Scumbag of the week

I know this is hardly a controversial nomination, but this week's recipient is Bono. 

Not, this time, for the stupid glasses, the mullet (it may have gone but its spirit lingers on) or the appalling music, not for the sanctimony, nor for the cosying up to some of the vilest people on the planet. 

No, this week's prize is awarded for his statement, in the course of an incoherent and hypocritical interview, that people who criticise his band's tax affairs are terrorists. 

That's right. After claiming that moving his money to the Dutch Antilles to avoid paying any tax in his now bankrupt country actually helps the Irish economy, he made this observation:

 I think some of the people who criticise us in Ireland and America have a history that you can trace back to our opposition to Noraid.

Noraid was the IRA's fundraising-and-arms-buying organisation in the US: if anyone jangled a collecting tin under your nose in a proper Irish bar in Boston, it was probably them.  Personally, I can't see much clear blue water between misty-eyed Irish-Americans supporting physical-force republicanism from the safety of the US and misty-eyed rich jet-setting rock stars condemning it from the cosy seats of the Clarence or the Lear jet. 

I'm pretty certain, however, that almost everyone who thinks you don't end poverty by hiding your money offshore while your country's young emigrate at a rate of 100,000 per year is a terrorist. 

His alternative explanation is even more pathetic:

A lot of the others probably hate our music.

That's right. We all base our moral and political judgements on whether or not we think 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' is searing comment or empty bluster, Bono. I think what I find most objectionable about him is the sanctimonious hypocrisy. There are lots of very unpleasant rock stars out there, and a lot of them avoid paying their taxes. But only Bono has the sheer gall to avoid his taxes and lecture the rest of us about fairness, making poverty history and moral responsibility. I'd far rather listen to Ted Nugent ranting about his gun collection than endure another sermon by Mr Vox. 

Trivia roundup

OK, I'm in considerable pain - I've actually pulled chest muscles from coughing so much. It may be the infection I've got, or it may be the sheer spleen-busting disbelief occasioned by watching U2 and Primal Scream performing at Glastonbury. It wasn't the musicians so much: U2 were reliably pompous, while Primal Scream yet again pulled off the trick of persuading the public that they're somehow interesting or relevant.

No: they do what they do and some people - unfathomably - like it. What made my intestines make a bid for freedom was the jaw-dropping idiocy of the BBC's presenters. U2 were discussed by Jo Whiley and someone called Zane Lowe. The pearls of wisdom spilling from their mouths would have shamed a toddler. Mostly, of course, just unconnected adjectives ('amazing', 'awesome' etc.). But then Mr. Lowe started claiming that U2's power was due to their set being 'raw', 'stripped down' and 'all about the music'. Really? Doing a live video link from the stage to the International Space Station so that an astronaut (the one whose Congresswoman wife was recently shot in the head) can mumble some platitudes to a drug-addled bunch of hipsters is somehow 'raw', rather than 'incredibly pretentious', 'arrogant' and 'pompous'? They then 'interviewed' U2 afterwards with the kind of journalistic incisiveness that inevitably leads to the interviewee having to wipe drool from the soles of their shoes.

This idiot - or it may have been some other idiot, all BBC yoof presenters are pretty much interchangeable - then proceeded to claim that Primal Scream's set proved that they'd 'always looked forward' in their music. For feck's sake: they're touring their Screamadelica album in some kind of retro cash-in. You know, the one that was released 20 years ago. The one that was a deliberate retro homage to the Rolling Stones' 60s work. The band which released and album with a bloody Confederate flag on it. How, in the name of all that's holy, is that 'always looking forward'?

Bloody charlatans, the lot of them. Time for a salad to calm me down.

A miseryguts writes…

Happy Monday you lot! There used to be a tradition called St. Monday in Northern cities, including Stoke. A heavy weekend required a day off - a religious festival. In industries with highly specialised skills such as pottery, enough individuals absent meant that a whole crew couldn't do any work - so men took turns a few times a year. This is how I feel today, except that I'm at work and absolutely nobody else is other than the cleaners, who are always very cheery.

It's hot, sticky and horrible, yet I've already seen one student (advice: don't nick your resit from the internet and characters with speaking parts usually aren't dead in Renaissance literature). I've got to write a conference paper for Wednesday ('O. M. Edwards, Travel Writing and Definitions of Welshness' or something similar and the beer festival is still weighing heavily on my guts.

We all had a good time, without getting hammered. Except for Mr. Radford Sallow, who arrived many hours late and proceeded to catch up in spectacular fashion. Poor old man isn't used to drinking. He took the pledge in 1934…

Many of you seem horrified that I'm indifferent to Michael Jackson's oeuvre. Sorry, I just didn't listen to much pop at that formative age. My parents didn't believe in radios in every room, and they listened to mainstream classical, bits of folk, and a lot of religious music. Dad's concession to Irish culture was a U2 cassette and one by the Dubliners, and Mum played a lot more music than she listens to.

If it's any consolation, I watched Blur's performance at Glastonbury last night. All the presenters were talking about it being a seminal, wondrous, amazing set. I didn't. I thought they were quite good. Maybe I'm just getting grumpy. Wonder how the Nightingales went down? The BBC didn't see fit to broadcast any of their set.

On arrival at university I owned a cassette of Automatic for the People given to me by a schoolmate. A few days later I walked into the fabulous Recordiau Cob Records in Bangor and opened up a financial vein which flowed freely for many years to com. I bought two interesting looking records: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Patio and Tindersticks Kathleen/ E-Type Joe, both on 10" vinyl - not bad for a random pick. Henceforth, I'd go in on Thursday and pore over the list of next week's releases, making a list. On Monday, I'd collect several groaning plastic bags, to which the helpful gimps behind the counter would add 'some things we thought you'd like'. Years later, I realised that this meant 'our own records because nobody else will buy them [hello, Ectogram] and anything we've ordered in and realised won't sell'. Add to this the stuff I bought because I trusted the record label and all the secondhand bits, and you get the beginnings of my 30,000 collection, surprisingly little of which I now regret. Except for Cast's album: played once, put away for ever. I had to sell some once - 250 7" singles to Norman's Records simply to survive one summer. very depressingly. The collection is now like a smile with several teeth missing.

Is Lewis Hamilton black?

I only ask because he's moved to Switzerland. The largest party after the last election is the SVP, the Swiss People's Party. They're a charming bunch of racists who want to deport pretty much everybody.

Except Lewis. Now this could be because they consider him not black, but green - the colour of money. Perhaps they only dislike poor black people.

I presume that as an intelligent man of the world (despite being a despicable tax-evader), Lewis Hamilton knows the political state of affairs in Switzerland. Surely he's seen, from the back of his limo, variations of this SVP poster.

Which makes me think that Lewis doesn't consider himself black - otherwise he wouldn't feel welcome in Switzerland. The only aspect I can see that makes his presence acceptable to both is money - the universal lubricant which turns both parties into hypocrites: Lewis prefers living with racists to paying his fair share of tax, and the racists prefer living with rich black men rather than running their economy on egalitarian lines. Nobody comes out of this looking good.

Next up: Dutch band U2 and their creative approach to tax-dodging and charity… and don't get me started on Liberia. Half the world's shipping fleet is registered there to avoid paying crew properly and cheat on taxes but beg the big nations to help their piracy problem. I say - leave it to the Liberian navy on the basis that the shipping owners have paid their money and taken their choices.