A couple of days off

Last night I went to Misery of Sound where we saw the always entertaining Devilish Presley (the photo is with Jacqui Vixen from the band), who I always feel I can mention due to their song Hammer Horror Glamour as well as Frankenstein – a horror punk band new to me but great fun to watch. Unfortunately we missed local band the Garbagemenn, but I’m sure I’ll catch them again sometime.

All of which does not explain why I won’t be posting anything substantial today and tomorrow. The reason for that means me getting a tad political and off the vampire topic for a moment. Tomorrow morning I’m off to London to join the March for the Alternative. The current UK shysters, I mean Government, are determined to slash and burn the public sector. They are doing this for purely ideological reasons and to keep their fat cat pals in filthy lucre. There is an alternative; bailing out the banks is what actually led to the current level of deficit so they could pay us that money back or we could run them publicly with no massive banker bonuses and profits channeled into the state until the debt is paid off; we could collect the £120 billion of uncollected taxes per annum; we could place a Tobin Tax on speculative financial transactions; we could cut the private sector out of the public sector as they are the biggest cause of waste of public money. Remember, the deficit was larger when we built the Welfare State… Rant over…

But perhaps I was on topic. Let us recall the words of Voltaire (pictured right) from 1764, “These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer. We never heard a word of vampires in London, nor even at Paris. I confess that in both these cities there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces.” (my highlight)