Last Christmas I wrote about the Tory lead Government’s plans to attack the poorest and most vulnerable people in society, cutting benefits, cutting wages and cutting worker’s rights. In the news as this year closes we hear about dead icons, football managers being fired, celebrity chef’s allegedly taking drugs and former X factor winners sleeping with teenage girls..  so while deciding what I should write about I read a blog by a colleague of mine about music. He said that I wouldn’t like it because I wouldn’t know the song. He was right, I didn’t know the song (she’s your lover now), but it made me wonder what it is about a song that touches some people so profoundly.

There have been thousands of books about a million pop stars; there have been endless quotes about music, from Shakespeare to Marley. The late reggae legend is credited with saying “the good thing about music is when it hits you, you feel no pain”. Oh contraire!

The beauty of a great song is that you feel all of the artist’s pain.

I have read many other quotes about music such as Plato’s “music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything”, and Charles Darwin’s “if I had my life to live over again I would (read some poetry and) listen to some music at least every week”, and then are simpler less deep quotes such as Bob Dylan’s “play it fucking loud!”

I think someone also once said that music is the soundtrack to your life. As clichéd as that is, it is for me the truest of remarks. Whether it be the song which topped the charts when your first born arrived or even the song you played while your first born was conceived, music has the ability to ignite and remind the most vivid memories. People spend months deliberating over what should be the first song they dance to as a married couple at their ceremony, and some spend years considering what should be played as they leave this earth. My choice by the way, on our wedding day was Jeff Heeley Band’s Angel Eyes, although the sentiment in John Miles’ Music (was my first love and it will be my last) was extremely tempting.. I am yet to decide on my swan song.

You can choose music to suit your mood and you can choose music to set the mood. There are songs that are generally accepted as great, such as Queens classic Bohemian Rhapsody, which always seems to top polls when voters are asked to name the best song ever. There are also multi-million sellers that are absolute drivel, but somehow manage to capture the imagination of consumers and listeners such as Joe Dolce’s Shaddup your face, which for some reason kept Ultravox from the number one spot, despite Vienna being a more obvious choice.

Some people look for sublime crescendos, while others associate with lyrics and others just like the beat. Whatever your taste, there is something for just about everybody.

Some people will be influenced by the music their parents listened to. As a child in the seventies, our home was full of 1960’s classics and later with 70’s country rock like The Eagles and Jackson Brown and Bad Company, with a helping of Charlie Rich and Cliff Richard. I certainly blame/ thank my parents for my random tastes in music. I can happily listen to Elvis Presley, the second highest selling artist of all time, yet just as easily sing along to Billy Ray Cyrus’ Achey Breaky Heart. There are times I like to listen to sombre music from bands like The Smiths and there times I like to listen to meaningless 80’s pop songs, depending on my mood.

This time of year there are always dollops of cheesy offerings filling the airwaves and there is often a debate about the best Christmas song, I am torn between Muds Lonely this Christmas and the wonderful Fairy-tale of new York, described by one as the perfect song to sing drunk, by Kirsty McColl and The Pogues.

If there needed to be proof that music is in the eye of the beholder and that there is something for everything, take a look at the back catalogue of the all-time top selling  band The Beatles, who have sold over 600million records. They are responsible for giving us such classics as the anthemic Hey Jude, the thumping Twist and Shout and the unforgettable Yellow Submarine.

People who say todays music is rubbish are simply wrong. Today’s music, whether it is to our taste or not is tomorrows classics. To people for whom it means something today it will continue to do so, it will bring to life their memories and fill their thoughts with sadness and joy. If music is the food of life , we shall never starve.

Last December a 23 year old woman was gang raped on a bus in Delhi. The assault was so depraved and violent that the victim had to have part of her intestine removed, and later died from her injuries.

Six men were charged and four were sentenced to death after being found guilty. One suspect died while in custody and a sixth, who was a minor in the eyes of Indian law, received the maximum sentence possible.

The shocking case caused understandable outrage, sparking violent protests on the streets of Delhi which resulted in the law being changed to allow the death penalty.

What is more shocking is that this was not an isolated case carried out by a group of exceptionally vile men; this is quite common with remarkably similar crimes being reported with alarming regularity.

There were an estimated 25,000 reported rape cases in India last year alone. Between 1971 and 2012 the number has increase by 902%.

A 22 year old photojournalist was gang raped in Mumbai by four men who had allegedly previously raped at least four other women. They believed they would get away with the crimes because the thought the authorities would not bother to investigate just another rape case. The accused also threatened the victim, saying if she did go to the police they would post videos of the attack on the internet. Undeterred the brave victim did go to the police and the attackers were arrested.

In a separate attack just 10 days later, a 3 year old girl was allegedly raped at play school.

Her family were reluctant to report the rape at first as the accused family were said to be rungs above the victim’s family on the social ladder. Police in India often treat accusations of rape as trivial, particularly when the victim is poor.

Violence against women in India is commonplace. It starts in childhood. Gender selective abortions and female infanticide mean that males outweigh the female population massively. Worryingly high levels of child marriage, domestic violence and teen pregnancy are seen as acceptable by many. Thousands of young females disappear every year, sold into slavery or marriage (or both) while the authorities take little interest and in many cases are bought off by the perpetrators, such is the level of corruption and disrespect for females. When rapes are reported it often takes over a month before police even register the complaint and the accused are often left free to threaten the victims.

 

A recent survey in the country showed that 57% of Indian boys and 53% of Indian girls thought that wife beating was justified.

The change in the law will do little to stop these horrific crimes when the attitudes of the country’s population are so laid back about such abuse. It will take generations to change the behaviour of men and the willingness of some women to turn a blind eye or in some cases even be party to the actions of their men.

Of over 700 alleged rapes in New Delhi last year only the high profile bus gang rape ended in conviction.  

While India appears to tolerate or simply accept rape and abuse of women, it recently passed law banning homosexuality. Being homosexual was decriminalised in a landmark verdict in 2009 but the supreme courts in India overturned that verdict this week. The decision further highlights the appalling attitudes of the authorities in India.

India and its people should hang their heads in shame. They are the people who must eradicate this behaviour by educating their young, respecting females and prosecuting those guilty of the crimes. It is unacceptable for these incidents to continue and the world must put pressure on the Indian authorities and the 1.2 billion people that live there to put a stop to it.

Sadly, one year on from what the world hoped was a turning point, little or nothing seems to have been done to change it.

 

 

                   

                                                                    Nelson Mandela 1918 - 2013

In June this year, I wrote an article about Nelson Mandela. It was written at a time when the world’s media were camped outside his house waiting to break the news to the world that he had died.

I wrote how he would be remembered for his dignity and courage and for dismantling Apartheid.

Last night the world began to mourn the death of Mandela, in his 95^th year, as he finally succumbed to the lung infection he had battled for months.

Tributes flooded TV screens and social media sites as politicians past and present, people who spent time with him in captivity, and friends and family members queued to heap praise on the man who many can honestly say is the most influential figure of our time.

I wrote in the summer that Mandela was no saint, being the co-founder of a militant group in the 1960’s, which led him being jailed for attempting to overthrow a government. I also wrote of the dangers of prohibiting people like former EDL leader Tommy Robinson from having a voice, and how he could become a free speech and human rights martyr.   

In contrast to those celebrating the life and mourning the loss of Mandela, there were right wing political commentator’s whinging about Margaret Thatcher getting less favourable coverage. There were left wing supporters attacking the right for once calling for Mandela to be treated as a criminal and a terrorist.

Whatever the opinion of Mandela’s early life, those political wanabees could learn many a lesson from the first black president of South Africa’s later life. When Nelson Mandela emerged from prison in 1990, his attitude was that of reconciliation rather than resentment or revenge, his demeanour full of dignity and strength not hostility.

The two sides bickering like children over who loved him or hated him the most are futile and pointless, disrespectful and distinctly trivial when compared to the fight Mandela fought. With hardly room for cigarette paper between the beliefs of the left and the right in this country, it is hard to believe that so recently in South Africa, people actually believed that the rights and lives of people were decided by something as simple as the colour of their skin. It seems ludicrous today that people with dark skin were not allowed to ride on the same bus or buy food from the same shop as people with white skin. There simply is no justifiable argument to support those beliefs. These were the evils Mandela was fighting.

I read somewhere among the tributes last night, someone had written “let us pray that we see the likes of him again”.

I commented “let us pray we never have to”.

I and millions of people living in South Africa and around the world, believe that thanks to Mandela, we never will.

As hard as it to believe the struggle Mandela and his fellow black people faced in those days, it is even harder to imagine the sacrifice he made in pursuit of his beliefs.   Offered conditional freedom years before his eventual release, Nelson Mandela had the courage of his convictions and the strength to say no to that freedom. He believed that his release had to be unconditional, and he gave up his right to a life, his right to see his family grow up and his right for freedom so that others could have those things today. On his release he refused to call for Black preference or to fight for the rights of just black people. He wanted freedom and equality for all.  

He famously said during his trial in 1964 “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

 

When he passed away last night he left the world a place much closer to those ideals than the place he began his life.

As he made his exit, in a final twist of fate, the story of his life “Mandela: Long walk to freedom” was coincidentally premiering in London.  This coincidence will quite likely fuel the conspiracy theories that he either died months ago or even that he is still alive, and that it cannot be just a coincidence that he died on the day of his film premier. There are always such theories when the most powerful and influential people in history die.

It is no coincidence either that Nelson Mandela will be in the history books forever as a leader, a politician and man of greatness.