Why I’ll Never Vote Labour Again.

I haven’t voted Labour since May 1997 when Tony Blair’s Labour Party came to power in a bright, cheery spring day where people like me thought we’d got rid of the Tories and their ideology. In reality we hadn’t. We just saw it refined to an inch of it’s life. Around 1998 or 1999 I found myself unable to morally defend the Labour Party and at that point my eyes were opened as to what they’d become which is a right wing party obsessed with control and the retention of power at all cost.

The event which opened my eyes was when I was working in a club in Leicester  and was working during the day to tidy up the bars, and part of that was to dump a whole load of rubbish at the tip. Myself and Richard, one of the club managers, were chatting about the NHS and he was a Conservative asking me how I could defend Labour getting into power and not clearing out the managers infecting the NHS and how could I defend the fact that Labour were making the NHS more bureaucratic. I couldn’t. I just spluttered some half arsed lines about ‘giving them a chance’ and realised I was fooling myself.

The party which I’d been brought up to believe to be for the working people and the poor was in fact, just propping up a system which was failing. Yes, Labour did make some things more liberal initially and it did ban fox hunting while overseeing the Good Friday Agreement but the good was being overwhelmed by the oppressive feeling that the likes of Jack Straw wasn’t really of the left let along a social democrat in the European mold.  At that time living in England I considered a federal solution to the problem that is the UK would be the best way for us all, so I considered the SNP & Plaid Cymru nationalists and not worth talking about. In short I was a good Labour drone who’d suddenly woken up to realise that just voting for Red or Blue right wing politics wasn’t democratic. I foolishly dabbled with the Lib Dems but learned my lesson fast and have now settled on supporting the Greens with some reservations while I’m still living in England. Once I’m back in Scotland in 2015 I’ll be campaigning and supporting the SNP.

I can’t support a Labour Party which has been pushed to the right and has taken us to illegal wars, seen the likes of David Blunkett do his best to make protest harder, and we’ve seen the gap between rich and poor increase as Labour pushed harder and harder for the precious middle class vote in England while all the time it leaves behind the core voters who Labour should stand for. Those people no longer have a voice in much of the country and although the SNP have moved now into a serious socially democratic party (and look to become more of the left over the next few months) along with the Greens and SSP have moved into the vacuum left by Labour in Scotland, while Plaid Cymru looking increasingly impressive thanks to their vastly underrated leader Leanne Wood (they’ve even had a Labour candidate join them showing the cracks in Labour in Wales) are making inroads in Welsh politics, there’s nothing of the left in England. Yes the Greens are a solution in the short terms but there’s not a uniting socially democratic party like the SNP or Plaid in England  who has left wing goals at it’s heart. There’s Left Unity but they’ll never be the party the English need, so UKIP have pulled it’s far right arse right into the heartlands of Labour in the north of England and look like winning seats. Sure, they’ll nick seats from the Tories too but Labour should be hammering the Tories after four years of the most oppressive and restrictive government we’ve had since the previous one.

Labour offer no alternatives. They offer austerity, further restrictions on civil liberties and if you’re young, they offer an extended Work Programme so you’ll be able to work for nothing for Labour’s corporate mates in return to get enough money to barely survive. The people of Scotland have sussed Labour out and on Thursday polls were released showing that Labour could be down to as long as four seats in Scotland in May. I don’t think it’ll be that bad for them but I can see Labour losing half their MP’s in Scotland which would be a mortal blow for them. If they put Jim Murphy in charge of the Scottish Labour branch office, then that could be even worse and they really could end up with a handful of MP’s.

We’ve seen desperate idea following desperate idea, with the latest being that Ed Milliband would abolish the House of Lords, but there’s reasons why this isn’t going to happen as Wings Over Scotland explains here. And here’s where we are now; Labour are desperate to get anything to connect to anyone of the left in a sad, last attempt to firm up their vote for next year. I’m sure enough people who slavishly vote Labour will look at Milliband’s ‘promise’ (the people of Scotland know how much these are worth) and fall for it. They’ll think ‘well, this time Labour might do it’ as they return a right wing party of business in to replace a right wing party of business. Labour is a party who have lost the common touch and look lost when trying to buy a sausage roll because these are people who don’t need to eat sausage rolls.

These are people who sit at a £200 a head dinner in one of Glasgow’s finest hotels and give a bag of food to foodbank donations while encouraging policies which will see foodbanks grow. But hey. Ed dropped off some tins of Scotch Broth so everything’s fine.

Yes, I know there’s Labour voters there who will go on about voting SNP or Green will deliver a Tory government and they are possibly right but Labour offer no hope, no imagination, no spine and no courage to stand up for the ordinary men, women and children of this country. They’ve joined the race to the bottom to keep up with UKIP’s extremism so we don’t see the Labour leader taking on a chancer like Nigel Farage head on as Nicola Sturgeon has by calling on a veto for Scotland, Wales and NI in the EU referendum in 2017. Considering it offers Cameron a lifeline to stay in the EU as he wants it’s perhaps foolish of him to reject it but notice how Labour are nowhere in this debate. No ideas, no nothing. Just Ed Milliband gormless face looking increasingly lost.

So vote Labour and get nothing better. There are options and I cry out to Labour supporters to choose them wisely. May is going to be vitally important because there’s a very real chance that at the end of this parliament the UK will be split up and out of the EU. We cannot have more of David Cameron’s oppressive government, but neither can we have another shockingly poor and oppressive Labour government. So look at the options and think of the long term, and yes, I do know that people will suffer under a Tory government but they’ll also suffer under a Labour government committed to George Osborne’s austerity spending.

The politics of austerity cannot be supported any longer. You vote for Labour you support austerity when there are other options. It is that simple.

 

David Cameron made the Queen ‘purr’ when he told her the result of the Scottish Independence referendum

 

So if you were in Scotland and voted Yes, you may well be calming down now. You may well be focusing on campaigning to how the three main Westminster parties to the ‘vow’ that helped No cement their vote, even though those promises are quickly vanishing into the mist by being tagged onto the debate about English (the Welsh and Northern Irish can forget getting anything) home rule.

You might even have calmed down after watching Ed Milliband lie to Labour voters in England about the NHS and democratic devolution of power from Westminster.

You may have voted No, and you see that you’ve been duped, but you hold onto the hope that really, it’s going to work out because otherwise the last month of the campaign for the referendum campaign from Better Together was a gigantic lie and you fell for it. But hey, they wouldn’t rub it in would they? That wouldn’t be too much surely?

Then you see this. You see what won last Thursday. The establishment didn’t just win, but they’re rubbing your face in shit and laughing at you for it, and you democratically allowed them to do it to you. The Mayor of New York is laughing with Cameron and at at you people who voted Yes and No. You were sold a lie.This isn’t to say that had it been Yes, the people of Scotland would be in paradise as people realised there was a lot of work to be done, but this latest humiliation not even a week after the result should motivate every single last Yes and No voter with a spine and a remaining bit of dignity to throw it all back in their face.

The SNP and other pro-independence parties have seen massive growth since Friday, but it now has to be clear that all Westminster parties have to be wiped clean from the face of Scotland, and in 2016 the SNP is elected on a platform for another referendum within the life of the next Scottish Parliament based upon the forthcoming failure to provide Scotland with the promise they made.

So look at that video again and I hope it makes you feel sick. I hope you’re angry beyond words. When you get to that stage, channel that anger, join a pro-independence party and funnel all that energy into ensuring next May that Parliament has a large group of pro-independence MP’s . A wise man once said that ‘anger is an energy’ so get up and do something. They might be laughing now, but when this is won, they won’t be.

Scotland has voted against Independence

It’s now very clear the Yes campaign lost and Better Together won. Now the media are openly talking about how all those extra powers Gordon Brown promised aren’t written in stone, or how these ‘new powers’ are totally unknown to anyone. It’s now clear what got the No campaign over the line by this ‘promise’

It’s clear the No campaign managed to conflate voting No with some sort of ‘devo max’ when in fact it was a No to the question ‘should Scotland be an independent country?’, not ‘should Scotland be an independent country or get ‘more powers’?’. That and the barrage of fear over the last two weeks has pushed No over the line with the 400k or so votes that’s pushed it over the line.

It’s those undecided voters who swayed it and they came out in support of the Union thinking they were going to get more power for Scotland, yet these powers are already under threat by Tory backbenchers who promise to veto them. By Monday it may be perfectly clear that what people thought when they voted No isn’t going to happen and their vote hasn’t counted.

So as much as I respect the democratic will of the people of Scotland, I don’t have to like it.It’s been a long,  long night and I’m off for some sleep but this isn’t over yet, not by a long shot.

Irvine Welsh’s opinions on Scottish Independence is essential reading

The campaign for Scottish Independence is getting more and more intense. All three Unionist party leaders in Scotland joined forces today for what looked like the most forced meeting ever to back the powers that might, possibly, perhaps, maybe be given to Scotland if all parties agree, if the right government gets in and if the UK electorate sits back and lets it all happen.

Meanwhile the Yes campaign pushed on with a photo opportunity showing the Yes campaign to be multiracial and multicultural. It shows the genuine forward thinking diversity of a future Scotland against the old establishment parties who have singularly failed. The ‘powers’ Gordon Brown speaks of aren’t new, or indeed guaranteed, not that they would actually make any difference. Here lies the problem with dragging in a dinosaur like Gordon Brown, he’s of the past and it’s clearly an attempt to firm up Labour’s power base in Scotland but Labour have seen Scotland turn on them as they’re now being seen by an increasing amount of former Labour voters as having failed them, which of course they have.

Forget David Cameron and Nick Clegg coming to Scotland tomorrow to campaign for No, they’ll only drive more people to vote Yes. It’s the sad sight of Ed Milliband hoisting up Saltires in Liverpool, supporting Tory policy and suggesting the appalling Work Programme will help the unemployed. That’s where Milliband and Labour are. Propping up policies which move people around unemployment figures and desperately panicking about that seat in the Lords going up in smoke.

In the midst of all this Irvine Welsh wrote a simply wonderful dissection of Labour, and outlined why people should support independence It is simply, the most thoughtful an intelligent thing you’ll read about the subject today and I suggest everyone reads it and then disseminates it so more and more people can read it. It’s simply glorious.

Read it in it’s entirety here. 

 

Scottish Independence is now a real possibility

The latest YouGov poll puts the Yes campaign for Scottish Independence at 51%, ahead of the No campaign at 49%. This is the first time that any major poll has put Yes ahead, and the fact it’s the notoriously conservative YouGov is important to understanding that Westminster, the London media and the establishment have completely underestimated the support on the ground for independence, and the complete failure of the No campaign to make a decent argument. After all, at the start of the actual campaign a few years ago, the No vote was in the high 60% mark, so they’ve lost tens of thousands in support and in the last two weeks since the last televised debate between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling they’ve seriously hemorrhaged support.

In the light of this latest poll, this has made the government sit up and George Osborne is promising ‘extra powers’ should there be a No vote. Two major problems with that: one, it’s clearly desperation and there’s no idea what powers they may well actually be, and secondly (and more constitutionally important) Scotland is in purdah at the moment and to quote from the Wikipedia article I’ve linked to, this means:

The time period offers a prior opportunity for government departments to develop guidance and policy due to any impact resulting from the election. It also prevents central and local government departments from making announcements about any new or controversial government initiatives (such as modernisation initiatives, administrative and legislative changes) which could be seen to be advantageous to any candidates or parties in the forthcoming election, or which may commit any incoming new administration to policies which it wouldn’t support.

 

George Osborne has just promised that Scotland may well get powers in an attempt to firm up the No vote, but he can’t. Nobody related to government, be that UK or Scottish, can do this. There could well be some legal issues over this and anyhow, the fact it is desperation will be so overwhelmingly obvious that the Yes campaign will be guaranteed a boost in support from this announcement.

As those people who read my blogs which aren’t reviews of films, TV programmes, or comics will know, I’m a Scot living in England and there’s a singular lack of understanding from most people as to what potentially might happen in less than two weeks. This superb post titled A Letter to England sums it up better than myself but I can totally back that post up. I’ve had around a dozen conversations in the last two years about the subject of independence, and they’ve ranged from patronising nonsense from people who think Scotland can’t do anything without permission from London, to the one I had on the Friday just gone with an Irish lad, and a chap born and bred in Bristol but seriously interested in the subject because he’s gotten fed up with how’s it’s being reported down here and wanted another perspective. In the last week in fact, I’ve had a few smaller discussions about the subject, including one at work which shows that the company I currently work for (a large multinational company with a large Scottish presence) will just get on with it should Scotland vote Yes. I imagine that’s exactly how 99% of companies operating in Scotland will do come September the 19th.

Obviously the only poll that matters is the one on September 18th, but let’s not diminish what this poll represents which is the first clear sign that the first ever democratic vote on the Union could see it’s breakup, and that the majority of the rest of the UK are not prepared for it as the thinking they’ve had installed into them by the London based media is that No will win and things will carry on, and anyhow, if Scotland votes Yes, they won’t get Sterling, or a currency union.

Here’s a lengthy quote from the post, A Letter to England that everyone south of Berwick should note as it’s importan which is why I’ve included it in detail. It shows why the media have failed to make this a national debate across the UK even though it affects you all who read this in the UK.

There is something that I believe that people in the rest of the UK need to get their heads around very quickly. Your leaders will attempt to convince you that Alex Salmond is either begging you to help him out or threatening you if you don’t agree to what he wants. The truth is that the negotiating position that the SNP have laid out in Scotland’s Future isn’t just the best deal for the people of Scotland – it is the best deal that the people of the rest of the UK could possibly expect in the event of Scotland’s departure.

I have done the reading and let me tell you – the currency union model that the SNP propose benefits the people of the UK far more than it is likely to benefit the people of Scotland. If the SNPs negotiating position was purely about winning the best deal that they could for the people of Scotland then they would not even be entertaining the idea of a formal currency union – they would simply go straight ahead and establish an independent Scottish currency with it’s own central bank and a fixed interest rate with Sterling, walking away from the UK’s national debts in the process.

Here is the most important thing that you need to understand right now. The idea that a newly independent Scotland would be walking away from a share of the UK’s debts is false. Scotland cannot agree to take on the UK’s debts because such a thing is legally impossible. The UK’s debt commitments are a legally binding contract that the UK government has entered into with the investors who have leant them money. Those contracts cannot be re-assigned to another third party and even it were possible the investors who issued the debt would not agree to it because to do so would go directly against their own interests. The reality is that we are not negotiating what share of the UK’s debts Scotland will be willing to take on. What is actually being negotiated is the level of foreign aid payments that a newly independent Scotland will be willing to make to the UK government in order to help it cover it’s debts.

That is not a threat. It is cold, hard reality. In February of this year George Osbourne, backed by Ed Balls and Danny Alexander, issued an announcement confirming that if Scotland votes for independence then the UK will continue to honour 100% of its existing debt obligations. Your government have already taken the unilateral decision that in the event of a breakup the rUK will be the sole continuator state, meaning that there is not a single thing that they can do to force the Scottish Government to accept any share of UK debt. That decision has already been taken on your behalf and that ought to worry you.

It ought to worry you because that triumvirate of Osbourne, Balls and Alexander have already proven themselves to be pretty poor negotiators. On the same day that they confirmed that the UK would continue to be liable for 100% of its debts they also announced that there is no way in which the rUK would agree to a formal currency union. Over the last week we have already seen the fallout of that decision, with Sterling sliding several points against both the US Dollar and the Euro. I can guarantee you that when we see the financial markets open tomorrow Sterling will start sliding even further. The financial press are already speculating that if Scotland votes Yes on the 18^th then the minute that the markets open on the 19^th Sterling will crash.

The reason for this is simple. What investor in their right mind is going to invest in a currency when the person in charge of running it has openly declared that he intends to slash his own economy by 10% overnight?

Right now Sterling is supported by the tax receipts from North Sea oil, meaning that in the event of a currency crisis the UK can back peoples investments by paying them back in oil instead of in cash. The minute that Scotland votes for independence 90% of the UK’s oil revenues disappear and the security that they provide disappears with it. I fully expect to see the rUK experiencing a further downgrading of its credit rating, meaning that it will face yet higher borrowing costs to continue financing its existing debt.

None of this has anything to do with Alex Salmond. It is already coming about thanks entirely to the outright incompetence of your own political leaders.

The reason why Westminster is desperate now, is that Scotland becoming free of it, means they are simply fucked and cannot spin austerity out as intended. You vote Tories/Labour/Lib Dems/UKIP and you get the same sort of incompetent careerist tosser who’s got people working 40 hours a week to just keep a roof over their head and they’re being told that they’re not working hard enough. But hey, they’ve been voted in because people stick to the same tribalist ideas so the system keeps going and going while the rich become richer and the rest of us look at pay packets which have barely changed in years, while prices constantly increase.

I don’t want friends to wake up on September the 19th to a free and independent Scotland and begrudge Scotland and it’s people for what they’ve done. I want them to realise that actually, this is the best chance they’ll ever have to break things for the better in the rest of the UK. This is a chance to take the incredible movement that Scotland has had over the last few years and drag it out across the UK so we can drive out the bastards who clog up the system and work only for themselves.

If there’s any lesson to be learned from this, it’s that the system we have now is broken. Rather than cling onto broken remnants of the past, we should be grasping this opportunity to start fresh not just in Scotland, but in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. So inform yourselves in the last few days before the vote as to the possibilities it opens up. Make sure you know that the people of Scotland are not doing this to ‘get at the English’ as many on the Unionist side would have you believe, but because they have a change for the sort of real democratic change this country hasn’t seen since the end of the last war.

How much are the UK government getting the press to attack the Scottish Independence movement?

With two weeks left before Scotland decides whether to leave the UK and decide it’s own fate, or remain and be governed by Westminster governments, the debate is getting incredibly heated as polls show a narrowing of the once though unassailable lead the No vote had. As a Scot living in England what’s amazed me is how badly the debate has been reported down here, and also how identical much of the reporting is as if the media are being briefed to say the same thing. This is especially apparent when you read the broadsheets like the Telegraph, Independent and the Guardian which all sound like they’ve all been well briefed in the day’s talking points. Even the international press sound like the London based press. Right now, the talking point is that it’s a Scottish government that decides whether the NHS is privatised and not Westminster. More on this later.

Today I was idly reading through various parts of the internet and stumbled across this article on Vice. It’s an interview with Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem lacky of George Osborne, and it’s a far, far more interesting read than I though it’d be because of this part at the start of the piece.

A short while ago VICE got a call from the Cabinet Office telling us they’d seen our article about a stupid video by “Let’s Stay Together”, the government’s campaign to stop Scotland leaving the UK. They were under the impression that we had taken an editorial stance staunchly in favour of independence, rather than simply against early 2000s English celebrities with crap opinions getting involved in important debates.

They said if we wanted to discuss the “real issues” (whichwealreadyhave, butwhatever), rather than just laugh at Tony Robinson, they could help us out by giving me an interview with Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who – as the Cabinet’s foremost Scot – is heading up the government’s Let’s Stay Together Campaign.

 

The insinuation here is that the UK government are looking at the media and trying to get them on message, including the likes of Vice. This frankly is quite extraordinary when we’re to believe the likes of the Guardian who have maintained they’re running a ‘balanced view’ on the debate, but clearly aren’t.

The fact is the entire No/Better Together/No Thanks campaign has been run exactly like an election campaign with Downing Street clearly briefing the London media, and anyone falling out of line is contacted to get them in line as seen here. One of the reasons why the Unionist campaign has failed to gain support is they’re not presenting any positive vision, but seeing as all they’ve got is to say ‘the status quo is fine‘ when in fact, it’s perfectly clear it’s not (unless you’re one of the few benefiting from the system) and something needs to be done. Faced with a grass roots campaign which has roused people who’ve never voted, and a large amount of working class voters registering while informing themselves of the debate in a way I’ve not seen happen in any bit of mass democracy in the UK probably at least since the 1980’s.The Yes campaign has striven on the whole to present an inclusive campaign based on solid arguments rather than spin the same old tired politicians talking points and this is what’s connected.

A case in point is Jeane Freeman of Women for Independence’s interview with Andrew Neil about the NHS in Scotland on the BBC today. It’s simply wonderful to see an old lag like Neil being shot down in flames so comprehensively.

Neil’s points are tired, and not just that, they’re easily proven wrong to anyone with a passing knowledge of the Barnett Formula, but the assumption is that people are stupid and they’ll do what they’re told. In fact the entire Better Together campaign has based itself upon disinformation, which isn’t to say that the Yes campaign hasn’t also indulged in some wee white lies. They have, but the Unionist campaign sums up everything wrong with how democracy is seen by those in positions of power. Do as you’re told because we’re right.

This has seen the UK government scramble for a Plan B as if Scotland does vote Yes in two weeks then they have made no plans for it, such is the arrogance of those in power. The only thing they’ve planned for is a No vote, so hence we’ve got the coalition panicking and Ed Milliband desperately telling Scottish voters that ‘this time things will change’ even though they’ve not. There’s the problem with the establishment telling you that the flavour of shit you’ve been eating will be really good next time, honest. They’ve thrown everything at the Unionist side of things and although the No vote is still in the lead, the Yes vote is rapidly catching up,even though the weight of the media (backed by the government and Westminster) is against it and that, in the UK in 2014, is bloody extraordinary.

2013-That Was the Year That Was

Boxing Day has passed and we’re into the odd twilight that is the time between Christmas and Hogmanay and seeing as everyone else spends this time in the pub avoiding the sales, or even madder, actually in the sales, I’m going to take this quiet time to do a little rundown of the year for my best and worst of the year…

So cracking on let’s leap into this…

Best Overdue Death-Margaret Thatcher.

Without her incredibly overdue death I’d not have written the first post in my blog, or even finally felt a sense of release though at the time I don’t think I would have predicted her becoming such a martyr figure to fucked up sociopathic Tory scum as she has become.

As you can see, there’s still a little bit of my heart blackened with hate for her and especially her spawn.

Best Flounce–The EDL’s Tommy Robinson

Tommy Robinson came into his own after the senseless murder of Lee Rigby which he used as a dragnet to get every snide wee fucked up racist in the country to quietly agree with the EDL’s obvious bigotry. During the summer he hosted an hilarious Q & A session on Twitter, which saw me being blocked by him.

However just as the EDL were at a peak, Robinson flounced off saying they were becoming ‘too extreme’ for him. This set people’s Spidey Sense tingling as frankly. the EDL had been ‘too extreme’ from the fucking off! Still, it’s now hilarious to see the EDL crack and fracture.

Most Annoying Americanism of 2013–Calling TV programmes ”shows”.

There was a time when Telly programmes were called programmes. They would be called dramas, serials, kids telly, documentaries, anything. You’d have entertainment programmes that would be called shows. They’d normally be things like Seaside Special which normally featured a paedophile or a Tory (sometimes both) presenting the worst of British Light Entertainment in a tent in the pissing rain during the summer. It was clearly a term relating to certain types of programmes.

Now everything is a ‘show’. Breaking Bad, Football Focus, Doctor Who, Panorama, and I bet if someone did a 12 hour documentary about Auschwitz someone would give it the jolly title of ‘show’. Stop it! It’s lazy.

The Iain Duncan Smith ‘Cunt of the Year’ award–Iain Duncan Smith.

In decades to come history will look back at this man and write a terrible history of what he’s done. Sadly too many people will have suffered by them

The Ed Millband Useless Bastard award–Ed Milliband

You’re opposition leader against a coalition  people hate. You should be leaping ahead in the poll. No, you’re not because you’re as useful as a Vatican approved condom.

The Jack Whitehall Middle Class Comedian award–Jack Whitehall/Everyone on BBC Three/Channel 4

Back in the day comedians came from all walks of life. You’d have a mix of people and this would mean something may have a broad appeal, which meant much of British comedy came from pointing out class divisions, the inequalities of it and we could laugh at it. Something like Dad’s Army is full of this. Politics was the lifeblood of British comedy along with satire, slapstick and

Now comedy in the UK is dominated by graduates talking about being at university without spotting the irony in doing so. Comedy is dominated by comedians speaking in the same accent, making crap gags about the same things and it’s boring.

The Michael Bay Award For Film of the Year–Man of Steel.

Ever wondered how it would be possible to make a worse film than Superman  IV: The Quest for Peace? Man of Steel provided the answer to that question.We need an edgy murdering Superman because that’s what hope is about.

The Rupert Murdoch Award for Journalistic Integrity–The Guardian’s treatment of Dev Hynes

I outlined recently what happened when The Guardian decided to print an article by one of the Vagenda’s editorial team about crowdsourcing in relation to the fire that destroyed musician Dev Hynes.

In a year when Julie Burchill still writes for newspapers, this managed the amazing task of the worst piece of vile attack hackery disguising itself as journalism I’ve seen. Well, today The Guardian decided to go ahead and print the interview without any mention of the previous article or Hynes saying on Twitter he wants nothing to do with the paper again.

There is however a suitably feeble excuse…

The Heroes Reborn Award for Cocking Up Superheroes–DC Comics

Many years ago, Marvel Comics decided to turn their like into Image Comics with the disaster which was Heroes Reborn. This gave us this.

DC Comics gave us the New 52 a while back. It gave us this.

Nuff said.

The Jamie Theakston Award for Worst TV Festival Coverage–BBC Three

I love festivals as anyone who’s read through my blogs will have worked out but TV coverage of festivals is always all over the place, but this year BBC Three’s coverage ploughed new depth as they managed to take what was a good year for festivals and concentrate on the same dreary tedious student Indie bands at every festival they covered.

Then there’s presenters so completely lacking in joy, charisma or talent telling us of these bands without joy, charisma or talent that they love.

The Jamie Redknapp Award for Pointless Footballing Punditry–Michael Owen.

In the event of a nuclear war all that’s left is the roaches and Michael Owen endlessly talking in a dull monotone to any roach who’d listen about how they all need to do to win football matches is to put the ball in the net.

That’s the future of the human race: Michael Owen endless talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking….

The Ray Winstone MassiveTool Award–Alex Ferguson

For decades we’ve had to put up with Ferguson telling us he never held grudges or vendettas. The minute he retires he releases a book outlining the grudges and vendettas he’s held for years.

Tool.

The Partick Thistle Award for The Film Which Should Have Done Better in 2013–The World’s End

This was a year of actually some decent films. I saw the splendid Excision which is a lovely mix of Cronenberg and Lynch. Lord of Salem is a ridiculously fun horror film. Pacific Rim is the most fun I’ve had at the cinema in ages but they all have something in common in that they didn’t do as well as they really should have.

The film that should have been fucking enormous is Edgar Wright’s The World’s End.

It did ok, It ticked over but it never hit the heights of success Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead did. That’s a shame because it’s a better film than the other two, and those other two are very good films indeed but without getting too much into spoiler territory here The World’s End isn’t the big obvious fist punching end that many expected it to be.

It’s actually more than that. It’s also a more adult film than I was expecting with the alien plot being something that works well within the main plot of the story of five middle aged men. It’s also very British so that a lot of this will skim over an overseas audience; the wee smile that slips on Paddy Considine’s face when his character hears I’m Free by the Soup Dragons for the first time in decades is something only people who remember a certain time in British popular culture will get, while for everyone else they’ll lose the nuance in that scene which comes early in the film.

See, this is a film for people roughly aged between 40-50. The references in the first 20 minutes or so are things that were unique parts of our youth so that when the film gets to it’s ending it can read as a tragic ending, but I’ll leave plot discussion there. Search the film out or buy it. It’s a fantastic film. It might have helped if it wasn’t released in the middle of summer when we actually had a glorious summer. Ah well…

And finally...

2013 was pretty crap. Sure, some things were fun but it’s been a hard year for not only me, but many people I know and things don’t that much better in 2014. However I’m going to carry on blogging in 2014.

That means my 20 favourite comic book films. My top 20 pop songs. More stuff about politics. A football blog about Scotland’s World Cup send off in 1978. The history of Neptune Comic Distributors. The return of my personal history of Glastonbury Festival. More about the Glasgow comics and SF scene of the 1980’s, and of course porn!

Happy new year!

The Daily Mail Is a Cancerous Sore

I was going to do something nice on the blog tonight but the whole business with the Daily Mail’s attack on Ed Millband’s father, Ralph Milliband has repulsed me, as has their defence of it. I’m not a Labour voter these days, and Ed Milliband is as much a socialist as I am George Clooney, but there’s a line and the Daily Mail leaps over the line, drops it’s trousers and shits all over it while blaming it on other people.

It’s an insult to refugees like Ralph Millband to be libelled this way. He fought for his adopted home against the Nazis and tried to help guide the UK out of the horrors of WW2 to a better world, a Land Fit for Heroes. He didn’t cheer on fascists like The Daily Mail did, or support Hitler like the Daily Mail did, or suggest that the UK would be a better place if we sided with the fascists as the Daily Mail did.

It’s owner, Lord Rothermere, was a friend of Hitler’s.

I can go on, but the Mail’s history with fascism is well known, but it’s always good to remind people that actually, the Daily Mail, it’s editor Paul Dacre, and it’s staff show nothing but contempt for the majority of people in this country.

The staff writer responsible for this particular lie, is one Geoffrey Levy. This is his sad looking Linkedin page. Here’s Levy being a misogynist prick in regards Nigella Lawson just to show hi variety. He’s the very definition of a Daily Mail hack & a travesty of a human being. His email address may be geoffrey.levy@dailymail.co.uk or g.levy@dailymail.co.uk.

I suggest if those don’t work, writing to the Daily Mail. Make clear what you think. You see anyone reading the rag, call them for it. It’s time to let the Mail, Paul Dacre and all those buying the rag what it is, and what they are for supporting this fascist mouthpiece that treats the people of Britain with contempt.

There’s a little bit of Andy Murray in all of us now……..

In case anyone has been in a coma, Andy Murray was the first British winner of the men’s singles at Wimbledon for 77 years yesterday which makes all all Andy Murray now, especially politicians who in the sort of landgrab that would make American settlers seem like reasonable people have grabbed Andy by his big Scottish ears and forced him down firmly to swallow the shaft of Britishness, and even more excitingly , Englishness.

See, it’s not enough for people to be genuinely happy about someone who’s grafted hard to become top of his game and does genuinely quite impressive things without grabbing him as a token of how spiffing, wonderful and fantastic Britain is. We can’t just celebrate his victory with a Cameron, Salmond or Millband dragging their arse all the way down Andy Murray leaving a skidmark of Britishness/Scottishness down his tennis whites as they try to use him as their puppet to show how great Britain is, or how Scotland can survive without Darth Cameron’s vice-like grip round round the collective Scottish testicles.

Then there’s poor Ed Milliband left in the background like the lad at the party who sees everyone getting off with all the girls, but all he’s got to himself is a half drunk bottle of Taboo and a copy of Razzle that’s got all the best pages stuck together.

Really, though, the politicisation of any successful British sporting feat, even one done by a Scot who many English were being enormously bigoted towards a year ago is frankly so bloody tedious now that as soon as Murray won you could have written Cameron’s speeches blindfold. Though the tubthumping cliches tends to fall out of Cameron’s mouth like shitty bits of poo after eating a vegan curry at Glastonbury.

What I’m basically saying is yes, let’s celebrate as a people but for fucks sake let Murray enjoy it for himself without having a politician leech onto him and suck the joy out of the victory. Let’s just have fun without Cameron using this to proclaim that everything’s fine and dandy even though millions are still unemployed, and the country is being wrecked.

Give us one pure moment of joy without it being spoiled by these people. It’s not hard to ask is it?