Thursday 10 June 2010

WOTSONTELLY. BOHEMIAN CRAPSODY?

Maybe, in the end, if he  lives long enough  and doesn't die from smugness fatalis arseholeitis, cheery Jock, Andy Neil, will interview us all;  We are joined on the Daily Politics by Mr Dick The Prick and Mr A Young Anglo-Irish Catholic, for their take on Prime Minister's Questions.

Today, or yesterday, it was Mr Brian May, guitarist with the Rock-Bombast ensemble, Queen, more accurately Dead Queen.



Dr May has a PhD in astro-something and is a regular on BBC's The Sky At Night, with the oldest, angriest fairy in the world, Sir Patrick Moore. As RockGods go May's not so bad.  He has far too much money, of course, his group dusted in the golden fairy glitter brought by the death of its frontman, the distraughtly promiscuous, exhibitionist,  Freddie Mercury and although his playing - on his home-made guitar - is both trademarked  bitter-sweet elegiacal  and manic, full-on stadium rock bluster at virtuoso standard, it doesn't seem to have changed much, these last thirty five years. And nor does he.  Trainers and long curly hair. And bags under the eyes. I have no time at all for Queen's canon and one of my Visions of Hell is of being locked in  a 'seventies bar, with only two songs on the juke box - Bohemian Rhapsody and All Right Now - and them alternately  playing,  loudly, throughout Eternity. But May seems together and thoughtful. No scandal attaches to his name, if he does or did drugs he did  or does them privately, none of Keef Richards'  toxic, bad-example, millionaire junky chic and he seems to have remained with his wife, Wotsername, the actress, rather than grossing-out, nonce-ish, with impressionable teenagers.  Unlike fellow showbiz giants, such as Fab Macca, May seems able to be Off, not forever playing, thumbs-up,  the rock hero, and to engage in other things. Today's isshoo was fox-hunting. May is dead agin it and pissed off at the Tories, for whom he has always voted, seeking to reverse the ban. He was quite straightforward, using dogs to tear apart other creatures isn't by any stretch of the imagination, sport, degrades all concerned, is cruel, sadistic and repellent and should stay banned. Culling badgers instead of inoculating cattle against TB was nearly as bad.  The recent fox attack on children was a  ten billion to one event, foxes don't do this unless frightened by something or cornered, it was the careless disposal of food waste, together with the vicissitudes of the Hunt which drove rural animals into urban settings, leave 'em alone, he said, normal, sensible farmers would rather keep the foxes down themselves  than have the Hoorays galloping all over their land.

May runs a charity, establishing shelters for wild animals orphaned by human cruelty, caring for them until they are fit to be released into their natural environment, Save Me, it's called.  On the odd occasion that I hit a rabbit or a hare, very, very rarely, Watership Down's chilly anthropomorphic horror floods my mind and that's what I think, too - Orphans, frightened, hungry and defenceless. It is not, I know, very manly, but there it is. We are what we are.

I know. May would be better using his money and his energy to damn WarCorp, Gauntanamo, Sri Lanka, China, the live incineration of young widows in the Ancient Civilisation, Aye, right,  of India; the Israelis' Nazi torments in Palestine. Fuck,  you could talk for a month about violated humanity, why worry about foxes.  Well, maybe, like most people, maybe more so, May is aware of his  impotence in the face of global brutality and therefore turns to something at which he might succeed, something in which small acts of kindness, of mutuality,  have a knowable benefit.

On the DP,  May was flanked by the odious, twisting and turning every which way but truthfully Hillary Benn, a grotesque, camp caricature of his Dad, the wretched old phony,  and by some loathsome braying Toryboy, up his own arse at being a junior minister in the coalition of the unwholesome and playing to the huntin' an' fishin' - and probably hangin' an' floggin' - dark hinterlands of RightWing  Filth-O-Graph cruelty.

Against these two worthless ciphers, Benn pro-ban, the other tosser pro a revisiting, as we call these things, Brian May, forever young, really shone, sparkling not for his celebrity but for his spontaneous, honest,  angry compassion for the Others, with whom we share this place, without whom, we are nothing. 

The blogging farmers are up in arms, of course, because, subsidised, supported and infrastructured  by the rest of us, they own the country and detest townies having an opinion on matters agricultural, the fisherfolk are the same, would fish the oceans empty if they could, and then bleat at everybody else;  there are no trees or hedges where I live, apart from my own, those clever farmers grubbed 'em up, so that, behind barbed wire, they  could grow a few extra turnips,  fuck 'em. C'mon the foxes.

May was, on that dismal show, a breath of fresh air.   Catch him if you can.  

25 comments:

a young Anglo-Irish catholic said...

Very nearly, Mr I.

Was invited onto the Daily Politics sofa in 2003 to be quized by Neil (a huge bugger in real life) on the idea of the Congestion Charge.

At the last minute then-transport minister Darling decides to stride across from the House to talk on the same subject. But he won't share the sofa with a hack, so I was kicked out onto College Green to contribute via a monitor and earpiece.

So didn't get on the Neil sofa. So near and yet so far....

PT Barnum said...

The phrase 'a huge bugger', Mr AYAIC, is pleasingly ambiguous.

I can only claim being removed from a small commentator's role on a Radio 4 programme at the behest of one M. Portillo. Which is, perhaps, why, whenever I see his mug now, my brain produces the word 'chicken'.

Dick the Prick said...

As per previous thread, some people find animals a much better form of companion than most humans.

The late Alan 'nazi' Clark also nearly came a cropper a few times because of the Right Wing flithy bastards that inhabit the Tory Party. No liberal he but animals, he viewed, as innocent and therefore to be afforded with the greater level of respect because of it.

jgm2 said...

Foxes? Nahhh. Beat them with fucking rocks. They eat all my rabbits and pheasants. I say 'my' but they're wild creatures up until the very last second.

But if the foxes didn't eat them then there'd be even more for me to eat.

I blame Beatrix Potter. The whole fucking country anthropomorphising Foxy Loxy and all that shit.

Bollocks. Chase 'em with hounds - why should I give a shit if folk want to make their dogs work for their lunch? Really. What business is it of mine?

I don't get my panties in a bunch buying cheap battery-farmed eggs and neither does most of the population. Why then, would we pretend they give a shit about a fox that, till the last second or two of its life lives as free-range an existence as is possible.

I know which I'd rather be.

The class-warriors in Scotland were the first to do away with it. Along with declaring everybodies private property a giant outdoor pleasure park. Well, as long as you don't live in the city of course. In which case, obviously, your private property is your private property.

It's all just divisive Labour shit Mr Ishmael. Us and them. Townfolk and Countryfolk. Bosses and workers. State employee or public employee. Privately educated or state educated.

Divide and conquer.

None of this live and let live shit from the meddling cunts. Although, in the context of beating foxes with rocks, I appreciate the irony.

jgm2 said...

Bit of respect too for Patrick Moore please (Wiki)

In the Second World War Moore lied about his age in order to join the RAF and from 1940 until 1945 he served as a navigator in RAF Bomber Command, reaching the rank of Flight Lieutenant.

....

The war had a significant influence on his life: his only known romance ended when his fiancée, a nurse, was killed by a bomb which struck her ambulance.


Patrick Moore. Legend.

Anonymous said...

I for one like Patrick Moore, what I can't understand is why the pilots of UFO's land in Suffolk or the back and beyond in the good old US of A risking being shot instead of landing in his back garden.

Jane Llewellyn said...

Oh my goodness! It is good to see you're still in action. Ma pere only just sent me this link today after I was thinking of you and missing your 'voice'. I just posted some of your old stuff on a site I read here (won't give the link in case you're incognito) It is SO good to see you're still around though. I've set this blog up on my feeds, and will read it over the next few days. MISSED you!!

lilith said...

I have very few worries about foxes being shredded by dogs. It makes dogs happy, and foxes kill just for a laugh themselves. I might even join the fun if an ex prime minister or two were substituted for the fox.

That is the most shocking attempt to hide a receding hairline I have ever seen. Mr May has obviously been keeping foxes to enhance his pate. Get a wig man, or do the decent thing and have a haircut!

mongoose said...

Chasing politicians with horses and packs of dogs sounds a jolly wheeze. Can I play?

Queen? Jesus, even I don't listen to that lot. May though can play the guitar a bit. Aww, the Seventies, eh? Bless.

call me ishmael said...

I like Patrick Moore, too, I think he's fabulous, just that he is the ancientest of bachelors, a la Grocer Heath and that he fizzes like a Mount Maggie Volcano when he goes political.

Not just the dogs and foxes that concerns me, Lilith, it's the fetishised orchestration of it all, for pleasure, why don't they all just meet up in some Tory dungeon somewhere, and flog each others arses, that's ok with me, but this hunting shit is like bearbaiting, or witch burning, or throwing Christians to the Lion, Oh, the hours that I've spent inside the Coliseu, how far back do we need to go to find cruelty parallels, there's always been fuck-ups getting their rocks off on the suffering of others; further down the evolutionary chain, they are, the redcoats; they should jump back into the sea.

Speaking for all the criminologists here, I can say that these little microcosmic celebrations of cruelty often lead to full-blown beasting, our most notorious serial killers shared a childhood penchant for pulling the legs off things, burning things alive, I see foxhunting as being on that spectrum of human misbehaviour, revolting and corrosive. Cruelty to animals, as the night follows day, leads to cruelty to children.

Mr jgm2 is far too well minted in the brains department, I guess, to be anything other than Devil's Advocating, here. But just in case he's not, I would just point out that it is measurably, demonstrably proven, you know, with ree-surch and scientific measurement, that children who have animal companions thrive and flourish resultantly, they are more stable, responsible, confident and empathic; modern, progressive health services introduce small mammals, mainly dogs, to hospital wards, where stroking them has wholly beneficial, measureable effects on patients' health. Most importantly, for me, is the knowledge that to look in Dog's eyes is to know the inescapable sorrow of existence; anybody who says otherwise is talking out of his arse.

call me ishmael said...

Yo, and welcome, Lady Jane, too kind, as ever. You might like a couple, a bit further back - Empire Burlesque and, I think, More Empire Burlesque. There's lots of stuff, pictures, too.

Elby the Beserk said...

Mr. May is thinking - "To comb over, or not to comb over?"

lilith said...

And yet Mr Smith, the Spanish manage to be generally kind to children in spite of their national lust for bulls blood, and their meanness to canines. Whereas the Brits are famous globally for their fear and loathing of children alongside their passion for dogs/cats/horses....

forthurst said...

Fox Hunting for the tally-ho brigade is about riding a horse across country, over hedges and ditches which is both dangerous and exhilarating. Why then do they have to kill the fox? Well quite apart from paying rental to the landowners, people need a reason for doing things for themselves even if the reason itself is spurious.

People who dislike hunting, apart from popular musicians who having made loads of dosh have entered their phase of public self-indulgence, are really riven with foaming class hatred possible tinged with the anthropomorphic anxiety of the townie who has never connected the neat cellophaned packages in Tescos with the four-legged creatures glimpsed out of the car window at 80 mph on the motorway but of course they will never admit to such infantile emotions. Vegans are nuts.

call me ishmael said...

And what, pray, is wrong with class warfare. exactly? Should we have stayed slaves, or serfs? Maybe we should have gone without the vote. Wasn't the demand for universal sufferage just a nasty old bit of class warfare? If you have your way, Mr f, we will return to The Rich man at his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate. All things bright and beautiful, indeed.

But you are wrong, anyway, objecting to ritualised cruelty to dumb animals is the mark of a civilised person and as such, unlike your own fevered prejudice, a classless position.

Anonymous said...

As an excercise in extropolation that was a tour-de-force, Mr Ishmael. My plea is for tolerance not deference. Furthermore, the ritual is in the ride not the dispatch.

call me ishmael said...

If the former is the rite, mr anonymous, then surely the practitioners could dispense with the latter; it is a bit like saying, forgive me, that the Crucifixion was actually all about carpentry.

Anonymous said...

that the Crucifixion was actually all about carpentry" Just look how thats come on the last 2,000 years or so, I would imagine if he were to spend Easter on a cross they would use "No more nails". Quicker and much more humane and bugger the stigmata fans.

mongoose said...

It is interesting isn't it that Mr forthurst derided "class hatred" and Mr Ishmael defended "class warfare"? It is the very root of it all in my view. This imprecise medium once again throws up the truth by accident.

I was once in a fancy management meeting and one of the client's lot sneered at my Midlands glottal stop. (I yam frum Cov.) The future of the fucker's job was in my gift, the poor deluded eegit. I resisted the temptation to have him done away with but it was a close run thing. (Take care what you say, my friends, when the consultancy savages come to call. Almost any excuse will do with some of those bastards.)

And I remember someone of the left denouncing all Tories as bastards. It was on Radio 4. What struck me was the hatred. This is, regardless of our own politics, what we are against. As our host noted a few days ago somewhere else here, anger and shouting are OK but when you turn your brain off and just hate people because of where you assume they have come or the badge they wear on their sleeve, well then you are truly lost.

call me ishmael said...

Altough I could not quibble with your main point, there was nothing accidental, mr mongoose, in my coinage, as I am sure you know.

No more nails, by the way, mr anonymous, is neither fish nor fowl, strictly cowboys for the use of, good for fuck all.

Anonymous said...

Oh I don't know it works well for me when putting up dado rails or do you prefer 6 inch nails and remeber the slots on screws are only there for taking them out. Don't force it get a bigger hammer.

Anonymous said...

Too right old ways are the best copper pipe and this new fangled plastic shit just pushfit connections that never leak, rubbish, bring back lead pipes I say no water hammer with them. Good enough for the Roman empire good enough for the British one. Oh wait we don't have one any more, cancel that order for lead pipe.

call me ishmael said...

For instant, unbreakable adhesion you need pearl glue crystals heated in a pot, they cost about twenty quid, the pots, and applied with a brush, a kilo of glue will last you for years, costs pennies, for people who want to give their money to Jewsons, in return for an inferior product, then SticksLikeShit or NoMoreNails are the very thing. For jobs needing less instant adhesion and a bit of manouevreability then ordinary white PVA glue is the best product, augmented, maybe, by nails - or pins for finer work.

Whoopy tye-aye-oh back to you, Sir. Back on your horse, now.

Perhaps you will share your knowledge with us in future on another subject in which you are expert. Wanking, for instance.

Anonymous said...

Wanking, for instance. Sounds like your an expert try this one sit on your hand for a while till you get pins and needles in it then toss yourself off feels like someone else is doing it. As you are diabetic do you get pins and fucking needles in your head smug fucker?

call me ishmael said...

Sounds like you are a master craftsman at something, then.