How To Party With The Coalition Party

After months of political in-fights and bitching, we've got a boiled ham for Prime Minister and a Cabinet who no-one really voted for. And no amount of pseudo-anarchic Facebook groups are going to change the situation.

So here are 5 reasons why this government will do right by clubbers.

1. No ID cards. The 'Con-Dem'-ed coalition agrees on this above all. This paranoid, Orwellian style of monitoring baddies and scaring the living daylights out of the good, law-abiding citizens was always going to have its problems, especially amongst clubbers. How often do we lose our stuff on a night out? Calling the bank at 3am for the third weekend in a row to get your cards cancelled is one thing, but having to call up the home office each weekend? Spare us the hassle.

2. Greg Knight. As MP for East Yorkshire, Greg may, at first glance, have precious little effect upon clubbers nationwide. But this chap is at the forefront of the 'Save Our Pubs & Clubs' campaign, which is requesting that the smoking ban be relaxed in order to keep booze Britain alive. If successful, clubbers could go back to those halcyon days of smelling toxic tar, tobacco and burnt formaldehyde in their favourite jaunts, instead of beer and puke.

3. Cuts to universities. Seriously, a brilliant idea. How amazing would it be to turn 18 without the pressure of having to spend another three years getting a degree which employers find entirely irrelevant? All of that money spent on student digs can now be spent on going out a lot more and listening to a hell of a lot more music.

4. Even if the new government takes a turn for the worse and repeats all of Thatcher's mistakes, we'll get some great music out of it. Some of the biggest pioneers of dance music were inspired by the Iron Lady's fuckups. In the early 80s alone, New Order's Blue Monday was all about the Falklands War, Bronski Beat wrote a whole album dedicated to overturning homophobic statutes and the New Romantic scene was all about escaping the dire realities of Thatcherite Britain.

5. The extremist right-wing nut jobs who are out to ruin everyone's fun (see: Norman Tebbit kicking a kid in a dragon costume up the bum during Chinese New Year festivities) will feel so disenfranchised by a government that doesn't charge four year olds for milk money, that they'll up and leave, making Britain a friendlier place for all people, including clubbers.

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This piece was written for the Ministry of Sound blog.

The 2010 Election. My last word.

Forgive me for another political blog post. Social networking frenzies, televised debates and the prospect of submitting my first general election vote have made me very excited. Well, apart from in the past few days. No, since the last leaders' debate, I've felt quite petrified.

I really shouldn't be. I am confident that this country has enough altruistic souls to vote for MPs who won't cut vital public services. I am confident that this country is mostly made up of people who want all to be treated fairly. I am confident that the people of this country want to see the world flourish. And I am confident that this country is made up of accepting, peaceful people, with the maturity to invest their precious vote in a party who will restore a sense of dignity to our parliament.

So what am I scared of? I'm scared that I'm hoping for too much. I'm scared that all of these brilliant, important and very worthy voters are being misled not only by the presumed safety of familial voting traditions, but by certain members of the mainstream media.

As the papers have shown their support for parties, you'd have to have been living under Eric Pickles' blubber for decades to have been shocked at any alliances.

Also, you'd have to be similarly incapacitated to not realise that many of these publications have been willing to disproportionately represent incidents on the campaign trail long before they pledged their allegiances . Charlie Brooker's column this week begins with a nod to just one example of how skewed the media's representation of this election has become.

And another more serious example of warped press has been highlighted by Benjamin Cohen of Channel 4 news (and founder of PinkNews). This is the recent non-story of gay-curer Tory candidate Phillipa Stroud who has sent Twitter in a frenzy, yet will never receive as much media lampooning as Brown did during Bigot-gate.

The leadership debates provided the media with another opportunity to manipulate voters. We've been encouraged to pick apart leaders of the party instead of looking to our own local candidates' policies. This would be great if we voted in a presidential system, but we don't. Obama's name has been dropped in this election run-up more times than Katie Price's knickers, and it is useful to compare the US and UK. The pertinent dissimilarities are that we don't vote for our leader, and we're a tiny island. But these just make the similarities all too eerie: we have just as many issues, a similar gaggle of nutcases running for office, and the same media fatcats in charge of our press.

I'm not disillusioned with politics, but I'm concerned that we're looking to partisan news sources to tell us about the three men most of us will never have the chance to vote for.

The 2010 election is one where we have never before had so much information readily available to us. But be careful where you get it from.

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*In case you don't know, this latter incident is when Brown called a spade a spade. I think he should have just called her an idiot and left it at that. If you were to meet the Prime Minister, a man with a fancy education and a right nice suit, with the BBC filming you, you'd surely not think to say something so crass as: 'These eastern Europeans, where are they all flocking from?'

** I put a photo of Paris Hilton up top so you'd pay attention to what I write.

We're All David Cameron's Fags

When I first voted, I wasn't really concerned about who was going to be in power. I went for Labour and Lib Dem, because I fit the demographic perfectly, and my parents, who are both now Conservative-leaning, used to be very liberal back in the day.

But this time round, there's no way I could justify voting for Gordon Brown's government again, after the mess they've got us into. Even though the banks which plunged us into economic doom were much more part of Tony Blair's blinded optimism, or even a throwback to Thatcherist greed, Brown's a washed-up gravelface with little charisma and a glass eye.

In comes David Cameron, so shiny and cherub-faced. So warm, so outspoken, so keen on 'change'. He is charming. So bloody charming, in fact, that it has taken me until now to decide that I cannot and will not vote for him to lead this country. He's got a convincing argument, claiming that he's fighting the election for the 'Great Ignored', a catch-all term for any disenfranchised people in the country. But he's lying. He does not give two figs about those outside of his own niche of society. And here's how I know:

I identify as LGBTQ, an ever-increasing acronym which truly reflects how Western society is accepting enough to allow an increasing amount of people to realise that they identify as something other than heterosexual. I know we've got many pressing matters to deal with this election: economics and the war especially. But I've paid attention to party leaders' stance on gay rights. I'm not going to warble on about the B+B which refused two men a night's sleep. This incident is more a discussion of whether a B+B is a business or a home, under the jurisdiction of the homeowners or business law. But I will explain how Cameron's negligence of gay rights spells trouble for all of us, and by 'us', I mean every person on this little island.

Back in 2008, aaall that time ago, David Cameron voted on Section 28. Along with William Hague, he voted against the 'promotion' of LGBTQ issues in school. He voted against vital education resources for young people who are struggling to come to terms with their sexuality, refusing to acknowledge that young gay people need sex education as much as their straight counterparts. Even though gay teenagers are as much at risk of STIs and sexual abuse as their straight counterparts, it seems that straight sex-education is allowed because, well, not because DC wants teen pregnancy, it's just that it's a visible problem. But this was all years ago. Why am I complaining now? Because he's just gone and said that 'gay' people are part of his 'Great Ignored'. Based on his past vote against gay sex education, his refusal to use his jurisdiction in Europe to stop homophobia and his inability to coherently explain his stance on gay rights, it's clearly a lie.

This graph details how the Tory and Labour cabinets have voted on gay rights For more statistics, click here.

An article highlighting this on the Guardian's Comment is Free site shocked me. Well, not the article itself, written by Tamsin Omond, but the comments. A usually liberal readership responded with the usual Daily Mail responses. Many of the highest-rated comments went along the lines of: Dave Cameron's weak on gay rights, but what's that got to do with me? Haven't we got gay rights already? Why do gay people need all this representation?

Well, here are your answers:

LGBTQ people, as with other minorities, need special recognition because theyare still disregarded, stereotyped and marginalised. Heteros won't necessarily be as aware of this as LGBTQ people are, and even if one is not 'actively' homophobic, by refusing to acknowledge this particular need for representation or by refusing to be upset about discrimination, one contributes to the problem of homophobia.

And yes, it is a problem. People in this country are denied employment, bullied, bashed and even murdered because of their sexual orientation. And it's not only a problem for LGBTQ people, as it's being endorsed by Cameron and his party. It's indicative of the way the Tories feel about all marginalised groups.

Discrimination against LGBTQ people is being condoned by David Cameron, and his top party members. At the moment, it may seem that this isn't too bad, that it won't affect the great majority of 'us' if the Conservatives come to power. But why does anyone who's not a whiteboy from an Etonian background living in south-west London with a 2.4 family think that they're safe from Cameron's ignorance, inconsistency and negligence?

Gordon Brown Loves Mephedrone

MEPHADROZ

Mephedrone is everywhere. On toilet seats, mirrors, keys, cards and notes. In students' noses, down raver's throats. Most importantly, for the future of this country, it's in our Prime Minister's head.

Two young men from Scunthorpe died on Monday. Mephedrone's been cited as the foremost cause. In each article you will read on this, buried somewhere beneath the fourth or fifth paragraph, there's mention that the guys had been drinking heavily and also taken methadone before they died. Without delving into the scientific specifics of these substances, meph is an upper, meth is a downer. People take uppers before they take downers. A property which the two drugs share, is that, unlike booze, MDMA or ketamine (etc), they affect the user immediately. Thus follows that many people are blaming the breakfast for what essentially was the dinner's fault.

So why meph and not meth? Because meph is new and intriguing. It's the toyboy to heroin's geriatric. And we're all cougars. And that's an analogy too far. What I mean is, if you're in the newsagents buying some ciggies and you're faced with a headline as ridiculous as 'Meow Meow Raver Drug Kills Kids', and you (rightfully) don't know what it means, and you get some change back for your cigarettes, you'll happily pay a couple of quid to find out what The Daily Twat even meant by that headline. On the very basic principle that new news shifts papers, mew mews will bring profit to tabs and broadsheets alike.

Gurndon Brown

I am not rushing to the defence of mephedrone. Anything intoxicating enough to work as a get-out-of-school-free card for up to 180 kids needs to undergo testing. And it goes without saying that the government is responsible for any restrictions imposed upon a substance. So jolly good then, that Peter Mandelson has piped up. Yes, Peter Mandelson. The man who resides in the cabinet as Business, Innovation and Skills Secretary. He's said that he'd never heard of meph before, but that his cabinet will: "take any action that is needed... to avert such tragic consequences occurring in the future". Well that's awfully nice of you, Mandy, but who overdosed and made you Health Secretary?

"Aaand pinch...aaannnd sniff.."

Why isn't Alan Johnson, the actual person in charge of Health policy, talking about mephedrone after these two deaths? He's had "grave concerns" about the drug for at least a month, but he's keeping schtum for now. Maybe he doesn't want to face the inevitable double embarrassment that I'll endeavour to illustrate in the next two sentences. Firstly, mephedrone's been available in the UK for long enough for it to filter down to kids aged 8. It must be incredibly easy to manufacture as it's selling for as little as £7 a gram in some places. Secondly, Johnson's drugs advisory council has been made up of many people with no scientific expertise since he sacked Prof David Nutt. Why did he sack Prof Nutt? Because Labour's up shit creek and to have a scientist with a calm, rational approach to what really causes danger to our society on your side isn't going to win those pesky contested seats.

Peter Mandelson's a stumbling block for many voters. We haven't actually voted for to be in our present government, yet he's literally Lording around Westminster with a phone directory's worth of titles and a place set for him at nearly every committee and subcommittee going. By attaching 'Mandelson' to stories about the government restricting a 'killer' substance, he's mincing into many voters' good books.

MM-Cat

It is also worth noting that meph is getting a bad rap (ha) because it isn't a controlled substance, but meth is. Meth is used as part of drug addiction rehabilitation, as a substitute for heroin. It's given out by the NHS to ex-junkies trying to wean themselves off of the juice. How these boys got their hands on meth will inevitably lead back to a story of government-sanctioned ineptitude. Whether it's a crooked pharmacist, inconsistent customs officials, or even a dodgy policeman, whoever's to blame for the drug which actually killed these boys is working in the public sector, at the taxpayers' expense.

Blaming meph also saves face in another way. Scientific tests will inevitably show that it's dangerous enough to be banned, so it's the perfect battle for Labour to play. As ITV1, televised debate and smear campaigns steer voters to judge party leaders by their personalities instead of their promises, shiny Cameron emerges as the frontrunner. What will work in Brown's favour, though, is if he can convert voters' many fears into effective policy in the run up to the election, as this is the only realm where he can outdo Cameron.

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Note: This article was edited the morning after I wrote it just for a little clean-up

Pissing on Climate Camp

Every media resource had differing opinions on Climate Camp. To the right-wing media, it was a hippie-festooned mess, to the left-wing media, it was a well-organised campaign hearkening back to the demonstrations held on that very same patch of grass in south-east London hundreds of years ago.

I went there on Saturday night at 12.30am, and all I saw was a tiny fenced off area covering a tiny portion of Blackheath. I did a really long wee at the fence. No-one inside the designated rowdy hippy area was awake, let alone rowdy.

Why did I decide to piss on the fence? Two reasons. I really needed a wee, and, as always, wanted to be able tell a good story. As the wind helped me drip-dry from one of the longest pisses I have ever had, I looked around the campsite.

I found it interesting that all these environmental acitivists were kept within a small locus, unable to use the rest of Blackheath freely. I don't know who set the barriers up, but the whole area dedicated to Climate Camp was about a quarter of the size of the funfair next to it. I like that the media decided to give Climate Camp a disproportionately large amount of coverage, showing that what the campers were doing had an importance behind it exceeding that of the gaudy funfair.

Ultimately, I hope that the issues surrounding climate change and the 10:10 conference will be addressed more so than locals' issues surrounding the possible nuisance of a couple of hundred stoners chilling out on some public land for a week.

At least they used portaloos.