Franz Ferdinand, Tonight

Mark Reed on the return of Kapranos & co after almost four years.

We experience music differently these days. Songs are first heard coming from speakers, tinny ones designed not to reproduce the full spectrum dominance of sound, but an approximatation, an imitation of sound, tiny white ear buds of computers.

After weeks of hearing Ulysses, the albums premiere single and starting track, from televisions and sandwich shop radios, it made a pleasant surprise to be struck with the warm and rich sound of the production. Unlike many people, Franz Ferdinand seem to value sonic clarity over volume dominance. And whilst Tonight is loud, it's only loud in the right places.

Ulyssess, like most of the rest of album, is dripping in melodies, choruses, effective and interesting rhythms (that never bore), and the opening triumvate (including Turn It On and No You Girls), may make you think that the band have evolved barely since 2004, the next one, Send Him Away shifts gears with a semi-reggae set of drum rolls, a high end bass, and angular guitar that sounds like a somewhat angry, stuttering White Man In Hammersmith Palais.

Add to this the delibrately dated – and one would therefire say classic, timeless keyboard sounds reminiscent of late era Abba in Twilight Omens, and you have something that sounds very much like Franz Ferdinand, Jim, but not as you know it. Three and a half years is a long time in pop music. In three and a half years, The Beatles went from Love Me Do to Marharashi's Chanting Family (or whatever it was called), and Radiohead went from Pablo Honey to OK Computer.

Franz haven't quite moved that far, but it's definitely a step beyond what they did before, an evolution, still memorable at the first listen (What She Came For is unforgettable), shifting tempos and styles betyween songs and inside songs in a way that is both fluid, natural, and surprising : Live Alone sounds like Blondie, Kraftwerk, Human League, whilst also sounding very 2009. The sound is classic, timely yet timeless, lyrically it is minimal, vague, and economical: about nothing, something, and anything at the same time. In some ways, the words allow you to project onto the songs whatever you want them to mean: but also quite clear. That's the beauty of language, and Franz are literate and have the benefit of historical awareness, from their name down.

Lucid Dreams is probably the album stand out, as it progresses as a strong, weighty track, before moving to the left with an instrumental jam reminiscent of Electronic's latter-period that is like a modern day version of the type of acid/techno/house buildups and breakdowns, albeit played on 'traditional instruments'. With this as the final full on band song, the closing two songs - Dream Again and Katherine Kiss Me, are understated, gentle explorations that hint at the type of future that Franz Ferdinand could have, plucking out heartfelt moments with power.

The Special Edition contains 40 minutes of remixes: unlike the usual modern remix, which is someone elses song with a clumsy fragment of the original shoe-horned in, these are worthy reinventions you will be returning to many times. That said, Tonight is no radical reinvention nor a tired retread of the past, but the next step on an interesting journey. For now, and maybe forever, Franz Ferdinand will never seemingly produce an album that rips away the artifice of civilisation, and repression, to expose the raw heart and hurt of emotion.. but they are getting there and the point of the journey is not to arrive, after all.

The "Italians" on the wildcat strikes

"If the Brits kick us out, we'll do the same to their workers here"

As I translated this article from the Italian daily la Repubblica, I discovered that about one hundred Brits are currently working on a regasifier on an oil rig in the Northern Adriatic. This is the stuff the Daily Mail & chums conveniently don't tell you about.

*****

"PORTO VIRO (Rovigo) - 'It's a pity. È un peccato, I love working with the Italians, I love Italy. I just hope this Stuff about the Grimsby refinery is just a one-off'. Brian has just got back from the oil rig in the Adriatic where one hundred Brits, along with two hundred Italian and foreign colleagues, are working cheek by jowl on a regasifier that will provide 10% of our country with methane. He doesn't want to talk, as he walks out from the Porto Viro base, guarded like barracks, where another one hundred employees work, mostly from Exxon Mobil, British, American, Norwegian, Italian.

It looks like the idea of beggar-thy-neighbour rhetoric may suddenly jeopardise this beacon of harmony and international cooperation on high seas, where no tension has ever flared between the Brits and the locals. Here on Christmas day, the English cook turkey for their Italian colleagues. At sea they have a game of ping pong, they eat together, watch the football on Sky. Their cabins are identical, on a 50mt high oil rig, large like two football pitches, two thirds under water, 15 miles from the coast. They take a break on the lodging barge after a 12-hour shift.

But the news of those walkouts against the "Italians" arrive like a bad omen. The ghost of a sour story that may turn up here as well. Which is why many of them clock out with their heads down, without uttering a word, sidestepping the questions. "I haven't read the papers, I haven't a clue", says another British worker as he walks away, looking down. "I'm not qualified to speak", mumbles yet another as he vanishes into the thick cloak of fog around the base. They seem to have a hunch that the mood is changing amongst the locals.

"In Italy it's a mess- protests 200 meters away Melchiorre Vidali, bricklayer, working on the naval dockyards- I don't mind the English or the French, but if they reject us, then we'll have to do the same". Luigi Tessarin, owner of the Taglio di Po hotel that hosts half a dozen technicians from the UK is concerned. "The English want to grab hold of their cake- he utters- but if that's the way they want to play, then we'll send them home too".

A warning that sounds like self-defense. There aren't any demonstrations or protests in this sea-soaked land where the Romea motorway is all that mends together a landscape made of warehouses, ghosts of derelict factories and small villages. Yet the strikes against the Italians are kickstarting a sense of malaise. "Here it's all fine" - objects Orazio Milani - a customer at the bar Mauro, hosting twenty Poles who every morning at 6 set off for the platform and at night drink "a beer, a shot and hit the sack at 10, with never a problem". In England "they're bang wrong, they want to go backwards" slams Marziano Berto, the barman. "They're only ignorant", confirms the customer as he sips his coffee.

The workers at the base also sense the atmosphere; the company invited them to avoid controversy, especially after the Northern League threatened the foreigners that it's "payback time". Security measures at the base are as strict as they'd never been. Alcohol is banned and there are regular tests. "We're working on a great project", explains Adriano Gambetta, from Genoa, a long-term captain who's been managing operations from ashore for a year. At the end of the spring here they'll start producing methane from liquid gas coming from Qatar. Three ships a week will be emptied, and they'll heat a tenth of all homes in Italy. Eight billion cubic meters of gas produced by Adriatic Lng (45% Exxon Mobil, 45% Qatar Gas, 10% Edison).

It's a pilot scheme that involves technicians from worldwide. Once the construction work's done, there'll be only 66 Italians left to run the day-to-day operations. "All I'm interested in is to get the job done", an English technician explains: "I don't want trouble, don't ask me what my name is". The anti-Italian walkouts? "Ridiculous", retorts an Exxon employees from ashore. "I don't get them, this way we're going backwards", adds Bjorne, a Norwegian who finds Italy "a fantastic country". For Bill, from Houston, USA, who for $10,000 a month plus travelling expenses brought his wife along, the only complaint is for the "bad weather". "[The strikes] are sterile protests, I don't think we'll witness similar things in Italy", bets Gambetta the manager. Less optimistic is a Parisian engineer, who's just got back from the oil rig: "What if this was the first sign of a protectionist revival worldwide? That would be no good".

Obama caps executive pay

Fat cats pay on bailout businesses to be limited.

It's what millions of people would want to hear from the British government. It's the natural course of action for those banks who were bailed out from the taxpayer to the tune of hundreds of billions. But whereas in Britain they're still tiptoeing about, in the US Barack Obama is going straight to the point.

After dubbing the Wall Street culture of bonuses in times of crisis "shameful", the new President revealed "details of new rules limiting executive pay to $500,000 [still a level that you or me will never understand through our entire lifetime -ed] a year for firms getting a US taxpayer bail-out". The BBC reports that "here was public outcry over $18.4bn in bonuses paid out in 2008 at a time when taxpayer money was propping up the financial system".

"If the taxpayers are helping you, then you've got certain responsibilities to not be living high on the hog," Obama said. As the Reuters agency notes, "the White House aims to hold banking executives accountable for the money they receive from government coffers with the new rules, which were presented as being in the interest of shareholders and taxpayers alike".

Interestingly, while this is front page news in the US, you'll struggle to find any mention in the UK press. Instead, all the headlines are for Obama "screwing up" the nomination process. The question is: why? Could it be that our lovely bankers may want to shield people from overexcitement with ideas of fairness and accountability?

Fear, loathing and collective panic

As the 'wildcat' strikes continue, here's a few links to make sense of what's going on.

Johann Hari's analysis in the Independent finds us nodding in agreement. Like we said on Sunday, it's not the bankers who are being pilloried, and nor are the "market fundamentalists", the tax avoiders or the greedy corporations. "No", says Hari, "It is a few immigrant workers, living in hostels. They are the only people who have seen a British protester outside their door in this depression."

Ministry of Truth confirms what everyone suspected. Don't trust the 'British Wildcats' website as it's a front for the BNP. Take a look and it'll dawn on you within seconds.

Unite clarify their position on the strikes, proposing a three-point plan which would include "an investigation into the practices of contractors and subcontactors in the engineering and construction industry".

A Very Public Sociologist argues that, in spite of the danger raised by chauvinistic slogans, "it is the job of socialists to intervene with our arguments", and resolve the strikes "in a positive directions".

Quite an uphill task. Because at the Daily Mail they're manipulating the dispute like there was no tomorrow. They know the foreign workers at Total are going to be shipped back at the end of their temporary contract, yet their headline reads "PAYING THE PRICE FOR DROPPING OUR GUARD ON IMMIGRATION". Hear, hear. Immigration. In the Daily Mail.

Back to reality, Polly Toynbee in the Guardian takes a swipe at the unions for not standing up for "the casualised and the contracted out" while "displacement of jobs and depression of wages has been happening all decade among the cleaners, carers, caterers and agency workers, many of them women". New Labour were no better, perpetrating the myth that "globalisation is good" - except, only for those at the top. "In the last few good years official figures show that 80% of earners saw very little real extra growth, with most winners in the top 10%", she writes.

George Galloway knows best of course. In his words, "despite attempts to confuse and misreport, the wildcat walkouts [are] about decent jobs, available to all". Have you seen any banners saying that though? Because so far it's been a load of "British this and British that". But if you have photographic evidence that what we're writing is bollocks, please do come forward.

In the meantime, fair play -for once- to London Mayor Boris Johnson for not trying to score cheap political points. In an article for the Telegraph, he asks: "How would we feel if some of the hundreds of superb British engineering consultancies were suddenly told that they were not welcome in China, or Italy?", adding: "what kind of British industry do the protectionists think would emerge? Some sort of crazy autarkic system in which we tried to substitute imports with home-made PlayStations and home-made shoes and brassieres once again produced in the cotton mills of Lancashire?"

David Aaronovitch in The Times dubs it "Fabricated fear and loathing in Lincolnshire", adding that the strikes were "based on half-truths and distasteful protectionism". Sue Carroll in the Mirror is an example. "Italian and Portuguese labour continues to be hired on the cheap.", she writes. It's false. They are being paid the same.

Money to burn

A quick reflection.

Robbie Keane was purchased by Liverpool six months ago for £20.3m. Now he's been re-signed by Tottenham for £12m. Back and forth, like the most expensive tennis ball ever.

I wonder how many of the tens of thousands who will pay a hefty sum to watch Spurs (or any other Premier League outfit, for that matter) play at the weekend will also enjoy a good old rant about the crisis, "the-money-is-tight" and how crap the government is and British-Jobs-for-British-Workers and we've-had-enough.

Social housing: the return?

If the government's building programme goes ahead, then they need to steer clear of the pokey and overpriced 'urban splash' dens of the binge years.

The Government announced "the biggest building programme since the 1950s". At last a good and practical thing to do and for the benefit of the many. As the number of repossessions skyrockets and the money available to buy new properties dwindles, investing money in social housing now is the logical thing to do. According to Gordon Brown, this would also "rescue the construction industry and help to kick-start the economy".

One of the many gifts left by Margaret Thatcher was the assassination of social housing. That contributed to the deterioration of the existing council homes and the beginning of the general perception that council estates=shitholes.

Also, if you wondered why all those new overpriced apartments are so microscopic, the answer lies in a Tory law from 1980 which abolished the so-called Parker Morris Standards. Set in the 1960s, those space standards became a milestone in housing provision, as they aimed at improving living standards and avoiding people living in cupboards. They stated a mandatory minimum liveable space and basic planning principles. Until 'the market' became the new idol, and the last drop of profit squeezed from basic human need.

If you simply look around, the result is that the greatest majority of today's cool and flashy (and mostly repossessed) apartments would not meet the standards from fifty years ago.

"New homes in England are being built smaller than almost anywhere else in Europe", a BBC report said last September. So, Gordon: how about reintroducing space standards now?

Is Johnny Foreigner the new Karen Matthews?

Is this the best the Unions can come up with? The current anti-foreign worker hysteria is a route to be avoided at all costs.

The wildcat strikes across the UK are at risk of turning into something much more sinister. With the end of cheap credit revealing the true plight of workers and exposing a rotten system where people are being milked for the benefits of the very few, it is quite clear that a lot of people have had enough.

The danger, however, is that what Madam Miaow calls "the inevitable outpouring of anger" is already being conveniently deflected and channelled against the weakest targets, i.e. fellow victims of the financial crash. Johnny Foreigner is already becoming the new Karen Matthews. But whereas few expected the Unions to get the bull by the horns and tackle head-on the system that lead to the crisis, no one thought they'd so easily go down the route of patriotic gravy trains.

This is why a number of questions are being posed.

1. Like John Cruddas MP wrote in yesterday's Guardian:

"Britain has lost control of key industries and their labour procurement procedures. The Lincolnshire dispute is a small symptom of a big problem. Britain is a country that no longer owns the productive processes that create its wealth. Crucial economic sectors have been handed over to unaccountable foreign ownership".

Britain is reaping the harvest of thirty years of relentless drive towards a 'democracy of the shareholders', to quote an old Thatcherite soundbite. In the specific case of the British oil industry, the moment the assets were privatised and sold off (from 1974 onwards and all through the 80s), the UK Government lost their control, plain and simple. Those who warned against it were branded 'old fashioned', 'stalinists', 'dogmatists', you name it.

That's the reason why little can be done if the oil company Total, or any other private firm, wants to employ whoever they want, if and when they want. As long as they do it legally, it is within their 'free market' rights to do so. It is quite obvious that the free market envisaged by the Daily Mail (The Italian job that proved the final straw for British workers'), the Express ('Jobs Fury') and all the usual suspects is a pick 'n'choose one.

2. Successive British governments have also chosen to second the airy fairy dream of a 'knowledge economy'. In their view, at the first sign of a downturn, manifacturing wasn't worth propping up, with the result that skills were lost, communities torn to shreds and Britain became the country that sold bullshit shares for a living, instead of factual, tangible products. Now the shares aren't worth the paper they were forged on, and people are crying foul.

3. As a former member of T&G, I find it embarrassing that the Trade Unions haven't been able to challenge the political trend over more substantial matters other than the hollow "British Jobs for British Workers". For years, British corporations have been offshoring entire departments to other countries. In 2004, it was estimated that up to 750,000 jobs were shifted from the UK to offshore destinations. What is more harmful to 'British workers', that or the few hundred Italian and Portuguese working at the Lincolnshire refinery for six months?

Yes, Unite may have whispered that the Government should bail out Jaguar, but how effective were their pleas? Theirs was, once again, a rearguard battle. Like The Independent writes today, "[TUC Leader] Mr Barber largely backs the Government's handling of the financial crisis, at a time when many union members would like to see him battle to guarantee their jobs". Little was done to challenge mass repossessions, or the fact that banks continue to award absurd bonuses and this time courtesy of the taxpayer's money. Why don't they organise strikes urging the Government to spend that money supporting wages instead?

4. This why it's depressing to see the British Unions waking up to back such a divisive and potentially explosive slogan, one that looks like textbook BNP. Compare it to France, where properly organised strikes with up to 2.5 million workers demanded action to protect wages and jobs. The French were asking, for instance, where the 360bn euro shore-up fund to guarantee banks came from. Unlike the UK walkouts, they weren't striking against "foreign labour", the "victimisation of the French worker" and "Put French Workers First". There were no jingoistic tones whatsoever.

5. This blog has raised the point repeatedly here, here and here. Britain's relationship with all things foreign is a deeply fucked-up one, perhaps the direct consequence of centuries of colonialism. The Lincolnshire protest is quickly turning into fodder for anti-French rhetoric, as well as anger aimed at 'wops' and 'johnny foreigners'. Or, the spine-tinglingly ignorant 'they all wanna come here cuz they get everything for free'.

How can the hate merchants bang on about economic nationalism and 'British Jobs for British Workers' when there are hundreds of thousands of British workers in the EU, some of them Auf Wiedersen Pet- style? On a different level, in the last fifteen years the Brits have literally invaded countries like France and Spain, clogging up their health service, pushing up property prices and distorting the 'market' in significant areas.

This time it's not just the tabloids. The Unions too, alas, are playing with fire and they don't even know it.

Gaunty and the ghosts in the Sun

How can the Sun's spitemeisters expect to be taken seriously?

First it was aliens in Germany, now it's a ghost at a hospital in Derby. The Sun are working hard for their stories. Yesterday's paper carried a huge headline HAUNTED HOSPITAL CALLS IN EXORCIST, along with a ghostbuster's opinion and a superimposed photo of a ghost with the Royal Derby Hospital in the background.

No question this gives more weight to the already authoritative opinions of Jon Gaunt and chums. In the same paper yesterday, Gaunty was busy spreading bile left right and centre with tirades against -in order- gays, the jobless, the BBC, 'Lardy' Chris Moyles (watch out, Brad Pitt, Gaunty's the new stud), Noel Gallagher, Dannii Minogue and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

It all makes perfect sense, coming from the paper that has to superimpose pictures of ghosts in order to sell copies.