Alan Coleman

It’s only been a few days since the it was announced that NOW was finishing with its last edition today, it all coming  amid the phone hacking scandal that is currently gripping the nation. My Tweet Deck has been working overtime trying to cope with the amount of  tweeters and bloggers feeling sorry for the workforce and bemoaning the end of 168 years of British media history.

Which raises question, is the end of The News of the World really such a big deal? It’s not as if we’re losing a great tradition of fine writing, insight and social commentary. No, nothing of the sort, because The News of the World has always been a pile of utter shit.

It doesn’t even look very nice, its overtly aggressive design has changed little since the 70s very much like the conservatism it champions. Awful. All this talk of justice and high level reporting, really? This is the Newspaper that has a history of taking the moral high ground on practically everything, whilst at the same time dragging the conscience and morality of millions through the gutter. Should we really be mourning the passing of an institution that has a morbid fascination with with sexualising both violence and young women at the same time? Sex, children, violence and women, in no particular order and preferably at the same time. Anything to boost circulation, to sell copy,  make money and titillate the nation.

The only aspect of this whole debacle I feel sorry about is that The News of the World didn’t have to face the humiliation of going bust. As for the people who worked there, they’ll have to join the dole que. Just like everyone else who loses their job, like the Miners had to, the people The News of the World demonised back in the early 80s whilst licking up to Thatcher.

Nothing ever lasts for ever.

As the tabloids scream with excitement, “Our boys launch submarine missile attack on Gaddafi”, an important question has to asked. Where is this latest spark of genius going?

We could do what we did in Iraq the first time around in the early nineties. Make a lot of noise with tanks and planes then leave without getting our hands dirty or really achieving anything at all. Or we could do what we did in Iraq the second time around.  Justify a cripplingly expensive military campaign with lies and deceit  in order to satisfy the religious egomania of pious men (and Jesus).

In both cases it’ll be innocent families picking up the tab, both here and abroad. There, it’ll be relatives blown to pieces and ignored as collateral damage. Here it’ll be young men who could have done something with their lives being hyped up as “The bravest of the brave”, by politicians whose own offspring will be tucked away safely at a select school.

Hollywood couldn’t think up a name for the latest campaign, and I doubt even Guy Richie could either.  It’s called Operation Odyssey Dawn.

You couldn’t write it any better.

Perfect for the glorified tabloid cartoon layout of  “Our boys” in action. The perfect fit for the suited man making the chopping action outside number ten. The perfect soundbite to accompany “It is legal and it is right”, just because a public schoolchild tells the foolish poor that it is so.

Yet another military endeavour, another opportunity for men to sprout soundbites on BBC News, to go to church on Sunday and pick up accolades.

Yet another opportunity for waste.

It was after I read an article somewhere a few years ago that I began to think that things were going wrong for British Pubs. I can’t remember what it was in or when, but it was about John Illsley, former Bass player from Dire Straits taking over a pub in Hampshire, which turns out to be called the East End Arms. He made a comment about the kind of clientele he’d like to attract, something along the lines of replacing the lagers with real ales in an attempt discourage the “Lager crowd”.

The reason I’m talking about this now is on the back of some reading I did yesterday about the Government and Local Authorities trying to regulate how and where we use our local pubs. Typical New Labour stuff, no standing at the bar, no swearing, children welcome, you know. I put two and two together and came to the conclusion that New Labour and John Illsley are actually after the same things. Gentrification and profit.

When John Illsley spoke of the “Lager crowd” what he meant was people like you and me. People that use pubs in the way that they we’re always intended, rather than his idea of them as restaurants for his own kind of people.  No more faded pictures of the 1979 pub football team, no more fruit machines, no more carpet complete with engrained filth, no more coloured curved glass hiding drinkers from prying eyes, no more raucous laughter, no more waiting for years to finally be let in. That’s all been replaced by inclusive entertainment for all the family. A restaurant, and a profitable one too.

I guess that’s what happened. The locals at the East End Arms were made to feel unwelcome, the place was stripped of any individuality and transformed into a hearty gastropub full of occasional diners and ‘hand cooked’ crisps. You could argue that it’s been voted one of the top 50 pubs in Britain, but by whom? The Guardian? What would anyone that writes or has ever read The Guardian know about local pubs? Nothing apart from the fact that the Sunday Roast can be ‘very pleasant’ when mum comes to stay and that the double buggy can fit through the doors that where widened for disabled access.

So John Illsley finally got the kind of gentrified clientele he wanted after installing “The Guest Ales”, an ordered and pleasant slice of New Labour’s soulless and boring middle classes.

Two Things. The first is the London Marathon. I’d only ever watched this on TV before and always considered it quite tedious, all those wacky costumes and over enthusiastic charity types seemed a little bit too much. We went to see some friends who live in Canary Wharf on Sunday so got caught up in the crowds on the way there, and bloody brilliant it was too. Despite my ill informed judgment (who would have thought it?) about the event it turned out to be not only really good fun, but also quite inspiring. Moreover, in the current climate of hysteria surrounding our identity here we have an event that shows that we can be a great nation without necessarily involving the tabloid press.

The costumes, the pain, the smiles and the decency all underpinned a general feeling of pride both in the spectators and the runners. As the Samba bands played in the sunshine, and pubs spilled out onto the cracked pavements on the Isle of Dogs, we suddenly had a glimpse of how life can be lived without politics, greed and Richard Littlejohn.

The second thing is a gig I went to at the Electric Ballroom last week. And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead has been one of my favourite bands (aren’t they all?) for years, and last Thursday didn’t disappoint. I won’t bother using F7 to come up with a load of adjectives other than to say that they’re the real deal, and as I’ve said time and again, all the best bands are American.

Things are looking up!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alcoleman/sets/72157617401351574/

http://www.trailofdead.com/

The expression ‘British jobs for British workers’ is quite simply laughable. The biggest hole in the current argument involving contractors at the Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Lincolnshire is that they are not British jobs at all, in fact they are French. French jobs that have been won, fair and square, by an Italian contractor who has every right to employ whoever it wants. Being British does not entitle anyone to work or special treatment within the EU. Again, they are not ‘British Jobs’ and the locality of an employer in relation to ones abode carries with it no obligation. Moreover, the benefits of EU membership has been carrying our economy for years, which is why the comforting and mythical idea of the British job and the British worker is as laughable is it is ludicrous.

When Clement Attlee created the National Coal Board after the war, he did so with no real intention of creating British jobs. It was just assumed that the coal would continue to be mined by the same communities as it always had. So when Margret Thatcher’s Conservative government closed the coal mines in the early 80s, preferring instead to rely on a cheaper imported product, the communities that had done the work previously had a fair claim to a British job. This is where the double standards start to emerge, and it doesn’t take the brains of an English craftsmen to know who is behind it either.

So what we’re really talking about is British jobs for British workers, just as long as it’s economically viable and certain other considerations are taken into account. Oh, and it helps if the media are on your side. Which is why striking miners spent two whole years fighting the media and the Government for real British jobs, and the argument for non British jobs was settled in a week. Shameful.

And since when has the tabloid press been a supporter of the striking worker? The swap from ‘The enemy within’ to ‘The honest working lads’ has been an overnight sensation, literally. The Daily Mail supporting Trade Unionism, who would have thought it? Strange times indeed, or an alternative agenda at play? Given the press and their historical attitude towards industrial action, it’s a little difficult to reconcile the cosy relationship that has developed without pointing to a common denominator. Foreigners.

Amazingly, they do have trades in other countries. Maybe they don’t aspire to the same level of craftsmanship that built our proud empire, but they probably get by with enough skills to build everything the British do, but somehow far better. Further still, we don’t have a problem with foreign children making our trainers in sweatshops for practically nothing do we? The reason being that it suits the economics of our vanity and is somehow justified by being a luxury item. This where the ‘British jobs for British workers’ argument finally crashes and burns.

And please don’t try and tell me that this isn’t a race issue when the idiocy that is the BNP are using it as their latest nationalist soundbite, and they’re not racist are they? Nick Griffin says so. ‘British jobs for British workers’ is a logical progression from ‘Jobs for whites’, only slightly more politically correct. It’s a shame that the working lads couldn’t have made their voice heard without appealing to the current zeitgeist of nationalism in the same manner as the pro Israel lobby.

It’s just all to easy. The flag, the aggressive rhetorical questioning and blatant ugliness of misguided British superiority. Things are changing, and sitting around watching Jeremy Clarkson tell you otherwise only reinforces the underpinning concept of this entire argument. We’re just not the country we used to be.