Oh, so that’s how it goes…!!

Ok, I was intending to write about how the economy is well up, to put it bluntly, a certain creek without a paddle. And now with Brown announcing a second unconditional banking bail-out. Woe is us!

But I ended up being distracted by this website (I need the frivolity and the humour…badly) and I recall visiting it a couple of years ago. Blimey, I am not the only person who has misheard lyrics.

Poor Alanis Morissette. I always liked Jagged Little Pill and the angsty, You Oughta Know. Radio stations surgically removed the bit: ‘when you fuck her.’ to something totally inaudible. But what the hell has a cross-eyed bear got to do with it?

Well, it seems many people think she is singing, ‘It’s not fair to deny me of the cross-eyed bear that you gave to me’.

When in actual fact she is singing, ‘It’s not fair to deny me of the cross I bear that you gave to me’

It seems that many people discover they have the lyrics wrong when they are singing along with others in the car…. and find out when they go off at a complete tangent. Such as finding out that Smokey Robinson was singing, ‘I Second That Emotion’ as opposed to, ‘Second Hand Emotion’.

Though sometimes the misheard lyrics are far more entertaining than the actual lyrics. Poor Robert Palmer….he may well have believed, ‘You’re  Addicted to Love’ …and not, ‘You’re a Dick in a Glove’…..

But strangely I happened on Smash Mouth’s Walkin’ on the Sun (which I liked) where the misheard lyrics go, ‘You need to be there when your baby’s old enough to be laid’….

Now I too believed that was being song as well and always thought it worryingly jarred with the rest of the lyrics … Well, I possibly shoulda checked what was being sung.

‘You need to be there when your baby’s old enough to relate’….

Oops! Oh well….

And was Jimi Hendrix singing about kissing the guy or kissing the sky on Purple Haze…………

More on the Welfare Reform Bill

The new Welfare Reform Bill was only introduced on the 14th of this month. The second reading will be on the 27th January. The third reading and report stage may take place at the end of February.

It demonstrates NL’s utter desperation to get this draconian Bill through Parliament. The Bill includes abolishing income support, workfare, further conditionality and sanctions aimed at loan parents and disabled people, and privatisation/corporatisation of the benefits system.

What is the rush? Is it about making various ‘savings’ and/or showing that NL are ‘getting tough’ on dole scroungers as there’s an election looming in about a year’s time?

If you want to voice your opposition to this nasty pernicious Bill write to your MP, for starters. I will. I am sure my NL drone MP will be voting for it but I will expressing and registering my disgust if he does!!

The politics of the workhouse is on its way!

Behind the Gaza crisis

As a former member of the ISG, British section of the FI (Fourth International) I still read International Viewpoint on a regular basis as it is an invaluable resource on international politics and struggles. There’s a very interesting interview with Gilbert Achcar about the current crisis in Gaza. And, below, is part of his analysis about Israel’s ongoing strategy towards Gaza:

So if Israel gets into a second fiasco even against Hamas which is quite weaker than Hezbollah, then this will be seen necessarily as a major disaster, worse than the 2006 one for Israel. Not to mention, and this is the second point, the petty consideration. If the ruling coalition in Israel comes out from the present war with another fiasco, its parties won’t even need to go to elections. Netanyahu would stand to smash them completely and they know that. So they cannot afford a fiasco for these two reasons combined and this is what makes the situation very, very worrying. They might develop the syndrome of the wounded beast, getting more ferocious than they are already. The level of Israeli atrocity is increasing war after war. The 33-Day War in 2006 was already the most brutal aggression in the long history of Israeli wars, the most brutal utilization of power by Israel, carpet-bombing whole regions of Lebanon, civilian areas.

The pretext then as now is that fighters are hiding among the population. This is the most hypocritical argument: what do they want them to do, to regroup in some wasteland with signposts saying ‘Bomb us here’? This is preposterous. The truth is that Israel is trying to crush mass political parties, which are armed, of course, but they have to be armed because they are permanently under threat. These are armed popular movements. Most of their armed members are not professional fighters living in barracks. When you take all these aspects of the problem into consideration, there are very, very serious grounds for the mounting, increasing worries that are expressed by international humanitarian agencies.

A lot of people now sense that the population of Gaza is really under threat of massive extermination. This is not the usual kind of exaggeration, it is a sober assessment when you face such a level of violence and brutality, day after day, with more and more so-called accidents in which concentrations of civilians are targeted with mass-murder as a result. The only alternative to a fiasco for Israel is to push forward its ground offensive in the populated areas. The worst-case scenario becomes therefore quite possible, and that would mean thousands and thousands of people killed, not to mention the maimed and wounded, and that is absolutely frightening.

Another really great online resource is Marxsite (and thanks for advertising my pix from last week’s Gaza demo comrades!)

Gilbert Achcar is one of the signatures to this letter in Friday’s Guardian.

RIP Tony Hart

I always preferred watching Tony Hart’s Take Hart as opposed to the sticky back plastic creations of Blue Peter. There was always something imaginative and creative about Take Hart and, previously, Vision On. Hart also showed the processes of his creations. He believed that art should be accessible to all kids.

And as a kid growing up in the ’70s I enjoyed his programmes and marvelled in the way he could create exciting and imaginative compositions. There was also something anarchic about it as well especially with his plasticine sidekick, Morph. There was something playful and exploratory about his art, there was no ‘airs and graces’… no rigidity about what is art. Just get down and do it, be practical and use any medium.

After his show, I would experiement with various mediums and conjure up many creations though I never had the courage to send in one of my pictures to the Take Hart gallery. My only regret.

So RIP Tony Hart, your programmes captivated and mesmerised me as kid, made art accessible and inspired me to draw, and be creative, which has still remained with me today.

Oh, like the youtube video especially the drawings of Che Guevara. You don’t get that on telly anymore!