A bit unusual for me to write a whole blog just to promote a song, but I had to make an exception for this!
If you've never heard of the singer Grace Petrie, you simply must check out her music. There are many incredible political musicians out there, but this one is pretty special. I've loved her music since 2013 when I heard her on BBC Radio 4's Now Show performing her song 'All In This Together', in which she claimed to have 'tried to write a song about her favourite MP, but couldn't narrow it down'. That song is really out of date now, but I still listen to it regularly! I've seen Grace perform live and she is an exceptionally enjoyable performer.
Every year we have a tedious discussion about whether the line 'you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot' in Fairytale of New York is appropriate given its frequent use as a homophobic slur. I touched upon my view about this in this blog that I wrote last week, but I shall reiterate my viewpoint on it one more time. My view is that I have absolutely no objection to the word 'faggot' being in this song in the context in which it is used - that of the Irish version, meaning 'lazy person'. As someone in a same-sex relationship, my view is that the more we use terms like this to mean other things besides the homophobic meaning, the less effective it becomes as a homophobic slur. I believe that making words taboo only increases the ability of bigots to discriminate - we need to focus predominantly on intention, because words have no meaning by themselves. Also, I find it quite offensive that US slang is considered more important in the English-speaking world than Irish slang is.
However, irrespective of my personal view on censoring the line, I just love Grace Petrie's new cover, in which this line is now 'You scumbag, you maggot, we love Diane Abbott'. In addition to Grace's beautiful singing voice, the boldness of this line is important to stand up to an extremely insidious media narrative about this politician. Of all left-wing politicians, she is by far the one with the worst reputation - thoroughly undeserved, because Diane Abbott is an amazing human being. Occasionally she gets flustered on television, and when that happens it's talked about for weeks in an attempt to persuade the British public that she's incompetent - which sadly is often successful. But if anyone takes the time to actually take the time to read what she does via reliable sources (the link above will take you to her TheyWorkForYou page) you will see what an incredibly hard worker she is, how intelligent she is and how much she strives to improve quality of life for the least fortunate. Just as a personal anecdote, an acquaintance of mine told me a while back that in a struggle regarding the immigration status of their spouse, and said that of all the MPs they'd met, Diane Abbott was the only one who they really felt cared personally about what they were going through (which incidentally, I think is so important - when we talk about politicians, so often we focus on big global things and never consider the work that MPs do on individual cases. And I often think that's the most important thing - no matter what other flaws a politician may have, if they work hard on an individual case, something that isn't going to affect their electoral chances, that is more proof than any other that their heart is in the right place.)
In 2020, when the Labour Party is becoming increasingly right-wing, MPs like Diane Abbott are needed more than ever. I could talk about Diane Abbott until the cows come home, but the best thing you could read is this article by food writer Jack Monroe, which was originally posted on Twitter shortly before the 2017 election. Read it. Now.
You back? Okay, back to the song.
Now, I want this song to get to Christmas number one. I highly doubt that I can achieve this because my blog readership is TINY - but I thought, why not try? The worst that can happen is that I'll have at least got a few more people to buy it, which would help the artist. But more than that - if radio stations have started to say that they won't play the original (I personally disagree, but it's their right) why not give them an alternative that glorifies one of the best politicians we have? Someone who is almost never in the media unless it's something negative? As Boris Johnson destroys more and more of what we have, so many of us are fed up with the fact that our lives don't mean anything to politicians. So why not take the time to spend £1 (only if we can afford it, of course) to appreciate a politician for whom our lives actually do mean something, and help one of the most talented political artists around, and listen to a beautiful cover of everyone's favourite Christmas song, all at the same time?
Happy Christmas, everybody. I can see a better time when all our dreams come true.
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