RMT, and Brighton

It has been an intense week. On Wednesday evening, I had the opportunity to attend the RMT rally against cuts to the London Transport network at which Senator Bernie Saunders was speaking. It was held in the TUC building off Tottenham Court Road, and the queues were already forming an hour before it started.

The event was riveting. There were speakers from several of the unions representing working people in the travel network, and the way they communicated the facts and figures behind the government manipulation of the 'crisis' in funding was completely absorbing. I can't describe how powerful it was, but there was something almost comforting about being in an environment where the room was full of normal people, and where I didn't feel as though I was swimming against the tide for being a person who has gone on strike to support attempts to plunder our own pension funds, and attempts to create working practices that make my own job impossible to do.

A properly populated transport system is a safe one: it's a basic reality. It's not just vulnerable people who need staffed stations; humanity is simply too flawed to be trusted with machine-controlled trains (and potentially buses). Living at the end of a tube line has become more and more frightening as the staffing has decreased, because one night I was unable to walk down my street after being followed by a really frightening man on my way home. If there had been someone at the tube station to report him to this would not have happened. Ticket machines break- often- and although it was really darkly funny to watch a businessman screaming at the broken machines in Paddington when I was on my way to Heathrow, if I hadn't been able to walk into the ticket office and sort out the problem directly, I would have missed my flight to Vienna. Staff are first-aid trained, and able to help disabled people. And as several of the speakers said, it is the poorest people who use the transport systems to get to work and socialise: if you remove their ability to travel safely and cheaply, you imprison them in their houses.

I didn't agree with everything that every speaker said, but Mick Lynch was great (as always), and the woman from the UCW (who had never spoken in public before) was wonderful. It was particularly interesting to read a copy of The Evening Standard on the tube on the way home, where Sadiq Khan ('fined' seven million pounds from the transport system that had been given to his predecessor as mayor, Boris Johnson, and who had got the completely unsubsidised system into profit before the pandemic) had written an article, and so had Grant Shapps. Shapps' article consisted entirely of a nasty personal diatribe against Khan. There is never any information in hate speech, which perhaps the Tories should have learned when Zac Goldsmith attempted to become mayor of London himself.

I left the rally feeling informed, supported and stimulated. I can't understand why such a lot of people don't understand the value of the work done by people in transport, health and education, and the importance of their work to the economy in general. Not at all, I'm afraid. The reliability and skills of these people underpin the vagaries of business, and economic volatility. It makes no sense for a government to attack them and downplay their value. Nobody likes strikes, and I can tell you from personal experience that nobody likes going on strike either. It's a last resort, isn't it?

Needless to say Bernie Saunders was inspirational. He basically underlined the amorality of money-is-no-object hyper-capitalism. It's so simple.

On to yesterday, when I travelled to Brighton to contribute an interview and some songs to an updated documentary about the Brighton punk scene. It was an overwhelming experience, partly because going back in time to those days is extremely bittersweet. In a nutshell, it was violence mixed with camaraderie and creativity in an immensely powerful subculture that resulted in some significant social changes, notably through the punk and reggae bands' involvement with Rock Against Racism. Music is not a safe lifestyle even for classical musicians, and for rock musicians it's positively dangerous. So many people from our clan have died, often quite suddenly. Darris Golinski was there yesterday, himself a survivor. The last time I saw Darris, Bob Golinski was still alive; he was such a sweet person. And of course Joby, who really was quite legendary in Brighton, also died a couple of years ago. On the other hand I was delighted to see Phil Perfect from the Lillettes, who set up the Brighton Punk website. Johnny from The Piranhas was there, Rosie from the Mockingbirds, and Dave from the Depressions. Stuart, who managed the early version of The Chefs was there, and David McLean who runs the Brighton music Facebook site. It was great to see Attila the Stockbroker, who was whistlestopping for an hour or so in the middle of an enormous tour, and I'm looking forward to playing Glastonwick next year. 

And on to today, when the Kylie covers album in aid of Macmillan has been released. It's here, in case you'd like a copy. My contribution was Can't Get You Out Of My Head, surely one of the best songs ever! https://godisinthetvzine.bandcamp.com/album/come-into-my-world-a-collection-of-kylie-minogue-covers-2