Politics and the Political Web

There's going to be an election soon, and at 26 I still have no more idea who to vote for than I did at 18. It's bewildering really, trying to access and understand the British political system. I was raised in a fairly middle-class home, did well at school, and am not particularly un-intelligent, but the political parties and what they truly stand for remain a complete mystery to me, a fabric of spin, utterly meaningless promises, ambiguous stances on real issues, and mud slinging.

I took an online test which gives you a pile of questions and then gives you a picture of where on the left-right fascist-anarchist scale you lie. I was fairly amused to find myself closest to the Green Party. "Legalize da 'erb man."

I've spent quite a lot of time studying and researching the various parties, and still being totally lost with it all, have come up with a theory. I think it is quite possible that the main political parties have an 'understanding' where they keep the politics in a language and format only accessible to the upper-middle and upper classes and the aristocracy - ie those over whom they have the most influence. A huge number of the working class don't vote, and neither do a considerable number of the middle class in this country. I think it is quite possible that this is exactly as the government wants it - keep any revolutionist thinking at bay by keeping the majority of voters and those you cannot influence held down with the illusion of being powerless. So many people are totally disillusioned with the thought that their vote makes a difference, and so don't vote. So many people can't understand what the difference is between the conservatives and labour, so they don't vote. I heard a guy in the pub the other day say he was going to vote for the BNP 'because they're the only ones who stand for anything, and there's no real difference between any of the other parties'.

All politicians need to do is make the illusion of encouraging people to vote, by putting up posters here and there, and perhaps saying 'everyone should vote' on the odd TV interview, and then they can seemingly carry on speaking a foreign language in parliament and having an unhealthy amount of influence over those demographics of society most likely to vote.

Don't get me wrong, I love my country, having traveled a lot and lived in other countries I have experienced lots of different cultures within western society, and still love my home country England the best. I think the NHS, University Funding, and foreign policy are outstanding in this country and on a global scale I'm not advocating anarchy, but Id much rather be closer to anarchy than fascism.

Living in the US, in Texas, I had a very different experience of politics. In Texas, people are very often raised to accept a political persuasion on a par with (and intertwined with) the religion they are raised with. To disagree with the party you were raised to support is to betray your American identity. If you're a Texan, you're a Christian, a Republican, a Gun Owner, and (in comparison to the rest of the world) a fanatical patriot. The above should never be questioned or (God forbid) disagreed with, because that would be un-American, and make you a Judas.

So, because they are raised with a religious devotion to their identity, they will often blindly accept what someone as indisputably wise as George W Bush says, as if it were gospel truth. Particularly insane examples of this are - denying global warming is actually happening, the frequent assertion that America is the greatest nation in the world, and a very current one - violently opposing free health care.

Today on the news it is showing that free health care has been pushed through in the States finally by Obama, and also John McCain is saying this decision will come back around to bite him in November, and that there will be a very heavy price to pay for this. I personally don't think so. In the UK, when the NHS was founded there was loads of controversy, but it is now looked back on by all political parties as one of the greatest achievements in British governmental history. I am sure that this will be the case in the states too, and I look forwards to gloating about it and being a cocky Brit to my Texan buddies.

I hope the political future for whichever country I happen to live in is one somewhere between the blind sheep of Texas and the dispirited poor in England. And my personal preference is for something closer to socialism -  'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need'.

Baby Joel

Joel Daniel Hargreaves was born 18-03-10, weighing 7 pounds, and with red hair! Which is really cool, but funny because the only redheads in our immediate families are my paternal grandma, and Sydney's maternal granddad. He is pretty much the cutest thing Ive ever seen, and I love him to bits already.

1 week overdue, Sydney started having contractions at 4:30 in the morning having not slept at all that night. We went to the hospital at 7:30 when the contractions were happening 5 minutes apart. We stayed at the hospital til around 1:30 in the afternoon, at which point they asked us to go home so Sydney could take a hot bath and get some rest. At first we definitely thought this was dumb and didn't want to go, but we both agreed in hindsight that it was definitely the right thing to do, as we were both able to have a good home made meal and to rest up on the bed for an hour or so in peace and quiet (labour wards are not quiet at all, just incase you didn't already know that!), and Sydney was able to take a warm bath, which did wonders for her back, and caused her waters to break.

Around 15 minutes later my good friend Paul came and picked us up to take us back in to the ward. Sydneys contractions began getting extremely painful after a few more hours, and so she used some of the 'gas+air' which helped, but eventually the contractions were just too much, so she requested an epidural, for which our very helpful midwife fetched the doctors (and bumped us to the top of the list because Sydney was having such a hard time).Whereas Sydney had been on the verge of screaming with the pain, once the epidural was all hooked up, she was fine, positive, and more than a little stoned. She decided on the spot that epidurals are the greatest invention in the history of man.

The next long hours passed as the contractions increased in strength and frequency (and thankfully not pain), until around 3AM Sydney was fully dilated and ready to start pushing. This was exhausting for her, but didnt hurt. She pushed with the contractions for 2 hours, and at 5AM the doctor came in to use the suction cup and forceps, but Sydney asked to be given a little more time because she wanted to give birth without the extra aid which could potentially hurt the baby a little. The doctor said that usually they would only wait 1 hour before using the forceps, and as Sydney had been pushing for 2 hours now it was best to use them, however as he was saying this another contraction came, and Sydney gave birth at last! Baby Joel was born at 5:15AM, crying and cute.

The biggest surprises were how big he was, even though he's pretty little compared to the average newborn size, the umbilical cord being blue (seriously - alien blue), and his hair being thick and red. We came home at 7PM the same day, and Mum and Dad came over to meet their first grandchild!

In total, Sydney was awake for nearly 60 hours consecutively!! I took a few hour-long naps curled up on the ward floor listening to the 4 Coldplay albums constantly, which i expect will always remind me of Joel's birthday now. All in all, a great day :)

The Track 11 Principle

A fairly random thing I've noticed is that many albums have common traits in the order of the track listing. The obvious ones are - track one - usually an uptempo, catchy, or well known opener. Track 2, usually the lead single from the album etc, track 7 usually also a single, (in memory of the A-side/B-side vinyl days where you got 2 first tracks[each side of the LP]), last track usually some kind of epic finisher. The penultimate track however is always a fascinating one for me, as it is quite often the odd one out from the rest, one with a weird chord sequence, an acoustic number on an album of rock songs or vice versa. Some examples of this are

Grace - Jeff Buckley
The penultimate track is 'Eternal Life', the only song on the album to be driven by distorted guitars from start to finish, in a totally different vein to the rest of the album. The opening 3 tracks tend to 'set the tone' for the rest of the album, and compared to Mojo Pin, Grace, and Lastgoodbye (tracks 1,2 and 3) it is a different animal altogether.

(What's The Story) Morning Glory? - Oasis
The first three tracks on Morning Glory are the pounding, wall-of-sound rock songs 'Hello' and 'Roll With It', and then the big single in the track 3 place, 'Wonderwall'. However, the penultimate track on what is widely considered to be their finest work, is 40 seconds of water noises, and howling harmonica and drums in the background, drenched in reverb.

Help! - The Beatles
Opening with 'Help', 'The Night Before' and 'You've got to hide your love away', penultimate track 13 on Help! is 'Yesterday', the only song on the album without all the Beatles playing (only Paul performs on this track), the only song without drums, the arrangement consisting only of acoustic guitar, vocal track, and a string quartet - again unique on the album.

Paranoid - Black Sabbath
The A-side to Sabbath's breakthrough album contains 'War Pigs', 'Paranoid', and 'Iron Man', probably the bands 3 greatest known and most successful songs. The penultimate track on this album is called 'Rat Salad', which is a two and a half minute track with no vocals, and a drum solo.

Houses Of The Holy - Led Zeppelin
Track 7 of the 8 on this LP is 'No Quarter', which sits amid 'Over The Hills and Far Away', 'The Crunge', 'The Ocean', and 'Dancing Days', which are some of the band's most poppy songs. 'No Quarter' however is a 7 minute psychadelic wash of strange underwater effects, and ghostly singing in a slow minor key.

Just an observation really. No concluding point. Makes a nice change. :)

TV and ambition

TV has raised us to believe we will all grow up to be movie stars, rock gods, millionaires, CEO's, but almost none of us will. Every happy-go-lucky film I would watch as a kid had a happy ending, always involving 'all my dreams come true'. Is this strange seed that was planted in the back of our minds when we were kids the lie that motivates us to learn, achieve and develop?

All my life I have never been able to shake the desperate desire to be a successful musician, to be signed to a record label, creating music for a living. Is that desire there because I want people to love me? Because I feel like it's my birthright to have my every dream come true, every ambition fulfilled? Is it some God-given desire driving me towards some kind of destiny, or some hollywood-implanted brainwashing I underwent (and am still undergoing) every time I watch a movie? It's probably the latter.

I don't think there's anything wrong with dreams, ambitions, or life goals, but is it really our birthright? Have I been deprived of anything? I wonder if I spend my whole life un-signed and never fulfilling that particular hope, if I will be filled with regret when I get old?

My Life A Few Days Before Becoming A Dad

Well, Austin lasted 2 weeks. We stayed there very briefly, I played a few gigs, which were fun, then we had to make a decision. The recession was at its height, and I was having an impossible time getting any kind of job. I promised Sydney before moving to Austin, that the next move would be to England, and so we decided to make that move. The day after making this decision, we found out that Sydney is pregnant! So all very good timing really.

We used every penny we had left for the air fares to England, and after staying with my parents for a few months, we are now settled in our first house, in Darlington. I am now working fulltime for a Telecomms company in England, and performing live with a new band every week.

Sydney is due to give birth in 8 days to our first son, Joel Daniel Hargreaves, and I cant wait. We originally thought our first child would be a girl (Eisley Hannah), but the scans proved us categorically wrong, which is totally fine.

Seeing little Joel move inside Sydney's tummy is mind blowing, feeling a little limb push up against my hand from the womb has made me feel a kind of wonder and love I've never felt before. I am very excited to be a father, and with Gods grace, hopefully I wont wreck my kids life too much, as psychologists say dads are so apt to do. I know now, and knew from before we were even pregnant, that I am going to make tons of mistakes with my children, probably different ones to the ones my dad made, and my son will grow up with a few pet peeves about me that he vows never to replicate with his children. I kinda feel the realest thing to do is to simply accept that this is going to happen no matter what, and just do my best anyway.

There is a lot of injustice in the world. Bosses who abuse their positions, kids who bully and pick on each other to impress their peers, there are just a lot of horrible people in the world. I don't really think I'm saying this out of a jaded negative world view, I just think its the truth. It makes me so angry to see people abuse one another, makes me want to take action, wakes up a violent desire in me to see justice served to these people. As a Christian it is a comfort to know that every idiot, including me, will have to answer to God for every idiotic word and action, and will be repaid accordingly, and fairly. A terrifying and somehow gratifying thought.

It is a truly horrifying thought, how much control we have over our own destinies. As Christians so often we imagine that this responsibility does not lie with us, and that if we just go with the flow of life, and simply roll with whatever opens up to us, God will make sure we fulfill our dreams and desires, and his dreams and desires for us. I don't believe that. The responsibility of making my life valuable and worthwhile is brought home to me stronger now than ever, as the birth of my first child is just days away. What I decide to do with my life - ie study, work hard, achieve etc will directly affect not only my destiny, not only Sydneys destiny, but the destiny of this desperately vulnerable little baby who is about to be entrusted 100% into complete dependence on us. I could just as easily choose to be a lazy unemployed waster, as I could to climb a corporate ladder, chase the dream of being a signed musician, or go to college and get further training.

I still like to think that God is there in the background however, watching over the decisions I make, and protecting me in some un-guessable way from making any really truly disastrous stupid choices that could ruin me and my families future. Fingers crossed eh?