Pump It Up

What rhymes with four?

A phwoar four? Do it. Do it.

4/50

The Long Honeymoon

No idea when the January 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard is out so, in the meantime, a blast from the past with this Socialist Standard front cover from July 1979.

I know the front cover is referring specifically to the Tories but who knew thirty plus years on that Thatcher would still be the apple of the eye of so many tens of millions.

The Editorial Committee of the Standard certainly didn't.

"When you got a face like last week's Cornflakes"

Via the new music blog on the block, The Holding Tank, and from the film of the same name, a link to my mp3 of the day

Elvis Costello - 'Party Party' (1982)

No idea why Costello has always insisted that this single doesn't feature on any Best Of Compilations. Was it really that bad? I mean, it's not that good but after a couple of listens it strikes me that it's one of those middling Costello songs that neither amuses nor annoys - in tune with three-fifth's of his career output - that you imagine he cranks out in the time that it takes the rest of us to boil an egg.

Maybe it's because the film the song is associated with is considered a bit of a mess - not as bad as Comic Strip's Supergrass but not as good as Cannon & Ball's The Boys In Blue either - that has resulted in Elvis 'Winston Smith' Costello bringing 1984 forward by 13 months. (It's the sort of early eighties British flick where you expect Kathy Burke to turn up in some bit part, but she's missing from this film and her usual role was taken by a very young Caroline Quentin.)

But back to Costello; he needn't be so precious, as the closing barbed wired verse in the song corrects any mistaken impression that he was 'writing to film soundtrack order', and it also has to be stated that the music is the best thing about the film.

Many an American power popper on Amazon cries real tears that the film has never been made available in the States, and they have to be content themselves with the hard to find vinyl copy of the soundtrack.

*I'm wrapping everything in 'barb wire' these days for some reason.

Starts like fascination . . . Ends up like a trance

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (18)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 18th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 911 friends!

<Recent blogs:

"The Dead Russians Society"

What causes famines?

Free trade and the environment

This week's top quote:

"The Proletariat originated in the industrial revolution...[which was] precipitated by the discovery ofthe steam engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines, which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole mode of production and displaced the former workers, because the machines turned out cheaper and better commodities than the workers could produce with their inefficient spinning wheels and handlooms. The machines delivered industry wholly into the hands of the big capitalists and rendered entirely worthless the meagre property of the workers (tools, looms, etc.). The result was that the capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers...."From The Principles of Communism, Frederick Engels, 1847.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

London's Brilliant Parade

Good comrade and friend, Keith "Keeef" Scholey* - who's greatest claim to fame is that he knows more obscure shit about the SPGB and the old De Leonist SLP (British section) than even I do - has recently written a pamphlet about the old long gone Communist Club of London, which, from the mid-nineteenth century up until the early twentieth century, was the political haunt of radical emigres, social malcontents, ner-do-wells and that one bloke who always turns up at radical meetings with his 'funny money' theories.

Naturally, the pamphlet gets the obligatory plug in the pages of the Socialist Standard, but I think I may have also stumbled across the text online at the rather excellent Past Tense website, which I believe has some connection with the South London Radical History Group, but it's too early and much too cold on this February morning in Brooklyn for me to be arsed to join the dots . . . and the political clots . . . to work out the connection between them all.

I'm hoping it's the full text but apologies in advance if it's incomplete. I'm sure Keith won't be too put out by my linking to the text. The couple of quid in lost royalties would only have been mispent on obscure political postcards from yester-year, and it's a welcome addition to the social history of radical London. It should be filed alongside such texts as Ken Weller's 'Don't Be A Soldier' and Stan Shipley's 'Club Life and Socialism in Mid-Victorian London'.

Finally, click on the link for a photograph that dates from 1905, and is of the first SPGB Conference, which was held at the Communist Club when its premises were in Charlotte Street. Sadly, I'm not in picture. I was doing a paper sale outside the Royal Court Theatre at the production of George Bernard Shaw's 'Major Barbara'.

* Yes, it's the self-same 'Keef' from this stream of consciousness post that dates from March 2005.