Denial?

Rusty kettles, unflushed turds and rip-off prices. Was Margaret Hodge so wrong with her suggestions that Britain's tourist facilities are not up to scratch?

You can't win, can you? This blog is hardly pro-New Labour, but there are times you can't help but feeling some sympathy. Especially if you see some of the stupidity they're up against. Gordon Brown & Co. are constantly accused of being "in denial". Which is to say that unless they admit that everything's bad and the nation is doomed, the Tories, the Express and the Daily Mail will blame their "inability" to own up to their mess.

But then when they do, they're accused of "talking the country down". Only a few days ago we commented on the Daily Mail's rabid rage at Alistair Darling's confessions of the "worst economic climate in sixty years". Now, the hacks have zeroed in on the new punchbag, Tourism Minister Margaret Hodge, accused of talking down hotels and holidaying facilities in England. Ms Hodge criticised expensive facilites and poor quality service. For the Daily Mail, that became "Tourism minister slams UK" whereas Tory MP Mike Penning called her comments "a stupid set of remarks".

But before going apeshit and doing a voodoo on poor Ms Hodge, hand on heart: was she so wrong? Would any sane-minded human being disagree for example with the Minister's statement that that the London Underground is "dreadful" at rush-hour? And ask any "continental" friend, if you've got any: isn't Britain astonishingly expensive???

Let's just imagine a couple of French tourists deciding to spend a week's holiday in England. Hotel prices are at a rip-off level, including the dingiest vermin-infested shithole in London.

I remember forking out 60 quid ("cash only") at a hotel near Victoria Station for a mini single room that was dirtier than the filthiest pit imaginable. "All rooms have tea and coffee facilities", it boasted. But as no kettle or cups were in sight, I had to ask for them. What I was given was the rustiest kettle you've ever seen; a relic that, if used, no doubt would have given me diahorrea for the next nine months. In protest, I decided to piss in it. Another time, having headed off to the capital to watch Morrissey live, I found a fairly cheap hotel in Earls Court. Checking in I was saluted by an unflushed turd that wouldn't go down which meant I had to ask to switch rooms. It made me wonder if rooms had been cleaned at all.

Back to our French couple. What if they decided to take the bus or the tube for a trip around London? With the single fare at £4, and a one-day travel card (off-peak only) ranging between £6-80 and £15-00 (way higher than other European big cities) how can Ms Hodge be criticised for daring to say England's too expensive for tourists? And what if the two visitors decided to hop on a train and visit other cities such as Birmingham and Manchester? Not having booked well in advance, it could cost them in excess of £120 a piece. How's that for talks of "denial"?

Margaret Hodge was actually being quite balanced. She also praised the country's heritage and the good value-for-money of pub food. But she wouldn't be doing her job is she didn't argue, like she did, that "tourists need to be offered good deals and we have to make attractions better." "Denial" would be anything other than that.

The Foodmongers

Good-for-you, bad-for-you. Why the swirl of news about the effects of food on health amounts to a load of rotten nonsense.

I wonder if it's because rule no.1 of marketing is that alarm generates sales, or if it's down to people's perverse attraction to fear and risk (after all, why do we watch gory horror films in the first place?). Perhaps we're all turning into hypocondriacs or, simply, we just love reading about bollocks. Who knows. Fact is, if you're trying to get a hang on what to eat/not eat in the hope of avoiding ill health, the panic merchants will turn you into a paranoid schizophrenic within a week.

The sheer amount of alarming, incoherent, contradictory information that comes out daily is absolutely shocking. It first dawned on me a few years ago while watching Should I Worry About, an insightful BBC programme presented by Richard Hammond that illustrated the schizophrenia of "oily fish is good for you" and "salmon gives you cancer" within the same headline.

Then the other day came a report from four UK universities: tall men are more likely to get prostate cancer. What are our poor gangly friends supposed to do, chop their ankles off and hope for a reprieve?

It gets worse. Last February it was confirmed that lack of vitamins and minerals "may increase the risk of cancer". Bleeding obvious? Eat your words, because two weeks later we read that "if you take vitamin supplements in hopes of warding off cancer you may not be doing yourself any favours" as they can also increase the risk.

And didn't your mum and nan always lecture you about the benefits of salad? Hold your horses. Only the other day it was big news that if it comes pre-packed, "salad will lead to increased food poisoning, scientists warn".

So on the one hand they tell you chicken's good for you ("Chicken Cuts Colon Cancer Risk"), then you hear the big news from the Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine, declaring that grilled chicken was "found to contain PhIPm, a compound from a group of carcinogenic compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs), which are often found in grilled meat".

What about potatoes? Never mind fried, even baked potatoes allegedly contain carcinogenic stuff! No matter we also heard recent news that "intake of potatoes boosts the immune system". This can really drive you insane.

Folic acid is a B-complex vitamin found in many vegetables, beans, fruits, whole grains, and breakfast cereals. Again, til recently we were told it helps against developing cancer. "Eat loads", was the general idea. You're buggered if you did, because folic acid supplements of vitamin B are now thought to increase the risk of bowel cancer", according to the Institute of Food Research.

Two weeks ago came the affirmative news that "spaghetti bolognese can help fight cancer". Well, just make sure you don't gulp them all in one go, as it's not unlikely a new scientific research may soon reveal that spag bol give you gallstones or something...

The Automatic, This Is A Fix

A review


Written off as one-hit wonders after the massive success of 2007's Monster, Welsh band The Automatic are back to confound their critics. Their second album is a musical masterpiece. Spearheaded by grand single Steve McQueen (not to be confused with the celebrated album by 80s indie outfit Prefab Sprout), it presses the right buttons from the get-go. The twelve tracks on the album are a selection of corkers, with only one (Make the Mistakes) sounding a little weak and unconvincing.

Initially described as a "Nine Inch Nails meets System of a Down", This Is A Fix is indeed beefier, relentless and more immediate than The Automatic's debut album, with melodies aplenty and almost pop in places. Their recent line-up change, with Paul Mullen replacing Alex Pennie on guitar, seems to have worked in the band's favour. Just listen to stand-out tracks Magazines, Accessories and the grumpy Secret Police to get an idea of the band's full potential.


[This Is A Fix is out now on iTunes]

Balls of Steel

As the struggle to perform CPR on the Labour party continuous, particularly insightful is Mark Steel in today's Independent:

Never again, the idea went, would the party go into an election with ideas that were clearly a minority view in the country. Yet every possible contender for leader still backs the Iraq war, and no one who opposed it from the start will be allowed near the contest. Or to put it another way, the 11 years of New Labour government were summed up by the cricket commentary on Test Match Special. A commentator was complaining about the rigorous security at the ground, as it had taken 45 minutes to get in.

Then suddenly up popped the voice of Geoff Boycott, saying "You've Tony Blair to thank for that." "I'm sorry," said the first commentator. "He was told," said Geoffrey, "that if he went around causing wars there'd be an increased risk of terrorism, but he took no notice, he thought he knew best." You could feel the BBC governors shrieking, "Shut him up – tell him he couldn't play fast bowling or something," but Geoffrey was adamant."

Click here to read it in full.

The Daily Mess

Want to stop immigrants flooding Britain? A quick look at the Daily Mail should scare the shit out of them

It's common knowledge that Daily Mail readers have extremely confused opinions. A look at today's issue (2 Sep) and it's easy to see why.

First off, the articles ripping apart Alistair Darling for having admitted the existence of an economic downturn are too many to count. "You're talking Britain down!", "We're all doomed", "Another fine mess", "Killing off hope". That (and more) is the Daily Mail's analysis of the Chancellor's comments. "Talking Britain down"? How rich, from the paper that -if god forbid landed in a foreigner's hands- would put off any perspective visitor to Britain. Five pages on and it's a whirlwind of murderous hoodies and paedophiles, loony leftists and gay rapists, Arab terrorists and toddler-mauling dogs.

But that's just for starters. Helen Mirren revealed that 25 years ago she occasionally enjoyed "a little bit" of cocaine at parties. Good heavens! You get Christopher Hart writing a whole page ("QUEEN OF HYPOCRISY") gnarling at Mirren about the evils of cocaine, arguing that she'd better keep her mouth shut in these Doherty-infested days of glamourised drugs. Nothing exceptional so far. But then Hart attacks (pun unintended) "the lists of celebs" who write "long, whingeing exercise[s] in self-pity routinely called something like My Drug Hell". At which point, the attentive reader should skip to page 32 where he can find the Daily Mail's final instalment (a 2-page feature) of Duran Duran's Andy Taylor's serialised whingeing exercises about their "crazed excesses". We were nearly killed by fame is today's headline; Cocaine, trampolining topless models and Martinis with Elton - Duran Duran, the wild boys of pop, was the first part last week.

That's the Daily Mail for you, guardian angel of the nation's morals.

When Women Rule The World

"Here women command, men obey". More fittingly: "Here Channel 4 command more public money for shitty TV series, and the taxpayers obey"


When will it end? When will the crap TV programmes based upon colossal egos that conceal non-existent personalities end? When will they stop using that grating, fake fib that it's a "social experiment". Not to mention bikinis that barely conceal those knockers, shouted TV, the fakery and the barrel-scraping sound of what "contestants" are supposed to be doing.

But aside from our slight bias, here's what Channel Four's new weekly series is about. Eight women are put in complete charge of ten men. In the sense that men are expected to do exactly as told, 24/7. A script, you may be forgiven for thinking, that fulfils the channel's public role as they've decided it's time to cater for men with a domination/humiliation fetish a-la Max Mosley.

Now, on to the programme press release. Here goes: "When a group of strong, educated, independent women, tired of living in a man's world and each with a personal axe to grind rule over a group of unsuspecting men used to calling the shots". What better way to show strength, independence and subversion of the "man's world" than to wear bikinis and skimpy tops 24/7 for the pleasure of the male viewer? Bring on the freaks.


["When Women Rule The World" starts Thursday 4 Sep, Channel 4, 10:35pm]

The shame of forced marriage

Today's Telegraph's article is a laudable attempt to re-energise one of the non-debates of British public life: the shame of arranged/forced marriage. Under the headline "MPs too scared to talk about forced marriage 'in case they lose Muslim votes", the paper reports an interview with West Yorkshire Labour MP Ann Cryer inviting politicians to be at the "forefront of the campaign to stop young couples being made to wed against their will by their families".

For good balance, you also get the opinion of Birmingham Perry Barr's own Labour MP (Khalid Mahmood) who seems quite anxious to play down the issue ("not an epidemic", he says). Like we discussed last February, it's easy to forget that, each year, hundreds of women in Britain (as well as back in Pakistan and Bangladesh) are victim to one of the most odious (and backward) forms of domestic oppression.

Birmingham is not shit

Did you know that since December 2007, 22 people died of a knife or gun-related crime in the West Midlands? Last week's killing of Dimitri Foskin in Hockley was the last in the disturbing spiral of what the police described as "tit-for-tat" gang violence. Take a look at The Birmingham Post 's detailed analysis.

*****

More light-hearted news comes in the guise of the Birmingham-Is-Not-Shit website. Basically, sod Costa Brava or the clear water of the Aegean Sea, check out their fantastic article about Birmingham's very own beach!