Don’t Mention The War

Bzangy Groink, Monday 25/9/06
Some of the songs on this album are years old. Some of them were written four months ago. Some of them are specifically about the “War On Terror,” some of them are not.

All of these songs are about the choices I’ve made and the choices we each face every day. I don’t mean just the big, flashy choices: who do I vote for, should I go on that march? Often, it’s the tiny, seemingly insignificant decisions that add up to change the world.

In the last few years, I’ve felt more and more squashed. Butcher Blair’s government watches me at every traffic light and in every shopping precinct. Armed police shoot an innocent commuter dead and aren’t even charged. Every day, our freedoms are removed and the justification is that it’s to preserve our freedom. You couldn’t really get more Orwellian.

So, we march and shout and protest and yet our media and government ignore us. And as the never-ending war wears on, opposing it becomes boring to the newscasters and talking heads.

Thus, even as I’ve taken part in the biggest political demonstrations in the whole of British history, I’ve felt more isolated in my day-to-day life. It’s all very well marching alongside millions of people but when you come home again, it’s easy to feel atomised, irrelevant, insane. You turn on the telly and the lead story is about some footballer or who’s got voted out of Big Brother. It’s like the day never happened. You wonder if it was all a dream: the thousands of protestors bringing London to a standstill. Did it happen?

But every day the news reports from thousands of miles away get worse. So bad that you can’t march enough, can’t shout enough to get rid of the guilt. Because it’s your taxes that paid for those bombs, your government that voted to illegally invade another country, your Prime Minister who bathes in the blood of children, all the while smiling and waving, making more connections that will help him in his future job for Rupert Murdoch.

As you’re about to break down and start shouting in public, raving at passers-by, a well-dressed, impeccably groomed New Labour politician appears and grabs your elbow, steering you away from the crowds of bio-tagged shoppers.

Drawing you closer, you can smell his wonderfully fresh, minty breath as he says,

“Don’t mention the war.”