Give 'Em Hope

The title is somewhat misleading.

Yesterday, I spent maybe the most depressing day of my working life filling envelopes with letters, for an entire day - I did my share of 35,000 letters that had to be posted that day. I'm telling you, the tension, you wouldn't believe it.

Anyway, the reason was that staff at the institution wherein I work had decided to strike, and thus we, the admin donkeys had to send out these letters to explain the situation to all those who might be affected. I don't really approve of striking. I'm not a member of any union nor do I plan to be, and any greivance at work I feel I have the ability to resolve it without resorting to ridiculous threats and comical posturing. Much as it might amuse me for a half hour or so to stand out in the cold yelling SCAB at anyone nearby, on Holloway Road this is likely to get you more than a cheery nod of approval.

Also, I'm not going to support anything that gives me a thousand letters a day to stuff, I feel this is not quite right.

Newtown Grunts - Solidarity. This is a cover of the elderly Angelic Upstarts track about the Polish shipworker strikes of the Lech Walesa-era 1980's, updated for the Liverpool dockworkers strikes. It came to my mind when the dispute was raised here, and it's a cool enough track if you like your punk rock to barrel along and shout "Oi!" at you as it passes. It's from an album on BYO Records from a few years back, to try and get some of those crazy So.Cal yanks to listen to British punk rock, and features some great contributions from Leatherface (I couldn't miss the opportunity to post up their excellent 'Boogie On Down', maybe the most poignant and romantic song ever to be buried in utterly indistinguishable hardcore), and also Snuff, Road Rage, Airbomb ranting about the TV and Melksham's finest Citizen Fish.