(1) This blog's core demographic - the rapidly-ageing ex-punk rocker market - will doubtless recall the Sham 69 anthem Borstal Breakout, released in early 1978. Youngsters, and anyone who needs to refresh their memory, can check out the YouTube clip above.
I was actually in the audience at the gig where this footage was filmed, although I cannot spot myself in any of the shots. And here's a fascinating Dave fact; I was at one time in a band with sticks merchant Ian Whitewood, who has featured in recent incarnations of Sham. Nice bloke, good drummer.
According to the Guiness Book of British Hit Singles, Borstal Breakout didn't make the charts. Can this really be true? It certainly got enough airplay from Peelie. The thing is, the song has been going through my head of late, which has led to me rewriting the lyrics in the light of more recent developments:
I'm in Canary Wharf, just watchin' markets crash
I lost my shirt on deals that were rash
I need some money, hand over public cash
There's gonna be a banking bailout
There's gonna be a banking bailout
There's gonna be a banking bailout
There's gonna be a banking bailout
I'm billions down on credit default swaps
Footsie and Dow just drop and drop and drop
Darling and Brown are gonna make it stop
There's gonna be a banking bailout
There's gonna be a banking bailout
There's gonna be a banking bailout
There's gonna be a banking bailout
I invested according to hunch
Subprime markets caused a credit crunch
You will always find us out to lunch
There's gonna be a banking bailout
There's gonna be a banking bailout
There's gonna be a banking bailout
There's gonna be a banking bailout
(2) Apologies to anyone who emailed me in recent days and has yet to receive a reply. But like 200,000 Virgin Media customers, I was incommunicado for most of last week, thanks to a server crash at my internet service provider. This is the second major email outage at Virgin in recent months, by the way.
As an old punk, I know I should never trust a hippy, and still less a hippy capitalist. When the BBC rumbled that something was amiss, Virgin Media told lies in response. The claim in this report that all services were restored by Friday simply isn't true.
I'm minded to take my subscription elsewhere. Trouble is, I was previously with AOL, and they were piss poor as well. So can any readers actually positively recommend their ISP? I dobn't mind paying a couple of extra quid a month, I just want the level of service which should come as standard in 2008.
(3) For some time now, I have been contributing to the group blog Liberal Conspiracy, which is now one of the most widely-read political websites in Britain. It's aim is to provide an online home for a wide range of UK liberal and socialist opinion, and it's fair to say I'm on the far left in terms of its regular writers. But dialogue between different shades of centre-left and left politics cannot be a bad things. Check it out, if you do not do so already.
Posted at 10:45, 12 October 2008
Comments (11)
I've been with ukfsn.org for a few years now and can fully recommend them - I think I've had a few hours of outage (a few weeks ago) in all that time. All their profits go into free software and the bloke who runs it is always helpful with support.
I have had problems when i've been on the Liberal Conspiracy blog, it is always slow to link to articles and it froze my PC up more than once.
I used to think it was the bigger fool theory and that the taxpayer turned out to be the biggest fool. Or maybe that someone took our seat in musical chairs. Now I think that the whole world is a telethon for billionaires.
I don't know about ISPs as I don't arrange it but I've never used the 'house' email address i.e. Southpawpunch@myisp.co.uk I've always used gmail, yahoo etc
I've taken that it will be hard to take everything with you when you change ISP (which has happened many times with me) and I also like to spread my info around more than one company.
Has capitalism been saved then?
Here's another bailout song video that made me laugh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZUXXSxZPhw
I would check out 'Liberal Conspiracy' more often but I've had the same problems as john with it, articles load slowly and slow down other things running on my computer.
Does the current "Krisis of Kapitalism" mean that my mint copy the Euston Manifesto is no longer (neo) liberal tender in the Starbucks and winebars of N.London?
What will my "aspirational" childen do for their "aspirational" pensions? Become BBC or Guardian bloggers in exile? Salford...surly NOT?
Please have a BIG collection for Richard ("Demo-ented" Reeves, Niko "Bananas" Cohen and Davy Aronoglitz now!
Its..."Neo-lib Aid 2008"
Give a man a fish etc.
I think the technical problem with Liberal Conspiracy is that Sunny Hundal's ego is so big that it distorts the space time continuum.
What Andy said. The only author worth reading on there is Dave and all his posts are available here anyways.
Boycott liberal conspiracy - no dialogue with self-facilitating media nodes!
Dave,
1. try O2 or BE, SPP's right, best not have an ISP connected email address that is too precious, as it becomes a pain when you change ISPs, have a few email addresses and filter according to topic/activity, that's an easier and more practical method.
2. as for Liberal Conspiracy, I tried to read it, not much bite, seemed a bit like watered down CiF.
I prefer reading the SU blog, more bite and variety, but I do, do wish they'd fix the design it let's them down.