never Miss a beat

Young? Bored? Generally unchallenged? Lost the will? Bugger all to do? Whatever it is you are in Britain right now you’ve probably got five minutes… If you put “David Cameron hates…” into Google, it automatically fills “the poor”, “john bercow”, “muslims”, “young people”. On the other hand “David Cameron loves…” produces “Angry Birds”. The world’s words, not mine. Quite a fun game, nonetheless. Or so my Twitter agrees, my interactions tab’s suggesting new versions of it, such as “George Osborne…” (“looks evil”) or “David Cameron is…” (“a pri… Oh sorry time’s up! Back to work. Keep calm and GET A RUDDY MOVE ON. We’ve all got to do twice as much now because the country’s not going to get itself out of this mess all on its own…

Prime Minister David Cameron has lost us all. He’s a figure of public ridicule. Noel Edmonds seems relatable in comparison - and he’s got a bloody good banker. Nobody has any “respect” for “LOL, DC”. But then nobody has any “respect” for anyone now, right? That’s why the riots happened last summer. Young people are only interested in themselves, their Nike Airforce Ones, ROFLcopter and the latest installation of Halo on the X-Box 360. In Cameron’s head this is what DA YOOF of Britain are saying today: “OI! If you can’t rap Ill Manors and fly a BMX off a high-rise building while eating Chicken Cottage in a Kappa tracksuit, you can’t tell me what to do, innit?” As Cameron’s government continue to punish Britain’s young it’s really starting to feel like N-Dubz and Vicky Pollard are the Tories’ gauge on the demographic. But lack of respect is a by-product of a deeper issue – a communication problem. We’re not connected with each other and we’re not connected with government. Any attempt at reaching out by politicians seems a ploy for poll points and newspaper headlines and totally disrespectful of us, the electorate. Their actions never just seem consequential of a job in public service. And it breeds a culture of US and THEM. US at our desks Googling “David Cameron eating pasty” and THEM trying to work out what LOL stands for.

And onto today. David Cameron’s planning to create even more hurdles for the most vulnerable portion of British society (DA YOOF) by removing housing benefits for the under 25s. Goes without saying that this is total catpiss. And for me, reading this story when I got home from a massive time at Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend, it just destroyed my buzz. My buzz got Sudden Death Syndrome. My buzz had been built up over 48 hours of urban pop insania and general celebration of life. Everything I was excited about in my twenties – basically San Miguel and Rihanna getting her sound thingy re-attached to her hotpants by random fans in the crowd – fell flat. Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend went far beyond my expectations. Imagine, the “antiquated” BBC investing in an event to give something back to Hackney and its youth. I’m not going to go into the debates about the pragmatic issues involved in ensuring Hackney dwellers were the main beneficiaries, etc, because I don’t have a 1st in Poli-Sci from Cambridge. All I’m going to say is, as an observer, Radio 1 collected one of the most impressive line-ups I’ve ever seen at a two-day music event in terms of Huge Superstar Pull, they did it in a place far from a branch of Nobu and people, young people who it was dedicated to, went completely bonkers… in a (mostly) really nice way. (My mate did sort of a wee bit get slightly headbutted in the face during Niggaz In Paris but apart from that it was EXACTLY like Wimbledon).

Florence And The Machine, Nicki Minaj, Jack White, Nas, Rihanna, Jay-Z and Kanye West… global phenomena, all in Hackney, all speaking to the crowds, all showing an interest. Some to the point of hilarity – Jay-Z and Kanye were talking to the audience on Saturday night like they were ambassadors addressing an underclass in New York City (perhaps an insight into how the riots were interpreted on an international scale). The BBC should feel proud. It was a great party and everyone behaved. The youth en masse were provoked by euphoric beats and strobe lighting and some of them drank beer while sporting OBEY baseball caps and nobody got hurt. WTF, Broken Britain? It’s just typical that when you do something good nobody’s there to bear witness or offer encouragement.