I’m A Party

I know I’ve said this blog is changing and going off in a new direction. It is – but not quite yet. So, in the meantime I have once more succumbed to posting a comment on a newspaper site article – this time, though, it is The Daily Telegraph, and an article on how political parties should be funded.

This is my comment:

It is quite simple. All parties should only be funded by membership fees, with the only legal stipulation being that the annual fee be the same for all members so that the millionaire pays exactly the same as the manual worker, or whatever.

This means that all parties must broaden their appeal and become mass movement parties once again (and, therefore have some real rather than assumed democratic legitimacy). It also has the advantage that any party that cannot fund itself through getting enough members will go out of business, and if political parties are actually necessary (and this is debatable), new ones will arise to fill the void.

The only problem with my scheme is that the present bunch of incumbents - on all sides of the house and in all current parties - will never dare risk discovering how unpopular they really are.

***

Obviously, it is not quite as simple as that* – which is one of the reasons why I am far from gruntled with the average blog-type posting - which often come out as much less than a newspaper-length article. As I also increasingly find purportedly serious newspaper articles disappointingly bland and superficial these days, it has become a state of affairs that leads more to frustration rather than elucidation.

This is why I want to move to less frequent, but longer, essays (blessays even). I want to do this even though I know the longer a piece is on a computer screen (a blog especially) the less likely it is to be read. However, that is in itself the subject for another – hopefully quite long – essay. For now, though, this will do.

*Just by way of example, there are things like election costs and party administration, which the politicians would claim need a great deal of expenditure. But, I’m not sure how true this is, or would be for a truly mass-appeal party.

[BTW I’m a Party – see here (track 3)]

This Silent Blog (Continued)

(Continued from here – sort of)

I think I have decided what this blog is going to be for from now on. It is an idea I’ve been toying with for quite a while, in fact it was one of the ideas that I wanted to try when I began this whole blogging business back with Stuff and Nonsense (now long deleted) a few years ago now.

However, it seems that one rather intellectually cuddly person (amongst no doubt several others I have not come across) has already beaten me to it, coining the rather lovely term Blessay (blog essay) in the process.

In short this is what I want to do from now on, longish (by the standards of the average blog post anyway) essay-type pieces on subjects as and when they occur to me, and not particularly tied to anything in the news or in the MSM at the time.

Of course, this will mean that new posts will be rather haphazard, appearing whenever I have completed them, rather than to any fixed schedule. Therefore, in which case, if you are interested, then the RSS feed will be your friend.

I am already well into the first of these new style posts, so it could be along any time soon (or, rather, soonish).

See you then.

Recent Publications (to 26/11/2007)

[The previous Recent Publications Post.]

I had hoped to do this update more often, but circumstances have not been too good, of late.

However, here is everything published since March 2007.

• Poem: A Sign - Cauldron Issue 316 Spring/Summer 2007
• Poem: She Is - ABCTales magazine No. 5 October 2007

My recent ABCTales publications are:

• Poem: Beachcombing - Submitted on April 16, 2007
• Poem: A Slight Delay - Submitted on April 23, 2007 *cherrypicked*
• Poem: Sea Horses - Submitted on April 30, 2007
• Poem: A Ghost Song - Submitted on May 7, 2007
• Poem: Snow Storm - Submitted on May 14, 2007
• Poem: Sheets - Submitted on May 21, 2007
• Poem: Flying - Submitted on June 4, 2007
• Poem: Kneeling - Submitted on June 11, 2007
• Poem: The Note - Submitted on June 18, 2007 *cherrypicked*
• Short Story: Rain On The Window - Submitted on June 19, 2007
• Poem: Princess - Submitted on June 25, 2007
• Poem: Footsteps - Submitted on July 2, 2007
• Poem: Shoreline - Submitted on July 10, 2007
• Poem: Circumnavigation - Submitted on July 16, 2007
• Poem: Memories Into Touch - Submitted on July 24, 2007
• Poem: She Is - Submitted on July 30, 2007 (see above ABCTales magazine No. 5)
• Poem: Drowning - Submitted on August 6, 2007
• Poem: Our Lives - Submitted on August 13, 2007
• Poem: Dark Shadows - Submitted on August 27, 2007
• Poem: Ambition - Submitted on September 3, 2007
• Poem: Images - Submitted on September 25, 2007 *cherrypicked*
• Poem: Dead Leaves - Submitted on October 29, 2007
• Poem: Bare Rooms - Submitted on November 5, 2007
• Short Story: Socks - Submitted on November 12, 2007 *cherrypicked*
• Poem: Shadow - Submitted on November 19, 2007

*’A cherry-pick, represented by a lovely bunch of cherries, is given by the editors of ABCtales to recognise pieces of writing that they really think that other people should read.’ (from the ABCtales FAQ)

On Why This Blog Has Been Silent For So Long

Boredom with the whole blog ‘concept’, I suppose. Regurgitating half-chewed globs of ‘news’ from the msm and them adding a snide comment or two on to the beginning or end of it has lost its novelty value for me.

However, this (long) piece from The Register – an interview with Adam Curtis touches on many aspects of my disenchantment, not just with blogs, but with what they feed off, too.

At a time when there isn't anything to give you confidence beyond yourself - you live in the "empire of the self" - then it is inevitable that you will seek those like you, because it will give you a sense of collective purpose. It will give you a sense of collective security.

And that's exactly what the internet is about - "If you like this book, others before you have bought these books..." And it works to create those little circles. All those little radio stations which tell you, "If you played this, other people have played this..."

On the internet, you're constantly monitoring other people's choices to see what those people who you think are like you do, and they say, "OK I'll do that to be like that". And what that leads to, again, is Balkanisation.

And it's what advertisers rather like, because it gives them a definition.

Ok, then… well so what?

I would like to use this thing for something far more interesting – at least to me – than just a glorified linking page. I’m not sure what it will be yet, or even if it will be anything at all.

We’ll all just have to wait and see what happens.

In the meantime, I’ll use it to list my recent publications on the web and elsewhere.

A Rich Man In A Poor Man's Shirt

I wish I could quit The Grauniad’s CiF, but I can’t seem to. Here’s another one about bloody ‘authenticity’ in rock music, of all things:

My comment:

Ah, authenticity in rock music, it fair brings a tear to the old eye thinking back to when that mattered and the obscurity of your 'favourite' bluesman was worth several bonus points in the late night record collection investigations back at your mate's place.

Authenticity has always been one of the great myths of rock. In fact, it was one of the main traits that were thought to distinguish it from mere 'pop'.

So bands got successful for being 'authentic' and that success robbed them of their authenticity - 'Well I took a piss at fortune's sweet kiss/It's like eatin' caviare and dirt/It's a sad funny ending to find yourself pretending/A rich man in a poor man's shirt'* - then we could all sit around and smugly crow about how they had 'sold out'.

It was the 'selling out' of the 'dinosaur' bands that became the creation myth of punk - when it turned out most of those punk bands that created the scene were failed pub rock bands from the previous 'next big thing', trading in new (ripped) t-shirts and spiky haircuts - about as 'authentic' as any other 'natural' pre-packed processed consumer item in the supermarket.

*B. Springsteen - Better Days.

The Future Lies With The Proles

The Grauniad’s Cif again:

'The future lies with the proles'* - but Winston didn't realise that it would be in the opposite way to what he thought. Prolefeed has taken over popular culture almost completely now.

The thing is though that a big part of the blame must lie with 'the left' itself. For it was the anti-elitism of the left which led to this flattening of culture that makes even otherwise intelligent people (men and women) settle for this vacuous tripe, rather than make a bit of effort to find that which is deeper and - ultimately - far more satisfying.

It is very sad when a person will find that, for example, owning a complete DVD box set of some obscure 60s cult TV show carries more cultural cache than owning the complete works of Shakespeare (A book? How quaint.) And, if this is the most that the 'intelligent' (and I still include the Guardian in this - if now only for reasons of nostalgia) can aspire to, is it little wonder that the prolefeed itself aspires to even lower horizons?

*From Orwell's 1984, of course.

Chaos, Not Music

The Grauniad’s CiF once again:

A new rebellion by David Wilson.

'We're into chaos, not music!' John Lydon (nee Rotten) said at the time - if you can't remember that, you weren't there.
Punk lasted between anything from 6 months to a year at the most before the adverts for pre-ripped t-shirts began appearing in the back of the NME and it died of an overdose of self parody (just as 'Sid Vicious' did - oh, the irony).
The one great pity is the way it revived rock music just when it was beginning to die. An important lesson that the industry (or, rather, the youth industries)learnt so well. So, the real lasting legacy of punk was the way that it brought about the constant recycling of teenage fads we still get nowadays - the this, that and the other 'revivals' we get on slow newsdays.
I'm just glad I hate nostalgia*, or I'd be wallowing in it too.

*In particular, the nostalgia sub-industry that seems to have a sort of symbiotic relationship with the media these days.