It Just Goes To Show You Can't Be Too Careful

David Mitchell seems to want to bring the Internet down with his request to put in the above phrase to every and any comment section you feel tempted to contribute to. People are still posting it to the original piece as I write. So often I sit with itchy fingers after reading much rubbish on such pages and never yet have I overcome the control rods of enlightened ignorance and actually posted anything. Yesterday I succumbed. And now the madness begins.

Next in our list of eighties music retrieved from the garage is Cupid and Psyche '85 by Scritti Politti. I played this album over and over and I struggle to work out why - it is fey and twee and all those other words which describe the effete voice of Green Gartside. He was on a BBC 4 programme about Rough Trade Records at the weekend (I've just realised that I typed "Rough Trade" into Google just then) and I cannot match his speaking voice with the Ultra-Jon-Anderson style of his singing. I'm not sure I would have picked up on this LP if it had just been released recently but at the time, studio trickery was all the rage. Good to play loud when travelling fast. It is also not damaged by having what sounds like some manic Radio 1 DJs on the remix of one of the tracks. Along with Into the Gap, this seems the archetypal album for which the words "Drum Programming" were invented as a credit. Listen and get back-combing.

The cluster bombs! I forgot the cluster bombs! I've been meaning to write about this for days because the papers don't seem to be making much if it. I can only hope that this is the end of it and everything else - Cluster bombs, Landmines, Hollow Point Ammunition, all of the terrible inventory of weapons that go just that little bit further in their defined function. This is where I return to the idea that it seems ludicrous to have a defined boundary for what is acceptable in warfare and what is not. The trouble is that this leads to the view that we should ban every weapon, obviously a ludicrous idea but it does then break-out of the argument over where we should draw the line over "acceptable" weapons and start talking about drawing the line in the range of what targets are acceptable. Anything with the remotest risk of harming civilians is out and as far as I am aware all the existing treaties already say this and still the heavy loss of civilian life raises little comment outside of the few minutes around when it actually occurs. No agreement can cover the red mist that overtakes any and all soldiers in the heat of battle - you just do not see personnel poring over ring-binders containing all the latest treaties. I am now wondering whether any military outfit of even the most regimented country actually carries such material around with it. The absurdity of it all is just lost because there is no visible boundary out in the field - it all just happens and is reacted to. Anyway - a good day for the world. Respect due.