With most of Europe now drier than an Apostolic wedding do while water companies rake in billions and beaches are awash with shit, Feargal Sharkey writes this very timely piece. It’s the best thing to have been produced by any of the Undertones since Big Decision.
Smart boy Kevin, who probably works for someone like BP or News International, will not be bothered.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/20/water-company-ceos-industry-political-failure
Not much water, but they’re doing a fantastic BOGOF
deal on Asse’s milk at Morrison’s if Mrs M fancies a bath
I’m just picturing Mrs M as Amanda Barrie in Carry on Cleo. Splendid.
I’m fairly easy to picture as Sid James, if he’s had a rough time.
“Caesar!” as Kenneth Willams might have said
“Sossages”
Infamy!!!
Pasteurised?
The response to which is (as we all know): I’ll be pleased if it comes up past me chest!
The two That Petrol Emotion albums after the one with Big Decision on (Babble), released on Virgin, are both great as well. Self-released final album, Fireproof, maybe less so.
There’s a 7CD TPE box set coming out later this year.
You need 1 and a half CDs of TPE at best – the first two albums and the accompanying singles. Contemporary reports suggest they were a very good live band at that time.
The Cooper Temple Clause reminded me of TPE, despite not sounding much like them…
As the resident AW TPE specialist, I’d say albums 1, 2 and 4 are essential. Album 3 is a bit of a hotch-potch.
They were ruddy fanstasic live. There’s a BBC Transcription LP recorded on the Chemicrazy (album 4) tour, which goes for over a hundred quid, which I covet. It was one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen.
They were great live then. Same then in the Boardwalk in Manchester and it was one of the few times I’ve seen or heard any band go straight into a song when someone in the audience shouts out the title.
The cry for Swamp came out of the crowd, Steve Mack said alright and the band were straight into it.
Album 3 is a hotchpotch but the last song is a good one. And I didn’t think Fireproof was that bad. Cracking Side 1 Track 1.
Their album 3 set at the 1989 Reading Festival was marvellous. It made me listen to the record with ears afresh. In retrospect, much of it sounds way ahead of its time.
Truly one of the greatest live bands and one I probably saw more than any others in my London days. I took my wife to see them when they played a date in Dublin a few years ago and she declared them to be “the best old band that I’d dragged her to see.”
In as fine an example of nominative determinism as you’ll come across in a month of Sundays, the head of OFWAT is called Jonson Cox.
football. Nominative determinism. For anyone who watched Newcastle v Man City, is there a final example than Kieran Trippier
Horst Hrubesch
Jack Charlton literally pronounced it as “Rubbish”. Whaddaguy.
I happened to mention this (shit on beaches) in a recent comment and Mo Esher asked if everything was all right at home, which it is because I don’t live near the sea in the UK (which is geographically/relatively everywhere in the UK).
I mean, really … it’s as if they had a think tank exercise on how to make everything even worse for the stout yeomanry of the Great Britains.
Cheer up, HP,
You’ll feel better after you clip a few of the snotty youngsters outside Ye Traditional Local around the ear with your pre-EU blue UK passport. \
Once inside, you can settle down over an imperial measure Nonik tankard of warm beer while you wait for the SPG officers to finish doing the. Macarena prior to coming inside and feeling your collar for child abuse
The random puncuation makes ^ this funnier.
& _ ) %!
Feargal is a real force behind this stuff. He clearly cares deeply but as we know the shareholders rule and will keep dumping shit until the black death returns then blame us all for having too many dirty shits. “Well you knew where it was going…”
Moose, your mention of Kevin makes me think that the story of Kevin and his less than perfect cousin needs telling and turning into a 6 part drama.. Opening scene a subbuteo table with the score at 5 – 0 to Kevin…
Who would you cast as the Human League? Reece Shearsmith’s too old for Oakey….
Mick Lynch?
He’s already pencilled in as Doctor Evil
Do you work for the Daily Mail?
It’s a steady job, but he wants to be a paperback writer
Bit rich, coming from the man who looks like a sock full of spanners, who I seem to recall has previously aligned his sympathies with the Tory cause. Where was his outrage when Thatcher privatised the water industry?
His ugliness invalidates his views, eh? That’s a nicely Darwinian approach to life. I’d better shut up forever, for a start.
If you prefer, then, and to avoid any sidestepping of the main thrust of my scoffing:
Bit rich, coming from the man who I seem to recall has previously aligned his sympathies with the Tory cause. Where was his outrage when Thatcher privatised the water industry?
I didn’t know he’d been a Tory. Very odd for a Derry boy.
Well, I’m not sure he actually was a Tory, but as I said, I seem to recall some remarks from him a few years back that, in my mind, put him rather in that camp. I’m happy to be corrected if that was an unwarranted conclusion.
It’s just that his recent emergence (in my own limited view of things) as a strong (and welcome) spokesperson for the campaign to reform the water & sewerage companies, whose rampant profiteering at the expense of our most valuable common asset – the rain that falls upon our land – is a disgrace, seemed to represent a change of heart, given that it was the Tories who privatised the industry under Thatcher.
I hope I got this wrong – he never seemed like a natural Tory to me. I wish I could recall the exact remarks he made that led me to that initial conclusion.
Well, it’s certainly true that there weren’t enough voices raised in protest at the time. Given that Telecom, electricity and gas had already been flogged off in rapid succession, perhaps people were just thinking about those lovely share portfolios. Tell Sid not to water his garden.
Privatisation arguably meant that this shit* was always going to happen.
*literally
I don’t know whether he was ever a Tory sympathiser but everyone is allowed to change their mind over 30 years or so. He may not have had an interest in chalk streams in 1989.
Billy’s Turd.
Here Comes The Plumber.
More songs about where chocolate’s made
(sorry)
Swimmy Swimmy.
More Songs About Rivers And Turds
I don’t wanna see you again.
Addressed towards the toilet bowl.
While we have had many campaigning pop stars before – I have never seen or heard of contemporary pop stars actively promoting the Conservative Party.
The odd personality might say that they vote Conservative (Numan, perhaps Feargal S some years ago seemingly) but actually doing fund raisers and writing songs about Conservative Party values do not exist.
Why do you think that is? I think it’s because it’s the default, standard, across-the-board political perspective of (mainly) the English. It’s taken me years to realise that the Conservatives start each General Election with this enormous cultural advantage. It’s not a clean slate. Each election is theirs and they have to be spectacularly terrible to lose.
The deferential, spineless, mean-minded, judgemental, uncharitable mentality is basically what we are. Easy beguiled and misled by our better-funded, better-educated aristocracy and the wealthy. When someone like Alan Sugar achieves enormous wealth, he can’t wait to get to the House of Lords, have a dead ferret solemnly draped around his shoulders while the Queen’s Moste Excellente Watchman of The Court quacks like a duck six times in Latin, while the Archbishop of Canterbury slowly twerks backwards onto a tumescent Beefeater, while the choir sings Zadok the Priest.
Gary Baaaalow was Cameron’s right(wing)hand man in the 2015 election. Subsequently turned out to be not very keen on paying tax, so clearly with his own people there.
Tony Hadley, the ex-Duran Foghorn Leghorn, is pretty keen, I understand.
Lots to unpack there @retropath2 – Tony was in Spandau Ballet. He was known as “Foghorn” due to the loudness of his voice.
You make it sound like he was in a giant rooster costume singing:
#Her name is – ah say – Rio and she – ah say – Dances in the sand…#
Which wouldn’t be at all fair.
Like Florence?
I think I was right(er) the first time.
Tried tickling for brown trout today.
Imagine my surprise!
AW T-shirt of the year, 2022!
I took my grandson fishing for the first time on Thursday. I did of course explain how you tickle a trout. The carp in the lake weren’t for tickling though.