Billy Bragg - Never Buy The Sun

[david747]

Hi, I went to see Billy Bragg at Garforth Arts Festival last night where he debuted a new song he's just written.

Thought you might like it.

www.billybragg.co.uk/blog/?p=183

For those of you that don't know the people of Liverpool pretty much closed the Sun down as a newspaper there after the Hillsborough disaster and the disgusting slurs they placed on the Liverpool fans. (See section 6.1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster#The_Sun_newspaper).

If Mr Murdoch intends to quietly re-open the NOTW as the Sunday Sun he needs to know that is not an option.

Tom Robinson in a later version of Glad to be Gay had a couple of verses re: the Sun - before it was terribly fashionable to hate it. Much nicer bloke :

^The British Police are the best in the world
I don?t believe one of these stories I?ve heard
?Bout pretty policemen in leather and jeans
Showing their leg through a split in the seams
Leering at people and leading them on
Then running them in when they start to respond
The press all ignore it, they don?t want to see
Except when the case is a Tory MP

Sing if you?re glad to be gay
Sing if you?re happy that way

Pictures of naked young women are best
In the News of the Screws and the popular press
They plaster their pages with bingo and tits
Then add all the scandal and slander that fits
The women of Greenham they smeared and despised
They crucify Elton with sneering and lies
If it?s paedophile teachers or lesbian nuns
If it?s filthy and fiction it?s all there in The Sun^

Billy Bragg is past his best,
He's losing his way and his hair.
He wishes he had relevance-
It's wrong to wish on space hardware.

Releases now are far and few-
his guitar strings are flagging.
And now he lives in Dorsetshire,
Billy's no longer bragging.

Why do some people believe that socialists ought to live in grinding poverty? Surely, the point is to prevent people living in poverty? Or, alternatively, to live in luxury if they make some money. Compare this thread with the recent one about Bob Crow living in a council house.

He's very sincere, I'm sure. It's the music that is tedious!! I've seen him loads of times and his audience is always the same. Students and right on guardian readers. Never the people he's so earnestly protesting for. How come?

Socialism- 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need'

Does Mr Bragg need a 6 bedroom house on Chesil Beach when he only has 1 child left at home?

Ach- I don't begrudge him his house at all- I'm sure it's not tiled in gold and cleaned by toothbrush by indentured philipinas or anything!

The problem is that - without exception - all the fans of his music I've known have been champagne socialists, and more than a couple of them have had extremely dubious morals too.

Someone needs to write protest songs though... and definitely someone more talented than me

I think some people are pretty mean-spirited and jealous if others do well or have some talent. If those that do well happen to be left wing then they are an easy target.

What's it got to do with you how many bedrooms Billy Bragg has ffs? Maybe he has family you don't know about, or lots of guests or maybe they just like lots of room. God!

frilly- is that rant addressed to me? I clearly say I don't begrudge him his house! He has 4 children, only 1 of whom now lives at home, not that it matters.

He is however largely irrelevant in 2011, and I find it laughable that the OP thinks Rupert Murdoch will be running scared because Billy Bragg has written a song about the whole affair.

And he's so bloody worthy...

Not one of his better efforts, but hell, I'm not sure Murdoch & his rags deserve a decent poem.