A brief word - in my professional capacity as eBay Top Rated Power Seller, Overlord of Positive Feedback and Grand Imperial Warlock of Those Stupid Coloured Stars You Get After Your EBay ID Which Nobody Really Knows The Significance Of - about the postal strike.

Since the stike was confirmed last Wednesday, my eBay sales have fallen off a cliff; the “marquee” items (i.e. the really rare stuff) are still selling OK, but impulse purchases in the £5 - £10 range have largely dried up; my income is down by about 60%. So who do I blame? Intransigent management, intent on imposing huge cuts and impossible working conditions on a long-suffering workforce? Militant unions striking for unrealistic pay and benefits despite the organisation’s desperate need of modernisation?

No. I blame the f*cking newspapers. The reality is that the strike so far has lasted only 2 days (one day for processing centres, one day for delivery and collection staff), and that most items posted during that period will arrive one, or maybe two, days late (if late at all). However, the impression you get from the papers is that the entire country is grinding to a halt, that the postal service is an unwieldy dinosaur doomed to utter destruction and that small business owners are throwing themselves out of skyscraper windows. People have stopped buying online not because of the nature of the problem itself, but because of the exaggeratedly negative way in which it’s being reported.

Worse still, the dispute is far from intractable; the two sides are reasonably close to an agreement, and the strike last week almost didn’t happen at all. But, on the day of fresh talks, the Grauniad isn’t reporting this fact; instead, it’s stoking up bad feeling by focussing its attention on an out-of-context quote in which Adam Crozier, head of Royal Mail, is supposed to have told his opposite number at the CWU to “shut up”.

Nice work, Fleet Street; your childish hysteria is helping to resolve the problem and get my professional life back on track how, exactly?

Cuddly, jowl-mungous wannabe-Mr Creosote / Jabba the Hutt-lookalike Nick Griffin will be appearing on the BBC’s Question Time this Thursday. Despite the Beeb’s charter stating that political minorities should be given coverage proportionate to their electoral success (the BNP has 2 MEPs), their inclusion of Griffin has been a controversial decision and, even at this late stage, senior Labour politicians are trying, through persuasion and legal action, to block his appearance.

The Labour position is very much based on the idea of “no platform”, which seeks to deny racists and fascists the opportunity to express their views in public. However, “no platform” was born in the era of old Labour, the old National Front, of militant trade unions, of the SWP, of punks and skinheads etc, when the country was far more politicised and polarised, and when everyone wore their heart on their sleeve. In those days, you could rely on your BNP (National Front as was) member to have a shaven head, a crazed look in his eye, a crudely-tattooed swastika somewhere visible and a pair of bovver boots for “paki-bashing” - in fact, even as recently as 1998, Nick Griffin was still talking about “well-directed boots and fists” (oh, and holocaust-denial). These days, however, it’s not so much “well-directed boots” as ill-fitting Primark suits; the second rule of Griffin’s Fight Club 2009 is that you do not talk about fighting (the first rule, of course, being “no darkies”.)

In short, the scenery has changed, and the BNP has changed; despite their constitution and stated aims, they’ll happily deny any charge of racism, and would much prefer to avoid the topic altogether. They have a spidery, shadowy network of their own websites and have full-time operatives who constantly post comments on the right-leaning newspaper sites (mostly the Daily Mail and the Times - both of whom tend to allow rightist comments whilst moderating out anything else). Typically jumping on topics such as immigration, mistrust of politicians since the expenses row and under-equipment of the armed forces, the BNP will claim to represent the “ordinary white working classes”. I’m sure that 95% of people who voted for the BNP in the European elections aren’t racists at all, they’ve just been taken in by the BNP’s new tactic of attacking the main parties and claiming to be patriotic whilst simultaneously performing a smoke-and-mirrors trick with its own dark heart.

As such, the idea of “no platform” is redundant; in fact, it’s very important that they’re given a national platform - as much attention as possible needs to be focussed on their real personalities, and real policies. They can’t be allowed to hide away and portray themselves as free-speech-martyrs; instead, Nick Griffin’s arguments need to be seen to be ripped to pieces by the best minds from mainstream politics and public life - the reality of what the BNP stands for needs constant reiteration. I’m not suggesting that Thursday’s Question Time will scupper the BNP once and for all, but it’s a step in the right direction. The boil needs to be lanced, not allowed to fester.

So Michael Jackson, now in the advanced stages of putrefaction, fulfils the promise he implied in the “Thriller” video and has returned from the grave with a new hit, “This Is It”. Well, sort of. In fact, it’s an unfinished demo from the 1991 “Dangerous” sessions that has been resurrected (rather than MJ himself) - which explains why a) it sounds like he was singing down a telephone with a clothes peg on his nose (remaining nose surface area permitting), and b) there’s a comparative lack of overdubbed “heee-heee!”, “Shamone!” and “OOWWWW!” noises. The record company has roped in Tito, Marlon, Randy, Glenda, Colin, Samuel L and various other family members to provide backing vocals - which they manage to do, to their credit, mostly in the same key as their deceased brother.

Actually, for my money (which is exactly what the record company is after), it’s not a bad track, despite evidently having been left off “Dangerous” because it’s pretty much same song as “Heal the World”. The uncluttered production is a refreshing change from the current irritating bleepy R’n'B norm, and Jackson’s voice sounds surprisingly fresh, similar to how it did in the glory days of “Off the Wall” and “Thriller”.

Obviously none of that matters, and the only reason I’ve mentioned it at all is because the poll needed changing, and the song’s title allows me to indulge in some appropriately low-rent wordplay. Nevertheless, you can check the song out using the link above; whadday’all think?

Indulge me, gentle reader, as I take massively disproportionate umbrage at a fairly nondescript and perfectly reasonable article in wimpy left-wing periodical “Prospect”, written by music producer Brian Eno about car boot sales.

Hyper-posh Eno, real name Brian Dido Peter St John George le Baptiste Florian Cloud de Bounevialle de la Salle McTwattybollocks Eno (and that REALLY* is his real name!), reckons that car boot sales “bring out your inner gatherer” and constitute a “new experience in civil society”. What a load of ambient noise.

Firstly, these lifestyle articles about car boots always carry a faint but pungent
patronising whiff of “oh, how quaint! Look how common people live!” - and this one’s no exception. Secondly - I’d love Eno to come with me to Pedham Place car boot, junction 3 of the M25, the geographic and demographic cesspool of everything within the entire London orbital, on any Sunday morning and then tell me if he still feels the same about a “civil society”. And thirdly, Brian - do I submit articles to left-leaning periodicals offering people advice on how to repeatedly play the same note on a fucking synthesiser and claim the invention of a new form of music? No. I don’t. So don’t presume to tell me about MY job.

(* - OK, it’s not REALLY his real name; however, it is a composite of his genuine name and that of equally posh songstress Dildo. I have added only one word of my own; can you guess which one?)

To be fair to myself, the fact that the lookey-likey happens to include a mixed-race man alongside a white man doesn’t make it borderline racist; it does, however, contribute significantly to the lookey-likey’s palpable crapness. Just imagine them side by side on piano keyboards, or something.

Red, dwarfish robot warrior Craig Charles…

…. and thunder-thighed track-taming titan Chris Hoy….