union jacks and commonwealth (the rest of you are just going to have to take your chances))

horsemouth's friends triple negative have got a new LP coming out - you can pre-order it here.

so horsemouth has survived another week. for this week. he has been gainfully employed which now means he has earned nearly enough to pay his rent (april to april) and that after this month’s paycheck it’s all gravy (i.e. he can use this money to feed and clothe himself and buy books and beer - so that would be february and march).

of course this is only nearly (but also not entirely) practicable and requires the dipping of his savings at a slow but steady rate. horsemouth’s basic plan is to coast it out to the point where his savings will allow him to survive until pension day (67) without recourse to the benefits system (this may necessitate withdrawl to a warmer country for a series of extended holidays now that moving to europe looks to have been blocked off).

horsemouth has been pondering the almost maoist optimism of paolo freire’s the pedagogy of the oppressed in tandem with the current political situation.‘trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change’ - paolo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed, p.42 (one pound treadwell’s table). it’s all very humanist and inspiring. ‘the correct method lies in dialogue’. easy to say (but difficult to do) in the current situation.

17 million people have chosen something horsemouth would not have chosen. everywhere horsemouth detects a profound political disaffection and a desire for autonomy (that he would recognise) but it is framed in the language of immigration controls and (paradoxically) parliamentary sovereignty.

the radical potential of the years following the credit crunch has been spunked on a dream of faded imperial grandeur. the tory party has played a good game and is now safely back in power for the next five years. and yet it is charged with delivering this insane fantasy of an escape from global capitalism into a sunny upland of union jacks and commonwealth.

the economy is about to take a kicking. horsemouth hopes that his needs are so few and his sector so far back in order of things that he will survive it largely unscathed. horsemouth will be saying I told you so at regular intervals and refusing all calls for unity. like he says all he has to do is stretch it out in the direction of the pension. should the pension evapourate or become meaningless before he gets there he’s probably still ok (he is after all a child of the middle classes).

the rest of you are just going to have to take your chances.