Jun 062013
 

By Bob Smith.

I like the quote fae Mahatma Gandhi faar he said  “There is sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed” A wunner fit the wee mannie wid say noo fin consumerism is the new religion o the warld.
Or foo aboot Vernon Howard, the American author and philosopher faa wrote ” You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need”

If aat’s the case it wid appear nae muckle fowk hiv succeeded in life.

Economist billies keep tellin us we maun spen oor bawbees so aat the economy stairts tae growe again. Iss tae me is a heap o bliddy crap. Iss is foo sum puir fowk git intae debt – bi spennin dosh on thingies they dinna really need.

A’ve heard consumerism described as bein in the business o pinchin siller oot o fowks’ pooches withoot threatenin them wi hairm. An yet a  lot o us div get hairmed bi the consumer business fit is aided an abettit by the advertisin billies an the merchandisers.

The young in society are the eens maist likely tae faa fer aa the bling. Ye ken fit a mean – they’re aa telt they are oot o touch if they hinna got iss or aat, be it the newest smairt phone or the latest fashion accessory. Lead bi the nose tae the cash tills is foo a wid describe fits happ’nin.

I can hear a lot o fowk mutterin, “they dinna hae tae spen their siller if they dinna wint till“. Aye some fowk micht stairt oot tae nae spen sae muckle bawbees bit the power o advertisin an in the case o the young, peer pressure can force them tae dee itherwise. I wark’t in advertisin fer nigh on quarter o a ceentury an ken richt weel foo persuasive ads can be, baith fae a “must hae” situation tae panderin tae yer fantasies.

Tak the ad on TV faar a young chiel douses himsel wi a weel kent body spray an his a the bonnie lassies fae miles aroon comin in bye. Tak it fae me fowks it disna work. A’ve tried it!!!

Noo fin ye’ve aa recovered fae fa’in aboot laachin aat the thocht o a seeventy plus mannie splashin himsel unner the oxsters wi fine smellin stuffie an sittin in his airm-cheer waitin fer a boorachie o gweed leukin young weemin tae pye him a visit (ach I can aye dream), a’ll git back tae reality.

A read the followin bittie jist the ither day fit sums thingies up perfectly.

“Landfills swell wi cheap throwe awa products fit brak doon easily an canna be repaired. Some products are made psychologically obsolete lang afore they actually weer oot. A generation is growen up withoot kennin fit quality goods are. Freenship, faimily ties an personal autonomy are only promoted as a vehicle fer gift gien an the rationale fer the selection o communication services and personal acquisition. Aathing becums mediated throwe the spennin o siller on goods an services. Human beins faa canna spen becum worthless”

Source:- www.verdant.net/consumerism

Noo a’ve nithing agin shoppin as a rule bit faar it gits oot o haun is fin sum fowk gyaang oot fer een or twa bitties an cum hame with aboot a dizzen, jist cos  they war a bargain. A bargain is only a bargain if ye really need it at aat precise meenit.

Ma wife leuks at me in despair as fin I ging shoppin a ken fit a wint an efter a’ve bocht it a buggar aff oot o the shop like a reid ersed bee. Ma gweed wife  likes tae dee a bittie browsin afore an efter she’s bocht fit she wints.

Fit’s wrang wi aat a hear ye say? Nithing, so far as ma wife’s concerned, cos she’s resistant tae aa the sales spiel bit ower mony puir craiturs are catcht hook line an sinker. They’ve noo becum disciples o Mammon, the god o excess. Consumerism is the ivveryday face o iss “religion”.

( Above image licensed from http://www.genderforum.org/uploads/media/286ae254d0.jpg  under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.  )

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Mar 092012
 

The black calendar of Aberdeen’s civic history has a new entry: 2nd March 2012, the day that its citizens, evident sufferers of apathy and myopia, handed both its natural heritage and its economic future to a cabal of businessmen.  Arthur Taylor writes.

The fight to retain and improve Union Terrace Gardens hit the buffers on that day when the public – or rather 27.5% of them – voted to support the plans to destroy this unique piece of the city’s heritage and replace it with a concrete monstrosity – presumably confused by the smoke and mirrors of the PR campaign which branded it “The Granite Web”.

Whether the battle turns into a war, protracting the debate, and driving further wedges between parties already badly divided, remains to be seen, but it is hard to see a rapid healing of the wounds that this process has created.

It is also difficult to stop the passion that fuelled the Retain campaign from dissipating, before all avenues of challenge are exhausted against a process labelled as democratic – but which in reality has been anything but that.

What is clear is that events from 2008 to now should be reviewed and recorded for posterity, so that future generations when looking back can seek to understand a number of things:

  • why we allowed our heritage to be given away to a clique of egoists and nepotists, who deluded the public and maybe even themselves into believing that they were altruists and philanthropists
  • why the local authority whose primary function is to act in the citizenry’s best interest handed control to an unelected quango, immune from public scrutiny
  • and why we allowed the city’s future to be mortgaged on the most questionable of business cases, flagged up as high risk by Audit Scotland in the final days of the campaign – when most votes were already cast.

Not that this was a revelation: Friends of Union Terrace Gardens had identified the risk months before, but their claims were played down in the media.

The last two months have seen a referendum conducted by a returning officer who sought to have the campaigns run to a fair set of rules.

The dominance of the local print media in forming and steering public opinion, and its incestuous relationship with local business, is deeply concerning.

While it appears that the retain groups stayed within their £8000 budgets, the pro groups – aided and abetted by the collaborators in the local media – spent an estimated £1,000,000 to buy the votes of the people of Aberdeen. Their cynical campaign saw radio adverts dressed as public information broadcasts, and a drip-fed daily editorial in the local press, with each day’s evening paper offering more extravagant promises than the last, as part of a fawning hysterical clamour.

That the retain groups, variously composed primarily of grey-haired men, beardies, tree-huggers and an enthusiastic schoolboy, ran the referendum right to the wire, losing by such a slender margin, is testament to their energy, enthusiasm and resourcefulness. That they did this against a campaign co-ordinated by the BIG Partnership, Scotland’s largest PR agency, is little short of a miracle.

The dominance of the local print media in forming and steering public opinion, and its incestuous relationship with local business, is deeply concerning.

The public need a source of true facts rather than propaganda dressed as objective reporting.

That said, there have been two positives to emerge from the press coverage of the campaign: the amusement derived from watching the Evening Express contorting itself like an India-rubber prostitute in a bid to champion the development, while not entirely abandoning its habitual council-baiting; and the emergence of the STV Local site as a place where all parties can present their voice without editorial bias.

It is hard not to see the future of local journalism as lying in hyper-local online spaces, as counterpoint to the shrinking of print to the point of complete insignificance.

the dead-eyed, gape-mouthed novelty-seekers who lurch zombie-like through the malls

Returning to the proposed development itself, it should be remembered that Union Terrace Gardens is the only part of the city where one can see the original topography of the land on which the city is built.

Sadly the local authority in the last century has allowed almost all traces of the city’s history to be erased like some embarrassing legacy instead of retaining and celebrating its character. Compare this with Edinburgh’s old town or York’s centre.

We are now confronted by the effacement of the final part of our history in order to satisfy the dead-eyed, gape-mouthed novelty-seekers who lurch zombie-like through the malls that have brought about the systematic homogenisation of the city centre and obliterated all individuality and character.

If we do not continue to challenge this proposed act of civic vandalism, by:

  • opposing the planning application,
  • challenging the use of Common Good land,
  • exposing the business case as one which will leave the city bankrupt (as it was last in1817)  when the TIF scheme plays out as feared,

then we should at least ensure that we record for posterity the names of the businessmen who proposed this vanity project; note the politicians and faceless unelected quango-ists who eased its path to realisation; and ponder the many, many idiotic consumers who swallowed the hype, without challenge or analysis.

If we do nothing else, we should record those names on the black calendar’s page for 2nd March 2012.

Jul 152011
 

Charlie Mingin, the Auchnaclatt Bugle’s ‘Weel-Chilled Chiel’ columnist, guests for Voice this week, giving the bebop lowdown for hep cats and byre tabbies, doffing his hiply-angled Panama in the direction of The Fast Show’s Louis Balfour. Fingerprints on Cattle Cake’s ‘bone believed to be those of George Anderson….

Jock Kerouac and the Beet Generation on the road again after sell out concert in Daviot

Within twenty minutes of going on sale, both tickets for Coos in the Park had been snapped up amid fears that a surge in demand might crash Ticketmaster’s system.

I was one of the lucky ones. The minute the ticket tumbled through my letterbox, a vibe in these old jazzman bones of mine told me that something crazy was about to go down in Daviot.

And was I right, Daddy-O?

The concert in The Byre, the north east’s premier teuchter-jazz club demonstrated that Jock Kerouac and The Beet Generation were right back on top where they belonged. On the night, their fusion of bothy ballads and sixties jazz really razzed my berries.

Yes, there were mistakes. Somewhere approaching the middle eight of the opening number, Lousin Time, and half way through his third reefer of the night, Jock realised that the double bass he thought he’d been playing for the last half hour was actually still in the tipper truck that ca’d neeps during the day and transported the band to gigs in the evening. Undaunted, he rattled off the piece’s twenty minute double bass solo on his galuses. Beat that for improvisation.

I’ve been a fan of The Beet Generation since I first saw them perform at Gamrie’s Clockin Hen nightclub in 1987. Granted, nobody asked them to play but they managed to knock off their own rewrite of a Billy Joel classic, In the Midden of the Night before the bouncers got Jock in a headlock, huckled him head first out through the fire exit and into the car park where they pinned him down until the police arrived.

The band’s line up hasn’t changed since the Gamrie gig:

Jock Kerouac on double bass
Ronnie ‘The Rooser’ Roberts on Stylophone
‘Cattle Cake’ Collins on slide trombone
‘Sheep Dip’ Danny Dawkins on trumpet, electric bongos and steam harpsichord.

The first set was an intoxicating blend of old and new material, kicking off with three of my favourites: Lousin Time; Let’s Get Yokit! and Fa Cut Yer Hair an Cried Ye Baldy?

The lads ended the set with the title track from their latest album, We’re Aa Up the Wrang Dreel Noo.

Haste ye back, Jock, we can hardly wait for your next concert.

At the risk of rekindling the trad-bebop wars of the early sixties, Sid Rawlins, music critic of the Crovie Chronicle has given Voice an alternative view.

Bad Tunes A Go-Go as Kerouac’s Beet Generation Bomb at the Byre

Hepcat Harrison and the Kittlins were treated for shock at Turriff hospital last night following the murder of their teuchter-jazz classic, Let’s Get Yoakit! at the hands of jazz fraudsters Jock Kerouac and the woefully unmusical Beet Generation who somehow managed to make this classic track sound like a badly-tuned piano falling down a spiral staircase.

The scene of the crime: The Byre Club, Daviot.
Time of death, 7:30 pm Formartine time (GMT minus seventy years).

Bad jazz stands out like a toonser wearing nicky tams. And make no bones about it, this was jazz at its worst. The evening was not helped by the fact that Cattle-Cake Collins stopped mid-honk during Lousin Time to spray WD40 on his trombone slide.

I sort of liked the Beet Generation’s new project, We’re Aa Up the Wrang Dreel Noo. Yet overall, a lacklustre performance by over-rated musicians.

As Ray Charles would have said had he hailed from Kemnay, ‘Hit the road Jock, and dinna come back ony mair.’

Image credits:  
Trombone © Chris Johnson Dreamstime.com,
Double Bass Scroll © William Davis | Dreamstime.com