© 2011 Bodie Group inc | all rights

Image courtesy of Bruce Couch. Link to the original post this photo was posted at, apologies to Mr.Couch for not asking permission.

“Ironically my favorite shot on my entire flickr blog is this shot… and I didn’t shoot it. my Dad shot this in the 50′s.

Shot with a Leica IIIf with a 50mm 1.5 Summarit”

© All Rights Reserved Ben Canales

Adge Cutler & The Wurzels – All Over Mendip. 1967/3m08secs./320kbps/7.2mb/mp3

DJ Premier Productions & Remixes 1993~2000.18tracks/78minutes/320kbps/166mb. ZIP

An arbitrary selection of remixes, productions and co-productions from DJ Premier. All together in a zipped folder, or individually below.

* Personal favourites? I like Chubb Rock’s verse on the Crooklyn Dodgers cut the most, O.C & Jeru strong on that track too. The Group Home & Special Ed tracks are up there.

Obviously on the surface of it the presence of Robbie Robertson looks out of place, but I reckon it fits in with the flow on the CD. When I was whittling down what tracks I should stick on, I couldn’t leave it out.

1. Big Shug – Treat U Better. 1995/4m03s/9.3mb/320kbps/mp3/ youtube

2. Robbie Robertson – Take Your Partner By The Hand (DJ Premier Red Alert Remix). 1997/6m39s/15.2mb/320kbps/mp3/  youtube

3. D & D Allstars – 1, 2, Pass It Featuring Mad Lion, Doug E. Fresh, KRS-One, Fat Joe, Smif-n-Wessun, Jeru the Damaja. 1995/4m41s/10.7mb/320kbps/mp3/ youtube

4. Guru Featuring Chaka Khan – Watch What You Say. 1995/4m39s/10.6mb/320kbps/mp3/ youtube

5. Jeru The Damaja – Me Or The Papes. 1996/4m25s/10.1mb/320kbps/mp3/ youtube

6. Showbiz & AG – Next Level (DJ Premier Nyte Time Mix). 1995/4m10s/9.6mb/320kbps mp3/ youtube

7. Group Home – 2 Thousand. 1995/3m19s/7.6mb/320kbps/mp3/ youtube

8. Common – The 6th Sense. 2000/4m06s/9.4mb/320kbps/mp3/ youtube

9. KRS-One – Higher Level. 1993/5m02s/11.5mb/320kbps/mp3/ youtube

10. Jay-Z – A Million And One Questions/Rhyme No More. 1997/3m03s/7mb/320bps/mp3/ youtube

11. The Notorious B.I.G. – Unbelievable.  1994/3m44s/8.7mb/320kbps/mp3/ youtube

12. O.C. – My World. 1997/4m16s./9.8mb/320kbps/ mp3/ youtube

13. The Crooklyn Dodgers (MkII) – Return Of The Crooklyn Dodgers Featuring Chubb Rock, O.C. & Jeru The Damaja. 1995/5m05s/11.6mb/320kbps/mp3/ youtube

Chubb Rock’s verse;

Now clock, kids, who got the cocaine?
Don’t tell me it’s the little kids on Soul Train
The meta-force it I put my brain to my jaw
It comes from other places, not the tinted faces
Journalistic values are yellow and then of course falters
You watch Channel Zero with that BITCH Barbara Walters
She’ll have you believe black invented crack
When President Lyndon had the formula way back in sixty-three
with Kennedy, yes the double cross
Remember that’s when they blew his fucking head off!
Vietnam vets come back looking like one-armed pets
Nixon bombs, here attached
No picket fence, no job, no Hazel in the car
Blue collar turns to bourgeoise
Depressed in your chest, Demarol for sess
Low dough, crack in veils much less
White Tee can sell on the corners of Bushwick
White Tee can sell on the corners of Flatbush
White Tees can sell on the corners of Bed-Stuy
Pass the torch to that nigga guy
So just DIE, nigga, DIE, nigga
You’re too black, you’re can’t handle you’re too strong
get high, fly clock next boost ya steal
In ninety-five we take back Ebbets Field…

14. Fat Joe – This Shit Is Real (DJ Premier Remix). 1994./4m36s/10.6mb/320kbps mp3/ youtube

15. Ed O.G. – Sayin’ Somethin’. 2000./3m52s/8.9mb/320kbps /mp3 /youtube

16. Nas – N.Y. State Of Mind. 1994/4m52s/11.2mb/320kbps/mp3 /youtube

17. Afu-Ra – Whirlwind Through Cities. 2000/3m57s/9.1mb/320kbps/ mp3/youtube

18. Special Ed. Freaky Flow (DJ Premier Remix). 1996/3m59s/9.1mb/320kbps mp3 youtube.

Excerpt lyric;

Strap you down, slap you around, call you Susan, use and abusin..

Call you Susan?  I thinks that’s what’s called stupid dope.

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link to original online article

Easy Mo Bee. An Arbitrary Selection. 320kbps.

download. 19tracks.176mb.79minutes

1.  Miles Davis ~ Mystery.

2.  LL Cool J ~ Pink Cookies In A Plastic Bag (Easy Mo Bee Remix).

3.  Notorious B.I.G. ~ Machine Gun Funk.

4.  Craig Mack ~ Judgement Day.

5.  Freddie Foxx ~ So Tough (Feat. Queen Latifah).

6.  King Just ~ Can I Get Some.

7.  Jamal ~ Live Illegal.

8.  Trends Of Culture ~ Make A Move.

9.  Lost Boyz ~ Lifestyles Of The Rich & Shameless.

10. Das EFX ~ Knockin’ Niggaz Off.

11. 2Pac ~ Temptations.

12. Shaquille O’Neal ~ Game Of Death (Feat. Rakim).

13. Busta Rhymes ~ Everything Remains Raw.

14. Queen Latifah ~ Elements I’m Among.

15. Rappin’ Is Fundamental (R.I.F.) ~ Who’s Da Man.

16. Chubb Rock ~ Games We Play.

17. Nice & Smooth ~ Boogie Down Bronx/BK Connection.

18. Big Daddy Kane ~ Uncut, Pure.

19. Mos Def ~ Zimzallabim.

Crap video quality, good mp3 quality

download mp3/11mb/320kbps/4min49secs.

“Literature without the power of great synthesis”, he wrote on another occasion, “is the symptom of social weariness and is characteristic of sharply transitional epochs” He therefore viewed critically the then fashionable symbolist trend; but he did so not because he favoured narrow realism. On the contrary: “Artistic creation, no matter how realistic, has always been and remains symbolist. . . .The purpose of art. . .is not to copy reality in empirical detail but to throw light on the complex content of life by singling out its general typical features. . . . Every artistic type is broadly a symbol, not to speak of such highly symbolical images as Mephisto, Faust, Hamlet, Othello, artistically embodying definite ”moments” of the human soul. . . ” The symbolist school, however, he held, was trying to elevate the means into an end in itself and, so, was degrading the symbol from an intensified expression of human experience into a means of escaping from the experience.

Sorry about the daily motion advert, but all the youtube vids are copyrighted right the fuck up, sort it out wordpress/google you punk ass biatches

mp3  is still fat tho’

download 320kbps/9.6mb/4min10secs

download 320kbps/7min36s/17.4mb/mp3

Video is different from the mp3 download, which is from the original recording.

All the videos of the original recording which I tried to embed from youtube would not work on wordpress.

link for original youtube page of video and details

{On Bullshit} = My contribution

download 320kbps/3min41sec/8.6mb

independent hotfile download 19.2mb/96kbps

By Helen Grady

There is a new force in the Labour Party with a radical plan to win back working-class voters and provide the left’s response to David Cameron’s Big Society.

It is called Blue Labour and it wants a rethink of what, for many, was the party’s greatest achievement – the creation of the welfare state in 1945. Blue Labour’s intellectual godfather is the academic and community organiser Maurice Glasman – this month elevated to the House of Lords by Labour leader Ed Miliband. Lord Glasman believes that, in the post-war period following the creation of the National Health Service, Labour developed a top-down model of government that became “remote, bossy and managerial”. “1945 was a wonderful achievement of solidarity,” he told Radio 4′s Analysis programme. “But the sting in the tail of 1945 was that it broke all the mutual solidarity – the ways we took care of each other – and handed them over to the state.” According to another Blue Labour thinker, the Oxford University political historian Marc Stears, Gordon Brown’s defeat in the last election was “a moment of reckoning” for the party. Quality of relationships “We’ve gone for many years now in a state-driven, redistribution-driven, equality-driven Labour tradition that comes straight out of 1945,” said Dr Stears. “There are many good things about that: it cares about fairness and equality. “But what it doesn’t do is acknowledge that what matters in everyday life is the quality of our relationships – our family life, our ability to go to church or to mosque or to synagogue, to have relationships there with other people, to care for our elderly. “All of those elements got forgotten and it’s those elements we now need to regain.” Blue Labour wants what it calls a more “relational” style of politics, which redistributes not just wealth but also power back to local communities. And it wants to see those communities taking more responsibility for their own lives. “The idea that you could have three generations of one family on welfare in the same house and that’s seen as a good society is anathema to me,” said Lord Glasman, who has written speeches for both the Miliband brothers. “Work and responsibility are core Labour values. I want to see a more relational state that doesn’t just provide personal care packages, but calls on people to meet each other, talk together and work together for the common good.”

Blue Labour’s plan for delivering the common good involves a revival of the Labour tradition of mutuals, co-operatives and friendly societies, the creation of local banks and a new system of worker representation on company boards.

And when it comes to the delivery of public services, it wants more localised provision and an end to what it sees as “Labour’s obsession with postcode lotteries”. Dr Stears, an old college friend of Ed Miliband, is about to lead a major research project for the Institute of Public Policy Research on Labour’s response to the Big Society. Influential supporters He said: “There’s a kind of aspiration – you might call it a myth within the Labour party – that it can eradicate the postcode lottery. That aspiration can’t be realised.

“That’s why we need to get away from this obsession with absolute fairness, with material equality,” he adds. “At the risk of sounding like Tony Blair, I think we need to be experimental. It’s crucial that we’re not dogmatic.

“If that means private sector operators working in collaboration with the providers and the recipients of services in a more relational, more democratic way, then we have to be prepared to say that that’s the right move forwards.” Blue Labour is gaining some influential supporters, including the Blairite former Labour minister, James Purnell. “I think the renewal of the Labour Party will come out of a synthesis of Blue Labour and New Labour,” he said. “There was something change-manic about New Labour. I think what Blue Labour does is remind the Labour movement of what its original values were.” Non-negotiable But for Labour veteran Roy Hattersley, a commitment to fairness and equal public services is a non-negotiable part of being a socialist. Lord Hattersley said: “The postcode lottery programme was about trying to provide equal levels of high services throughout the country. “It seems self-evident to me that a social democratic government should want to have an equal level of high-quality services throughout the country rather than if you live in a city, you’re likely to have a shorter life expectancy than if you live in the country. “Blue Labour seems very nostalgic to me. This is the idea of Arcadian England, the idea that there was some mythical time when we all loved each other,” he added. “Well, before the creation of the welfare state, we all died of illnesses early on because all the things that the state provided were not available in those days.” Ed Miliband has launched a major review of Labour Party policy and it remains to be seen how much Blue Labour thinking will be adopted by the party. However, if recent speeches and media interviews are anything to go by, we can expect to hear more of Blue Labour’s themes and language from senior figures in the party as Labour tries to rebuild bridges with its lost working-class voters. Analysis is on BBC Radio 4 on Monday, 21 March 2011 at 2030 GMT. Listen via the BBC iPlayer download the podcast or join Analysis on Facebook.

Download {320kbps/3min57secs/9.1mb}

320/20.6mb/9.01s. download

download mp3 (7.8mb)

Now it’s jazz, the place is roaring, all beautiful girls in there, one mad brunette at the bar drunk with her boys. One strange chick I remember from somewhere, wearing a simple skirt with pockets, her hands in there, short haircut, slouched, talking to everybody. Up and down the stairs they come. The bartenders are the regular band of Jack, and the heavenly drummer who looks up in the sky with blue eyes, with a beard, is wailing beer-caps of bottles and jamming on the cash register and everything is going to the beat. It’s the beat generation, it’s beat, it’s the beat to keep, it’s the beat of the heart, it’s being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat.

The faces! There’s no face to compare with Jack Minger’s who’s up on the bandstand now with a colored trumpeter who outblows him wild and Dizzy but Jack’s face overlooking all the heads and smoke. He has a face that looks like everybody you’ve ever known and seen on the street in your generation; a sweet face. Hard to describe, sad eyes, cruel lips, expectant gleam, swaying to the beat, tall, majestical – waiting in front of the drugstore. A face like Hunke’s in New York (Hunke whom you’ll see on Times Square, somnolent and alert, sadsweet, dark, beat, just out of jail, martyred, tortured by sidewalks, starved for sex and companionship, open to anything, ready to introduce new worlds with a shrug). The colored big tenor with the big tone would like to be blowing Sunny Stitts clear out of Kansas City roadhouses, clear, heavy, somewhat dull and unmusical ideas which nevertheless never leave the music, always there, far out, the harmony too complicated for the motley bums (of music-understanding) in there.

The drummer is a sensational 12-year-old Negro boy who’s not allowed to drink but can play, tremendous, a little lithe childlike Miles Davis kid, like early Fats Navarro fans you used to see in Espan Harlem, hep, small – he thunders at the drums with a beat which is described to me by a near-standing connoisseur with beret as a “fabulous beat”. On piano is Blondey Bill, good enough to drive any group. Jack Minger blows out and over his head with these angels from Fillmore, I dig him – now it’s terrific. I just stand in the outside hall against the wall, no beer necessary, with collections of in-and-out listeners, with Verne, and now here returns Bob Berman (who is a colored kid from West Indies who barged into my party six months earlier high with Dean and the gang and I had a Chet Baker record on and we hoofed at each other in the room, tremendous, the perfect grace of his dancing, casual, like Joe Louis casually hoofing). He comes now in dancing like that, glad. Everybody looks everywhere, it’s a jazz-joint and beat generation madtrick, you see someone, “Hi,” then you look away elsewhere, for something someone else, it’s all insane, then you look back, you look away, around, everything is coming in from everywhere in the sound of the jazz. “Hi”, “Hey”. Bang, the little drummer takes a solo, reaching his young hands all over traps and kettles and cymbals and foot-peddle BOOM in a fantastic crash of sound – 12 years old – but what will happen?

with thanks to Call Me A Lyre

download 6.2mb (mp3)

Brady: (Fredric March)

“Is it possible that something is holy to the celebrated agnostic!?”

Drummond: (Spencer Tracy)

“Yes! the individual human mind!..

In a child’s power to master the multiplication table there is more sanctity than in all your shouted amens and holy-holies and hossana’s, an idea is a greater monument than a cathedral and the advance of man’s knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turnt to snakes for the parting of the waters. But now, are we to forgo all this progress because Mr. Brady now frightens us with a fable?

Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain, you have to pay for it, sometimes I thinks there’s a man who sits behind a counter and says…Alright you can have the telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. Madam you may vote, but at a price, you lose the right to retreat behind the powderpuff or your petticoat. Mister! you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.

Darwin took us forward to a hilltop from where we could look back and see the way from which we came, but for this insight and for this knowledge we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis”

Brady:

“We must not abandon Faith! Faith is a most important thing!”

Drummond:

“Then why did God plague us with the power to think Mr.Brady, why do you deny the one faculty of man that raises him above the other creatures of the Earth, the power of his brain to reason? what other merit have we? the Elephant is larger, the Horse is swifter and stronger, the Butterfly is far more beautiful, the Mosquito is more prolific, even the simple Sponge is more durable! what does a Sponge think?”

Brady:

“I dont know, I’m a Man not a Sponge!” (Court laughs)

Drummond:

“What do you think a Sponge thinks?”

Brady:

“If the Lord wishes a Sponge to think, it thinks.”

Drummond:

“Do you think a Man should have the same privileges of a Sponge?”

Brady:

“Of course!”

Drummond:

“This man.. (the Teacher who Drummond is defending for teaching about Darwin) ..wishes to accorded the same privileges of a Sponge!

He wishes to Think!”

Scopes Monkey Trial link

A late Gas equalizer, Holloway running faster than Linford Christie, Helicopters, Horses on the pitch.

Priceless

Dandy Nichols as Else Garnett (Silly Moo) & Una Stubbs as her married daughter Rita Rawlins.

Channeling the late, great, Johnny Speight.

download

1  . The Start Of Your Ending (41st Side)
2  . The Infamous Prelude
3  . Survival Of The Fittest
4  . Eye For An Eye (Your Beef Is Mine) Ft. Nas & Raekwon
5  . Just Step Prelude
6  . Give Up The Goods (Just Step) Ft. Big Noyd / Produced by Q-Tip
7  . Temperature’s Rising Ft. Crystal Johnson /Co-Produced by Q-Tip
8  . Up North Trip
9  . Trife Life
10. Q.U. – Hectic Ft. Darc Nature
11. Right Back At You Ft. Ghostface Killah, Raekwon & Big Noyd
12. The Grave Prelude
13. Cradle To The Grave
14. Drink Away The Pain (Situations) Featuring AND Co-Produced by Q-Tip
15. Shook Ones (Part II)
16. Party Over Ft. Big Noyd

Thought I would drop some NY/Queensbridge stuff on y’all.

I have to say I seriously slept on Mobb Deep when they first came out, I was moreinto the Native Tongues stuff like A Tribe Called Quest/De La Soul/Pharcyde, and into diversifying my tastes into other genres (notably House/Techno in all its forms). The lyrical content of acts like Mobb Deep used to turn me off (as well as a pure hostility towards fans of House music from Hip Hop heads), I didn’t then identify with the drugs/ghetto/guns/bitches life they rapped about, and in the days when you had a finite choice of what music you bought or heard, I chose not to buy, or even listen.

You could do that back in the day. The whole music owning thing genuinely took more of an effort. There were whole artistic genres and acts that would totally pass you by. The digital age has changed all that, there’s no reason to miss anything, and I don’t. Now we dissect the discographies of our favourite producers/artistes & musicians at no monetary cost, in a heartbeat.

Those that lived through that time need to tell those that didn’t how much money we used to spend out of our wages/benefits/pocket money, and how much physical labour we used to put in to go from shop to shop to shop. It was fun though, great hobby. No amount of trendy revisionism will bring it back, hardy har, get yer own culture.

This past year I’ve been falling back in love with Hip Hop (particularly the East coast sound of the loose mid-Nineties), I’ve been joining the dots, collecting all those rare remixes and releases by the likes of DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor that I’ve either sold ( I boasted one of the best Hip Hop collections in Bristol) or never could get hold of.

Heres a few videos of tracks from the album for you to try before you make the effort to download (Dont work on WordPress because WordPress is a BITCH/ just double click and it will take you to youtube), and don’t be a pussy like me back in the day and be put off by the ghetto talk, this shit is high-grade art with contributions by some of the greatest Hip Hoppers of the day, including Nas, Raekwon, Ghostface & Q-Tip. An album that is widely thought to be only second to Illmatic as the greatest Queensbridge LP of the day/ever, an important record in the New York rap renaissance of the mid 90′s as a whole.

Incidentally my opinion on the whole East/West coast thing is that the cold jazzy beats of the East coast suit the ghetto/gangster chat better than the messy West coast juxtaposition of warm P-funk beats with drive-by lyrics.. enjoy.

Yet I have flesh both firm and cool,
And eyes tumultuous as the gems
Of moons and lamps in the full Thames
When dusk sails wavering down the pool.

Shuddering the purple street-arc burns
Where I watch always; from the banks
Dolorously the shipping clanks
And after me a strange tide turns.

I walk till the stars of London wane
And dawn creeps up the Shadwell Stair.
But when the crowing syrens blare
I with another ghost am lain.

happy festivus/winterval/winter solstice/xmas/christmas

Photos by me, exhibition info here

At the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, John Terry throws himself in front of  Zlatko Dedic’s shot. Even funnier in slow motion replay.

Photo borrowed from Daily Telegraph/ Getty Images

photograph borrowed from Daily Telegraph/PA not too sure who the photographers are.

gif stylee. thanks exile

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Shuttleworth Ft. Mark E. Smith ~ Englands Heartbeat.

Download Mp3 here

Why is it so easy for those on the left to dismiss Cameron & Clegg because they are both white, of similar age and privately educated at Oxbridge?. There is an ideological wasteground within ‘leftist’ thinking which believes it is perfectly acceptable to loudly pronounce that its OK to moan about someone’s privileged education or upbringing as a tool to beat them with. When I hear this implied (more often by supposed liberals), my heart sinks and leaves me questioning the lack of any apparent progressive ideology of the left, It is the politics of a desperate tribalist loser, and I reject anyone who argues in this way. These types can and should be dismissed as readily as the casual racist or misogynist. Prejudice should not be accepted as an acceptable argument to criticise anyone, particulary by those that consider themselves ‘progressive’. It is New Labour/anarchist-left/middle-class generated class envy that operates as acceptable argument. It is not the unrepresented poor that spread this particular type of hate, the poor do not vote, and they do not care, because they are disenfranchised.

Complaining that too many ministers come from an Oxford or Cambridge educated background misses a serious point. Maybe these and other educational institutions like Eton are over-represented not only on a nepotistical basis, but because they teach the understanding of politics to a higher degree than the average comprehensive/college/university. They must do, because your average comprehensive teaches you nothing, you will be lucky to rid of the misinformation that has been drilled into you from a moribund curriculum within 20 years of leaving it.

POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION

That is the real problem. Subjects including politics and the understanding of them are not taught to a high enough standard and enthusiastically enough outside of high grade education, which leads political parties to feel obliged to level the playing field by parachuting or lauding those not good enough to do the job, just a load of jobbing head-nodders running the country.

A problem that is not addressed is why we do not produce people from minorities into the system? (including the poor) Is it a general problem of short termism that prevails in western democracy?. No one really wants to admit or feels capable of tackling the issue that our educational system does not produce enough people of an educated political class, a class that is interested and understands the responsibilities of the system. You want minorities represented at parliamentary level? well why is it not taught at school? why are few attracted to it? what are our schools producing? what useless nonsense have they filled our heads with?.

While fully accepting that minorities of all types are under represented at parliament, I cannot accept that all women/black/asian shortlists for MP jobs are the acceptable way of going about choosing an MP. The Blair babes were not really the dynamic intake of MP’s that was promised in 1997, all it created was a significant, compliant and acquiescent Blairite group within the then governing Labour party, helping and allowing Tony Blair carte-blanche to do (or not do) what he chose. No checks and balances in the post 1997 PLP in the slightest. Indeed it has contributed to the complete lack of direction in the current Labour party. Where were those in the party sticking up for the poor? Where is the brains? When exactly did they drive into the current philosophical dead end that they find themselves in?

TOKENISM

This leads on to the faintly smarmy Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North & Stoke Newington, who has just entered the Labour Leadership contest. The first black woman to be elected to parliament is something to be applauded and proud of, but reading the Guardian this morning there is a real Go Diane! attitude in the article, and why?, because she is a she, and because she is black, and because (are you serious?) she represents the left of the party. This is her platform.

Grammar school and Cambridge educated Abbot fully understands that comprehensive school education sucks some major ass, with her admirable but hypocritical decision to send her child to private school. She appears regularly on BBC One’s enjoyable This Week program sat next to ex-Conservative Secretary of State for defence and education, Michael Portillo, and opposite the combative and erudite presenter Andrew Neil. I have to say by observation that if she represents the Labour left, the Labour left is non-existent. Diane Abbott consistently has views that are loyal tribal Labour and almost always to the cautious right of Portillo, a man of privileged background who represents a model for Conservative progressive change and whose opinion is consistently to the left of the Labour Party and has been for a good few years before this current Cameron era. I, as a bit of a lefty would rather see Michael Portillo and his type at number 10 than any New Labour tainted MP. Things have changed.

Objective; 326 seats for a controlling majority (a majority which cannot be defeated in a government vote with all other seats combined)

Resulting in a Hung Parliament, with coalition government negotiated between the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrat Party with a majority of 363 (expected to rise to 364 with a Conservative win at the first Bi-Election)

LABOUR

Post election Labour & Liberal Democrat Negotiations.

Some blame the Liberal Democrats for not getting-it-on with Labour in a coalition of the losers (as the Tory media called it), or a ‘Progressive’ coalition as was being touted by those on the left and centre left. If there was any chance of a Lib-Lab pact, it was the institution and the personalities of the Labour Party who intentionally scuppered it.

In the face of the strange yet more plausible option of a Con-Lib deal, so-called progressives were momentarily demanding a dreamy possibility of a Rainbow Alliance, with encouragement coming from Scottish Nationalist leader Alex Salmond and Lib-Dem Baroness Shirley Williams, who both let it be known that progressive coalition with the Labour Party was the preferred option. The New Labour project which has been controlling government for the last 13 years would of course never reject what was even a slim to non-existent chance of power, and a nice chance to snoop at what the Liberals and Conservatives were planning to boot. Maybe at the first meeting there was a tiny chance of a coalition, for a moment during the talks it seemed a genuine possibility that a theoretical coalition could be formed representing the disgruntled left and centre left parties of the United Kingdom, this union would have to consist of New Labour, Lib-Dems, the Scottish/Welsh Nationalists, Caroline Lucas the first and solitary MP for the Green Party, and the various parties of Northern Ireland minus the Irish Independents Sinn Féin who never take up their Westminster seats, on a point of political principal.

Although the mathematical possibility of a Lib-Lab-SNP-Plaid Cymru-DUP-SDLP-Alliance-Green pact would take the coalition into majority territory. A theoretical non-chance is about as close as it got. The tribal drums of Labour banged hard and suggested they are not going along with all this trendy but substantial Con-Lib new politics talk that is being banded at the moment. They were firmly in party survival mode, and who can blame them?, for the last three years they had been expecting a reverse wipeout ala 1997. Add to this the fact they have been the voice of power for half a generation and you can almost understand how they found themselves in the exalted position of not thinking too much about what has gone wrong for them. A moribund mixture of imperial defeatism with none of the vim & vigour shown by those in recent and no doubt thoughtful opposition.

Labour was never prepared for the question at hand, unsurprising some may say as they have indeed spent the last few years with a loser mentality. A Lib-Lab-Rainbow coalition could have made the most sweeping progressive change of the New Labour period of power, and all this only at the end of their tenure, whilst clinging on for dear power. The project was calmly falling through the air with their middle management poker faces on, wondering when to pull the cord. The Lib-Lab talks were a non-event. You do not have to scratch beneath the surface of the Labour project (and there is plenty of surface) to realise why talks were destined to fail and everyone sort of knew it. Today, looking back to the first few post-election days from outside the eye of the storm, Labour could have offered the moon on a stick, but it was never deliverable. The offer by Labour to the Libs for immediate electoral/constitutional change was likely only chucked in as a stick to beat them with over the next five years.

In facing a well prepared Lib-Dem team, another problem the New Labour negotiating group would have had to resolve if it could be bothered, was the hope that the parliamentary Labour party would show themselves unified enough to be able to get their heads together and retrieve a real electoral and political change from, in my opinion, 13 years of uninspiring bureaucratic nanny state control. A progressive victory perhaps from the jaws of defeat?. Not on your Nelly!.

The truth of the Labour parliamentary situation was of vocal hostility to any leftist coalition. And an undermining of any chance of a deal for a progressive parliament from senior Labour figures, who I think its safe to say were representing accurately the general feeling of either the Labour Party as a tribal whole, or one or two select individuals, possibly one of the potential incoming Labour leaders. The way such luminaries such as John Reid, David Blunkett and Dianne Abbot (I will be interested to hear who they support in the forthcoming Labour leadership election) darted between the BBC, Sky, and ITV correspondents at the very moment Labour & Lib Dem discussions were under way was one fine example that it was Labour as a party who had the complete inability and lack of will to adapt style and politics for the moment at hand, they were a resigned vocal roadblock to the pipe dream of a progressive union. The strategic truth of the Labour government situation was that Labour was a busted flush from the moment the dominating un-elected clampet  Gordon Brown was appointed leader.

It was Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg who hammered the last nail into his political coffin with one particular hung parliament pre-negotiating rule during the election run-in, that being, in the event of a hung or balanced parliament (as pro-coalition parties like to call it) and if voting patterns had decided against him (and they certainly did), a coalition of the left could never materialise with Brown in charge. So when the Liberals went into discussion with the Labour, it became obvious that Gordon Brown had no other option but to announce his future resignation in the event of a unlikely Lib-Lab-Rainbow coalition (remaining as PM for a few months, right after he potentially agrees to a new coalition which he will not have any part of). It was the Liberals who signalled the end of Gordon Brown, a man who served a shorter period of time than any other previous Labour Prime Minister, it was not the members of parliamentary Labour Party, who have been itching to do it since Blair.

The Libs Dems triggered the long waited Labour leadership contest which at the time led to the ridiculous theoretical chance that whoever the new leader was, they could be end up as next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in a progressive coalition. It was at this point it became immediately obvious that Labour was out of the power game. The Con-Lib deal being the only show in town. Brown had no credibility or mandate in negotiating an agreement for a future for his party that the then unknown incoming leader would have no kind of obligation to uphold, abide or agree to.

The Machiavellian manoeuvring behind the scenes in the last three years for victory in a Labour leadership election equates to the overriding reason Labour never had a hand and were as just as likely going through the motions for future leverage and extra platform in opposition. The fact that mooted potential leadership candidates Ed Milliband & Ed Balls were two of the Labour negotiating team leads to other clashes of interest and has to be questioned too, particularly by lefties appalled at the Con-Lib coalition who believed the negotiations to be tackled in a serious manner.

The New Labour Project government showed itself as split, fat, out of touch, unadaptable, old-fashioned, desperate and undignified, a project whose only succesful aim was only to acquire power, no real ideology, no real belief in anything, and that attitude disseminated from above into the PLP. and that very lack of a system has a hand in my notion that as a group they are not rigorous or vigorous enough of a political party for them to be able to unite quickly behind politics as it happens. I cannot seem to see where Labour represents any kind of ideology of old or new. They seem today the most tribal and ideological bereft of political groups, a first past the post grubby lardass wannabe Tory MESS of a fake leftist political party which still understands that the poor don’t matter because the poor don’t vote.

Attribution to follow

Walter Huston ~ September Song (L.A.R. Edit). Download on the arrow pointing downwards in the Soundcloud box.

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