No news = good news

The News blackout continues

Over a week now. I have looked at the online Guardian pages, but only the sport, the food subsection under lifestyle and the culture section, mainly the books because music and film stuff I prefer to get elsewhere.

Thirty days have September...

...I think,

And some other months,

The names of them also escape me right now,

Because,

I guess,

This simply isn't the sort of information I tend to retain,

It just seems so random,

Pointless,

Arbitrary rubbish.

Oh,

Apart from February,

Which is,

It appears,

Bit of a law unto itself.

Sun Kil Moon

Benji is an intensely personal album. It must be painful to make music, to write songs, opening yourself up to this degree. It needs and rewards careful listening, because the songs tell real stories and describe real relationships. One of the albums of the year, as album of the year list time approaches.

Desert Island Discs

DLL has gone all secret squirrel, and won't tell me her picks, so I thought I'd make a long list and whittle it down. I've found that I could pick eight (this year) or eight (jazz) or eight (hip hop) or eight (insert pigeon hole here) or eight (unclassifiable / crossover / hybrid) or eight (opening album tracks) or eight (featured in film soundtracks) or eight (from the Shrek films) or...

There's just so much great music to listen to.

You could do a Frank Zappa eight. Frank Zappa eights. Frank Zappa (songs) and Frank Zappa (albums) even double-eights (songs live / songs studio) and (albums live / albums studio).

Acoustic eights, electric eights, a Prince eight and a Jam eight and a lets get going morning eight and a laid back last thing at night eight and changing room eights (football / cricket) and eight that the critics panned and changed their minds about.

Luxury

Depending on what they give you to play those records on, I might ask for something better to play those records on. Or just say a huge storage MP3 player because eight's nowhere near enough. What about a cinema? Has anyone ever asked for a cinema? I'm going to ask for a cinema. Art house, not multiplex, free drinks and chocolates: film = Revels, Maltesers, Those melt in the mouth not in the hand jobbies (are those Revels?), and those assorted ones with the horrid coffee and delicious orange centres, which may also be Revels, if the others are not Revels. Anything else, including popcorn, is an abomination.

6. Captain Beefheart - My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains

6. Captain Beefheart – My Head Is My Only Home Unless It Rains

I wonder how many people have done this:

“I must listen to Miles Davis…what’s a well-known Miles Davis album?...I know…Bitches Brew...”

“Shit and rice! I can’t listen to this!!!”

When what they should do is start with Kind of Blue, work their way up to In A Silent Way, then take on Bitches Brew when they’re good and ready.

Same goes for Captain Beefheart.

Here’s a link to this beautiful, mellow song, and a video with a a dog just having fun running around some woods with its stick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeOjHtuX958

My heart won’t beat,

Until I wrap my arms around you

Captain Beefheart, the name goes with Trout Mask Replica. Another disastrous album to introduce a new listener. Clear Spot would be a much better kicking off point. No Beefheart album is ever going to exactly be easy listening from start to finish. Apart from anything else, he’s got some sort of fantastic, one-in-a-million vocal range, in terms of the low to high notes he can bang out, octaves apart (or something).

Also from Clear Spot:

Sun Zoom Spark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiXrxVoSQDI

Years ahead of its time, in every way.

Another mellow Clear Spot song is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRlWbzdmJQA

Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles, and it was a close-run thing between that and My Head Is…

Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart were regular collaborators. Zappa, a notoriously intelligent but belligerent at the slightest hint of disrespect for rock 'n' roll interviewee, was the first in a “Don't Vote, It Only Encourages 'Em” t-shirt. Neither was interested in making easy listening, moon in June rhyming music, but both were able to effortlessly produce moments of outstanding beauty.

9. Lazyitis - Happy Mondays

9. Lazyitis – Happy Mondays

I’ve gone for The One Armed Boxer Remix, the one on the 1999 Greatest Hits compilation with the garish-coloured cover. The video’s here:

http://www.muzu.tv/happy-mondays/lazyitis-video-music-video/2205890/

The one with the rain pouring on the barbed-wire surrounded five-a-side court, with Shaun Ryder rubbing his hands together for warmth, and with Karl Denver, who looks more comfortable in the weather condition, but who caught pneumonia filming the video.

The song comes at you, and washes over you, in waves. Thick lush waves. It isn’t typical Mondays, really, other than it revels in its own imperfections, eccentricities, and off-beatisms. In the summer, when I’ve been unable to escape those lawn mowing and hedge-trimming jobs, the headphones protecting me from the engine noise I hate are very likely to be playing this. Loud enough to drown everything out.

BLISS and DLL know what’s going on, but I’m sure the neighbours wonder what the occasional “k-k-k-k-khall da kops”…”you’re twistin’ my melon man”…”that one go it alone, and that one go wah wah wah, all the way home” are all about, when the petrol runs out or the ladders need moving.

If you dislike, or at least have a suspicion about manufactured, plastic bands (and I do), whether or not you like Happy Mondays, they’re of a totally different world. Like the best reality stories, you couldn’t make it up. I’ve been listening to the Greatest Hits album while writing this, and it’s so ingrained in my ear muscle memory stuff, that I’ve had bit of a mini-crisis because I’d unwittingly hit the @shuffle’ button and the songs weren’t coming at me in the expected (right and proper) order.

There’s so many great Mondays moments:

Step on : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CQLAhNlbfQ

Kinky Afro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcn4UG6Jd0s

Lose Fit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyZp1nm5yco

Judge Fudge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyZp1nm5yco

The intros are unmistakeable, unless you were in a coma for a number of years.

It’s strange to think that the nearest thing to sensible, cogent politics no longer comes from three parties all busy copying as much of UKIP’s racist spite as they dare, but from Bez, dancer and part-time maracas shaker. There’s a clip on one video where their American tour-bus driver describes the state the boys were in when they got on board that morning, and they were legendary in that respect. They also drove music forwards, burning bridges behind them and destroying barriers, and pigeonholes along their relentless way. How no football runs out to a Mondays song is beyond me.

Arsenal 1 v 1 S***s

Arsenal 1 v 1 S***s

Szczesny

Chambers Martesaker Koscielny Gibbs

Arteta

Oxlade-Chamberlain Ramsey Wilshire

Ozil

Welbeck

69% possession. 69%. You don’t get that when Real Madrid play Acrington Stanley in the European Massive Disparity in Ability and Resources Ten-Nil or Nothing Tournament.

So, how come it finished one all?

Sixteen shots on target to their four. Fifteen corners to their five.

How on earth did it end up one-all?

Calum Chambers continues on the booking-per-game trail, so all’s going well in that department. Otherwise, massively disappointing. That we’re not beating any of the top, or supposedly top sides is one thing. That we’re not turning over last season’s woeful United, or this year’s model of Spuds mediocrity, well, that’s a bit worrying.

If you ever need a laugh:

Dennis Berkamp was a S***s fan.

If you ever need another reason to hate S***s: Mahir Bose, worst sports journalist (bad writing, bad subject knowledge, no imagination, trots out clichés like a souped-up Acme cliché-o-matic (TM). S***s fan. As are:

Phil Collins, god-awful music and divorce-by-text specialist.

Ian Duncan Smith, anti-social Tory “are they on benefits? Kill 'em”.

Colin Firth. I thought he was a bit unconvincing at the celebratory end of Fever Pitch.

Littlejohn, idiot journalist who trots out what old ladies at bus stops are saying to white van drivers. Not sure but I think his first name's “Thatc**t”.

Vinnie Jones, top kicker of S***s during a playing career at Wimbledon, Chelsea and Leeds. Nothing personal, he kicked eveyone.

2. Move On UP - Curtis Mayfield, from Curtis (1970)

2.       Move On Up – Curtis Mayfield, from Curtis, 1970

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFJtfdYjhFI

You really need the long, original album version. You can’t miss it, the one with the false finish less than halfway through, and the long, funky percussion-heavy horn work-out rounding it all off. The link is to a live at Ronnie Scott’s video.

Ronnie Scott would wonder onto the stage and introduce the acts himself. I was in an audience that copped this…“you’re not the liveliest bunch, are you? Why don’t you all join hands…and see if you can make contact with the living?” A bit unfair, how animated can you get on a night of pretty avant garde jazz from an obscure three-piece band led by an alto sax player?

Just when you think you can’t like a song any more (it’s wonderful to start with, the Jam covered it, it’s about as uplifting a slice of funky soul as it’s possible to put together…etc.) the Arsenal decide to play it. So you can now listen to it and picture the players getting their 2014 FA Cup winners medals and lifting the trophy with Curtis playing over the Wembley PA system.

All the live versions have (poor) substitute keyboards playing the horn parts from the studio original. Cash-strapped Curtis trying to make ends meet with the touring band, I suppose.

The thing with Curtis Mayfield is the effortless cool. Beautiful Brother. The life and soul. Just step up to the mic and let it go.

My favourite Curtis album is There’s No Place Like America Today, seven long songs, almost all of them slow-burning, slow-tempo, downbeat, but the album works (only works) as a whole. You can’t cherrypick tracks from this one, it’s all or nothing.

It’s almost impossible…actually, strike the ‘almost’ there, it’s absolutely impossible to narrow things down to eight songs. So I’ve made up some of my own rules to help. No jazz, no hip hop, no classical, nothing too difficult. Using BLISS’ idea of having the choices playing in the background over the course of the day, I’ve tried to pick those sort of songs. They all stand up (or I think they do, anyway) to being listened to, again and again, on the strength of being just that: great songs. I’d have to have some Roots, something off Illmatic, Horace Silver’s Song for my Father, at least one Miles Davis, something by Steve Reich and a Robert Wyatt, given free reign, and an Elvis Costello, and, and, and…

…DLL won’t tell me her picks, teasingly keeping them to herself (for now, at least) so I’ll have to introduce some drama and uncertainty, and what better way than to list ten, or even twelve, and the secret to be revealed will be which eight of those ten or twelve have made the cut.

That’s win, win, win: more choices, more posts, and I’m level with DLL in the keeping people guessing competition.

Oh, and the book, and the luxury, and the holy book? There’s going to be blood on the Fallok debating chamber floor, have no doubt. Good luck, MM, in the role of sole arbiter, Dredd-like judge, jury and law.

1. Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who (Who's Next 1971)

Won’t Get Fooled Again – The Who

MM’s going for another family Desert Island Discs this Christmas, which I think is a wonderful idea. For loads of reasons. Apart from anything else, your all-time favourite eight songs or pieces say more about you, in my opinion, than many other more conventional yardsticks. I’m going to get at least eight more catch-up blog posts out of it, too.

First in my 2014 eight is a song, and a political philosophy, wrapped up in eight and a half minutes of rock n roll heaven. A good test of whether you’re actually still alive, rather than in some ‘Matrix’-like government and corporation generated human battery state is to listen to this, with the volume set somewhere between ‘ouch’ and excruciating agony, with Entwhistle’s bass, when it first comes in, actually rearranging your internal organs…and if, by this point:

Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Meet the new boss,

Same as the old boss…

You’re not pointing accusing fingers at imaginary faceless suits, then Matrix it is.

But that’s pretty well impossible, I think.

Do you believe in rock and roll?

Can music save your mortal soul?

Don McClean – American Pie

Give Won’t Get Fooled Again a chance, and you’ll be answering: "Yes, Don, I do, and yes, I do believe it can."

This is from Pete Townshend’s Diaries:

I am just a song-writer. The actions I carry out are my own, and are usually private until some digger-after-dirt questions my methods. What I write is interpreted, first of all by Roger Daltrey. Won't Get Fooled Again - then - was a song that pleaded '….leave me alone with my family to live my life, so I can work for change in my own way….'. But when Roger Daltrey screamed as though his heart was being torn out in the closing moments of the song, it became something more to so many people. And I must live with that. In the film Summer of Sam the song is used to portray white-boy 'street' idiocy; a kind of fascist absurdity, men swinging their arms over air-guitars and smashing up furniture. Spike Lee told my manager that '…he deeply understood Who music….'. What he understood was what he himself - like so many others - had made it. He saw an outrage and frustration, even a judgement or empty indictment in the song that wasn't there. What is there is a prayer.

What there is, is just a song. Just a song. But I guess I’m just a bloke who sees the world as just an absurd, obscure, unimportant little rock, taken too seriously too often by too many who need to put that ‘just’ in front of their personal neuroses and obsessions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_SWP3qI7Rg

This is a 1978 version. Keith Moon in ridiculous cans at a ludicrously oversize (fashionable at the time) kit. Listen to just how busy Entwhistle is on that bass. Townshend and Daltry are at their peak here. Huge trousers, Doc Martens, windmilling arms, mic swinging, larger than life. Maximum R ’n’ B, the loudest band in the world. Oh and look out for the Townshend knee-slide when it all comes back in at Daltry’s scream, years before it’s been adopted as the Premiership footballers’ celebration of choice.

Arsenal 1 v 2 Southampton

Arsenal 1 v 2 Southampton

Ospina

Belerin                 Chambers            Monrael                Coquelan

Diaby                    Rosicky                 Wilshire

Campbell              Podolski               Sanchez

Start as you’ve been going on: some shocking centre-half play. I was a shockingly bad and pretty unenthusiastic centre-half. For quite a number of years. Having played upfront and had to endure seasons of backpass-exploiting negative defending, when it was my turn, goalkeepers couldn’t pick up backpasses, I wasn’t allowed those achillies-crunching from-behind tackles, not without (another) card and fine. So I know a bit about playing centre-half, badly, and we’re doing a lot of that, this season.

Rosicky had a chance for us, but, bless him , he isn’t the best header of the ball, ever. He probably isn’t the best header of a ball in his family.

They were, however, zipping the passes about well, then Alexis scored from a free kick. It wasn’t so great to watch, as it was on a stop / go, frequently-buffering Arabic telly channel. I don’t know what language it was in, the it was an ideal language for sports commentary, great for conveying urgency and excitement. There’s some consonants in the corners of every foreign tongue that are forever Welsh-sounding.

I didn’t see the Southampton penno, trying to pick up a better stream. I wonder if Wenger’s ever used that form of “I didn’t see it” excuse?

“I was a little bit distracted because the Egypt Channel 19, it keeps buffering, yes? So I didn’t see the incident, but I zinc it was a certainly little bit ‘arsh, no?”

The rest was in French.

They smashed a second, and we couldn’t get an equaliser, or extra time, or penalties, or go any further in the competition. Which, when it happens (the early exit) is always bit of a shame, because it stops the younger / fringe / returning from injury players from having that outlet, and that opportunity to get in ninety competitive minutes.

That’s the end of that, anyway. Something tells me that Wenger’s latest assembly adds up to less than the sum of its parts at the moment, and that he’s not helping much. Maybe the second-string cup competition ought to represent an opportunity for someone else to occupy the managerial hotseat? Money, not success, seems to be the club’s overriding concern, and that’s wrong. I tire of all that “we can’t compete with Citeh and the Chavs” nonsense. We could, were we to get a similar financially beneficial owner.

No news is better for you

News – bad for you

Rolf Dobelli says, here:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli

That:

“News is bad for your health. It leads to fear and aggression, and hinders your creativity and ability to think deeply. The solution? Stop consuming it altogether.”

What he very much does not say, actually, is stop consuming it altogether. What he does say is that it is those addictive, short, sharp glances at the headlines in particular are bad, and that those short sharp glances add up, time-wise, and do you no good, happiness and productivity-wise. They also have an adverse effect on your ability to take in longer, deeper articles and pieces of writing. Stuff that needs concentration and thinking about, rather than passive scanning.

There’s an article refuting the idea, from a journalist claiming that moderation, not stopping altogether, is the answer.

She actually starts the article “as with all things, moderation is the answer…”, or something like that. I decided to moderate my overwhelming desire to quote people correctly.

Anyway:

First of all, what Dobelli said made sense. When I finish one thing, before starting another, I get tempted into a quick butchers at the Guardian online headlines. More often than not I’m left angry (for example, we’re all in it together Osborne leaving the richest 1% better off and hitting the poorest 25%; the immigration rubbish spouted, escalatingly, by all parties; the BBC excluding the Greens, with more of the vote than the Lib Dems and the only guys doubting the sense of austerity, from the election debates) or bemused (Dec getting married? Why would I want to know that and isn’t he wed to the other one…Ant?; ‘strictly’ what, exactly?; of course rightwingers like Cliff Richard, they like Clarkson, Thatcher, and Lloyd-Webber musicals, that's what ‘conservative’ means), no better off, no better informed and certainly no happier.

What he says is avoid the short and the sharp, but by all means attack the long, the difficult, the demanding and the complex. He does not advocate a blackout, but suggests taking a more proactive and discerning approach.

Secondly, that’s the big mistake, right there: the presumption of moderation over excess in all things. The idea that it’s moderation or the unhealthy highway to hell. My (moderate) way or the highway. There’s a lot of that sort of intolerance and jackboot approach from the supposedly softer disciplines. I can understand Dobelli and he makes gut-instinct good sense. It is exactly the moderation, the dipping in and out of issues without ever digging deeper for a true understanding that sells copies of the Daily Mail and keeps the Sky News viewing figures high.

I’m going to give the no news is good news approach a go and see if I’m happier and more productive.

In the process, I might just strike a blow for excess over moderation.

Magical surrealism

Magical Realism

BLISS and magical realism does not, in 1960s sci-fi-speak, compute. Not blessed with the highest tolerance levels known to mankind, I can’t see her suspending her disbelief sufficiently, or for a long enough time, to get through a magical realist novel.

I read 100 Years Of Solitude on holiday, in Portugal. Four of us from the football team were away together. Two of us were readers. P was reading I Robot. The cover was something like this, before:

The after version was similar, just with a cock and hairy balls biro’d onto the robot. Somehow, my 100 Years Of Solitude remained undefaced:

It was exactly that Picador paperback edition, too. I didn’t know it was a work of magic realism. I was in my early twenties and didn’t know very much at all, really. I knew it was a magical work of dazzling brilliance, and went on to grab and read every Marquez book I could lay my hands on, quicktime.

Anyway, it went something like this:

ME: You’d like the new Amis, it’s a WWII extermination camp novel and Amis researches those sort of books really well, and The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Maybe not the new Will Self so much, although that’s based on…

BLISS: Oh. Right. Anyway…

Then like this:

ME: [Seeing her on the first few pages of Colourless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage] what’re’ya doing with that?

BLISS: You said I should read it.

ME: No, I said [hits that “what’s the point / better left alone” moment]…nevermind. Any good?

BLISS: Yeah. So far.

So, from nowhere, she’s likely to have read the new Murakami before I have. She’s always been full of surprises, but this would be one of her more unpredictable enterprises.

Mr Nobody

Mr Nobody

Without apology to creationists, who belong with the flat earth people, climate change deniers, and there’s really fairies at the bottom of the garden folk over there in La-La / Ga-Ga Land, it all started with a big bang, before which there was no time (and nothing else as we know it). Now there’s dimensions and stuff, including some that make no sense to us because we’re equipped with the senses that we happen to be equipped with.

The point is, nothing, and no time, before, then…big bang, time, marching relentlessly in one direction, we thought, but marching on relativelistically since ideas changed in the early 1900’s, after the big bang, but dependent on the expansion of the universe for its direction (I think that’s about right). Bang, energy, explosion, rapid, then slowing expansion. Any two random points in the universe are moving apart. Eventually the energy and acceleration will dissipate and gravity will take over and the place will slowly, then acceleratingly collapse back in on itself.

117 year old Nemo is hanging on, at his 118^th birthday, the last mortal on an earth where quasi-immortality has overcome death. On an earth where his doctor has complete facial tattoos.

Younger Nemo bears an uncanny likeness to Thomas Rosicky.

The film is superbly photographed, the soundtrack’s great, and it picked up no end of awards. It gets billed as philosophical, time-bending science fiction drama.

It’s a series, or rather a parallel of love stories, with spectacular special effects and those philosophical and scientific questions built in.

It raises a lot of questions. About the nature of time, and what will happen if expansion becomes contraction. About those parallel timelines cats in boxes illustrate. About how there can’t be objective observation when the observers are limited to the kit and senses they have to do their observing with.

It answers the question of who will play Thomas if the Rosicky bio-pic is ever produced.

Villa 0 v 3 Arsenal

Aston Villa 0 v 3 Arsenal

Sczezny

Chambers            Mertesaker           Koscielny              Gibbs

Arteta

Ramsey

Cazorla       Oxlade-Chamberlain     Ozil

Welbeck

Villa had been laid low with a Saturday morning virus, and were depleted, player-wise. A case of Tottenham-Lasagne flu, as it’s known.

The Villa manager was watching our last game, the Dortmund debacle. Either he wasn’t paying attention or he didn’t think that his guys were able to press that hard that consistently, or the virus took away key personnel, pressing-wise, because he didn’t pick up the how to beat us blueprint Klopp provided.

We had Ozil unlucky to be flagged offside when through, and they had a free header, Sczezny saving from Clarke. Good save, too.

Then a goal-waltz. One-two-three. Three minutes, game over. Awful for neutrals, high-fiving back-slapping job-done and dusted glee for fans.

1.     Welbeck’s ball to Ozil. Composure. Relax, finish. 1-0.

2.    Ozil picked out Welbeck this time. Roof of the net. Less composed, more emphatic. I prefer composed, you don’t get one and a half goals for hitting the net that little bit harder. 2-0.

3.    Ramsey’s ball in, Sissoko (with Chamberlain hovering) OG. 3-0.

Famous Villa fans: David Cameron. Look, try as you might for that ‘Dave-of-the-people’ thing, you’re a little rich-kid. Stick to the lonely tennis and the ugly foxhunting. You know the square root of bugger all about football. Prince William. Who, exactly, is that? I thought the royals were gooners anyway? Tom Hanks. Heh! He’s a ‘Big’ fan. He’s up for the Sleepless in Solihull remake, apparently. Nigel Kennedy. Believable as a proper footie fan.

Trevor Francis was co-commentating for NBCSN Sports. At the three-way substitution:

Commentator: Rosicky, Podolski and Wilshire are all coming on.

Francis: They could take Sczezny off if they wanted.

Summed it up really. Little chance of more goals as Villa totally lacked ambition and concentrated on avoiding getting hit on the break.

(More) bad album covers

Bad album, bad cover

I walked into one place of work recently. There was a pile of old vinyl long players on the desk. It’s taken a while, but I’ve learned, in these situations, to keep my gob shut and wait and see. I just gave a non-committal “we started doing house clearances then?”. Just as well. There was some genuine excitement over a copy of ‘The Sound of Music’. Left to my own devices, I would’ve said something like: “you are taking the p*ss here, right?” I went to the pictures with my dad to see 2001 and The Exorcist, my mother dragged me to watch singing bloody nuns and Nazis in jackboots lonely goatherding and eidelweissing on for hours and hours and hours…

Then someone picked up a copy of ‘Evita’. They started making positive noises. I took a tactical visit to the bathroom and told myself to say nothing.

It reminded me to have another Internet bad album art trawl. I’ve found a few WTF’s:

Names across the top there, see? Imagine being Canta of the Wanka’s? “Hi, I’m Canta, I’m’a inn’a los Wanka’s, with the apostrophe, no?”

Maddy Genets, ladies and gentlemen, and her ensemble, ready to kick ass.

The Reverend (and his pipe) in (the) Rhythm (method), including Tiny Bubbles.

There’s what were they thinking?

I mean, someone had to know they’d be cutting that hole out of the middle there, right?

More what were they thinking, but this could be someone with a GSOH:

Finally, just plain frightening:

We've multiple Elmers

I'lth kilth those screwy badgerth













We've got a 600-odd committe of Elmer Fudds, sitting around, sometimes standing up, and generally talking about...well...you know...stuff. Making sure us plebs are kept in line and on the straight and narrow.

I did a bit of Internet research.

Probably quite a risky bit of Internet research, given the Home Secretary's deep love of snooping. There's a David Mitchell piece in the Guardian or Observer last week, if you want the clever angle. He had this to say:

“Politicians are always having to resign – for shagging the wrong person, for lying about their expenses, for texting a photo of their cock (there’s never a not-spot when you need one). Fair enough. But it is a worrying indication of the national mood that Theresa May’s position remains completely secure in the aftermath of her frightening remarks. The priorities she reveals in her letter are truly shocking and, much more than the worst excesses of dishonesty, infidelity and ineptitude that we’ve seen from our leaders in recent years, make her utterly unfit for government.”

I just had a strong bad feeling about her and her almost panic-stricken insistence on getting the cutain-twitchers and prying old witches charter on the statute books, but that's strong stuff there: utterly unfit for government.

Anyway, ignoring Theresa May's CCTV looking over my shoulder [the things you have to do to keep a blog going, eh?] I Googled... “how much to hire a hitman?”

Did you know there's a website called HavocCentral (or something like that), a collection of advice for shoppers on the black market. The hitman pages couldn't use 'You Shop – We Drop' as a slogan because Tesco had already taken it.

Anyway, surprisingly little Internet research, and there it was: the average cost of a hit (Australia) was between £2,475 and £4,950, sterling.

The badger cull cost over £3,000 per badger (official sources) and £5,200 per badger (unofficial sources that included the costs of policing the operation.

There it is, in the numbers. An Australian minor criminal operating at the low end of the underworld spectrum can organise a killing, for business, revenge, or message-sending purposes, for considerably less than our Whitehall geniuses can organise shooting a badger.

I didn't do the next, inevitable searches, how many cattle could you inoculate for the £5,200 for one badger, because our ruling classes love killing things, that why they go fox hunting; nor how much would it cost to knock off all members of parliament with the consequential tax savings. Theresa might be watching.

Nasty, ugly, and telling us what to do

Nasty, ugly, and despicable

We seldom watch anything much together, BLISS, DLL and me. Me and BLISS watch The Sopranos when we get the chance and when we remember (look, in contractual terms, we're in overrun, having missed our completion date, and have applied for multiple extensions of time – work is (albeit slowly) in progress). [The Sopranos was available on Catch Up TV, it is now available on Jesus H Friggin' Christ, Where've You Been for the Last Fifteen Years? TV]. Me and DLL watch The Walking Dead.

Just not my thing, really, telly.

For some reason, we watched the documentary into the lead-up to, and the fallout from the Baby P torture and murder case.

All the major points hit home: the absolute horror at the ordeal of a short life that child suffered; incomprehension (but not surprise or shock) that people can be so fatally damaged and flawed as to those things; the mistakes by the social services, the police, the medical teams, all charged with looking after the welfare of vulnerable children.

It also left dismay:

At the way the media were manipulated into, and couldn't wait to give the easy target some cheap shots and then a good kicking.

Then, after further reflection, dismay that there's no dissenting voice among the broadcasters or the newspapers. Not one journalist with enough brains or balls to move away from the sheep and propose a different point of view. Telly, radio, newspapers all mobilised against the social workers and one lone under trained and exposed doctor. The politicians and the police used their powerful connections and spin teams to stay in the clear. Absurd that the police escaped criticism for not dealing with the criminal acts that should be their core operational concern.

Absolute dismay watching Cameron at the dispatch box, taking his own cheap shots, benefiting from the cruel and unusual death of a child; absolute dismay that Ed Balls, after clearly having manipulated, politicised and mishandled the situation then happily (he was almost giving in to a smug grin impulse during one interview when he thought he'd scored some points and come out squeaky clean) hung people out to dry. If either had an ounce of moral fibre they'd've stood down after watching their performances.

It's the lack of that dissenting voice that's the scariest thing of all. Without even one expression of an alternative point of view, nothing will ever change. Nothing can ever change. The politicians at the top are in power under the systems currently operating and therefore have selfish vested interest in maintaining those systems. Those systems that have failed the vulnerable for years. The police, the civil service, and the media who feed on the circus have their own futures bound up in that maintenance of the status quo. So no-one stands up and asks, or sits down and types the awkward questions or the unwanted truths. The minister responsible, pleased as punch with his get out of jail free card, gleefully announced that he had no idea that OfSTED destroyed their records three or six months after publishing their inspection reports. He's paid for running that department, he showed not a scrap of embarrassment at his unfamiliarity with its workings. Towards the end one man spoke up. Why had the social workers (generally) and one individual doctor (despite the broken back she apparently missed actually happening after her examination) been vilified in the press and the media, while the police and the government departments had escaped criticism? Not as in less, but as in nothing to speak of?

Borussia Dortmund (Hoodie) 2 v 0 (Suit) Arsenal

Borussia Dortmund 2 v 0 Arsenal

First of all, there's no excuses and few positives to take from this game. That 2- 0 gap may as well be a million light-years in terms of the energetic, effective football gulf.

Wenger-boy or Klopp-ite? I guess I'm a Klopp-ite.

Before kick-off the news wasn't good, but foreseeable. If your squad is overloaded with attacking midfielders, they're all almost guaranteed to get through the season (and, probably, the next three seasons, as long as the surfeit persists) unscathed. Wherever the shortage is, if you let one develop, that's where the injury build-up will occur. We're light in the defence department, so that's where the treatment table is busiest with the EC broken footballer mountain.

Hector Belerin came in for Chambers, out with tonsillitis. There we are paying the price for what we didn't do in the summer:

Szczesny

Bellerin Mertesaker Koscielny Gibbs

Arteta

Sanchez Wilshire Ramsey Ozil

Welbeck

Jurgen Klopp seems impossible not to like, unless you have an aversion to the big, happy, loud, energetic blokes that cause havoc in trinket shops with narrow aisles. He's like one of those huge, affectionate dogs who knock tables over with their wagging tails. I was going to insert a load of pictures and comments contrasting the two managers, but there's no need for too many words. Klopp doesn't smile a lot, he laughs, proper and loud, incessantly, he was in a branded hoodie and tracksuit bottoms. Wenger's starting to look like the economics graduate he is. Wenger smiles rarely, and prefers the “got one over you, there” smirk. Klopp's blue-collar team made Wenger's white collar bunch look very second rate.

There's a good panel on Sky. Souness talks sense. Merse can be hilarious and is Arsenal through and through. Shame about old big-nose Hamman, but there you go.

The computer's on beside the screen I'm watching the game on, and some cock is tweeting on about the Sweaties' independence vote, just before kick off. That's why political debate's impossible. These are the sort of people you have to deal with.

The positives? Good goalkeeping. Gibbo played well. Wilshire was energetic and willing, and Welbeck got into decent positions and had some chances. Not much other than that. Bellerin did ok, Kos was ok too. Other than that there were a lot of stinkers, but stinkers brought about by a team looking to press hard, and high, and intelligently, and to keep that intensity up for the full ninety. Most technically gifted players like a little bit of space to show their skills in. Denied those millimetres they start to look very ordinary. Very ordinary indeed up against a big, strong, determined, organised, motivated and fit as anything team prepared to make life difficult for their opponents every inch of the way.

There were just the twenty two players out there, but it seemed as if we have about seven of them, and they had the other fifteen. I blame the nondescript blue kit, up against the highly visible bright yellow. Why weren't we in red and white anyway?

The goals came just before and just after half time, and there could've been many more, all going in at our end.

Hoodie 2

Suit 0

The economist has got some thinking to do.