I'm 100% Remain, and personally couldn't give a toss if Jeremy Corbyn wants to leave or remain. It's such a dumb and childish narrative. What matters is that he'll give us a chance to choose. And if Leave wins, we will have the safety net of a better Leave deal than Johnson's.
The mathematics of Covid-19 blows my mind whenever I see the daily toll. 980. That's five Herald Of Free Enterprises. Seven Aberfans. Ten Hillsboroughs. Events which stunned the nation. Nothing was the same again. And that's just normalised now, every day, times five, seven, ten.
Someone I follow just shared this photo of a sign he saw attached to a front door in a block in Norwich.
Brexit has encouraged and emboldened these people. It will get worse.
Do whatever you can to support immigrants who face this shit. We all need to stand strong against it.
Here's what's just struck me about Oasis: THEY HAVE NO FAST SONGS. They just lumber about, fat-arsed and graceless, at 20mph because it's a residential area. Music for people who can't-dance-won't-dance. They ARE rock but they DON'T rock. And what's the fucking point in that?
Sainsburys sell six types of burger bun, and five of them are brioche. Every time I mention the vile brioche burger craze on here, everyone's all like "Mmm, brioche".
I don't understand the world any more. But I do think it somehow correlates with successive Tory election wins.
Tried to download the
@NHSCovid19app
on my phone, an iPhone 6. Won't work. "This application requires iOS 13.5 or later." So, only people with phones less than three years old can use it. This is what the Tories call a "world-beating" system. Well done,
@MattHancock
, you genius.
In 2020, Dolly Parton's stood up for Black Lives Matter and put $1 million towards a Covid vaccine, and the year's not over yet.
There's a strong argument that America should give up the whole 'democracy' thing as a bad idea now, and just make Dolly Parton queen of everything.
Sajid Javid says Brexit will enable business to cut "the red tape that stifles innovation". Every time Tory Brexiteers say this, the mask slips. Because that 'red tape' comprises workers' rights and Health & Safety standards. Which is exactly why No Deal gives them a boner.
#PMQs
Nobody comes out of the Canning Town incident well. Extinction Rebellion for targeting public transport when they should support it. The platform mob for kicking the shit out of the protester. The armchair hard men on Twitter cheering the violence. What an ugly start to the day.
Also worth noting that British deaths are at nearly 9,000 and worldwide it's nearly 100,000. Roughly one in ten of every recorded Coronavirus death on the planet is a British one. We are not doing well at this.
And still right-wing rags and gobshites agitate for ending lockdown.
For the first time in my life, I favour Welsh independence. I'm off the fence. I am NOT a nationalist. Nationalism is the most disgusting impulse in the human soul. But an open, welcoming, internationalist Wales uncoupled from the ugliness of Brexit England? I could support that.
I once saw Elvis Costello play "Oliver's Army" mid-set at the Royal Albert Hall, at the request of someone with terminal cancer. He'd normally save it for the encore, but he just said "Yes of course" and played it, no grumbles. Here's hoping the universe shows him the same grace.
It is not a 'gaffe'. A gaffe is Ronald Reagan saying "Princess David". What Rees-Mogg said was an insult to the dead, and to the survivors. It reveals volumes about the Social Darwinist, every-man-for-himself mentality of the Conservatives. He didn't misspeak. He spoke. We heard.
Little Richard was the firecracker who set it all off. Right there at rock'n'roll's Big Bang, this ungovernable force transcending race, gender and sexuality. Literally a screaming queen. I met him once and it was like touching the hand of God. We owe him everything. RIP (it up).
Who's up for hiring a boat, and chasing the boats carrying the BBC and Sky reporters who are harassing refugees, and shouting with a loud hailer "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING? WHEN YOU TRAINED TO BE A JOURNALIST, IS THIS THE SORT OF WORK YOU ASPIRED TO? ARE YOU PROUD?"
I once hit the guy from Toploader with a champagne cork at the Q Awards, from right across the room. Hell of a shot, but I felt slightly guilty afterwards. (What had he ever done to me, except be in a crap band?) I don't feel guilty any more.
Getting booted off Twitter is not 'censorship'. It's a private business. It doesn't owe you a platform. Best comparison is a pub: anyone's welcome to come in, but if you start acting like a dick and upsetting the other customers, don't be surprised if the landlord kicks you out.
As a Liverpool fan, I couldn't care less if
@GaryLineker
celebrated Messi's free kick. He played for Barcelona (and Everton), and it's not as if he was broadcasting at the time. It's not as if he turned to the camera and said "IN YOUR FACE, SCOUSERS!" during post-match analysis,
'Iconic' is an overused word, but Mick Rock's photos are that. Without his genius, our cultural memory of Glam would be 50% less vivid. Lovely man, too: I met him on a train with Manics. He shot me but I never saw the pic. Impossible to pick a fave of his, so here are four. RIP.
"I don't read books" - Noel Gallagher to Melody Maker, 1996
"People who write books are fucking idiots" - Noel Gallagher to Pitchfork, 2018
"NOEL GALLAGHER TO RELEASE FIRST OFFICIAL BOOK" - publicist's email, today.
Prince Andrew: "I'm so sorry. We'd been doing so well lately, PR-wise, but by being mates with a sex offender I've brought our family into the worst disrepute since Diana died. Nobody's made us look this bad for years."
Queen Elizabeth II: "Hold my beer."
#abolishthemonarchy
The worst people on Twitter this weekend = blokes who had never heard of Edward Colston 48 hours ago but now think it's vitally important that Bristol should have a statue of him.
Clive Tyldesley: "It's Orange Juice time. Rip it up and start again."
Was not expecting that reference during a Euro 2024 match. Has he shown post-punk/indie-pop tendencies before?
I mean, don't get me wrong, they've paid their money so god bless them for keeping the indie rock economy going, I guess... but PEOPLE WHO TURN UP TO GIGS THEN TALK REALLY LOUDLY TO EACH OTHER THROUGHOUT THE SHOW are the worst. The worst.
Buzzcocks = one of THE greatest bands. Largely due to Pete Shelley's genius for saying just enough in his lyrics - not a word more - to let us know what he meant, sexually. (And that, in the often-macho world of Punk, took balls.) His music had that same exquisite terseness. RIP
Anyone from South Wales, of a certain vintage, will have been thinking of Corona lemonade a lot, lately. The milkman used to deliver these. You could get 5p back on the bottle.
The Swifties are kicking off but Tennant is right. I've *heard* plenty of Taylor Swift music. I've seen her live, listened to her albums. But I only *know* "Shake It Off". That isn't really a comment on Swift, but on pop as a whole, and how it doesn't cut through like it used to.
Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant says Taylor Swift’s music is “disappointing”
“What is Taylor Swift’s ‘Billie Jean’? ‘Shake It Off’? I listened to that the other day and it is not ‘Billie Jean’, is it?”
Janice Long was a great broadcaster by making it feel as if she WASN’T broadcasting: instead she was one of us, confiding the secret of some amazing record she’d heard that she knew we’d get. I worked with her a few times, and she was so funny and kind. This is a huge loss. RIP.
Just finished The Sopranos (again), and remain unshaken from my view that it's the greatest work of art created by humans in the 21st centu
#dontstopbelieving
#madeinamerica
Don't call Jacob Rees-Mogg "the Honourable Member for the 18th Century". That's what he WANTS. (Like calling Johnson 'a buffoon', or even 'Boris'.) He's a modern creature: casino capitalism, offshore havens, zero hours, Far Right links, hatred of welfare, calculated meme-ability.
Adele can charge £500 for gig tickets if she wants. That's the free market for you. What she CAN'T do is charge £500 for tickets and keep trying to maintain her unpretentious, down-to-earth, woman-of-the-people, "I'm only an 'umble Sarf Landan gel" shtick. It's one or the other.
Boris has fought more battles over the last 18 months than any other Prime Minister l can remember as well as nearly losing his life to COVID-19 l think he deserves a break with his wife and newborn I can’t believe some critics think he should be back at his desk!
@BorisJohnson
People can say "It's only a building" but it isn't, is it? The tragedy of Notre Dame isn't merely an architectural one. Even as a staunch atheist, I used to love going in there when I lived in Paris. Just to immerse myself in feelings of stillness, silence, contemplation and awe.
As a child, every time we visited family in Swansea, the industrial fumes made me carsick when we passed through Port Talbot. One time, on a school trip, I vomited out of the minibus window. If this is a Banksy, he must have made the same journey himself once or twice.
Finally, and improbably late in life, I have become an actual dad.
If my musical taste takes a sudden swerve for the worse, please stage an intervention.
(It's already too late for my jokes, and probably my dancing.)
Testing the waters:
If I published a fully-updated edition of my 1999
@Manics
biography Everything [A Book About Manic Street Preachers], including everything they've done in the 21st century, new essays and interviews etc (plus the whole of the original book), would you buy it?
Go fuck yourself Liddle, you tedious, shabby, racist, opinions-for-quids, sub-AA Gill, sub-Littlejohn, sub-Hopkins, sub-everything, pea-clavicled waste of DNA. Let's build the Rod Liddle Levee around Sidcup so you can drown in your own diarrhoea. And fuck you
@thesundaytimes
too.
So, Johnson's "oven-ready" deal was bullshit, and
#NoDeal
is back on the table. What a surprise.
I know we on the Left are supposed to be having a "period of reflection", but fuck that. Everyone who voted Conservative expecting anything else is a mug.
#turkeysvotingforchristmas
Nobody is the 'king' or 'queen' of you or me. No human is superior to another by an accident of birth. I swear allegiance to no one. We are citizens, not subjects.
For those reasons, You Can Shove Your Coronation Up Your Arse.
#notmyking
#citizensnotsubjects
#abolishthemonarchy
One thing we know for sure about the 'Princess of Wales' is that she is not the Princess of Wales.
Nor is her husband the Prince of Wales.
Neither of them is 'of Wales' in any meaningful sense whatsoever and nobody asked the Welsh if we wanted them.
#notmyprince
#notmyprincess
The story isn't what Peston & Kuenssberg are telling us. The story is that Peston & Kuenssberg are telling us.
Someone needs to whip away the curtain and show us how this grubby puppeteering and uncritical leak-regurgitating actually works.
There's a Panorama in that, surely.
Daniel James. Disparaged by Man U fans. Loved by Wales fans.
Gareth Bale. Hated by Real Madrid fans. Loved by Wales fans.
Neco Williams. Savaged by Liverpool fans. Loved by Wales fans.
Aaron Ramsey. Unappreciated by Arsenal fans. Loved by Wales fans.
No wonder they give us 100%.
Devastated to hear that my dear friend Neil Kulkarni has died. A genius writer, one of the finest music critics ever to do it. Proud to have been his colleague at Melody Maker, Chart Music and beyond. So many laughs and outrageous times together. Sending my love to his family. x
People will talk about the Christmas song, the teeth, the drinking. But The Pogues were about ROMANTICISM. Finding precious warmth in a cold, cruel city. It's in "London Girl", in their version of "Dirty Old Town", in "A Pair Of Brown Eyes". R.I.P. Shane.
Annie Nightingale was a radio pioneer, a brilliant broadcaster and a truly lovely human being.
Her Sunday night requests show on Radio 1 was a lifeline for a generation of teenagers doing homework and dreading the next day.
Here's one, from 1985.
R.I.P.
If lockdown is relaxed, it will not be because of 'the science', but the maths. Popularity maths. A calculation will have been made that Johnson's base are selfish I-want-I-want numbskulls who demand picnics and pub beer gardens. The Tories do not care about us.
#KeepTheLockdown
So, Richey Edwards of
@Manics
was born 50 years ago today. The world only knew him for 27 of those years, and I only knew him for four. But I never met a cleverer, more impressive and more beautiful man.
It would be easy to dismiss Dolly Parton's views on BLM as those of a typical showbiz liberal. But coming from where she does, with the core audience she has, this took balls of steel. Also, showing that you can learn, and make adjustments, with grace, at any age. Inspirational.
“As soon as you realize that [something] is a problem, you should fix it. Don’t be a dumbass. That’s where my heart is. I would never dream of hurting anybody on purpose.” –
@DollyParton
on removing the word "Dixie" from Dollywood.
The full cover story ➡️
I went on Steve Lamacq's Good Day Bad Day on 6 Music once. He asked me what the first record I ever owned was. I said "I'm The Leader Of The Gang (I Am!)" by Gary Glitter. Without missing a beat, Steve said "OK, what was the second record you ever owned?" That's a broadcaster.
Remember Morrissey claiming he was misquoted by Der Spiegel? They've posted the audio. And guess what? Everything they say he said, HE SAID. Germany a "rape capital", "millions died for German identity", British press is "like the Third Reich", the Kevin Spacey stuff, all of it.
Steve Albini was a giant. Big Black great, but production (he never called it that) exceptional: Pixies, Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Manics... Nobody made drums sound so ARID. (Also, owned up to his younger self sometimes being a jerk, which is ultra-cool.) R.I.P.
I wrote an Opinion piece for
@Guardian
@GuardianOpinion
about Gig Etiquette. Why have people forgotten how to behave at gigs? And do we now need a code of conduct?
What the Reply Guys dimwittedly fail (or pigheadedly refuse) to understand is that the NHS app isn't a luxury, like a new game or something, that people should just pay extra for if they want it. I don't 'want' it. It's something you SHOULD download and install out of civic duty.
If you can watch this all the way through without feeling the urge to load up a cropduster with Coronavirus germs and dump the whole lot over Hollywood, you're a fucking saint.
Now the dust has settled, Wales keeping Italy down to just 0-1, in Rome, with almost no Welsh fans in the stadium, and only 10 players on the pitch for much of the game, looks like a magnificent achievement. If Bale had put that volley away, it would be in Wales' Top 10 matches.
There was a jagged toughness to Geordie Walker's guitar. He, as much as anyone else you care to mention, defined the sound of 80s Alternative Rock. Those three notes at the start of "Love Like Blood" alone opened up a whole world. R.I.P.
The BBC is taking an awfully long time to sack Alan Sugar from The Apprentice over his unambiguously racist tweet about the Senegal football team last summer, but I'm sure they'll get round to it eventually.
My
@GuardianOpinion
piece on Gig Etiquette seems to have struck a chord (or touched a nerve). It was one of the most-read articles on the site yesterday, and today it's in the print edition of The
@Guardian
(G2, page 3).
Here's what I don't buy about Hi-De-Hi. It's set in 1959. Ted Bovis is presented as an ageing Teddy Boy. He's born in 1916. Teds had only been a thing for six or seven years in 1959, and it was totally a teenage tribe. Are we meant to think Bovis had a conversion to it, aged 37?
I voted Starmer-Rayner. I am now done with Starmer. The list of reasons has been growing since Day 1, but reneging on a commitment to nationalisation is the final straw. (To those who say "I told you so", you did. Enjoy that.) I'd now vote for almost anyone who stands against KS.
Here's my story about what really happened at Labour Conference - the drama, the passion, the unintentional comedy.
From Starmer's most passionate critics to most determined supporters.
Think you will all enjoy this one!
👇👇👇👇
So sad to hear that 'Exotic' Adrian Street, the Glam Rock wrestler, has died. The guy was an absolute legend - unapologetically unconventional, aggressively camp - and deserves to be a Welsh icon. I've always said there should be a mural of him in Cardiff. Maybe it'll happen now.
'The problem is not the schools...the issue is the spread from the mixing of households...that's what we're trying to combat'
The PM urges parents to send their children to school in the "normal way" unless the govt has specified otherwise. Read more:
Just listened to Parallel Lines and Eat To The Beat back to back, and while I recognise this isn’t a fully representative sample, I think I can scientifically prove that the greatest Blondie song is Union City Blue.
You know who's a really good band? Squeeze. Whacked their Singles LP on last night and there wasn't one song we weren't singing along to.
More earth-shattering, up-to-the-minute breaking news as we have it.
Lots of people missing the point with the Loris Karius concussion story. It isn't "We demand the match be replayed" (nobody's that daft). It isn't even "Sergio Ramos is evil" (we already knew that). It's "Give the poor guy a break."
How obscenely rich and privileged do you have to be to smash up your kids' iPads? I mean, leaving aside the questionable parenting shown by using violence/breakage to solve disputes, wasn't there a local kids' hospital she could have given them to? What a dreadful human being.
Flag-next-to-name Twitter is boycotting the Co-op because it's pulling its ads from the transphobic Spectator.
In other news, I am off out to the Co-op.
Deeply saddened by the death of Andy Rourke, bassist in the greatest rock'n'roll band ever.
Overshadowed by the personality of Morrissey and the genius of Marr, but he could really play (as "Barbarism Begins At Home" shows). Lovely man, as well.
R.I.P.
Very sad to hear that Steve Priest of (The) Sweet has passed away. Genuinely one of my all-time pop heroes. Embodied the essence of Glam: effeminate, but menacing. The original Stormtrooper In Drag.
And had possibly the best title of any autobiography ever: Are You Ready, Steve?
On my way to Coventry, along with a contingent of Melody Maker and Chart Music colleagues. You know why. A very sad day, but we’ll give the great man a suitable send-off.
Heartbroken to hear that punk icon Jordan has passed away. Just one of the loveliest people you could hope to meet, a brilliant laugh, and far more punk than so many of the charlatans who milked that movement in their rise to fame and fortune. What a horrible shock. R.I.P.
Hard to believe we stand on the threshold of another Twenties. The last one gave us Art Deco, Surrealism, Russian Constructivism, Dada, Jazz, German Expressionism, Weimar Cabaret, Ulysses, The Waste Land, The Great Gatsby and Speakeasies. Actually can we just have that one again?
The most staggering thing about Theresa May is her shamelessness and lack of self-awareness. Her speech claimed she made Britain "work for everyone" and gave a "voice to the voiceless", and presented herself as the heroine of Grenfell. Like Thatcher's, her tears are for herself.
The Beyonce overkill, and today's news that Taylor Swift has become a billionaire, are two sides of the same coin. The music industry, assisted by media, has undergone massive market consolidation, whereby a tiny elite of artists are deemed of interest and permitted to succeed.
If this incarnation of the Tory government has done us any favour at all, it might be that it's fatally wounded the persistently lingering belief among the British lower orders that the posh are automatically cleverer than the rest of us.
A few people speculating that this is fake. Nope. The guy who tweeted it has a locked account, and only sent it in reply to someone he was chatting with. A lot of trouble to go to, and he's really not the type. He wasn't looking for shares or retweets, but I happened to spot it.
When this all shakes down, it will be independent culture that gets wiped out. Not just your local venue but the old man pub or the greasy spoon. Get ready for a world of All Bar Ones and Starbucks (even more than already). Corporations who can take a temporary hit will swoop in.