Not much blogging of late because I’m in the middle of several books on several levels of the house; and also, with the last three nights spent on PopMatters columnation, my mind is pretty much spent and incapable of delivering attention to anything wordier than
Family Guy. Well, there was the Uncut interview with
Robert Plant, which I understand cause a minor controversy for Benny and Björn from Abba; and there’s the debacle of Continuing Top 100 Album lists (courtesy of
Channel 4, whose popular list got more
pedestrian as it went along ) and of course there’s
Lisa Burke on Sky News’ Weather channel, but that’s about as much media as I can tolerate for a while. Attention is the most precious resource in this world, and I’m starting to get fussy how my petrodollars are being spent in that department. I did write a (regular, to FDaze's style) blog entry for the blokes at
1115.org (blogger kudos!) but either I didn’t get the house style right or they’ve no time to check my slight and superficial analysis of the upcoming British elections. Either way I forgot to mention that Blair’s Gut and Manboobs have increased in relative volume and girth, and that he should be advised to wear a jacket or blazer at all times.
Don’t blame me, I voted for Sir KodosThe lesser of two evils perhaps? With campaigning well underway for the May 5
th general election, it won’t be long before British politics will mirror the American style of bipartisan homogeneity and indifferent platforms.
My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball, but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom. — Kodos
British voters have the choice of re-electing a lying (on Iraq) and disingenuous Tony Blair for a third term of Labour, or the Conservative Michael Howard whose creepy smile and leery eyes seems to suggest more than his jingoistic policy of immigration control and swing-voter-baiting. So far, this is an election of sound bytes and manifesto slogans write large on billboards for the parochially stupid (‘
Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’ say the fear-tapping Conservatives to Labour’s ‘
Forward, Not Back’ – as you can see, clear election-winners there). There’s very little unique or intelligent debate or dialogue going on – only the endless launch of manifestoes like fleets of paper promises. The slanging match hasn’t resorted to Swift Boat tactics yet, but there’s enough image- and issue-management and Left/Right turnpiking to keep Kodos twirling for ever. It’s an indifferent two party system! We
will talk about pensions and policing immigration but we
won’t talk about the war (and its causes) or greater EU involvement or cleaning up the National Health Service. If current polls are anything to go by, there’ll be a likely victory for Labour, and hence voter interest is low and resigned. To be honest, there is a third choice in the form of the
Liberal Democrats whose promise of a genuinely intelligent if befuddled alternative seems marred by a penchant for greater policing, even if they do have alt.kudos in the form of an open letter from
Brian Eno.
The real winners on the media front have been the cartoonists of
The Guardian. Steve Bell’s brilliant
parodic piss-takes and Martin Rowson’s
sly pen have kept the duplicity of political guff and well-mannered hot English air suitably sane and true.
