And so it goes.Everything and anything that can be used in the service of promoting the material class interests of the people,those whose direct and indirect labour produces surplus value to the benefit of society and its well being;anything and everything that can be possibly pressed into that effort is by definition useful."Engaging in the semiotic struggle in northern England"is how I phrased it in my "Big Issue" interview back in Jan.2000;the same phrase occurred in "The Times"interview around the same period.What you've never been interviewed by "The Times"?So it goes.Possessing genius and abundant talent does help,does really make a difference.Those who possess such innate qualities are a persecuted minority,or in this city's case a very persecuted minority.I still haven't received my yellow star from the authorities,they've probably mislaid their coloured crayons.Maybe they can get the Arts Council to fund them a pack.Green's a good colour too,maybe I could wear a green star?The direct ideological forebears of our present Whitehall regime and their provincial toadies at t'town hall did so over use yellow the last time.And so it goes.T'arts council's "Sustain fund"whereby they give other peoples' money to personal friends of theirs(that is t'arts council and not other people)is alive and flowing.It's basically a bail out when an institution would just have to struggle through this deDepression like everyone else.Ron Paul of Texas is right,was right when he advocated no bail outs ever.Those who were gurgling their way inexorably down the plughole should've been allowed to go on disappearing.The world would in very short order have been a cleaner,saner,better place.No doubt whatsoever.The Left would have been forced to seize the historic moment.It would have been game over.Alas,the moment was lost,cowardice and indecision,which is a necessary precursor for cowardice held sawy.But Ron Paul was right.And so it goes.The single longest running blog in the history,albeit a short one,of this venerable and august journal and its affiliates now comes to its own end.As Pindar wrote(218 B.C.)there were many heroes before Agamemnon,but all are lost in unending night their deeds buried along with them for want of a dedicated poet;I shall not suffer envious oblivion to graze upon my many triumphs">(the last three words were my interpolation as you might've guessed)And so it goes............179?are you sure?more or less;gosh!didn't that go on a bit?Since May 2006 apparently.Blimey.If you're reading this,you are the Resisitance...........

And so it goes.Everything and anything that can be used in the service of promoting the material class interests of the people,those whose direct and indirect labour produces surplus value to the benefit of society and its well being;anything and everything that can be possibly pressed into that effort is by definition useful."Engaging in the semiotic struggle in northern England"is how I phrased it in my "Big Issue" interview back in Jan.2000;the same phrase occurred in "The Times"interview around the same period.What you've never been interviewed by "The Times"?So it goes.Possessing genius and abundant talent does help,does really make a difference.Those who possess such innate qualities are a persecuted minority,or in this city's case a very persecuted minority.I still haven't received my yellow star from the authorities,they've probably mislaid their coloured crayons.Maybe they can get the Arts Council to fund them a pack.Green's a good colour too,maybe I could wear a green star?The direct ideological forebears of our present Whitehall regime and their provincial toadies at t'town hall did so over use yellow the last time.And so it goes.T'arts council's "Sustain fund"whereby they give other peoples' money to personal friends of theirs(that is t'arts council and not other people)is alive and flowing.It's basically a bail out when an institution would just have to struggle through this deDepression like everyone else.Ron Paul of Texas is right,was right when he advocated no bail outs ever.Those who were gurgling their way inexorably down the plughole should've been allowed to go on disappearing.The world would in very short order have been a cleaner,saner,better place.No doubt whatsoever.The Left would have been forced to seize the historic moment.It would have been game over.Alas,the moment was lost,cowardice and indecision,which is a necessary precursor for cowardice held sawy.But Ron Paul was right.And so it goes.The single longest running blog in the history,albeit a short one,of this venerable and august journal and its affiliates now comes to its own end.As Pindar wrote(218 B.C.)there were many heroes before Agamemnon,but all are lost in unending night their deeds buried along with them for want of a dedicated poet;I shall not suffer envious oblivion to graze upon my many triumphs">(the last three words were my interpolation as you might've guessed)And so it goes............179?are you sure?more or less;gosh!didn't that go on a bit?Since May 2006 apparently.Blimey.If you're reading this,you are the Resisitance...........

Sometimes,and this ever only occurs during specific phases of the moon,you can run your index finger over the editorial column in this most august and venerable journal,and my dear old Boswell,actually cause your finger to bleed.I did indeed perform this act of gratuituous self-mutilation upon last week's(11 September)editorial pertaining to the putative bid for city of culture status.Sharp?Razorsharp editorialising,of the kind that makes you think,"crikey that was sharp"even as your vital claret pours out of your severed digit in the slo-mo manner of a Sam Peckinpah framed shot.And even as I was lapsing into catatonic shock from the visceral impact of this whetted tranche of journalistic insight;for one solitary moment I had a sense of Deja Vu.Where had I come across this revelatory insight before?News?what news?But,of course;back on August 11th.in Blog 171,the exact same thing but without the added gloss of barmy disney-happy ending optimism.Exit stage left Homer Simpson returning editorial garb to joke shop.And so it goes.

Where's the money gone,where's the money gone?far far away...(to the tune of "Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep"the 1970 pop classic by Middle of the Road,although I much prefer the bluesy version by Free).UK PLC is the favoured shorthand beloved of arts administrators and t'arts council when justifying their own metropolitan-elite cloned prejudices.It's very Blairite,defecate on the working class and its institutions and glorious history kind of a phrase."UK PLC",oh yah did you read that article in the Observer,oh yah my constituents are all endemically racists and deny global warming.You know the type,the effing parachute Brigade that got flown in over our constituenicies with all the precision of an unannnounced blitzkrieg sending so many working class stalwarts into early political retirement.Scandal,corruption and public excoriation aren't enough to even slow down their rapacious appetite to remodel our lives and our society into some hideous simulacrum of their wiberal nightmares.The grand panjandrum of the calamitous wiberal onslaught,Obergruppenfuehrer Balls enunciates his eng-lish-er in an uncanny pastiche of Goebbels'enunciation of German all those years ago.Listen to those historic recordings and the effort of pre-cise diction findsa contemporary resonance with Von Balls.Tahnk providence then that despite their unquestionable mastery of the body politic,even gob-stopper mouthed elitist progeny like Balls and his Cruella DaVille partner in political hegemony are going to come up short next Summer.The elctorate of Morley are just about the remorselessly thickest just about anywhere and so lack even the rudimentary sensors to detect Balls' verbiage and so are collectively rendered immune to it.And as for Cruella,Harvard educated,former financial journalist,so consequently has never produced any socially useful surplus value,well she's gone down the electoral plughole next summer too;why?not even the knuckledragging ghettoes of Ponte and Cas can be fooled evrytime;as Lincoln once said.Whtehall and its centuries long ,inbred led exploitation of its english colonies goes on doing to us what its armies are doing to Afghanistan and its peoples.And so it goes.

Literary.Literature.The literary arts.Writers.Novelists.Poets.Playwrights.What have all these in common?They've just got mentioned more times than in Wakefield Metropolitan District Council's official "Cultural Strategy"document of 2007.Playwrights,poets,novelists;what have they still all got in common?Far more mention has been made of them here than in any of the official deliberations of the various,"bodies",groups ,committees and sub-committeees of the Cultural Partnership Board.The Stasi have brought into existence,a very non-legitimate existence,the sum of their own intellectual,or what passes for intellectual,faeces.With quite breathtaking temerity and grandiose self-delusion,the Stasi and its,vetted,hand-picked culture/arts appointees and lackeys fully intend to "organise"the headline cultural activities in our City for 2010,11,12 and even more delusionally,2013.Just as the pathetic,emaciated,scabrous cultural strategy document blatantly omits and excludes vast swathes of Wakey's cultural/arts practitioners from its plans,so the appointed planning groups for the forthcoming plethora of festivities omits and excludes all arts/culture practitoners.Concerts and gigs and poetry performances go on irrespective of what the stasi hope or intend to achieve.The pity is the wasted opportunities the stasi seem endlessly capable of replicating year after year after galling year when it comes to promoting Wakefield itself.The Stasoid numbskulls and careerist toadies planning 2010 ad infinitum are from the same pile of discarded intellectual faeces as that lot that blew any hope of a Gissing Festival 2005/06/07/08 etcetera.The only realistic hope lies with DIVA and its affiliates;the authentic grassroots,independent culure/arts grouping that somehow keeps the dream alive.Of course,even now the stasi and its hydra like network and regiments of collaborators and officers are gearing up to expropriate,that is blatantly steal ideas and proposals for cultural projects that are tentatively entered into the public domain for discussion.Warning to all stasoids;keep the hell off our projects.If you all can do that,why,I'll make sure you get a fresh supply of coloured crayons for Xmas.And then you might be able to get around to replying to our corresepondences.That'd make a change.

On the occasion of the start of the second world war,it's a good a time as any to appreciate the appalling irony of our current national and international predicament we find ourselves in.Officially,according to the most reliable agencies of the bourgeois capitalist owned media,the economic system is in a significantly worse state of crisis and dysfunction than at the time of the so-called,"Great Depression"of the 1930s which was ackowledged as the necessary prcusor for what happened between 1939 and 45.The ruling Class never ever really learns from history,all they ever truly do is to rewrite it according to fashion,fad or taste.In lieu of once infallible religions,secular,empiricist dogma are the prevailing shibboleths.Curiosly,human freedom and liberty has thereby been greatly diminished.War heroes?what bloody "war"and as for "heroes",to "sample"Monty Python's,"Holy Grail","I fart in their general direction,those empty headed sons of animal foodtrough wipers".A little tin medal and "mates doing their job"sanctified the einsatzgruppen of the SS,the Normans and their mercernary hirelings at Pevensey Bay and a hundred other historically recorded psychotic mass murderers who've slaugthered,raped and robbed to excess in order to secure the hegemony of a particular ruling class and its insane ideology.The spineless rubbish which constitutes the membership of various western parliaments are merely a symptom of the Age.Voodoo politics goes with the prevailing voodoo economics and Capitalism in the early 21st.century is still promoting both with all the fervour of the innate shysters and charlatans that all supporters of capitalism innately are;it's in their DNA;they were predestined to be a blight upon mankind.Fortunately or otherwise,according to prejudice and affectation,there is no coherent alternative present or likely to emerge that might re order things and thus free us from the on going calamity of indecision.Where oh where are The Men of Action?alas they are at present lost to History.Hence the proliferation of midgets trying to stand on the shoulders of Giants.The scammers,the liars,thieves,impostors,counterfeiters,class traitors,venal careerists;the Browns,the Camerons and their bourgeois"Dreck".They can no more be expected to apologise or show contrition than could a cannine after its defecated in the living room.The Generals play their troops for fools and the media fulfills all of Goebbels precepts,and he after all was the prevailing historic genius of the dark arts the one everyone copies even without conscious association.Alas,and this might echo Philip K.Dick's "Man in the High Castle",the Nazis were never defeated and the post war collapse of the Iron Curtain was a trompe L'oeil.Then again perhaps we really ought to trust and rely on the goodness of human nature.And everyone gets to live happily ever after(the region's been pacified and local police trained and ethnic and religious differences have been reconciled,that sort of thing).Happy anniversary!

Intellectual property.Theft of intellectual property.Achtung!Achtung!Thieves at work.Back in July,following on from the highly successful 3 Schools Project,I submitted via Cllr.Olivia Rowley,to the CouncilCabinet for their consideration,a proposal for a Civic Poet in Residence together with Poetry Capital of Yorkshire.The submission was dated 8 July and copies of it were simultaneously deposited with Mary Creagh's office and the management cttee.of the Black Horse Poets.7 weeks after the submission I got a letter from t'council the clear inference of which was,"thanks for your unique and innovative idea,we'll take over from now and do with it what we will".There could of course be an alternate "reading"of their reply,but that would only be interpreted as,"eff you,thanks for..."Suffice for now that a terse response to the council was issued and correspondence on this matter will be ongoing.They have been cautioned as to the wider implications of intellectual property theft.More intellectual property has been ventured into the artistic/cultural public space relating to DIVA's proposed 2010 jamboree.The official Black Horse Poets'contribution is intended to be a Wakefield performance poem in the manner and style of "Under Milkwood"with just a twist of "Ulysses".Contributors and would be participants are welcome from all artistic disciplines.Unlike the Council,we do not exclude as a matter of policy any artistic/cultural practitioners.T'council's own attemted planning/organisation for 2010,apart from attempting theft of my intellectual property,isn't up to a great deal,in fact it's stuck fast in a swamp of its own making.Why's that I hear you cry;erm..because it's a bunch of talentless bureaucrats.Not one singlr,solitary practsising professional artist of any kind whatsoever is involved.Nobody,not even a sculptor.So,you might think how on earth are t'council going to plan let alone implement a cultural celebration/festival in 2010?With great effing difficulty,seeing as how the real arts/culture mob,DIVA are getting on with the only authentic and legitimate version.They could of course have given DIVA overall charge of the official effort.But hey,that takes intellect and understanding.You wouldn't want the Stasi to suddenly come over all sentient human being would you?not now they're only months away from the political extinction event come May 2010."The echo of jackboots parading on the cobblestones of Red Square",I loved that didn't you,I bet the Stasi really like the attention they get.Snapping of heels,exit stage left.

Icon and iconic used to be the preserve of religions but now are the preserve of an increasingly bastardised and hyperbolic secular discourse that has as its home the world of arts.Everything is "iconic"these days.Musical pieces,paintings,buildings,even record album covers from 1969."Abbey Road",the Beatles final studio album has got this shot of them walking over a zebra crossing.That's it.That's the "iconic"image.Well they were the Beatles,their faeces was quite possibly iconic too.So,an "album"gets to be 40.Wow!The BBC and masses of the print media get to indulge in some phony nostalgia."Maxwell's silver hammer" and "Golden slumbers"aren't exactly "out there"Man telling it like it is Man,you dig?Beatlesw the very epitome of mediocrty."Live at San Quentin",the Johnny Cash prison concert,"In the Court of the Crimson King"by prog rockers King Crimson and not least,"Songs For A Tailor"by former Cream bassist Jack Bruce were all LP chart contenders alongside the scouse quartet.Only difference being all the others were musicians who actually composed great songs.Time and the ownership and reproduction of memory are like everything we think do or say,commercialised and commodified and come at a price.In the end the famous are actually"famous"for being dead,or become so by the act of dying.Intrinsic merit is never enough,at least not in the cultural sphere.There are exceptions,largely because retrospective commodification and exploitation are themselves imperfect practices.Had Buddy Holly landed safely,or Hendrix cleaned up his addictions,what then?or Dylan Thomas drunk less.Let the shipwrecks of others be your seamarks as someone once said.I only ever heard this second hand on a recording of one Tony Hancock;who died much too soon.Unlike quite a few others,not actually intrinsically gifted or artisitic,who seem capable of hanging around forever,well at least until May 2010.