And another thing.Culture is on a respirator.It's sucking air through a straw and someone's got their finger on the airhole.Sound familiar?Had the 640 odd clowns,vagabonds,parachute artists and rapscallions down by that Brothel -by-the-Thames not ripped off the country then perhaps,local arts and local culture would be breathing with slightly less impairment than they are now.Could be better off,in fact should be and those with the power to ensure and safeguard such a happy state of affairs chose in effect that arts and culture are worse off,in some cases reminally so.Having been voted into the Byzantine Pauper and Lunatic Asylum,off they went didn't they.members of Parliament for constituencies from everywhere and nowhere baby(that's where they're at)failing to fulfill their primary duty.I.E. to represent the interests of their constitiuents first and foremost.Factory or Office gets threatened with closure up they should pop and bloody well say something,organise something rage against the dying of the light,that sort of thing.Each constituency having clear and distinct identities,needs and concerns and in effect the MP(short for me personally)is a delegate subject at some point to recall and continual scrutiny.Ha,ha,ha,how naive.Because if they are not then what have they got?if not themselves then they have not(or at least according to Sinatra's musings).It is "ultra Vires" for MPs to enable the systematic mafiaesque fraud which gave billions to the Leni Riefenstahl Triumph of the Will Festival to be staged in East London in 2012.it is not nor can it ever be the duty let alone the constitutional function of say the MP for Wakefield to enable such a grotesque scandal to be perpertrated.London wants money?well go and get lost not our problem.But that's in a different life.Here in this one we've got the inmates self medicating with lithium and then trying to walk through walls.Outcome for the rest of us?not good,not good at all.then again,there is the ballot box and we can all redemocratise the process in our own unique ways.Moral dilemma time.Do you want,do you really really want a different set of inmates down at the asylum?Me? I'd burn down the asylum.

One of my all-time favourite authors,CJ Sansom was the subject of a full page spread in the York based"The Press"last Saturday.Nothing remarkable in that,apart from his third of so far four Tudor-era detective novels,"Sovereign"is the centrepiece of York's "Big City Read".And what a concept that is.An annual event in which local people are encouraged to read the same book then take part in a series of events celebrating it.On Friday 26th.local york residents will be able to collect a free copy of "Sovereign"from Council libraries staff out and about in town.The scope of participation and involvement of libraries,museums,The Minster and type and variety of event;well it just makes for unrequited jealousy.Well done York.Breathtaking.But what an idea,especially one that was set in motion and which is paying huge dividends,directly and indirectly.In a parallel cosmos,one that somehow isn't exactly like our own,another city in Yorkshire with a far ,far stronger literary arts heritage and tradition could be doing its Big City Read.Based say,around a modern genre defining novel such as,"This Sporting Life"and which would involve lots of events down at Belle Vue and themed displays,events,tours of film locations.Etcetera,etcetera,etbloodycetera.One very obvious "lacuna" in my hypothesis;yes quite,York isn't run by the Stasi.Unless of course it's a more enlightened kind of Stasi,the kind that doesn't have genetic philistines and Neanderthal survivors like Von Box and Frau Jefferey going around like the Inquisition eliminating every proposal and concept for our own literary arts based festival.How many proposals is it now that they've contemptuously binned?how many times is it now that literary arts based organisations have suffered the exclusion from forums based on the stasi's very own proactive cultural apartheid?big City Read for Wakefield?yes,but only after Homo Sapien evolutionary predominance takes hold;and that to misquote Shackleton could take some time.

Art for arts sake,money for god's sake.An imperishable truth.All human labour addresses the needs of replenishment and the drive for fulfilment.What is not part of the struggle or cannot be usefully brought to bear in the struggle,in the end isn't worthwhile.The whole point of philosophy,for example is about fashioning a more reliant,resilient,efficient weapon for use in the struggle of ideas/intellectual engagement and combat.rights schmites,freedom schmeedom,History is determined by much simpler considerations.Arguments are for winning,contests are as stated,competitions mean what they say..otherwise a debased form of adjudication fills the void.First you win the fight then you construct whatever appropriate intellectual framework that legitimises and naturalises your victory.Winners write History.Subject/object.Those who survive have determined their own fitness in any given case.Meaning is everything.Words are flashpoints,sentences are firefights,paragraphs are battlefields.Who then is right?and how can this be substantiated?Whoever it is that wins any particular struggle.Nietzsche,Nietzsche give us a wave!Nietzsche give us a wave.

Ever got up on a morning and it turns out to be,really,I mean really crapulent,unbelievably so?like for no apparent reason the people you're trying to talk to don't comprhend a single solitary word that you're speaking.Kafka had days like those or is it these?"K" finds himself under arrest.he must be guilty for otherwise how do you explain him being under arrest?The Great Capitalist Implosion,the concomitant catastrophic financial debacle is the pre eminent Cultural fact.The defining topic of popular and intellectual discourse.It's The Black Death 1348 all over again but without the unsightful cosmetic problems that accompanied the real thing that wiped out half of the then populace of Europe.great opportunities for art and culture I suppose,but I could do without the totalitarian hassle of the Big green Money Grabbbing Machine grabbing my cojones for some bizarre,quasi theological reason that it itself refuses to explain and thus help me understand my own part in this wonderfully visceral act of cultural materialism.Alas there are no tumbrils clattering along the cobblestones of Paris.the Mob itself is too busy listening to The Big Green Money Grabbing Machine.Distractions,distractions,distractions.

I haven't had this much fun shirring the stit as the Speverend Rooner put it,in quite a while.Quite a long while actually.Leeds Other Paper in the '80s was my main gig ,the various letters pages and columns of local papers since '75  to the present,obviously and idiosyncratically "The Square Ball" Leeds Utd. fanzine between90 and 95,and boy did some stit get shirred in that time.And so it goes as Vonnegut observes;and so will it continue to go as I'm observing,commenting on the minutiae of the quotidian.Ideology,the battle of ideas,the inexhaustible parameters of Cultural struggle,my War against the Dunces.Clearly their is a veritable Confederacy of Dunces arrayed against me,or rather the practical import and consequences of the ideas that I embody and seek to implement.Fun.If it ain't hurtin' they ain't workin'.The more "ouch" I get to hear the better I feel about the whole War.As Diogenes remarked,nothing worthwhile can be achieved without pain and sacrifice.And clearly aspiring petit bourgeois posuers want nothing more than to achieve without the inextricable and concomitant pain or sacrifice.Their politics are redolent of the stench of easy virtue,effortless ideologies,spineless visions that necessarily entail the wholesale and programmatic betrayal of Class,nation and identity.These witless flaneurs who wouldn't recognise a sweated brow if they were stood next to someone who'd acutaully got dirt under his fingernails.And nothing embodies,if indeed inverterbrates can be said to embody,this ill fated confluence of random DNA than the lickspittle Stasi and its sub-intellectual cohorts.The prostitutes and vagabonds of a thousand ideologies,compromises and betrayals that somehow ends up as their maladroit version of wisdom and,ironically knowledge.the kind of mind searing cretinous drivel which daily threatens to suffocate the pure,the revolutionary,the aspiring,the Future.Minions,hirelings,adherents,toadies and the simply abject Party braindead are all legitimate targets.In the end,or rather long before any hoped for end,my sword which sharper than your sword will inflict more lasting damage than you would care to possibly imagine.the stasi is my harvest.it's hangers on the sheaves.Assist or hinder,Your choice;but please stop shivering like a coward at the Book repository Window just as this motorcade drives into view;you're not that good a shot.And anonymous,bottomlip quivering comments.Well,what else ought I to expect from stasi,stasi,yum yum?

What a complete and utter disgrace to our democracy and democratic values!(Feigns suitable outrage in hope of being portrayed favourably in media).It was perhaps expected in some quarters and by some commentators that "they" would grab one of this region's european parliamentiary seats.A mighty shudder that sent throughout the body politic."They" won a seat;how dare the electorate.According to one Mailk MP for dewsbury the electorate ought to examine their own consciences.He of course had his examined by a parliamentiary committee(so much handier than doing it yourself,don't you think?)by winning a seat ,"They" need to be examined.They do have quite a history amongst their membership of extremism.And the sorts of activities that they engaged in in the 1970s,were they to repeat them today would find them on the wrong side of the Law.Furthermore,unequivocal evidence there is aplenty of ties between individual members and branches and overseas organisations engaged in armed military struggle against various ,at the time,legitimate sovereign governments,going back as far as the 1960s.The actual stated policies of this horrid party that won a seat expound a unreconstructed messianic vision of the sort of society they would like to impose on others."Rallies",mass demonstrations etc.held to physically and psychologically intimidate opponents being a stock in trade of this party and its adherents.So,it really is worrying that enough of the electorate voted for them,denying a valuable seat to the other parties clearly not doing or intending to do what "They" are.the time surely has come to openly challenge the prejudices and pernicious policies of this hate based party.the prospects of it getting stronger are unsettling;the time has come to confront...the Labour Party!!!

On june 26th.,and here's a bit of prophecy,Walter Harrison and Michael Yates will receive each an accolade to mark their respective inaugurations as Honorary Life Vice Presidents of the Black Horse Poets.We are now in Year 11 of the Black Horse era,and are of sufficient civic and cultural standing to make such commemaritive awards.Outstanding work for and on behalf of our Organisation and for poetry in general in this City cries out for lasting,public acknowledegement,a few lines at the very least in the historic public record.Mary (very reasonable expenses actually)Creagh our current MP and group Patron will bestow said accolades on the day.The actual awards should have included 4 recipients.Alas Messrs.Clarke and Walsh exercised their inalienable rights to be pig ignorant and utterly condescending to the concept of the award itself by shunning the honour and making up some wholly implausible reason as to why they were doing so.Well that's poetry for you,they're both in the Padel camp of unmeltable Butter in the mouth syndrome.No mention in the historic narrative for either of them.Nil,big fat zero,nada,nothing,hollow emptiness.Which,coincidentally corresponds to their actual contribution to the health and well being of The Horse.Individuals whomsoever,wheresoever,whensoever can only do one of two things in relation to The Black Horse Poets and the implementation of its policies and strategy;either said individual somehow assists said process or hinders it.Assist or hinder.Just like this august and venerable periodical.The inaugural poetry masterclasses at Heath View School the other week,threw up an arcane,archaic little appreciated ruling by t'Express;to wit,no picture of shool pupils can be published without their names appearing.The school unbeknown to me at the time has a policy of not allowing publication of pupils with their names.Immovable object and irresitable force spring to mind.And me and my project right smack in the middle.For some inexplicably optimistic reason at the time ,I thought I resolved the gaudian knotted problem by refering to the many instances when t'Express has indeed published pupils pictures without using their individual names.Silly me,tragically deluded glass half full person.In the end the Schools policy prevailed;no pic.no story,no promotion for poetry in this city.In the end the Paper's policy prevailed equally,no names,no pic no story.The winner in all this?the cause of literacy in our schools?the promotion of poetry by this city's leading literary arts group?of course not.Arcane rules?yeah,stick it in and break 'em off,lets have some legilation round here;better to die hidebound with really useful rules than living and breathing without them.Assist or Hinder.Does CA Duffy get this treatment,or Ian McMillan or scouse rap poets?No they don't they're not local,couldn't care less and are inherently priveleged.if anything like this bureacratic farce ever remotely gets in the way again,I shall be forced to taunt you a second time you empty headed animal foodtrough wipers!

Padel v.Walcott.(cue;"eye of the Tiger").And the wiiner and new heavyweight champion of..erm..poetry at Oxford is..Well,it was Padel,actually,oh yarrhh,acshlee.And three days into her newly won tenure as (and you couldn't make it up)Professor of poetry,she handed in her resignation.that particular elitist,cosmopolitan intellectual imbroglio got "poetry" onto the national news agenda in the aftermath of CA Duffy's laureate appointment,making poetry a topic of interest and scrutiny for well over a fortnight.Not bad,not bad at all when you consider that pastimes like tiddleywinks or underwater pole vaulting never ever seem to get into the news.the frisson with Padel,was that her supporters made use of a 1990's based scandal of sorts involving Walcott and allegations in America involving young female students.None of it factually corroborated,and never subject to any kind of legal or quasi-legal investigation at the time.Still,an ideological struggle is certainly worth the attention even in such an anodyne guise as poetry.Padel in her own defence was interviewed on the airwaves attemting and nearly,oh so nearly demonstrating that,indeed butter would not melt in her mouth.Poetry can get very interesting.The other example of this phenomenon is if you google "Dread shred bleatings",you get back "did you mean Red Shed Readings ?"Isn't cyberspace perceptive?