Clegg and Coxon

Hello, hello, helloooooo....

I haven't been around these parts recently because I have got Very Into another blog project (ohmydays, how pretentious does that sound?!) Anyway it's called frantakingpictures and, well, it's about me taking pictures. Light relief some might say. Lots of pictures, not many words...the complete antithesis of this! If I were you I would take a quick scroll of how long this post is and if it looks longer than you care for, follow the link. For titillation. *Snigger*

Oooh, I'm in quite a yarning mood. Three quarters of Parklife (Parkli?) went to the Impey for us tea and a beer which were lovely. However JD Weatherspoon spends more money heating his house than we do ours, so the warmest things I can do right now is carry on drinking my rudeboy in the dive-bomb (i.e. knees tucked up under my chin) position at my desk and tap away. Ooh I think I might talk about two things. The election and a brilliant new Blur track. They both excite me, although in quite different ways...

The election: how are we ever going to choose?!

It's almost here! I know some people are, like, enough already and other people are all election smellection, but, SERIOUSLY. We literally don't know who will be our leaders on Friday. There are only three days left of normalness! I know there's the whole thing of "it doesn't matter who wins, the Government will still be in charge..." but genuinely, massive great faults in the electoral system aside: this is our moment. Regardless of how centred the main three (THREE!) might be around the middle, it is us, you and me and my nan and your year eight history teach, who grant legitimacy to one or two (TWO!) of them to take the helm. A frighteningly exciting opportunity. NathanDogg and I went to Geneva over Easter and I was told by some people there that in certain areas they are really in to participatory democracy and every few months they have a referenda on a whole bunch of policies. Apparently it gets boring and people either don't bother or just put random, uninformed crosses in certain boxes but I am fairly certain that I would be a very diligent, if slightly overbearing, participant. The sort of excitement civic duty ignites in me is best contained in five yearly events, I fear. That said if anyone gets jury service and wants to trade....

So in relation to this I have some things to link:

1. Voteforpolicies is brilliant and I would well recommend it if you haven't already been collared into it by some other corner of the Internet. It's a way of assessing your political persuasion based on policy rather than personality. I think I came out 60% Green which was interesting/uninfluential on my decision making. However it was a good way of actually getting informed rather than just riding on the limited knowledge stored up from my first year British Government module.

2. I think how much most of our minds are shaped by the media is really interesting. Cos, ultimately, a lot of the stuff the politicians say doesn't make lots of sense to regular people, so newspapers and television shows and nextdoor neighbours are really good at decoding that and making applicable to us. But, you know, the lost in translation thing means that we're getting a cloaked view of The Truth (which, btw, is why the above link is useful). Two things caught my eye in the last few days....

- One is this Facebook group challenging people not to be reeled in by Rupert Murdoch in the next few days. Obviously mainly a load of hippy students who wouldn't be voting Tory anyway, but a good point made none the less.

- The other is this coming out by the Guardian for the first time. And yeah, it's very easy for me to say I won't be following Murdoch but it's massively more difficult to say the same about this trendy, left wing paper who basically I want to be (albeit apart from being made of paper and being squeezed through one of those printing machines.)

How everyone isn't a floating voter still is beyond me.

Blur are back (back again, Blur's back, tell a friend...)

All together. With Graham! Making all of those beautiful organny bits that have we have been bereft of whilst they made stupid albums like Think Tank. Anyway, there was a thing called Record Store Day apparently and a load of bands made a track just to be purchased in record stores and not on the Evil Interweb. So this is the first song back togeva and I consider it a thing of great beauty. Yes life can be mundane, yes often one day follows a similar pattern to the last, yes Woolworths is no more, but actually: there is something innately beautiful which makes it all have a point. Now I think we might differ on what that is, but heck. It is a really, really good song.


Gwon. You've wasted this much time.