Posts by Rich Lock
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Ohhh, new Beastwars!. See, wouldn't have known that if it wasn't for this community.
And that gives me the perfect excuse to post up the new Black Sabbath track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Sb-bU-XOwR8
My rule of thumb is that any band the wrong side of 30 and/or 3 or 4 decent albums is almost certainly creatively bankrupt and coasting on the goodwill of their former glories. Black Sabbath appear to have made one last deal with the devil to continue to exist outside the usual space/time continuum.
Good for the garden, too, apparently. "exposure to Sir Cliff Richard killed every plant". Ahehehehe.
I've had good (albeit limited) experiences with 'Beatport' for dance music downloads, if you're after an alternative.
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to Stewart,
It never occurred to me that my tax was anything other than a means for the government to provide the necessary education, health & social welfare provisions of the population for whom it works. With a little to subsidise Bellamys, pay for a toy army, etc.
Taxes pay for Civilisation. Time to dust off that old soundbite, methinks.
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
One thing Thatcher never did was to introduce a Henry VIII law
But...she already had a son with Denis. Why would she have need to break with the church in order to divorce and sire a heir?
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to BenWilson,
Yeah, been drafting you an e-mail for the last two months. Must get that finished...
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I’d also respectfully suggest Greenwald has the dick privilege to not see the pretty rancid and intensely gendered shit that got thrown at Thatcher. And still does at any “aggressive” ANGRY un-woman in politics – from Gillard through Hillary Clinton to Angela Merkel.
Yes, it does. But Thatcher as an individual was: unlikeable, sneering, condescending and (word used advisedly) patronising. Personal opinion, of course.
I think her unlikeability as an individual got rather conflated with the fact she was a woman: she wasn't disliked as a woman per se (well, not as much as has been suggested). Which doesn't make it right, and yes, she got a lot more intense shit thrown at her because of her gender. But I think not as much as you think - anyone with that sort of voice, with that sort of tone, would have got a lot of shit (I admit I'm struggling to think of a male equivalent - being lectured by a sarcastic hooray henry, maybe?)
Blair, for example, takes a lot of personal flak for his mockney man-of-the-people faux-chumminess, and his 'who-me?-how-could-you-possibly-think-that-I'm-truly-hurt-to-my-core' reaction to any criticism, as another example.
I've thought about your 'miss manners' point, and I disagree. While there may not be bucketfuls of explicit examples of 'don't you dare speak ill of the dead', Louise Mensch aside (a person who considers liggers at that evenings envelope opening to be publicity-shy retiring wallflowers, and who makes it her life mission never to be caught short of an opinion), the gushing flood of tributes and saccharine opinionating that has dominated the news has much the same effect - it crowds out any debate that might be critical or more nuanced. I also think that this serves to fuel some of the more virulent celebrations. If you can't see your PoV even being acknowledged, you're going to shout it louder and nastier.
This line from the Russell Brand article more or less sums up my feelings now the dust has settled: "one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. "I thought I'd be overjoyed, but really it's just … another one bites the dust …". I would not be entirely surprised if Iain Banks is revising his intentions now that money has to meet mouth.
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
12-15 years ago, when I had friends living there, and spent many a night out in that area (ah The Fridge, ye'll never be forgot!), Brixton was still pretty rough. However, a lot of (white) younger professional childless couples, living on 'normal' salaries (not bankers) moved there because it was affordable, and they put up with the bars on their windows and the not-so-occasional mugging.
Although it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me, I visited a little while ago, and it's gone all gentrified in the last ten years. Who would have thought that a whole bunch of typical middle-class businesses would have followed the money? And who would have thought that a whole demographic who were of the system and knew how to play the system might have done just that as they grew up, had children, and started shaping their environment to their own advantage?
I felt rather sad to have to walk around without constantly watching my back.
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to Ross Mason,
But she might rust.
Ashes to ashes...
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Hard News: Thatcher, in reply to Matthew Poole,
If I were Roger I’d be planning to be cremated, with my ashes scattered on Sir Rob Jones’ farm. That would deny the bastards the chance to dance on my grave.
Won't work for Thatcher, though. The Lady's not for burning.
Ba-doom, tish! Eyethangyewlaydeezangennlemen.
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I have never again experienced the bleak, pervasive sense of alienation she fostered in government.
Best not come over to the UK for a while, then. It's getting pretty bad here and will get worse before it gets better.
Some people seem to have forgotten what a basket case the UK was then. I am sure it could have been done better but it had to be done
Now that I know a bit more about domestic history than I did in my teens and 20's, I can very grudgingly accept that there is a small nugget of truth in this argument. I remember being in primary school and coming home to a blacked-out house because the electricity workers were on strike, and walking past 20-foot high piles of rat-infested rubbish in the local park because the bin men were on strike.
For my parents generation and older, it must've been pretty worrying. But 30 years on, we're still feeling the effects. Since we're talking about Iain Banks, one of his characters has a rant about it, in (I think) Complicity. The only line I can remember goes something like: 'trimming the fat in the name of efficiency, but you slashed so far to the bone that the marrow started leaking out'.
Glenn Greenwald sums it up best for me: if you're a public figure like a politician, then you're open for criticism when you're alive, and when you're dead. To declare otherwise is usually an attempt to further an agenda and often rankly hypocritical. I don't recall anyone buttoning their lips 'out of respect' when Hugo Chavez died, and I really doubt that they will when Castro kicks it.
So, anyway, I've been away for a while. What's been happening round here? Anything to drink? Coffee? Whiskey?