After months of tedious Labour infighting, the moment for its long hoped-for eclipse by Tory party divisions has finally arrived. So-called blue-on-blue action is doing a good job of exposing Tory idiocy on all sides of the referendum debate. Ministers – particularly those on the leave side – are wonderfully showing up their stupidity. And last but not least the bumbling, amiable mask Boris Johnson has hidden behind for too long has slipped and the face of an unprincipled chancer is daily in the press and politics programmes.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe this will be enough to rip the Tory party apart, even if matters get pretty fierce and it falls to playground name-calling. Thankfully, there are other shenanigans afoot that might put the long-term health of the party Conservatives in jeopardy.
Last week, the Telegraph commented on “secret plans” by Dave to reorganise the party. Under these measures, he was hoping to wind up nine out of ten local Tory associations and centralise the membership in sub-regional blocks. Association chairs will have less local clout, giving up powers to CCHQ, and campaigning was to be concentrated in a staff of full-timers appointed by and beholden to the centre. The reasons why are pretty obvious. For one, Dave knows some of the parliamentary party are going along with Leave because of pressure from the “mad, swivel-eyed loons” in the constituency associations. And, as we know, that’s where real political sovereignty lies in the Westminster system. Secondly, mindful of what happened to the Labour Party, it’s plausible to them for the party elite to try and prevent the same thing from occurring – not that it will ever see a Corbyn-style surge. Specifically, and more immediately, there is the thwarting of Johnson’s ambitions and shoring up the fort for Osborne.
Alas, there’s been a partial row back on the plans. Associations under 200 members will be merged with their neighbour(s) and it will go ahead where there is a desire for it to happen. In reality, a large number of associations operate in this way already, particularly in urban areas where some are down to single digits. It’s also worth noting here a chunk of the membership is entirely fictitious. If you’re a member of your local association boozer, and there are a surprising few knocking about, you’re classified as a party member too. Yet despite the step back it still represents a power grab by central office. Marginalising them and directing activism from the centre has the added benefit – from their point of view – of making the full-time apparatus more influential and important to those wanting to make their way up the greasy pole.
I welcome these reforms and hope the Tory party board don’t water them down further. The problem with the Tories is they are locked in a death spiral. The membership keeps falling and precious few activists are coming through. This can be offset by money, by gerrymanders, by friendly media, and by engineering situations more favourable to their politics. But they cannot fight shy of this forever. Dave must hope that a more disciplined outfit will prove attractive to Blair-esque small business, middle class, and professional people who’d find the unreconstructed rightwingery of the associations a massive turn off. Sadly for him, it’s groundless.
As we know from the experience of the Labour Party under Blair and Brown, one driver of the diminishing membership was the ever more remote relationship between leading MPs and the members. Unless you were doggedly Labour, and/or had the political understanding that participating in the party and working for its electoral victory is always preferable to the alternative, there was very little to incentivise paying over the subs, attending the meetings, and doing party work. Whatever you might think of Jeremy Corbyn, his election has reversed that trend and all the crude insults and calls for deselection for truculent MPs are expressions of a support reasserting itself after feeling neglected. Dave’s proposals promise to send his party in the other direction. With the influence of associations curbed, and with it the patronage senior lay committees can dole out, unless one is either a careerist or a super hardcore Tory why would you join a party that takes your money and gives precious little back? To head Johnson off at the pass, the Tories’ famous short-termism and decadence sees Dave forward a plan that can hasten their decline. Good.
There is, however, a cloud to this silver lining. The Tory party isn’t some free floating signifier without a referent. It is the collective expression of a section of British business and their allies and exists to pursue their interests while pretending to govern for everyone. It also has a wider constituency of millions who will always passively support them come election time. The problem is if the Tories die, those interests and those votes will find expression in some way. It could be through a Blair mk II Labour Party (stranger things have happened), a rejuvenated but rightward-facing Liberal Democrats, or via a recomposition of the right into something even less pleasant than the Tories and its ugly UKIP offspring. Whatever happens, when defeat eventually comes for the Conservatives we need to have a movement and a Labour Party strong and astute enough to ensure that however long their current period of government goes on for, it will be their last.
Does the English criminal justice system discriminate against the Roma? Well, of course it does, would be the right-on answer. Haven’t years of experience with the police, the courts, the prisons shown us that the whole thing is institutionally, irredeemably racist? As with most things once you scratch the happy official reality and dig a bit deeper than most radical critiques one finds a messy, complex situation that requires nuance and a bit of tact to address. At the first University of Derby Sociology Research Seminar Series last Wednesday, Phil Henry took us on a guide of this difficult terrain in his paper, ‘Deviance and difference, stereotypes and stigma: pathogising Roma within the criminal justice system in the UK, what evidence do we have?’.
As well as being a member of the Sociology department, Phil doubles up as the director of the university’s Multi Faith Centre where he and his colleagues are engaged in several outreach projects, and that includes supporting young people from the (primarily Slovak) cohort of Roma who arrived in Derby after 2004. His way in to exploring how this community is disadvantaged and has its young people up before the courts in disproportionate numbers proceeds via some elementary and widely-applied sociological concepts. Is it the case that a moral panic surrounds the Roma which stigmatises and labels them, in turn compounding the magnitude of the panic and driving a criminal justice response, or is something else happening?
Drawing on the classic study by Stanley Cohen, a moral panic is an exaggerated social action attributable to a social group that is amplified (if not stoked by) the media and certain political concerns. Each panic seeks to construct a folk devil on which a panic can ultimately be hung, re-hung, and hung again for good measure. Longtime readers/observers of the right wing press in this country will certainly have an idea of which groups have received this treatment over the years.
In many ways, the Roma are the perfect set of folk devils, which is fed by centuries of antipathy toward Gypsies and travellers. The Roma also bring with them associations formed in Eastern Europe and reinforced by non-Roma migrant workers who’ve also settled here. These tend to be associated with littering, overcrowding, loitering in public, anti-social behaviour, lack of parental supervision, and petty crime. Phil also observed that Roma, or at least those living in Derby, tend to live in relative isolation marked both by very close proximity and communal living. 3,500 (approximately) are clustered in three wards in the south of the city. Furthermore, some community practices such as kids having a freer reign, and more problematic ones such as marriage-at-16 tend to reinforce separation from the host society.
Erving Goffman’s Stigma, is useful for thinking through some of these issues. Goffman understands stigma as a socially attributed status disqualifying people caught up in it from full acceptance. In the UK context, Phil noted that certain cultural mores might contribute to stigmatisation in the eyes of the host community. Firstly, however, it was important to note the Roma do not see themselves as stigmatised. Most important are “internal” dynamics of shame and honour, and anything belonging to the outside is just that – they pay second fiddle to what you might call their own specific forms of symbolic and social capital. It followed that tensions between these structures and the conventions and law of the wider society are bound to happen. As Phil illustrated by anecdote, Roma youth tend not to take encounters with the police too seriously as here they tend to get cautioned and locked up, whereas back in Slovakia beatings and getting threatened with guns is the normal run of things. Either way, whether policing is violent or not, what matters most are the cultural codes of the Roma.
Hence from their point of view, boisterous behaviour on street corners and petty crime is normal behaviour whereas it can be viewed as threatening by others, and therefore brings forth a criminal justice response. Developing strategies to tackle the over-representation of young Roma in offending and re-offending rates means understanding the culture and, crucially, not turning a blind eye to practices that transgresses the law but develops a strategy that can discourage, promote integration, and not come over as crudely assimilationist and bureaucratic. To this end, informed by this analysis Phil and the MFC have been working with the office of Derbyshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner. Together they have provided outreach workers and mentoring to provide activities that take folks off the streets – in full consultation with the Roma themselves, and to work with young offenders. There is always two-way consultation to let the authorities know about any issues as well.
Going from the pilot work done so far, it appears to have had some positive results. First time offending and reoffending rates are well down – of 17 young offenders who received mentoring, only one ended up back in the criminal justice system. Of course, there may be other factors in play not controlled for by the study and intervention. For instance, Derby these days is growing quickly and providing greater numbers of job opportunities than other similar-sized cities, particularly outside of the south east. It is possible that a more benign economic environment could be having an impact coincident with the study, though that caveat seems to be stretching credulity a touch.
By way of a tentative sociological conclusion, Phil argued that the fieldwork showed that the Roma weren’t disadvantaged and targeted by law enforcement because of the mainstream labelling them deviant and stigmatic, but rather lay in the tensions between their internal values systems and wider British society. While moral panics a media stigmatisation are damaging, it’s not a simple case of doing away with negative portrayals of Roma and everything will be alright – as I hope my rendering of Phil’s paper has demonstrated.
Doncaster. Famous for the race course, Ed Miliband, and, um, that’s it. Not that I’m particularly bothered. It was the idea of tooling up on digital artifacts of a certain vintage that drew comrade @alexdawson1978 and I to the West Riding of Yorkshire this day for the Retro Collect Video Game Market.
Despite my status as an inveterate video game hunter, I had never been to a proper games market like this one. Car boot sales and one of North Staffordshire’s seven (you heard that right) retro stockists are my preferred trawling grounds, so I didn’t know what to expect. Would it be packed? Are the games going to be overpriced? Will there be anything decent?
Rammed it most certainly was. We turned up a little later than we hoped thanks to the supplied post code directing the satnav to the back end of beyond. Cheers for that, promo people. And the queue to get in the market was the longest I’ve seen since The Nemesis opened at Alton Towers. Thankfully it moved very quickly, and before we knew it we were in. However, as packed as it was, for someone used to deftly moving in and out of crowds with the occasional strategic elbow, I managed to see everything I wanted.
On the price front, there was little evidence of a market premium getting slapped on most titles. Okay, there were some very dodgy pricing decisions. The odd tenner here and there for games with a street value of three quid (I’m looking at you Rage Racer), and 95 notes for A Link to the Past is excessive. But for the most part, cramming so many stockists together disciplined the price range, and often came in under the kinds of sums demanded by Stoke’s finest retro emporiums.
How about the stock? There was a lot of good stuff, nay, great stuff going. Unfortunately, as my games don’t have much space available to them I had to make some careful decisions. Being a semi-serious collector of sorts, I tend toward complete games. I won’t buy boxed games without instructions, for instance. I’ll also pick up Nintendo stuff (NES, SNES, Game Boy) as cartridge-only, but not MegaDrive, Master System, or original PlayStation – unless it’s a super good bargain, like the four quid I paid for Gunstar Heroes 18 months back. I’ll also avoid stuff that has had a rough existence – my nose turned up a few times at games with sun damage and snapped off hangers. And why oh why is it that every copy of the Master System’s Double Dragon always comes with water damage? Bizarre.
Without further ado, here are my acquisitions:
F-1 Race for the GameBoy was released back in the day with the handheld’s four player adapter. It’s a port of an ancient Famicom title, and was very well received at the time thanks to the endless multiplayer fun that could be hand. For 99p it would have been sinful not to have picked it up.
G-Loc Air Battle for the MegaDrive is a conversion of Sega’s (then) spectacular sequel (of sorts) to the canonical Afterburner. I’d been looking to pick it up for a while, but for some reason was always overpriced in local stockists. Acquired for a song, I look forward to being as rubbish at this as I am with its illustrious predecessor.
Heroes of the Lance is an adaptation of a (once) relatively well-known Advanced Dungeons and Dragons licence to the Master System. To be honest, catching it on one of the stalls was the first time I’ve seen it since, well, forever. I can only vaguely remember seeing it back in the day so as something of a rarity I took a punt on it. Alas, the consensus is it’s rubbish but we’ll have a go nonetheless.
Kung Fu for the NES is the much-loved conversion of one of my favourite beat ’em ups from the mid-80s. Back then I used to cane this game something rotten on my mate’s Amstrad, so I’m glad my jolly old Nintendo and Retron5 are set to deliver a stiff nostalgia fix.
Metal Slug X for the PlayStation is a beastie I’ve wanted since finding out a version was available on the PS1. For the uninitiated, Metal Slug is a franchise of comically violent 2D scrollers that cleaned up the arcades in the mid/late 1990s. I’d have been into it at the time if I wasn’t otherwise engaged in book bingeing and boozing.
Starflight for the MegaDrive is a game I’ve held a candle for since 1991. I can still remember opening the pages of Mean Machines issue 12 and seeing the glowing review for this space trading/exploration game. I’m not sure why I never got it when the chance presented itself. Well, then it cost £39.99, which is about £800 in 2016 money, and I got it today for £13, so it had better be worth a quarter century of waiting.
Lastly, I bagged a boxed and complete version of Super Mario Bros 2 for the NES. It’s a game that probably needs no introduction, SM2 remains the only classic Mario title from the NES/SNES days I haven’t played in any depth (the legacy of being a teenage MegaDrive owner, you see).
Sooner or later, I’m sure there will be more words said about each of these. Just got to find the time to play them inbetween everything else.
From a chin-stroking perspective, Brother A and I expected the market to be packed with gentleman of a certain age, and we were right. But interestingly, there were a few younger folk there. Some were probably seeking games from their own childhoods, and stockists were smart enough to bring along plenty of PS1, PS2, and original XBox titles, but plenty helped themselves to 8- and 16-bit goodies. I also espied one bloke buying his five/six year old a MegaDrive, though I strongly suspect it wasn’t really for him.
As I’ve argued before, nostalgia has mutated and occupies a niche in the eternal present. Before the internet became what it is today, there was a certain cut off from the past. Prior to YouTube and SoundCloud, songs, shows, and games of yesteryear had to be experienced directly via old records, old games, and old video tapes – not withstanding the issuing of occasional nostalgic compilation CDs. Investing in old cultural detritus was for fringe people gathering at fringe events. For the bulk of folk, reminiscing the old stuff was the closest they got. Now, it is immediately available. If I want to play something like RoboCop on the Spectrum, 30 seconds with a search engine is all it takes. But this accessibility, and commentary from sundry YouTube commentators* is driving a surge in retro game collecting, and is encouraging some to pick up where their interest tailed off years ago. When I was a kid, I wanted a NES and SNES but my limited means kept me to the MegaDrive. Now those means are a little more expansive, and I can indulge the pash I guillotined for the dubious pleasures university offered.
Overall, the market was a great experience and had both of us thinking that something similar in Stoke could do well. Watch this space …
* Almost forgot to mention I met Gemma of Juicy Game Reviews/TheGebs24 fame today, as you do.
There is little Donald Trump can say to shock any more. Last night’s implication that his underwear packs something beastly is a case in point. I must admit, it raised a chuckle here. As the Republican party takes a dark turn that won’t end well for millions of Americans, not least those supporting Trump, sometimes laughter is the only response you can muster as all the rules about US politics is dumped in a skip, and for something more coarse, more dangerous to rise in its place.
I would hope that Hillary Clinton, as the likely Democrat nominee would be able to crush Trump in the presidential election, though I still am of the opinion that Bernie Sanders would be an even safer bet. Yet neither are dead certs as Trump is drawing deep from a well poisoned by decades of prejudice, resentment, alienation, entitlement and, yes, that old warhorse anxiety. As many commentators have already observed, Mitt Romney’s “unprecedented” intervention was only going to shore up Trump’s support, as per His Blairness and his courtiers vis a vis Jeremy Corbyn.
In this respect, The Graun has provided a service inviting us to peer into the minds of “secret” Donald Trump supporters. Some of it is typical hard right bullshit, but lest we forget that bullshit is taken deadly seriously by millions of Americans. But most intriguing (or depressing) are the self-styled liberals, progressives, and in one case an apparent anti-capitalist who are lining up to support his ticket.
One describes himself as a “patriotic socialist” who likes Trump’s idea of stopping all Muslim immigration. Another would support Sanders in a heartbeat, but believes Trump is the lesser evil to Hillary’s oligarchy-as-usual policies. Another thinks a Trump presidency would shake the American people out of their torpor, seeing as Hitler did the same. A “left-liberal college professor” is supporting Trump because he wants to piss off his lefty students. Another is an unemployed licensed attorney who thinks Trump will shake things up, even if he’s “as bad as Hitler”. And perhaps the most ridiculous and short-sighted comes from a young gay Muslim who thinks he’d be okay under a Trump presidency because The Donald just wants to get the “bad” Saudi-backed Wahhabi Muslims.
Each of these people are either deeply stupid, short-sighted to the point of blindness, or both. But millions supporting Trump for similar, albeit less articulate reasons, isn’t something you can put down to individual stupidity. It is a social phenomenon, and need to be grasped, analysed, and responded to as such. What’s common in all these “left” rationalisations is a sense of fatalism and powerless. Each of them have effectively given up on collective action to change things, not that each and every one of them have been active in the activist sense. They don’t think to look to themselves and others in a similar position to work together around a set of political and social objectives. As American politics has redoubled its oligarchical character, so their individual situations are rendered external and irrelevant to Beltway concerns, or at least so it appears to them. Hence feeling isolated and unwilling/unable to engage in politics to solve their own problems, they latch onto a billionaire saviour who threatens the whole system with a hard reset – and all without having to do much more than fill out a piece of paper.
The problem is their fatalism is also premised on it’s-not-going-to-happen-to-me-ism. Trump wants to demolish establishment politics, but that wrecking ball will crash through the heartlands of those now flocking to support him, just as it has done under previous conservative presidencies.
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It looks very jolly, doesn’t it? I’ll more than likely head up ‘anley duck to watch it come the release.
As you might expect, a few people have had a moan about the Ghostbusters reboot. Some of it is justified (three white scientists and a “street” black woman, really?), but the big whinges are reserved for the all-female cast. Never mind that comedy action family romps for mainstream audiences have typically centered on the antics of all-male gangs, oh no, the moaning only begins when women-led films dare to venture out of the romcom and super serious character study-type flicks. In fact, trying to think of anything in this genre led by a group of female characters and none immediately come to mind. In 2016.
Of course, anyone who’s worried about the franchise “being spoiled” by the replacement of male by female characters need to get a life. But I can understand the anxiety while having zero sympathy for it. 1984’s original Ghostbusters is a much-loved film. It’s funny, has great effects (for the time), a simple goodies vs baddies story line, and characters an audience can relate to. I can remember the publicity back in the day – the scene where Slimer charges down the hallway toward Venkman (Bill Murray) was heavily trailed. But we never saw the sliming itself – that was left for the movie (unlike now where it appears all the best lines and set pieces make it into the publicity).
Beloved and fondly remembered it is, Ghostbusters was very much a boy’s movie. Female characters had inessential walk-on parts as the secretary (Janine) and the love interest (Dana). Venkman practically stalked the latter until she gave into his leery advances. She was possessed by a demon called the gatekeeper while another, called the keymaster (groan), had to get together to summon their big baddie master, Gozer the Gozerian. It’s all low-level sexist stuff that was par the course in 80s movies, and despite being very entertaining is hopelessly a product of its time.
Nevertheless, this sort of format was ubiquitous in the 1980s. This was years after the sexual revolution, and women were already present in the workplace in large numbers. Perhaps it was an expression of the revanchist tide of Conservatism that rolled over the United States, and did threaten the gains made by women and gay people. Part and parcel of this is a forgotten aspect of 1980s culture, and that’s the permeation of film and music with 1950s nostalgia. Cris-crossing the Atlantic we had films based in small towns that had barely moved on since the days of the Great Society, we had Shakin’ Stevens and Jive bloody Bunny exercising the record-buying public, numerous superheroes were revived from the 1950s heyday, there was a teddy boy inflection in the New Romantic scene. It was everywhere and it was horrible (except in Back to the Future, but that’s for another time).
This 50s nostalgia of twee white families living in twee white houses with their twee fridges and twee Cadillacs spoke of a simpler time where gender roles were rigidly defined and everyone knew their place. Of course, that 1950s was the experience of a relatively privileged number of Americans, but it was they who came of age in the 70s and 80s and started churning out cultural product for the masses, and no wonder they would visit the (idealised) themes of their childhood. Therefore pally blokey movies, which have always been something of a mainstay, became even more ubiquitous as family-friendly entertainment not simply because of the conservative cultural climate which, itself, was conditioned by the turn to the right in politics, but also the cohort of (mainly) men moving into decision-making roles in the entertainment industry. As such, while Ghostbusters wasn’t a retread of a 50s B-movie, it did stick with rigid gender lines and character archetypes. Even the car – Ecto 1 – is a 1959 Caddy.
Going from the trailer of the new Ghostbusters, it looks like the ghost of the 50s has been laid to rest. Good.
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Ellie Mae O’Hagan writes that the Tories are politically prepared for another economic crisis, should one hit. Looking at the lack of profitable opportunities for capital presently, the ongoing investment strike, stock markets that went up and then came down, and the inflating credit bubble you’d be daft to rule one out with certainty over the coming years.
Ellie talks about how she felt the left response the the crash(es) of 2008 were bland and complacent. My experience was different. I wrote at the time that there was a bit of energy and excitement about, even though we knew the government would strive to make a crisis of private capital into a question of public spending. For our part (I was a Socialist Party member up until early 2010) it was a spur for activity, of trying to raise questions about the crisis-ridden character of capitalism and get people to take our analysis seriously. Never mind that the SP’s theory of crisis was premised on the underconsumption of the working class, and therefore was both wrong and owed more to Keynes than Marx, and that it had confidently predicted 15 out of the last three recessions, we felt we were right and that our ideas had been vindicated after 30 years of neoliberal consensus.
Ultimately, the far left in its manifestations weren’t able to press home the political advantage of its cornering the niche for forecasting economic Armageddon, though I remember one international current pompously claiming The Graun echoed its own unreadable editorials. Dream on …
The Labour Party was intellectually paralysed by the crash. Credit where credit is due, Gordon Brown overcame his predilection for dithering and moved decisively to prevent the meltdown of Britain’s banking system. His rescue package became a model for elsewhere and helped stop the so-called ‘Great Recession’ from tipping over into an unwelcome retread of the Great Depression. But you got the sense this was all done rather reluctantly. Earlier in the year as Northern Rock courted liquidation, Alistair Darling appeared genuinely contrite that it had to be nationalised. And small wonder. As far as Labour under Blair and Brown had a political economy, it was one marked not just by market fundamentalism, but by the belief that it was the job of the state, as per Thatcher and Major before them, to create new opportunities for profit making and profit taking funded by the tax payer. None of this erases the positives of the last Labour government, but one cannot help noting these advances were tacked onto a core politics that, in all essentials, did not deviate from the script handed down from Thatcher to her successor.
When the crisis erupted, Labour was not ready for it. It had a narrative, that the crisis was caused by the collapse of the US housing market and how exotic (and toxic) forms of debt were held by British banks which, in turn, placed them in danger of failure. It wasn’t our fault, guv. The problem was Labour had repeatedly told the City that it was fine and dandy, intensely relaxed some might say, with the financial alchemy driving the treasury tax take. With government seeing itself as facilitator of rather than regulator of economic activity, there was no position from which it could tell a story that exonerated its previous actions. It didn’t matter that the Tories under Dave were committed to the same spending plans and had attacked Blair and Brown for regulating too much – the only oppositions the popular media scrutinise come from the left. And so the future PM and chancellor articulated a position as per Ellie’s article, and we know what happened next.
Are we in a better position today? One of the few positives to come from Labour’s loss back in 2010 is an opening up of debates around economics. Matters are a touch more heterodox now. Too late in the dying days of the Brown government, our beloved comrade Peter Mandelson talked about the need for the state to do industrial activism. Noted by his sometime admirer George Osborne, the Tories have talked a lot about this with their long-term economic plan and northern powerhouse nonsense, but it was only Labour that embedded it in their programme. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, the punters weren’t takers. Now? Well, the position has moved further to the left. Austerity is rightly attacked as unnecessary, harmful, and damaging from the perspective of capital as well as the people at the sharp end. The book is closed on neoliberal policy as even standard bearers of the Progress right swap Friedman and Hayek for Keynes, and we have closeted and not-so-closeted Marxists taking up advisory roles to Labour leadership.
Despite these welcome changes, there is no indication this ferment is breaking news to people outside the strange little club of the politically interested and committed. We can talk about austerity and cuts, but the sad truth is it gets through to precious few. The Tories gambled that paring back public services and flogging off parts of the NHS without adversely affecting the majority of people, and their judgement has proven correct. Doubling down on criticising austerity isn’t going to work, and neither will exposes of cronyism and serious tax dodging. Unfortunately, I’m not in the possession of an answer either, and if I were change is made by movements of masses of people – ideas only gain flesh if they inhabit the thoughts and actions of millions. Perhaps, just perhaps, the ideas around the basic/citizen’s income could be the basis of a platform that will make people take note of what Labour is currently saying about the economy and the prospects of another crisis. Which is why, seeing as the economy clock could be counting down to a renewed round of ruination, it should be adopted as a matter of priority.
The most popular posts last month were …
1. Boris Johnson: Vanity and Opportunism
2. Michael Gove’s Fairy Tale
3. The Idiocy of Jeremy Hunt
4. Notes on Peter Tatchell and No Platform
5. Hillary Clinton: It’s the Politics, Stupid
It’s pleasing to see a combination of Tory infighting and Tory incompetence make the running this last month. Since my screed on Boris was published, it has transpired that Johnson drafted another Telegraph article setting out the argument for remaining in the EU. If that doesn’t underline how his position-taking is all about ambition and nothing to do with the interests of the class he represents, I don’t know what will.
Nevertheless, February – as it usually is – has proven to be relatively quiet, partly because I haven’t had much time to think, let alone write. But still, according to my reckoning the month was still the 17th best on record. Far out, eh?
In terms of second chances, it is going to be the weightier posts that get a look-in for another airing. First is my start to a series of posts about State, Power, Socialism by Nicos Poulantzas. And the other is a rumination on age as a growing point of tension around which politics is increasingly influenced.
They say politics becomes bitter and personal in inverse proportion to the seriousness of what’s at stake. On this occasion though, the battle for Young Labour’s seat on the NEC is a weighty matter.
As readers know, the party is precariously balanced. Jeremy’s army of supporters make up the bulk of the membership, which helps explain the 72% approval rating the leadership currently commands. And, of course, there is the small matter of his occupation of the leader’s office. Meanwhile his opponents on the right and centre command a majority in the parliamentary party, the party administration, the National Policy Forum, and in the various committees at local and regional level. Therefore every position, every seat on anything that inputs into party decision-making is a battleground.
Over this weekend there’s been an awful lot of crying and crowing over goings-ons. The successful candidate, Jasmin Beckett, secured her place amid accusations of dirty tricks, and is now the subject of a code of conduct investigation. As that is ongoing, there’s little to be served by offering my opinion about the allegations. However, I’m more interested in claims about vote-rigging and the pressure put on some attendees at the Young Labour conference to vote a certain way.
One Zac Harvey took to Twitter to prove that he had been “intimidated” by Unite “fixers” to vote for James Elliott, the Momentum/Unite-backed candidate for the NEC place. What despicable, outrageous anti-democratic behaviour.
Except it’s nothing of the sort. Zac wasn;t an ordinary attendee free to cast a vote as he pleased in a secret ballot. He was a delegate. Now, the word delegate is oft abused in left wing circles – particularly by small organisations on the fringes of the labour movement to suggest they represent more than just themselves by so labelling all attendees – but the meaning is pretty clear. When you are a delegate, you are a representative of an organisation and have been deputised by them to vote in accordance with their wishes. They are awarded a mandate that may require them to cast ballots in a particular way. Perhaps Zac wasn’t aware that being a trade union delegate required him to vote along with the rest of Unite’s delegation, but officials were well within their rights to insist on scrutinising the ballots of their delegates. In much the same way it’s proper that party whips insist that elected representatives follow the direction given by the leadership.
There really isn’t anything to see here, though it’s disappointing but not at all surprising for some to try and delegitimise the common democratic practice of trade unions.
It’s true to say Western/cowboy-themed video games have always been thin on the ground. Off the top of my head I can name High Noon for the Spectrum, Konami’s Sunset Riders from the 16-bit era, and more recently there was Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption. And there is this from Capcom: Gun. Smoke.
Thus styled with the dot for copyright reasons (it was definitely not not a video game revival of the old US TV show), Gunsmoke hit the arcades at roughly the same time as the fondly remembered Commando, and the premise is basically the same. Guide your guy up the screen and blow the baddies away. There are a couple of key differences apart from the theme – one is the presence of end-of-level bosses in Gunsmoke, and a significant change in the control scheme, of which more shortly.
When it made its way over to the humble NES in 1988, Capcom made a number of small changes for the home. It was pared down a bit (the number of bosses were cut down), power-ups were introduced and could be purchased from in-game shops, and meeting the big bad at the end of the level required the acquisition of a wanted poster – a “neat” little trick that meant levels had to be played over and over until one was either acquired or purchased from the store. Interestingly, the localisation work was done by someone with a sense of humour as well. Plot-wise, you’re up against a gang of varmints called The Wingates. They’ve taken over the town of Hicksville (yes, really) and you, their saviour, trades under the name Billy Bob. Brilliant.
Like many an NES game, it’s hard and occasionally frustrating. By far the worst are those minions who spawn behind you, which is tricky as you’re stuck facing up the screen. And having evil doers appear suddenly from windows, tepees, and out of the window isn’t helpful for a speedy journey through the game either. It has its peculiar moments too. Level four has something of an oriental theme, and sees you blasting away at shuriken and sword-wielding ninjas. Now, I don’t know a great deal about the Old West but I’m pretty certain there weren’t many of them running around terrorising pioneers, prospectors, and the like. And, it being a Western by programmers from a country not known for racial sensitivities, there’s a level full of dodgy representations of Native Americans. Published in the 1980s, ideology from the 1880s.
Readers know I have an interest in extinct play mechanics that never caught on. As mentioned earlier, Billy Bob faces straight up the screen. His saving grace is button A shoots diagonal right, B diagonal left, and both together fires dead ahead. It’s second nature once you get used to it, but it a massive pain confronting enemies behind you. At least in Commando and its sequel, Mercs Capcom realised that was quite a handy thing to do. Therefore, unsurprisingly, despite not being game-breaking this sort of control method slipped into obscurity with the title that carried it.
As such, while not a common title Gunsmoke isn’t horrendously expensive. As a venture into a path of gaming conventions, it’s a not unpleasant stroll.
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