tUnE-yArDs

tUnE-yArDs – AKA: a haunting lo-fi pots-and-pans ensemble – is the creation of Merrill Garbus (also of Sister Suvi): Canada’s answer to a question never asked. As expected with lo-fi, Garbus’ debut, BiRd-BrAiNs, is full of hauntingly underplayed vocals and a rag-tag assortment of instruments, lead by Garbus’ own ukulele. The album itself is a mishmash for the senses, but at times the wilful eccentricity becomes overwhelming, and you are left feeling impersonalised by a genre which aims to place you three-feet from the singer at all times.

Although Garbus has managed to get a large underground following, perhaps by self-releasing BrAiNs some months ago, information is scarce. This mystique is probably meant to bolster the character, but it only acts to serve as a reminder that ‘more is more’. The secrecy is incongruous to the gimmicky development of the album; the alternate capitalisation in the title, for example. Whilst not a major flaw, it’s annoying before you even start.

Fortunately for us, some of these doubts and irritations can be cast aside when you actually sit down and listen to the track. Although the beginning sounds alarmingly like Falling Down by Turin Brakes, that’s where the similarities stop, as Garbus steers this record as far from the mainstream as is possible. The opening features both yodelling and the innocent voice of a child discussing fresh blueberries: It’s a strange one, admittedly. It does act as a good introductory platform for Garbus to demonstrate just how good a range she has, however.

Fan-favourite Sunlight – “Look at me, me, me, in the picture” – follows the age-old pattern of slowly building to a crescendo; and with a heavy-handed touch, too. When it reaches the end, it’s like you’ve fallen into a Kubrick film: haunting chanting-style lyrics, and shouting; throw in some Morse code and some digitised baby and you’ve got yourself a full opening track.

What was promised, however, is not delivered. The underproduction and tinny quality merely becomes grating and it’s up to tracks like Lions, a gorgeous symphony of gentle ukulele and repetitive drumbeats, to keep the listener sane. Although Lions’ lyrics leave a lot to be desired: “Please oh can’t you please just stay on over for the night...” the backing is a tinkling delight. Hold on to this moment dearly though, for this is where we start to slide...

Skipping gently across to the mountainous insanity of yodelling, you land in critics’ hot-tip for the album, Hatari. Against the current, I actually think this is one of the weaker tracks: Interesting – definitely yes – but pioneering? Probably not. It’s not the unabashedly insane song that we were promised; it sounds more like a quintessentially cutesy Kings of Dependence homage.

Jamaican, a marimba-style tin-drum graveyard music set against institutionalised lyrics – “I see you, I see you, oh yes I do, I see you, I see you” – and Safety – a melange of styles, are standout tracks for this listener’s ears.

It’s towards the end of the album that Garbus seems to have run out of ideas, and needs to dip back into her electronic bag; Fiya and Little Tiger are weird for the sake of weird. Synonynonym props up the ending, but it suffers from the plague which afflicts the whole album: How and where are you going?

Garbus has introduced something to think about, something to fall into, but it’s not the lo-fi we’ve come to know and love. It feels distant, and like it’s trying too hard to be just that bit weirder than it needs to be. Like a hallucinogenic trip through a Belle and Sebastian album; it’s overwhelmingly strange, and whilst imaginative and inventive, it doesn’t put you right there. When you should be staring straight up her skirt, you’re eight yards away fighting through a ragtag collection of Dali shapes.

Published November (1/2nd), in TheMusicMagazine.

Bah.

Don't wanna be a book ;(.

This is why no one likes you.

Hey, Labour; you want to know why no one likes you? Not only do you repeatedly and unabashedly ignore all public opinion on major issues, but you employ experts for advising on drug policy, and then fire them when they disagree with you. I didn't realise that arbitrarily dealt prejudices superseded scientific empiricism. Somehow I must have missed the memo that leant any credence to the sensationalism angle. Also, I'm sorry for supporting the email that said reason beats prejudice.

Yes, here it is: Final and conclusive proof (how ironic - presumably Labour won't heed it) that Labour is completely and utterly out of touch with reality. A week after their abysmal performance on Question Time - courtesy of Jack-flounder-Straw - they've decided that the scientific community does not measure up to their standards for drug enforcement policy. You'll forgive me for staring in disbelief at the stupidity that they're displaying at this moment, but, well, it almost defies any sort of rationalistic processing. Just as the abject cannot be described by words alone; the idiocy on show here is both fantastic and frightening.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, read a newspaper. No, I'm talking about the Hindenburg decision to fire the head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs from his position as top advisor to the government on drug policy. "What kind of madness is this?" I hear you ask; but, no, do not fear, there is a 'basis' for this hilarity. Oh yes: When the top advisor was asked to advise on the reclassification of cannabis from C to B, he disagreed with the government. They are for the heightening of class, he is not. So, what did they do? Fired him. Seriously. The story can be charted using this rough paraphrasing:

"David, what do you think about making weed more illegal? I think we should, because I don't like it myself. I haven't read the studies, but, ya know, innate prejudices of an out of touch generation! I want your advice though!"

"I think it's a bad idea. All of the scientific evidence points to there being negligible chance of psychosis developing from use of weed. I also think there is an arbitrary division between alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs."

"Yeah. You're fired."

Now, normally I would spin some rhetoric your way; try to win you round to my thoughts, or I'd just present some insidiously altered 'evidence' to back up my claims, and you'd be none the wiser. This time, however, I have presented you with what happened. The advisor advised, and his advice was not the expected advice, so the advisor was fired for advising. Fortunately for all of us non-morons out there, there is still an element of sanity prevailing in the 2plus system we insist on employing.

Chris Grayling, Shadow home-secretary - a position dangerously close to becoming synonymous with 'mindless idiot' - denounced Prof. Nutt's "latest ill-judged contribution to the debate".

Now, as always, I like to take things that people say and decode them for what they really mean, so, here we go again:

"Latest" implies that the head of a council, dedicated to scientific research into the properties and effects of drugs, is at home to making decisions which would appear illegitimate to those in government. Given the context, however, all this does is reaffirm the stupidity of the decision. Think of it like this: The advisor has made a decent and well sourced claim about the dangers of weed; the government has said he's wrong, the Shadow government has agreed; the government is wrong; thus, the man has made a lot of right decisions. Sorry, Chris, nice try though.

"Ill-judged" doesn't say anything about the legitimacy of what he has said, just that he said it at the wrong time, and that he should never disagree with what the government has said. I'm sorry, but is this man completely insane? It's the same as saying: "Yes, you're right, but don't you know? We're the government, silly boy."

"Contribution" suggests that Prof. Nutt wasn't actually leading the idea. To downplay the only important piece of information as a "contribution" is rude and pathetic. Honestly: There are people paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to write this vitriol for the politicians, why can none of them do it properly?

So, yes, good try you guys, but, try again.

----

Just like last week's Question Time, the only person to come out of this debacle with even a shred of integrity is Chris Huhne. I don't know what's happened recently within the Lib Dems to empower them to start speaking out against the fucking lunacy that we're living under, but good on them! Ignoring my bias for them, surely any impartial person can see Huhne as the only person here with a decent head on his shoulders? Whilst the insecure knee-jerkers were busy flapping around in a huff, Huhne was busy stating what everyone was thinking:

"What is the point of having independent scientific advice if as soon as you get some advice you don't like, you sack the person who has given it to you?"

Why indeed? It's madness.

It's about time the government stepped outside of themselves, and started to look at what they were doing and how it was affecting the country. This issue will never affect me - I never smoke the stuff - but it does frighten me. If they're willing to stare scientific fact in the face, and claim their obstreperous belligerence is more legitimate, what the hell else are they doing? Come on. The man's comments weren't at all insidious. Why is disagreement automatically nefarious? It's utterly ludicrous. Look how irate I am!

---

Speaking of hilarity within the government, according to the BBC, kids can do it better than the adults. Probably right, too. The young people infested the HoC earlier today for some kind of Youth Parliament tour, or something; apparently it went down a storm with them, and with the staff, AND the Speaker himself! Fabulous, eh?

But wait. These eleven to eighteen year olds are all for keeping tuition fees; against the lonesome better judgement of the Liberal Democrats - and even Labour at the moment. Sorry. But, what? That's the kind of vacuous tripe I'd expect from people who eat glass. Why the hell do you feel qualified to speak about an issue like that? Do these kids not realise just how much they're about to get ass-raped by going to university?

"Run by young people for young people, UKYP gives the young people of the UK, between the age of 11 and 18 a voice" - needs a clause comma.

Not a good thing. Young people are idiots.

Ha.

McDonald's pulls out of Iceland

Iceland worried about pregnancy.

Straight, no chaser.

Synth-beats overlay the stilted lyricism of Birmingham born Mr. Hudson's 'Straight No Chaser'; an androgynous Kanye-West prototypical R&B/alternative mish-mash. Fresh from the unsuccess of 2007's 'A tale of Two Cities', Mr. Hudson, the band - lead by the eponymous Mr. Hudson - have re-branded themselves for 2009; although how much 'the band' did is entirely unclear. Feels and looks like a solo project from all perspectives. The new album features heavy and clear cuts from both Kanye West's latest release - 808's & Heartbreak - and Dizzee Rascal's Maths + English. It's an album of up's and down's, from the instant-hit of the title-track, Straight No Chaser, to the hackneyed and cliché melancholy of Instant Messenger. The album borrows gratuitously from the stock of boy's own bedroom lyrics, and although there is a fresh twist on the quintessentially talentless verbiage the album seems to crest before it has begun.

The album meanders through the first two tracks - instantly recognisable clones of any modern-day R&B star - before gradually becoming more progressive and introspective. It's not until you hit There Will Be Tears that Hudson finally makes a break from West's heavy influence. You can hear him in the production, as well as the first single which he features on; heady and hedonistic synthesised vocals and repetitive chords played off against cold-cut, clean lyrics and interesting nuanced bridges. It's pleasurable, but mundane, to follow the archetypal course of the album: Start high and heavy, slow down, finish with a crescendo. There are moments of the sublime - the poignant (though startilingly similar to Lee Evans' finale in his most recent tour), if hackneyed, lyrics of Time: "And as your old man said: Good friends, well you can count them on one hand - they'll never judge you, whatever your crime, crime, crime."

It's when it reaches these peaks that you can appreciate the rawness underneath, and you can ignore the overproduction which is rampant throughout the mainstream genres at the moment. At the end of Time - excuse me - we see a delightful little piano interlude, bringing the album resoundingly to a close, but you've had to wait 35 minutes to get to such a moment of piquancy.

We all remember the anticipation preceding Little Boots' release, and the anti-climax when it turned out to be a wantonly overproduced slice of the bizarre; and we all remember the catchy and auto-hit beats of La Roux's Bulletproof, but also, stuck at the back of your mind, is that question: What could this have been?

London, with a capital 'Fuck you'.

"Home of Nescafé."

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we will soon be arriving at our final destination - London Victoria - please make sure you collect all of your bags, and items, and leave nothing unattended at the station. Mind the gap when alighting from the train, and prepare yourself for immersion within pig-headed arrogance and stupidity. Thank you for travelling South East Trains: The Nation's least reliable source of transport, '09!"

Arriving in London is as attempting to fit through a cat flap. When you're an octopus. You pull up to Clapham Junction, and it proudly proclaims to be "Britain's busiest train station." First off: Why is that any sort of good thing? Second: Why does it not include the caveat, "Also Britain's busiest design abortion." You know when you're 14 years old, in class, and you and your friend are all making notes about what the teacher is talking about? But you get bored, so you start jogging your friends arm, so when he writes it ends up all over the page; huge fucking loops? Yeah. I think that's what happened when The Blind Architects Society deigned to lend their skills towards the design of Clapham.

"Oh, yes, I see what we should do here. Let's just put in a line going WOOOOOOAHHH. James!!!"

"Tee-hee. Sorry. Fuck it, though, leave it. 30 tracks, whatever."

"Yeah, who cares? Not like people pay out the ass for this service."

"Definitely. So, who fellates who now?"

Remember the Holocaust? I'm almost sure that the cattle-carts used for transporting Jews to the camps have been flown over here to be used as trains, instead of being left to rot as a historical testament to the atrocity. Like Hitler is reaching out from the grave to terrorise all of London's non-Aryan population. The cold hand of Goebbels masking the language of the conductor to some unintelligible commentary; Hess' toe prodding you in the back as you tempt to find a seat next to the representative of The World's Ugliest Fat Cunt Society. Please, embody some more unenviable traits, why not? Fat? Smelly? Ugly? Unhealthy? Crispy? Fuck it. Get on the train and taunt the normals. I'll admit that the British rail system probably isn't quite as bad as the Holocaust-transport, but, well, it is doing its best: The arm rest on the right hand side that don't fold up, so when you turn, you get speared in the kidneys; aisles that could only accommodate recovering anorexics; conductors trained solely in the language of Mars; toilets where you can wash your hands, piss, and converse with your fellow travellers, simultaneously; windows that don't open at all, or too much; lights which would kill epileptics; and carpets that would make Kim and Aggie shit themselves.

Not only that. But the people are so awful. So utterly, utterly awful. I guess the only way to get an Oyster Card is to prove you are the scum of the earth. Maybe you have to spit on the ticket salesman, or rape his mother or something; that is the only reasonable explanation for why everyone who frequently travels in London is such an ignorant fuckwad. The myopia is unbelievable; people genuinely don't realise that there are other citizens of the world, and that they might just have to sit in the same compartment as them. Don't hold your obnoxious unimportant conversations at a level which could break glass - lucky the windows are made of wood - and, please, don't think that we all want to know who you had sex with the other night. You especially might want to keep that last bit down, because I am pretty sure rape is a crime: And there's no way you fucked anything, let alone anyone, without date-raping them.

So that's the train.

The announcement of it being really busy is merely a terrifying foreshadow to what you are about to enter. Christ, want to know what it feels like to be a sperm trying to find an egg? Yeah: Get to Piccidily Circus tube station, and try to find the right exit for where you want to go. I genuinely saw two people who had just given up going round and round, and had lain down on the floor and ceased to exist. It was a delightful interplay between them and the wildly exuberant busker butchering some Nat King Cole on the saxophone, right next to them. No, arriving in London is nightmarish. As soon as you 'alight' (who even uses this lexicon anymore? Well, I suppose: Antiquated vocabulary for an antiquated system), you are greeted with the sights, and smells of walking into a foetid swamp. It's a sensory barrage similar only to the feeling you get when you fall into a public toilet and slowly drown under the weight of excrement and urine. Before you even stand up to get off the train, there are 900 people waiting to get on - and these people are idiots - and they all think it's acceptable to stand in disarray all around the doors. Remember the G12 police barricades? Yeah. We're British: Queue god-fucking-damnit. You cannot get off, and then when you do, all you get for your troubles is repeatedly punched in the face by pseudo-important business men with Trump haircuts who "Just have to be on this train or [I] might miss my appointment to be gently sucked off by a 2-dime hooker".

You make it off the platform. Congratulations. You've thus far traversed the first of nineteen-thousand horrors that await you. The ticket barrier looms up large in the distance; an apocryphal blight on a reasonably efficient system: It's the machine equivalent of a pregnant lady. "What's that? Day saver? Nah, don't accept those. Go see bald-fat-ginger-dribbling-moron." Why have they designed such a shabby system? It doesn't recognise all tickets; yet you can buy all tickets. Where is the fucking logic in that? Oh, yes, nowhere. Nowhere at all. Because it wasn't designed with logic in mind, it was designed with irritation in mind. Must have been drafted by Schadenfreude United - 'Selling woeful crap to the masses since forever.'

If you manage to get through that (assuming you've not been crushed under the mass of idiots behind you), you can pat yourself on the pack. Though I'd advise against it, because if you lift your arms up above your pockets, you will become the victim of theft. Mentally pat yourself on the back. Pull a weird spasm-y face too, then you'll fit right in with the hordes of cretins. Now all you have to do is wend your way through half the population of Hong Kong to get to the underground station. Don't worry if there are people beneath you, just stomp on their heads - it's the physical incarnation of the London ideology: "The little guy? Fuck him." If you've come into Victoria - which you probably have - you will only have to dodge that random immigrant trying to hock you a copy of Metro or even better London Lite; then you will just need to avoid the random Thorntons franchise - strategically placed in the least convenient position imaginable - and finally, just to add to the woe, try to get down the steps into the underground. Remember those two episodes of the Simpsons: One where they go to Australia, and Bart and Lisa run over the top of people's heads to get to first-class? That's the first reality of London. The second is where Homer eats hallucinogenic peppers and goes a bit schizo, tries to climb that pyramid, only to realise it's a million steps? Yeah. That's descending into the underground: Fuck, you need a Ray Mears qualification just to attempt it.

Stop.

Pray you don't need the toilet. Coin-operated humanity.

Now here is where you really need to grab your balls and just dive in. You are genuinely entering into a bull-ring of immorality; the underground is the prototypical ignorant design by fat-cat morons who forget what the system is for. If you were born with optional scythe-leg extensions, whip them out now. What you will see, each and every time you are in London, when walking down the steps at London Victoria - to the tube - is an elderly woman being shoved about, a couple going to Heathrow or Luton with too many bags, not being helped by anyone; and some pikey teenagers forcibly shoving people out of the way.

There is no such thing as philanthropy in London; it is the domain of the amoral and egoistical. Narcissism replaces humanity; and don't even dream of trying to break that curve. Not only can you not get across to help the old lady, because people will push you down the stairs, but even if you do, she looks at you with the kind of mistrust normally reserved for registered sex offender nursery teachers. Yes. Instead of mugging the hundreds of people pressed up against me, I have decided to go out of my way, across three hundred people, to mug a lady who lives on £18 a week. Good reductionism there, Grandma. Christ. If I picked her up and lobbed her down the stairs, she'd be fine. That's my tip: Hoist 'em, chuck 'em, watch 'em land on a mass of languid bodies. Stagnant fuckers. Please never try to get to the couple with the 13 bags. Please. You just won't ever make it. In fact, you'll be so utterly depressed by the vitriolic barrage of hate you receive on the way, you'll probably end up assuming the foetal position and then get slowly trampled to death. Leave them: They'll be fine.

You make it down the stairs? You're a better man than I am. Congratulations. Here's your gold star: Enjoy it whilst it lasts, the smog will reduce it to a pale brown within minutes. All you need to do now is figure out which line you need, for how long, and which entrance will get you to where you want to go. Simple enough: The names don't really correspond to anywhere they go, but whatever; the stations are arbitrarily just bunged on a map, but hey ho; oh, and the entrances? Yes. They should have proposed a new zone for Crystal Maze:

"Underground zone. The mission is simple: All you have to do is find the right entrance from the labyrinthine choice. You have .2 seconds, or you will be entombed forever."

It's nigh on impossible; not only are some of the gates solely Oyster, and some solely tickets, but some passengers can't read, some can't do anything but stroll (I'll get to this), and some clearly have no idea what drove them to come to this broiling pot of inhumanity. Get through. Pick. It's all interconnected anyway; you can always change (if you have the fortitude).

Made your choice? Good. Welcome to escalator land. Or, as it should be called, 'Taunting staircase land'. None of them ever work. Why even bother with the pretence? Just put staircases there and be done with it; at least then you wouldn't have the heinous crime of people who stand on the left!? Not only is that not a big deal, but it does not deserve a barrage of hate, either. Replace them with staircases: There'll never be another anti-climax, and no one will have to endure a monosyllabic litany of hatred for simply standing on the wrong side of an escalator. Jesus wept, talk about overreaction, much? You won't fit on the next tube, anyway, so, tough. Slowly but surely you can find yourself descending through a phantasmagorial landscape, devoid of personality, existing solely to sell mass-produced slave-labour crap to you en masse.

North or South?

East or West?

Good choice.

Now you've gotten over halfway, you should be genuinely proud of yourself; it is no mean feat to reach this stage of the game. All you've got left now is the crowd-level, but it is the hardest. When you reach the platform, you genuinely cannot comprehend how many people are there, and why they're all out on a Saturday night at 11 O'clock. Half the world is on the platform, you say to yourself, so at least the tube should be empty. Oh no: The other half are on the tube. Sorry. You genuinely have to force yourself on, and that involves shoving, elbowing, swearing, shouting, pushing, heaving, and mocking the person who misses it by .2 of a second. How are there so many people? Getting this train. On this route. At this time. All over London. Seriously? Multiculturalism can suck my balls as far as I am concerned; if all it produces is population influx and loathing. Nah, but, seriously, everyone can fuck off. Don't care about your nationality, hate you anyway.

Sardined in the tube like... well, like a sardine, you will slowly start to slip out of consciousness; you're probably dehydrated, exhausted, suffering from fever, and coasting gently towards death. Adrift in a hallucinogenic sea of tranquillity, you can enjoy the scenery: Humans reduced to their basest instincts, fighting merely for the luxury of travel; cursing the day the infrastructure of Britain's capital crumbled under its own façade. This is the eye of the storm; audible hush descended upon a broken landscape; barren and lonely - immerse yourself in the current of peace. Bask in the verisimilitude of escapism. It's over soon, but pray that you enjoy it whilst it's there.

Destination.

Congrat-u-fucking-lations, dude, you've made it to where you wanted to go. Half the journey is completed. Now all you have to do is zigzag across the tarmac to your journey's end. Don't fear, all you will have to encounter is: All of the cars ever made, quadruple decker buses driven by blind men, three-million idiots, four-million tourists, and Starbucks. If you can get through all of that, you will have arrived safely, a little worse-for-wear, but safe.

Now you've got to get home...

Knackered, innit.

I'm so fucking tired already, and it's only 14.27. I've got a train to catch in about 2 hours, and I'm not going to get back until around 2 tomorrow morning. That's a hella long day: First few hours of a Saturday spent in the library, and then more time doing work at home, before finally falling down dead and having to travel for four hours to go to London (there and back, innit).

Sigh.

Politicus.

From the 18th century onwards, people across the world have fought for universal suffrage: Emmeline Pankhurst, The Corsican Republic, and the Paris Commune. It was a long, and oft bloody battle, to get a sense of equality into the electorate. Women and men alike stood side by side to take back the power from the landed gentry and nobles: There was a mass outcry for equality and basic human rights. People died for the cause, people died for the right to vote. The Chartists promulgated the 'One man, one vote' campaign, and the suffragettes strove for women's rights; slowly but surely, the battle turned in the favour of the mass: "We are many, they are few". Suffrage was granted, slowly but surely, electoral reform throughout the late 1800's started giving a voice to those who before had been without a voice. The aristocracy of the 18th Century was gradually worn away at, and people started calling for their rights to be instated, it was a time of social and political upheaval. In short, it was the mass revolt of thousands of would-be voters denouncing the corrupt and inconsiderate tyranny of an aristocratic rule. Change came, at last, and universal suffrage (to the extent I wish to discuss) was established: Gender, race, ethnicity, age, and merit of idiosyncrasy became irrelevant. The right to vote was garnered on the principal of basic human rights. Obviously, there are still systems which do not grant these rights; there is still corruption, and a lack of suffrage - most especially for women - in the Eastern countries, but on the whole, the idea of suffrage has become an inherent right for anyone growing up within a civilised society.

So two hundred years of bloody battle, and where do we find ourselves? At a juncture of mass disenfranchisement; in the midst of the highest level of voter apathy seen since the foundations of the electoral rights were initiated. We're at an impasse of political stasis and decline: Wasted votes, and ignorance, drive forth political antipathy. Our electoral system still struggles under the weight of calls for democracy, and Plato's Republic is still a far off vision of reckless hedonistic thought. Electoral reform has failed to galvanize the stuttering electorate into force; trade union activity has declined, and people have become distanced from the system that is in place in order to better their lives. What happened? When did mainstream political parties adopt the same platforms as each other? When did a two-and-a-half party system become an amorphous blob; full of unintelligible rhetoric, and profligate manifestos? Why did voter apathy bring the recent nationwide turnout to such an stagnant figure?

Don't think I employ hyperbole: Turnout has been as low as 27% in some UK constituencies. It's almost unbelievable that in a time of such political change, that we find ourselves in such turmoil. So, what has happened, why, and how do we fix it?

To find out what has happened, I guess it's worth looking back a few years, to at least get some perspective of this issue. The issue of a Thatcherite Briton is always one that plays on the lips of the older generations: The poll tax, nationalisation, widespread mistrust of the political leaders, strikes; it was a time of disharmony and tension. Understandably, the Conservatives have been reeling from this ever since the vote of no confidence allowed John Major to step into the chair; but this is not a contributory factor in the disenfranchisement of those under 25. Recently, the plague initiated by Tony Blair has lead a lot of the younger generations to be disinterested with the political spheres. And now that Brown is seen as a blight on Britain's future, that's not going to change.

Evidently, we need to look further back to get a clearer picture of what has happened.

In short, the two mainstream political parties that we have nowadays were founded from The Tories (Conservatives) and The Whigs (Labour); they were two wholly disparate entities which sought for two completely different visions of Britain. Whilst the whigs, at the turn of the 18th Century, were firm supporters of the large aristocratic families, towards the mid to late 1700's, their ideologies tended towards increased suffrage, sovereignty of parliament over the monarchy, and the abolition of slavery. The Tories, conversely, supported the gentry, the CoE (Church of England), and the general rule of 'court-life'. So, as we can see: Two entirely separate and disparate parties, fighting for control of the UK parliamentary sovereignty. If you chart the ideological progression of the parties over the subsequent two centuries, what you see is a gradual - but noticeable - slide towards similarity. You arrive at the modern-day picture of Britain with only two real divisive issues left to battle over: Immigration, and the part Britain plays within Europe. There is not the political and social struggles that were present through the 18th and 19th Centuries to drive enfranchisement or voter interest; it is a Britain where the candidacy is fought on personalities, not policies.

So surely the issues cannot be the sole reason for the transmogrification of the two parties into one indecipherable mess of rhetoric? No, perhaps not; perhaps the role of the electoral system itself is to blame. Grossly oversimplified, our current system of electing leaders is based around the idea of First Past the Post (FPTP): It means that the more seats you win, the more chance you have of winning. It is not a proportionally representational system; it is one fought on seats, not number of votes. FPTP is the reason that George Bush won the 2001 American Presidential election. For instance, you might win the most amount of votes, but you may not win the majority; if there are several parties up for votes, you do not have to win the "popular vote" in order to win the seat. Parties form conglomerates in the hope of edging out the competition, and gaining the seat; thus you end up with a 'two-plus' party system (with third parties merely exacerbating the strength of the main two).

FPTP raises questions of democracy for several reasons: Is it fair to have a winner who fails to achieve the popular vote? Is it fair to only have two parties who have a chance of winning? The former is an irrefutable fact of the FPTP, the latter a bit more complex. Take the Liberal Democrats, for instance: A vote for the Lib Dems is so often seen as a 'wasted vote', because people think they will never get into power. Whilst this mentality remains - reinforced by FPTP - the Lib Dems can never hope to gain enough seats in Parliament to be able to influence Britain in any meaningful way. Third parties become indistinguishable from pressure groups, for all the effect they have. I hope I've not lost you here; basically, the system where there is only two parties to choose from leads to people not wanting to vote, because they are so similar. Basically. Unfortunately, electoral reform of the voting system will not happen under the current Labour government, simply because a more democratically representational system would further distance Labour from any hope of retaining the encumbrance. Shame.

So that's how we've got to where we are, and why. Voter apathy with tired party lines trotted out by vacuous individuals devoid of personality, and party lines which become so similar as to be indistinguishable.

What do we do? We educate. We enforce mandatory lessons in politics and political systems in senior schools. R.E. is obligatory in a secularised society, devoid of any real religious zeal, and yet politics - which affects each and every citizen of a country - is not given the same approval. People don't understand the voting system, they don't understand tactical voting; they cannot differentiate between the two parties; they don't fight for referenda or for reform; there is no care, simply. If we can get people to a point where they are genuinely engaging with the political system; where they are holding corrupt or inept governments truly accountable, perhaps we can start to see some change. At the moment, all we've got is apathy: Pankhurst would be spinning in her grave.

Sick.

I cannot even begin to qualify my disgust at what I've just watched. That was wrong on so many levels, I genuinely am struggling to put into words what I feel having watched that. If people ever wanted demonstrable proof for why people like me want to emigrate then there it is - in full view - for all to see. What we had there was classic British politics. This was the antithesis of Blackadder: 'We will fight this campaign on personalities, not issues'.

From start to finish it was pathetically misguided, and poorly executed. It became, inevitably, a demonising exhibition of Nick Griffin and his values. No issues were tackled, the Conservatives seem to think an immigration cap is a viable or practical platform on which to conduct their immigration policy; I am completely bemused as to what Labour feel towards it. Straw mentioned the impossible nature of putting a cap on population: Well, they're not the same thing there. The show should have been a platform for us to vilify the abhorrent bigotry of the BNP and their values; it should not have been us attacking Nick Griffin.

You want a reason to galvanize an underground for support of someone? Antagonise their electorate by berating their leader; instead of showing how obtuse and unpleasant the policy is.

The Baroness' only argument was ad hominem towards Jack Straw: It demonstrated absolutely nothing about what the conservatives would 'do' for us. Greer made some fairly transparent and surrealist cherry-picked arguments, which bore no real relevance to the issues that were being discussed. Chris Huhne, at least, attempted to show Nick Griffin and the BNP for what they really were, and are. Fortunately, he made the heinous mistake of admitting the classic fascist line: 'Moderation to win votes, extremism once in power'. Hopefully the people watching have been able to see the party for what they are; hopefully the British public realise that electing anyone who holds such hypocritical, contradictory, and baseless views, should never be allowed to gain even a modicum of power.

Why have we been left in a situation of such baseless idiocy within our mainstream political parties? Straw was as obtuse as any politician I have ever seen; he answered nothing with any real grace or zeal. His best answer used an image of the BNP "transmogrifying" from 'The National Front' etc., and that was apparently the answer to the question 'Have your parties' failings lead to the increased popularity of the BNP?' Wow, Jack, wow. Truly sublime. Ms. Baron-face or whatever her 'title' is made a terrible error in her assessment of civil-partnerships, and the entire panel managed to show its ignorance towards homosexuality. Whether it be Straw's demarcation between "gay and lesbian" (News just in: They're the same thing), or the Baroness's weird hypocrisy surrounding her views of civil partnerships. The only person who at least gave an honest answer, was Griffin: Granted it was a mindlessly bigoted, overzealous vilification of the teaching of sexuality to minors, but, well, at least it was honest. I'm not sure why he'd stand over here in extremist myopic policy, oh, no, wait, that's the foundation, oh, OK.

They kept making terrible allusions to associations between Griffin and leading extremist figures, such as Gadafe, or a former sub-sect leader of the KKK, but they never pressed home the advantage. You take the insult to the personality, and use it to show the ramifications to the party policy. You don't just laugh and belittle a man for holding fascist views: All that does is show people why you're spineless. It was terrible interrogation born from ignorance of the other panellists: They all seemed ill-equipped to deal with the questions put to them, instead choosing to cherry-pick the questions and answer their own self-appointed ones. It was classic politics, but it wasn't demonstrably useful to the goal of the show. The BBC was right to give Griffin this platform - the censoring of fascism is an irony too great to ignore - but the booker was not right to get such uneducated, and ill-informed guests.

On the issue of Jan Moir, they were all utterly terrible. Unlike the US, where they basically have free reign, we have alluded caveats which stipulate that any article needs to avoid latent ability to insight any hatred born from inequality. In the printing of the article, and the writing, not only were they in breach of moral standards set down within any cultured society (or at least until the BNP come to power), but they also failed to live up the PCC's code of conduct. The sub, if there is one in such a paper, should have realised the shit-storm that kind of inaccurate and prurient journalism would have produced.

Grievous errors. Indefensible stupidity. Demonising masquerading as politics.

I will say, however, that by attempting to ostracise Griffin himself, they did manage to show him for the monster that he is - so that's good. They managed to draw out the hypocrisy and inconsistency of his ideologies (mainly re: Homosexuality and civil partnerships); they also managed to show what would happen to the country if we were to elect this kind of person to power. He said it himself, it was the beginning of any tyrannical leadership throughout history: 'Moderation > Facism'. Was that not how the Nazi's got in? What they also did, on the other hand, is show themselves to be spineless and weak. No wonder we've got such widespread disenfranchisement and voter apathy: Partisan politics fought solely on one-upmanship.

Screamo? Here's some androgynous undefinable sexuality.

Seriously what is going on with all these Lady Gaga covers that 'screamo' and 'techtronica' bands seem to be obsessed with releasing? Not to knock their legitimacy as real music, but, well, they're not; they're incredibly odd, and unbelievably generic. There's something irritating about a carbon-copy-cover which only has one difference: Shouting. Yes, that's not a cover, that's just the same song shouted, which, well, ya know, isn't really a tolerable or acceptable genre of music. Speaking of inexcusably irritating artists: What is up with Lady Gaga? How has she become this laudable figure of talent? It's confusing to say the least.

So how has Gaga made the world go Ga-Ga?

I've been thinking long and hard about what makes The Lady quite so popular: I looked at style, at music, at lyrics, at videos, and at the woman. I asked fans, I asked dissenters, I asked myself, hell, the only thing I didn't do was ask her - and that's mainly because I was frightened.

I reasoned that it can't be the music, because it's trite to the extreme: Every other chord sounds like something you've heard before, and cruising through the more ubiquitous tracks is like walking down the same road each and every day. The people are the same, the scenery is the same, and the beat of your feet on the pavement is the same. So perhaps it is the omnipresence? Adoption by default? I'm not sure, really, because the press far exceeds the playtime; sure there was a week where you couldn't move for want of a poker-face, and going clubbing was like sitting inside a womb for all the variation in the songs played: Choose Just Dance or Lovegame. But that week is far-gone, it never reached the unprecedented heights of Umbrella or even some of Spears' earlier stuff. Alas, no chance of self-aggrandizing sabotage, no implosion when the substance is realised lacking. I will admit that some of the tracks are catchy, but why is that necessarily a good thing? Some other things that are catchy: Plague, AIDS, chlamydia. Great. Exploding buboes or time with the p-p-p-paparazzi?

What's more is that the best Gaga song out there is a remix of Just Dance which has a much more interesting timing, and some much smoother mixes played over the top of it; it's much more cohesive and accessible. How's that for irony?

And why is she become this giant figure in the gay community? Is it because of the undefinable nature of her sexuality? Why in the hell is that interesting? Oh. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's because she's quasi-interesting that people feel the need to worship her for painting the town beige. She's label-less. Fuck that.

I hate this whole praising of so-called 'individualism': In what sense is deception individualistic? What's with this whole 'praise the "unique"' mentality we're adopting? Can we not see that by design and definition the 'uniqueness' of this girl is mere façade? I don't understand it. Individualism is fine, but individualism is undermined when the deciding factor in popularity is said individualism. It becomes an amorphous concept, and falls under the weight of hypocrisy. When we start to praise individualism into the mainstream, it is no longer individualised, it is mainstream and androgynous: It's the antithesis of what it defines itself as. The myth of Gaga is gossip-whore mongering, intellectual stasis: I'm sure she is by no means as interesting as the legend that surrounds her purports her to be. No one could cope under the weight of being so eccentric all the time; it's an act, and it is thus not to be praised. Pioneering indifference to public approval could perhaps, ironically, be something to praise; self-effacement would be dynamite to watch; conversely the pseudo-ambivalence is not something to credit nor to laud. Get over it. It's a masque.

Tired. Again. For a change.

Have some half-assed journalism instead.

Guantanamo Bay is providing more nourishment to the impoverished digesters of lunacy: The Senate has approved the governmental plan for ‘temporarily extraditing’ the inmates of the GB to the US for trial (I love this sentence, it’s so fabulous). This announcement comes about a week after the news that judges have ruled information pertaining to British detainee Binyam Mohamed should be disclosed publicly. Of course, the decision comes merely as a platform for excusing our pseudo-sanctioning of the detainment of Mr. Mohamed: Whilst he attempts to discredit the British intelligence services, the judges hope that the releasing of the paperwork will demonstrate how active Britain was in attempting to gain interviews with Mr. Mohamed. It’s perhaps the first step for Obama in clearing his route towards the full-closure of the detainment ‘camp’ (scheduled for January of next year) – although more interestingly, the bill does not allow for the retention of the prisoners on American soil after their trial. Richard Lister, a Washing correspondent, wrote: “The legislation does not allow those acquitted to stay in the US, and those convicted will not be able to serve their sentences in US prisons.”

From betrayal to Royal Mail: Yes, the Brits are struggling under the weight of undelivered mail, and the unions are getting their angst on at pledges to hire in scabs to cover the strike days. The strikes, are mainly because of concerns over job security when phase 4 of the ‘modernisation plan’ is rolled out. Now, because British people are probably reasonably aware of this story, I will only speak about the bit that I found particularly hilarious: David Cameron’s lashing out at Brown’s alleged “[lack of] courage and leadership”. Cameron goes on to say that since the shelving of plans to part-privatise the system, “union militancy has got worse”. Cameron seems to be capitulating further to the fates of Irony as each week passes; it’s truly sublime to witness a man implode through his own communicatory failings.

Onto lighter news: A driver has managed to break 15 laws in just over 10 minutes in Switzerland. The offences include: Speeding (160 km/h), driving on the hard shoulder, ignoring traffic lights, and failing to stop for police. When police finally managed to pull the man over, he failed a drugs test. Fabulous work, unnamed Swiss man!

Constitutional victories for the women of Kuwait! They’ve today (Wednesday) been granted rights to their own passports, without needing their husbands’ consent. The gulf state has been making good progress towards a gender equal country: Women became franchised in 2005, and were entitled to become MP’s in 2009. It just seems odd that they had not the power of individual travel, but the power to be in government.

The entomologists of the world are rejoicing (well, that’s utter rubbish, but I bet they’re interested) with the discovery of a new spider! The ‘orb web spider’ can spin a yarn of up to 1 metre in diameter – impressive, I feel. And this is a proper web too – geometrically and aesthetically delightful – none of that rubbish we get in the UK or the US: Where the spider just kind of limply strings some string across a path. Long as your arm, feeble as your little finger. The only downside to this recent discovery is that it does nothing to alleviate the problems spiders have been having ever since their initial finding: They’re so utterly disgusting no one cares about what kinds live near them, as long as they can’t kill you.

And finally: A woman who was told that she needed a performing artist’s license in order to be able to sing at her job – stacking shelves – has been celebrating the week after the decision was reversed. This story does throw up two interesting points though: Don’t wear an orange necklace if you’re tanned, and that if you work in a local shop which has customers, don’t play a radio; you could be fined thousands of pounds. Yes. That’s right. But don’t sing either. Or talk. Or breathe. God is levying money on any bodily function performed in public. You just read that. £3, please. Yes. I’m god.