Aye, I know, I've not posted for a couple of days and it looks like the best laid plans and all that, of doing a regular blog to jot things down, have already fallen at first hurdle.
However, the last couple of days have been spent trying to get my head round adding links, a comment section and even trying to rejig the look and colour of the template for the blog, as part of my semi-commitment to get some working knowledge of web/blog design to help out with the Party's website.
All I can say on the matter is how do the computer geeks - *cough*, sorry, computer programmers and webmasters - actually get themselves through a working day without wanting to take an axe to the computer monitor and keyboard in a fit of rage? Jeez - just sorting out the few changes to the blog did my head in. If I do persevere with this commitment to trying to acquire some web design skills to help out with the internet side of the website, I will have to put myself down for that laser treatment to remove the Homer Simpson quote tattoed on the inside of my eyelids.**
As you will note - erm, who the fuck am I talking to? - the colour scheme for the blog has been changed. I didn't mind the previous colour scheme - very nice and in keeping in mentioning Celtic winning its 39th Scottish League title - but I thought I would use the excuse of getting my head round using the paint pallete board.
Before someone from the back heckles: 'Yes, very nice - very New Labour. Have you paid Peter Mandelson a royalty cheque for nicking the colour scheme?', I just like to point out that the colour scheme has been ripped off wholescale from Parma Violets Roll Unfortunately, the only picture of parma violets is a bit crap, and it looks sod all like the mental image I have of the sweeties and the colour of the packaging from younger days.***
On the matter of the links that I have put up on blog, it was only when I had to rack my brains to put some up that I realised how few websites there are out there that I thought worthwhile putting up. I have yet to been browse the millions of blogs out there to see if there was any worth linking to, but I guess I will have a look in future weeks and months to see if there any worth sticking up. I'll probably desist with placing links for political blogs on the page. I'll need to wait and see.
With regards to the links already put up, there are the obvious political links of *cough* 'The Party' (apologies to Trevor Griffiths), and to the Marxist Internet Archive and the John Gray - For Communism. The last two are excellent sources of information for any left trainspotters out there who want to know the difference between the CWO and the ICC ****
I have also placed the Resistance MP3 website on the site as one of my links. Despite, in the main, being made up of audio files from members of the Socialist Workers Party from various Marxism events***** down the years, and despite very obvious political differences, it is an excellent resource; if only to hear what it from the horse's vanguardist mouth. Despite it is being the case that the sound quality of the cassettes of the meetings at Marxism that are sold at the event are usually excellent, unfortunately the sound quality of some of the audio files on the Resistance aren't really up to scratch. Shame that - nothing should be too good for the working class, comrade ;-)
The other links?
New Internationalist is there 'cos it will remind to look at it every once in a while. I used to subscribe to the magazine ten years ago - read on average one article and the review section in each issue and placed it in my 'worthy things to read' pile. A pile since obscured by the scaffolding constructed around it to ensure that it don't collapse suddenly, killing innocent by-standers in the process.
In Sound is an excellent MP3 site with the various indie tracks from around the world freely available to download. I had the good fortune to discover both Denise James and the Swedish group Cinnamon on there - both excellent artists who can't be found anywhere else on the internet - even on my trusty winmx. Another example of the tantalus reality that makes up most of the internet experience, and which I'm sure I will rant and rage about again some time in the future.
Off The Telly is an excellent website devoted to discussion of both television programme today and of yesteryear. Thankfully, it stays away from that kitsch style of discussing television programmes of yesteryear that seem to infect the rest of us, and has served as a sanity restorer for me 'cos there are TV programmes that I had convinced myself over the years had never really existed because no other bugger had heard of them when I used to wax lyrical over them, and then one day I discovered this website and realised there were other sad bastards out there who remembered the Swedish comedy drama Xerxes, Willy Russell's One Summer and Alan Bleadale's Scully.
The George Orwell link is there 'cos at the end of the day - whatever a person may think of his multiple contradictory political and personal positions - Orwell was the guvnor when it came to clear and concise political essay writing. Getting interested in politics in the mid-eighties meant that because of the media's interest in all things 1984ish there was always a couple of Orwell books in even the crappest bookshop in a town not known for its interest in all things literary.
Orwell is a writer that has never really dissapeared out of public discourse and even now, through political commentators such as Christopher Hitchens, David Aaranovitch, Francis Wheen and Nick Cohen, to name but a few, invoking Orwell's name and legacy when coming to support US/GB intervention in Kosova, Afghanistan and now Iraq (delete as appropriate) in the last few years, he is all the more there in the political arena with his opinions and political positions being dissected for all to see.
As mentioned above, Orwell was a writer and activist of many political contradictions and this only lends itself all the more to people who have came after him grabbing hold of some part of his memory in their contemporary political disputes.
I've finished off with a couple of band/music websites and an online music magazine. (Can't be arsed to list them - scroll up yerself ye' bugger.) Just thought I would put them there to give off the illusion of being a well rounded person - though my choice of bands may have you thinking otherwise.
The Redskins site is there purely because the bloke who put it together -*cough* - Bazza, kindly sent me a CD of Redskins rarities that included their early single on CNT Records, Lev Bronstein; a track that I have wanted to hear for years. It is not one of their better tracks but the energy is there in spades to see it through to the end of its four minutes ten seconds duration. The lyrics are absolutely bonkers, not that X Moore/Chris Dean was ever that good a lyricist - too much Cliff and Lenin as opposed to Costello and Lennon for my liking - and it looks like Jon Langford of The Mekons fame, who produced the single made use of his anarchist politics to mix the vocals down so low in the production that you can't make out most of what Chris Moore sings.
Either that or he was too kind hearted to let Moore's 'Socialist Worker Student Society chant on a march' style lyric, mixed in with the breathlessness of a 16 year old fanzine writer and put through a post punk blender to reach Dean's middle aged ears twenty years down the line and thus causing him maximum embarrassment.
I think Dean owes Langford a pint for the foresight.
The Smiths site is there as much 'cos I am jealous of the site's actual design as much as anything else. It's also handy for giving you the tracklisting of all the tracks on the various albums and compilations, for when you bite the bullet and download the full Smiths discography from the music section of the Suprnova website.
Last, but not least, is the Tangents Magazine. Again, high jealousy at such a funky looking website: a Ozwald Boateng handmade suit in comparison to the SPGB's moth eaten cardigan but also 'cos it has a nice wee article on Sharon Tandy. Check out Tandy's single 'Hold On' if you get the chance: A wee lost treasure of sixties pop.
Thank christ - that is another entry to the blog eked out. It's like getting blood out of stone, or worse a straight answer from the Standing Orders Committee.
* Yeah, I know it's a crap play on the name of the Diane Keaton film from the mid-seventies, but it was either this one or The Not So Weakest Links.
** Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.
***I'll try and keep the sub-Proustian/Maconie reminiscing moments to a bare minimum but in this post modern time is it a promise I can truly keep?
**** Those of you not brave enough or too busy to put on the water wings and dive into the alphabet spaghetti soup of ultra-left politics, all you initially need to know about the CWO and ICC is that the former still has one foot on planet earth while the latter left on the Spaceship Bordiga many moons ago. Unlike the ICC, the CWO, when you stumble across them at national demos, will try and chat to you though they share with ICC members the conviction that humour and good naturedness are counter revoultionary until an otherwise unknown corrspondence between the Marx and Kugelmann gives the green light from the old man himself that it is not a contradiction to be both pleasant and be politically committed at the same time.
*****'Marxism' is the week long propaganda event that the SWP has been holding in the centre of London for nigh on 25 years. Both the main recruiting event for the SWP annually (apparently they throw three months of intense activity in getting people to attend) but also one of the few occasions annually when Central London Branch of the SPGB - we are a very pallid bunch - get the opportunity to get some fresh air whilst doing a literaure stall outside the event on the Saturday and Sunday.
I have been helping on the Branch stall for over five years now and wouldn't miss it for the world. Where else can you get the chance to be blanked by the active membership of the SWP; see the collective strength of the British ultra left - which would have the average Milton Keynes-Wimbledon FC fan pissing themselves laughing at the small numbers; and study in anthropological fascination the selling techniques of the Sparts and hope to christ that you don't come across like that when you are arguing the toss with a half-interested passer-by.
