Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Mellow dramatic
Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 121
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the 121st of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.
We now have 1527 friends!
Recent blogs:
Market behaviour A girl's best friend? UN World Food Day
Quote for the week:
"Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen." Woody Guthrie, Pretty Boy Floyd, 1939.
Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!
Robert and Piers
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Forty Days of Tucker J. by Robert Leeson (Fontana Lions 1983)
Tucker walked outside. Paddy was still there.
Hello, Peter, then. I see you've joined the toiling masses.'
'Wish I had, Paddy. Are you out of work, then?'
Paddy smiled: 'No, I'm not. I'm doing this for a friend. Just to give a hand, like.'
Tucker took a leaflet and walked away reading it.
'Fight for the Right to Work' said the leaflet.
They must be joking.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Bend it like Bent
No jokes please about beach balls, freakish goals and Liverpool having to cut short next year's summer holidays so that they can try and qualify for Europe via the backdoor.
That joke is redundant now that they've abolished the Intertoto Cup. Europa League it is.
A year and a day
Owen's first birthday.
The orange giraffe moomin horse gatecrashed the party. Ostler Owen had to bring it under control.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
World Socialists a twitter
Being the slow reader that I am, I've only just spotted* this most excellent competition in the September issue of your soaraway Socialist Standard:
Competition for the Twittering Classes
The latest fad for micro-blogging is coming under fire, with a study showing that 40 percent of ‘tweets’ are ‘pointless babble’ and only 8.7 percent pass along ‘news of interest’(BBC Online, 17 August). Considering the gargantua of garbage which is the printed book output, this is not a bad batting average. However, keen as ever to raise the bar of public discourse, Pathfinders proposes a competition for the best expression of the Party Case in 140 characters or less. Brief reflection offers: ‘World for the Workers, not the Rich W**kers’ however you are sure to do better than that. Emails or letters to our Clapham office. Closing date 10 November, for our December issue, and best ideas will be printed. First Prize will be, of course, comradely adulation, as we socialists are trying to move away from material remuneration systems.
Why not? I'm sure I read somewhere that someone has been putting The Communist Manifesto on twitter (bugger if I can find it, though). And, no doubt, someone from Aufheben will eventually get around to serialising The Grundrisse on twitter . . . but we may get socialism before that particular exercise in twitter publishing is actually completed.
My contributions to the comp are the following:
world socialism - for a world without war, want, wages and the fat controller. Banish the gods from the sky, the capitalists from the earth and the chuggers from the high street.
I thought I'd play it safe with a careful tweaking of the classics.
I can already feel the "comradely adulation" coming my way, and I don't like it. It seems so unnatural: comradeship and the SPGB, I mean.
*'just spotted' roughly translates as 'this post has been in draft for three weeks'.
The Snapper by Roddy Doyle (Penguin Books 1990)
Sharon sat down again. She whispered to Jimmy Sr.
- Me uterus is beginnin' to press into me bladder/ It's gettin' bigger.
Jimmy Sr turned to her.
- I don't want to hear those sort o' things, Sharon, he said. - It's not righ'.
He was blushing.
- Sorry, said Sharon.
- That's okay. Who's tha' fuckin' eejit, Darren?
- Can you not just say Eejit? said Veronica.
- That's wha' I did say! said Jimmy Sr.
Darren laughed.
Veronica gave up.
-Da, said Darren.
- No, yeh can't have a bike.
Darren got up and left the room in protest. That left Jimmy Sr and Veronica by themselves.
- There's Cliff Richard, said Jimmy Sr.
Veronica looked up.
- Yes.
- I'd never wear leather trousers, said Jimmy Sr.
Veronica laughed.
Jimmy Sr found the remote control. He'd been sitting on it.
- He's a Moonie or somethin', isn't he? he said as he stuck on the Sports Channel. - And an arse bandit.
- He's a Christian, said Veronica.
- We're all tha', Veronica, said Jimmy Sr. - Baseball! It's worse than fuckin' cricket.
He looked at it.
He looked at it.
- They're dressed up like tha' an' chewin' gum an' paint on their faces, so you're expectin' somethin' excitin', an' wha' do yeh get? Fuckin' cricket with American accents.
Jimmy Jr stuck his head round the door.
- Finished with the paper yet?
- No.
You're not even lookin' at it.
- It's my paper. I own it. Fuck off.
Jimmy Sr switched again; an ad for a gut-buster on Sky.
- Jesus!
- You've got the foulest mouth of anyone I ever knew, Veronica told hi. - Ever.
- Ah lay off, Veronica.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Spacers and an intellectual skinhead
Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 120
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the 120th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.
We now have 1528 friends!
Recent blogs:
Billion Dollar Bribery Prisons: In Capitalism's Stockade Karl Marx and the Classics
Coming Events:
Autumn Delegate Meeting
Saturday 17 October 10.30am to 5.30pm
Sunday 18 October 11.00am to 5.00pm
Socialist Party Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4.
The Zeitgeist Movement
Wednesday 21 October, 8.30pm
Community Central Halls, 304 Maryhill Road, Glasgow.
Radical Film Forum, Sundays 6pm - 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.
1st November - The Fog of War
15th November - Matewan
29th November - Sicko
13th December - Earthlings
Quote for the week:
“I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.” George Carlin
Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!
Robert and Piers
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle (Penguin Books 1987)
- We'll ask Jimmy, said Outspan. - Jimmy'll know.
Jimmy Rabbitte knew his music. He knew his stuff alright. You'd never see Jimmy coming home from town without a new album or a 12-inch or at least a 7-inch single. Jimmy ate Melody Maker and the NME every week and Hot Press every two weeks. He listened to Dave Fanning and John Peel. He even read his sisters' Jackie when there was no one looking. So Jimmy knew his stuff.
The last time Outspan had flicked through Jimmy's records he'd seen names like Microdisney, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Otis Redding, The Screaming Blue Messiahs, Scraping Foetus off the Wheel (- Foetus, said Outspan. - That's the little young fella inside the woman, isn't it?
- Yeah, said Jimmy.
- Aah, that's fuckin; horrible, tha' is.); groups Outspan had never heard of, never mind heard. Jimmy even had albums by Frank Sinatra and The Monkees.
So when Outspan and Derek decided, while Ray was out in the jacks, that their group needed a new direction they both thought of Jimmy. Jimmy knew what was what. Jimmy knew what was new, what was new but wouldn't be for long and what was going to be new. Jimmy had Relax before anyone had heard of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and he'd started slagging them months before anyone realized that they were no good. Jimmy knew his music.
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