Having it all put in perspective.

When I was a postman, and I only had one perspective, I railed against wealth and privilege, I denounced the riches of a few set against the poverty of the many, I despised those born with the inherited sense of destiny, I desired nothing other than to topple the class of elitist, self entitled cunts who think they have every right to run this world with all the disdain of the autocrat. I detested inequality because it was a blank cheque for the consolidation of economic power, overrode any attempt we ever made toward formal equality and created the fucking hell we live in.
I hated those who rode roughshod over me because they felt that they had the right to do so, because that right had been bred into them by their own sense of fucking entitlement.

And you know?

I was right in more ways than I could imagine.

Strike like you mean it.

I confess that defeatism is one of my oldest vices, perhaps it is the desire for the quiet life, perhaps it just comes with the territory. So it is that I have found myself with my head resting wearily in my hands as regard the postal strikes and the public reception of them. I feel as though we’ve kind of settled for a jealous kind of serfdom, one in which the man who prostrates himself the most, does the least about his exploitation and uses his blighted existence as a kind of stick with which to beat others from his hard-won moral high ground, is inevitably declared the winner.
I had a good idea of what Nietzsche meant when he discussed out ’stupidly proud work ethic’, it’s an idea which has consolidated itself into some sort of proto-belief.
I walked past Blackwells today, the giant bookstore which loves you if you’re got a stupid amount of money to spend and really wants you to get the fuck out if you’re one of those penniless people who have the sheer gall to want to learn. Adorning the window was a poster which declared ‘BEAT THE POSTAL STRIKE’, I noticed the same thing on the Ebay website.
Well of course companies that rely on postal services are going to be anxious to reassure customers, don’t think I’m so blinded with leftist politcs that I can’t see the simple, business calculations behind such activity, Blackwells and Ebay aren’t actually publishing such statements as part of a class war aimed solely at striking postmen.
No it just struck me as par for the fucking course, you see it’s all business as usual, that keep calm and carry on attitude which I’m not so sure is such a great idea anymore.

I won’t stop going on about it until I’m long enough in the teeth not to have any, but we’ve just been royally screwed by our government and by the banking industry and as a result we’re all now ‘tightning our belts’ or ’scrimping to save’ or, as I like to put it ‘finding new and ingenious ways to accept the austerity that has been mandated upon us by an elite class who really just don’t give a shit’. It’s higher taxes and it’s longer working hours for all in our New Age of making things go further and there just isn’t any time for people who don’t want to play ball.
Hence the Union are quickly heading for that coveted ‘Public Enemy No.1′ spot that we all secretly hanker for, because lets face it its pretty audacious to go striking in the middle of a recession isn’t it?
A quick and dispiriting search through the public message boards of the BBC website dredged up all the anger and the invective that could be piled on those greedy, malicious, society wrecking Postie’s who are going to hold us all to ransom with their reckless, thoughtless strike. Don’t they understand that those above have decided that austerity is the new dogma? Don’t they understand that in today’s economy they’re lucky to have a job at all?
Doesn’t anyone actually understand?
Bad Postie’s! One would almost have thought from the sheer malevolence aimed toward working men and women that they were actually solely responsible for our dire economic state.

You see it’s interesting that the CWU are accused of blackmail (I wonder if there is a pun in there?) when Angela Knight of BBA fame appeared to fend off the terrors of a Tobin tax by saying something along the lines “We make a lot of money for this country, if you tax us we’ll pack up our bat and ball and go play in Taiwan”. I guess that isn’t blackmail, not like saying “We provide a vital public service, if you don’t stop shitting all over us, we’ll pack up our bat and ball and go play on the picket lines”. I see that it is only blackmail if it is the poor trying to achieve their aims rather than the rich.
I’m tired and I’m sick of being involved in a society that seems to enjoy it’s servitude and I’m sick of being part of a society which turns upon any one who says ‘Hey I’m not having any more of this’ and renders them apart like some raving Maenad with a hutch full of gerbils.
Yes we’re living in a recession, yes we’re all facing higher unemployment, we’re facing higher taxes, we’re facing an even more uncertain job market and we’re facing a generally shitty period of a shitty capitalist society so naughty, naughty Posties striking when we’re all chittering away like frightened squirrels.

(I now read from the book of Our Market, who is in Recession)
“THE MARKET NOW SPEAKETH AND I HATH SAID FROM NOW UNTIL I SAYETH  DIFFERENTLY YE WILL ENDURETH AUSTERITY AND IMPOVERISHMENT UNLESS YE BE OF MANY FLORINS AND WORKETH IN THE MONEY-LENDING INDUSTRY THEN YE WILL BE AIDED BY LARGE SUMS OF TAXPAYERS PENNY BITS, EVEN IF IT BE YOUR FAULT THAT CAUSETH MY EQULIBRIUM TO BE OF UNSETTLED SPIRIT, HEEDETH NOT THOSE NON-BELIEVERS WHO YE WILL BE ABLE TO TELLETH BY THEIR EVIL RED VANS AND SACKS OF HEATHEN LETTERS FOR THEY WILL LEADETH TO THE BLACK OBLIVION OF AGGREGATE DEMAND POLICIES”  

Seriously we’re so fucking reverential toward the market these days I half expected a weird looking celestial graph on which were enscripted the undeviating lines of supply and demand to descend from the sky and inform the faithless masses that they were going to have to rein it in.
The bile levelled at Postal Workers, who are actually striking to stop the Royal Mail being frittered away in the massive firesale of public assets that the Government has planned in a sad and desperate attempt to balance its books, is deeply, deeply saddening. I’ve been told that it was Socialism that wanted to make everyone equal by making everyone poor, that is one of those nice one-liners that people like to reel off at you when you’re unfortunate enough to HAVE SOME FUCKING CONSIDERATION ABOUT THE NEEDS OF OTHERS!
It would appear that if this is true then Socialism is alive and well in all those private sector workers who demand that public sector workers have the same grim prospects as themselves. No one seems to say “Public sector pension, sounds nice, why don’t we have one too?” and then do something about it, it is all “Bastard, greedy, fat cat public sector with their gold-gilted pensions and their job security ad nauseam…if I’ve got a shit job, you’re going to have a shit job too!”
In the final analysis, or at least the first of this little rant, I’m on the side of the CWU, and I remember being stuck right in the middle of this situation two years ago, we were savaged for our strikes, there wasn’t a media outlet in the land that couldn’t resist having a pop, so I want to say that I support the Men and Women in this country who have enough fight in them to not just roll over and take it like the rest of this whining self-victimising nation. Strike like you mean it.
I’ve got very little time for those people who splash so much vitriol on those who try and change things, when they themselves whine like a month old puppy about how crap their jobs are, even as they slap down those who stand up and fight for better conditions.
We’ve accepted with little dissent a giant handover of public money to the rich, really if I’m going anywhere with this I have to say, why the hell is it just business as usual? Why is no one saying something along the lines of “Hey you know Royal Mail? Why don’t we bail them out and fuck the banks?
End of though, we’ll get what we deserve in the end, and if we’re all involved in a race to see who can hit the bottom first then I’m not going to act too surprised when we’re left a declawed, jumpy and divided bunch of proles who turn our exploitation into some peculiar kind of virtue.

Thou shalt speak freely unless thou disagreeth with me

So the wonderfully charming Nick Griffin makes an appearance on the BBC’s Question Time and lo and behold the audience grill him like a kipper for breakfast. Poor diddums. Griffin’s complaints about a rigged audience and his particularly poor reception strike me as being as feeble as a one legged horse in the Grand National.
The BNP has repeatedly sung its hymn of freedom of speech, it is, like many odious organisations happy to hide behind banners of liberal democracy when it suits its needs, hence the tenet of free speech has been bandied around with enthusiam by characters such as Griffin and Brons. So it is difficult to really see what their problem is considering that the BNP was given a public platform and the audience exercised that right of free speech to, well; ‘have a go’.
Well as painful as it may be to have to face crowds of people who disagree with you isn’t the whole point of public debate meant to about convincing the other side you’re right?
As far as I can see, Griffin failed and now he’s throwing his toys out of his pram over the fact that the audience had the temerity to use their right to free speech to tell him exactly what they thought of him.
Even if that audience was rigged, even if it were, the points that were raised were perfectly valid, if you can’t answer them then that’s just tough shit.
In his tantrum Griffin wants to be re-invited to the show in order to discuss a wider range of issues, loathe as I am to go recommending that the BBC give further air time to such a man, have him up again, grill the fucker again and this time don’t be so polite about it.
The question is what make-up of audience is going to be truly ‘representative’?
Presumably the only audience Griffin will actually be happy with is one which is exclusively whi…sorry, exclusively ‘indigenous’.
Just for the record I wasn’t jury rigged as an audience member, neither were the fifty or so people who watched it with me in the TV room and, just for the record you understand, we would have given old Nicky boy a very similar reception albeit with a lot less applause and a lot more ridicule.
Free speech eh? So annoying when someone disagrees with you isn’t it, can’t be because you’re spouting total crap can it?

Late night questions

How is it you’re here, what with the fact that there are days you can’t leave the house? What with the days you crash through life with all the fucking energy of a go-go dancer on acid?
How is it you can be here doing what you do? When you can’t turn those bad ideas off and they insist on you, like whispering blondes with their hands in your trousers. who the fuck knows? Like a rotten little series of events there goes the brain, rattling off its lonely outpost of bad thoughts like some isolated machine gun post manned by everything that’s just plain wrong.

I wonder sometimes if I’ve got some special ability, like a superhero. It’s the ability to sneak in and avoid radar; I’m the infiltrator and I reckon I’ve got the abilities to put up that necessary front. It’s great for hiding but sometimes I use it on myself and it isn’t such a blessing anymore.
So I’m a criminal now, got the conviction to prove it, no prison for me, there is a blessing but it’s just another reason why I can’t trust myself  and even here amongst these dreaming spires I know.
My worst enemy is still myself.

Once more over the top

“You’re our future Rulers“

Another day, different place in a different time but all round your poor, befuddled head it’s the same old shit, the same fucking group of armchair politicians who sweep up so many human lives like they were Risk soldiers and dump them away in a necessary little waste paper basket. Give me a sharp-tipped nuke and I’d prick their fucking pomposity, see if they still think in such pretty patterns about human misery and suffering after I’ve turned them all into pillars of salt? See what they did when I bought every piece of ‘private property’ in the world and then just let the animals roam free; I’d leave one square mile construct a ghetto on it, ring it with fences and then force every fucking Libertarian to live in it and then watch them sing songs of market supremecy. I’d set packs of dogs on fox-hunters and have people who smack their kids beaten by professional boxers.
Violate every fucking right there was to violate because lets face it, rights are really only dependent on your nukes and your money and when I’ve both…boy I’ll show those fuckers just what ruling is all about.
 
“You’re our future Rulers“

Pimped, preened and pampered for future greatness, we’re all kings and queens waiting for our parents to die and for us to take over and dictate affairs from our happy little bubble. Always pretty fucking easy to be so clear cut from a distance, always so much easier to concentrate on the ends when you’re nothing to do with the means.
Oh…what are you thinking? Other than sometimes it gets just too fucking difficult to be understanding about all this, so very tolerant of the sophists who one day will hover with their sweaty little paws over the rest of us and in tones of liberty and freedom enslave us like never before.

“You’re our future Rulers…?”

Money it aint an object, she won’t mind and if you put a fancy sounding word to acting like a drunken fool then it looks like high living and you’ve nothing in common with the brawling city because you’ve been reserved for greater things. Fed a solid diet of good breeding, good manners and good looks; you’ve an inbuilt radar to spot difficult cases and avoid like no other. You’re a huffy, puffy trumped up little shit but;

“You’re our future Rulers“

Through it all there are those of us who somehow snuck in the side door and are wondering how the hell this is going to play out, new to it in one sense but pretty sure we’re seen all this shit before and hearing them say to us

“You’re our future Rulers“

At least I know where the fuckers get their inbred sense of self-entitlement from.

Terminus

Dear Disappointment

I will probably have reached my destination by the time this letter reaches you. I have been stuck at the station for several days now but the train is due any minute and from that point on the journey becomes routine and short-lived. I had to cross two dams before I arrived here. They were high up in the moorland cutting the black, oily water up into graded segements. I stood for a while on the middle of both and gave all that water a hard look; I can’t believe we drink it. It looks like death.
I have not written for ages, I know. I’m sorry about that, I’ve been distracted what with doing my best to walk as far away as possible.
You wouldn’t believe my dearest disappointment, you wouldn’t guess as to the madness of walking, walking as far and as wide as possible. I pace forward, legs stiff and unresponsive, my head full of cotton wool, and my heart hammering dully against the unhealthy confines of my chest. I hop drystone walls and brave the gusts of wind that carry fine spray into my face. It comes off the resevoir, the huge oilspill from which we all drink. I walk and I walk and the clouds shift in the sky until the light begins to fade. Cast iron, to battleship, to graphite to black.
I sleep where I fall, cold and exposed. Exhausted.
I’ve walked miles, endless miles of desolate moorland and this is the crazy part my featureless gestalt of shattered hopes. I wake up in the City.
I wake up in the same doorway feeling cold, sore and stiff. By night my dreams have been urban soundscapes. The smashing of glass, the turmoil of violence, the grime of three hundred bodies packed together in one square kilometre.
I always smell of alcohol, sometimes I get picked up and the rest of my morning is spent in a harshly lit cell, with a thin blue blanket and a feeling a nausea. I listen to my various cell-mates, whom I never see nor meet, as they hammer upon their doors and tussle with the desk seargent. I stare up at the ceiling and I try my best not to throw up.
It only happened the once my misappropriated optimism; just the once but they let me out early in the morning and the cleaner stood outside. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes, I know it is her training, I know she gets all sorts but it brought it home to me.
A criminal lumped in the same bag and mugshotted to hell, avoid the eyes, you don’t know what they might do.
So I took it to heart and after that I walked further than I did before, put more effort into it all and I spent a lot less time contemplating the slimy, barren waters lapping at the dams. I walked until there was no trace of life other than the broken, ancient walls and the empty, stonebuilt shelters. I slept against a block of stone which stopped the wind cutting me into a thousand different shards and when I woke up there was a station at the bottom of the hill.
There was a postbox, so I decided to write you and let you know. The train is due any moment but I’ve sat in a small cafe with a cup of tea for longer than I  can rightly recall.

Perhaps I will see you soon

Yours with remorse

Boy

Enough is Enough

The cuddly conservative leader David, just call me Davey-boy, Cameron recently managed to reveal a little more of that political Atlantis we otherwise might call the Conservative party manifesto. This mysterious semi metaphysical entity has been glimpsed by some higher level tories who repeat in mystical, trance like fashion to lower mortals who inquire as to it’s contents that ‘it’s difficult to explain in words, time needs to catch up with the vision that is the manifesto’ indeed so otherworldly is this epic plan for the future of our nation that the material circumstances of the physical world simply have to alter in order for it to be manifest to the misguided masses ie. there has to be a General Election taking place.

So a glimpse of it’s political genius is more than welcome and good old Dave helped open our eyes to the bright lights of the glorious future of the UK Legislature on Sky News Sunday Live (which sounds oddly like a pub carvery menu) He revealed tough new plans to oust Brian Haw and the peace camp that has been positioned outside the Houses of Parliament since 2001. Despite being very careful to state his support for Freedom of Speech yatter, yatter, yatter, Cameron considered that the square had become a ‘pretty poor place’.
Now I can speak from experience because I’ve actually had the honour to meet Brian Haw and talk to him man-to-man and I’ve found him to be more inspirational than any one of those venemous slugs who slither in that vipers nest that calls itself the House of Commons. Parliament Square is not a ‘pretty poor place’ but instead one of the most simultaneously heart-rending, heart-warming places in the country. I remember walking towards it and seeing in the foreground, one man standing, looking lonely and dishevelled, leaning on crutches harmelessly whilst in front of him stood the gothic architecture of the House of Commons, littered with Police officers bearing heavy weaponry. To me (and perhaps this is a candidate for Pseuds Corner if only I could write articulately) it was the perfect symbolism of principle and ideal, manifest in one man against all the invidious machinery of the state and all the stinking corruption and dishonour, all the money and special interest, all the ambition and the self promotion, the filth and the muck of an elite which had just plain forgotten that its job was only ever to serve the public interest and to facilitate a better world for it’s people.
I went into the House of Commons that day, I stood at the dispatch box where Brown regales the House with endless reams of statistics and I stood at the opposing box where Cameron treats the whole business as though it were some amusing game where people don’t actually count, but the most affecting and memorable part was standing in the chilly spring air with Brian Haw regarding the edifice of our centralized legislature and wondering how difficult it could be to find six hundred, honourable, decent people who could do the job that a public servant should.
Mr Haw is there because he believes that protest is not a token gesture, you don’t protest a bit then just give up unless you want to appear like a character from the Vicar of Dibley (No, no, no, no, no…yes!)
But I guess I wasn’t prepared for the perceptive and compelling argument of David Cameron, boy that Oxford education really pays off doesn’t it? What was this excellent and cutting argument?

I am all for demonstrations, but my argument is `Enough is enough’.”

“Yes we all know that Iraq was an illegal war enough is enough people, yes okay politicians have been taking the absolute smeg out their constituents as regards public money enough is enough okay? Yes the rich have plunged us into a recession and public money has been used to bail them out and ensure that their contract protected bonuses have been delivered on time and in full whilst pension schemes across the public sector collapse for want of funds enough is enough stop whining would you? Yes young men are coming back home in pieces because we can’t be bothered to supply them with the equipment to do their job or failing that bring them home but enough is enough so shut up and get back to work. Yes we’re quite aware that the public don’t want us to channel their money into rusting, militarily useless weapons of mass destruction would you stop going on about it? Enough is enough.

You know Cameron is right perhaps more than he thinks, a Government so arrogant it believes it should be able to screw up our lives and force its economics down out throats, bankrupt our public services, savage our pensions, raid our pockets not for education, or transport, or health or jobs or housing, or welfare but for city fatcats, who sends our troops to die in illegal and immoral wars and a Government in waiting who’d do more of the same AND not want to have to see its people come out to protest at its actions?
Yes Cameron; Enough really is enough!

Liss, and all its wankers

Ah the wonders of local democracy, a chance to attend public meetings and feign a sense of community where none exists. The chance to casually not recognise those you usually see leaning against a bar, staring with miserable desire at some cavorting figure upon the telescreen blaring its incessant wail of melodramatic passion and wondering if tonight will be the night that will prove David Hume’s assumptions as to the flaw in inductive theory and the barmaid will finally, finally go home with them.
To think that man used to be me.
But I, as is usual, digress, a public meeting is also a chance to get up and give the conservative minded pratts who populate this woeful excuse for a village a bloody good pasting and that my nonexistent reader is a chance too good to be missed.
The subject was the proposed skate park in Liss, and true to form Liss can suddenly find itself a’ community’ when property prices are at stake and so the West Liss Residents Association or as I like to label them ‘The wankers alliance’ turned out in force to prevent the, let’s face it, utter social evil that is a Skate Bowl.
Let’s just get this straight, this is no flash in the pan issue, it’s not like a month ago the local council decided to jettison its final cash reserves into capital development in order to protect its budget from the inevitable savaging that local government is going to face in the next few years. This issue has been dividing the village for 9 years as the wankers alliance have barracked, stalled, prevaricated and essentially obstructed any development of youth facilities in the village.
That’s 9 years boys and girls, the best part of a decade, in fact it is so long that the poor kids this project was aimed at are now in their late teens and early twenties. Nonetheless the demand remains because even in a soul destroying, venomous little dump such as Liss people still have the energy to conceive and raise children and so a new generation of would-be skaters and BMX’s have inherited the cause and the epic struggle that is, attempting to overturn the iron rule of conservative self interest and general Middle Class NIMBYism which isn’t so much expected in Liss as mandatory.

So I attended the meeting, I was in less than cheerful mode, whilst the exam period has been so far unsurprising and generally genial it has still been a slog, a culmination of two years worth of study, a marathon of 14 different papers ranging from Virgil’s Aeneid to the state of socialism in the UK, curiously the subject matter appeared to be the same; that they are both brilliant, both the products of the higher and more enlightened aspect of human reason and both essentially forgotten and unknown in the world today. No doubt when the reuslt come rolling in in August it won’t matter what I got, because of course A levels are just too easy aren’t they? That’s why I, a 24 year old, have been stressing my little fluffy socks off my overgrown feet.
Personally I think you’ve only got a right to tell someone their exams were too easy if you sat the same exam at the same time and got 100%, then you’ve got some grounds, until then please, please, please find a more creative way to express your resentment and envy.
Not only was I in the middle of the exam period but the previous night my front door had been kicked off it’s hinges by a group of marauding drunks, which was nice, two nights before that I’d been involved in stopping a burglary outside the Whistle Stop pub, which consequently saw me involved with the Police yet again. Now whilst it might appear to the casual observer that the two events were related I can pretty much conclusively say that they were not. Statistically speaking I live in a shit hole and that’s really all there is to it.

So there’s me in a room full of a snide-bound collection of smug, self satisfied residents, as well as the poor, long suffering youth and their parents who simply cannot figure out why it is that something so damned simple and postive can provoke the wankers alliance to come crawling out of their wormholes to snipe at it until it goes away and stops threatening to provide young people with something to do (perish the very thought)
All I really have to report back about the meeting was that the behaviour of the wankers alliance was pretty atrocious, interjecting, interrupting, heckling and probably most offensively stereotyping all young people into the bracket of scourge of society. Essentially their behaviour was disgusting and given that these are the people who like to think of themselves as so socially superior to every one else, as Burke’s ‘little platoons’ of a well ordered and cogent community I think every damned one of them should be utterly ashamed of themselves.
Equally I don’t know who the tame housepet was but whoever it was that stood up and demanded to know why, when she was going to university this year (have a fucking medal love!) money should be spent on an issue that was locally divisive; you seriously need to wake up and recognise that there are other people in the world. I mean what right have you got to decide on a issue for a village in which you’re not even going to live? You might be off to Uni but I doubt very much whether the eight year olds who want a place to practice their sport without being obliterated by a speeding mum trying to ferry her bloody spawn from the country mansion to Churcher’s College private school sure as hell isn’t going to university in the near future. Moreover, by the sounds of it you don’t particularly require state funding to go to university. You might however benefit from some debate practice and maybe study the rules, such as don’t attack the chairman.

Well to cut a very long story short I managed to land one on the fuckers and boy oh boy oh boy did I enjoy every moment of it. I mean the chance to publicly humiliate these people? That is something to be treasured it really is.
Still it probably won’t make a great deal of difference although I get the impression that if I were to say ‘boo’ to members of the WA in the street they might run a mile with a full pair of trousers and perhaps that, my nonexistent reader, is all you can really hope for.

Captains Log Additional: Additional

Furthermore to highly irrelevant posts about swift insurance and it’s soul sapping advertising campaign. I read that it has only recently begun to insure musicians.
Previously it didn’t due to some mumbling about ‘high risk’
Go live that one life!
There is selling out, Iggy and then there is Selling out!

I’ll Advertise That

Anyone see those dumb adverts with Iggy Pop or at least a very passable Iggy Pop look-a-like who wants to watch out for a defamation case? Please someone tell me it is actually a look-a-like c’mon put me out of my misery of simply not doing the relevant research myself.
You see as I dragged my feet through Petersfield after another foray to the library to plug away at my Latin translations, I was affronted by one of those ubiquitous purple adverts for swift insurance (is it swift? I don’t know and I really don’t care).
Fronted by that radical, madman Iggy Pop these adverts have it all, the sense of quirky cool, the individualism of a tailor serviced insurance company, celebrity endorsement…purple. For Home insurance who else would you choose?
If I may allow the tangent to begin and for myself to be shepherded blindly at an oblique angle from the main issue, I thought I’d discuss the nature of a tailor made service. It’s all in the language really isn’t it, tailor made to your convenience like you were some 19th century aristocrat having a bespoke suit made out of elephant hide by an obseqious oriental slave you’ve just had imported from the empire; when in reality you’re attempting to keep up with the legal necessity of keeping your battered old car insured allowing you to continue your meagre existence of driving to work, working, driving back from work, sleeping.
If it were not for my fervent hatred of marketing I’d probably admire the way that the idea of a tailor made service has turned the process of what is otherwise known as ‘giving over your details’ into a situation which evokes the musty comfort of a saville row tailor shop.

“How would Sir like us to rob him blind today? We have the draincashquick express service if you’re in a hurry, or if you’re interested in contrived little scheme which we, the retailer, will always screw you on, then perhaps Sir would care for our extra specia, individually tailored, poverty deluxe service?

But really the main thing I thought about was the concept of selling out, I mean clearly it’s a widespread thing. I will never forget the awful, gut-wrenching disappointment I felt when I heard Rik Mayall was the voice of the Andrex puppy, nor did my soul really recover from the shock of seeing Adrian Edmondson on Casualty. To be honest I still haven’t gotten over the end of the Bottom series but that’s an issue for another day.

What is it like though? I mean the actual point you sell out? One minute you’re sticking your fingers up at the system, your out there, you’re a rebel, you’re saying “yah boo to the establishment man, go screw the squares” then all of a sudden you’re advertising insurance on the back of a bus.
What goes through your head? Is it like a one day you wake up and you go ”Oh man I realised I’ve been wrong all along, I thought people needed rock but no! They wanted double glazed conservatories and a credit card with a sloping edge!”.
Or is it a sneaking, insidious thing. The offer comes through, it looks good on paper and yeah you’ve always had a thing about toilet duck, it’s quirky and it’s kind of funny. C’mon a duck in a plane that cleans your toilet, that’s good. It’s advertising sure but you’re sticking with an old school product so it’s okay and anyway there isn’t anything wrong with toilet cleaner, it’s not part of the system or anything, poor old toilet duck, in fact see that’s the problem with rebellion against the system, it doesn’t take into account the need for clean toilets and if we’re honest toilet duck is a better name than cilit bang, better ‘brand’ yeah and the money won’t do any harm either, I think I’ll do it…
So conscience loses the battle, the soul retracts, and the market consumes with greedy lust yet another poor wretch.
What I want to know is whether or not the individual in question wakes up one night in the cold sweat of a night terror and suddenly realises what they’ve done.
Rock stars do tend to die of overdoses.
Perhaps there may be a connection.