Tories are meant to be about minimal government intereference and have libertarian tendencies (though admittedly they are frequently confused over this) so I see as any interference in trying to ban music as very statist and illiberal.

Conservative ideology is associated with the land, Liberal ideology with the moneyed classes and Socialism with labour. That summary has many faults, but points to the historical roots of the various parties and a reason for some of their policies.

The problem the Tory have always faced is arguments over what they should actually be conserving. As a result, the libertarian and conservative are constantly fighting like two cats in a burlap sack.

Any day now a Redwood or Tebbitt is going to say something obviously silly.

I’d laugh if Rhymefest raps about meeting Cameron on his next album.

Dig Rhymefest if you will his music is good.

Fever!

Brand New!

Although to be honest Rhymefest has some consciousness to him, so MC Cameron isnt so dangerous, and the 50Cent of the UK politics scene at the moment is Charles Kennedy, who pulled out of a speaking engagment the other day because he was pissed and had fallen off the wagon and couldnt read the autocue — although that’s more like Axl Rose than fiddy —- Rock and Roll MAN!!

Really reactionary ones want to go back to the era of a Christian monarch ruling his loyal subjects.

Free traders want to go back to the era of tea-clippers and coffee-houses.

One-nation types want to go back to the 1950s, when everyone knew they had a place in society, and most knew what it was.

Cameron wants to go back to 1997, and specifically to the party where Blur and the Gallagher brothers were invited along to Downing street.

It’s hardly as if the Tories ever suggested that as Governnment they weren’t going to carry on enforcing law and order, property rights and ‘creating an environment for Business to flourish’. { and think big business – not just some little corner shop) ( and anything else that takes their fancy whilst in power)

[even the so-called laissez faire economy is hardly without 'intervention' it depends on how people view intervention in any case - if from a conventional viewpoint on regulations affecting trade - then perhaps = but in my opinion even then its bollocks. Bretton Woods was 'interventionist' enough to ensure it worked in favour of certain groups - all a national govt would have to do is float along with that ]

Anyhow, back to the point at hand: Minimal intervention my foot. a Funny term if i ever heard one referring to central bloody government. Shape the whole damn thing – the social institutions and funding for the ones they’re fond of – and cleverly sit back and prattle oh but we didn’t intervene honest.. Of course ‘minimal’ can mean all sorts of things can’t it. oh we ‘mimimally’ intervened to slaughter all sorts of people elsewhere/to keep up our Nation-State. oh it was so minimal..i hardly noticed it – did you? Oh we threw all sorts of people into jail/. oh it was a minimal role. why we hardly did anything..

The Tories may be confused but they aren’t the only ones. We are all confused by the sound of things. Clearly we don’t as a society understand much about social dynamics. we think ‘legislation’ and injection-style social effects. Ha Ha.

So: All those things – property rights; laws allowing business corporations all sorts of rights individuals do not have; institutions disseminating normative positions (generally masquerading as fact) on the so-called free-markets ‘actually-highly-unfree-but ‘free’-from-the-point-of-view-of-my-nation- state’-style -’markets’-which-by-the-way-don’t-involve freedom-of-humans-apart-from-our-citizens-of course->
( ha) : didn’t involve “govt”. intervention? Are we really expected to believe that? ‘Oh of course honey, it all depends on who you define as ‘govt’. Right. As long as the ‘govt’ let some other institutions do all the work , that has nothing, nothing at all to do with what the Govt wanted and helped to achieve, isn’t it. Of course. How cunning.

We are encouraged by economists and politicians to think in terms of ‘legislation’ as written down – and disregard power and unwritten influence when it lies within social institutions, corporations, influential groups. One can have no obvious legislation and still have a hell of a lot of ‘intervention’ – through strong institutions which wield a great deal of ( generally unaccountable) power.

And encouraging big business corporations and strengthening/supporting such institutions with (nowdays) global influence – is something we people normally don’t seem to think of when referring to this ‘minimal government interference’ term. Like we’ve heard time and time again from the so-called Washington Consensus crew. Oh right – and then we have nice big strong institutions like the IMF and the World Bank and the WTO who can do all sorts of things to ‘ensure’ a lot of other things. Ah yes they aren’t ‘government’ institutions. well there you have it. Even better that way – they’re not accountable then are they. Ha ha. How Very Clever. who’s going to join the dots in any case.

I have to say one can applaud them for their cunning. Doing their best to push the world in ways they want to move it in and at the same time making everyone think ‘oh it’s market fundamentalism’ of course – ‘we’ didn’t interfere at all! nothing to do with a bit of forceful human agency and strong insitutions. Ho ho.

And of course not thinking about the ‘social’ aspect of so-called markets plays right into the hands of this sort of thing. And we can thank some economists for that of course – and politicians for taking an academic subject out of its context where it is clear what the assumptions involved are – to a world were there appears to be no recognition of those assumptions.

At least let’s call a spade a spade. All these so-called political parties will end up doing the same old conventional thing. It’s not called Central Government for no good reason! All we ever hear are differences on what various policies will be planned – they’ll all still be centrally dictated – no change there. It’s the what flavour ice-cream will you have – you have 3 choices we’ve given you – tick the box.

yes no doubt my rant has gone out of the ‘thread’ and no doubt ive rambled so much with so many typos it doesn[‘t make any sense to anyone. apologies for not having the time to look back and fix it – i sit in an open plan office!

Does hip hop music make gangsta life look glamorous? Some would say that it does.

In any case, I didn’t see any reference anywere that Cameron suggested the possibility of ‘banning’ anything. Where did that aspect come out from?

Where does racism come in? – well i think katy had a good point up there in no. 5. How is it they get away with all that is what i want to know!

Perhaps the Conservatives need a change in name – it appears to confuse all sorts of people extremely – including themselves and their voters. Are they conservative with a small c – to some extent of course – definitely in the old days — that’s definitely the origins – now who knows – so naturally there will be lot of voters who will want to ban all sorts of things. The question that started all this off was from the editor of Good Housekeeping magazine – on how Cameron would tackle gun crime.

No surprise there! ha ha. there are plenty of people trying to ‘ban’ things all over the place – generally those sorts of people appear to be interested in party politics – my cynical dystopian sort of mind suggests so they can get into power one day to lord it out over everyone else. isn’t it lovely how our so-called democratic model allows for that sort of dictatorial hegemony for a term of x years. How Lovely. A toast is in order I think.

Yup although Lethal Injection is my favourite.

Wink Wink on the Ice Cube. Death Certificate was crazy.

Jagdeep – the second article is a typical example of media sensationalism over something journalists know very little about. I’d say anyway. I read the first article though and liked its sentiments.

These politicians make me laugh…

Wasn’t there an episode of Armando Iannucci’s Time Trumpet where an elderly David Cameron talked about trying to win votes by rapping the Five Pledges of his manifesto? Reality Pwns Satire, Part 94.

or even better, get Zach De La Rocha down….

1991 end of OG
…Fuck the police, Fuck the FBI, Fuck the DEA, Fuck the CIA, Fuck Tipper Gore, Bush and his crippled bitch this is Ice-T I’m out of here, told ya…
shoulda killed me last year..

Why I Gave Up On Hip-Hop

Also – from the Observer, an article on exactly this subject and relating it to British Hip Hop

Gang videos glorify violence

Rappers are using digital TV music stations to glamorise gang culture as police say that turf wars are spiralling out of control in London

I don’t know how sensationalised the report is, but it’s worth reading – especially because of the links it makes with Channel U which is a Hip Hop station for British rap.