone familiar with recording techniques, especially in the dark pre-computer days, will know that as soon as you record from one cassette to another you're going to create a certain amount of 'hiss' on the second recording. Then, if you want to record further, as I did, you need to record back to the first machine the two tracks you have already done, whilst at the same time playing a third. This new transfer effectively doubles the amount of 'hiss' you already had. Ultimately, during an afternoon's recording I managed to record 2 chord tracks, a 'bass', a 'lead' piano, synth and voice (with overdubs). The amount of hiss on this final recording sounded like I was singing and playing from the inside of a snake-charmer's basket, and factoring in that I had no drums or any kind of metronome meant that the final recording was a completely out of time, out of tune mess with more hiss than there was music. But I was completely besotted by this recording that I took it home to Jane and played it to her, and took her total indifference to it as a sign that she loved it.

And so it went on for another five songs, which brings me to another down-side of self-producing one's music: there's no-one else to tell you to stop. I was completely and utterly alone during those sessions, a practice I have continued to this day, but none of the six song set finished up under five minutes long and three of them ended up being over eight. And all because of the dreaded popular music device known as the 'playout.' This little passage of music, at the end of a song, can be maybe four or eight bars in length and precedes either a swift fade or a proper end to the song. Some of my 'playouts' went on for four and a half minutes! It wouldn't be so bad, I guess, if a song had so many words it had to go on for six minutes, like 'Tangled Up in Blue' by Bob Dylan, but if the song itself is actually only three minutes or so but you want to keep it going and going and going so you just play the same thing over and over and over and....oh, you get the point.

Trouble is, I still do it. I can't stop myself. Not only that, but I still have that early album, which I aptly titled 'Whatever Happened...?', on my iPod. One of these days I'm going to find some dark corner of the internet willing to take my back catalogue and shove it out there as an abject lesson to you all - don't do it, kids!

MPs' Expenses Published Online

It appears that Parliament has at last published, on its own web site, the 'details' of the expenses claimed by each and every MP that we voted to represent us in the House of Commons. However, some details have been withheld, such as those MPs who 'flipped' homes - alternating between their first & second homes - for the purposes of claiming mortgage benefits and other payments. Although the dust appears to be settling in terms of the media furore over this story, I still call for a General Election. It is the only way that this can be solved.

But Gordon Brown has survived this and clings on to his determination that we wait until the very last minute - i.e. Spring 2010 - before he calls this election. It's extraordinary how he can sit at 10 Downing Street and effectively say to the country that he will run the country whether we like it or not. It's also extraordinary that Labour, having polled its lowest in any major election since the First World War, can still remain in power today. It just goes to show that their motives are for their own gain rather than for the good of the country, in spite of their rhetoric.

It also goes to show that there is one man in all of this who is the most dangerous in the whole of the political spectrum - Peter Mandelson. That man is greasier than a chip shop on a Friday night. In one of the most insane moves seen in British politics ever (certainly in my lifetime), Gordon Brown brings him back into Government, unelected, makes him a 'Lord' and he then proceeds to dictate to his own Prime Minister who should be in the Cabinet. So to add to my list of demands from an earlier blog, may I respectfully suggest that Peter Mandelson be kicked on his arse, very publicly, on the doorstep of No.10 and shown on his way. Out of respect, and because I'm not all bad, I would certainly not begrudge Brown giving him his bus fare home and perhaps an extra couple of quid to buy a sandwich at a petrol station.

And don't think I'm anti-Labour, because I'm not. I'm anti-them all. I forget exactly how many MPs there are - some say 635, some say 646, but frankly it doesn't matter - every last one of them should do the decent thing and stand down at the earliest opportunity and force an election. But of course, they won't do that, because they value their own jobs over the needs and issues affecting their constituents, which of course stands against every rhetorical statement that any MP, regardless of their party or political standpoint, that we should focus on the issues affecting hard-working families of this country. That's exactly what is happening, if only they would take off their blinkers and see for themselves. Hard-working families of this country are completely cheesed off that they cannot exercise 100% faith in their elected representatives (and Peter Mandelson) who are flipping homes for profit, making the taxpayer pay for home repairs, cleaning, meals and God knows what, while they fight to keep their jobs, houses, and families; and they are forced to watch while the NHS goes down the pan, the schools fail their children, bankers swan off with hundreds of thousands of pounds of their customers' money, half of Europe dashes in through this country's wide open back door and take any jobs going right from under their noses, as well as child care, health care and other Government benefits.

But, as citizens of this country, I firmly believe that we should shoulder our share of the blame for this mess. The cause can be summed up in one word: apathy. Where are the protests? There are none. Why? Because what's the point? Cast your mind back, if you will, to March, 2003 when Tony Blair sent our soldiers in to Iraq because George Bush told him to. At that time, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched on London to protest. It was an open secret that the toppling of Saddam Hussein was not the primary motive for this invasion. Some say it was for oil, some say Bush simply rode on a tidal wave of 9/11 and got many 'Western' governments on his side to help him settle some of his old man's scores. But whatever the reason, a fair proportion of the British public said No thanks, old chap, we'd rather you didn't put the lives of our troops at risk in some Middle-Eastern foreign land, we'd rather you focused on putting our own house in order. But Blair ignored these protests and went ahead anyway. This was a turning point, in which Blair realised he could actually do anything he wanted. Sure, people might protest for a while, but it'll soon go away, so let's just do it anyway.

And Brown now faces the same carte blanche. Not only that, but the voters (for that's what we are, primarily, to our MPs), can't even be bothered to protest any more. Environmental protestors, once regularly chaining themselves to trees to stop motorways being built through our beautiful countryside, were simply removed and thrown in jail for a night and the road got built anyway. When the price of petrol shot up to over £1 per litre, we saw lorry drivers take to our motorways and protest. Now, we find petrol once again well over the £1-a-litre threshold, and there is not a soul protesting.

Am I the only one who wants this country to be run by its people? Who cares what political 'party' is in power, just so long as they listen to the people and actively do as those who voted for them ask? And don't be fooled next time you hear your 'elected' representative (and Peter Mandelson) tell you that they are listening. They are not. The only thing they hear is the sound of smug laughter and the silence of millions like you and me as we sit back and let it happen.

Life is not always black & white

Dear Readers:

First of all, apologies to both of you for the delay in providing you with your daily rant-filled sustenance.  I can only put that down to not having written anything.

But, where to start, where to start?  Several of this week's key news stories have had a direct and profound effect upon me, largely because I was watching them at the time.

Let's start with the biggie, those naughty MP's and their expenses claims.  Now, it seems, since I last blogged you both, a select number of our Westminster masters have not exactly quit their jobs, but they have said that they will not stand for re-election whenever it is that the Prime Minister calls a General Election.  Oh, by the way, we also know that Brown is holding out until the last possible moment before calling the election (likely to be June 2010).  It was pointed out on the BBC's Question Time (May 28, 2009) that Brown is Election-phobic, citing:

• His unwillingness to call an election when he became Prime Minister, to see if the country wanted him
• His inability to fulfill a promise in the Labour Manifesto of 2005 and hold a refurrendum on the subject of Europe
• His apparent inability to grasp the concept that the country wants a General Election now.

What almost slipped under the radar was the fact that, by choosing to stand down at the next election rather than go now is that they get some sort of golden handshake deal from the constituency, something like that.  I don't quite understand it all myself but what it shows is that MP's simply cannot help themselves when it comes to sticking their grubbly little fingers into the taxpayers' pot.  It just beggars belief that, at any opportunity, these theives will take what they can for themselves whilst at the same time judging our morals and standards, filling the streets and roads with dreadful Brussels-led rules and signs, making us sweat blood and tears over the simplest of benefit-claimant forms, telling us where or when we can or cannot smoke, etc. etc.

...

The next target for my rantings is my beloved Newcastle United Football Club.  In a moment, you will see that there is actually a link between footballers and MP's, but we'll come to that.  Firstly, though, I am sure many of you, probably up to half (that's a whole person) feel absolutely gutted that, after 16 years of coming so close, the Toon finally achieved their dream and got themselves relegated.  And how many of Newcastle's high-earning, Ferrari-driving wasters can hold their hands up and say that they played a massive part in their downfall?  You guessed it, step forward Michael Owen.

When Owen signed for Newcastle United in September 2005, it was one of the brightest days in the club's history.  Sure, he had a bad injury record, but those days were all behind him, right?

Wrong.

In his four, yes four, years at the club, Owen has managed just 26 goals.  Alan Shearer, Owen's current manager, scored more than that in his first season!  In his first four seasons, Shearer scored 86.  Over three times more.  And, though not a betting man, I'll wager that Shearer was not "earning" the massive fee that Owen is.  

Here's the thing:  during the last game of this season, away to Aston Villa, Owen was brought on in the second half, as he is coming back from yet another injury.  And, to all those watching the game either in the stadium or on TV, Owen looked like he was playing for his relegation get-out clause.  No-one seems to be able to recall an occasion when he so much as touched the ball.  That is a criminal waste and Owen ought to be brought before the Premier League on a charge of fraud under the Trade Description Act.  It is, to my mind, a criminal act, it's that serious.  So we all (myself included, obviously - see above) bang on about how criminal the situation is in Westminster, but what about St. James' Park, and in other clubs with similar situations?  It's outrageous.  Of course, Owen is playing within the rules, but that does not make it morally justifiable.  He should pay back every last penny of his fraudulently-taken salary and donate it to the poor season ticket holders who, in the midst of a recession, still go to see their "heroes" "perform" in a bid to escape their own misery.  Somehow, I think the sham that is his description as a "Premiership striker" only serves to compound that misery.  

Owen, of course, will believe that somehow he has a Divine right to play in the Premiership, and, as a result of that, play as first choice striker for the England squad.  As my brother would say, "He's 'avin' a giraffe!"  Sack him from Newcastle, sack him from England, and let him play for Rushden & Diamonds or someone, on the bench.

Actually, the one good thing about the Toon's relegation is the fact that, as long as the club doesn't go into freefall, it should weed out all the overpaid, hundred-grand-a-week dead wood like your Owens and Duffs (never was a player more accurately named) and bring in some hard-working, more honest players.  Sure, they might not be as talented, but I would much rather see less talented players giving it all they've got and more than 11 supremely gifted wasters who float across the pitch, preening themselves for the cameras, wearing makeup and their own perfume, Police sunglasses or their kids' names tattooed across the back of their necks, wasting their lives and talent knowing full well that their agent will get them a good relegation clause or some sort of tax-free expensive perk that people who earned less in five years than a week of their wages could ever hope to see.

...

Right:  Jeremy Kyle next.  I'll be the first to confess that I am a big fan of the show.  Like most of the other two million or so people who watch the show every weekday, there is a certain guilty pleasure to be had in getting a small window into people's lives, so long as they are willing to parade themselves on national television.  People are always willing to do that, this country is full of them, that's up to them, and to some degree Kyle and this show exploit that.  He often ends up shouting at them that (for example) if they can't be parents for whatever reason - they are too young or on drugs or alcoholics - they should have thought of that before they had unprotected sex.  But if they did that, of course, Kyle wouldn't have a show and therefore not have a vehicle for venting his particular view of British society.  Mind you, I can't help agreeing with what he says, and if only he were to go into politics....

...which brings me on to this:  two things have struck me about Jeremy Kyle today (Friday 29th May).  The first occurred to me during his show.  Much of Kyle's modus opperandi reminds me of the charismatic preacher, whom many will associate here as the American-style TV evangelist.  You know the type, that "Thunk-ya Jayyyyyysusssssss!" variety.  Sky TV has about a dozen Christian-related free channels, and tune in to any one of them and it won't be long before one of these evangelists appears on the screen.  And Kyle works in the same way.  Charismatic, neatly dressed and presented, Kyle likes to RAISE HIS VOICE AND SHOUT at his guests before suddenly becoming calm and paternal, reducing many of his guests to blubbering wrecks (the women too).  "I understand you've had a tough life BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE YOU HAD UNPROTECTED SEX WITH THREE MEN IN THE SPACE OF ONE NIGHT although I know it must have been hard when your boyfriend walked out and took the kids..."  Kyle clearly is employing every tactic in the Preacher's Handbook to make sure that he keeps his audience's attiontion.

The second thing that occurred to me about Jeremy Kyle occurred during a rare interview with him on ITV's This Morning during which he was promoting his new book.  Kyle sat there, the interviewee on this occasion, with one leg crossed over the other, arms nonchalantly leaning on the back of his chair, and he looked like he owned the place.  It was also notable how Kyle used certain words and phrases, hooks or catchphrases if you like, from his show in his interview, like "thanks, guys," or "if I'm being honest," etc.  In answering one of the questions put to him, he said that that he would not rule out entering into politics...  And then it all became clear:  Kyle is not only a potential political candidate, MARK MY WORDS - he is a potential Prime Ministerial candidate.  I guarantee you one day he will be going for the top job.  I'm not suggesting he'll get it, but he has all the credentials already in place:  he has admitted to his mistakes, he talks about his family alot and some (though not all) of the unsavoury parts of his life a lot, he is highly opinionated and, crucially, likes to remind people constantly that he is highly opinionated.  He is charismatic, looks people in the eye, raises one eyebrow a lot, uses what I call the Preaching Technique (see above), is smart, neat and tidy.  The man wants to run the country, his way.  And I guarantee you he will try.

With that, folk, I will leave you for now.  There is much more about which to rant, but I will spare you for now.  Thank you for reading, both of you.   

Out Like a Light

Sorry for the lack of action these past few days, dear reader.  I have been trialling a new drug, Mirtazapene, designed as a supplemental anti-depressant, but which also acts as a muscle-relaxant, I believe, and it has sent me to sleep for most of the day today.  

Thus, in my unconscious state, I have not been keeping up with the news and I find that, on examining the BBC News web site today, that the latest on the MPs expenses has been relegated to some of the minor stories.  This is a sad yet predictable reflection of media interest in such affairs.  Indignation and then ignorance.  And this was after the Mail on Sunday, and one or two other Sunday publications, gave us hope by reporting the fact that the Queen was said to be "unhappy" with Gordon Brown over his handling of the affair.  

I repeat:  The Queen should dissolve Parliament now.  If you wait for the politicians to do it themselves, you wait for at least a year, or until they themselves feel that it is politically convenient for them to do so.

I have not much else to report at this time.  My brain is so slow at the moment, I swear I just saw the rest of my body overtake me.  I suffered from what they call the "fibro-fog" before; now it is positively a "fibro-pea-souper."  Today I watched an absolutely brilliant episode of Scrubs called "My Musical," about a patient who wakes up and everything that she sees takes the form of a Broadway musical.  Utterly fantastic, and I take my hat off to the genius that wrote it.  I only wish that I had that level of creativity in me.

Speaking of levels of creativity - did any of you (singular) see the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday?  The only surprise is how high the United Kingdom entry finished, given that the song ranks as one of the poorest songs that Andrew Lloyd Webber has ever had the audacity to foist upon the unsuspecting public, and that's saying something.  Overall, the attempt by the organisers to re-vamp the competition worked, and, one or two offensive entries aside, the standard was much higher than usual and voting was more or less song, rather than political, based.  Which makes Lloyd Webber's "song" rank as one of the worst on the night.  

Even on the night, when interviewed, Lloyd Webber seemed barely able to disguise his contempt for the competition, though his singer, Jade Ewen, did display some of the star quality that could promise her a future in "the business."  But the song is completely, totally and utterly dreadful and in that respect sits nicely with Lloyd Webber's entire output since 1987.  Fair play to him, he did write four or five half-decent musicals back in the day, but The Phantom of the Opera really did it for him, as it dawned on him that he could write any old crap in his sleep and turn it out as a musical.  There were so many great songs in Phantom that he seems to have used up his whole entitlement in one show.  

In spite of his best efforts to cripple our chances, Jade finished fifth, our highest placing since 2002, apparently.  

Well, I must now go and lie down, I appear to have worn myself out with that particular rant.  See you on the other side.

You Couldn't Make This Stuff Up

Hello dear reader, today has been a pretty difficult day for so many reasons, maybe partly due to our beloved British weather, which has turned to poopy virtually overnight.  That awful misty, drizzly rain has begun to rear its ugly head again.  One bonus, however, when driving through the Forest of Dean, is that the forestry itself becomes very green and lush.  It looks lovely and my wife and I went for a drive through it today, remarking that it reminded us of the time we drove through the forestry of the South Island of New Zealand.  That was beautiful and so is this - easily the most lovely part of England.

When the bad weather strikes, so does what Churchill describes as "The Black Dog."  My body aches still more, headache, foggy head, extreme fatigue.  The pain of moving is like the pain of pulling a very large truck behind me with my teeth.  It's not only down to the weather, I can feel like this on sunny days too, but certainly it appears to have been set off today by the arrival of this horrid weather.  

Both my wife and I have been stressed today.  Sadly I am unable to venture into the reasons for it here, but stress never helps matters.  I am very proud, however, to call this woman my wife.  Next month, we celebrate 21 years since our first date, and at the end of July will be our 18th wedding anniversary.  Still every day the feeling of marriage to her gets better and I love her very much indeed.  Corny though it may sound, she is the rock on which I lean and she is, in many ways, the reason I am as sane and well as I am, even though it is still not good.

Any road, back to the shenanigans at Westminster.  Today, former minister Elliot Morley was "outed" as having claimed £16,000 on a mortgage that had already been paid off.  This worked out at £800 a month for 20 months!  Then, of course, when this was discovered and threatened with publication by the Daily Telegraph, he claimed that this had been an error, he had paid the money back, and he felt terrible about it!  Yeah, sure, mate, you didn't realise that the mortage had already been paid off a year and a half earlier!  Anybody, and everybody I have ever met, literally counts down the days until the end of their mortgage and for him to say that he had discovered the mistake 2 weeks ago (when this whole stink was surely already in the air), paid it back and already begun the process of feeling terrible about it is taking the insult to our intelligence to a whole new level.  WHO DO THEY THINK WE ARE?  DO THEY IMAGINE WE CAME DOWN IN THE LAST SHOWER?  This is utterly dreadful - these are the people who tell us how to live our lives in this NANNY STATE - they tell us what benefits we can and cannot claim and put measures in place to stop benefit fraud including making disabled people fill out 60 page forms for the sake of a few quied a week.  Is it any wonder that not only is our trust in these people destroyed, but in actual fact these people should be sacked and hauled through the courts.

One gentleman whom I believe has been stitched up by the Telegraph outings has been Conervative MP John Maples who used a private members' club as his residence while he waited to move into another property.  The difference here is that he cleared this with Westminster officials at the time, and they agreed it at the time.  Maples even produced all of this correspondence for the benefit of the Daily Telegraph.  They ignored it.

These are my demands:

1. That there be a general election immediately, with every single MP of every single party in Westminster getting the boot, and facing re-election to their jobs.

2. That Gordon Brown be ousted as Prime Minister.  A more weak and ineffectual leader there has not been since the one before last, a certain John Major.  Come on, Margaret Thatcher was in a better position than Brown is now when she got kicked out of Downing Street.

3. That when MPs are returned to Westminster, they receive the salary that they receive, already pretty high in my opinion, and nothing more.  Everything they do, buy, live in, eat, drive or cook their barbecues on must be paid for out of that salary.  That salary should be subject to the same rate of tax that everybody else pays.

4. Every Cabinet Minister should be forced to go on a training course before taking up their post.  And they must pass a certification before being allowed to sit round the table with whoever becomes PM in Brown's place.  This prevents young upstarts with a particular chip on their shoulder taking up 6-figure salaried jobs for which they have no experience or aptitude, simply because they all want the top job (even though they cannot say that).

5. And while we're on the subject, those who pay their new tax rate should have a say in where that money is spent.  Nobody, it is well known, would object to paying tax if it went towards improving their schools, hospitals, roads and housing, instead of fighting wars in oil-rich foreign lands or bailing out banks that got into difficulties while their CEO's took 7-figure retirement packages.

All MPs are barking on about changing the system, but they would hate it if that change involved them losing their jobs.  But that is what is needed.  Get rid of this corrupt Parliament, & change the rules from the outset.  These people should be their to serve their constituents, and not the other way around.  The Queen ought to seize the reigns [just my little pun] for once and dissolve Parliament, sending every single one of them home and calling a General Election.  

Oh well, until then, I'll just watch another episode of South Park...