This Music Rules

Acid Brass, i.e. acid house music played by a brass band. No, really. It's fantastic. Look for Jeremy Deller's Acid Brass project at your local purveyor of weird music, or go grep the web - I got mine mail-order from the brass band in question.

Exactly how FUCKING STUPID are you?

I've just watched the (brief) coverage of today's Drumcree march. 24 members of the security forces were injured, five seriously. I am not going to attempt to take any sides here, since for all I know it may well be perfectly acceptable for the local Orange Order to march down a road full of non-Orange people in celebration of a defeat of said non-Orange people several hundred years ago. That's the sort of thing that greater minds than mine are trying to figure out. No, I'll just give you a simple dialogue and let you calculate things such as DEGREE OF STUPIDITY by yourself:

The Orange Order: We would like to march down this road.
Security Forces: The Parades Commission has said you can't march down this road this year because of past rioting. However, if you can guarantee them that you will behave responsibly and non-antagonistically, you may be allowed to march down this road next year.
The Orange Order: Okay.

"The Orange Order" proceeds to spit on, and then attack with rocks, cudgels, and their bare hands, a wall of security forces in riot gear. The latter retreat; however, the antagonists continue to advance and attempt to breach the wall of riot shields in order to inflict more damage on the people behind the shields. It's pretty obvious who's doing the attacking here; the security forces are, for the most part, not even using their batons - they're simply protecting themselves with their shields, retreating slowly, and preventing the crowd from proceeding down the Garvaghy Road - which is blocked off, anyway, and defended by water cannon.

Now, I'm not claiming any supreme intelligence or clairvoyance here, but how do you think the Parades Commission is going to respond next year, when the Orange Order puts forward its case for marching down the same road?

Note, I've put scare quotes above because it's pretty obvious that at least a portion of the crowd is there purely for a riot. Especially the 12-year-old kid in the white tracksuit with blue stripes right at the front of the crowd who, if there is any sense of justice in the North, is currently sitting in a police station being taught the meaning of "a short, sharp shock".