everyone knows this already (and then forgets it again immediately).

it's bandcamp friday and later on it's the erdington by-election result declaration. ok no the result has been declared already - paulette hamilton won it for labour (it would have been a major setback for them if she hadn't).

horsemouth has his coffee. he is sitting up cross-legged in bed, dressed, and wearing a jumper. later a wander round with TG (probably - ok yes 9.45 at the bench). saturday he's off to see some photos. 

on this bandcamp friday horsemouth recommends you buy music from weirdshire/ sproatley smith (you, the reader, almost certainly have all the musicians of bremen stuff that is available to buy). 

horsemouth has had the hohner guitar out. it and the laramie are sitting on the guitar stands (the rest are gig bagged up). he has run through something's on your mind. (a few days ago he played through wondrous love  but his voice wasn't behaving/ he needs to get familiar with the tune again). he thinks the bridge on the hohner has been replaced upside down when howard changed the strings (er. but it still sounds great). he should probably do some practice as if he was going to do a gig. 

triple negative have got a gig coming up and have been posting some old material from the mean streaks (their old band). now the mean streaks were properly south london famous. horsemouth's friends were always telling him to come down and see them. (horsemouth missed his one chance to see them live). the tunes feature cameron bain on guitar - who was a wonderfully great noisy guitarist. 

'we are ending  in the middle of a crisis which is on a different scale... (this crisis, it's on a different scale...)'

it is the last episode of talking politics (after five years of attempting to discuss an increasingly insensible world sensibly). we end on a (frankly insane) war in the ukraine. a (re-)division of global capitalism into two spheres. two world powers whose influence is leaving them confront each other. their successor waits in the wings -waiting to see which way all this will fall. sanctions of unparalleled harshness are about to descend on the russian people in what looks like an effort to collapse a nuclear weapons state (beyond that even, a nuclear superpower). an attempt to play the game of regime change again. 

and yes we all know how well that has worked. in syria. in libya. in iraq. in afghanistan. in the former yugoslavia.  we all know the depth of the west's commitment and its willingness to stick around for teh long haul.  

we think we have seen a refuge crisis (we ain't seen nothing yet). 

we have a war in what is now declared to be europe. (can other states simply declare themselves europe and receive as much concern? if ukraine why not russia itself?). 

at the end of the day it is the workers who are sent to fight and die, it is the workers and the working class who bear the brunt of sanctions, it is the working class who will not be able to afford to heat their homes. the rich can insulate themselves from the carnage and then profit from the new opportunities opened up. 

everyone knows this already (and then forgets it again immediately). 

horsemouth mainly writes down these arguments to see if they still convince him or to see if they provide any guide for action. 

in an early talking politics  david runciman presents a lecture in which he argues that democracy will fail not in the way it did in the 30ies (economic depression leading to a rise of fascism) but that it will fail in new ways, and indeed that it might already have failed. that the political scientists view the collapse into fascism as backsliding  into an earlier state of social organisation. he argues this is mistaken but then argues we cannot return to this earlier state because we are not in this earlier state as a population in the west (we are wealthier, we are older) and that therefore it will be different.