[betty boo] you can dance to this music

In the late 80s and early 90s, the rap phenomenon was well under way with such luminaries as MC Hammer et al and the Brits looked likely to be bi-passed in this new era.

The 60s swing which had given place to 70s complex sounds and the alternative punk distortion itself gave way to early 80s ska and a host of British bands - Madness, Bad Manners, the Beat, the Specials, Selecter and the classic Splodginessabounds spring to mind.

Yet the American incursion was strong. Into this came the 1990 album Boomania, generally regarded now as a masterpiece of the genre, by Kensington girl Alison Moira Clarkson.

Those who remember the microphone malfunction in Melbourne which ended her career or the interviewer who came to her house asking her: "So what do you do?" and her classic, shocked reply: "I'm a singer" - all of that aside, not enough people give Boo her rightful place in the history of popular music.

She stood out in a sea of rap as:

1 British;

2 White [sort of - she was a Malaysian Scot];

3 Possessed of a damned good album, musically speaking.

I don't know if it was her or whether it was her writers or producer or whoever - whatever, the thing gelled and I, for one, now miss her rhythm, if not her caustic, egotistical lyrics. She was also easy on the eyes but I wouldn't want you to think that influenced my thinking. Oh no.

You remember her?

[By the way, compare Boo's photo to that of the Minnesota phenomenon Ruthie Z. If her photo is not currently in MyBlogLog, wait some and it will hopefully reappear.]

[men & women] it takes hard work

Match.com ran an article a long time ago, well before my blogging days, rating the following as the things which a girl most wants from you:

# Listen

# Support

# Admire

# Pay attention

# Learn

# Grow

Finally, try to be the kind of person she would want to be with. Staying in shape, engaging her on emotional and intellectual levels and helping out are all tangible ways to let her know that she matters to you.

I would add these:

# being clean

# having a sense of purpose

Girls might add:

# no really bad habits, e.g. drugs

# confidence

Adele Horin, in the SMH, August 14 2002 said:

# Happy couples around the world were the ones who tended to put their relationship first. They had a strong sense of being a couple, while retaining their own identity. They looked after each other.

# Each partner compromised and adapted to please the other and was prepared to give more than they received. They were the president of each other's fan club.

# These marriages took effort and ongoing maintenance, but the couples did not regard it as a hard slog. Rather, they brought an attitude of goodwill to the compromises required.

# How couples handled inevitable conflicts was also crucial. Criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling spelt death for a marriage. Humour could defuse conflict and salve wounded egos.

# Couples married for 40 and 50 years worried that young people did not have the commitment needed to carry them through the hard times.

The themes which keep coming through, as far as I can see are working hard to keep the thing going,wanting to keep the thing going and perhaps the hardest - being reasonable to the other.

[islam] fine in a muslim world

I live and work in a Muslim republic, within part of the government and surrounded by Muslims. This republic has always been Muslim, the way of life and the architecture is largely Muslim and there's absolutely nothing to be said about that.

I'd marry a Muslim girl tomorrow.

Our government here sees Britain as a Christian country, regrettably maybe but there it is. This doesn't prevent great warmth on both sides when we visited Britain earlier in the week and that's one reason "trade" is such a positive field of international activity - it is all-accepting and diplomatic and the only criterion is mutual benefit.

Tim Worstall detests the DTI and they seem to be having their problems just now but internationally, the DTIs of the world go a long way towards smoothing out differences and preventing conflict. I've observed this happening at close quarters. They really can slant the strategy to the best advantage of business, locally.

That's why I believe the government should be run by business or people who understand business and not by Imams or Archbishops. And that's why there is, in my view, dismay in Turkey and delight in France at this moment.

Two aspects in a middle-east online article illustrate this:

In Turkey, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, 56, a pious religious conservative, has been nominated for the presidency of Turkey by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). He seems certain to be confirmed in the post by a parliamentary vote on Friday. This has alarmed liberal Turks who fear that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s legacy of secularism will be eroded.

In a warning against radical Islamism, Turkey’s outgoing President, Ahmet Necdet Sezer -- himself a stalwart secularist -- went so far as to declare that Turkey’s secular system was facing its gravest threat since the founding of the Republic in 1923.

It would be an unmitigated disaster in Turkey. So much work has gone into the secularization and a rejection by the EU could well drive it into the arms of the jihadis. That's why, though I think Sarko is infinitely preferable to Segie, it would not be so good for Turkey.

The article continues:

In France, presidential front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy makes no secret of his distaste for militant Islam -- and perhaps, if the truth be told, for Arabs and Muslims in general -- especially in the form of alienated youths of North African origin in the rundown suburbs of Paris and other French cities.

He is viscerally opposed to the entry of Turkey - a country 99 per cent Muslim - into the European Union. He is the only French presidential candidate to make his position on this issue absolutely clear. If he is elected President, Turkey’s accession negotiations with the European Commission in Brussels are likely to face serious obstruction from Paris.

Not wanting to seem softer on crime than her rival, Ségolène has suggested that youthful troublemakers should be sent to military boot camps. But, this apart, she projects a gentler, more caring image than Sarkozy.

And this is why Segolene would be a disaster for France. She is playng catch-up-policy the whole way, her party machine is a mess and her platform keeps changing according to the prevailing political wind. And yet, in Turkish terms, she would be preferable.

Sarko is remembered for this sort of thing as well:

More controversially, however, he praised the Algerian army for cancelling the second round of general elections in 1992, thus preventing an almost certain victory by an Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). "Algeri was very brave to interrupt the democratic process," Sarkozy said. "If the army had not acted, one could have had a Taliban regime in Algeria."

He failed to mention that the army coup triggered a 10-year civil war in the 1990s in which well over 100,000 people died -- and of which this month’s suicide bombing was worrying evidence that the struggle is not yet over.

And this article "failed to mention" that it was precisely the FIS which triggered the atrocities in Algeria. What middle-east online is saying is that because the French prevented the FIS coming to power, that the FIS revenge massacres were the fault of the French. Not even I would accuse the French of that.

This article gives a different take:

Western pressure led to elections in 1991. The Islamists were leading and would've won. But the generals decided to cancel the elections. That's when it turned into all-out war between the Islamists and the Army.

The biggest Islamic guerrilla force was the AIS, connected to the FIS, the Islamic party that would've won the elections. But AIS looked like squeamish moderates compared to the GIA, another Islamic militia that does its killing south of Algiers.

So, in a nutshell, Sarko is better than Segie for France. If Sarko gets in, this will impact on Turkey, which needs the EU membership to both stay secular and to act as a possible bridge between the western and eastern worlds. A little like Egypt once did.

[sea of troubles] change the lifeview

Leaving aside the metaphysics and theology and concentrating instead on people, as in human beings and all their joy and pain, the issue of suicide is sad because there IS an answer and many people have seen it work many times.

A doctor doesn't treat symptoms - he treats root causes and that's the only way to go. The drugs and the electro are cosmetic fixes. A huge amount of the trouble is when we put ourselves at the centre of ourselves and our needs above all.

This is the sun and the stars revolving around the earth. Even a rationalist will say that's a rubbish model.

This manifests itself in an obstinate drive to solve all problems ourselves and we can't because we simply don't have all the equipment [unless you're a superman - I'm not].

You know the rest - despair, drinking, bleak music and so on. Absence of hope is what it comes down to and according to Dante, there's one particular entity who has this even written over his gateway.

Medically, there are people predisposed to despair and suicide. I may be one of these. Plus there is life experience to take into account. But even medical science knows of many "miracle" cures, so many that perhaps it should start to take the phenomenon seriously.

The human physionomy and brain can do remarkable things if it's operating in the right way. This is all JC was saying in pushing the faith, hope and charity thing so hard. It stands to reason. Faith, hope and charity regulate the brain and allow little time for despondency.

Putting family, friends and unfortunates first is a first step and no one is saying that's the preserve of the Christian alone. That would be idiocy to suggest that. It's just a first step to a sense of self-worth.

It doesn't change the curmudgeonliness, the cutting tongue [or keyboard] or life's day to day issues. It just makes it so much easier to cope if one is outward, rather than inward looking.

And this is not my character. I'm a selfish mother, with a caustic tongue. Any niceness you see in me was put there.

Which brings us to the next thing. There are no free lunches.

If you want comfort in your troubles, you have to pay for it. Standard business principle. The 3rd person in the Trinity is the good oil - it works in the same way those without a Ferrari can't appreciate true speed and safety until they've driven one.

But there's a price. You have to believe it can work first. It's the Peter walking on water principle. Believe, you walk on water, you soar to the clouds. Lose faith and you sink. Who cares whether it was allegorical or if it happened?

In my situation, I would say all my troubles came from stubbornly insisting on my own way. On the occasions I throw up the hands and say: "OK, OK, what do you want me to do then?", immediately things fall in line.

Things start to gel instead of jarr.

In a nutshell, we're going to come a cropper if we let this manic drive for self-aggrandisement consume us [even if we insist it's for the good of our family]. Doors close here and there, opportunities present themselves less and less and so on.

Go the other way though and it's simply good business practice.

That's all I wanted to say.

[suicide] to be or not to be

14 year old Mike Altman wrote this for M.A.S.H.:

The game of life is hard to play; I'm gonna lose it anyway;

The losing card I'll someday lay, so this is all I have to say:

That suicide is painless; it brings on many changes and I can take or leave it if I please.

… and Joy Division:

So this is permanence, love's shattered pride.

What once was innocence, turned on its side.

A cloud hangs over me, marks every move,

Deep in the memory, of what once was love.

Oh how I realised how I wanted time,

Put into perspective, tried so hard to find,

Just for one moment, thought I'd found my way.

Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away.

In his second year of university, an old school friend, Rhys, who'd introduced me to Rugby Union at school, was sharing a bedsit with his best friend and one day he came home, left a note for is friend Will, then blew his brains out.

The note said how sorry he was for having caused so much trouble. What trouble? There'd never been any trouble.

Because of the fear and shame it generates, suicide is scary and difficult to talk about, even for health professionals, and usually it is reported in code: "there were no suspicious circumstances". Suicide is a major public health problem, accounting for 2101 deaths in Australia during 2005. There are 40 deaths a week and rates for young males are particularly high. Suicide is on a par with the road toll as a preventable cause of premature death. We are struggling to make a real impact.

Some suggest that the internet is leading to more suicides and you can see why in the case of some of those sites, the fora, the late nights and the seeming obsession [I'm in here now, for example].

On the other hand, there are suggestions that the net can, in fact, help decrease the number if it acts as a helpline. An example of such a site is http://www.reachout.com.au and the advantage is that the helpline is just a click away for a young internetter.

Mary Quant said, in the Observer, in 1996:

Being young is greatly overestimated . . . any failure seems so total. Later on you realize you can have another go.

Many won't make it that far.

And what of yours truly? Many times it's crossed my mind but four things stop it.

1 It's self-indulgent and concerned with one's introspective ego, a failing of the young but also prevalent amongst the not so young of a certain mental set. A passage by Agatha Christie said it, for me:

You take your life today and perhaps in five, six, seven years hence, someone else will go to death of disaster simply for the lack of your presence in a given spot or place.

You say your life is your own.

But can you dare to ignore the chance that we are taking part in some gigantic drama under the orders of a Divine producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play - a mere walking on part - but upon it may hang the issues of the play.

2 Douglas Adams' "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things" is close to the Australian Aborigines' idea of the same kind - that the earth and the sky feel every nuance, every scream of terror and every murder, even self-murder.

3 The technicality that if one is Christian, then suicide is a backsliding against the 3rd person, a statement, in fact, that the 3rd person can't help you and therefore a one way ticket to the infernal regions.

4 I always want to know what's happening tomorrow.

Taken together, this is a nicety which keeps me alive. What keeps you alive?

[blogfocus thursday] some home truths

This evening, we're dealing with absolute rubbish.

1 Matthew Sinclair shows that the most important issues are often those close to home:

More and more councils are having waste collection take place every other week. The Conservatives I am campaigning for are likely to introduce fortnightly collection. The change is a response to a major increase, by the government, in landfill charges. Councils can either take drastic action to increase recycling or face heavy new charges and be forced to cut other services or increase taxes.

Fortnightly collection is not popular, it comes up on the doorstep and people really resent it enough to change their vote.

2 Olly's Onions has the good oil on these rubbish collections:

Campaign to save weekly rubbish collection stepped up Refuse collectors across the country today appealed for support to help save the Daily Mail which has been publishing rubbish every week for over a hundred years. Oswald Mosley was last night unavailable for comment.

3 Speaking of the good oil, J. Arthur MacNumpty gives the Scottish lowdown on the infamous Eurovision voting system:

Brian Taylor has compared the STV system to the voting in the Eurovision Song Contest, of which I am a fan (stereotypical? moi?).

I disagree with him. Firstly, the ESC is closer to FPTP than STV - all though each nations' votes are ranked, the points are allocated according to ranking rather than proportion, so a song in first place can win by 5 votes in a country and get as many points (12) as if it had won by 50,000. Secondly, the people who draw up our electoral boundaries are obsessed with 'parity', i.e. getting the size of the electorate in each constituency to be as equal as possible, while in ESC, Malta and Andorra have the same voting strength as Turkey or France. Thirdly, the STV system does not allow voters in neighbouring areas to support each other's candidates.

4 Longrider writes of the counterproductivity of trying to bring pressure to bear on smokers to stop:

Well, I do have some personal experience of addiction and I am painfully aware just how difficult it can be to quit. But, and here’s the rub, the addict has to want to quit. NICE seems to be assuming that all those hooked on gaspers fall into that category. While many smokers talk the talk, most of them in my experience are happy enough to puff away given the opportunity.

Mrs Longrider has no intention of quitting, so her employer would be wasting time, effort and money trying to get her to do so. Indeed, the more the government and the health fascists try to make her into a pariah, the more determined she is to fight back and puff away regardless.

5 You're not going to know these gems unless you get yourself over to Mutley the Dog:

The first canal in Britain was not the Bridgewater Canal as is often claimed – it was the Ste Helens/Mersey Canal, known as Sankey Brook, which was opened in 1757. The Bridgewater Canal - used for transporting the Duke of Bridgewater’s extensive collection of travelling Commodes - did not open till 1761. One of those commodes, carved entirely from Ivory weighed nearly 3 tons, or the equivalent of seventeen middle sized motor cars. The Sankey canal was briefly filled with spermicide in the 1960s.

Between 1777 and 1896 it was illegal to urinate in a Canal or to dispose of turnip tops or pigs trotters. Curiously, it remained legal to defecate in a canal and specifically to dispose of all food remnants from barges.

6 The afficianados are going to know exactly what Peter Cruikshank is talking about:

People are beginning to wise up to the implications of allowing those cuddly Web2.0 services to host all that nice information your give* them (see Because you can’t do bettr than Flickr for instance for the enthusiasm that Web2.0 can generate - sorry Simon, only picking on you because my comment on your blog raises the issue of data protection)

In For Your Information | ‘Web 2.0′ and data control Peter Bradwell of Demos has picked up that even Tim O’Reilly (not a poor man, I don’t believe) has noticed that internet business are interested in money, not some dream of participatory democracy.

7 It's interesting that Wulf is writing of anonymity on the net and tracing comments back because he does seem to take direct comments himself [I might be mistaken]:

However, by and large, I think some level of identification is valuable. If I post a comment on someone else's blog, it is backed up by links back to other places I have made a mark. That online trail is only my representation of part of who I am but it gives an identifiable persona. Even for those who have never met me, or met those who have met me, "I" am unlikely to be a marketing bot designed to hawk a product (see my earlier posting, False Accounts) or a bored teenager creating a complex fantasy world to wind other people up.

Equally, I want some degree of traceability from those I encounter on my Internet travels, including those who might comment on my blog. Not addresses and bank details but simply the option of following their trail back a little way so I can decide what credence to give their contributions.

8 JMB admits what many of us know full well - we are not that technically savvy and it's a learning curve we all take. We go out this evening, as we started, with some home truths:

I have to tell you, quite ashamedly, that the reason I could not see how to resize in the photo software programs, which I already have on my computer, was that I did not have a file in place. As everyone but me already knows the relevant options are grey until you have an image to work on! I assumed it was because I had an inferior version which came with some hardware or other I had bought.

Well as I always say, these things are sent to make us humble when we get too big for our boots. Another of my sayings is that I hope to learn something new every day and yesterday I learned quite a few new things.

Hope to see you on Saturday evening, readers.