How the SWP Can Save the UK Music Scene

Some lessons from Tony Cliff, founder of the Socialist Workers' Party, which promoters and unsigned bands might take to heart:

- There's no use burying your head in the sand and saying 'there'll be 20 people there'. Much better to admit that 7 people are going to turn up, and work hard to get an 8th.

- Don't mistake grand names and attitudes for actual popularity. Tony Cliff was once introduced to a woman who claimed to represent 'The Pan African Liberal Christian Women's Movement for Democracy and Freedom'. His first comment was: 'I hope there are as many members of this organisation as there are in its title'.

More on Tony Cliff: http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/index.htm

Trivia Corner

These days, I try to get most of my information from packets of rolling paper. It was via this medium that I learnt that the fifth biggest selling single in the UK, of all time, is Rivers of Babylon, by Boney M.

It hardly needs pointing out that Rivers of Babylon is far from even being the best Boney M song.

And yet the people who parted with their money (presumably earned, through working) to place this single in such an elevated position are allowed to vote.

Proof, if proof were ever needed, that the man on the Clapham omnibus is a cretin.