straw on veils

I’ve spent a lot of today thinking about Jack Straw’s comments on the wearing of veils and the fact that he has, for the last year or so, requested that they be removed when he is visited by Muslim women in his constituency surgery. He has gone to considerable lengths to make clear that he asks rather than demands, and is certainly not in favour of any prescriptive legislation, yet believes that the niqab makes "better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult", being as it is "such a visible statement of separation and of difference".

Generally speaking, I think that Straw’s article is well-argued and I don't doubt his sincerity - it was perhaps the best and most measured contribution to this debate from an anti-niqab perspective I've seen, and I’m pleased that he has done it fairly sensitively. He describes a conversation he had recently with a Muslim lady once she was unveiled.

"We … had a really interesting debate about veil wearing. This itself contained some surprises. It became absolutely clear to me that the husband had played no part in her decision. She explained she had read some books and thought about the issue. She felt more comfortable wearing her veil when out. People bothered her less."

Straw ended the interview promising that he would think about what she said, but asked her to do the same and bear in mind his argument, that he wanted British Muslims to think about the impact that their style of dress had upon the community and upon interaction with their fellow Britons. I think that making this point was very fair and he seems to have done so in a sensitive manner.

However, as much as I want to believe that Straw – a good constituency MP – is publicising this approach now because he feels that – those dread words – a full and frank public debate is neccesary, I remain concerned that he's made the statement now for political reasons, trying to echo the appalling John Reid and ramp up the 'harsh on terror' stuff. And I wonder if despite his good intentions he may have misread the 'relief' with which women remove their headscarves during his consultations and not understood that in making the request from a position of considerable power (the women are there to ask for his help, after all) he may be making a request that his visitors feel unable to refuse.

More pertinently, of course, what the fuck business is it of his what his constituents are wearing. He says, "Above all, it was because I felt uncomfortable about talking to someone “face-to-face” who I could not see". Well, again, I sympathise and suspect that I would feel rather the same. Then again, this would be my problem. I’m guessing that in many cases the lady he is speaking to would be uncomfortable removing the veil. Where do we go from here? As an experienced servent of a constituency with a high Muslim population (one who, until Iraq, and perhaps still, held him in pretty high regard) I would expect Straw to find his own solution to this discomfort he feels. Nevertheless, he is within his rights to ask and I appreciate his candour in describing the awkwardness he feels.

There is, though, one more aspect to this which makes me wish, for all his good intentions, that he hadn’t written the article which he has. It does not take long to note that as soon as Straw’s measured comments are published, two conflicting but equally extreme reactions subsume and bury the subtleties of his argument and the debate is reduced to little but a fiery to-and-fro. It certainly did not take long for the Muslim Council of Britain to denounce Straw’s words as ‘blatant Muslim-bashing’, nor for George Galloway to call for his resignation. Nor did it take long for the Daily Telegraph to pen a leader praising Straw for singling out

"another example of the damage done by multiculturalism to the cause of real integration. Mr Straw is to be commended for brushing aside the politically correct nostrums that have inhibited such discussion among senior politicians."

Straw ends his article by saying that there is a need for a debate. Certainly a debate is desirable. But can such a debate be started by a member of a government with such a bloody record in the Middle East? And if the debate is so swiftly taken over by people who distort the debate, what should we do?

Jagshemash

An interesting post about Borat and Kazakhstan over at the Guardian newsblog today: the second link below will take you there...

"In an effort to set the record straight and establish whether the central Asian republic really is that bad, Guardian Unlimited conducted a trawl of recent news stories on the country. And it turns out it isn't that bad: it's much, much worse."

the long farewell

Two thoughts occur simultaneously when looking back on Blair's valedictory speech yesterday. The first is the foremost, "thank god he'll be gone soon". For all the blokey asides, the rhetorical skill and the fair domestic progress, the utterly misguided, blinkered Tony Blair remains terribly evident the second he gets on to international affairs. He blindly stated again - against all conventional wisdom - that there is no connection between terrorism and foreign policy. He insisted that he would dedicate the rest of his time in power to pursuing a peace agreement in the Middle East, without seeming to grasp how irretrievably his stock has fallen in that part of the world. I seem to recall Blair promising a peace agreement in 2002. Seeing as he didn't succeed then, when his policy of bombing the shit out of foreign countries was still in its infancy, I find it rather hard to imagine that he'll manage it now. Still, perhaps he'll prove me wrong.

In the US, meanwhile, a leaked intelligence report indicates that:

"The Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success [in Iraq] would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere,"

"The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world. If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide."

Well, duh.

The second thought arising from the Blair speech, sadly, is "oh, you could have been good". No-one is more comfortable or natural in the political arena as Tony Blair; next to him Gordon Brown's speech seemed flat and lacking in energy. That's not to say that I don't think that Brown would make a decent prime minister - merely that when you see Blair at his best it is a dismal reminder that Labour may never encounter elect another leader possessed of so much consummate skill. What a shame that his talents were obscured by his flaws.

Thank God he'll be gone soon.

Osama Bin Laden reported dead?

Hmm - just seen this. I wonder...

Saudi intelligence services have determined that terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in August, the French regional daily L’Est Republicain reported on its website on Saturday.

The newspaper said it based its information on a document classified ‘defence secret’ originating in the French DGSE intelligence services. According to the story, the DGSE informed President Jacques Chirac of the Saudi report on Thursday.

The DGSE document, printed with the report, reads in part, ‘According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi intelligence services are said to have acquired the information that Osama bin Laden is dead. The information gleaned by the Saudis indicates that the head of Al Qaeda was a victim of a very strong attack of thyphoid... in Pakistan on August 23, 2006.’

The document goes on to say that bin Laden’s geographical isolation rendered all medical assistance impossible.

horrendous accidents at great speed

This is an extraordinary story with a tragic twist; but the sheer impressiveness of the endeavour, which (I'm a luddite) I knew nothing about means I'm more excited by the idea than saddened. Apparently a test-run of a new type of train has gone badly wrong in northern Germany and up to 29 people have been seriously injured - so far ten have been rescued alive but it is thought that eighteen others, along with the one confirmed fatality, will be pronounced dead. Awful.

And yet the train itself is utterly fascinating. Am I alone to have never heard of high-speed magnetic levitation trains? According to the Guardian they are being trialled in Germany and Japan and one is already in operation in Shanghai. The mind-bending principle is that "There is no fuel source on board mag-levs. They use electrically charged magnets to cause the trains to hover just above the track, and move forward without friction", which is pretty fucking sci-fi, don't you think? The train in question was travelling at a speed of around 120 miles per hour but mag-levs in development in Japan can reach a terrifying 310 mph, a speed which would make travelling from Paris to Rome in two hours by rail possible. Astonishing. To put it in perspective, a Boeing 777 travels at a top speed of 562 mph.

Really incredible, although today's disaster is tragic and hopefully not an omen of more safety problems to follow. It seems that the derailment occurred not because of a problem with the magnetic levitation but because of a simpler and more avoidable factor - a maintenence wagon had not been cleared out of its path. God. After the awful news about Richard Hammond, I'm hoping this is the last story about horrendous accidents at great speed we hear about for a while.

But I look forward to the trains, one day.

nicky wire, gordon brown

Are you ready for Gordon? The Guardian has a quiz to determine how well prepared we are for a short period of dour Scottish rule. I am ready, I scored 7 out of 9.

See how you do.

Nicky Wire is ready too. Has anyone heard his new record yet? I haven't. What's it like?

Nick Wire once wrote a chorus that always stayed in my head: "I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer / I spat out Plath and Pinter / I am all the things that you regret / A truth that washes that learnt how to spell". Now he is writing diary articles for The New Statesman; the one in today's is predictably entertaining.

My mind starts wandering, asking myself: "Why is Charles Clarke so utterly weird?" He calls Gordon Brown a control freak. Of course he is: more than any other politician, the Chancellor needs to make enemies and piss people off. If he listens too much, then he fails (remember when Nigel Lawson started listening to Margaret Thatcher?), yet, more bizarrely, the criticism comes from a man whose "control" seemed to disappear when pimps, murderers and rapists roamed Britain on his watch. In modern history, he was the most inept home secretary we have known, yet he is worried about a man who works 18 hours a day, whose didactic knowledge and dedication are unsurpassed.

We need a forensic, analytical, dour workaholic like Gordon to save us from this tyranny or, God help us, the king of smarm Alan Milburn will make another comeback. Gordon's a hyperrealist: he may seem prosaic, but his results are colossal. He separates his religion from his intellect. His economics are almost agnostic.

[....]

I start to dream of a cabinet to serve Gordon Brown. Diane Abbott, Martin Amis, Will Self, Damon Albarn, myself, Harold Pinter, Victoria Wood, Mark E Smith, Shami Chakrabarti, Charles Kennedy, Dennis Skinner and Michael Portillo. We could privatise the royal family; abolish all subsidies to the Royal Opera; invent a supertax for Premiership footballers . . . Then my life slows down again. Someone is asking me about the next Manics album and about my love of domestic chores. Maybe I could just be Gordon Brown's cleaner - it's a position of influence and importance, after all. We need more control freaks. As Voltaire said: "The true character of liberty is independence - maintained by force."

[...]

The week has disappeared. At last it's raining. The comfort of bad weather shrouds me. I realise it will be a long, hard year of Blair. It could have been so different, but history will always have a witness. Clarke will fade even quicker than Geoffrey Howe's execution speech.

My dreams falter and hibernate - it's a long, hard evolution but I am patient. Twenty years in the music business have taught me that inertia and boredom are sometimes healthy. We're all searching for meaning, but as Kafka wrote: "The meaning of life is that it stops."

It's a real shame that I never actually liked the Manic Street Preachers that much.

more lookalikes

Okay, apologies to distant readers of this blog who don't know or care what my friends look like - but yesterday's lookalikes post proved a hit so I have been persuaded to waste a little more time holding up my chums to ridicule. So here's a new batch of dastardly characters. First up, Michi, whose facial furniture may, I suspect, have something to do with comparisons to... well, see for yourself:
Nice one Michi! Elvis Costello. That's set the bar for the coolest lookalike.

Registering perhaps the bizarrest set of results so far is Andrew, who manages to accrue comparisons to Bill Gates, Keira Knightly, Jay Leno and Winston Churchill. He seems to have a bit of a 1920s thing going on there, too:
And, before we get to the last two glamourous ladies of the exercise, here is Dustin, the man they call the Al Gore of Brighton. With extra charisma!
Ali, meanwhile, despite confounding expectations by turning up to the comparisons party with a holiday snap, making her look both healthier and happier than any of the rest of the us, manages a swoonsome list of stunnas matched only by our last entrant...
Ladies and gentlemen, the beautiful Sam:
Gosh.

lookalikes via nat

Unspeakably amused by Natalia's blog today, which contains face recognition charts of herself and Keiran - in other words they've uploaded photos of themselves to MyHeritage.com, which has scanned them and found celebrity faces which tally with their (rather fetching) features. Some of the faces found really aren't bad - the one immediately top right to Nat is a very good likeness, for example. Naturally, this makes me want to play the game myself, and I thought it'd be more fun if I abused my friends' trust and played around with their faces too. So, because I'm fair, here's me first...

Michael Douglas!!! What? Obviously the paleometer has notched up the Doherty comparison, too. Hmm. Let's have a go with Dan:
Sorry Dan. We've all been too polite to point out the Fred Durst similarity all these years. Now for Vic, who, annoyingly, does OK out of the deal.
Not quite sure how she ended up with the fella, though. Nor, while we're on the subject, am I sure why Dave has accrued the following, ahem, rather striking comparisons:
Condoleeza Rice! Jesus. All the other girls are a pretty good match, though.

Another lunch break used to its maximum potential there, I think.

pope on the run

I've used my blog on several occasions to argue that there is an absurd militant islamophobia on the rise in liberal circles and the West generally, but the following quote, by the Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Tasnim Aslam, is just too good to ignore...

"Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence".

Ha ha ha.

stay off the smack

"Most parents are cretins who support physical violence against minors, according to a survey.

The figure was higher among adults without their own families, 80% of whom are big fans of hitting children.

But, among parents, the proportion who support aggression against people completely unable to defend themselves, much less understand, fell to 67%, the poll for ITV showed.

The survey was conducted ahead of a new ITV1 documentary, I Smack And I'm A Fucking Idiot, which follows five families who smack to discipline their children."

More info here.

Next week: shock new survey reveals that Jonathan 100% agrees that punching adults in the face should they hit their own children is entirely acceptable. Can we legislate?

Dan on the folk explosion!

About five years ago we were in the midst of what was rather grandly known at the time as 'The New Acoustic Movement', which, looking back, I'm sure was record-company-spin to help sell the batch of quiet rock groups emerging at the time. These included Turin Breaks who had hit it big with their The Optimist LP and Kings of Convenience who Simon and Garfunkel'd their way to success. There was also the annoyingly-feeble Tom MacRae and David Gray wobbled his head a bit. All mildly satisfying, I suppose, but I do remember getting annoyed that my Mum knew a Kings of Convenience song I was listening to because it was Terry Wogan's record of the week. The NME, as it tends to with a different genre every week, hailed this new sound and devoted pages of one issue to it. Sales of acoustic guitars apparently went through the roof.

I'm not certain if that 'movement', or those guitars, formed the basis of the plethora of Folk that exists at the moment. My suspicion is that it didn't really play a part. Certainly some artists being recognised now have been making music for some time. Electro folk outfit Tunng and Scots balladeer King Creosote spring to mind. Yet plenty of others have sprung forth and forged a much more plausible sense of a 'scene'. It really does seem to exist.

Folk seems omnipresent and credible right now, and I for one am pleased. iTunes tells me that Sufjan Stevens - of whom I can’t seem to tire - is 'Folk'. From the US, Sam Beam aka Iron & Wine, Bright Eyes and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy have been exploring Folk music for a while but I never really explicitly thought of them as Folk. More longstanding contributions have come from artists such as Laura Cantrell and Animal Collective, and folky albums like Neutral Milk Hotel's supremely odd In the Aeroplane Over The Sea, largely written off in the 90s as a minor piece of indie rock whimsy, have been deservedly reappraised.

On Monday night I caught on BBC2 a programme called Folk Britannia, which I think was originally shown on BBC4. It explored the re-emergence of Folk during the 1960s and its take up by the Hippy movement. It reminded me that of course Dylan was essentially a folk musician who turned his talent to protest song and then 'went electric'. Many of the famous American musicians at the time came to Britain to immerse themselves in the pubs and clubs of Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, where distinctive folk scenes had formed.

Paul Simon's famous rendition of Scarborough Fair was the result of one of these trips. The programme charted the emergence of the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention amongst others and documented the stir caused when they plugged their instruments into amps and went psychadelic. It showed me the roots of an important part of British music I had always overlooked.

I was, in my sleepy state, trying to make mental notes of apparently seminal album releases or compilations but can now only remember Unhalfbricking by Fairport Convention, which I already own and love, and which is perhaps the only album I can listen to with my Mum which we can both enjoy.

Re-releases of 'lost' recordings have also played their part to a resurgence of folk, as well as several very good recent compilations. These include Vashti Bunyan's 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day aided by endorsement from Davendra Banhart and also by the use of its title track on a T-Mobile mobile phone ad and Linda Perhacs' Parallelograms another 1970s re-release. This has led, I suspect, to much retrospective CD and vinyl buying. The ongoing allure of the 1970s film 'The Wicker Man', with its by turns charming and sinister folk soundtrack, has also played a part.

Perhaps this resurgence is just down to the mood or the style at the moment. Perhaps it's a reaction against manufactured music and endless stylised guitar bands called 'The...'. Maybe people are after what they perceive is a non-corporate back to basics approach to music that in some ways keeps it real. I don't know, but I do know that I like this 'New Folk' and psychedelia and am clearly not alone...

[blogging by Dan]

libs in brighton

I like Ming Campbell, despite his faltering start as leader of the Liberal Democrats (who have invaded my town en-masse this week); but I still laughed at Steve Bell's If... today. Very good, and as much sweet as savage.

clare short

Thank you Clare Short, for going some way to articulating the anger I feel with the government and the New Labour project. The last week or so has been interesting, as I've been monitoring my feelings after learning that Blair will at last be standing down relatively soon and that, unless something drastic happens, the man I've been wanting to be Labour leader for the last nine years will almost certainly finally achieve that aim. And yet I feel just as disgusted and furious with this government as ever, just as reluctant to rejoin the party and just as determined never to vote for them again.

I don't agree with every word in Clare Short's Independent article - in which she announces her resignation from the Labour party - but she is right to say that New Labour's policies have "dishonoured the UK, undermined the UN and international law and helped to make the world a more dangerous place". I never understood the criticism over her delayed resignation over Iraq, and I'm sure that she'll be subjected to much more criticism over this desicion, particularly if she chooses to join another party or stands as an independent candidate. Like most politicians, she is fallible and has made poor decisions in the past, but she is essentially, principled and dedicated to her constituents, and I hope that she is able to continue to represent them. If there were more like her we wouldn't be in this bloody mess.

new songs by Assistant

My band, Assistant, have recently finished recording a bunch of new songs - which we're probably going to put toward an album presently - and Ali, who produced the songs, has recently passed me the mixed up versions. Am very proud of the results as I think they're amongst the best things we've done. So there's a little preview here: click the links below to download the following three songs...

1. Criticism
2. Get Away
3. Engines and Anvils

There are six other tracks too, all of which I'll post before long. Any comments, thoughts, criticism much appreciated.... If you can't download and want the songs on a CD then drop me an email or leave a comment and I shall post you one and some other Assistant goodies...

In the meantime, you might want to take note of the fact that the always ace rbally.net blog has a full Wowee Zowee-era Pavement set up and available to download. It's stunning, as you'd expect (hat tip). And Bradley's Almanac had a couple of live tracks from the reformed Throwing Muses a week or two back, while I'm recommending stuff.

Oh, and finally some good news to counterbalance Sleater-Kinney splitting up. It seems that the Afghan Whigs are back in the studio. Thank you, God, I knew you hadn't given up on indie rock altogether...

too little, too little

I'm no fan of Tony Blair, and quietly hopeful that Gordon Brown will be a more principled, progressive and patient Prime Minister, but events over the last few days don't really give me any satisfaction; it just seems patently absurd that we are witnessing the fallout of a twelve year feud which could surely have been avoided. Neither man emerges with much credit - Blair has been utterly discredited by his illegal actions abroad, and has there been a more mysterious politician than Gordon Brown? Not that I can recall; his conduct over the last five or six years has been astonishing, refraining in almost every instance to make his views heard on any major issue beside Europe and the economy. And yet his discomfort with his position and impatience to take the premiership has been palpable.

Looking back, it seems remarkable that Tony Blair has consented to so much clear disloyalty from Brown, and surely the great mistake was Blair's in not sacking him earlier. Equally, Blair's dogmatic refusal to share centre stage with the co-creater of the New Labour project has seemed at times an act of nothing more than hubris. How astonishing it is to note that the split between the Blair and Brown camps is fuelled by personal emnity rather than an ideological divide. How on earth have two such intelligent men not been able to resurrect a working relationship? And if that was impossible, how absurd that they have been tied together so completely. The whole relationship beggars belief. Worst of all is that (former) Labour party members by myself have had to watch the progress of our (former) party being utterly upstaged by the dynastic ambitions of two men.

Where do we go from here? The party is broadly united in its values with respect to domestic policies, with only market-based issues driving a real wedge, and should be able to articulate progressive ideas positively. We should be able to think beyond the Blair/Brown equation when thinking about alternative leaders, but even there we find it hard to think beyond the rivalry. No compelling alternatives present themselves, and it is hard not to wonder if one of the reasons for this is that the PM and Chancellor have so dominated the party as to block the progress of more youthful (or conversely, experienced) colleagues. There are plenty of interesting Labour MPs but they do not have the gravity of the likes of Robin Cook, Jack Straw, David Blunkett, Margaret Beckett and Peter Hain. Given the quality and experience of the politicians elected to power in '97 it's impossible not to include, looking back, that the Labour Party spent far too much time fetishising Blair. His contribution to that Labour victory was incalculable, but we had a whole range of experience from which to draw in that first term, and we/they didn't do enough to use that experience wisely. We did too little, too little, too little.

So, no conclusion. I dunno. I want to go back to voting Labour but I don't know if I can do it. I want Brown to be the leader but I don't like the way he's going about doing it. I feel enormously frustrated with Blair and it's getting worse by the day. I want to squash David Miliband. I want Robin Cook back. I want to turn back time. Oh well.

here we are again

Just flicking through my flickr account and found this photo I took at Pride a month or so ago; I like it lots. That is all.

souls via nat and fay weldon

There's a nice little post over at Nat's blog which jumps and shudders tunefully along with my thoughts recently. She writes:

"If I had taken a photo of my soul monthly for the last year, I would have seen it grow. But why the last year? 28 going on 29 seems a bit late for a sudden burst of growth. Where did it come from? And is it only me? I feel that everyone close to me is going through it as I go. Growing together."

This last year has seen unfathomable acres of change, alongside lots of staying the same. I probably like Nat's post so much because she is talking about her friends and I am one of them, but also because I think she's right about the growth of what she calls the soul, and the fits and bursts of it's, or rather one's, development. Recently I seem to have spent a lot of time with friends who are bustling through life and it's associated glitches and disappointments with a kind of courage and vigour which makes me feel proud of them and comforted and hopeful that I'm capable of the same; lots of things fizz and change and all we do is persist and grow little by little.

Maybe there is such a thing as a soul. People are so singular and brimming with personality; I think of the spirited drive of a friend's personality and spirit feels like the right word, a word which transcends logical or scientific formulas. Fay Weldon's new book contains an incredibly surprising sentence on the subject: "The soul is the essential part of us, the inner recognisable core which stays the same while the body which ties us down changes". I see for a moment the soul or the essence as a balloon which can thankfully not slip from our grasp and our heavy bodies. Of course, Fay Weldon, despite "getting" god, thrives as a contrarian, and I do not think that the soul exists. But I would like a photograph of it anyway, to fix where I am now so that I remember, later.

Or else I shall have to ask my friends, who will know.

son of peel / lindsay west

I've just finished listening to the first of the two podcasts which Tom Ravenscroft - John Peel's son - has completed for 4Radio, the new podcast radio station from Channel 4. Far from being a novelty item, I was tremendously impressed with the 30 minute show, which draws tracks exclusively from Channel 4's Slash Music service, meaning that all of the artists are either unsigned or operating outside of the conventional music industry. Tom's debut as a DJ - he has worked previously as a music journalist - might very well have been one of two things; a naked attempt to follow in his father's footsteps (which I've contrived to make sound rather offensive, where in fact he has every right to that ambition if he holds it) or an unfortunate reminder of just how good Peel was, as - inevitably - his son is unable to match his astoundingly high standards.

But the show never feels contrived or driven by the market, and the fact that Tom's delivery, like his father's, is even, genial and enthusiastic suggests that had he chosen to take his show to Radio 1 he would surely have been given a warm welcome. There's no replacing Peel, but, just as the loss of Charlie Gillett from BBC London Live creates a huge chap which can never be totally filled, we do need an eclectic, accessible music programme which does at least some of the things which Peel did so well. To this end, Ravenscroft's debut presses all the right buttons; he's calm, likeable and doesn't talk over the records, and in thirty minutes he plays indie rock, tech-house, dub reggae, some odd, gleeful glitchy indie which might have been my first exposure to 'new rave' and a particularly beautiful bit of folk music by Lyndsay West which featured the lyrics:

"Day began getting dimmer
And we began to talk
about getting dinner.

We talked about how clothes
were getting thinner and thinner
on the people that were passing in the lamplight's glimmer.

Oh-o, we held our coats closer.
We held our coats closer."

She's great, and so's Tom's show; both come highly recommended. You can tune in here.

utterly insane

So West Ham have signed Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascharano on PERMANENT contracts today for an undisclosed fee! Most ludicrous and astonishing transfer in the history of the Premiership? Without a doubt. It's completely incredible. What odds, however, on them being snapped up by Chelsea in a year's time. They were signed from Corinthians, and the Guardian notes that:

"It is not known what role, if any, was played in the transfers by Media Sports Investment (MSI), the company that two years ago agreed a 10-year partnership with Corinthians that effectively gave it control of the club. In 2004 the company was instrumental in bringing Tevez to the Brazilian club from Boca Juniors in an £11.4m transfer that amazed observers of South American football. MSI is run by Kia Joorabchian, the London-based businessman who last year expressed an interest in taking over West Ham. Spanish newspaper AS has reported that Roman Abramovich also has a 15% stake in the company, but Joorabchain has consistently denied that the Chelsea owner has any link to MSI."

Well, either way, I've never been so surprised about a transfer. Makes Spurs' captures of Steed Malbranque and Pascal Chimbonda look positively paltry, doesn't it? God.

Up with people

I like people very much. I woke up late this morning and was in a kind of hazy, lethargic mood bordering on a bad temper, exacerbated by my decision to dress for winter and then have to charge to the station barging past pedestrians and getting increasingly hot in the process. I got to the station in time, had a brief argument with the ticket machine, and steamed aggressively into WHSmiths to buy a paper. And was greeted at the counter by the nice chap who works there and his friendly, even greeting of 'Alright mate', which I vainly but gratefully took to be a personal greeting because he recognised me and I him. And I felt much better immediately, thinking, I like people very much. So I'm having a good day, now.

seven days in music

A week of musical memories:

1. Oh, alright, I won't go on about the Young Knives again.
2. Watching a band set up and play a set on the beach on Sunday afternoon. School's out for the summer and the young are running free, singing cod-reggae in fake jamaican accents and singing 'funny songs' about date rape. I suppress the urge to dash pebbles against their heads.
3. I just read that Andy Partridge, main man of XTC and best songwriter in the world (if you forget Wyatt, Malkmus, Costello etc) has finished his trawl through the archives and decided to stop cataloguing his demos and out-takes at volume 9. So he's reissuing the Fuzzy Warbles tapes as a nine-CD collection. I cannot afford to buy it. Why do I have a horrible feeling that I will, then? (via)
4. This week I have been mostly living at Dave's house and as a consequence am now, somehow, able to play several songs by Coldplay and Travis. Blame Natalia. I drew the line at learning 'Tears in Heaven' by Eric Clapton, ostensibly because my religion does not allow it (Church of Sonic Youth, English branch) but mostly because, erm, I'm not talented enough to play it.
5. You can buy The Clangers Opera here.

young knives LP review

The wait for the debut album by The Young Knives has been long, and worth every minute. After a several years old mini-LP, a collection of demos and a cracking run of singles, they finally unveiled their Voices of Animals and Men LP today, and not at all surprisingly it is a tremendous collection of pristinely recorded, ultra-energetic and mostly familiar punk-pop songs.

At first glance the Young Knives template looks either calculated or nostalgic; their appearance - what the Mighty Boosh's Howard Moon might call 'forest casual, for the leafy gent' - their sense of humour and their fondness for angular, arty riffs all summoning up references to literal and metaphorical forebears, whether XTC, Adam and the Ants or just the Futureheads. But it doesn't take long to figure that the perfect packaging of the record - the cover depicts the Whittlesey Straw Bear - is the last thing but paper over the cracks. Conceptually, stylistically, lyrically and musically the Young Knives are a complete, and pretty flawless, package.

It all starts with 'Part Timer' and staccato bursts of guitar and a pulsing bassline. It's immediately tighter and fiercer than anything I was expecting, the lyrics painting a picture of a bored Henry trying to write a song and failing in a bout of indecision. Yet the sense of frustration and ennui he feels in songwriting is a metaphor for much of the focus of the album. You get it when Henry, after a delightful, unexpected and teasing pause in the music, which is in itself a shockingly confident step a minute and a half into a debut album, sings - or rather spits - "Back down, it's the best you can hope for. Back down again". The album thrives off the fury of not achieving, yet Andy Gill, who produced the record, teases twelve stunning, fierce vocal takes out of Henry, who has a really beautiful, loaded voice.

'The Decision' is sung by House, however, and his performance - vocally and musically - is not to be underestimated on this splendid album either. His tracks are lovely and his now familiar couplet "I'm the Prince of Wales, I'm the Prince of Wales / And if all else fails, I am the Prince of Wales" probably remains the most instantly memorable thing about the Knives thus far. There are a good many of us fervently hoping that 'The Decision', with it's charming 'ba ba' refrain and sweet chorus ("the horses in the New Forest are running in their Sunday best") will be the band's first genuine HIT single when it's released at the end of September.

That hit should, of course, have been the next song, 'Weekends and Bleakdays' - key lyric: "what I feel, it's not important" - and you wonder if the band would not have been better rush-releasing it - with it's "hot summer, hot hot summer" chorus - when the country was still spread eagled on the grass in the midst of a now-distant heatwave. No matter. Quickly following the splendid harmonising of House's 'In The Pink' and the rather weaker 'Mystic Energy' is another lost would-be hit, the super, frenetic 'Here Comes The Rumour Mill', telling of "Tall tales, cliques and whispers" and secret kisses.

And it's now, with the end of side one in sight, when a debut album often begins to drop off, that it becomes apparent just what a tremendous record this is.

'Tailors' is the first hint of how special the Knives are. An absolutely irrestistable little folk song sung in a disconcerting falsetto and driven by the rhythmic snapping of a pair of scissors, Henry begins with the lines

"Tailors are the best
See them running with their brollies.
Workmen of the week".

It's strange, slight and throwaway, but hints at a real variety and vision beyond the punky pop of the singles; in fact, far from being a 'post-punk' band there is much subtlety on this record which recalls Robert Wyatt as much as it does Howard Deveto. The Knives build on this flexibility from hereon in.

Yet the second half actually opens with the silliest song here, 'Half Timer', which sees the band with work on their mind once again as they noodle around a half-formed idea in the studio. "A salary!" they cry. "You need a salary if you want to get through". "For money and emergencies", one suggests. "Bloodsuckers!" shouts House. What else? "New carpets", perhaps? "I had a job once", House reminisces, "It was awful". Quite.

On to 'Dialling Darling' then, once the near-hit 'She's Attracted To' has been negotiated, and once I've shouted myself hoarse with Henry's "You were screaming at your mum / I was punching your dad" sign off. And 'Dialling Darling' is really magnificent, three minutes of delicate, twin vocalled punk with thrilling "whoo-oo-ooo-ooo" backing vocals. The change of direction for the chorus is masterful, I'll tell you that much.

And then 'Another Hollow Line' and it's much changed from its early incarnation and initially disappointing 'til you learn to wear the new approach, where the delicacies of Henry's acoustic guitar are replaced with crisp, melodious riffs. The vocal is typically gorgeous, though, Henry musing on a shallow girl and the hopelessness of love;

"A lonely smile in the clouds
And the smell of foreign bodies
He waits for you to ask him out
Three hours sitting in the lobby".

The guitar break in the middle would melt my spine if such a thing were possible. And the lyrics evolve from bittersweet to hilarious - witness the following:

"One day you’re sitting very still
And repeating a faburden
The next you’re wearing Faberge - oh dear -
On your way to Covent garden"...

'Coastguard' - stop me if I'm getting repetitive - is tremendous too; fierce in every respect - violent and brittle, driving, furious at loss. "At the table", Henry screams, "is an empty place". It's even fiercer when he repeats it. And then House takes over, intoning:

"She couldn’t swim she couldn’t see
The current pushing out to sea,
Down estuaries and tributaries.
On benthic rocks.
She’s wrecked on Benthic rocks."

After twelve songs of this, The Young Knives (who, incidentally, didn't even bother using a whole host of songs - 'Current of the River', 'Kramer Vs Kramer', 'Kitchener', 'Elaine' - which would stand out like pearls on any of the albums of their contemporaries) unleash the best two songs in their catalogue. The first up, 'Loughborough Suicide', is perhaps the best encapsulation of the Young Knives ethic, a (lyrically) ferocious, pent up, beaten-down hymn of small town angst which brings to mind The Jam at their most caustic. The music itself - particularly the kinetic, angry riff which explodes half way through as a kind of counterpoint to Henry's desperate admission: "I'll never go down fighting" - is superb and yet dominated, despite the beauty of the tune, by the words. As Henry repeats his despairing refrain House rants:

"Well it is cold, cold, cold
And I think I’m going to die in here.
Considering Loughborough suicide
Which I’m definitely going to do this year.
And if you take a look outside
Then the answers to your questions seem quite clear...
That you may as well leave,
Because there’s nothing else to do around here."

Somewhat purged, the album closes with 'Tremblings of Trails', which finds Henry battling on but worn down. Musically, it's by far the most interesting thing here, a metronomic, loopy, languid slice of melancholy good enough to recall Wire at their most tuneful without the comparison embarrasing them. Having boarded a bus "to anywhere", Henry finds that there is no comfort in being absent either: "We come undone in foreign parts / Our home is heavy in our hearts".

And yet the fury is there too, as the searing but momentary lapses into violence attest. Having sounded resigned throughout, the moments where the frustration breaks through are thrilling. "We've got the same decrepit stars!", he screams. "My plan has failed! / Tremblings of trails! / Yearning comforts of the dales!"

It's ironic that the ceaselessly good-natured public persona of this band, and their endearingly daft videos, runs the risk of painting them unjustly as a novelty band. But bands only really suffer from that caricature if there's nothing but the laughs to back them up. Anyone who spends three quarters of an hour with Voices of Animals and Men will attest that riotous good fun and existential angst are handed out in roughly equal, and equally satisfying measures. Even more ironically, given the furiously excitable reaction in evidence above, the band have been playing most of these songs to half-empty venues for the last few years. Recent b-sides and live tracks seem to suggest that there is a folkier, more lyrical side to the band to come. And the hype is building. If they can produce another album of this quality in a couple of years then, frankly, the mind boggles.

currrently listening to:

1. The Young Knives - Voices of Animals and Men LP (thunderous and frequently hilarious debut)
2. Super Biton De Segou - Afro Jazz De Mali LP (cool collection of Malian Jazz)
3. K'naan - The Dusty Foot Philosopher LP (best rapper on the planet?)
4. Lambchop - Beers Before the Barbican (heartbreaking and gorgeous track from the new album, Damaged)
5. Wayne Jarrett - Showcase Vol. 1 LP (sweet, chaotic dub reggae)
6. Junior Boys - In The Morning (fabulous, crunchy new slice of tech-pop)
7. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Kamli Wala Mohammed (loping, funky pop from Pakistan)
8. The Needles - Summer Girls (ultra indie)
9. Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited - Chimurenga Explosion LP (vibrant zimbabwean protest music - recorded in Oregon, so go figure)
10. Good Shoes - All In My Head (fizzly, crackly pop and good fun)

sad news from the animal kingdom

Sad news from Compton Avenue today, as my friend Ali has had to report that Cyril, her favourite seagull, bought it yesterday. Cyril was a good seagull - just a nipper in many ways but wise beyond his years. In troubled times he sought wise counsel from Ali and she in turn learned a good deal from her flappy companion. She is the only person I know, for example - apart from Sam - who can spot and swoop on a discarded chip from forty paces. While myself and Ali have penned tributes to this marvellous bird (reproduced below) I ask that you give Ali time to grieve and respect her quiet dignity at this difficult time.

An earlier tribute to Cyril the seagull can be found at the bottom of the comments, here.

Myself and Ali in happier days, and a seagull, yesterday.

ode to cyril, by Ali

you were born, a fluffy ball of grey
you lived on the roof next door
you grew and grew with each passing day
you flapped your wings and sang your songs
mostly in the morning about 5am
i watched you proudly from my window

then one day the news came
you were gone
your fluffy feathers no more
your song never to be heard
your wings never to spread

rest in peace cyril.

rest assured we will find the motherf**ker who ran you down and tear him limb from limb

Cyril, Ascending by Jonathan

you were the world of blogging's most famous
and singular seagull. Little more than a gull-child,
your pencil grey feathers and hesitant take-off
seeming somehow to stand for life in a world
which is savage and wild.

Larus modestus, stood on your perch overlooking
the city, the burger king wrappers and the scent
of the chippy. And pigeons and gulls, oh
they swoop and they sneer when you try to take off
then feel queer, and fall back to the sill feeling dizzy and ill,
flight so far yet so near.

Then the day arrrives. Spurred on by that girl
who each day wills you on - and the smell of kebabs
wafting up from the station - you are launched.
And this time the air wafts you up and you laugh
and you smile and you fly... and you're free at last.

You could fly anywhere, somewhere far somewhere near,
you could take out an infant way down at the pier
and fly off with his ice cream to london, to paris,
and then suddenly near - a toyota yaris!

you have swooped down too low
and the angles are shady,
you think for a moment of your perch,
your sill,
of that beautiful lady,
who watched you and waited, who would be
so proud - and now has to know
that some cunt mowed you down.

Rest in peace Cyril.

another night in the tin drum

Had a nice evening last night helping Dave to forget that it was his birthday (not that he needn't much help, having already misinformed people of the date a few days earlier) and lounging around at the Tin Drum in Seven Dials, which has started being a bit of a home from home lately, which is surely yet more evidence that as we age we begin to gravitate towards more sophisticated and adult destinations on a night out. On the other hand, it could be just because it's kind of in the middle of where we all live.

And the night was mightily enlivened by the presence of the coolest birthday card in history, which depicted Dave in a variety of romantic situations with friends, a kind of candid scrapbook of alarming photographs, including one which showed him blowing a kiss at Dustin, and one where he and I could be glimpsed staringly lovingly into each other's eyes. Hmm. It was made by Natalia, obviously, and was as such adorned with stickers of birds and - because, I can only assume, she had run out of birds - a solitary bee.

A typical birthday present from Nat may be a beauty product sampler she found in a magazine, but she makes excellent birthday cards.

Some more half-remembered moments:

1. Being unable to get served Leffe in a stylish Leffe glass. Everyone else gets the satisfying bowl shaped receptacle. I get a sturdy half-pint glass, as if they are saying "don't give the easily broken glass to the idiot with the side parting".

2. Victoria blinding everyone with the triple-flash on my digital camera. I complained that I could see two big rectangles in front of my eyes. "They're your glasses", says Michi.

3. The third reason we go to the Tin Drum, on the other hand, might be because of the bar staff. Yes, the service is a bit on the slow side, but I get the distinct feeling that if talk continues to centre on arguments as to the conflicting merits of the blonde barmaid and the brunette, I fear that me, Dan and Dave will be going to the pub on our own while Nat and Vic engineer a more cultured night out of their own instead.

4. Noticing the drinks piling up in front of a cheerful Dave. Exchanging rounds of 'cheers' and clinking glasses takes a lot longer when the bugger is accumulating glasses of Jack Daniels and pints of Staropramen like they were going out of fashion. And best of all, I think I managed not to buy him one, which was a heroic bit of tight-fistedness (but not deliberate).

5. The toilets are situated upstairs at the Tin Drum. On the way back down to the bar, there is a door frame, half way down the stairs, which is just begging to be grabbed and used as a climbing frame. Last night I grabbed it and hanged there for a moment, enjoying the feeling, before the aforementioned pretty barmaid appeared at the bottom of the stairs and was confronted by the sight of me suspended, flapping my little legs, like a badly trained monkey. Hmm. Not sure that did my rep much good.

Ah well.

several voices and several names

I read with real interest today's article in the Guardian by a young man by the name of Kamran Siddique, who is a close friend of one of the suspects arrested under the Terrorism Act last week, Waheed Zaman. Zaman is 22, and, according to Siddique, not a likely terrorist.

"Waheed Zaman is a 22-year-old student who is well-known around the community of Walthamstow, where everyone knows everyone's business. He is 6ft 2in, broad-built and he's invariably got a cheeky smile.

Waheed lives round the corner from me, and we've known each other since childhood. As kids, we went to the same school, played football by the gates next to my house. We played knock-down ginger on the very streets that are now flooded with press. As teenagers, we'd spent hours on the sofa playing computer games, drinking cups of tea and emptying packets of cookies."

Siddique finishes his article by saying,

"Do I think there is any possibility in the world Waheed would be involved? Could he have kept a secret? Could there have been a side to him that someone who spent most of the day, every day, with him, could not see? My answer is no. I bet my life on it."

No idea whether the portrait Siddique paints of his friend is accurate or not, but it sounds it, for what it's worth. Drawing no conclusions from that, however. I was, though, interested enough by the article to idly enter first Zaman and then Siddique's names into Google to see if he had been interviewed elsewhere.

The first thing I found was interesting; an article on the BBC News site where a 24 year old student was interviewed about Zaman's arrest. Although the article states that the student was 'too scared to give his real name', and opted for the soubriquet 'Hanif', it is clearly Siddique. He relates the same story about being invited out for a burger hours before the raids. The article continues:

"I think they have got it wrong and Waheed has been picked up because he is involved in the student society at university," said Hanif.

"When he gets released, he is going to have a field day, an absolute field day - he's not like a lot of us - he is eloquent and intelligent and will speak out."

Why couldn't his friend be involved in a plot?

"Because if Waheed was involved I would know. Best friends tell each other things that you would never tell your mum and dad. If he had been radicalised, if he had got involved in some kind of extremism, he would have tried to take me with him surely?"

The Guardian article said nothing about Kamran Siddique being an assumed name so I imagine that, since the shock of the original arrest, he has been persuaded that there is nothing to be afraid of in giving his name. Unless The Guardian did use an assumed name, in which case it's interesting that "Kamran Siddique" was used, simply because when I next googled his name, the first result related to another Kamran Siddique, also interviewed recently by BBC News, expressing a strong interest in political and social matters. In April '05, in an article on Asian youth dissatisfaction on the streets of Bradford, the article begins:

"Twenty-one-year-old Kamran Siddique is a polite and mild-mannered young man, about to take his final exams to become a youth and community worker.

He says he was pretty liberal back in 2001, before the Bradford riots erupted.

But what he saw in the aftermath of the violence changed him. Three of his cousins and another three friends were each sentenced to several years in prison for throwing rocks during the riots.

Now he is more cynical."

Now, Siddique does no more than express (perhaps legitimate) concern about heavy handed police bias and what he calls "injustice in the justice system", but it's interesting to read that his community leader, who shares his surname, Haqueq Siddique, goes further and makes some familiar and depressing comments:

"Terrorists don't really want to hurt people," he explained.

"They want to get a message across."

Well, I'm not gonna dig into the subject, as it looks like the two Kamran Siddiques are different people - one based in London and one in Bradford, one 24 and one (now) 22. But it caught my eye and interested me, not least because it cautions against the idea of assuming that Muslims speak with one voice. The Guardian article, by the way, ends with Siddique stating that:

"Muslims condemn attacks on civilians wherever they are and work hard with the authorities to fight terrorism. But in return they see that their mosques and scholars are still criticised. The thought crosses the mind that the Qur'an itself may one day be called a terrorist book. But evil has no religion."

dylan and damon

Ha ha, apparently boring old Bob Dylan (that's just to annoy any Bob Dylan fans reading, and not heartfelt) has been playing Blur on his radio show. Cue a bunch of 'Dylan digs britpop' articles, inevitably. Here's one the Guardian knocked out. Fans of my incessent pedantry can even keep an eye out for my first ever comment on the Guardian blog. Yup, I hold my fire 'til a really big subject comes up.

Introducing the song [Coffee and TV], Dylan drawled: "Y'know, one time coffee was believed to be the drink of the devil. When Pope Vincent III heard about this, he decided to taste the drink before banning it. In fact, he enjoyed coffee so much, he wound up baptising it, stating 'coffee is so delicious, it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it'." As Blur's song began in the background, Dylan revealed: "I also feel that way about coffee. And about TV. And ... about Blur."

chelsea on the rocks

Ever since Vladimir Putin turned on his old friend Boris Berezovsky and forced him into exile after a criminal investigation into fraud charges, Berezovsky's protogee, Roman Abramovich, has done everything possible to stay in Putin's good books. He's managed so far, but I wonder if the tide is turning? I only speculate because I just received the following spam message:

Taboada 17
50002 Zaragoza
Zaragoza ESPANA
www.asesoris.com
phone+34-658-586-517
fax.+34-635-175-157
E-mail. johnterry20@excite.com


Dear:
I humbly apply on behalf of my client. As a matter of fact he is
actually looking for a reliable
and trust worthy company to invest and legalize his fund.
Thanks for your cooperation.
Best regards,
John Terry

Are Chelsea's players doing their pre-season training in North-Eastern Spain this summer, by any chance??

the rich are the rich the world over

A good anecdote from the book which I am currently reading, Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim by Zia Sardar...

Zia is in Dubai in the mid 70s, witnessing the sudden, incredible re-birth of this strange metropolis. He is researching a book on Science and Technology in the Muslim World and is turned away from a government minister's house because he looks like a labourer, one of the city's countless poor.

He writes

The following day, I dressed more formally and left my hotel early in the morning. This time the gatekeeper allowed me in without hesitation. The minister received me in the garden by the swimming pool. It soon transpired he was not very interested in science and technology. His standard reply to every question I asked: ' Why bother about it when we can afford to buy it?'. He kept gazing around, turning his eyes here and there, everywhere except in my direction. I tired of my questions and turned my attention to the pool, which was unusually large. "Is it because you have a very large family?", I enquired.

"No, just an average family", replied the minister. "But I do like to swim a good length".

I nodded to show I understood.

"Do you know that I have three swimming pools?", the minister volunteered. "This one has cold water - it is kept just at the right temperature. Over there - you can see it if you stand up - is the pool I use in winter. It is heated to just the appropriate temperature".

I stood up to admire the second pool. I couldn't help making the point: "But in Dubai the temperature stays more or less the same all the year round".

"Well, it can get chilly in the morning", replied the minister. "You can see the third pool from here". He grabbed my hand and escorted me to a spot from where the third pool was clearly visible.

"But it's empty. It has no water", I observed.

"Sometimes," the minister, upset at my interventions, retorted sternly, "sometimes I just do not want to swim".

Marvellous! The book is a cracking read, incidentally, one of those books you can't help but read everywhere - walking down the street, climbing the stairs, in the bath. Great stuff.

the rehabilitation of Jack the lad

Can Jackie Ashley possibly be right in the reasoning she posits for Jack Straw getting shunted out of the FCO in favour of Margaret Beckett? It sounds rather unlikely, but you never know, and as much as I can't forgive Straw for his involvement in the disasterous Iraq war, it's very difficult to disagree with the thrust of Ashley's argument - that he was quietly developing an independent, rational and constructive foreign policy drive. Beckett has been an ineffectual bystander so far, in comparison.

Ashley writes:

"The depth of the stupidity shown by the White House and by No 10 is caricatured in the story that Jack Straw was fired as foreign secretary after Condoleezza Rice visited Blackburn and reported back to Bush on the strength of Muslim feeling in Straw's constituency. Put to one side the grotesque affront to British status implied by an American president being able to sack cabinet members by proxy (which Downing Street will doubtless deny) and ask this question: what kind of mind thinks the presence of angry Muslims in his constituency would hamper Straw's diplomacy, rather than sharpen it?

The kind of mind, presumably, that thinks Muslims are generally bad and rejects the battle of ideas in favour of battle. Straw was reaching out to Tehran. He said that nuking them was "nuts". He was, modestly, adopting a rhetoric which was not simply Washington's "Israel good, Palestinians bad" tone. Despite his involvement in the Iraq decision, he was trying to find a middle way. He knew he had to, because like most of us he lives among ordinary, non-extreme Muslims - drawn in some ways to western society, and currently infuriated and despairing. One day even the Americans will have to follow him, or we are all off to hell in a handcart."