Idlewild Reissue @ebtg #ebtgreissues

Idlewild, my favourite early EBTG album, has been re-issued, and arrived from Amazon this morning. I'll get the other three when my self-imposed CD rationing scheme permits, but this provides enough to be going on with.

Idlewild is an important album to me. I'd been aware of EBTG prior to then --- they're about my age, an acquaintance of mine had been a contemporary of theirs at Hull which provided some vague link, and I admired their unashamed literacy and musical competence --- but for whatever reason I hadn't quite got around to buying their albums. Younger readers won't remember the 1980s, when actually listening to new music required it to be on the radio or a friend to have a copy, but actually committing to slapping down the price of an LP was quite a big deal. But I read a review that raved, heard a track on the radio, and bought Idlewild on vinyl. To me, Idlewild sums up the dog days of the late 1980s, in the manner of Stephen Poliakoff's 1991 film "Close My Eyes" (although, obviously, without the incest). A tired government, a country unsure of what it wanted as industry died all around us, the personal uncertainty that came from leaving university and having to make a living, long hazy summers. I bought it at the same time as Nanci Griffith's Little Love Affairs, and I still think of them as a strange double album, vignettes charting the end of Thatcher and Reagan, with no clear idea of what would come next. It's impossible to divorce music from the context you first heard it in, of course, but those two albums sum up 1988 to me far more than
Over the steady tick of drum machines, clipped guitars and synths --- like The Blue Nile would sound if Glasgow were sunnier --- Tracey spins stories that feel true, no matter if they are or are not.. Perhaps because of the Hull connection, The Whitsun Weddings never seem far away ("It becomes still more difficult to find // Words at once true and kind // Or not untrue and not unkind" could be from Idlewild or Larkin). "The Night I Heard Caruso Sing" gently worries about nuclear war with infinitely more subtlety than most of the agit-prop of the era, "Blue Moon Rose" (amazingly, written and recorded in a day) reminds you why your best friend is your best friend and "Oxford Street" has to be amongst the best songs ever written about growing up and leaving home ever written (having mentioned Nanci Griffith, I have to mention her "There's a Light Beyond These Woods, Mary Margaret").

The remaster sounds fresh and bright --- the Warner CD release, complete with the unnecessary addition of the cover version of Danny Whitten's "I Don't Want To Talk About It", always sounded like it had been done quickly from a production master --- without having the compressed to death feeling that mars so many re-releases these days. The sleeve notes are interesting, the bonus CD of B-Sides and demos is charming and the whole thing has obviously been done with a lot of love and care, as befits an album that you feel was made with a lot of love and care.

I suspect that to a new listener, this album will sound slightly dated: nothing places a record in its time more than drum sounds, especially synthesised drum sounds. But if they get past that, the songs are superb, the production elegant and tasteful and the vocals precise and nuanced (and let's tip our hats to Ben for "Caruso" --- a live performance of that in, of all places, Warwick Arts Centre stays with me). It's a great album, well-deserving of a proper re-master and re-issue, and should be heard by everyone.

ian

I want to be a cabinet minister

If http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2012/may/24/leveson-inquiry-adam-smith-frederic-michel#block-146 is the sort of stuff that qualifies as the insights of senior ministers in their memos to the prime minister, then (in the immortal words of The Boys From The Blackstuff) "I could do that.  Gissa Job".

This also completely demolishes the idea that Cameron was forced into moving control over the Sky bid from Cable to Hunt because of Cable's perceived bias.  This letter pre-dates that move, and quite clearly shows that Hunt had made his mind up before he even had the brief.

ian

Here is the draft text of the memo from Hunt to Cameron from November 2010:


James Murdoch is pretty furious at Vince's referral to Ofcom. He doesn't think he will get a fair hearing from Ofcom. I am privately concerned about this because News Corp are very litigious and we could end up in the wrong place in terms of media policy. Essentially what James Murdoch wants to do is to repeat what his father did with the move to Wapping and create the world's first multiplatform media operator available from paper to web to TV to iPhone to iPad. Isn't this what all media companies have to do ultimately? And if so we must be very careful that any attempt to block it is done on plurality grounds and not as a result of lobbying by competitors.

The UK has the chance to lead the way on this as we did in the 80s with the Wapping move but if we block it our media sector will suffer for years. In the end I am sure sensible controls can be put into any merger to ensure there is plurality but I think it would be totally wrong to cave into the Mark Thompson/Channel 4/Guardian line that this represents a substantial change of control given that we all know Sky is controlled by News Corp now anyway.

What next? Ofcom will issue their report saying whether it needs to go to the Competition Commission by 31 December. It would be totally wrong for the government to get involved in a competition issue which has to be decided at arm's length. However I do think you, I, Vince and the DPM [deputy prime minister] should meet to discuss the policy issues that are thrown up as a result.

BBC News - Summit opens in Edinburgh on e-crime threat

"We estimate that Scots businesses are losing around £5bn a year to cyber criminals. That is an enormous amount that should concern every business boss and employee in Scotland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-18145826

£5bn is an immense amount of money: it's about 4% of Scottish GDP.  To put that in context, the UK defence budget is 3% of GDP, UK health budget is 8% of GDP.  It would be very interesting to see how these sorts of numbers are calculated.

I found one piece of work that claimed to have numbers and methodology and looked vaguely science-y: 

At this stage, the most likely estimate for the economic impact of cybercrime to the UK is in 
the range £13Bn to £42Bn. The reported single estimate is £27Bn.

Their centre estimate is about 2% of UK GDP, which is still a very large number.  When you look at their methodology, error bars of about +/- 50% look pretty optimistic.   They appear to be conflating losses with opportunity costs, and some of the numbers have been pulled out of thin air.  For example, £2.2bn a year is listed as extortion costs, without it appearing in any company's accounts.   I know auditors are often perceived as gullible, but surely even the sleepiest of them would wake up and pay attention to "we wrote a cheque for a million pounds to Mr X".  There's £8bn down to industrial espionage and £9bn to IP Theft, supported by no evidence at all, and those two are far and away the largest items in their laundry list.  

I don't have an up to date number, but in about 2005 the number usually quoted for the turnover of the UK electronics sector was £50bn.   I doubt it's grown, with more and more manufacturing and design moving off-shore.   It's claimed that today they're losing £1.7bn a year to espionage and £2bn a year to IP theft, which together would represent over 7% of turnover.   Again, I know auditors have had a bad press of late, but hasn't anyone noticed?

ian

Nick Clegg: The Prawn Cocktail Years

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/06/nick-clegg-coalition-local-elections

While Labour ministers were eating prawn cocktails with financiers,

Prawn cocktails?  Really?   In 2003?  Were financiers having 1970s theme nights to the strains of David Essex, finishing up with a choice between crepes suzette and black forest gateaux?    Who knew?     Should I buy a coffee percolator for the next time I have company around?  Should I stock up on Liebfraumilch?   Can you still buy salad cream?

That's why Clegg's so false.  He can't even try to insult people for their decadence without sounding like he's disconnected from reality.  I can't believe that Nick Clegg (b.1967, "third of four children of Nicholas P. Clegg CBE, the chairman of United Trust Bank") has eaten a prawn cocktail in his life, because I doubt his parents considered, even ironically, taking him as a child to a Berni Inn.   It sounds like he has no idea what the common people think the rich people eat, and is struggling to find a dish that sounds debauched without being obscure.

Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe the sine qua non of fine dining in the noughties was cheap frozen prawns in Marie Rose sauce over shredded Iceberg lettuce.  I wasn't eating out as much as I did (hey!  I went to Granita before it was notorious!  I went to Marco Pierre White's first restaurant in Wandsworth!) and perhaps I missed a whole cycle of fashion.  

Or alternatively, Nick Clegg's just a patronising fool.  Tough choice.

ian

London Mayoral Election 2012

Posted elsewhere, but here for completeness:

The Tories succeed electorally because they are entirely without sentiment. Thatcher was a multiple election winner, deeply popular with both the party and the base, but was becoming more and more divisive and looked on course to lose in 1992. So the Tory brains trust invited her to consider her future with a revolver and a bottle of whiskey and, when she refused, staged a show trial and public execution. They got a two-for-one: a new, less divisive, leader and the opportunity to show that they were stepping away from her policies (they didn’t, of course, not really, but perception is all). Then when, in the aftermath of 1997, new Tory leaders lost elections, they were immediately defenestrated: never did the Tories try the foolish act of re-presenting a losing candidate to the electorate, saying “yes, I know you rejected him last time, but you were wrong, don’t you see?”

Contrast with Labour. Candidacies aren’t decided based on the ability to win elections, but rather as the reward for long service, loyal lieutenantship and straight-forward sentiment. Michael Foot is the index case for this — no-one ever believed he would win a general election, probably including him, but he became leader as a reward for a long career in the party. Neil Kinnock in 1992 is another: he’d lost in 1987, so there was no possible chance that as a loser, he would win. Brown is yet another: Blair was becoming a liability, but rather than make a step to a new world, Labour rewarded Brown by launching him on a doomed premiership.

But the Livingstone example is insane. He lost in 2008. He lost in the face of a campaign by an insurgent, inexperienced Tory whose public image was of an incompetent buffoon. Irrespective of whether you think someone else could have done better over the past four years (which obviously, they could), Johnson has not been a total disaster. Zoe Williams’ notorious piece in the G2 in 2008 now looks absurd, because although Johnson has been many things that are not good, he has been neither evil nor incompetent. So running Livingstone again (saying to the electorate “we think you didn’t mean it last time, so we’re asking again to see if we get a different answer”) was just sentimental madness. This time, Johnson was the incumbent, and had a track record that was not entirely bad: defeating that requires more than pointing to your past history and saying, in essence, “I deserve it for past glories”.

Candidates have to be able to win. Candidates who have lost will continue to lose. There are no second acts in politics. Livingstone, remember, didn’t lose his role as leader of the GLC at an election, the role was abolished. There was no reason for anyone who didn’t vote for Livingstone in 2008 to vote for him in 2012, and they didn’t. In the face of massive hostility to the Tories, and Labour victories through the whole country, including the GLA, Labour threw away an important election just so they didn’t have to have an awkward “thanks, but here’s your gold watch” with a much-loved but now ineffective retainer. Loyalty to colleagues and members is touching, but the Labour Party has to be loyal first and foremost to its electorate and to the working class. On this occasion (as with Brown) the Labour Party self-indulgently ran the candidate that made their lives easier, rather than the candidate who could win an election and make things better for Londoners. Shame on them.

This Week's Words and Phrases

Cameron on the ten past: "I won't rule it out of hand". Presumably conflation of "rule it out" and "...out of hand" --- then quoted on the 9am bulletin.

James Allen --- who allegedly has an English degree from Oxford --- on the F1 commentary yesterday: "[driver] is eking towards [driver]". Presumably an over-exploitation of "eking out".

Woman walking around Edgbaston reservoir yesterday morning: "...with my cardery of friends". I'm guessing a conflation of "cadre" and "coterie", but it's rather a nice word anyway.

A Manifesto for our times

http://www.labour.org.uk/uploads/3099f339-a055-dd64-c113-7c620424cdc1.pdf

So, I realise that most people don't actually read manifestos, but presumably they're written with the intent that at least some people might glance at them.  Why doesn't Ed just put "Single?  No children?  We don't want your vote" on the front page and save them the effort?

Families up and down the country are paying the price for the global financial crisis and the Tory-led Government’s economic failure. Families are feeling the squeeze, but this out of touch Government is making tough times even tougher with policies which are hurting but not working. Bills are going up for families while petrol prices are at a record high, but David Cameron is doing nothing to help.

It's all just gravy for the singles, of course, and anyway, they don't matter electorally.  After all, it's not as though 29% of households in the UK are single adults living alone.  Oh, wait, it _is_ 29% of households.  Fortunately, Labour are doing so well in the polls that they can wave two fingers to 30% of the electorate and it doesn't matter.

A bit of textual and visual analysis gives some fun, too.   Aside from the linguistic poverty (tough appears 53 times, which implies that a thesaurus isn't amongst Ed's recent purchases, touch 13 times, mostly in the 7 out of touches) and the obsession with particular groups in society (48 family/families),  you can see how ashamed they are of their leadership: Miliband is mentioned once.  Meanwhile, Cameron gets 18 times.   Apart from Harman on the back page, no other Labour politician is mentioned, although on page fourteen you can see half of Andy Burnham.

Diversity is obviously last year's concern, because every single face in the document is white; still, Labour doesn't need to worry about other communities, as they're mostly safe seats like Bradford West.  Page 8 has a photograph which the most Kinder, Küche, Kirche elements in the Tory Party would discard as being too cheesy.  On the same page they write about "stand[ing] up for the squeezed middle, even when there is less money around" which were I poor I'd read as meaning they're going to cut my benefits to give smiling families in sunlit houses more money to spend at Boden. 

And the omissions are interesting.  4 mentions of school, but all in the context of a free school meals scheme in Southwark.  No mention of education, which given it's one of the major functions of local authorities is a little odd.  No mention of borrowing, deficit, etc even though it's promising radical tax cuts (including lowering VAT to 17.5%).

It really is a shambles.  Aside from the rebarbative prose, endless repetition, brutal sentence structure and slip-shod editing (let's not worry about the prosody of inspiring writing, because there isn't any and it isn't) it seems to be a desperate case of "vote for us, because we'll tax a few slackers, give you a handout and keep foreigners out".  Dreadful.

ian

My Nearest City

So I turned on the mode where my laptop detects its location (presumably from WiFi positioning through Skyhook) and asked it to find my nearest city (I'm at home in B31 right now).   Its choice is, well...odd...