craner

Beast of Burden
The pre-Britpop context is interesting. Late-92 to late-93 was the key period (which also coincides with the darkcore era in the alternative Dissensus canon): there was the Morrisey Finsbury Park incident in August 92 and the BNP council by-election victory in the Isle of Dogs in September 1993 which sparked an Anti-Nazi League revival. This all culminated in a big anti-racism concert in Brockwell Park in May 1994.

This is the same time that Blur were creating their British Image. The best contemporary review of Modern Life is Rubbish was in Lime Lizard and it was an extended essay, basically, on this phenomenon, which opened with the very serious and outraged and anxious question of Blur: “Why ‘Britishness’? Why now?” This was never properly answered, no one even really engaged with it, until suddenly Parklife was the greatest British album since the Beatles or the Jam depending on your perspective, and then it was too late to go back to it.

Everything happened so fast in those days, one thing reacting to the previous thing, that it’s difficult to go back and unpick what happened between then and Parklife but some significant (and negative) shift occurred and British culture ended.

Unless you were listening to jungle.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
1993 was actually an interesting and key year for British culture. It didn't seem to be at the time, because the feeling of that year oscillated between the grim and the dreary. But there was a lot of important, subterranean work going on, for example: stuff that would set up the shift from rave to 'dance music' or from indie to Britpop, which would both signify a capitulation of the counterculture to capitalism on the parochial scale. This was reflected in politics, to a large extent. It was a year that was undefined but was making significant movements towards new definitions.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Looking back from where we are now, that interview looks simultaneously pathetic and visionary.
Yeah it is an amazing thing and I'd not seen it before. (I read the inkies religiously until about 1991 iirc).

I think that Blur perceived "our culture" was under attack from America is fascinating in itself, but the elephant in the room is that it is a battle between two comprehensively white cultures - american grunge bands and some odd configuration of pre-punk British culture which was about the Kinks and a particular kind of pub. And the union jack.

I don't think this was just a reaction against rave but that was definitely one unspoken angle to it. There is something about the post-Thatcher pre-internet period to be said probably.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I liked the bit where Damon defensively says it's obviously not about whiteness because they've got a disco track on their next album. The track was 'Girls & Boys' which was inspired by Gary Numan and Duran Duran!
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Keep seeing this stuff on twitter about bare shelves in supermarkets, especially Sainsbury's, is this true, are you lot experiencing this?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I liked the bit where Damon defensively says it's obviously not about whiteness because they've got a disco track on their next album. The track was 'Girls & Boys' which was inspired by Gary Numan and Duran Duran!
Sounds to me like it was "inspired" by Soldier Soldier by Spizzenergi

 

john eden

male pale and stale
Keep seeing this stuff on twitter about bare shelves in supermarkets, especially Sainsbury's, is this true, are you lot experiencing this?
Not really in my local one. A few more substitutions than usual each month for the payday online order.
 

sufi

lala
Not really in my local one. A few more substitutions than usual each month for the payday online order.
yeah exactly - the online shopping sometimes seems to be out of certain basic items - like juice, the other day

I'm expecting that now we've got mostly past the shock of brexit, and the shock of the pandemic, it feels like we are now cruising in this new shabby uk reality - so i think we're probably about ready for a severe economic shock :(
 

john eden

male pale and stale
yeah exactly - the online shopping sometimes seems to be out of certain basic items - like juice, the other day

I'm expecting that now we've got mostly past the shock of brexit, and the shock of the pandemic, it feels like we are now cruising in this new shabby uk reality - so i think we're probably about ready for a severe economic shock :(
Fraid so.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
definitely lots more substitutions in the online shop, and not just on the more esoteric stuff I use in cooking.

On Saturday I went to Lidl for an in-person shop for the first time in a month and I did notice that it was a lot more sparse. I had promised a visiting friend I would make sweetcorn fritters and I had to go round Lidl and four different corner shops before I could find a tin to use.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Went to the local shop for local people, they have no trouble there. Got a sack of carrots, a bag doesn’t describe it, for 2£. Oompa Loompa fake carotene tan sorted

Jersey R’s for a steal, done everything except fuck a tato
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
There was this the other day,
I reckon this won't even have much of an impact on public opinion about whether Brexit was a good idea. A lot of people who still think that will convince themselves it's just to do with the pandemic and has nothing to do with Brexit at all, while the real hardcore nutters will actually enjoy it, partly because it'll give the Remoaners something else to Remoan about, and partly because it's like wartime rationing! Keep Calm And Carry On! Fight them on the beaches, etc.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I don't think that anyone will enjoy it, but in itself it is going to be small enough to shrug off.
The thing is, Brexit is made up of loads of things like that; slightly less stuff in the shops at slightly higher prices, slightly harder to go on holiday or spend a lot of time abroad, slightly fewer bands and DJs (especially small ones with tight margins) coming to the UK to tour and less going the other way so ultimately less money in the performing arts in the UK, a number of companies going under but unless it is actually yours or that of someone really close to you then this is still possible to ignore, a bit harder to order things from abroad and you will have to wait a bit longer for them to be delivered (and quite possibly pay extra duties and so on), no doubt slightly longer waiting lists for minor operations as the number of staff from abroad decreases, perhaps somewhat harder to get casual staff if you run a business and maybe you have to pay them a bit more, of course a decrease in growth against all models of our economy based on remaining in the EU but of course these can always be dismissed as simply hypothetical and from experts, a general decrease in goodwill from our neighbouring countires which will perversely be seen as proof of their vindictiveness and a vindication of our vote... and so on and so on and so on. Just loads and loads of small negatives which can add up to a lot depending on how many affect you and which can be disastrous if your business or lifestyle depends on something which is squarely in the middle of one and so becomes unprofitable or even illegal.
Basically for a lot of people who WANT so hard to believe in Brexit, or who are simply unable to admit they were totally wrong, it is quite easy to focus on one of the above and then pretend to not care about it, in an argument you can very well say "Oh we were threatened with all these disasters by the proponents of Project Fear but actually it's just a slightly smaller choice of cheeses in the supermarket and I consider that a small price to pay for freedom". A disingenuous argument which focuses on one minor issue and pretends that that is the whole issue. And also of course, it is never a good thing to be slightly worse off on anything.... with no upside, each of these issues is in itself a negative worth considering.
A lot of Brexiters now remind me of Putin supporters when Russia was facing a lot of sanctions a few years back for.... I can't even remember why, come to think of it, I think maybe cos of their actions in Ukraine, but the point is the sanctions were decreasing the availability of various foodstuffs and luxuries and my girlfriend's very pro-Putin (or really just pro the status quo and authority) brother was defending the situation and saying "Well I've eaten enough brie in my life and...." ultimately pretending that all these little decreases in quality of life didn't matter. Pretending that slice after slice being chopped from life didn't matter at all to a true believer.....
I also remember one of my friends (known to a number of you in fact) saying to me in his typically antagonistic and contrarian manner soon after brexit "A number of middle-class people have to pay a bit more for their holidays to France, who cares?" as though only middle-class people go on holiday, and ignoring the fact that such a regressive fee as that he was revelling in would of course hit the poor harder. I remembered that very clearly when I saw him on facebook about a month ago asking for information about "artists" travelling abroad to do their stuff and questioning whether or not the new rules made it prohibitively expensive. I managed to bit my tongue and not publicly remind him about how he had been a lot more sanguine about the situation when he thought that it was only going to affect a "few middle-class people" rather than himself.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think I know exactly who you're talking about, funnily enough.

One thing that really would be a big shock, as distinct from the death-by-a-thousand-cuts thing you've outlined, would be a return to open hostilities in Northern Ireland. But even there, the cunts have laid the groundwork for getting themselves off the hook by blaming tensions on the EU being "unreasonable" (i.e. sticking to international law and the withdrawal agreement that our government negotiated and then signed).
 
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