I will do my lines, I will do my lines, I will do my lines...

Having lost a shit load of old posts here and elsewhere, i WILL archive my old posts here, whether i originally put them here, on myspace, or whatever.

Honestly, i will get round to it.

The Burning Issue of the Day

The best selling book in galactic history famously sold so well because it had on it's covers in large friendly letters, the phrase "Don't Panic".   It seems seems paradigmatic that the Tories should choose the opposite as their current strategy, even in the absence of any known threat, their current message is not just 'Panic Now', but a more nuanced "Get your panic in early". 

There seems to be a belief that if we all panic buy our fuel and make the pumps run dry this week we'll all be fine next week, when, if there is a strike, the petrol stations will have difficulty re-fuelling.  Essentially the government think that a week or more of disruption is more desirable than a single day of striking, which would likely effect only a handful of forecourts. It's not usually the role of the Cuntservatives to highlight the essential contribution made by a striking sector, but it does appear they're hellbent on emphasising the efficacy of their action, and the necessity of their role. 

The delivery industry has been quick to point out that all their drivers are currently mobilised trying to make up for the unexpected shortages following Francis Maude's realisation that he had shares in the jerry can industry. Strangley then the strikers are being painted the heroes of the hour just before the Tories are due to rush out the "tanker drivers are bigger wreckers than nurses" statement they've been drafting all week. While it is nice of the Cabinet to arrange a few days of overtime for tanker drivers so they can afford to lose a day's pay next week, I wonder if we're going to see Tory scaremongers made to compensate those who can't get to work today or tomorrow?

The threatened strike underlines however the position of the Tory party to industrial relations and their desire to drag us back to the 1930's.  The strike is essentially one about health and safety - now i'm not sure about you but i want the guys who drive hundred of gallons of highly flammable material down our highways to be awake at the wheel, and while it's annoying when you pull up to a garage and see the the tanker there and entry to the forecourt blocked by little plastic cones i don't think that it being blocked by the screaming bodies of burning employees would be any real improvement.  Yet repeatedly it is the great successes that unions have had over the years in securing safe and reasonable working practices that the Conservatives are now trying to erode. Which makes Fanny Maude's statement to fill jerry cans absolutely fine. Fill a dozen, pop them in your car (despite the dubious legality of that), drive home in the fumes and then stack them in your shed full of wood, old paint and dodgy wiring. What could possibly go wrong. 

It's not as though the Tories don't know how to organise a fuel crisis properly, Iain Duncan Smith, Edgar Griffin and their mates in the BNP did a great job in organising a fuel stoppage ten years ago and the Blue Team were right behind them, but they were different times.  Labour times.  Now it's no longer politically expedient to allow the fuel industry to have the right to stoke, especially when one might have lost one's media sponsors, but it is convenient to just put the disaster forward a few days and distract everyone from what is in the papers. Don't panic buy petrol and fill your garage with jerry cans.  Put it straight in the milk bottles so you've got them ready, come the glorious day. Which on current reckoning will be Thursday week.    

And while this incompetence is all great fun, the hilarity and difficulties of the conveniently created fuel panic, hasn't made me forget Cash for Cameron.  "Don't Panic" said the Hitch Hiker's Guide, and if we kept calm and carried on, we discovered that at the end of the books the whole of government was an elaborate smokescreen to distract the populace from the fact that the same old shadowy vested interests were still pulling the strings. While the Prime Minister pimps himself out and hopes that shouting "quick everybody look over there" will cover his modesty, one has to wonder were the fiction begins.

The Great Indie Fire of London

I'm sure everyone here is horrified to see what has happened with regard to the Sony/Pias warehouse fire. Most of the indie labels distributed by PIAS have had their entire stock, records/cds/tshirts/posters etc destroyed.

With no stock, current or back catalogue to sell they will be crippled and will go to the wall well before any insurance payouts to Sony finally trickle down to them. There is a fund set up by PIAS which you can donate to to help the labels via the PIAS website, which is great. (see also twitter #labellove) However it's only part of the problem.

The economics of indie distribution is a symbiotic one with the independent record shops whose financial situation to hand to mouth one, existing from month to month on a weekly or monthly cashflow. If the stores, whose existence is precarious enough since Woolworths and their distribution arm went to the wall, have two or three bad weeks, they too will fail, and losing the current orders and the drip drip drip of back catalogue orders from PIAS may see the whole sector go, with ramifications for all
indie labels, PIAS distributed and others, who depend on these stores and their knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff to promote the unknown the obscure and the new. Without these stores, those labels that can limp along until the insurance pays out may not be able to market themselves quickly and effectively without the support net of the stores network.

Buy indie this week, next week and next month, and buy at your local indie record shop, check out CWNN or Last Shop Standing for you nearest if you don't know it. If you can't buy from a store, buy direct from the label via a download from their website - but not amazon or itunes please - lets get the cash where it's needed, into the indie infrastructure.

Share links for stores, ideas for indie downloads and back catalogue purchases on twitter with the #saveourindies tag.

Festival of Rebellion: watching the London Riots.

Blogging huh...

Well i only signed up for this so i could look at a mates blog really - Viny Winthers at www.vinceinafrica.blogspot.com he's doing a stint at an orphanage on the slopes of Kilamanjaro in Tanzania. So if you're bored enough to be reading this - check out his blog, as it's bound to be more interesting than mine, there's certainly more chance it might have lions in it.