Here she whines about the Mayor's cancellation of the right-on shindig for the Righteous:
The news that Boris Johnson is pulling the plug on the successful Rise festival, a London-wide event held for the past 13 years with a message of anti-racism, is not just a blow to all progressives in the nation's capital – it is a sign of things to come under a future Tory administration.You mean, public money won't be wasted on this sort of thing in future? Woohoo! Go Boris!
...now that he doesn't need anyone's votes until 2012 the real hard-right Boris is coming out of the closet as seen in his decision to discontinue the Rise festival, which drew a crowd of 100,000 last year at Finsbury Park.Eh...? This is what passes for 'hard right' in the mind of Rupa Huq? Cancelling an 'anti-racist' shindig that attracted a tiny percentage of London's population?
Put the pen down, dearie, before you hurt yourself. It's not exactly krystallnacht, now, is it?
In its place will be two days of activities encouraging schoolchildren to take up musical instruments, including "street piano performances" in a number of areas that need rewarding for voting Boris in (Barnet, Redbridge, Hillingdon) and will be key Tory-Labour battlegrounds at the next general election.Oh, noes! The pianists are coming! The pianists are coming! Run for the hills!
But wait a minute. Is there something I'm missing here, maybe? Because usually, left wingers lap up 'art' for the public on the taxpayer dime like ducks squabbling over stale bread.
Are ethnic minority children to be barred from these piano lessons, perhaps? Told they can only use the black keys, or something?
Ah. Wait. It's the 'wrong kind of music'. That's the problem here:
Furthermore, the whole idea of pianos in the suburbs and music on the official curriculum smacks of "high culture". It indicates such elitism will inform government thinking on the arts under a future Tory administration.'High culture' instead of rap, hiphop and Peruvian nose flutes? *faints*
But luckily for those of us who would regard this as a good thing, Rupa has sniffed out the Mayor's cunning plan. She's not fooled. He plans to help the BNP into power with the aid of piano concertos:
Dunno what grandpa Ali would have made of it all but if the BNP makes further advances this summer in the European elections then this shortsighted decision really will be no laughing matter.Yup, you heard it here first, courtesy of one of CiF's 'intellectuals' - the BNP will rise to power as a result of public piano performances...
Oh, well. Let's hope they play Wagner. I've always liked that.
I always knew the BNP were good local campaigners, but their campaigns are clearly getting very nuanced with this attack on pianos.
ReplyDeletewot? no dj lessons?
ReplyDeleteAnd again it is April 1st.
ReplyDeleteGreat post - as ever - what on Earth are these Guardianistas on FFS?
No wonder no one reads it. Huq II must have been taking Polly intraveneously for too long.
You have me terrified. We have some piano music arranged (pun alert)for a Conservative fund raiser next week!
ReplyDelete"And again it is April 1st."
ReplyDeleteI think 2009 has far more April 1sts that we could have possibly imagined...
"You have me terrified. We have some piano music arranged (pun alert)for a Conservative fund raiser next week!"
Get your pianist to wear dreadlocks, smoke weed and have his trousers hanging down past his buttocks, and you might just squeek by... ;)
'high culture' - didnt Chas N' Dave feature a piano quite prominently in their act? (not to do them down in any way - but I believe they themselves would certainly agree that they are a populist entertainment act, no?)
ReplyDeleteTrue!
ReplyDeleteBut then, all that horrible Cockney culture, with its rhyming slang, Pearly Queens and barrowboys, probably doesn't fit with the Islington idea of 'culture'...
And the Nazis goose steeped to the Lambeth Walk. It was in Triumph of the Will or something.
ReplyDeleteEh? Oh.
What is the position on electronic keyboards? I bought a second-hand one for £20 and and the Usborne Guide to Playing the Piano (includes a CD) with the intention of bashing the hell out of Grieg's Piano Concerto in order to impress Mr Raft. It is normally mains-powered, but you can put lots of batteries in if you care to lug it down to the street. Can't say I've got further than Mozart's Three Blind Mice, but I've got a compendium of country music and I'm not afraid to use it, although everyone else is afraid I might.
ReplyDeleteMy other infallible guide is "The Piano CAN be Fun" by Harry Junkin and Cyril Ornadel, who advise sticking the proper letters on the keys with little sellotape labels. This is a great comfort to us typists, who think there is something wrong with having blank keys to start with. Would you pay full price for any other keyboard without the letters? No, you'd want a reduction, even if, like me, you are a touch-typist.
So my question is: have I made it in to the elite middle classes yet? If not, when?
"So my question is: have I made it in to the elite middle classes yet? If not, when?"
ReplyDeleteI think it probably depends on what you play on them. Some of Dizzee Rascals's ouvre would possibly relegate you back to the ranks of the 'street'.
Best to stick to something they can claim is not culturally sensitive enough and so marks you out as one of those horrid middle classes, without which the UK would be a paradise on earth. 'Chopsticks'..?
The article's pretty poor but many of the comments prove that the "we define anti-racism and all that goes with it and if you don't agree you are worse than Hitler" left is alive and kicking...
ReplyDeleteWoman on a Raft - With provisos that your version of the A minor on a Rolf Harris stylophone is superior to Julia's French and disasters on our Town Hall's inflatable Grand, admission to the Yorkshire elite is just one performance away.
ReplyDeleteThe BNP got 800 thousand votes in the last euro elections. I expect them to gey even more this time.
ReplyDeleteRichard
Somewhat off topic, but this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1520478,041009mugshot.article
total loss of perspective is what happens when 'anti-racism' and grievance mongering runs wild.
Oops. The link has run off the page in my last post, here's an extract:
ReplyDeleteThe police booking photo of alleged child killer Nour Hadid released Tuesday is an "insult against our religion," says Hadid's husband, Alaeddin.
Orland Park police detectives say the 26-year-old Muslim woman was treated as any other suspect in a murder probe would be, and they did not intend to humiliate her when they photographed her Sunday without her headscarf and wearing only a skimpy top.
Nour Hadid is accused of beating her 2-year-old niece Bhia Hadid to death over four days at her home on the 9000 block of West 140th Street. The child had 55 separate bruises and was beaten "from head to toe," according to prosecutors, who say Hadid confessed.
But Alaeddin Hadid - who insists his wife is innocent - said Orland Park police are "really going to be in big trouble" for releasing the woman's booking photo to the news media after she was charged with first-degree murder.
As a compromise, they could teach kids how to bash out "El Kapitan" by Memphis Slim*, possibly the greatest song ever recorded.
ReplyDelete* I can't find that one, so try Slim's Boogie instead.
WV: signses
Wagner, yes. I've been listening to the Ring Cycle on my mp3 player on the way to work for the last few weeks. Hard going at times, but I'm onto disc 2 of Gotterdammerung and I'm damned if I'm going to stop now...
ReplyDeleteCould this event not be funded by selling* tickets
ReplyDelete*dirty capitalist me! Imagine people who wanted to go along paying themselves.
Touch typist, eh, Mrs Raft?
ReplyDeleteI'd be a bit circumspect about admitting to that sort of thing if I were you. People have been put on the Sex Offenders' Register for less.
I must go and lie down. I've just had a quick rub of the nipples on the F and J keys and have come over all unnecessary.
Awesome post, Julia
ReplyDeleteI love this;
"Dunno what grandpa Ali would have made of it all but if the BNP makes further advances this summer in the European elections then this shortsighted decision really will be no laughing matter."
Yep indeedy; there's a thin line between my own meandering bloggings and my willingness to get a big pair of boots, garb myself all in black, adorn myself with silver jewellery, and march into the night singing of death and misery to a place where coloured people rarely go.
And it's got to be the 'Rise' reggae experience, isn't it?
Oh, no.
Sorry.
It's the Goth club that does that.
Doh...
PS, word verification for this is:
Help! I'm trapped inside a piece of blogger software.
Good for BoJo. This event sounds very much like a waste of taxpayers cash.
ReplyDelete"But Alaeddin Hadid - who insists his wife is innocent - said Orland Park police are "really going to be in big trouble" for releasing the woman's booking photo to the news media "
ReplyDeleteShe gets arrested for beating her daughter to death, but it's the police who took her mugshot sans veil who'll be in trouble..?
Riiiight...
I am surprised that none has yet mentioned that Huq did not make the same grunts when they did the same to St Georges day parades as Johnson is doing to this particular shindig.
ReplyDelete"Wrong sort of culture", by any chance?
Von Brandenburg-Preußen.
Indeed.
ReplyDelete