All of us in the United Kingdom know the deal by now: on June 23 the Conservative Government is putting the country to the vote in a referendum on whether the U.K. should stay in the European Union, or leave it entirely and lose all of its alleged ‘benefits.’  And it appears to be a rare instance where both Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn both agree: we must stay in.  At the time of writing, the latest YouGov opinion poll also suggests that the ‘Remain’ campaign has a slight lead over the ‘Leave’ one.  Of course, with more than two months to go, that could change either way.

One thing I will give the Tories credit for is their continual negotiation to keep Britain out of the Euro.  We have seen over the last few years how several nations, Greece in particular, have fallen foul of it; if Greece catches a cold, then Portugal sneezes.  For Britain to join the Euro would be heading for eventual disaster.  However, as recently as February of this year, the Prime Minister yet again negotiated that, even if Britain stays in the EU, then we as a nation have no plans to switch to the Euro currency.  Good.

Many of my devoted fans have been asking me: should we stay or should we go?  And I’ll be honest with you; it’s not been an easy decision to make.  But come down on one side or the other I must, if only so that I don’t depart the polling station on June 23 with nothing to show for it but a spoiled paper.  As much as I have to say this through gritted teeth, I find myself agreeing with the Prime Minister and the ‘Remain’ campaign.  We should, in all conscience, stay in the European Union.

Certain un-named members of my acquaintances hold a very different view.  We should leave, they say, close the borders to all foreigners and stop the Polish and the Portuguese coming over and taking our jobs.  All they do is come over, sign up for child benefit and send that back to their home country.  To those individuals who have expressed that opinion to me, I say this: Why do people come over from Portugal and Poland (and other countries) in the first instance?  Because the jobs are vacant and available!  If we British are too lazy to take those jobs, why not bring people in from other nations and welcome them?

Another view held by the ‘Leave’ campaign is that Britain will somehow lose its national identity if we stay in the EU.  Really?  This country has been in the EuroZone (or ‘Common Market’ as it was once known) since 1973 and I don’t see any loss of the British-ness so beloved by Europe.  We are still able to travel to other countries and destroy their pubs and clubs, shouting racist obscenities and beating the holy shit out of citizens of the host nation purely for the crime of supporting the opposing football team.  Doesn’t that just make you feel proud?  So don’t worry, UKIP, we can remain in the EU and still be British.

It is very likely that the EU Referendum is the primary reason why the Conservatives won the last General Election, held in May 2015.  As early as 2013 they promised it during the next Parliament should they win, and lo and behold they did.  I thought I would throw that thought in there.

Another random thought: the Leave campaign tell us that up to a million jobs could be created if Britain frees itself from the shackles of EU regulation; while the Remain campaign say an equivalent number of jobs could be lost as car manufacturers, for example, leave Britain to find cheaper EU countries in which to mass-produce.

Nigel Farage and his lot point to Norway and Switzerland, two countries very much on the European map but not member states of the EU.  They are still able to deal, or trade with the EU, but are not constricted by its laws on agriculture and fishing, for example.  And both, sadly, are still able to produce the most dreadful entries for  the Eurovision Song Contest.

The Remain campaign also point to Norway and Switzerland; however it is with the proviso that they are still bound by EU regulations without having any say whatsoever on how those regulations are formed and passed.  Thus it would ever be the same for Britain; bound by rules passed by pin-striped pen-pushers in Brussels without having had our ten pence worth during their creation.

Remember, racists, that as much as people from Portugal have the right to come over here and take ‘your’ jobs away from you, you have the same rights to travel to Portugal – and indeed any of the 27 other nations in the EU – and work and live there.  And you can still buy The Sun there.  The more I think about it, the more I have become convinced that we as a nation must stay in the European Union.  The pros, in my view, far outweigh the cons.  And I get the feeling that the majority of Britain will agree with me on June 23.  x

Yesterday, U.S. pop singer Kesha got stung by the courts, who told her that she was not allowed to exit her contract with Sony because she claimed that her former producer and mentor, Dr. Luke, had raped, physically and mentally assaulted her, and generally messed with her mind.  I have a number of issues with this, as you might expect.

Record contracts are notoriously difficult to get out of – just ask George Michael (Innervision & Sony), or Prince (Warner Bros.).  Especially if you sign with one of the major labels.  Oh, when they want you, they wine you, dine you, and mostly make you believe that all is well with the world.  I also believe that they make every effort to stop you from reading the small print in too much detail.  For it is there that you will find clauses which tell you that you must produce a certain number of albums over a certain period of time; they have artistic approval over said albums; you cannot record for anyone else without their say-so – yes, even guest appearances, in short, they own you for the duration of the contract.

I’ll let you into a little secret.  I am a musician myself, and once upon a time (about thirty years ago) I dreamed of a record contract, fame and fortune just like everybody else.  But that dream began to fade as I found out in ever greater detail how archaic these contracts were, and that you lose your identity as an artist once you sign one of these things.  That, and the fact that no record company has ever approached me with a view to signing with them.  Turns out you need a lot more than I’ve got to be a rock or a pop star.

Anyway, I ranted about this issue on Facebook yesterday.  Record contracts are as archaic as the ones the Hollywood film studios handed out to their star actors during its ‘Golden Era.’ (Basically, up to around 1948 but continuing after on a diminishing scale to about 1967.)  Now these were in many ways remarkably similar to a record contract of today.  When you signed for a particular studio – let’s say, Warner Bros. – they owned you.  You had to behave in public, you had to conform to whatever image the public had of you, you were told what movies you would appear in with whichever director, fellow cast and crew.  A few actors tried to break out of this – James Cagney and Bette Davis among them – but they always came back.  A few actors – Paul Muni was one – were clever enough to make sure that script and director choice were built in to their contracts, but for many others the lure of fame was too great and they signed without reading the small print.

Oh, and the other thing was, if you objected to a movie, director, any other aspect of the production or otherwise generally caused troubled, you could be placed on ‘suspension,’ (i.e. not allowed to work at all), or ‘loaned’ to another studio, and crucially that period of time was added on to the end of the contract.  Olivia de Havilland signed a 7-year deal in 1934 at the age of 18 and when she thought it ran out in 1941, she found she still had to work out the periods of time that she had been placed on suspension in the past.  She took her employers (Warner Bros., remember) to court in 1943 and won.  This was a landmark judgement and one which, over the next quarter of a century, saw the eventual dissolution of the Studio System and its draconian contracts.

Although Warner Bros. are no longer able to force actors to sign these contracts, there is still nothing to stop them from doing so to their pop stars.  They didn’t sign Kesha, Sony did, but as she discovered, once you sign, you are trapped.  If you look at a typical record contract, you will find almost everything in it designed to benefit the company, not the artist.  For example, if the company is unhappy with the product or you simply don’t shift enough units, they can drop you like a sack of shit.  They can terminate the contract at any time.  Why can the artist not do the same?  Many artists feel that the record company (hereinafter referred to as ‘the label’) has not done enough to promote an album, whose failure the label then blames on the artist!  It’s got to be a two-way street.  If a label calls time on the deal, then the artist should also have the same rights, regardless of whether, in Kesha’s case, there are any foundations in the allegations she made against Dr. Luke.

Now that Kesha and her label are locked in legal dispute, she has found that she cannot record any new music at all.  None.  If she did, the master recordings would automatically become the property of Sony.  That’s another thing that has stung many artists in the past – they don’t own the master tapes of their own songs.  When Prince was in dispute with his label in the early 1990s, he found them releasing albums of substandard material just to fill out his contract; a fact he had no control over.  He came up with the brilliant idea of renaming himself with an unpronounceable squiggle, which meant that he could record independently of his label while they bashed out compilations of unreleased rubbish.  Kesha obviously does not want (or is now contractually prevented from) to do this.  In conclusion for this, artists should be allowed to own the master tapes of their recordings once they separate themselves contractually from the label.

Kesha claims that she is tied to several companies which are owned by Sony, and controlled by Dr. Luke.  Sony deny this.  They claim that if she records for Sony again, she need not have any contact with Dr. Luke.  Kesha has the right, as I said earlier, to terminate a contract on the grounds that she is unhappy with it.  Dr. Luke denies her allegations, and countersued her for breach of contract.  The judges, in all the judgements so far, have sided with Dr. Luke and Sony.  There are some legal loopholes in the U.S. system which are cowardly and allow for those with the most expensive lawyers to generally walk away scot free.  First, is the issue of jurisdiction.  As well as federal law in the U.S., we also have state law, and it seems that because the offences that Kesha alleges took place in California, therefore the New York judges were not in a position to rule on it.  So why is the case being heard in New York, then?

Second of all is another loophole, that of the statute of limitations.  That means that if the offences took place more than a certain amount of time ago, then they cannot be accused of it in court.  That too is ridiculous.  Third, and most damaging of all, is the statement made by Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich, who said “rape isn’t necessarily an act of gender hatred, so can’t be considered a hate crime.”

What the f***?

Rape is not a hate crime?  Coming from a Supreme Court Judge?  That is madness right there, folks, in your face and up your ass.  In addition, Justice Kornreich wrote: “[Kesha’s] claims of insults about her value as an artist, her looks and her weight are insufficient to constitute extreme, outrageous conduct intolerable in a civilized society.”  Holy crud!  So now a judge can determine how upset Kesha can be over the alleged rape, mental and physical torture – if indeed it took place, which I don’t see the judge denying.

To sum up: although she alleges her boss raped, verbally and physically abused her, she must still record for the record label that he controls (Kemosabe Records, owned by Sony).  It doesn’t really matter to me whether they are true or not, she ought to be able to tear up her contract if she is unhappy with Dr. Luke’s treatment of her as an artist, which she evidently is.  If the allegations are true, then this judgement of two days ago shows an astonishing lack of respect for the law, and for Kesha as an artist, as a woman, and as a member of our society.  There is an enormous amount of online support for Kesha, including myself, which is generally of the opinion that I have stated – that she should be allowed to part with Dr. Luke as of now and then perhaps take the allegations of abuse forward on a separate legal basis. x

An astonishing eleven million documents were leaked from law firm Mossack Fonseca which detailed how the rich and famous – not to mention the politically powerful – used this tax haven in Panama to avoid paying income tax in their own respective countries.   It’s already more or less brought down the government in Iceland, and people are out on the streets protesting even as I type.  And depending on what else is revealed in this vast array of documentation, who knows what may follow.   However, the kind of protest currently being seen in Iceland is highly unlikely to be repeated here in the United Kingdom.  Here, we prefer to take to Facebook, moan and complain for a while behind the sanctity of our computer screens, and then log off to go and watch Pointless.

Since David Cameron became our Prime Minister in 2010, the Government – largely made up of upper-class Eton-fed ex-public schoolboys – has adopted a more or less ‘who gives a f***’ attitude towards the British people.  They know that when a scandal or some less than favourable news story breaks, all they have to do is sweat it out for a while and then it will all go away.  By way of an example, look what happened when it was revealed that Iain Duncan Smith charged the taxpayer (not David Cameron’s father, obviously) £39 for a breakfast at The Ivy in London?  Facebook went nuts for about 24 hours and it all went away.  Sure, it still pops up now and again, but nothing the Government cannot handle.  Speaking of IDS, his recent resignation as Work & Pensions Secretary came as a knee-jerk reaction to waking up one morning with a sensation that he couldn’t identify; it was something he had never experienced before.  It was called a conscience.

What could damage the Government is the upcoming referendum on whether the United Kingdom should stay as part of the European Union or not.  Europe has always been an issue that has split the Conservative Party more or less right down the middle; if the country votes to opt out of Europe, then that spells the end of Mr. Cameron’s tenure as Prime Minister, and he might as well hand over the keys to No.10 Downing Street to Boris Johnson right away.  If the country votes to stay in, as I suspect it might, then it will be business as usual for David Cameron and Boris will just have to wait his turn to become Tory leader.

In the United Kingdom we have an inept and quite frankly corrupt Government whose business and policy decisions are based upon favouring their friends and relatives in business and they are completely disinterested in the approximately 99.9% of the population who didn’t go to Eton, or who are unable to fiddle this country’s tax laws to run fake and dodgy deals in Panama.  “We are all in this together,” they tell us, all the while helping themselves to tax dodges, leaving the lower paid members of society to actually pay those taxes that provide our schools, hospitals, and Iain Duncan Smith’s breakfast.  It’s outrageous.  We should be marching to Westminster in our hundreds of thousands, demanding this Government be brought down.  Every last one of the cabinet must resign.  They are all in it together, not us.  It depends, of course, on your definition of “it.”  The disabled face losing £30 a week from their benefits, while Eric Pickles spends £500,000 a year on limousine travel.  The minimum wage is set at around £7 an hour, while George Osborne – possibly our most unqualified and inept Chancellor – pockets £500,000 from the sale of his “second home” (originally paid for by – guess who – the taxpayer).

How many more scandals must break loose before the British people wake up and start smelling the corruption that has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, closed hundreds of our valuable libraries and other public services, and made a hypocrite of our Prime Minister, who in 2012 blasted “comedian” Jimmy Carr for dodging income tax while he knew that his own father had done the same?  In 1642, Civil War broke out in England because the King (Charles I) was thought to be corrupt, and while I am not advocating war – or indeed any kind of violence whatsoever – I certainly advocate protest of a peaceful kind that will not go away until every last member of our Government resigns. x