Ian Brown for President

Förrförra helgen var Ian Brown intervjuad i The Guardians lördagsbilaga The Guide. Hans femte soloplatta The World is Yours handlar tydligen mycket om viktiga geo-politiska frågor så intervjun blev ett manifest för hur Ian vill att världen ska drivas. Jag blev riktigt peppad, så som jag blir när de muppar som styr åt fel håll får på nosen. Ian Brown är en gud för arbetarklassen, och om arbetarklassen kunde resa sig ur soffan och kräva förändring skulle förändring ske. Det han säger är så simpelt men ändå så slagkraftigt att jag var tvungen att citera en del av det här:

“America won’t accept that there is global warming. It’s not good enough. We can’t all perish because of their blindness. We need to ban all air freighted food. Carrots from Holland. Potatoes from Egypt. It’s got to stop. Lamb from New Zealand. Let’s get lambs grazing on the roof of the Pentagon or on the lawn of Buckingham Palace.

Permaculture – where you use the immediate environment to grown food – should be mandatory. We should be growing carrots up the side of the Empire State Building or big Ben. Round my house I pull the kids off the Xbox and make them dig soil in the garden. We grow parsnips, carrots and potatoes. I like to see ‘em grafting. They appreciate the taste.

It makes me angry that they’ve been able to build cars fuelled by corn oil or chicken shit for years. But the oil companies won’t allow it. Same with tyres and light bulbs: everlasting versions of these were invented years ago. The big corporations bought the inventors off. We’re all going to perish because of their greed. The chicken shit-powered car will only do 60 miles per hour but so what? Leave your house a bit earlier.

We’ve got to stop kids thinking of Space exploration and austronauts as a fun and glamorous thing. Nasa is an arm of the US military. The International Space Station is a military undertaking. We need to melt down the rockets. We’ve got to divert the money to the poor. The rural poor in this country are overlooked. The country mouse – he needs feeding.

Teenagers are being demonised for wearing hoodies [huvtröjor är förbjudna i många shoppingcenter i norr. egen anm]. This is what I’m saying on the track Me and You Forever. I’ve got a 15-year-old son and he can’t walk with his two mates through the Trafford Centre in Manchester. What’s that all about? The hoodie happens to be the perfect piece of clothing for up north. It gets flippin’ cold in Manchester. My dad wears a hoodie and he’s 72! The hoodie is one of the best and most useful items of clothing ever invented and it’s attacking northerners, anyone who is genuinely cold, to ban them.

There are some beautiful Bible stories – it’s just that in UK schools the teaching bores you stupid. The feeding of the 5000 isn’t meant to be taken literally. Jesus spoke to the people and fed their spirit – that’s your two fish. Then he spoke some more – that fed their souls. Then his posse went among them and the baskets were overflowing – that was the vibe in the air. That was the energy, the feeling. No, I don’t have a Messiah complex but I think music is the nearest thing to achieving Christian ends. It unifies people and sustains them. It uplifts them and makes them closer to love. You get a great gig at Wembley or somewhere and that is modern Christianity in action.

It pisses me off when I see pictures of the Queen or that Duke husband at Balmoral or Sandringham or wherever. I don’t look at them, I look at their surroundings. All those little salmon rivers, beautiful creeks and beaches that they’ve stolen from us a thousand years ago. Let’s have them back. Gordon Brown says he wants to build three million new homes then that’s where we should build them. How many homes could you build on Balmoral? Loads.

My kids laugh at me when I tell them about life when I was 14. They say ‘Go on dad, tell us again’. There was no Walkmans, videos, Nintendo or Xboxes, no internet, no mobiles. No computers. No DVDs. There were only three TV channels. They cry laughing. But it made us hungry and thoughtful. We’re breeding a generation who won’t invent anything. They’ve got everything. They’re stimulated all day and they’re never bored. I think there should be an hour of total boredom every day for kids.”