Sunday 14 August 2011

Anarchy in the UK?




It's two weeks now since our return to these beautiful shores (and quite beautiful they are too - we walked on the beach near Montrose today so I know that for sure). Over the past week however, like most people, my thoughts have been on subjects other than beauty as I have written one and read many articles prompted by last week's events in English cities. Sometimes the articles I've found interesting have been in unlikely journals – say this one in the “Daily Telegraph” - but one of the best things I've encountered was this article by Boff Whalley of the band Chumbawamba that found a home in the “Independent”. In it Boff reclaims the word 'anarchy' from the tabloids and that is such an important job (reclaiming our lives and ideas from the filth-spreaders). In the comments to my last post here I found myself doing it too, I think, when I wrote the words “we've all been calling each other 'scum' for so long we can hardly remember how to do anything else”. I wrote that as a quick response to something and then afterwards realised how true it probably is. This is always better than writing something, publishing it and only then realising you've got it completely wrong - though of course in this instance I'd rather it wasn't true at all.

We listen to a fair bit of recent Chumbawamba in this house (they've been around for years but it's only with later albums like 2008's “The Boy Bands Have Won” that the three of us have become real fans) and this week we were trying out a couple of their other albums on Spotify. They always have good album titles (and good covers like the one at the top of this post) and on one album called “A Singsong and a Scrap” (2005) I heard this song that I'd never heard before. I really liked it and thought you might too. It's called “Fade away (I don't want to)”.





Much as I like this song it does make me sad too - mainly because I still can't hear phrases like 'fade away' without thinking about my Mum and her last weeks (back in Spring 2010). Still, she is not forgotten at least. Not at all, not at all.

x

7 comments:

Titus said...

Found you! Bought cookies, where's my latte?
The paucity of the analysis of the riots has made me want to scream. Best seven words for me straight from the horse's mouth, 'Pure terror and havoc and free stuff.'

Rachel Fox said...

More into the ol'style diner coffee myself. Can't get it here, of course.

There has been some dreadful 'analysis' crap 'prompted' by riots (things that people have been saving up for the occasion no doubt). I watched the David Starkey on Newsnight clip yesterday (via another blog) - what a load of crap (and the racist comments on youtube underneath showed how effective/reflective it is). Who needs Mock the Week when the 'real' commentators are so OTT? Bits of the Starkey were almost funny (him reading the text message!) but overall it was just wrong... and destructive too in its way.
x

Titus said...

I watched the Starkey live whilst clearing out a cupboard and my jaw just dropped. I have, in the past, found him interesting, entertaining and insightful when presenting history programmes and it felt like he'd taken off his veneer of urbanity and revealed a blurred mass of intolerance and his genuinely held belief that white is not only better than black, but that black is uniform, rubbish and fit to denigrate. Head-shaking stuff.

Rachel Fox said...

Yes, off with his head. Or at least put him in that cupboard.
And what I hate most is when crap like that gets called 'brave' and 'honest'. It is hatemongering dressed up in academic clothes, nothing else.
x

Rachel Fenton said...

I think there's a problem with broadcasters being given too much authority - then, when they spout tosh, they are damaging.

It's been very interesting, if sad, to view the riots from such a distance.

Rachel Fox said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rachel Fox said...

(Got the link wrong - hence deleted comment!)

The BBC has been criticised over the Starkey thing but I think everyone else on the panel (including the presenter) was pretty shocked by his spoutings. I just saw a response to it here.

We're at quite a distance too. Scotland does feel like a different country right now (and it doesn't always - not to me anyway).

x