The World Is Fucked So Here's 9 Kirsty MacColl Songs

'We should just take our chances while we've got nothing to lose'

Jesus Christ this world is fucked. 2019 was a basket case and 2020 will be the worst year til 2021, no contest. So fuck it, here are 9 songs by Kirsty MacColl.

The first time I came across English singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl, who was almost certainly killed by a multi-millionaire supermarket chain owner in 2000, was on "Fairytale of New York". On that iconic Pogues song, she plays the down-and-out female character, singing a duet with the ever-drunk Shane MacGowan.

On that track, she's full of charisma and fire. But if you stop there, with MacColl's work on someone else's song, you're missing out.

Because Kirsty MacColl, daughter of communist folk singer Ewan MacColl of "Dirty Old Town" and "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" fame, is something else. Her songs in her too-short career are filled with wit, anger and humanity. (You can watch a doco about her life and songs).

Genuinely original, her songs span pop, rock, country and Latin music. She can be tender, but most of all she knows when to shove the knife in and twist. A Kirsty MacColl song has zero tolerance for cunts.

Her death aged 41 in 2000 was not just tragic, it was fucking symbolic. It sums up this shithole of a world.

WHen she died, MacColl was on holiday in Mexico, having just visited Cuba again.

(A supporter of besieged Cuba and its culture, MacColl raised funds to break the fucked-up US blockade on the island. When she was killed, a charity was launched inspired by her work -- Music Funds for Cuba -- to support Cuban artists.)

MacColl was diving in a designated diving area with her two sons when a speedboat owned by Guillermo González Nova, multimillionaire president of the Comercial Mexicana supermarket chain, illegally sped through. It was heading straight for her 15-year-old son Jamie before MacColl managed to push him out of its path, only to hit by the boat herself.

She died instantly.

Despite Gonzalez Nova being on his boat, one of his employees claimed to have been driving (he later said he'd been paid to take the blame). A Mexican court gave him a fine for killing MacColl of US$90.

That's the world. The rich kill you and get the hired help to pay a minor fee.

Here is a a playlist of 9 songs, mostly hers with two covers thrown in. Any seeming connection to the current events in Britain or elsewhere is purely coincidental.

***

There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis
But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you

Lucky the world has changed and, since MacColl's death in 2000, no lying man of any note has risen to any sort of prominence. There is also a cool alternate country version of this track from her debut album.

They smile and say cheese
They're so eager to please
But they'll never remember your name
The names and the places all change

I love this song, with its country stylings. It is savage against men being cunts, but still shot through with hope, tenderness and a large dash of self-deprecation.

The mercury is rising and it's not all that surprising
In the land of milk and honey where you make big money
And it always keeps the rain off and it always keeps you dry
But back home the people hate you and you never did know why

I don't know how, but Kirsty MacColl appears to have written a song about Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison literally 30 years ago!

I thought of you when they closed down the school
And the hospital too
Did they think that you were better?
They were wrong
You had so many friends
They all left you in the end
'cause they couldn't stand the patter

I don't know how, but Kirsty MacColl appears to have written a song about recently re-elected British Prime Minister Boris Johnson literally 30 years ago!

It is not in my nature to ever pick the winning team
Sometimes I think I'm happy then I remember it's a dream
Now it isn't in my nature to ever pick a winner
I always pick a bastard who would have me for his dinner

A true story about a bastard of a man/ruling class.

Then I met an Englishman
Oh, he said
Won't you walk up and down my spine
It makes me feel strangely alive
I said: In these shoes?
I doubt you'd survive
I said: Honey, let's do it

I must admit I can think of an Englishman I'd like to see killed in such a fashion. Fuck it, I can think of a few million of the Tory voting pricks.

I don’t want to change the world
I’m not looking for a new England

That's probably just as well Kirsty, after events in that fucking shithole this year.

You just haven't earned it yet, baby
You must suffer and cry for a longer time

Welcome to 2020... We are yet to earn deep-going radical change to create a humane, sustainable world. Yet.

Why should it matter to us if they don't approve
We should just take our chances while we've got nothing to lose
Baby
There's no need for living in the past
Now I found good loving gonna make it last
I tell the others don't bother me
Cause when they look at you they don't see what I see
No I don't listen to their wasted lines
Got my eyes wide open and I see the signs
But they don't know about us
And they've never heard of love

Look I'll admit it. This song is how I feel about Jeremy Corbyn. But I get it, he lost and he, as an individual, is stepping down as leader of Those Who Fucking Want There To Be a Fucking Future (English Division).

But the ideas -- the policies and the Manifesto developed since he unexpectedly and Quixotically became British Labour Party leader remain... so I guess what I am saying is this is how I feel about Corbynism and the mass movement around these ideas.

So yeah. We should just take our chances while we've got nothing to lose.

And some people think capitalism is a system with nothing of any social value to offer any more???

Prince Harry and Princess Meghan, I think.

Now, after the incredible scenes of the royal wedding on Saturday, it may be possible the world's had its fill of Prince Harry and Princess Meghan news.

But it would be a fucking shame if we let this moment pass, in which the very embodiment of imperial power, unearned wealth, inherited privilege sought to slightly soften its image by letting a ginger marry a biracial American while the homeless were physically evicted from the surrounds, without highlighting a profound point it has proven beyond doubt.

Because there are some people out there who refuse to stare social reality in the face ... (possibly printed onto a single piece swimsuit)... and say capitalism is nothing more than a social system based on gross exploitation of people and the planet that has long exhausted any historical progressive role it could play!

WELL SUCH CYNICS NEED TO COP A LOAD OF THIS!!! I'LL POST IT AGAIN IN CASE YOU MISSED IT THE FIRST TIME!!!

Yeah! Check it out!

Yeah that's right, forget "but what about your smart phone" smart-arse answers to those who defend a social system that can only produce such technology in factories so terrible they put suicide nets to stop the modern day slaves from jumping... WE FINALLY HAVE THE EVIDENCE OF JUST HOW SOCIALLY VITAL CAPITALISM TRULY IS!

YES!  The online printing company Bags of Love is offering customers the chance to have the newly-wedded royals faces printed on anything customers want, which is exactly the sort of individual choice directing a free market that Adam Smith famously described in his 18th century treatise: An Inquiry Into How The Wealth of Nations Can be Extended By Putting An Inbred Ginger's Chin Onto a One Piece Swimming Suit So It Sort of Looks A Bit Like The Wearers' Exposed Pubic Area.

A spokesperson for the told the Metro:

Our favourite [printing suggestion] has to be the Harry and Megan and Wills and Kate swimsuits. Nothing like printing the face of a Prince or Duchess on a swimming costume and rocking it proudly on the beach.

Oh no, nothing like it at all, and in case you've forgotten, HERE IT IS AGAIN!!!

CAPITALISM!!!

Yes, according to News.com.au:

Your royal creation will be printed and posted (to UK locations) within days ... The bizarre product will set you back $68.24 (£38) plus a $7 (£3.99) delivery charge (delivery in the UK only). 

If a swimsuit’s not your thing, there’s hundreds of themed merchandise springing up on the internet to buy. From a commemorative coin to tea towels, condoms, T-shirts and napkins, here are some of the wacky items on sale.

My God, you read that right! Harry and Meghan condoms! WHAT A SOCIAL SYSTEM!

Oh capitalism has its critics who bang on about how 62 people own 50% of the world's wealth while 25,000 children die every single day from mostly preventable causes. BUT FOR FUCK'S SAKE... HAVE ANOTHER LOOK AT THESE SWIMSUITS AND TELL ME IT ISN'T WORTH !

Sadly, no image of the condoms were available.

Do you think these would be produced in... oh I don't know... maybe Cuba??? I don't think so.

Sure, Cuba has free health care and has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States, but what is the point of raising children in a world where they cannot buy a swimsuit to allow Prince Harry's chin to cover their groin??? IT DOES NOT BEAR THINKING ABOUT!

AND THE THREAT TO HARRY AND MEGHAN SWIMSUITS IS NOT JUST IN THE CARIBBEAN! No, the leader of Her Majesty's Allegedly Loyal Opposition is Jeremy Corbyn, an infamous self-confessed socialist!

And his left-hand comrade is Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who just fucking told the BBC that his "job" was to "overthrow capitalism"!!!

His pathetic justification was that he wanted to “radically challenge the system” to prevent another catastrophic economic crisis like the one ordinary people are still paying for with savage austerity, with the sick freak stating :

Only a few months ago we had someone die, a homeless person die, within feet of a door at Parliament. I don’t want to live in a society like that and I don’t think the British people do either.

Yeah that's right. NO MENTION AT ALL of Harry and Meghan swimsuits or even condoms! Presumably such progress has no place in Comrade McDonnell's socialist dystopia.

Sure, Corbyn-led Labour's policies aim to end homelessness and extreme poverty.... BUT AT WHAT COST TO SOCIETY???

Well OK maybe their proposals actually say nothing at all about not letting people part with presumably hard-earned cash to get disturbing products over the internet, and are just about bringing the large corporations to heel and putting essential and major industry into public hands to organise the economy in a more rational and sustainable fashion... but can we afford to take the risk???

LOOK AT WHAT IS AT STAKE!

This is too valuable to risk!

No, we must stick with the social system we know and trust. The social system that delivers! OK maybe not in relation to action on climate change, as just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all global emissions... but on the important things like how to commemorate a wedding involving an aristocratic, outdated, over-privileged institution with real style!

As the great, sadly late Texas country singer-songwriter Guy Clark puts it so clearly in the song below, let's stick with the "stuff that works".



Stuff that works, stuff that holds up

The kind of stuff you don' hang on the wall

Stuff that' real, stuff you feel

The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall...

I can't say for certain, but I am pretty sure Guy Clark was talking about monopoly capitalism in this song.

You can never hold back spring... Tom Waits on Jeremy Corbyn. Sort of.

You can never hold back spring
You can be sure that I will never
Stop believing
The blushing rose will climb
Spring ahead or fall behind
Winter dreams the same dream
Every time

You can never hold back spring
Even though you've lost your way
The world keeps dreaming of spring

So close your eyes
Open you heart
To one who's dreaming of you
You can never hold back spring
Baby

Remember everything that spring
Can bring
You can never hold back spring

We could fucking use some spring in Australia, and not just coz it is really fucking cold right now.

'There is hope where you can't see it, there is a light after the storm...' Corbyn, neoliberalism and Shovels & Rope

The British elections certainly didn't go according to plan.

A humiliated Theresa May looks to form a decidedly unstable government via some agreement with a bunch of fanatical Presbyterians from Ireland who are convinced they are British, despite all available evidence suggesting they are actually definitely from Ireland, and whose social views have not advanced since 1690, and whose agreement to prop up the Tories is based on reinstating government programs of Catholic burning or something.

But a bigger story is the scale of the successful campaign by Jeremy Corbyn, his team and left activists around a popular Manifesto that breaks with austerity and neoliberalism. This campaign's success defied predictions of almost all pundits and polls.

Is this important? I'd say that depends how bothered you are by the horrific catastrophe of the Grenfell Tower inferno in London, where repeat warnings by residents were ignored by the cost cutting privatised company running council housing in dangerous conditions that are repeated in tower blocks the poor live in across the country.

BBC reporter trying her utmost to stop lady telling the truth; trying to put spin on it. Bravo, lady. #GrenfellTowerpic.twitter.com/snYSCY82G7

— Z4M1R (@Z4M1R7) June 15, 2017

If you think a further kicking of the poor to worsen such conditions is neither here nor there, then maybe the success of Corbyn's campaign can be viewed on grounds of "well that was surprising, that is interesting isn't it, an election manifesto about NOT kicking the shit out of ordinary people prove quite popular with ordinary people? I guess this crazy ol' world will never fail to surprise us, eh?"

But for those strongly opposed to a society that sacrifices the majority to ever worsening conditions amid growing inequality, while the poorest and weakest are sacrificed, literally, in bonfires... the fact that Corbyn was so successful, and consolidated the hold of "Corbynism" on Labour's leadership, and has helped energise a mass movement, led by youth who were inspired to turn out in huge numbers to vote for an alternative FOR FUCKING ONCE... well it means something more.

I mean, everyone told young people Corbyn was a no-hoper, at best a decent bloke with nice ideas but who'll never get anywhere. But it didn't work, they turned out in the largest numbers for years because the people telling them this have done nothing but spit in their faces. Meanwhile, the Manifesto Corbyn has touting actually promised them something when no one had ever offered them anything before. Not really.

And their response?



Within Labour, which is now the largest left-of-centre party across Europe with as many as 800,000 members, the Great Neoliberal Orthodoxy has been overturned. There is the growth of a mass, youthful movement around the politics of solidarity and hope.

The fact that, while Corbyn has failed to form a government this time, he is very well positioned to do so sooner rather than later around a Manifesto that says "For the Many, Not The Few" on its cover and actually fucking means it ... is not just stunning, it is heartrendingly, beautifully hopeful.

Derek Wall, an ecosocialist and activist involved in Green politics since 1979, which is a fucking long time ago, and who is the joint international coordinator for the Green Party of England and Wales, put it simply an article on Green Left Weekly:

For the first time in my lifetime, the left in Britain are making dramatic gains.

We have lived through, and are still living through, a dark neoliberal nightmare where people and planet are sacrificed.

The rise of Corbyn (and similar left political breakthrough in other countries) is not The End of it, not by a long way. Hell, here in Australia, we haven't gotten close to even looking like seeing this type of political breakthrough.

That is without even getting to the challenged a Corbyn-led government would face if it won government from powerful entrenched interests, notwithstanding his platform actually being little more than reasonable. For a taste, you could just look the intense financial blackmail applied to Greece when they elected Syriza on a perfectly reasonable platform of not letting Greece be strangled to death. Syriza finally capitulated and abandoned its democratic mandate with the banks threatened with total collapse -- all done to send a strong message to ordinary people across Europe that they should STOP asking for FUCKING REASONABLE THINGS if they know what's good for them.

And that is not even discussing the fact a Corbyn government would formally head an imperial state whose actual democratic content is not quite as strong as it claims on the label, and would need to be countered by strong mobilisations from below.

But the Corbyn movement is a serious challenge to all this that brings hope of a struggle that may end the neoliberal nightmare, for the sake of the many and fuck the few.

It is hard to know how to fully put this into words, so I will do what I love to do, which is a) use a song and b) make that song by the glorious country folk husband-and-wife duo from South Carolina, Shovels and Rope, from their 2014 album Swimming Time.

Said I thought it would be colder
You put your head upon my shoulder
Ain’t it funny
How time just seems to run
What the hell have you been doin'
Not too sure, guess mostly movin'
I’ve been spinnin' for so long
Now I guess I’m spun 

Like the widest river
Like the brightest morn
There is hope where you can’t see it
There is a light after the storm
But won’t you help me to get through it
I’ve been flailing like a child
My mistakes, they are so many
For my lovin heart is wild 

Not quite old
But far from young
Body bold
With a youthful tongue
Like a kiss held out of context
I can’t separate my mind
We can set this boat on fire
We can leave it all behind 

Like the widest river
Like the brightest morn
There is hope just up ahead
There is a shelter safe and warm

 I am NOT crying! Fuck you. You don't deserve another Shovels and Rope song, but I'll give you one any way.

...I’m going down a long road, maybe it's the wrong road
But either way I gotta find my way back home again
It's too late to turn back now, gotta get the lead on out
Gotta find some way to make it right on

And nobody knows it like you do babe, nobody knows it like you do
Nobody knows it like you do babe, the lengths we will go to

There must be some other way, I just don't know
Gotta get myself back up on that high road 

But nobody knows that like you do...

What is that??? MORE??? Fucking Jesus, OK in the spirit of sharing I offer this... Shovels and Rope covering Nick Lowe's classic "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.
I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?
And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I want to know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

...And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.
'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me want to cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

Alright now fuck off.

This Vogue Piece Proves Jeremy Corbyn Has Sold Out To Bourgeois Values

Tomorrow, Britain will vote in what is pretty widely considered the most important British general elections in years. On one side of British politics, you have a bunch of elite, pampered, born-to-rule overpriviliged arseholes whose brains are too small to imagine anything but a cruel status quo whose victims they patronise and insult with empty platitudes and vacuous rhetoric.

And that's just the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party! The actual Tories are even worse.

But on the other you have a youthful, growing, determined mass movement of people who want an end to anti-poor austerity measures, oppose the privatisation of health care, who want to stop selling arms to brutal regimes like Saudi Arabia and end bloody Western interventions that kill large numbers and create the conditions for the sort of horrific terror attacks in Manchester and London.

And this movement is coalesced behind one man: Jeremy Corbyn.

Much maligned by the political and media establishment, who treat him like some sort of bad joke, the veteran socialist MP has defied expectations ever since he entered Labour's leadership race in 2015.

Armed with a powerful Manifesto that represents a decisive break with austerity and proposes tilting the scales in favour of the working people against the 1%, his campaign has turned what looked like a Tory rout into a potentially very close run thing.

Most of all, Jeremy Corbyn represented the ordinary person. Not just in policy, but in his decidedly unfashionable dress. I deliberately avoided saying "proudly unfashionable" because I am not sure it would have ever entered his head until recent weeks to feel pride in his attire one way or the other.

That means a lot to many people, myself included. Even here in Australia, I have been inspired at the sight of a man aiming to lead a whole nation while dressing like a high school geography teacher just before his fortnightly trip to the laundry down the street.

My own fashion sense is famous. I have perfected the "woke up too hungover and late to do more than throw on yesterday's crumpled clothes while dashing for the door" look, which I have honed over years of waking up hungover and late and throwing on yesterday's crumpled clothes while dashing for the door.

Corbyn was an inspiration. There was that time he met a baying media outside his front door in socks and shorts with a daggy, brown-striped short-sleeved shirt, and you knew that wasn't a calculated decision.

His wife probably said to him as he opened the door "Oh you are not greeting the hyenas of the capitalist press out to smear and demonise you in order to crush a movement of working people seeking to use your leadership of the Labour Party to push back against the elites destroying all that is decent in society dressed like that?"

To which a genuinely bemused Corbyn no doubt responded with "What?" before walking out to put his logical, carefully thought-out case that the interests of the majority should be put before a too-powerful minority and, as another point, perhaps weapons programs whose function is to obliterate millions of lives with a single push of a button isn't the wisest course.

'Look why are we spending tax payers money on these weapons of mass destruction while starving the NHS of badly needed funds? Sorry, what? Where did I buy my socks?'

But Corbyn has changed.

And it is not just that the largely wonderful Manifesto includes a compromise for the veteran anti-war campaigner by including a commitment to not scrap nuclear weapons. No... far worse than that.

Of late, Corbyn has started dressing... and it pains me to write this... snappily. 

Yes, the very thing that defined the soul of Labour's socialist leader has been thrown out the window in favour of carefully chosen outfits that exude... there is no other word for it, unfortunately... they exude style.

If you think I am exaggerating consider the fact that Corbyn's sartorial shift has been noticed and praised by none other than Vogue magazine itself!

On June 5, Vogue was moved to write:

WHO is Jeremy Corbyn’s stylist? He must have someone advising him on his wardrobe. For while the shifty suits remain at least one inch too large for his wiry frame, Corbyn’s certainly turned a corner in the long old road to chic. 

As one Twitter user commented after his confident performance on BBC1’s Question Time on Friday evening, it is a very skilled individual who has “turned the Corbyn look from a freight train-jumping hobo into a vaguely credible-looking adult”.

As if there is anything wrong with the "freight train-jumping hobo" look! I call it the "I'm Pretty Sure this T-shirt Has One Wear Left And that Beer Stain Isn't Really Noticeable" look.

I mean, this has been a feature of Corbyn's career for a long time. Check out this clip of Corbyn responding to a Tory whinging about "Labour scruffs" (he even names Corbyn) not dressing of a standard fitting of parliament. (I guess when working extend imperial power across the globe while crushing working people at home, you should at least try to wear a decent tie.)



And now Jeremy Corbyn wears outfits so nice they draw comment from Vogue!

Look at him now!

God.

Oh Jesus.

Ok that baseball cap is just taking the piss.

I mean honestly, here is a reminder of how Corbyn used to dress.

Yes those are socks with sandals! Red socks, of course!

"What is wrong with brown anyway?" Nothing I can think of, Jezza.

I don't even know what you can technically call that sort of "all tracksuit" action, but I know I call it awesome!

And I know what many of you are thinking. "Really comrade, the fucking election is tomorrow. Now is not the time to be bringing up such criticisms, no matter how important and eloquently expressed as they are on your wonderful, well-written blog!"

I get it. It is a crucial election and Corbyn-led Labour must win. But that does not mean we must lose our critical faculties! Or choose to be quiet on the things that matter out of some cheap electoral opportunism!

The day we cease to speak out on the things that matter is the day we begin to die, as a very wise person, whose name I cannot be bothered googling right now coz my fucking Internet is so slow it's driving me insane, once said.

But, despite my strongly worded criticisms here, I wish to still emphasis that, from Australia and with full solidarity, I support a vote for Corbyn's Labour. I merely do so critically, and well aware of the limits of a supposed anti-establishment socialist entering Westminster in a tailoured suit.

Oh well, here is some Manic Street Preachers anyway.



What price now for a shallow piece of dignity?
I wish I had a bottle
Right here in my dirty face to wear the scars
To show from where I came

We don't talk about love we only want to get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end