Posted 8:33 AM by Paul
Culture Wars

Last night saw the Eurovision Song Contest, an excercise in pan-European Unity nearly as old as the European Community itself. Americans should note that this is an annual televised 3 hour TV marathon where European countries [stangely including Israel] compete with each other to decide who has the written the best new song. It is a celebration of kitch and it has become fashionable in a kind of post modernist jape kind of way, particularly amongst the gay community.

It used to be restricted to Western Europe, but with the fall of the Berlin Wall all the Eastern European bloc lined up to join the party. Last year Latvia won, so this years final was held in Riga. It is good business for the host nation. Some people even date the Irish tourist boom and the re-positioning of the Irish brand [ from rural backward to hip modern and creative ] to when they won the competiton three times in sucession. The contest gave us Abba and Riverdance [ Michael Flatley danced in the interval ] but it hasn't had a major impact aside from one night of TV watched by around 150 million people.

Well maybe that is changing. Strange thinks happended last night.

The Latvian crowd in the arena booed the Russian entry from TATU - a teen age girl duo that simulate lesbian sex acts in their stage show - and howled with derision every time votes were allocated to them. If TATU had won there would have been a riot. To make matters worse for the home crowd TATU took the most phone votes in Latvia. Around 50% of the Latvian population are Russians dating from when millions were moved their by Stalin either to keep the locals under control or banished to work as slave labourers. Lets just say there is tension between the two ethnic groups now that the Latvians are in the driving seat.

When Moscow came on the TV to announce how their votes had been allocated [ votes are by phone and callers cannot vote for their own country ] the host made a point of praising the excellent show from their "Baltic neighbours". Times have changed. In 1968 the Red Army finally decided to clamp down on dissent in Czechoslovakia when crowds gathered in Prague to wildy celebrate their ice hockey victory over the Soviet Union. The Kremlin would have never tolerated the afront to Russian pride dished out to TATU by the Latvian boo boys. They would have sent in the tanks.

The Poles entered a peon to European Unity called "No Borders" with lyrics in Russian, German and Polish. Perhaps this was an attempt to prevent them both from invading every 50 years.

The Belgiums, who came second, entered a song in a entirely invented language. Some people would say that is very apposite as Belgium is an invented country.

About half the entries sang in English

A Moslem country, Turkey, won.

The world is turned upside down.

The United Kingdon came last with 0 votes. That's right. Zilch. Terry Wogan, the UK chat show host who did the voice over for the broadcast by the BBC went on record to say that this was due to "political voting" and was "a backlash for Iraq". Nothing of course to do with the fact that our entry was crap. The UK entered a faux disco anthem by a duo from Liverpool called Gemini. The bass line was a rip off of "Edwin Starr's" 70s classic "Eye to Eye Contact" or maybe "Disco Inferno" by The Tramps. Gemini sang painfully flat throughout, and there was no discernable song structure. Gemini we are told, studied at the Paul McCartney funded Starlight Stage School, and the song was written by the school's director of music. This confirms by suspicions that colleges teaching popular music are packed with lecturers who have never had a hit record. But Wogan thought this was all down to a conspiracy of millions of Europeans to punish us for our invasion of Iraq.

This is a particularly British trait. When we get knocked out of a tournament or suffer some kind of minor huimilation we blame it all on dirty dealings by "Johnny Foreigner". It is not our fault. Most bizzarre of all - Wogan is Irish. We even manage to infect immigrants with this ridiculous paranoia.

Posted 9:41 AM by Paul
Gorgeous George and the Nicaraguans

George Galloway, a fire brand left wing MP has just been suspended from the Labour Party pending allegations (possible true, probably untrue) that he was taking back handers from Saddam Hussein. George also made some ill advised comments on Arabic TV comparing Bush and Blair with wolves and calling on British troops to disobey orders.

Now these comments may be true and are a consistent position for a revolutionary leader (which George imagines he is) but not from a Member of Parliament, particularly the call for British troops to mutiny. After all, this is treason and I until recently was a capital offence.

The thing about Georgeous George ( he picked up his nickname because he managed to wear a suit that fitted him and a nice tie, something which eluded most Labour MPs for the 1980s) is that he is mad as a baloon but events have proved him right. The Bush administration had no intention of bringing back the UN weapons inspectors and are in fact in the process of taking control of all of Iraq's oil. So - the barmy conspiracy theorists were right all along. Bush bombed a country and then nicked its oil to pay for the damage which was caused by US missiles manufactured by his pals and which will be re-instated by US firms with connections to his adminstration. Or as a dodgy market trader in the East End would say OI BUSH MY SON ! RESULT!!

I met Galloway once at the Labour Party International reception ( old comrades were puzzled as how I had got hold of an International Delegate VIP Pass). Geoge was...how shall I say very cheery and his faced was flushed. It was about 6.00 p.m. I introduced him to two guys (one senior) from the Frente Sandinista. The Sandinistas had split a year earlier into two factions with the majority like my guests staying with Daniel Ortega in the Frente Sandinista. Other mainly intellectual types had gone with Sergio Ramirez in the MRS. I met Ramirez on an earlier trip to Managua when I was acting as a translator. When asked what was the main issue of the elections he replied, "Me.". . Humility was not his strong suit. This is in a country with grinding poverty, endemic cholera and the routine assasination of left wing candidates by Contras who had not given up their arms. Sergio was a berk.

But a few months later in Brighton George Galloway was in full flow, glass in hand and there followed a conversation lasting some minutes in which Galloway kept repeating:

"Aye but which Sandinistas are you? Are you with Daniel or Sergio? "

My senior guest kept repeating politely that they were with Daniel and still members of the Frente Sandinista. Galloway persevered with his line of questioning for several minutes before moving off in the direction of the free bar.

" Que pasaba con aquel senor?" asked Victor Hugo Tinoco, the senior guy of the group who had been a guerilla leader at 19 and Nicaraguan ambassador to the UN when he was 28.

" Es un borracho", I replied

Having said all of that none of this means that Galloway is wrong about Eye-rack even if he is shown to be a thief as well as bon viveur.

Posted 1:00 AM by Paul
In the City

May Bank Holiday. We were going to troop down to Brighton with the kids and thier cousin Rosalyn to Brighton for the day. It is an easy journey of about an hour and half from the station which is a few hundred yards from our front door. However, the weather has taken a turn for the worse, so we are staying in London. So, it will be breakfast at McDonalds, a trip to a leisure centre with water slides rounding off with a film. A packed day.

The benefits of the country life - particuarly with kids - remain a mystery to me.

Posted 5:25 PM by Paul
Trust

We had my sister in law around for dinner. A good evening. She is a lecturer in Actuarial Mathematics in Canada. Her main claim to fame is that she predicted in her PhD dissertation that most life insurance companies were teetering on the brink of insolvency and that with profits investment polices which were over-reliant on the stock market were a bit risky. She was written off as a left wing scaremonger but got her doctorate all the same. Now she must have great difficulty in refraining from crowing I TOLD YOU SO YOU DUMB ASSES!. But she manages it because she is an academic, a scientist and believes in the truth. Not sure if I would be so phlegmatic.

Good food, convivial company, fine wine and cold dry sherry ( this year's re-discovery) and The White Stripes played at volume are the perfect recipe for a great evening - unless of course you don't like The White Stripes. The Stripes are now added to my list of Great American Contributions to World Culture. Detroit and environs have given us some class acts - The Stripes, Tamla Motown, Was Not Was, Alice Cooper, Madonna, Eminem, Kiss, Iggy Pop MC5 and more. OK - Kid Rock is from the Motor City but we will leave him to Pamela Anderson. It's like the USA version of Liverpool.

I visited the Detroit in 1984. It was closed. I was managing a Sheffield R&B / Soul outfit called Floy Joy and by a succession of events which came about due to a mixture of their talent for music and my talent for bullshit, we ended up recording their first album on the night shift at the Detroit Sound Suite with Don Was at the controls. I just missed seeing Aretha Franklin recording a jingle for a new Ford commercial. But Detroit was not swinging. The city centre was shut down - car plants had closed and economic activity had shifted to the suburbs based around 4 new malls - Northland, Southland, Eastland and Westland. It was like a wierd movie. I am a great fan of consumer capitalism when it works but when it goes wrong and there is nothing to take it's place? Well it's a mess.

The finest night was when the band had a break from recording and we had drinks at the Dynasty Cocktail Lounge. Don's assistant Garzelle described it as a place where "Black working class people go to kick ass". In fact it was the set of Shaft. Waitress service, small tables with low lights. a kicking house band (which included members of Aretha's backing group and old members of The Pips) and a clientele which had dressed to impress. White suits, fedoras, sparkling jewels, beaded afros, immaculate make up. The house band thanked Floy Joy in an annoucement from the stage for coming to Detroit to record an album and also for giving work to local black session musicans. The whole club rose to its feet to applaud the boys from Britain who had come to the Motor City. The Sheffield lads were embarrassed but pleased. The entrance to the club had been through a double steel door and we had all been frisked for fire arms but it would be hard to find a more congenial place to have a drink. People's manners were impeccable.

Around 3. a.m we left the club and emerged from the set of Shaft and entered the set of Mad Max 2. Burnt out homes and burnt out lives. We had burgers and fries at White Castle and returned back to our apartment opposite one of the malls. I think it was Southlands - but I was later told that the 4 malls were virtually indistiguishable.

Detroit was my first experience of what happens when it all goes wrong without a safety net. 12 years later I visited post-Sandinista Nicaragua and saw something much worse. But for a short time in Detroit we lived in the USA and trusted the people we met. Don Was was a treasure. Detroit was packed with great Americans and a few people who would not have been out of place in the Sopranos. There was a lot of trust. It worked. The album was released. It bombed. But everybody got paid. Unusual in the record business.

Blair has been back in the newspapers on the eve of his 50th birthday telling the world that he admires Bush - "an intelligent man whom I trust". He would have got a better reaction in the UK if he had anounced he was hanging out with Marilyn Manson. I think that what Blair really feels is that he now has to trust Bush. He really has no choice. A little bit like the brow beaten wife who waits at home for the philandering husband who is out yet again with the boys until 6.00 a.m. But she has invested so much of her life in the idiot that there is no way back. Besides, he controls the money and has the bigger fists. In the same interview Blair was rattling on about how we "all shared the same values" as the Bush aministration and that is why we must support them in a new "strategic alliance" - management speak for kissing their butt.

A few days ago George's kid brother Jeb addressed a National Rifle Association convention thanking them for helping elect George W. Jeb said. " The sound of our guns is the sound of freedom" . These are not my values. But paradoxically, my values are the same as the people we met in 1984 at the Dynasty Cocktail Lounge. But many of them won't get to vote because they are black and got busted for some minor misdemeanour way back when and did not have a rich daddy to get them off the hook.

But we still love America or bits of it anyway but as Was not Was said in "Out Come the Freaks".

" Who can now say that the Ship of State is not out of control...out of control..out of control......."