*that* World Cup song

June 10th, 2010 § 3 comments § permalink

Remember scenes like this…?

James Corden, Dizzee Rascal and Simon Cowell obviously don’t. Why else would they include the chant…

Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough

in a football song?

What does that line bring to mind? It brings to mind some meathead challenging you a fight. Didn’t they even think to change the line to ‘think you’re good enough’

The song, as far as I can work out, is about, actually I have no idea what it’s about except for the chorus of ‘shout, shout, let it all out’, and how that fits with the rest of the ditti, I’m clueless.

It’s one thing for this type of confrontational chant to be sung on the terraces (are there still terraces?) but to have put it out in a song is, I want to say irresponsible, but that doesn’t quite do it. The football institutions, the FA, clubs etc, have spent decades and an enormous amount of effort into getting the violence out of the game and the last thing they need is for the validation of a chant like that.

Although I have gone to a few games I’m not really a football fan, so I might be missing something. Please, tell me I’m missing something.

Also

James Corden has claimed that he turned down the chance to record a song for the World Cup.

The Sun says that the comedian was approached to re-record New Order track ‘World In Motion’, but he said no because he is a big fan of the original.

“I thought, why do that? ‘World In Motion’ is the greatest song ever,” he said. “What next, re-record ‘Three Lions’? It’s pointless. Those things have to happen organically, to come out of a feeling.”

He added: “You can’t try and manufacture a chant for the terraces or a song that a whole nation will adopt”

How is anything to do with Simon Cowell ‘organic’? How can the song Cordons’ done with Dizzee Rascal come out of a feeling? You can’t understand what they’re singing about most of the song. The only bit that could be sang on the stands is the ‘shout’ chorus and having that sang at me from across the pitch would not impress at all.

Cordon is nearly right about not being able to manufacture a chant or song for the terraces. Some people can, he can’t.

Oh, stop fucking whinging and pay your fucking taxes

June 10th, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink

The Guardian…

The CBI today demanded that the public sector bear the brunt of Britain’s deficit reduction as it urged the government to spare the better-off from radical changes to capital gains tax

Oh, boo-fucking-hoo. What a surprise, the ‘better off’ don’t want to help pay off the massive debt that has been run up because of the crafty well paid shits that bet everyones houses on schemes that no one understood.

The CBIs’ director-general, Richard Lambert, …

set out a three-point plan for making savings in the public sector: controlling workforce costs through curbs on pay and hiring; eliminating waste and duplication through sharing back-office functions, outsourcing and more efficient procurement; re-engineering public service delivery, including treating more patients at home.

Fair enough. It is always good to try and find better, cheaper ways of doing things, but he also wants the top rate of income tax to come back down to 40% and to leave capital gains tax alone. This, he says, is because “mobile talent” will bugger off and it won’t increase the tax take much.

Capital gains take is stupidly low, for an income for doing fuck all, and if all these cunts rich enough to get an accountant to funnel their income through various channels and offshore companies, that are nothing more than an vessel to reduce their tax bill, actually paid their taxes, then there wouldn’t be a need for a 50% tax band.

So once again, a rich cunt, on behalf of other rich cunts doesn’t want to pay for the sheer stupidity and greed of other rich cunts that has screwed everybody. Makes you heart fucking bleed, doesn’t it?

Daily Mail gobbledy-gook

June 3rd, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink

The Daily Mail reports that the activists from the Gaza Aid Flotilla have been returned to Turkey, welcomed by cheering supporters.

But…

Their arrival was marred by Israel’s decision to drop plans to prosecute dozens of pro-Palestinian activists – reportedly sent to attack Israeli forces on the Mavi Marmara on Monday – involved blockade, opting instead to deport them.

Eh?

By the logic of Israel

June 2nd, 2010 § 2 comments § permalink

Lenins’ Tomb…

[R]ecall that for weeks the Israeli state has been declaring that the aid flotilla constitutes a violent attack on Israeli sovereignty, though Israel has no sovereign right to police the borders of Gaza. They claimed that the convoy was bringing assistance to terrorists, and warned that it was being funded by the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood. They claim that such aid vessels help keep Hamas in power and Gilad Shalit (who he?) locked up. They claim that the convoy, rather than the blockade itself, constitutes a violation of international law. Israel’s ability to exhale falsehoods and absurdities seamlessly, poker-faced, and then to suddenly and without missing a beat alter its story when it becomes clear that not even its loyalist drones are gullible enough to believe it, is not unique but it has a unique pedigree. For the Israeli state is singular in its self-righteousness. This is built in to official doctrine and practise, entrenched in its forms of governmentality. It is always the victim, no matter what it’s doing today – whether slaughtering refugees in Sabra and Shatilla, or murdering sleeping families in Dahiya, from Nakba to Cast Lead – it is always on the precipice of being exterminated by a new wave of Arab Nazis. Given this, any effort to undermine its ‘defensive’ actions is an attack not only on its expansive notions of sovereignty, but on the ‘Jewish state’.

By the logic of Israel, any abridgment of its right to murder Palestinians constitutes an act of antisemitism, an existential attack on the Jewish people, whom they represent by proxy. Its job, then, is to do whatever it deems fit in discouraging and punishing said ‘antisemites’ while aggressively retailing whatever they do to an increasingly hostile world which, at any rate, they insist is driven by exterminationist antisemitism anyway. If the two ends – the violent preservation of Israeli supremacy in the Middle East, and the global PR – increasingly come into conflict, this is only because of a ‘new antisemitism’, not because of anything Israel actually does.

Read the whole thing.

Gaza Freedom Flotilla attack

June 1st, 2010 § 3 comments § permalink

How I see it.

A gang of men break into a house, the owner of the house goes at the intruders with whatever comes to hand, a broom handle maybe or a kitchen knife, and beats the fuck out of the intruders. The intruders are armed and start shooting, killing the owner and injuring other memebers of the household.

Whose side are you on?

For a more informed take on the situation, Craig Murray…

Because the incident took place on the high seas does not mean however that international law is the only applicable law. The Law of the Sea is quite plain that, when an incident takes place
on a ship on the high seas (outside anybody’s territorial waters) the applicable law is that of the flag state of the ship on which the incident occurred. In legal terms, the Turkish ship was Turkish territory.

There are therefore two clear legal possibilities.

Possibility one is that the Israeli commandos were acting on behalf of the government of Israel in killing the activists on the ships. In that case Israel is in a position of war with Turkey, and the act falls under international jurisdiction as a war crime.

Possibility two is that, if the killings were not authorised Israeli military action, they were acts of murder under Turkish jurisdiction. If Israel does not consider itself in a position of war with Turkey, then it must hand over the commandos involved for trial in Turkey under Turkish law.

In brief, if Israel and Turkey are not at war, then it is Turkish law which is applicable to what happened on the ship. It is for Turkey, not Israel, to carry out any inquiry or investigation into events and to initiate any prosecutions. Israel is obliged to hand over indicted personnel for prosecution.

Ed Balls: knew Iraq was wrong but still went along

May 21st, 2010 § 3 comments § permalink

Ellie Gellard…

V insightful @edballsmp interview in Telegraph tomorrow – Iraq “war was wrong”. http://bit.ly/cg4bCW

What Ed actually says about it is…

“People always felt as if the decision had been made and they were being informed after the fact.” Though not yet elected as an MP, Mr Balls – as Mr Brown’s adviser – was party to top level discussions after attempts to get a second UN Security Council resolution failed.

“I was in the room when a decision was taken that we would say it was that dastardly Frenchman, Jacques Chirac, who had scuppered it. It wasn’t really true, you know. I said to Gordon: ‘I know why you’re doing this, but you’ll regret it’. France is a very important relationship for us.”

Ed was only an advisor to Gordon Brown and could only give advice but admits that at the time he knew that what the government was doing, or at least how it was going about it, was wrong. He gave his advice and that was all he could do. Fair enough, I suppose.

But wait. What’s this (click to enlarge)…?

Edward Balls, the MP *strongly* didn’t want an investigation into the Iraq war that he knew to either be wrong in itself or had been sold to the public by lies and subterfuge.

So. What’s more important to Mr Balls? The truth or his career? Innocent people dying or climbing the greasy poll?

Ed Balls says that his mentor, Gordon Brown, retiring has been a “a liberation” because…

For the first time I’m free to be myself

Mr Balls has always been able to be himself. What himself chose was to be part of a lie that has killed thousands of people and to try and keep that lie covered.

Only now owning up because he is far enough up the career ladder and the lie is far enough in the past that it won’t do too much damage.

How Not To Run A Political Party

May 19th, 2010 § 1 comment § permalink

or The BNPs’ Slow Motion Implosion.

Jai at Pickled Politics has gathered together over 15 ‘things’ that have fucked the BNP since the general election.

Such as…

4. Griffin’s third public message, including fabricated ‘percentages’ of Barking & Dagenham’s non-white electorate along with the assertion that the BNP is the ‘British Resistance’. Believe or not, Griffin’s apocalyptic faux-Churchillian call to arms isn’t actually a spoof; he really did write this message.

and…

8. Just before Griffin was leaving the premises after the election results for Barking & Dagenham, he was confronted by Nick Lowles from Searchlight about the incident in Barking involving Bailey. Lowles’ impromptu confrontation with Griffin was captured on video. Griffin makes false allegations about the Asians carrying knives and also refuses to condemn Bailey’s actions (especially Bailey’s attempt to forcefully kick the Asian lying on the ground) despite being repeatedly questioned about the matter by Lowles. Also note Griffin’s Freudian slip when he refers to the [white] ‘British majority’ and then corrects himself by stuttering ‘minority’, along with his claim that the BNP now needs to change into a ‘civil rights’ organisation for them.

Go read and follow the links. It’s quite a mood-lifter.

#bercowout

May 18th, 2010 § 5 comments § permalink

The Speaker of the House position maybe up for change, if Iain Fale is right, with Ming Campbell offering himself up.

The uprising is lead by, amongst others, Nadine Dorries. But why the buggery is there the focus on John Bercows wife?

Political Betting…

So is Ming going to do it? That’s hard to say but there’s one strong point in his favour – his wife, Lady Elspeth, is never in a million years going to make an arse of herself on Twitter

Mrs Bercow has bugger all to with with House business, and neither will anybody elses spouse unless they are elected.

Maybe it would be a better course of action to look who is leading this and how much of an arse they are rather than their other halves before deciding which way to vote on Bercow.

The Amnesty ad the FT wouldn’t publish

May 18th, 2010 § 2 comments § permalink

What’s with this ad?

betrayed

May 17th, 2010 § 3 comments § permalink

Anton Vowl…

… thinking about New Labour cheerleaders here, that they feel a bit betrayed by what the Lib Dems have done – getting a bit of power in return for shacking up with the Tories and biting the bullet on stuff they used to believe in.

Why do people feel betrayed?

The LibDems might have compromised on some stuff they believe in, not used to believe in but still do, in return for what? For getting some other stuff they believe in. What was the alternative? Being the third party in the parliament, or a smaller part in a coalition of even more competing voices in ‘rainbow’ coalition, with less say, and less chance to influence things.

Sometimes you have to get what you want in small steps. That is what the LibDems have done. They’ve looked at the bigger picture and thought they could get some stuff done now rather than wait bugger knows how long for the chance to do everything at once.

The Tories are going to do what is most important to them whether they have a junior partner or not. At least this way, with the LibDems in there as well, it’s not going to be all their way.

Betrayl? Look at the bigger picture without your parties blinkers on and it becomes anything but.

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