Billy Bragg Starts Wearing Blue and Brown

[biopunk]

Billy Bragg, choses to stand on the throats of the skaters of Southbank, rather than with them.



http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -community


I can't express how utterly disappointed I am in him today.

He's so out of touch on this one.

[Purple Hayes]

He should wear yellow, he voted Lib/Dem at the last election....Hope he's happy they're sharing power..

[biopunk]

Hope he's happy they're sharing power..

Yeah, well that's all part of "austerity" innit?

[Silent Majority]

Billy Bragg, choses to stand on the throats of the skaters of Southbank, rather than with them.



http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -community


I can't express how utterly disappointed I am in him today.

He's so out of touch on this one.

As someone who spends most of their working day in and around the Southbank, Bragg's showing he's got no sense of the area. That tiny skating section is the only place where people who aren't aging stockbrokers feel comfortable, the only part of that stretch of the river that feels vaguely uncorporatised. Wreck that, and you've got a place that's for tourists and no youth at all.

[Wolter]

Billy Bragg, choses to stand on the throats of the skaters of Southbank, rather than with them.



http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -community


I can't express how utterly disappointed I am in him today.

He's so out of touch on this one.

As someone who spends most of their working day in and around the Southbank, Bragg's showing he's got no sense of the area. That tiny skating section is the only place where people who aren't aging stockbrokers feel comfortable, the only part of that stretch of the river that feels vaguely uncorporatised. Wreck that, and you've got a place that's for tourists and no youth at all.

From what I can tell, Bragg's politics aren't nearly as radical or even decent as his music would lead you to believe.

[Silent Majority]

As my politics have radicalised, my opinions on Billy have harshened. He's a total statist ex-British army recruit who used the miners' strike as a springboard to further his career. Which is fine, whatever, his music was good then and that's all I'm interested in. But it's defined him in a way that he's played up to: a holier than thou lefty. Bragg's always been a very conventional thinker and hasn't met many lines he didn't want to toe. It is still a shame to see him actively react against real grassroots activism.

[biopunk]

One of the things that gets me is this:

"Elsewhere, there's Luke's Café on the Hayward Gallery terrace. The owner is a local lad who wanted to start his own business but was daunted by the prospect of having to sign a long-term lease for a building. He's just one of a number of young entrepreneurs that have been offered space to set up over the summer."

Luke's Café is run by Luke Hartland, son of Ian Hartland, owner of Hartland Pies Ltd. of Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire. Real local, that is.

http://www.hartlandpies.co.uk/

[muppet hi fi]

As my politics have radicalised, my opinions on Billy have harshened. He's a total statist ex-British army recruit who used the miners' strike as a springboard to further his career. Which is fine, whatever, his music was good then and that's all I'm interested in. But it's defined him in a way that he's played up to: a holier than thou lefty. Bragg's always been a very conventional thinker and hasn't met many lines he didn't want to toe. It is still a shame to see him actively react against real grassroots activism.

I think pointing out that he's ex-military as a black mark on his character is (or MIGHT be) misguided. Nearly all the most radical thinkers I know personally are ex-military (and not radical in the Timothy McVeigh sense). It was a paying job, it was adventure, it was a valuable social education (only one mate was ever involved in actual combat; all others I knew always bet the odds against having to kill or be killed, were not in the combat arms, or lucked out with a "cold" foreign policy posture at the time). Just saying.

[drowninghere]

As my politics have radicalised, my opinions on Billy have harshened. He's a total statist ex-British army recruit who used the miners' strike as a springboard to further his career. Which is fine, whatever, his music was good then and that's all I'm interested in. But it's defined him in a way that he's played up to: a holier than thou lefty. Bragg's always been a very conventional thinker and hasn't met many lines he didn't want to toe. It is still a shame to see him actively react against real grassroots activism.

That is a little harsh and probably unfair if the intent is to accuse him of a lack of sincerity. But I'm not sure exactly where you are coming from on that point.

[Silent Majority]

I think pointing out that he's ex-military as a black mark on his character is (or MIGHT be) misguided. Nearly all the most radical thinkers I know personally are ex-military (and not radical in the Timothy McVeigh sense). It was a paying job, it was adventure, it was a valuable social education (only one mate was ever involved in actual combat; all others I knew always bet the odds against having to kill or be killed, were not in the combat arms, or lucked out with a "cold" foreign policy posture at the time). Just saying.

With a few exceptions, like fighting fascism, aside, I tend to be mistrustful of people who were at one time prepared to murder for money.

That is a little harsh and probably unfair if the intent is to accuse him of a lack of sincerity. But I'm not sure exactly where you are coming from on that point.

I don't think him insincere. He works very hard in a direction he thinks helps.

[Silent Majority]

http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2013/07 ... southbank/

[Silent Majority]

I've been thinking about this so I thought I'd clarify my position. I think that ultimately, Billy Bragg has been a net force for good in the UK but it is frustrating to see him used as a mouthpiece for the left on the BBC or ITV when his politics are essentially conventional and that clogs up the political dialogue into an unhelpful centrist ouroboros. And it's been years since he's made an exciting album or one relevant to my life.

I've got quite passionate almost unreasonable views on the armed forces. There was a time when I was partway through the recruitment process and the only reason I was trying to get in was because I wanted to die in a way that would cause the least amount of pain to my family. So less than positive associations there. And some acquaintances from school have died overseas for no reason that I can see, so it is an institution that I can't trust at all. There is an ambivalence on my part, because I tend to romanticise freedom fighters, such as the republicans in the Spanish Civil War. But that stuff's history to me and I feel like we as a species should really have moved on from that by now.

[Dr. Medulla]

Not a defence of Bragg but a possible explanation is that material success and age have a way of blunting one's opposition to the dominant system. A big chunk of my current research deals with what happened to a bunch of radical intellectuals (mostly Marxists of various stripes) in the post-war period. For a number of reasons, they turned against radicalism and embrace America. A significant reason was that they found success in various institutions, be it universities or government agencies, which blunted their ability to see America as oppressive. By the time the New Left emerged in the mid-60s, these guys were wholly derided as sell-outs. No surprise that the radicals of the New Left have similarly gone thru a transformation of embracing a system that rewards them well, even if they've been more likely to continue mouthing radicalish critiques from their tenured positions.

It can also be hard for formerly oppositional figures (I'd never call Bragg a radical; he was always wholly within conventional opposition during the Thatcher years) to let go of the worldview of their formative years, to frame current events thru that prism. It's not uncommon to see aging feminists shit on young women today as betraying the fights of the 60s and 70s, without ever thinking that many of those victories have been achieved and there are other issues of greater importance.

So if Bragg is a sell-out and out of touch—and on the latter point it's pretty apparent—it's not an uncommon fate.

[biopunk]

No surprise that the radicals of the New Left have similarly gone thru a transformation of embracing a system that rewards them well, even if they've been more likely to continue mouthing radicalish critiques from their tenured positions.

At my most cynical, I'd say Billy was wangling an OBE for his services to the arts.

Unfortunately for him, going into skate shops and haranguing skaters ain't going to gain any sympathy for his self-interests from his (ex-)fans.

[Silent Majority]

I went down and signed the petition in person today. I asked if any one else had done just to spite Billy Bragg. Apparently I was the third.