Glasgow Women Reclaim The Night

Led by women and children, but with the participation of many men, hundreds of people took to the streets of Glasgow’s West End on the evening of Thursday 29 November to Reclaim the Night. It was too dark to accurately count the numbers involved, but the demo was big and noisy! Reclaim the Night is intended to show that women should be able to walk our streets without fear of violence. The demo was followed by speeches, a buffet and excellent entertainment from a women’s choir.

Bush’s Iran lies exposed

JUST two months ago US president George Bush warned Iran that is was risking World War if it continued work on nuclear weapons despite persistent denial from Tehran that such work was being done.
Then on Monday, 3 December 2007, an report from Mr. Bush’s own government spy agencies blew his cover.
16 top spy agencies bluntly revealed that their intelligence proved that Iran halted nuclear arms work four years ago.
Despite this knowledge, the Bush administration and its backers in Congress have continued to move the United States closer and closer to war with Iran.
Now it emerges that the report known as the National Bush’s Iran lies exposed Intelligence Estimate which refutes claims by the US and Israel of an Iranian bomb has been in the hands of Vice president Cheney and he has been desperately pressing US spooks to water it down.
The report assesses that Iran’s alleged military nuclear work ended in 2003, but fails to provide any evidence that such activity ever existed. If proof for this assessment had been found, it was the obligation of the US to provide it to the IAEA for on-the-ground verification.
A senior official of nuclear watchdog the IAEA said:
“Despite repeated smear campaigns, the IAEA has stood its ground and concluded time and again that ‘there was no evidence of an undeclared nuclear weapons program in Iran.”
On 7 September, the IAEA director general, Dr. El Baradei, told the New York Times, “we have not come to see any undeclared activities...
We have not seen any weaponisation of their program, nor have we received any information to that effect”.
He has for several years urged sceptics in Western capitals to help the IAEA by sharing any possible proof in their possession of suspicious nuclear activity in Iran. Judging from the IAEA’s many reports, Iran’s accusers have failed to demonstrate to the agency that they have superior information.
The new claim about a pre-2003 weapons program is no exception.
The IAEA on 15 November 2007 essentially cleared Iran of all outstanding ambiguities regarding its past nuclear programme.
The agency confirmed that in multiple areas of concern, the information provided by Iran has been consistent with the information obtained independently by the IAEA.
Given the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and the IAEA’s own assurances, it is now clear that the decision by the Governors’ Board of the IAEA in February 2006 to report Iran’s file to the UN Security Council was without justification.
In order to incriminate Iran, the US and its allies exerted massive pressure on other voting board members at the time. David Mulford, the US Ambassador to India warned the Government of India in January 2006 that there would be no US-India nuclear deal if India did not vote against Iran at the IAEA.
The Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) called for the immediate return of Iran’s nuclear file from the UN Security Council to the jurisdiction of the IAEA under the rules of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).
All UN sanctions imposed on Iran must accordingly be lifted. In addition, CASMII reiterates its long-standing call for immediate negotiations without pre-conditions between the US and Iran on all points of dispute.

Wendy And Labour’s Lost Boys

The speed of the crisis engulfing both Edinburgh and London New Labour is dizzying.
Having lost 25million people’s bank details and spent some £25billion bailing out a failed bank, the stumbling former New Labour superstars are mired in a sea of sleaze.
Leading figures are all shown to have had a finger in the dodgy donations pie despite their protestations that they are innocent, it’s all a mistake guv, nobody told me it was illegal, etc.
Now the New Labour innocents are facing a visit to their local nick where they face serious questions about their actions.
When you consider all the puffed up posturing about scroungers, crooks and cracking down on this and that over the last ten years, you could be forgiven for having a wry smile at the expense of Straw, Hain, Harman and co.
However, not to be outdone by the London bosses, the recently rejected inhabitants of New Labour’s Edinburgh benches have come up with their, entirely homegrown, sleaze scandal.
New Labour leader Wendy Alexander - who we are assured is a super brain - apparently believes that she is subject to a new legal doctrine which says she is innocent if she breaks the law “unintentionally”.
This is an interesting variant of the famous Scots legal defence of ‘it wisnae me’, beloved of regulars at our Sheriff Courts.
But unlike your normal offender who often pleads too much drink or some other memory loss, Wendy, whose problem is a donations from a Jersey resident actually wrote him a thank you letter at his home address.
The problem is that, as a non-UK voter, the donor was barred from giving cash to UK parties by laws brought in under Blair. And given that fact it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the law has been broken. And that Wendy knew it.
Of course, given the firestorm engulfing the Brown regime, much bigger stakes than the future of Wendy are in play for New Labour. If she resigns the question is then posed about the future of some prominent London figures.
So Wendy finds herself rapidly running out of road and faced with choices, all of which are damaging.
As the Voice goes to press it looks as if she is going for the brass neck option and will attempt to ‘tough it out’, no doubt noisily supported by her increasingly nervous MSPs.
In many ways this course is probably the most politically dangerous, not just for the Alexander leadership but for the broader future both of New labour and the British state.
Put simply this approach of clinging to power in the face of the facts sends the clear message to voters that New Labour leading lights are somehow above the law if they break it “unintentionally”.
On that basis we can expect a flood of motorists who were punished for “unintentionally” speeding, taxpayers who were “unintentionally” late with their returns and Xmas revellers punished after “unintentionally” drinking too much clamouring to be let off. 
The perception of politicians thinking they can break the law will be bad enough. But when it looks as if they are doing so under orders from London - as in this case - then the consequences are potentially fatal.
Lost in the fury around the illegal cash, New Labour was groping towards increasing Holyrood powers.
But any prospect of advancing this to counter the SNP now looks like a lost cause.
As for bold talk about a multi-party coalition to stop Salmond and bolster ‘Britishness’, the intense battles between Cameron and Blair over donorgate certainly seem to rule the Tories out of that while LibDem taunts labelling Brown as moving from Stalin to Mr Bean hardly seem likely to build unity with Labour.
After the May elections the wise men of the Scottish press spilt much ink warning Alex Salmond how difficult he would find it to run a minority government against the Brits in Edinburgh.
Eight months on the SNP are still riding high and Salmond is, certainly for now, the dominant figure in the Scottish Parliament acknowledged by those same media sages.
As we report elsewhere, the record so far is patchy but faced with the split, sleazy petulance of New Labour, the nationalists look new, radical, competent and clean.
Donorgate could fatally damage the rapidly disintegrating grip of New Labour in Scotland, and with it the main political force propping up the bloodstained British state.
Largely through their love-in with big business and big money, which has seen ten years of worship of all thing private and business, they are now trapped in a gathering crisis in both Edinburgh an London which is rapidly moving from the dangerous to the potentially terminal for their project.

Trump And Prescriptions Show Two Faces Of SNP

By Ken Ferguson

TWO decisions in one day neatly serve to spotlight the Jekyll and Hyde character of the minority SNP administration at Holyrood.
Plans to scrap prescription charges, as originally proposed by the SSP, join other left facing measures on Free School Meals, the right to buy and against Trident in presenting a radical face to voters.
Yet on the same day the same administration signalled that when it claims to be ‘business friendly’ it means it, as the SNP moved to subvert the decision to reject the plans for a mega golf development by US fat cat Donald Trump.
So far the tycoon has played hard ball, refused to use the normal appeal process and effectively told opponents that democracy needs to be set aside in favour of ‘doing business’ in Scotland.
The SNP government move is a major concession to that pressure.
The Trump decision is yet another piece of evidence indicating that, while in comparison with New Labour they appear left wing, it rather depends where you put the centre.
In the ten years from Dewar to McConnell New Labour, with a few minor exceptions, stayed determinedly in the pro-market straitjacket set by Blair and refused to comment on big issues of war and peace.
With that as the yardstick it has been comparatively easy for the SNP to look new and radical.
However we have already had some early warning signs that the SNP government have no intention of challenging the rich men such as Brian Soutar who bankrolled their May campaign.
Moves have already taken place to water down the targets set by the SNP on poverty reduction and the path is now open for the 20-year ban on working with the Tories to go.
This latter move is likely to take on growing importance in the new dynamic, with the Tories looking like realistic challengers for the first time in a decade making any Holyrood deal with Labour increasingly unattractive.
Why throw New Labour a lifeline if they are sinking and you are rising?
On their part there is much at the heart of the SNP programme which chimes with the Tory approach, such as plans to cut business rates and wage war on government spending and thus jobs.
Tory demands on issues such as drug treatment centres should also be something that can be accommodated by Salmond.
The fact is that, while Salmond may play the star role in public, much of the SNP agenda is being shaped by his predecessor and now finance supreme, John Swinney.
Swinney may represent Tayside but he is no Blairgowrie Bolshevik. He has spent his adult life in the SNP and represents the small business, largely instinctively right wing, rural base of the party.
This wing has historically been in tension with the largely left wing, urban-based activists and the present administration is an uneasy alliance of the two groups.
At the heart of demands to cut down on administration and costs, heavily supported by Swinney, is an agenda similar to Gordon Brown’s plan to cut thousands of civil and public service jobs.
The bombshell plans to sack some 1,000 council staff in Edinburgh are the first fruits of this approach and clearly show that saving jobs is low on the priorities of all the major parties.
Even after the loss of 25million people’s bank details by civil servants severely pressed by cost and job cutting, none of the big parties seem to have accepted that jobs need workers.
The real danger is that as the economy turns down in the face of the US inspired credit crunch and prices soar workers will face the all too familiar demand to tighten their belts, accept sacrifices in wages and job cuts.
None of this will of course apply to the Donald Trumps or Brian Soutars who, so we are told, need to be regularly paid millions to ensure that they are able to keep their business skills in order.
As 2008 beckons the signs are growing that soaring prices, tough credit and a squeeze on jobs and wages will once again be the approach adopted to deal with the problems of the bankers and speculators.
And it places a heavy responsibility on the left to not only back those who come under attack in this offensive but also to show that they have an alternative vision which can deliver an approach in favour of the millions and not the millionaires.

Scots Universities To Take Arms Dealers Cash

ANTI-ARMS trade campaigners have uncovered a multi-million pound collusion between the dealers in death and leading UK universities.
A report by the Campaign Against Arms Trade shows leading Scots universities with their snouts firmly in the arms dealers’ trough, with Glasgow and Edinburgh universities taking a whopping £12,225,799 from them.
The report, entitled Study War no More, covers the period 2001 to 2006 and is a damning indictment of academic co-operation with those developing ever more sophisticated killing methods, with a massive £725million flowing into arms research in 26 UK universities.
The role of the big weapons firms is underlined with around 70 per cent of the military projects, especially in science, sponsored by Britain’s three biggest arms companies - BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and the controversially privatised QinetiQ.
QinetiQ was recently at the centre of a storm about the super profits made by civil servants when the former government research body was privatised by New Labour, leading one Tory MP to describe it as ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’.
Report authors Tim Street and Martha Beale made it clear that uncovering the truth about the links between academics and arms dealers had not been easy, and that they had struggled to obtain the necessary information because of a lack of transparency and accountability in the way that universities are funded.
They also echoed students’ concerns about the “democratic deficit” within academic institutions and the ends and ethics of research and research funding.
“It was a huge struggle to unearth this information, due to a lack of transparency at many universities and the secretive nature of the arms trade,” Ms Beale said.
“Corporate interests tend to favour secrecy, a monopoly of intellectual property rights and the silencing of dissidence.”
She urged students, university staff and the public to challenge what she branded the “alarming influence” of military funding in UK universities.
Campaign Against Arms Trade director Simon Hill said:
“Universities must be forced to be more transparent about their finances and the government must stop using taxpayers’ money to subsidise university research for arms dealers.
“It is important that student and university staff unions take this seriously and address it as a threat to their independence and the values which universities are founded on.”
The findings of the report were, he said, “yet another shocking example of how much influence arms companies have in so many sectors in British society.”

Edinburgh Council set to cut 800 jobs

by Gerry Corbett

IN a move headlined as efficiency savings, City of Edinburgh Council revealed a package of cuts and redundancies that will chop more than 800 posts across the city. In their second attempt to attack services in the city, the SNP/LibDem coalition announced that the cuts will take place over nine areas of the council services.
The administration have tried to disguise the cuts as a merging of services with Fife and Borders councils.
But as parents of Edinburgh school children found out earlier this year when closure of 22 schools was announced, the council is desperate to cut £10-15million from a budget that the Labour group decimated in an attempt to buy off Council Tax payers in the May election.
Tom Aitchison, the chief executive of the council, emailed staff about the cuts saying that this was the “first phase of the project”, and calling for the redundancies to be made through “ simplification, standardisation or sharing” services.
At a time when core services of Scotland’s capital city are attacked, cut and underfunded, the city council seems to think it sensible to fund a portion of the £500million tram system to replace a perfectly good bus service, and fund a 10,000-seater concert hall at Ingleston.
Both commitments are in the hope of attracting more ‘business’ to the city - business that the people of Edinburgh see little benefit from but the business community thrives off.
You have to wonder who the council are working for - the people of Edinburgh or the businesses of Edinburgh?
From the evidence, the city’s people come a very poor second. Meanwhile the public sector workers who supply the services to the city don’t even register on the councillors’ radar, unless it’s to be seen as completely expendable.

The SSP keeps marching in 2007… And into 2008

FOR the Scottish left, 2007 has been a year to test the will and the nerve.
The defeat in the Scottish Elections in May was a low point and, although bigger forces were clearly in play, the ego-driven split in the left certainly didn’t help.
More positively, it was also the year that saw New Labour’s seemingly iron grip on Scotland broken.
The signs are that a combination of spirited resistance from workers facing attacks on jobs and pay, allied to a growing revulsion with Labour cronyism will accelerate this process in the year ahead.
Across the planet, imperialism is facing defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan and plans to demonise and then attack Iran are inspiring growing opposition.
Throughout this year the SSP has been on the frontline of struggle on jobs, against Trident and war and in the battle to thwart the globalisers and their henchmen in Downing Street, Holyrood and Washington.
Faced with the apparent total victory of fascism in Italy, the great Italian communist Antonio Gramsci advised comrades that their slogan should be “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”.
Ninety years on this advice to think, to analyse, but to use the process as a guide to action would be a good guide to our activity in 2008.

TRUE GRIT

After eight weeks of struggle -Day Care workers return to work

After an incredible two months of unity, defiance and outstanding courage, striking Day Care workers in Glasgow have voted to accept a deal.
Strikers have voted by the narrowest of margins - 80 to 71 - to accept the deal negotiated and return to work.
They walked out after Glasgow City Council downgraded them to lower role profiles - refusing to recognise the difficult work they do in day centres caring for people with learning difficulties, including severe disabilities, and the wide-ranging qualifications they have gained.
The regrading added up to pay cuts for many of the workers, some facing as much as £6000 being slashed from their salary.
After the passion of the two months long strike, there was heated debate at the meeting, and as yet some detail of the deal still has to be clarified.
Those who voted against felt the deal was unacceptable because it gives no guarantees for support workers - who made up a quarter of the strikers.
They also object to the fact that what has been conceded on role profiles is tied to the acceptance of the proposed ‘redesign’ of the service.
However, the council has undoubtedly been forced into major concessions on role profiles, compared to their utter intransigence before the strike.
Then, and all through the strike, the council insisted wages would only be protected until April 2009.
After that, there would be no guarantees.
Under this deal, every manager, depute manager and day service worker will be lifted up to the higher role profile demanded. This will take effect from April 2008.
But in a measure to force through service redesign, the council also agreed that this
will be implemented by 31 January - if redesign is agreed by then.
One of the strikers who voted to accept the deal told the Voice that he was, at first, opposed. But he made the point that the strike was all about role profiles, and when negotiators clarified that, not only had the council conceded the role profiles demanded, but also that workers will be assimilated to a point in the profile that
takes them out of detriment - in other words, that they will not lose money - he voted to accept.
In contrast, another striker said: “We’ve won nothing, it’s really disappointing. The first thing in the agreement is that we fully accept the service redesign - what does that mean for the future?”
Clearly, redundancies will feature in the council’s plan.
In fact, they offered arrangements for enhanced redundancy packages as part of the deal – bringing implementation of the new role profiles forward to January means that any workers volunteering for redundancy will have their package worked out on the higher wage scale.
The offer, and the fact that negotiators at the top table recommended acceptance, both played a part in gaining the narrow majority vote for acceptance.
One other main persuading factor is that the same negotiators have promised that the issue of support workers’ profiles - at the moment guaranteed nothing - will be addressed in the forthcoming negotiations.
These support workers are understandably angry at being excluded from a deal that has gained higher role profiles for day service workers, but at the expense of accepting the council’s redesign plans.
Many day service workers voted against the deal on the principle that support workers had struck alongside them and deserved recognition with higher role profiles. They wanted to remain united.
Some details have yet to be clarified, and it should be made clear that the union has never said they are against service redesign.
Until the deal, the council had always insisted they would not enhance role profiles until they’d implemented redundancies, closures and their so-called redesign.
But the power of the strike has forced much earlier implementation. Now the struggle to resist the scale of cuts to the service planned by the council gets underway.
That struggle is strengthened by the strike action that’s been taken, as it’s only through the tenacious strikers taking their campaign out onto the streets and to other workplaces that many people have even heard of the issues that will be thrown up by the redesign.
These 260 strikers go back to work, each one with their head high, after an outstanding eight weeks of the ultimate demonstration of strength in workers’ unity.

Root and BRANCH
Campsie

Building the SSP in East Dunbartonshire

by Thomas Swann

IN announcing Campsie Branch’s AGM, held on the 28 November in Milton of Campsie Village Hall, Branch Organiser Neil Scott sent a message to local members that contained the following quotation from Noam Chomsky.
“If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.”
As Neil rightly noted, “that is what the Scottish Socialist Party is about”.
Having learned the lessons of the last two years, we are ready to keep doing things and, indeed, to do them better every time. With this in mind, those in attendance at the meeting set out a plan designed to make the SSP as visible possible in the coming year.
Given the area Campsie Branch organises in, composed of individual, often poorly connected villages, members know that they have to be modest about what can be achieved, but also that the most important thing they can do is to not allow people to forget that the SSP is still here.
One of the inventive methods of maintaining such a presence that was agreed was to begin a regular Saturday morning socialist cultural event.
Beginning with a film screening in early January, this will hopefully become an alternative source of information and entertainment that people in the area can come to rely on and associate with the party at large.
Continuing with a series of talks and other activities, this morning will provide the local communities with an educational voice they might otherwise never hear.
In addition to this, the branch agreed on a number of new positions aimed similarly at reasserting the role of the SSP within the area. In doing so, members took up a number of suggestions that were made at the National Council meeting in August.
This included appointing Bill Newman and Mark Callaghan branch press officers, to see that the cultural events the local party organises are as well publicised as can be, and also to provide the local newspapers with stories and information that they may be currently overlooking.
This follows the excellent example set by comrades in other branches.
Campsie Branch is also planning to launch a local edition of the Voice, in order to inform residents about both the activities of the party, and also goings on in the area that aren’t reported elsewhere.
For example, one of the press officers has been tasked with accessing the local council meeting minutes, in order that these can be published to make people aware of aspects of council decision making that may effect them, but that they may never hear about.
A member was also appointed to redesign and run the branch online presence, in the form of a blog which was set up for the May elections but which has fallen into disuse since.
This will provide a space on the internet that both those inside and outside of the SSP can refer to to see what work Campsie Branch members are involved in.
Some of the methods Campsie members intend to implement in the near future are ones that have already been proved successful by other party members. Some are the invention of those in the branch themselves.
It is crucial in the future that branches share their experiences of activism so that, as Chomsky argues, they can learn from mistakes and come back with better approaches that will not fail.

Biography Of Constant Struggle

Hamish Henderson: a Biography Vol 1 - the Making of the Poet by Timothy Neat, published by Polygon

by Ken Ferguson

THIS is simply a stunning book of immense richness and vitality, which not only entertains, informs and illuminates on the incredible life of its subject but provides a detailed view of the world and events Henderson was part of.
For it is this critical fact that lies at the heart of Neat’s biography - in many ways Hamish Henderson could easily serve as a human incarnation of Scotland in the 20th century and his actions as a reflection of Scotland’s part in that turbulent time.
Born to a single mum on Armistice Day 1919, one year after the end of the 1914-18 imperialist bloodbath, his life was inextricably linked with the upheavals, war and struggle which hallmarked the period.
By the time he entered Cambridge in 1938 Henderson had lost his mother, spent time in institutional care and was both a convinced anti-nazi and supporter of a Scottish republic.
Some have argued that the many contradictions of Henderson’s life - highly effective British soldier and opponent of monarchy, ardent nationalist and passionate internationalist, balladeer of soldiers and committed peace activist - are impossible to reconcile.
However Timothy Neat takes us through these events in a lucid, detailed and patient way which puts before us the picture of a complex human life interacting with cataclysmic world events with the objective of sustaining human decency.
It was this lodestar of humanity which saw Henderson working to help anti-fascist refugees escape Hitler, serve with the famous 51st Highland Division in the desert and Italy, and become an active Scottish Republican and peace campaigner after the war.
However amidst this epic journey Neat makes it clear that the experiences of the war in Italy and time spent with the Communist Partisans opposing Mussolini’s fascists was seminal.
It was this experience which opened the door to what was clearly one of the most important influences in his outlook - the ideas of Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci. A political activist and revolutionary, Gramsci also turned his formidable intellect to trying to explain how the ruling class remained the ruling class through its dominance or ‘hegemony’ over what is regarded as normal.
Eight years after Gramsci died in Mussolini’s jails, young Communist Partisans discussed his ideas with Henderson, who was serving with them.
He went on to translate his letters into English and while doing so found an article by Piero Gobetti. “More than a tactician and a fighter, Gramsci is a prophet,” it said. “The only way it is possible to be one nowadays is to be unheard of - except by fate.” It was this simple idea allied to his intensive study of Gramsci’s rich seam of ideas which helped shape the path which Henderson directed his energies.
It was a path which, though it did not involve blazing headlines or high profile activism, was to see him at the heart of key movements and moments which have, over the last 50 years transformed Scottish politics from kailyaird pocket imperialism to the radical, questioning society of 2007.
Indeed this approach remains one which has much to teach movements, such as the SSP, of the present day.
Henderson didn’t act alone, but was at the centre of movements such as Scottish Covenant which collected 1million names in support of home rule.
Events, such as the blowing up of pillar boxes stamped EIIR when the current monarch is Elizabeth 1st in Scotland, are set out in interesting detail by Neat.
The book is packed with incident - Hamish accepting the Italian surrender in 1945, his key role in the Edinburgh People’s Festival, forerunner of the fringe, the intensely moving poems in Elegies to the Dead in Cyrenaica all are there, and much more.
One incident told by Neat is the appearance, on the eve of the critical El Alamein battle in 1942, of two fingers of searchlights in the sky above the waiting troops of the Highland Division.
These swung and formed a Saltire in the sky above them - surely an omen?
It is likely they were part of a wider plan to illuminate the battlefield but the fact they were attributed by many to Henderson surely shows then, as in later life, he held to the aim of illuminating the way ahead.
Timothy Neat’ s book certainly illuminates his subject and skilfully places it in the events and actions of his time.
The second volume, which will cover the period from 1953 to Henderson’s death in 2002, cannot come too soon.

New York investigators hit town

Interpol at Carling Academy Glasgow
3 Dec 2007

YOU don’t expect to sweat when you go to see Interpol. You don’t expect Soul Music.
The New York quartet (augmented by enigmatic fedora-sporting touring keyboardist Blasco) brought their particular brand of icy Manhattanite post-rock to Glasgow’s Carling Academy, and led the capacity crowd through a selection of songs from all three of their studio albums so far.
There’s a remoteness about the band and their music which should keep the listener at a distance. There’s a tautness to their sound that recalls the likes of Joy Division, and when they shift up a gear there’s a relentless industrial power in the rhythm section which makes you listen closely and look really hard at drummer Sam Fogarino to check that he’s actually playing his drums, that it’s not a machine making that big big noise. (Fogarino’s a highly unorthodox drummer, incidentally - it’s just about worth the price of a ticket just to watch him play like he was taught by someone with two left hands.)
Bass player Carlos D - well, he’s a piece of work. Looking like a miserablist Mississippi gambler, his Peter Hook kneelevel bass absolutely subterranean, he turns, he swoops, he digs his Fender Jazz into the stage like a shovel.
It’s all an awesome thrilling racket that fits Paul Banks’ angular vocals precisely.
He sings about car crashes, marital experiments, alienation, cocaine shame, New York City - while guitarist Daniel Kessler dices in shards of colour and underlines the acute angles to the songs. Kessler’s an oddity onstage - immobile for only a tiny percentage of the time, his moves vary from a splay-legged hunch to a very odd cross-stage scramble and slide.
There’s a stark degraded beauty to their slow songs (Pioneer To The Falls), and a four-four hurry-up urgency to their quick ones (Evil).
It shouldn’t draw you in, it shouldn’t move you. But it does.
The Academy crowd lapped up every intro and sang along. Air was punched.
Sure, the baroque washy grandeur of The Lighthouse demanded hush and got it, but its crescendo in turn made people yell with delight. Banks may be one of the world’s more diffident front men - apart from a couple of thank yous and a brief comment about Glasgow, he didn’t even try to connect with the crowd - but the crowd didn’t really notice or care.
Never mind the austere veneer, ignore the fabulously tasteful stage lighting, Interpol play for themselves and love every note.

The Wild Brunch
Keef Tomkinson

Keef casts his eye across life’s more leisurely pursuits in order to put a wee bit of CULTure into our lives.

Is the SSP not meant to be angriest bunch political animals this side of Manchester? Surely we have enough left over to stick the boot into more injustice?
Think global, growl local.
But the facts say otherwise. It’s been nearly a month since the capital of Strathclyde won the contest to host the Commonwealth Games and I have not seen cynical criticism coming from either this paper or Chairman Fox.
Well let’s kick it off. What’s this thing the ‘Commonwealth’? For a Queen-hating, Brit-busting socialist like myself, it’s a pointless, bureaucratic gravy train. A club containing most of the countries Britain plundered and raped its way through to build its bloodsoaked empire.
As these states won their independence, the Commonwealth continued to represent these countries’ economic semi-dependence.
But there is an even more sinister purpose to this body and tournament. In world, European and Olympic competition athletes from these isles, especially allconquering England, don’t really stand much of a chance. If you cut out mainland Europe, Russia and the USA we’re talking gold, baby!
Growing up as a sports fanatic, the Commonwealth Games were less glamorous, less dynamic and much slower than the Olympics. The only drug taking involved was an audience injecting caffeine.
Some might say - so what! It’s bringing something new and lucrative to the streets of Glasgow which will leave a legacy.
It’s not that new. The sight of a bunch a white guys chasing a black guy through the East End of Glasgow will be the same, it’s just that they’ll get medals for their efforts.
Lucrative? Sure, for the crooked businessmen and donors to the Labour party in Glasgow who would feed off our Council Tax and government grants paid through our taxes.
And the legacy? That’s the biggest fraud of them all.
The spin is that the youth of the East End of Glasgow will be left with 21st century sporting facilities and new homes when the athlete’s village is converted into private accommodation.
The facilities will only be as good as the investment in coaching, equipment and accessibility (a private firm charging high prices would be the norm). The facilities will only be as effective as the steps taken to improve the health, wealth and self esteem of young people.
Last year I walked past the remnants of Munich’s 1972 athlete’s village. Like Glasgow’s plan, it was turned into public accommodation and now looks like run down municipal housing. Just like what already exists in the East End.
This isn’t negativity, it’s just a natural rejection of the drip-down theory - the idea that spending huge sums of money on short term publicity and shiny new buildings for tourist brochures will trickle down for us all to revel in.
Did we not spend years opposing Thatcher on the basis that she said the wealth of the rich would drip down to us plebs in the streets? Why not invest in communities and their occupants as socialists have always envisaged?
I can only think of one reason to hold the games and spend a shit load of money - to enrage those pricks in England who call into radio stations complaining that their taxes are paying for Glasgow 2014.
Just don’t mention The Millennium Dome, London Olympics or English World Cup bid.