Bacon Barm

The Police out in force at the Manchester demo.

A phalanx of state power, all jack boots, riot gear
and desperate to arrest someone, anyone.

The horses were out, like some fascist knights,
with shield and club standing above us ready to charge.

The cameras were watching, taking our faces,
inscribing our names and all the while pretending we’re free.

The Arab Revolution

The recent response to the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions by the Western Powers has been breathtakingly hypocritical. The muted and conservative response underlines the approach of the "west" to democracy. When the Soviet, Chinese and Eastern European people came onto the streets in the late 1980s they were all for it, for the end of their major political, economic and strategic foes.



Now in the Arab world people protest about the corrupt, repressive dictatorial regimes that have been supported and propped up by the west. The silence of the western leaders is deafening. These our *our* guys, our stooges....Yet there are oppressive and corrupt, keeping millions in poverty as they colluded with global capital in shifting to a neo-liberal economic policy.

In way the exploitation of the people by this international cartel of interests sowed the seeds of its own destruction in creating poverty and class consciousness. They should have read Marx though shouldn't they.



Continuity, Stability, these have been the watchwords of their response. Pussyfooting around the hundreds of thousands on the streets facing down the police state. Where were the calls for continuity regarding the Stasi, the KGB? This shows the bullshit of their belief in democracy. It's a fig leaf, a convenient lie. A lie drenched in blood for oil, the sweat of billions around the globe, in our utterly inane wealth lives. A prompt and moral response would be to explicitly state support for free election. It might be seen as meddling, but yet it is not as if the west doesn't already.

The true face of our support for these pseudo-client dictators is our collusion with Libya and the insane Gaddafi regime. Absolute Nutter. Look at him. We both sold out and did some trade deals and now he was in the fold, and now as his security apparatus lay waste the people in brutal suppression they are with British made, government mandated and supervised exports.

The Mad Dog

They, Ben Ali, Mubbarak, Gaddafi, sold themselves as anti-Islamist. We bought into that to support our own geo-political narrative of terrorism. It is clear thought that creating poverty and exploitation in cohorts with the west would create a society more open to the radical alternative model of political Islamism.

North Korean Cinema

A report on the North Korean Cinema 'Industry' by Al-Jazeera. Propaganda Central.

A crushing report on what is a clearly a Stalinist country of oppression and exploitation straight out of the 1930s.

Project Merlin, a Wizards Sleeve

So the government has done a deal with the banks. It is hailed by the chancellor, but it is a sham. I work for a bank, an effectively state owned one at that. They are cutting jobs and work places as we speak. Yet the big boys are going to get the bonuses now. I'm not. Not a penny. So how does Project Merlin help me? How does it help my colleagues and me?

Project Merlin, the banking deal, is basically two groups of public school types thrashing out a rough deal of increased lending to SMEs and token bonus control and disclosure.

The increased lending of 15% at ono £10 billion sounds impressive, but the economy shows signs of recovery especially in manufacturing so as businesses begin to expand you would expect lending to increase. Further, it is the lack of lending by the banks in the first place that caused the crash so that they have agreed to return to their proper role is not in any way a development worthy of crowing about. That they had to have a big sit down to do it is even worse.

USELESS GOBSHITES.

Pasta Bake Incoming

I am making a pasta bake. You can too. This is heart attack food but so tasty. I don't do weights and measures and precise timings. It's done when its done.

Fry up an onion, a pepper, some mushrooms and cherry tomatoes. Use oil at first but then add water. This will evaporate, leaving behind concentrated flavour. After the veg has juicified a bit add peices of Chicken and Bacon. Also season and add herbs. Let this cook through for at least half a hour. Then add a tin of tomatoes to create the sauce. Finally add a small pot of double cream. Then turn down the heat a simmer some more.

Meanwhile cook some Penne pasta and make some bread crumbs. Grated cheese is also helpful. Put the pasta in the baking dish, then add the sauce and mix it up. Then layer the cheese and bread crumbs on the top and wap it in the oven till the cheese and bread crumbs are melted and crisped. Noms.  

Top Gear Mexico Debacle

HAHAHAHA CLARKSON YOU ARE FUNNY SO FUNNY I'M GOING TO FORCE AN EMPTY CRISP PACKET THROUGH MY EYE SOCKET HAHAHAHA

Having got that out of my system I'm going to try to examine why it's OK to be casually racist, if you're an overweight, unfunny, overpaid, car-obsessed boring twat. They speak to the lowest common denominator of base humour. LETS PISS ABOUT IN CARS. RACIST STEREOTYPES. The following is a tour through the though

You know Germans, ruthless and efficient. Making things, gassing minorities and commies and invading everywhere. I mean there's no culture in Germany is there? Berlin in the artistic centre of contin
ental Europe? ARE YOU HAVING A LAUGH? BEER SWILLING NAZIS THAT LOT. Good cars though. And football.

MEXICANS, There's a lazy shit bunch of cunts, eh? Always sleeping, eating sick....

SHUT UP YOU THICK FUCKS. YOU'RE SPREADING IGNORANCE LIKE A STD, SHOVING THE PHALLUS OF YOUR IDIOCY INTO THE DIM CREVICE OF DARKNESS OF BOY RACERS LIKE THE EDL. It was only a bit of fun was it? Harmless laughs? Was it funny when Hammond crashed? I mean twats do tend to crash their cars so what can be expected eh? HAHAHAHA I mean he's English so he probably can't read, have you seen their schools?

Oh God it makes me angry. I despise TOP GEAR. Clarkson the most. What a nob.

The Madness of Library Closures

THE MADNESS MUST STOP!


The proposed library cuts will hit Bolton hard. According to the Bolton News: "libraries in Breightmet, Astley Bridge, Bromley Cross, Heaton, High Street in Daubhill, Castle Hill, Tonge Moor, Oxford Grove in Halliwell, The Orchards in Farnworth and Harwood could all face the axe." This is not only attack on literacy and access to education and culture, but an attack on ordinary people. A savage denial of the right to be entertained through civic effort, of the right to a quiet space of learning, to a repository of human culture. The "Big Society" so lauded by the Conservative led coalition is made so utterly bankrupt, so hollow and duplicitous as to totally invalidate any legitimacy and mandate the government has.

The Central Library in Bolton is an exceptional piece of the cultural framework of the town, housed in the beautiful Le Mans Crescent it is the centre of an excellent set of community libraries. The classical facade is a  natural meeting place, a place to greet and cherish a freshly withdrawn book, to chat with friends and share a lingering cigarette as the clouds gather in another Lancashire town. It was fitting that as part of the resistance and opposition to the travesty of the Library closures policy a demonstration was held there on Saturday the 5th of February by community groups and library users. Sadly it was a day of torrential rainfall which somewhat dampened the turnout and staying power of the protest. Nonetheless there was vigour and conviction in the opposition to the cuts, shared across the generations.

Bolton Green Party was there, demonstrating the Green Party's commitment to an alternative to the harsh and destructive ConLib cuts. The lack of other visible political parties compounded this and spoke of the bankruptcy of the Labour Party, especially damaging in a working class mill town such a Bolton, right in the heart of the traditional Labour strongholds.

PLEASE JOIN US AND SAVE OUR LIBRARIES!

Romeo & Juliet: the hipster version

So last night I went to see Romeo & Juliet at the Octagon in Bolton. I love that theater, its one of the great things about the town.

This play however not so much. One of Shakespeare's most famous and quoted works, it is a very strong foundation on which to build a play.
The setting was unsure of itself, we see at the beginning two *ultras*, one in a Roma shirt, another in the pale blue of Lazio, rival clubs from Rome. So is it set in Rome? Or Verona? Clearly textual authenticity must be maintained in linguistic terms but this incongruity was just the start of a jumbled up confused staging of the play.

On the one hand the costume was raging hipster, daft glasses and Sharp suits, and the other Juliet was rocking a 60s look, and the maid glamour ready for a night up Deansgate Locks. It was confused and uncohesive.

The cast as a whole was too old and a bit too rotund, not the fountain of youth at which first love tosses the penny of passion and conflict. They should be supple and vigorous, not portly and meandering.

Tibalt was somewhat fey and camp, despite snarled teeth and jackboots, not a 'duelist' of the first order. A black vest with a minor belly compounded this image. Mercutio too was older and rounder than he should have been. He did play the role with full physicallity and innuendo, but with garbled voice serrating the dialogue now and then as a blunt saw on cheap wood.

Romeo himself was too old and too deliberated, his passion calculated and madness full of method. He also unleashed a torrent of saliva with each new sentence, over pronouncing.

The maid, played by Michelle Collins of Eastenders fame, was a travesty. Over dressed and too young in appearance she blurred the line between maid and mother, who are meant to be seperate, by years and by social class. Why then did she have Gucci bags? She attacked the words with the subtlety of a pickaxe to the head, with no flow or poetry at all. She started with a cockney accent, then after the interval became posh, and then reverted to cockney.

Amidst this travesty of errors, Juliet was a revelation. A thin whisp of a woman she had the requisite youth to play her part. The balcony scene was modern, was fresh and she gave it the nervous energy of young love.

All on all must do better.