Filth

Most puzzled by this comment on bbc.co.uk about Channel Five: "Plans to invest £1.5bn in the channel for programming over the next five years were also confirmed." Wow! That's the UK's fifth terrestrial television channel? The one recently acquired (subject to Ofcom approval) by Richard Desmond? One-point-five billion pounds?

Sounds pretty amazing. That much cash could produce an awful lot of quality drama. Or educational documentaries. Or top drawer news output. Or it could buy in the very latest and best of US programming. But this is Richard Desmond, the owner of Northern and Shell; the publisher of OK! Magazine, The Daily Express and The Daily Star? That much money sounds just a little unlikely given the editorial values at Express Group Newspapers. This is a publisher that doesn't believe in journalists, cribs most of its stories from the internet, makes the rest up, and the main purpose of whose newspapers is to plug OK! and sell premium rate phone competitions to premium rate stupid people?

Well I never. Perhaps I'm being unfair on Des (Dirty Des to his friends). £1.5bn! Let's have a closer look at what sort of programming we might expect. This is easier than you might think. After all, Des already broadcasts numerous satellite/cable channels, so he's not new to the game. let's have a look at the sort of programmes his other channels produce. Rim Junkies. Hmm. A programme about golfers who actually enjoy missing puts? Strange. What's this? Man Bitch. Er, a nature documentary about a lesser known bread of asexual canines? More and more puzzling. But what are the television channels called? Dirty Talk.... Red Hot Fetish....

Now it makes sense. You see Desmond is a pornographer. Nothing wrong with that in my mind, but is it really appropriate that one of the UK's five terrestrial television stations is owned and run by a man who made his millions publishing porn magazines such as Asian Babes? Maybe? OK, what about a man whose businesses have: -

- been reprimanded by the television regulator on numerous occasions for broadcasting R18-rated material which can only legally be sold in sex shops;
- had numerous complaints upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority regarding dubious reader offers in its publications;
- been censured by the Press Complaints Commission for failing to provide adequate apologies for arroneous or inappropriate stories on six occasions;
- made numerous libel settlements for false stories, including "more than 100 articles (about Madeleine McCann's parents) which were seriously defamatory to the couple"; and
- received a criminal prosecution for printing a misleading cover line on OK!?

The man who has in the past associated with the New York mafia; the man who has paid compensation to a ex-employer for physically assaulting him; the man who has just paid off a female member of staff to avoid an accusation of sexual harrassment?

Ofcom has the power to overrule the acquisition, but it seems highly likely that they will wave it through, deeming Desmond a "fit and proper person". Sigh!

£1.5bn! Amazing. Another rquote from the story: "The £20m cost-cutting drive is past of an 'ambitious new investment plan that will see the channel go toe-to-toe with the biggest players in the TV world,' a statement from the channel added." (emphasis mine). This is the true story. Desmond will come in and slash costs wherever possible. To the maximum extent permissable by the regultor, programming will consist of plugs for Desmond's other business (see The Daily Express for a sample), cut-price celebrity nonsense (you ain't seen nothing yet), 'tasteful' soft pornography and late night t&a. The "£1.5bn" investment story is, how does one say.... 'bollocks'.

In case you were wondering, "Filth" is the title of another one of Desmond's existing television channels, but seems an appropriate heading for slightly different reasons.

It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs

I started this blog entry back in July. I only got as far as a title and now (in September) have no idea what it was supposed to be about. I expect it was something to do with what a knob George Lucas is, or the decline of mainstream cinema after 1977, or how Jennifer Aniston should win a lifetime achievement Oscar for her diligent and repeated interpretations of the character 'Jennifer Aniston' in the increasingly little-known genre 'RomComs featuring Jennifer Aniston as Jennifer Aniston'. Or something like that.

Drugs Are Bad, M'kay?

Heroin will be legalised and regulated within several developed countries within the next 20 years. Within 50 years the idea of criminalised heroin will be as anachronistic as 1920's alcohol prohibition in the USA.

I just wanted to get this prediction down for posterity. I've been saying it to anyone that will listen for several years, but it seems that the tide is truly now starting to turn.

We know that retired policemen, back-bench politicians, and anyone who has ever studied the subject without regard for the views of the Daily Mail have increasingly been saying the 'unsayable': drugs should be legalised. Good grief, even The Economist has been making the case since at least 1993 (http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2009/03/economist-revisits-long-standing.html). However, when even the incumbent President of Mexico says it should be considered, you know the writing is on the wall. As it happens, President Calderon has qualified his comments by saying that he doesn't agree with it personally (weasel words if ever there were any: imagine David Cameron saying "we need to have a discussion about cutting the public budget and raising taxes; I don't personally believe we should, but..."). But a former President has no such concerns - he doesn't need to kowtow to the church or the USA, hence Vicente Fox has said it straight: (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMi5B2USfJStXxfqgWWr2xjRYpOgD9HFMD5O0)

Of course, despite my opening comment, this isn't a debate about heroin. It is a debate about all 'illicit' drugs (marijuana, cocaine, etc). However, I specifically mentioned heroin for two reasons.

Firstly it is the uber-bogeyman of drugs. According to popular imagination, even being in the same room as heroin will cause you to lose your mind and descend into debauchery and depravity, if indeed those are two seperate things. Despite this lofty position as the bete noire of chemical substances, I maintain that heroin will be amongst the drugs that are legalised.

My second reason for specifically mentioning heroin is that it needs to be legalised more urgently than anything else. Illegal heroin is very dangerous. It is highly addictive (although nowhere near as much so as tobacco) and as such commands particularly high prices. This drives many users (although by no means all) into a spiral of criminality that ruins their lives and the many people effected by them. It is also a highly dangerous drug as users often resort to injecting. As we all know, in a illicit environment this carries a grave risk of HIV and other infections. It also means that the multivarious cutting agents that are inevitably passed off in street heroin can frequently be dangerous and/or deadly.

Did you see the "illegal" qualifier in the second sentence of the previous paragraph? Here's the rub. Heroin itself is a very safe substance. Pause. Deep breath. Let's try that again. HEROIN ITSELF IS A VERY SAFE SUBSTANCE. I know the vast majority of people who come across that statement simply won't believe it. The simple truth is that they would be wrong. A brief reading of the facts will explain all, and I can think of no better place to start than http://www.flatearthnews.net/media-falsehoods-and-propaganda/heroin. This is not a screed by some hippy drop out or conspiracy theorist, but careful research by an "award-winning" (aren't they all) journalist.

And if I need to provide one piece of evidence, one little factoid that might make people open to reconsidering their deeply held Daily Mail opinions, it would be this quote from Davies: "(Martindale, the standard medical reference book,) records that heroin is used for the control of severe pain in children and adults, including the frail, the elderly and women in labour. It is even injected into premature babies who are recovering from operations. Martindale records no sign of these patients being damaged or morally degraded or becoming criminally deviant or simply insane. It records instead that, so far as harm is concerned, there can be problems with nausea and constipation."

Isn't it hilarious that in the popular imagination, heroin is about as safe as arsenic. Isn't it a terrible indictment of our media and our politicans that the truth has been so comprehensively suppressed. This is in large part (although typically indirectly) a result of pressure from the USA to maintain the global war on drugs (very useful cover when you want an excuse to send hundreds of millions of dollars to a client state). In the past, any country attempting to liberalise drugs laws came under intense pressure from Uncle Sam. It seems those days are gone.

I don't expect that a UK Prime Minister will make the case for legalisation anytime soon. The Daily Mail and the prejudices of its readers are too powerful to allow that (have I mentioned the Daily Mail before?) However, the public will increasingly become aware that the drugs laws are a pathetic joke - the single biggest blight on the world since malaria. They will become aware that legalistion and regulation will: -

- slash (and I mean SLASH) crime;
- not lead to a huge increase in drug use;
- generate savings for NHS budgets as existing users become healthier;
- provide a massive source of new tax revenue;
- create a whole new field of legitimate employment;
- strangle funding to terrorists;
- Kick the feet away from organised crime (at least until they find a new source of revenue); and
- generate more wealth and social cohesion in developing nations, who will be able to legitimately profit from the trade.

And they will demand change. One day. Within the next 20-50 years.

Them Rappers

I have owned Straight Outta Compton for about 10 years, probably since a period around my 30th birthday when I decided it was important to own every seminal rap record ever made. While that appears as, and probably was, a slightly sad early mid-life crisis thing, it does mean that I have early efforts by Afrika Bambaataa, Melle Mel, Run D-M-C, Public Enemy, The Beastie Boys, Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, Jay-Z, The Roots, Outkast and Roots Manuva on CD and on my iPod (sorry, MP3 player). However, I have never really got around to listening to Niggaz With Attitude's only album that counts. I set that straight this morning on the train.

It happens that I had been listening to a couple of Public Enemy's less obvious albums a few days ago - Yo! Bum Rush the Show and Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age - so given the traditional critical contrast between the two groups I was well primed. To cut to the chase, I find that SOC is almost unmitigated rubbish. Even some of Public Enemy's more laboured efforts have passion and ambition in them. SOC sounds like a BBC children's television director's idea of what rap music is. With added profanity.

There is another rap band that comes to mind and they were notable for two reasons. Firstly they had the first ever pure rap hit. Secondly they are widely renowed for being a pathetic, watered-down, lilly white, half-hearted excuse for a facsimile of the street music that was being produced in the late 1970's. I am talking, of course, about The Sugarhill Gang. The title of their hit almost says it all - Rapper's Delight.

(I found a wonderful 'fact' on Wikipedia about Rapper's Delight, the track being based around a sample (or perhaps copy) of Chic's Good Times: apparently "the song currently holds the record of sampling a previously recorded song in the shortest period of time, less than two months." I now intend to become the new world record holder by going into a record shop later today and buying any of this week's new releases - doesn't matter what - and recording it on my mobile phone or any other handy recording device. While not obviously necessary, I will then avoid any dispute with the Guinness Book of Records by creating a further recording of myself talking over the top of the first recording and copying this second recording onto a CDR. So long as I can manage to achieve all of this within two months I will then become the new world record holder for sampling a previously recorded song in the shortest period of time, and perhaps someone will write a Wikipedia entry about me. Idiots.)

Anyway, the only shocking thing about the supposedly shocking SOC is that it sounds like it could have been recorded by The Sugarhill Gang. Although to be fair, with extra "fuck"s and "bitch"es and "I don't believe in foreplay, just spread ya legs"s. Actually, there is one other shocking thing about SOC. 8-Ball (Remix) by Eazy-E sounds exactly like the title music to The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air -you know, where Will Smith raps about "a couple of guys, they were up to no good, started making trouble in my neighbourhood". It is to my great disappointment that Will Smith's track was recorded a couple of years after SOC, so i can't accuse Eazy-E of ripping it off. However, if Will Smith can copy your music undiluted, then I think it says rather a lot about your music (apologies there to Stewart Lee).

I said that SOC is almost unmitigated rubbish. Express Yourself remains a thoroughly enjoyable romp and, tellingly, quite atypical of the record as a whole. It was primarily rapped by Dr Dre. Now, as everyone knows, Dre is not considered a good rapper. His flow is ponderous and devoid of inflection unlike... well, unlike Calvin Broadus or Marshall Mathers. Even Express Yourself suffers from this failing, but the funk in the backing track and the humour in the lyrics is enough to carry the day. The same cannot be said of the rest of SOC. And where does that leave the revered production abilities of Dre or the supposedly sublime rapping skills of Ice Cube?

Shocking indeed. 1 out of 10. I'll be listening to It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back on the way home, to remind myself what rap music can aspire to.

"I got a letter from the Government the other day. I opened and read it, it said they were suckers."