At first I wasn’t too bothered by the idea that Nick Griffin was going on Question Time. I definitely subscribe to the view that shining a light on the BNP is a better way of showing them to be the plonkers they are, than forcing them into dark corners where it’s easier for them to mislead and shit stir. That they are inveterate liars and myth-makers as a ‘political force’ is without question – even this week the Dick Barnbrook their London Assembly member was discredited in court for lying through his teeth.

But as the furore has unfolded, I’ve realised I made my usual error of drastically over-estimating the forces of reason ranged against the twats. Jack Straw is the big gun rolled out by Labour to face Griffin on QT and this instantly flashed warning lights: Straw is a hesitant, thoughtful speaker (to put it kindly) and - more importantly - he is massively hamstrung by his senior position at the heart of the Labour Party establishment. There will be so much he simply can’t argue with, from that standpoint, while maintaining the balancing act of being their ‘corporate voice’. Anybody who’s watched Question Time recently will know, regardless of how individually gifted or honest the Labour panellist might be, saddled with being that struggling party’s spokesperson, they’re about 85% fucked before opening their mouths. It’s only on the rare issue where the party line isn’t clear or important, that they get a chance to shine a bit and briefly occupy their own ideological space.

So the last thing we need is a Big Gun in that sense: we need a proper hard hitter, one of the brilliant mavericks who can destroy the Griffin but previously wouldn’t’ve gone near him. Of course I’d love to be proved wrong and watch Straw flatten the holocaust-denying Hitler mini-me scumbag. But it’s going to be a rum do. My friend Steve just pointed out we need Galloway, or Dennis Skinner when he wasn’t so frail – though the razor is still sharp, or maybe Jeremy Corbyn, if they’d ever let him remotely near anything media-shaped.

Livingstone would be another choice, possibly the closest remaining to the Labour establishment who could make a real dent. Though I spose Prescott could just twat him. That might win Labour the election in a single punch.

The worst thing – that now feels oddly inevitable to me – will be if the Tories pile in with a useful fighter to show utter derision for Griffin (even smug old Hague could do that) and then they come out as the party that properly challenged the far-right. It would be another swift nail in the coffin and I started to think this afternoon: maybe it’s a put-up job and the Tories jumped onboard with the BBC first, leaving Labour playing catch-up once the gig was booked.

Another warning bell: why didn’t the BBC put the nazis on Any Questions first? Why have they been able to leap straight up to the high-profile TV version, rather than having to prove their mettle on the slightly more highbrow (and less consumed) radio version first? If the BBC was playing straight their newfound ‘involving’ strategy for the BNP, surely they should have had a BNP panellist on Any Questions long before the much higher-risk idea of sticking one of the cunts on the telly?

Anyway, it’s going to be fascinating and possibly horrific. I think still, deep down, I prefer that we give him the rope to hang himself, rather than silencing him to the extent that he can play martyr. But it’s risky.

A quick extra blog, here’s an interesting vid of (excellent) lefty US singer-songwriter Jill Sobule performing at the D: All Things Digital conference, which is run by Rupert Murdoch’s people. She sings a sweet song written ‘for’ Rupert Murdoch.

Imagine being hired for this kind of event and then being asked to be specifically on-topic, yet non critical! Everyone knows who everyone is here: they know she’s a lefty, she knows her co-star runs Fox. I like Sobule and she manages it well but there is something uncomfortable at the heart of this relationship.

If she did ever feel debased, how would she express it? Wouldn’t want to jeopardise a lucrative relationship. For now at least, she’s owned. In an odd way this follows up what I was trying to say in my Morning Star column about Britains Got Talent. She’s not even a court jester here: too soft, doesn’t really speak truth to power, just makes a joke.

As of this week, it’s now illegal in the UK to photograph a police officer, under terrorist legislation. No, I didn’t mis-type, if I’d meant to write ‘anti-terrorist’ I’d've written that. Same week, it turns out Home Secretary Jackie Smith took £100,000+ of our money on top of her minister’s salary, to pay her sister for rent on one room.

What we really need right now is a really flamboyant, imaginative, V For Vendetta or Unabomber-style one-person ‘terrorist’, to take a massive stand against the grand theft and moral bankruptcy of our establishment. Banksy with a cannon, putting into operation various elaborate ’spank-the-bankers’ or ‘waterboard Hoon’ schemes.

It’s weird it hasn’t happened, just like it’s weird that the assassination of the oppressor by the oppressed seems to have vanished in modern times. Nowadays the only people assassinating individuals seem to be powerful foreign governments. How come, when Joe Public is so obviously bloody furious and frightened, nobody’s kidnapped Hoon or Miliband or some of the bankers or that oleaginous cunt Smith, humiliated shit out of them, left him in a Brixton backstreet and then distributed the footage to every online video service?

I know, I know, it’s obvious, a spurious question, mass media divide and rule is just as powerful as CCTV and not being allowed to even photograph a fucking cop, that’s why.

Another solution: time to fuck the law.

Obviously, we already make the law take second place to our own moral/ethical imperatives. I’ve surely written this before: we drive too fast (sometimes with no good reason). We take illegal drugs. Our sex lives start at too young an age. We steal from the office or download films. We make these decisions blending personal morality with need and a calculated risk about getting caught. Very, very few of us use the written national law as a hard and fast set of rules for personal morality.

Meanwhile, what is the establishment doing? The people running the corporate world, government and media are all doing exactly the same thing, on a grand, and, it turns out, world-recession-causing scale. Read any random page of any random issue of Private Eye and you’ll get slapped in the face by some scandalous corporate, government, media or local government illegal escapade at our expense.

They’ve lost ALL moral authority and, in itself, that puts their adjustments to the written law of this land into the ‘invalid’ box. Fuck them. Damn them to Hell. If Smith has the power to put folks in prison or kick them out of the country, she should live up to the spirit of her office, not just the sneaky, carefully-worded letter of her code.

One more moment of craziness to avoid writing a proper blog. I put it on Facebook but can’t resist posting it here too. This is not a spoof, Brits, this is the genuine article:

(super, super gutted. I should be at Proud Galleries right now partying with the Xtra Mile Crowd but circumstances have conspired and I’m at home, sober. tears before bedtime)

At the risk of this blog becoming a series of pointless short posts about the Beeb… Did the BBC make this Hammas fighter cross-eyed, or does he just look like a muppet in real life?

(this is the cover photo on today’s BBC News website story about the ceasefire ending)

Poppy Day thoughts after some personal stuff… Post-tour malais kicked in worse than usual, despite being delayed a few days by the excitement of the US election. I guess it was A) a fantastic tour B) cut short in its prime and C) we hung with some of the loveliest people, so I’m really feeling the lack of Hoodrats, sitting at home catching up on boring paperwork. We reunioned yesterday to catch Johny in Cottonmouth Rocks play some gothy bash in Brighton, alongside Mr Jack Cooper, Vile Imbeciles and Restlesslist. Absolutely lush bill. Not a duff moment, despite The Hope’s mediocre set-up. Young Thomas White was there with a big sexy beard and Restlesslist all dressed up as ladies which was almost as disturbing as Vile Imbeciles’ normal stage outfits.

I head for Europe in a fortnight – on the train, thank God – which will be a markedly different kind of adventure, driving Frank from Paris to Vienna, before we get chauffeured around Italy, playing solo and duo shows all the way. I’ve never driven in mainland Europe before, my only experience of left-hand drive is a few nervous trips around Los Angeles. I did make it from the 101 Café, up the 101 to Eagle Rock at night in the pouring rain without killing anybody (or spilling my spiced chai latté shake) but everyone’s hands were very sweaty upon arrival. So I’m not convinced the Gard du Nord pick-up in the centre of Paris at 4pm-ish is the ideal place to start… nor the Swiss Alpine roads in November the ideal place to continue. Hopefully we won’t meet Clarkson, James Bond or some super-rich Euro speedfreak coming the other way on a twisty bit, or it’s ravine time for us all.

Anyway.

This is the week we remember veterans, however I’ve always been profoundly uncomfortable with the dominance of the Royal British Legion’s red poppy, especially during the years they used “wear your poppy with pride” as an aggressive slogan. Of course, I have absolutely no problem with people who decide for themselves to wear the red poppy but, similarly, I hope nobody has a problem with my decision not to wear one and to wear instead a white poppy, if I can get hold of one. I suspect, if I had a profile high enough to be on any BBC TV programmes this week, of any kind, it would be an interesting pre-air issue. They really seem to force presenters and guests to don the poppy. I’ve written to them to ask about their policy and, if I get a decent response, will let you know what they say.

Two contrasting problems with the red poppy.

First a pro-soldier argument. I think the red poppy signals tacit acceptance of the MOD’s abject failure to ensure the life-long welfare of veterans and their families. The very idea that we need to, even in part, provide for soldiers out of charitable donations is a disgrace, if the state (which is us) is to employ people and send them into battle. It should go without saying that they are looked after for life and their families are similarly supported. Anything less is disgusting – the duty of care is mine through taxation, not charity.

By embracing as an establishment a charity responsibility in that area, we both absolve the government of responsibility and, at the same time, distract attention / donations from other, equally (or even in my opinion more) deserving frontline professions such as firefighters and nurses. 

Secondly, an anti-soldier argument. The real victims of war are civilians. Soldiers decide to take the job – we don’t have national service any more and the army is a well-paid career in comparison to many. And they aren’t employed to die or get injured (armies aren’t armed and trained to lose), if we’re honest about it, they’re hired, trained and armed to kill people, subjugate and control those they don’t kill, and destroy ‘enemy targets’.

Civilians in war zones have no such choice. Particularly in recent years, when our armies have been sent to foreign lands to engage in highly politically-motivated invasions, occupations and military actions which have nothing to do with any direct defence of our own British sovereignty – and were sold to the British people and MPs on a bunch of fat lies – we show an astonishing lack of interest in civilian deaths and casualties by comparison. Half the time, we don’t even count them. They’re the ones I think we should be remembering.

Right, I’ve totally failed to finish and publish a tour diary and now it’s election night so our rock’n'roll adventures will just have to wait.

Tonight we’re (obviously) staying up to watch the results and I’ll be blogging live here anything that strikes me. You are more than welcome to comment, argue, or whatever. I’ll also be on Twitter and joining Dean’s group blog HERE. 

Cheers, see you on the other side.

I’m no anti-American, seriously, not in a million years. I don’t subscribe to any of the Brit crap about USA stupidity or the lack-of-irony myth, when my own experience has been almost exclusively that of open-minded, open-hearted people. They’ve maintained welcoming curiosity and in many cases good manners that have long gone in many parts of Drunk UK.

But it’s worth really thinking about some of the raw aggression and open racism that has surfaced in the crowds at the increasingly desperate McCain/Palin rallies recently. The heckles need to be tied to the possible defeat of the conservative ticket, the economic problems and the slow decay of the American Empire: and I think they, as much as anything, signal the truly dreadful possibilities ahead in that land.

I love the USA so much. A month doesn’t go by when we don’t sit at home seriously weighing up the possibilities of moving to southern California and, when the boys from Entourage went out to Joshua Tree last week to take shrooms, I felt a physical longing for that place. No, it doesn’t conflict with my politics, obviously you can love a land, people, culture, counter-culture, even streets and buildings, without loving its government or systems. And anyway, if I was to move somewhere purely for politics, I’d be in Cuba or Venezuela right now, so that makes no sense.

However, I think there’s a truly epic gathering storm, as the great empire of the 20th century makes way for the great empires of the 21st, in the far east. You can see it in Simon Schama’s exploration of the water problems in the Colorado basin and even hints of it in Stephen Fry’s lighter-in-tone but equally perceptive jaunt.

They are used to opulence and it’s running out. They are used to freedom and – in order to maintain control as resources thin – it will be reigned in. Some are used to tying morally regressive patriarchy to isolationist elegy, when now, both are seeping away. Some are used to ignoring the Other America, the underbelly of The Wire and Hurricane Katrina and no health insurance, yet now that underbelly is rising. They are used to cheap gas (it’s still half the price of ours) but that’s ebbing fast and relies on their enemies.

They are used to being winners and deifying the concept of victory, yet they are headed – in so many ways – for defeat. There’s still no bigger insult than ‘loser’ in the USA.

They are armed. 

By the way, I’ve just boshed off a complaint to the BBC about last night’s execrable Panorama, which, despite touting itself as a balanced look at the US election, turned out to be a strangely Fox News-esque and unBeeblike hatchet job, moulding scarcely any real content into a negative picture of Obama’s rise, while avoiding any similar study of his two rivals and ignoring his running-mate completely.

Simply: to bring up the Reverend Wright connection as an argument undermining Obama (in an emotive way, juxtaposing the worst soundclip over a photo of them together), yet not mention a single issue about Palin (such as her exorcism by a far more extreme religious nut, who has run people out of their homes for being witches, or her links to Alaskan Independence movements, or the bridge to nowhere, or McCain’s Keating scandal, or – for god’s sake – her rampant creationist extremism), instead letting the ‘hockey mom’ myth stand and presenting her as a mainstream populist alternative, was beyond biased, it was dangerously irresponsible and misleading for the UK public about what is really going on inside the USA.

While there is definitely some space for questions about Obama’s lack of legislative substance and fast rise through Chicago’s political scene, it was despicable that they let McCain and Palin off similar (any!) scrutiny.

Yesterday I realised the ultimate right-wing dream: a one-step solution to the global economic crisis that doesn’t involve scary socialism. Just make a big (cost-free) ethical shift instead of these crazy-expensive fiscal shifts… here we go: let’s legalise the black markets. Drugs, the sex trade, the movement of labour and suddenly some of the world’s biggest, most stable and profit-making trades become a sizeable chunk of the ‘official’ economy. All the resources currently spent fighting them can be channelled into their development and the deregulators get to crow victory. A shot in the arm, if you like.

Really enjoyed yesterday’s Manchester jaunt. Marc Riley is a total gent, his team are lovely and we rocked it. It’s dangerous having a bar so near the studio though – especially with gaps between each performance – because the band has a swift one after get-in, another swift one after soundcheck and then one between each song.

Not me, I was driving.

Only bummer was, we adjourned to a highly recommended curry house, where everyone else had a delicious meal but I had a shite one. My floridly-described main course was just sag aloo with an onion. Asked for it mild, got it medium-strong. The tarka dal was viciously hot as well and even the pilau wasn’t much cop. And they forgot my mango lassi (though it was the nicest bit when it came). So I don’t care that the rest of the party was raving, I was gutted. Then three hours down the motorway I nearly lost my rag in Welcome Break, where it took thee different attempts to score a pathetic excuse for a coffee. Both Coffee Nation machines in WHSmith were bust and the staff were a bit ‘confused’. Especially once the milk started running and running. So I was forced into Coffee Primo, Welcome Break’s pretend café brand. It’s the worst! The staff can’t make hot drinks for shit, you get a filthy lukewarm milk’n'dirt mess and you don’t realise it’s undrinkable until you’re back on the road, doing 80 miles an hour with nowhere to throw it. The canteen was full of flies as well. God I hope their IT department tracks back!

Just got out of the Earth Terminal studio with Jim, although it was a shorter session than previous ones – we didn’t mix or even finish vocals, just slammed down multi-layered backing tracks for seven songs and they sound amazingly lush.

I can’t really tell you anything about the theme, style or anything, because it’s not my story to tell – but it’s the third Jim Bob album I’ve been involved in and definitely the best yet. It’s light-of-touch because Jim wrote these tunes fast, while concentrating on something else (writing the script for his story, which has been optioned by a Hollywood production company). It’s also black-as-treacle… but that’s a judgement on unfinished stuff.

Johny came along for the ride and brought crazy instruments with him. We jammed out chunks live, rehearsing the evening before each day, which is a departure for Jim’s stuff. Also, although we’ve been gigging together for almost a year, I haven’t been in a studio environment with Johny before and it was great, he’s got a similar constant musicality to Tim Victor which I should’ve noticed before but didn’t.

Another highlight of being in the studio with Jim is Mr Spoons’ high class catering. Johny is a pro chef but that didn’t cramp Spoons’ wong – he did seriously gorgeous mushroom wellington, squash soup and a blinding veggie curry. But more importantly, he made sticky toffee pudding with dates that was psychedelically intense. Because I’m “cutting down” (whatever the fuck that means), I ate one portion slowly – but when you eat slower, less is more.

The trip kicked my own demos up the bum and I’m rattling along at a decent pace now, will have enough tunes to hand in a disc to management before we head off on tour. I’ve also worked out what this year’s Christmas (free homemade) EP is going to be: A.A. Milne. 

A big personal prop to Sarge and Jane because Sarge is taking 3 weeks off to go campaign for Obama in Nevada and (I assume) he’s only able to do it because Jane is keeping everything else going. And when I say ‘campaign’ I really mean it – he’s working his arse off knocking on doors, canvassing and fighting the good fight in a vital swing state. The US elections seem enormous, showy and impersonal. But really, the importance of swing states means it often comes down to a few thousand votes in certain areas. The work Sarge does in Vegas and surrounding towns will make a real difference.