lessons from the funeral of a raven

'autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. a man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.' -  george orwell, benefit of clergy: some notes on salvador dali. 

today horsemouth does a meeting (over zoom). then he gets on a train. he goes to a gig. he goes home. sleeps. gets up. goes for a wander round charlton. sunday he doesn't know. monday (afternoon) a discussion about insulation. thereafter he does not know. 

hmm looks like horsemouth is getting blackballed over at american primitive guitar - his two posts from last year - 27th september and 23rd march are still 'pending' (hell soon they'll be fossilised). matter of fact he hasn't had anything published there since 27th october 2022. looks like he has pissed one of the admins off (or something). it was probably his excessive enthusiasm for suni mcgrath. 

the games people play. why bother. 

er. it's not like he noticed. he can still like (and maybe even comment). he'll  give it a go - that's more participation than representative democracy gives him. 

today horsemouth finds out how the by-election in rochdale has gone. (and it's a bandcamp friday as well).  

george galloway wins by more than 5000 votes. horsemouth once saw him walking down cheshire street in bethnal green during his time there. just as the brexit party, ukip and reform have dragged the tory party rightwards (enabling them to connect with disgruntled voters) so horsemouth expects parties to form to the left of labour (which hopefully will drag labour leftward ditto ditto). galloway has brand recognition but in a way horsemouth puts more hope in movements arising out of local councils (such as lutfur rahman's in tower hamlets). 

the advantage of an MP is that it is more difficult to suspend one (powers to remove recalcitrant local authority administrations are well developed). but it is not impossible to suspend MPs, develop recall petitions etc. (horsemouth has been making a study of this of late). galloway's challenge is to keep rochdale later this year given labour relaunching with a safer candidate and to build a movement to take it all forward. 

of course one MP does not a summer make.