Author Archives: Tim Hall

British Politics Decends Into The Darkness

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Tim Hall

I am finding it very difficult to find the right words to express my shock, horror and anger at today’s events.

Yesterday the referendum campaign descended into farce with a mock sea-battle on the Thames. Today began with Nigel Farage using imagery lifted straight from 1930s Nazi propaganda, and ended with the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox. While there appear to be conflicting eye-witness reports, much of what we’ve heard suggests the killer was a supporter of the far-right.

David Cameron’s decision to call a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union was a spectacular political miscalculation in the first place. It has unleashed dark forces into British politics which will prove very difficult to banish. The Leave Campaign and their supporters in the press, especially The Daily Mail, have been steadily ratcheting up the racist rhetoric in the past weeks; they’re not even bothering with the dog whistle any more. It’s hardly surprising they have the far-right marching under their banner.

In this increasingly ugly atmosphere, it was only a matter of time before something like this was going to happen.

I knew very little about Jo Cox, but the tributes I’ve seen flowing paint a picture of a woman dedicated to making the world a better place. She was a reminder that the majority of MPs across all parties are essentially good people; that the sociopaths, demagogues, charlatans and cynical careerists that exist in all parties too are a minority.

When something like this happens, it’s easy to give in to hate. To rage against the people whose rhetoric empowered the ugliness that took an innocent life. They need to be called to account, yes. But more hate won’t break the cycle.

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Panic Room DVD: Plan B

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Tim Hall

Panic Room Weekend

So near and yet so far. Panic Room have reached 85% in their PledgeMusic campaign for their live DVD. But the gap is still such that they cannot afford to take the financial risk of hiring a professional film crew to film the show this coming Saturday.

The gig itself is still going ahead, and the band have a Plan B in place

Please don’t despair, because we have worked very hard to put together a strong Plan B for you:

We have decided to KEEP THE PLEDGE CAMPAIGN RUNNING – and in fact we will EXTEND it by a few weeks, so that it will now close at the end of July. (Many Pledge campaigns run for several months, whereas we had aimed for less than 2 months here). We hope that by taking this step, we should hopefully reach our 100% target for sure in the weeks to come!

85% is very close…..

So we DO succeed in hitting 100% in the next few weeks – which we feel confident will happen – we will THEN book a brand new Live PANIC ROOM show for the early Autumn – September / October – and THIS will be the new filming date for the Live DVD to be captured!

So, if you haven’t yet pledged, and you still want to see a Panic Room DVD, now really is the time to do it.

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Responses to Orlando

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Tim Hall

Maajid Nawaz predictably doesn’t mince any words when it comes to the tragedy in Florida. “Admit It: These Terrorists Are Muslims”, he says.

Liberals who claim that this has nothing to do with Islam today are being as unhelpful and as ignorant as conservatives who claim that this represents all of Islam. The problem so obviously has something to do with Islam. That something is Islamism, or the desire to impose any version of Islam over any society. Jihadism is the attempt to do so by force. This ideology of Islamism has been rising almost unchecked among Muslims for decades. It is a theocratic ideology, and theocracy should no longer have any place in the world today.

The general point is true even if Maajid Nawaz is overstating things with this particular tragedy. Even though he claimed to carry out his monstrous acts in the name of ISIS there appear to be conflicting reports over the extent that Omar Mateen shared their poisonous ideology. The reports that he was apparently a regular at the club he went on to attack paints a picture of a conflicted and disturbed individual. But those are precisely the sorts of people who gravitate towards extremist groups; were he white and grown up in a different community he sounds like the sort of person who may well have been drawn towards the white nationalist far right.

It’s certainly wrong to use this tragedy to demonise out-groups. Donald Trump’s two minute hate against all American Muslims is despicable. But some of the sanctimonious diatribes I’ve seen from male feminists about “toxic masculinity”, blaming their favourite target of low-status “straight white males” are little better.

The world does have a problem with violent extremism in the name of a perverted version of Islam. America has a problem with mass killings in a nation awash with guns. What happened in Orlando was a terrible intersection of the two.

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Touchstone announce new singer

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Tim Hall

After months of teasers and speculation, Touchstone have announced Polish-born Aggie as their new lead singer. She has a background in musical theatre, having performed in productions of Phantom of the Opera, so fronting a rock band will be something of a change in direction.

The band plan to release a double A-side single in the coming months, with the album “Dangerous Days” due in the new year. She will be making her live debut with the band in December with dates at The Borderline in London, The Robin 2 in Bilston, and a third venue yet to be announced.

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Christina Grimmie

Posted on June 12, 2016 by Tim Hall

It’s been overshadowed by the terrible nightclub massacre in the same city just a few hours later, the enormity of which is still hard to take in. But the murder of singer Christina Grimmie while she chatted with fans and signed autographs after a gig struck terribly close to home. Especially when I read that there were about a hundred people at the gig, which makes it the sort of gig I’m very familiar with, and there are many, many times I’ve chatted with band members after a such a show. As a female games journalist said to me on Twitter, the fear of this sort of thing lurks in the back of the mind of anyone with any kind of public profile.

I am fortunate to live in a country that isn’t awash with guns.

At the moment we know next to nothing about the killer or his motivation, but the probability that he was some kind of obsessive stalker is quite high. It’s why you don’t make tasteless jokes about the subject; because stalking is really no laughing matter. It’s also why can’t dismiss online threats out of hand either.

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The Great Musical Divide

Posted on June 12, 2016 by Tim Hall

Iron Maiden Book of SoulsA couple of tweets from an acquaintance about the ubiquity of Iron Maiden and other classic rock and metal bands as background music in bars in Romania shows how mainland Europe has a quite different relationship with rock and metal compared to indie-dominated Britain. An equivalent bar in Britain would be playing Oasis or Ed Sheeran.

Especially in Eastern Europe, how much is this down to former Communist countries first encountering the music in a completely different context, such that it doesn’t carry the same cultural baggage as it does in Britain?

I know this is a recurring theme for me, but a big problem with British music is a critical establishment that defines every kind of popular music in terms of its relationship towards punk. A handful of snotty three-chord bands, or rather the pseudo-intellectual scribblers who worshipped them ended up casting a long shadow over everything that happened not only after 1977, but the years before. A lot of the narrative is revisionist nonsense, but it’s become the orthodoxy, endlessly repeated by those two young to have been there at the time. Anything that doesn’t fit the narrative risks being written out of history.

Eastern Europe experienced none of that. The fall of the Berlin Wall bought a flood of Western music, such that the cheesiest hair-metal of that time is revered in the same way the 1960s British Invasion is revered in America. Songs like Europe’s “The Final Countdown” and The Scorpions’ “Wind of Change” have a status that’s hard for people in Britain to imagine.

Although this doesn’t explain the huge popularity of metal in Scandinavia. So perhaps there’s another explanation?

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Don’t fall for it

Posted on June 12, 2016 by Tim Hall

Look, I know it’s tempting to vote Leave just to give David Cameron a bloody nose. You’re all pissed off with deteriorating public services and falling standards of living. But don’t fall for Vote Leave’s lies that it’s all the fault of the EU and migrants. It’s six years of Tory cuts that caused that.

Cameron is probably toast whatever happens now. Only Remain winning by an overwhelming majority will save his premiership, and that’s not going to happen. Voting Leave will only see Cameron replaced by something even worse.

Leaving the EU is at best a desperare gamble, and the Leave campaign have completely failed to articulate their vision of how Britain outside the EU will look. But it will almost certainly leave Britain a less prosperous place, with less opportunity for you and your family. By the time it’s your job that’s lost in the economic downturn, it will be too late.

I’m probably just preaching to the choir here, but it needs to be said.

Posted in Religion and Politics | Tagged | 5 Comments

On Springsteen, Mostly Autumn and Panic Room

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Tim Hall

Good piece by The Guardian’s Michael Hann on the appeal of a Bruce Springsteen show

I can understand people who just don’t like Springsteen. I was well into my 30s before I could even tolerate much of his music, let alone adore it. And for a first-time attender, a Springsteen show can be a little like attending a meeting of some religious sect – intriguing at first, then slightly terrifying as you realise quite how long it’s going to last. But once the rhythms of the night seep into your soul – as you understand how you are going to be swept up, then brought down, then lifted again; as you come to understand your part in the liturgy – it becomes hard to resist.

I’m not a Springsteen fan myself, but that paragraph somehow sums up what’s so great for me about seeing bands like Mostly Autumn and Panic Room live. Some people wonder exactly why I’ll travel considerable distances and stay in sometimes dodgy B&Bs to see a band they’ve never heard of play before a couple of hundred people.

The comparison with religion is spot-on.

There have been times when I’ve seen Mostly Autumn and been on a high for the rest of the week, to the extent that work colleagues have noticed. It’s not quite the same as Springsteen’s universality, of course. Sometimes it’s knowing more about the backstories of deeply personal songs about love, loss and bereavement than has ever been put in the public domain that gives the music such a powerful emotional punch. And the dynamics of a small intimate club gig where you frequently get to meet the band after the show is different from the electric atmosphere of an arena show. But the parallels are still strong.

What about you? Who is your Sprngsteen, or your Mostly Autumn or Panic Room?

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The Return of Tony Blair?

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Tim Hall

LetMeFuckAHorse(From the entertaingly silly Tumblr Comment is Weird)

OK, the very last part about the Second Coming of Tony Blair is far-fetched, but the rest of it far more plausible. Whichever way the referendum on June 23rd goes, it’s going to force a major realignment in British politics in which neither the Conservative or Labour parties are likely to survive in their present form. A split in both parties looks inevitable.

The outcome of the referendum, for better or for worse, is going to shape British politics for a generation. Our present party system is a legacy of the 20th century struggle between labour and capital. The EU referendum cuts across that divide; it’s really between internationalism and parochialism. So we find the trade unions and the financial houses of The City on the same side, and see both the populist right and the old-school hard left on the other.

The next few years and the next couple of Parliaments will be messy. We may eventually end up with parties called “Labour” and “Conservative” which bear little resemblance to the parties of today, or we may see completely new parties emerge to replaced them. But whatever happens, the politics of the new few decades won’t look much like the politics of the last century.

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Brexit would be Jeremy Corbyn’s fault.

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Tim Hall

Good post by Robert Peston on Facebook, in which he puts his finger on the problem with Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of the EU referendum campaign, in a rather better way that Mick Hucknall’s ham-fisted twittering.

So the question is why Corbyn has not been more conspicuous and passionate in campaigning to remain.

There are three arguments put to me by his despairing colleagues:

1) his heart isn’t in it, because he loathes Brussels, and he detests Cameron more;

2) he doesn’t have experience of campaigning in the mainstream on mainstream issues;

3) he thinks Brexit or an ultra narrow victory for Remain would see the PM toppled and the Tory party fracture.

If any of that is true, Corbyn would be taking a huge personal risk.

The point is that whether he likes it or not, he is the head of a major party campaigning to keep us in the EU.

And his colleagues tell me that if we opt for Brexit, when Cameron is bundled from office, Corbyn would be defenestrated and ejected from the leadership too.

If the worst happens on June 23rd, it will be as much the fault of Jeremy Corbyn as Cameron or Osborne.

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