Valentine's Day . . . The Ultimate Issue

National Feedlot scandal.

Tajuddin Ramli's out-of-court settlement.

And yet, some quarters in the opposition seem to think that the most pertinent issue on the agenda is the celebration of St Valentine's Day.

Fer fook's sake.

Wake the fook up!!!

Do you seriosuly think that is going to win ye an election?

Bodoh!!!

Gone too soon . . . Gary Ablett RIP

Even when he was part of the ultra-successful Liverpool team, me often heard punters say "he isn't good enough".

But as former team mates reflected upon the news of his tragic passing, consensus appears that he was a top pro & one who thoroughly deserved his place in that great LFC team.

Solid, dependable & fuss free, Ablett was a vital cog in that Anfield MAchine circa 88-90 which many pundits consider to be one of the finest footballing sides ever.

Ablett won two FA Cups with both red & blue halves of Merseyside.

RIP.

Punk's not dead, its just criminal . . .

Scary news this. This was in today's papers & me really felt fer those who got hauled up. Blatant abuse of human rights which the "moral police" seem to think its ok.

Similar thing happened here when the Malaysian authorities decided KL needed a clean-up pre-Commonwealth Games. A couple of my musician friends who were at the wrong place at the wrong time (ie Central Market) were herded (along with several hundred others) into FRU trucks & sent to rehab/jail fer a couple of weeks.

Not even a phone call to family/friends, nevermind legal representation or informing employers. If you've got long/dyed/spiky hair, wear denim/leather & have piercings/tats, ye is fooking vermin & has absolutely nay rights at all. That's the prevailing message here & some people wonder why the fook we are viewed as backward.

Beware, in a police state, you could be next . . .






Punk rock fans jailed, ‘morally rehabilitated’ by Indonesian sharia police
Agence France-Presse Dec 14, 2011 – 11:35 AM ET

Police shave the hair of detained Indonesian punks at a police school in Aceh province on December 13, 2011
.by Nurdin Hasan

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Indonesian sharia police are “morally rehabilitating” more than 60 young punk rock fans in Aceh province on Sumatra island, saying the youths are tarnishing the province’s image.

Since being arrested at a punk rock concert in the provincial capital Banda Aceh on Saturday night, 59 male and five female punk rock fans have been forced to have their hair cut, bathe in a lake, change clothes and pray.

“We feared that the Islamic sharia law implemented in this province will be tainted by their activities,” Banda Aceh deputy mayor Illiza Sa’aduddin Djamal, who ordered the arrests, told AFP on Wednesday.

“We hope that by sending them to rehabilitation they will eventually repent.”

Hundreds of Indonesian punk fans came from around the country to attend the concert, organised to raise money for orphans.

Police stormed the venue and arrested fans sporting mohawks, tattoos, tight jeans and chains, who were on Tuesday taken to a nearby town to undergo a 10-day “moral rehabilitation” camp run by police.

A girl cried as women in headscarves cut her long unruly hair into a short bob, and some of the men groaned as their heads were shaved, according to an AFP correspondent at the camp.


Chaideer Mahyuddin / AFP / Getty Images
A group of arrested Indonesian punks are jailed in Bandah Aceh police station, December 13, 2011
.“Why did they arrest us? They haven’t given us any reason,” said Fauzal, 20.

“We didn’t steal anything, we weren’t bothering anyone. It’s our right to go to a concert.”

A 22-year-old man from Medan city, who did not want to be named, said he feared he would lose his job for staying at the camp for 10 days.

“I’ve just started with a bank in Medan. I don’t even know what to tell them because I don’t know why I’ve been arrested.”

Police said the objective was to deter the youths from “deviant” behaviour.

“They never showered, they lived on the street, never performed religious prayers,” Aceh police chief Iskandar Hasan told AFP.

“We need to fix them so that they will behave properly and morally. They need harsh treatment to change their mental behaviour.”

A local rights activist Evi Narti Zain said the arrests breached human rights.

“What the police have done is totally bizarre. Being a punk is just a lifestyle. They exist all over the world and they don’t break any rules or harm other people,” she said.

Mr. Hasan denied the accusation, claiming the rehabilitation programme was merely an “orientation into normal Indonesian society.”

Aceh, on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island, adopted partial sharia law in 2001 as part of a special autonomy package aimed at quelling separatist sentiment.

Only Muslims can be charged under sharia law, although the non-Muslim community is expected to follow some laws out of respect.

Nearly 90% of Indonesia’s 240 million people are Muslims, but the vast majority practise a moderate form of Islam.

Coolest facial hair in footie - Socrates RIP

"That's how you play when under pressure. Brazil have replied."

Even though me was a wee lad during Espana 82, me can still remember the commentator's words when Socrates strode into the Italian penalty box & slid in that goal.

Though Brasil lost that classic tussle with the Italians, many football fans of a certain vintage will always have very fond memories of that team. Classy & reckless in equal measures, they were the closest thing to the great 1970 side that truly played football as a "beautiful game'.

And with his 70s style neo-Afro & headband, Socrates looked like the coolest thing on planet footie. Socrates famously sat fer his medical exams whille being a full time pro & he is also famed fer his pro-democracy campaigning whihc helped overthrow a dictatorship.

Alas, the Smoking Doctor who captained Brasil passed on today at the age of 57.

And to quote a narrator on one those 'great Brasilian world cup' videos who said, "these men have truly bestowed on us a golden almanac of memories."

RIP.

Holy Smokin' Bassist, Batman!

Bought a copy of Bass Player mag (I know, I know - gotta look the part) with this Jonas Hellborg dude on the cover. A quick search on youtube yielded plenty of smack me fooking forehead & jaw on ground moments.

Inspired stuff.

Just the stuff to make ye wants to pick up an instrument or pawn it in disgust.

Again, apologies to anyone still reading fer the delay in between posts & hopes ye enjoys the vid.

Am off to put in some much needed practice minutes . . .

Thrilla In Manila - RIP Smokin' Joe Frazier

Boxing legend Smoking Joe Frazier passed away yesterday after losing the battle against liver cancer.

A giant of the sporting arena & someone who got way too much crap from a peer who he had beaten in the Fight of the Century in 1971.

Those who are wondering wot the fuss is all about, please watch the absolutely BRILLIANT documentary below (made by the same team who gave us Oscar-winning When We Were Kings about The Rumble in The Jungle).

Remarkable film about possibly the most brutal fight in the history of pugilism.

Smokin' Joe Frazier - a truly great champion. RIP . . .

Grindcore - The Meaning of . . .

Watched this very entertaining vid many many many years ago.

Highly entertaining & very educational, if ye wants to knows more about the grindcore scene.

Enjoy!

The Truth . . .

Incredibly the controversy rages on & it has taken the Hillsborough victim's familes 22 long years to get to this point. Which is to get the UK govt to acknowledge its failings & its part in the cover up of the aftermath of that tragedy that claimed 96 Kopite lives.

FFS says:

Fook the police . . . in this case the Yorkshire constabulary who made grave mistakes on that day & fer all the subsequent lies.

Fook the UK Sun fer printing shite regarding the incident.

Fook Maggie Tatcher & her Conservatove govt which treated football fans like lepers.

Read this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/17/hillsborough-disaster-legacy-lies

Master of Frets

Imagine wot would the history of metaldom be if Metallica had actually hired this dude to replace Cliff?

Les Claypool had actually gone fer the auditions but the Metalligang found him just a little way too out there.

Perhaps they wouldn't have gone all shitty soft rock if they had replaced an unconventional bass legend with a totally off the wall character like Les.

Shame . . .

Shanks The Man

Part of the reason why me writes in a pseudo-Scots accent ala Irvine Welsh is as a tribute to this great man. All dem ye, didnae & cannaes isn't me thinking me is some fooking gwailo. Though Shanks had left by the time became a Kopite, listening to his interviews were nothing usch of awe inspiring (see above).

Gone but never forgotten.

From The Telegraph


Bill Shankly was speaking and Cally was spellbound by his master’s voice all over again.
Here was a newly unearthed old cassette recording of Shankly holding court in one of his last interviews, responding at 67 to a question about whether there were any mistakes he had regretted during his great career. “No,” he had scolded his questioner.

“I don’t call them mistakes, never mistakes! That’s too negative. I call them ‘happenings’. Aye, you have to learn from ‘happenings!’”

Callaghan could only look and smile at Ian St John, Chris Lawler and Ron Yeats. Ha! As if Shanks would ever have admitted to fallibility!

“Eerie. You could feel the same aura, how he compelled you to listen when he spoke,” reckoned Callaghan. “It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, like he was there in the room with us.”

But then maybe Shankly is still with us all. The spirit of the extraordinary people’s manager who took Liverpool FC from a nowhere club to global phenomenon largely through the sheer galvanising force of his personality and footballing passion seems to be more all-pervading by the year, reckons Callaghan.

“His values and what he stood for only seem to get more precious, more important to people here.”
Saturday’s Merseyside derby comes in the week of the 30th anniversary of his death and Karen Gill has, as ever, received hundreds of e-mails, texts and letters celebrating the memory of her granddad. From New Zealand to Mauritius and, yes, even back to Everton.

“I get more every year from all over the world,” she says, overwhelmed at how the cult just grows. “I don’t know why? Maybe, he symbolises good times, positive things about Liverpool. It’s a unique phenomenon.”
At her home in Greece, she reads from the tribute the Liverpool Echo offered on his death. “Shanks was not just a soccer genius, a charismatic, inspirational force.

"He won Cups and titles, yes, but he also won the hearts of men, women and children the world over. He walked with the high and the mighty but was never deluded by grandeur.

"His love was rooted deeply among the ordinary folk of Liverpool. He enriched the city immeasurably.”

A city, mind, not just a club. How astonishing, thinks Karen, that 30 years on, he still keeps enriching.

She was only 16 at the time and, to her, he was just the lovely, gruff, storytelling grandad who was so obsessed with the game that when the local kids came round with a football after Sunday dinner to ask if “Mr Shankly can come out to play”, even at 65 he just couldn’t say no. Of course, he had to be on the winning side, too!

On the day of his funeral, when she saw the unbelievable crowds lining the route from his home in Bellefield Avenue to the church, she began to truly comprehend what he meant to Liverpool.
“Including plenty who were wearing Evertonian blue,” she recalls.

Remember the fabled Shanklyism: “If Everton were playing at the bottom of my garden, I’d draw the curtains”?
Well, Karen relates how, actually, he had respect for the old enemy. When he took his dog for a walk, it was usually down to the nearby Everton training ground and he even got physio treatment there.

“Respect, but he still loved to beat them!” she smiles. And, of course, they made a perfect punchline for a bloke with the timing and delivery of a top stand-up comic.

Today, Karen is the chair of the Liverpool FC supporters commission, representing all fan bases and designed to give a direct line to the club’s new owners.

“In this day of corporatisation of football, at least there’s an indication from the club that they do care about supporters and I’d like to think that has stemmed from my granddad. For me, this feels like a chance to do something in his footsteps. It makes me proud.”

Next Friday, extracts from that cassette tape of him being interviewed by former headmaster Frank McFarlane, the recording which has transfixed Callaghan and co at rehearsal, will be interspersed with the four players giving their memories in a special “Bill Shankly Anniversary Show” at Southport Theatre.

The show is written by John Keith, who had the privilege of hearing Shankly’s wit and wisdom at Anfield on a daily basis as the Daily Express’s Merseyside man.

For five years now, it has played to full houses from Norway to Ireland and Keith notes: “We do get a lot of Evertonians coming too. They say ‘we hate Liverpool, but we love Bill Shankly!’ You see, he transcended the game.”

It is as the inscription on the base of the statue of the scarf-wearing Shanks, which guards Anfield with bronze arms outstretched like some angel of the north, puts it with perfect simplicity: “He made the people happy”.
And, to this day, the very thought of him still does too.