So, Pepsi is back in fashion and Ed Miliband is now Roger Daltrey. The buzz phrase for the speech was ‘our generation’ (according to Mr Paul Waugh appearing at least 35 times, with a few mentions of ‘my generation’ too) and oddly, this made me think of Limp Bizkit. Not many things do, it must be said, but I remember them having a pretty crap tune called ‘My Generation’ and the chorus seems particularly apt.
If only Ed had gone for this, he might have eclipsed his brother.
“Who gets the blame, you get the blame and I get the blame.
Who gets the blame, you get the blame and I get the blame, but do you think we can fly?
Do you think we can fly?
Do yoooooooou think we can fly?
Well I do, I do……FLY!”
JFK-esque like only Fred Durst can do.
Also, the line “Hey kid, take my advice, ya don’t wanna step into a big pile of shit. The captain is drunk, your world is titanic” sums up Labour’s election campaign quite aptly.
Last week St Vince took a swing at the evils of capitalism, in an hour of so labour will finally have a new leader, and next weekend I’m heading down to birmingham for conservative conference.
I’ll be covering the event with my camera and doing a few posts on the Blue Blog, as well as getting to some of the fringe meetings looking as at technology, young people’s issues and the creative industries.
In the mean time, here are some of the tune’s that I’ve had on while watching the Miliband show.
Sky Larkin - Kaleide
School of Language - Rockist Pt 1
Maximo Park - A19
Battles - Race:Out
Thom Yorke - Cymbal Rush (The Field Late Night Essen Und Tricken remix)
Mervyn King, Governor of Bank of England and he who prints the money, is speaking at the TUC conference in Manchester today (indeed, as I type)
One line in his speech has already generated lots of excitement: “the causes of the crisis may have been rooted in the financial sector.”
Cue hysteria from many that this is proof the bankers are to blame for everything.
A further paragraph should highlight the real point, but no. King said: “There was nothing fair about the financial crisis. It was caused not by problems in the real economy; it came out of the financial sector. But it was the real economy that suffered and the banks that were bailed out. Your members, and indeed the businesses which employ them, are entitled to be angry.”
And he’s right. The issue is, he’s talking about the financial crisis. Which is quite different to the budget defecit, the reason for spending cuts. Will the left recognise that? Probably not.
The ONS produces a nice little graph to illustrate the point, illustrating the impact of the financial bailout and the level of public sector debt without the bailout.
The point? The banks are responsible for a great deal - and there are a whole host of actions that should be taken - but let’s not pretend that they are responsible for the spending cuts to come. Even without the banks, the country is way beyond prudent Mr Brown’s “sustainable investment rule” of debt not exceeding 40% of GDP. And that’s without PFI or pension debts fully included.
The choice isn’t between bailing out banks and cutting spending - and anyone who says it is simply denies the facts.
I often struggle to articulate what I feel is wrong about the X Factor-style shows that seem to have devoured much of the music industry, and why it’s incredibly important that people make a point of not letting such ‘product’ dominate the airwaves.
Well, I don’t need to try anymore. For those of you that havent seen Anvil, well, do. For those of you that have, you know what I mean.
I can’t deny I am prone to taking a cynical view to the ‘official’ statements put out by organisations when they’ve dropped a howler, but this latest effort from Greater Manchester Police is a particular work of pure poetry.
Nothing particularly remarkable at first about the story. Guy arrested for drink driving, police officers drive his car back to station.
Only said car - a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution - ended up on it’s side across two front gardens.
Most people would assume to achieve such an outcome, the car has to be driven at speed, hit something, and then skid uncontrollably across the gardens before coming to a rest.
But no - according to the police spokesman: “Following the arrest of the driver, officers drove the vehicle from the scene. The car then collided with two front gardens.”
Genius. I’d better dig out my insurance forms to check I’m covered if an uninsured garden collides with me while I’m driving.
Another neat idea, another Radiohead project. This time they’ve given an audio rip of a live show to a collaborative project which has basically made a gig DVD from fan footage. The team behind it had a hell of a job on bringing all the different camera feeds together and keeping it so tightly synced, and while I’m sure the quality won’t have the corporate types worrying too much, it’s an interesting sign of the times. How long before the quality of small cameras catches up with what you can now get on a 5D or a D3s and we’ll see much sharper efforts? Axl Rose probably won’t like it, and Metallica will probably sue video camera companies, but it potentially opens up a whole new world of opportunities for creative projects. Once again, it’s nice to see a band (not for the first time being Radiohead) putting something out there as a creative project without seeing it as a revenue-generating tool.
