Current Affairs

What could be a better start to an album than a hearty cry of COFFEE!

Now, people were supposed to go see Bis that day. Sadly, Bis got cancelled. Just as well, saved me the mad dash from Islington Academy to 229, because I had every intention of seeing both Bis and Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer are the best thing that has emerged from Belfast for quite some time. No really, they are. The Myspace tagline reads ‘2 people, 1 sound, perfect pop music’. That is a wild understatement. Two people that seem to be doing the job of about five. One plays drums, sings, whips out a Melodica every now and then, the other plays an array of synths, jumps between them like a madman, leaps around robotically and even finds time to shout into a vocoder. Well and truly amazing.

‘Helen Love would like to thank you for your patience. This club is now open, please make your way to the glitter dancefloor, we hope you enjoy your night. Hey Ho! Let’s Go!’

YAY!

At long last!!! Another Helen Love album!!!!! On bubblegum pink vinyl. The sort you’ll want to crank up ‘till the speakers explode.

It starts off with the genius It’s My Club which is a discotastic and interspersed with all these lovely little samples and stuff. Oooh isn’t it exciting?

Robots! Pirates! Dinosaurs! All your favourite things rolled into one (ok, He-Man is missing, and so are Thundercats, but that would just be too good to be true. And ‘The Robot Pirate Dinosaur He-Man Thundercats’ would be too much of a mouthful for even the most dedicated follower of all things nice)!

This demo sounds like La Boum (for our younger viewers, that is French teen party cult classic movie from 1980) was set in the 60s and a band was playing. This could either be down to heavy use of spring reverb or just recording through a sock. In a tin can.

The massive desire to own your own home and the belief that this is so important is something I’d ascribe to Margaret Thatcher. I might even term it her ‘last laugh’ but then there are so many other legacies it would seem pointless: I wasn’t cognitive of the time before her arrival but I grew up in her shadow and watched as her policies drove a wedge between people of a certain wealth and those above it, making the poor that much poorer. I will admit, perhaps grudgingly, that her policies probably had good in the bad, that the prosperity we have now is down to things she did; most of politics seems to be about benefiting some part of society while harming another rather than having an objective good or bad.

I think most people I know were surprised at quite how much news coverage this has been generating. Certainly missing child cases have always had the power to be a massive draw but this one seemed to take on a life of its own. There have been a few mentions of so-called 'Missing White Woman Syndrome' on the web as a way of explaining this, but it seems little more than a convenient response. I would say it's more likely down to it not being a case of "There, but for the grace of God..." thanks to the apparent stupidity of the McCanns on the night of Madeleine's disappearance or death.

“It is a beautiful thing, the destruction of words” (1984)

Over the past fortnight, the mainstream press in the UK have carried out a lengthy and typically vacuous appraisal of journalistic standards at the BBC, in response to a number of recent minor scandals on the subject. The controversy was prompted in part by a furore over misleading footage of our esteemed head of state. The attention it received was perhaps a more significant indicator of a decline in standards than the substance of the controversy itself, which concerned footage apparently showing the Queen looking upset when in fact she hadn’t been upset - not a story of any great importance or, indeed, any importance at all, and certainly one which ought to have been of no interest to any serious journalist.

by Arash Norouzi

Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map". Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made, as the following article will prove.  

We are by now quite used to the fact that nearly every media discussion-based item devoted to our soon-to-be-erstwhile Prime Minister is a showpiece for the most degenerate currents in the mainstream political discourse - from the sycophantic fawning of his supporters and sympathisers, to the disingenuous and incoherent protestations of his critics on the right, all truly cringeworthy in their own way, and all balanced out by a heroic lack of assertiveness on the part of the presenter or chair as the case may be. And yet the recent debate over Mr Blair's "legacy" appears to have plumbed new depths, as the nation's politicians and political commentators joined forces in an orgy of denial and indulgent drivel which in and of itself constituted the strongest evidence of the true legacy of Tony Blair's ten years as Prime Minister.

“Opinions are not facts. What happened and how you feel about it are two different things. And people should know which is which.”

This was the earnest declaration at the centre of an advertisement poster for The Guardian newspaper, a poster which can be presently seen adorning the London transport system, inviting commuters to ponder at its earnestness and profundity. The observations are surely correct - opinions are indeed not the same as facts, and events are not the same as feelings. And of course the more people can distinguish events and feelings the better. But it is not entirely clear that the problem of people confusing events and feelings was an issue of social concern, except perhaps in some very specific circles - surrealists’ conventions, perhaps, or crack-houses. The Guardian might just have legitimately launched a colourful campaign to convince us that it would not be worthwhile or in the public interest to confuse road traffic accidents with yearnings.