Tom Waits for no man

 

"People's Faces" by Kate Tempest

Heard this on Radio NZ this afternoon. Perfectly captures how I'm feeling just now.

It's always good to find new music, though it would be nice to be hearing something celebratory. Even "Things Can Only Get Better" would be welcome, if it was accompanied by a thumping Labour victory.

Boris Johnson Goes Down

It hasn't been a good week for the Conservatives, pollwise.  All major recent polls are showing their lead shrinking.

Comparing each pollster's current (between 29/11 and 22/11) and previous most recent poll.

• Panel Base - Conservative lead down 2 points.
• Com Res - Conservative lead down 3 points.
• You Gov - Conservative lead down 1 point.
• Kantar - Conservative lead down 8 points.
• ICM - Conservative lead down 3 points.
• Survation - Conservative lead down 3 points.
• Deltapoll - Conservative lead down 2 points.

All from here.

Like I've said many times, I don't trust pollsters to get vote shares right; some of these polls are still showing outlandishly high Conservative leads. But I do expect them to be able to pick up indications movement. Which is what we're seeing.

I still think there is likely more movement than they are detecting, and things are much closer than they are showing.

So here's a song for Boris Johnson, which captures his arrogant sense of entitlement ("I tell all the girls they can kiss my heinie"), his sexual incontinence and his current polling:

Frank Zappa - predicting everything about Boris Johnson before anyone else knew Boris Johnson needed to be predicted.

Much love to my loyal Ukrainian readership

For some reasons, my post about the mystery message from inside the Downing Street bunker seemed to catch people's attention.  Quite a lot of hits from NZ (unsurprisingly) and the USA (a bit more puzzlingly, but hi there, USAians!!) and 76 views from the Ukraine.

I've celebrated my Ukrainian readers in the past, and it is good to see they are still there, still taking a peculiar interest in Brexit, as filtered through the twisted psyche of an expat Scot living in New Zealand.

Here's another nice Ukranian girl singing a traditional folk song:

Perhaps my Ukrainian following will join me in celebrating Scotland's 61-0 demolition of Russia in Japan.  I was slightly scared going into that match, after watching the Russians ask a few early questions of Japan.

Still in with a chance!

Celebrating the original Tommy Robinson

I was puttering about in Wellington the other day and picked up a copy of Tom Robinson Cabaret 79, live at the Collegiate Theatre.

It reminded me of this cartoon:

Which captures the ignorance, bigotry and general nastiness of the Far Right.  Who could resist singing along to the chorus of Glad to be Gay?

Though my favourite tom Robinson song is the more downbeat Cold Harbour - a simple song about the confusions of love and desire, in which the pronouns are less relevant than the emotional honesty.

"Who's he... choosing,
Clenching my toes,
And just wishing to God it was me."

RIP Pete Shelley

Get in the mood!

Can't believe it has been 20 years since Okay Computer.

Musical Interlude - for Brexit

Musical interlude

It has banjo.

Old Soul For The New World Order

Ditty for Jeremy "I'm on the ballot, eat that" Corbyn:

Musical Interlude: Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young

The 80s weren't all bad.

Pretty much, this all the songs Jim Steinman wrote all being played at once.  Absolutely fantastic.

Seems appropriate for the Greatest Day In Recorded History.

If Dumbarton can beat Morton on Sunday, it will be the Greatest Weekend Of All Times!

An apology to the nations of Norway and Sweden

Yesterday, in my post on Alexandra Mezher, I confused Sweden and Norway, not once but repeatedly.  I could explain that this happened because just before the post I was pondering this blog's unsettling popularity in Norway, and had been about to post a whimsical musical clip featuring the Norwegian band DumDum Boys just before I read about Ms Mezher's terrible death.

But the real reason is that I am stupid.

So here's the song.  It's called Englefjes.

It's by DumDum Boys.

Who are from Norway.

Ironic musical comment on the flag referendum thing

Yeah, I know.  The 'rag' in question is the stage curtain.  But any excuse to play Tom Waits.  Any excuse.

Although I hadn't seen him in more than ten years, I know I'll miss him forever

I interrupt the general political discourse of this blog to announce the recent death of my friend Bob.

Bob always had rather average taste in music.  Neil Young was one of Bob's favourite musicians.  Bob Dylan was the other.

Still, liking music like that is no excuse for dying of meninfuckingitis in some dismal hospital in India.

Cheers, marra.

Down with the shine

Tony Blair has intervened, yet again, in the Labour leadership race, clearly oblvious to the fact that no-one likes him any more, and the more he begs people not to do something the more likely they are to do it.  If he truly loved the Labour Party as he he claims, he'd simply shut up and go away.  The Labour Party does not want him.  That much is obvious.

Whether or not we get him again, or rather one of the three dwarves that accompany his Snow White routine, is another matter.  Democracy doesn't always deliver, if the Powers That Be have anything to do with it.  And Tony Blair - once the glistening insurgent against the vested interests of Old Labour - is now undoubtedly one of the Powers That Be.

Anyway, let's play some music so we don't have to listen to his tiresome scolding.  Frankly, I'd drive off a cliff if it meant I didn't have to hear him any more.

"In with the new, and out with the old."  Only reverse it.  Out with the New (Labour) and in with the old (geezer).

Down with the glistening shine!

The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated To The Neo-Stalinist Regime)

Read into this what you will.

China Crisis

I've been predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese economy for a while now, and it seems I might finally be proved right:

Minutes after opening, the Shanghai Composite Index fell by just over 8%. while the Shenzhen Component was down almost 5%.

Within ten minutes of trading, more than 1,000 shares across China’s two stock markets had dropped by the daily limited of 10% and had their shares automatically suspended. About 1,400 companies, or more than half of those listed – filed for a trading halt in an attempt to prevent further losses.

China’s securities regulator said there was “panic” in the stock market with irrational selling off increasing and “leading the stock market to a situation of intense liquidity”.

 This lends itself to some impressive visuals:

And some Doom Filled Graphs With Big Arrows and dramatic text in case you miss the significance of the Big Arrows

Whether this does develop  into a proper crisis, as opposed to a bit of a wobble in an overall upward trend remains to be seen; though there is a whiff of genuine panic, and even some moderate concern expressed on National Radio.  If this is the real thing, then it puts all the excitement around Greece into perspective: Greece, profoundly, doesn't matter.  It's a small country, a long way away.  Even for the Eurozone countries, its only a minor nuisance.  To the rest of the world, it's a soap opera.  China going to the dogs, on the other hand, is the complete works of Shakespeare and Wagner getting played simultaneously on the same stage: a bit too much to take in, even for those who can claim expertise.  Suffice to say, Chinese demand keeps our economy ticking over.  Chinese supply keeps our lifestyles comfortable (our meaning New Zealand, and the rest of world).

If either part of that equation is jeopardised, and we'll feel it, massively.  If both are affected, we'll be staring into an abyss that makes the situation in Europe seem like a light farce.

But on a lighter note, many may not know (and few care) that China Crisis were / are a somewhat obscure New Wave British band.  While I don't think I've had cause to think of them in about 30 years, that has not detered them - Wikipedia informs me they are still going.

Here's one of their songs, to while away a few minutes while we wait to see just how doomed we are.

Two minutes to Milinight?

Final Guardian / ICM poll shows Ed Miliband played his infamous 35% strategy to perfection:

Labour 35%
Tories 34%
Ukip 11%
Lib Dems 9%
SNP 5%
Greens 4%

If Labour 'win', it would be like Iain Duncan Smith winning back in the day when he was (briefly) Conservative leader - somewhat disturbing, more than a bit worrying, yet oddly reassuring that British politics isn't (yet) all about spin and superficial nonsense.

And on the subject of nonsense ...

Chasing the Green Light

Over on the Standard, the rather pretentiously named mickeysavage highlights the National Party's favourite unicorn - the balanced budget that appears to be eternally receding before us, always just slipping through our fingers:

John Key and National have placed a huge amount of political capital in returning the country’s books to surplus.  Back in 2008 they campaigned heavily on how Labour was going to deliver “a decade of deficits” and it really was the slogan de jour.  According to them Labour’s mismanagement of the economy as the cause of the global financial crisis and not the pure unadulterated greed of a bunch of merchant bankers like Key seeking never ending wealth.

He then provides a list of quotations that illustrate his point very nicely.   Back in 2011 we were assured surplus would be achieved in three years.  That would mean 2014.  But in 2014, we were told “The Government is focused on returning to surplus," and earlier this year, we were promised that “The Government is working towards a surplus and repaying debt,” both of which would rather suggest we had not got there yet.

This from the party, remember, who warned us about the risks of electing Labour in 2008 would lead to a 'decade of deficits.' Nice sound bite, John. It might also do as a summation of your contribution to New Zealand.

Those of us with litereary pretensions might feel this is all a bit reminiscent of the final lines of The Great Gatsby:

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. 

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter - to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning - 

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

It should be remembered that Gatsby was a gangster who ended up dead in his swimming pool, and the narrator, Nick Carraway, a naive fool who couldn't see which he for what he was.

I'll charitably assume John Key and Bill English are more like Nick than Gatsby; I'm sure they believe, really believe, in the green light as well, and they believe that if we just cut a little further, reduce a little more, we'll catch it at last.  Their green light is the surplus, and if it is eluding us now it just means more austerity, until finally, one fine morning ...

The annoying thing (or tragic, if it directly affects you) is that this was all fore-warned. Even I managed to see ho Bungling Bill's ideologically driven austerity drive would be self defeating, all the way back in 2009 when Bll English delivered his first budget (here, here and here).

It isn't just in New Zealand that the right win lie continually about their own economic confidence.  In Britain, George Osborne has signally failed to deliver on any of his annual promises to eliminate the deficit.  Yet he feels we should listen to him when he promises us that he'll boost NHS funding by £8 billion - by 2020. And (sotto voce) if the NHS can find 'efficiencies' (that means nurses and doctors and operations and things like that - trivial and unimportant things in a modern health service). Cast your mind back, dear reader, to the Emergency Budget of 2010, when Osborne told us:

In order to place our fiscal credibility beyond doubt, this mandate will be supplemented by a fixed target for debt, which in this Parliament is to ensure that debt is falling as a share of GDP by 2015-16. I can confirm that, on the basis of the measures to be announced in this Budget, the judgement of the Office for Budget Responsibility published today, is that we are on track to meet these goals. Indeed, I can tell the House that because we have taken a cautious approach, we are set to meet them one year earlier - in 2014-15. Or to put it another way, we are on track to have debt falling and a balanced structural current budget by the end of this Parliament.

Debt, you will note, is not falling. Britain's public debt has, in fact, exceeded 90% - the level we were warned would have a catastrophic impact on growth. At least it would, the Tory argument would go, if Labour were in power.

Meanwhile, the sane argument goes that it would have a catastrophic impact on growth if Reinhart and Rogoff could get their sums right.

Nor has Britain achieved "a balanced structural current budget".  The deficit is still running at 5.8% as of 2013-14.  That is nowhere near a balanced budget.  It is, however, pretty much where Labour's Alaistair Darling wanted it to be at this stage - while Osborne wanted to eliminate the structural deficit in a single term, Darling sought to halve it (Well, to be pedantic - halve the overall deficit and reduce the structural deficit by 2/3rds).  And Darling's goal has almost been accomplished, almost by accident, in spite of the Conservative mania for growth stangling austerity.

And, insanely, the coalition boast about this.  They even make posters about  it:

"The deficit halved."  Not quite the same as "a balanced structural current budget by the end of this Parliament".

And elsewhere, as Paul Krugman points out, the right proffer the same nonsense, time after time:

The 90 percent claim was cited as the decisive argument for austerity by figures ranging from Paul Ryan, the former vice-presidential candidate who chairs the House budget committee, to Olli Rehn, the top economic official at the European Commission, to the editorial board of The Washington Post. So the revelation that the supposed 90 percent threshold was an artifact of programming mistakes, data omissions, and peculiar statistical techniques suddenly made a remarkable number of prominent people look foolish. The real mystery, however, was why Reinhart-Rogoff was ever taken seriously, let alone canonized, in the first place. Right from the beginning, critics raised strong concerns about the paper’s methodology and conclusions, concerns that should have been enough to give everyone pause. 

Moreover, Reinhart-Rogoff was actually the second example of a paper seized on as decisive evidence in favor of austerity economics, only to fall apart on careful scrutiny. Much the same thing happened, albeit less spectacularly, after austerians became infatuated with a paper by Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna purporting to show that slashing government spending would have little adverse impact on economic growth and might even be expansionary.

And, worryingly, what the right sell, the public seems to buy.  I suppose austerity must tap into some self-flagellating instinct in people, the need to be punished for revelling in luxury.  And of course, it is handy when the politicians are  quick to point out that it will be Other People who endure the worst of it.

Astonishingly, with this seems to be the only argument they can offer.  There's nothing beyond the "Reduce spending" mantra.  Keynes, it seemed, never existed in their world - though he's been around so long he surely counts as some sort of a conservative by now.

Which is the real issue here.  The Conservative party - and its analogues in other parts of the world - has been colonised by people who are fundamentally anti-Conservative, and whose intent is a complete neo-liberal reformation.  Some people rather dimly follow their mantra because they are bamboozled by the arguments - I put Bill English in this category.  Others understand it more fully and recognise it as the desired goal.  Their green light is not a balanced budget, but the effective eradication of the state.  And so they lie, consciously, wittingly, saying things they know are untrue and making promises they know are impossible.  Because like fanatics everywhere, they know it is the end, not the means, that is important.  They aren't interested in conservation versus reform - the point of argument between conservatives and progressives - but in destruction. Their bible is Atlas Shrugged, the story of how people with an overwhelming sense of mission and justification destroyed the world for the rest of us.

And as a reward for reading lll that, here's one of the best songs ever written on the subject of green lights:

Musical Interlude

Kimbra really is more awesome than an awesome thing that's awesome.