Thirteen Years

Back in January 2022 one of the musicians/songwriters I wrote about was Ross Wilson of Blue Rose Code (that piece about him and one of his songs is here). This week Ross has a new song (officially released tomorrow) called Thirteen Years. 

[Video released since writing this, added it here]

The Conservative party have been in power in Westminster since 2010 (albeit in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats for the first five years of that period) and what with that and the Brexit disaster things are pretty bad in the UK right now. The Conservatives are employing the usual right-wing tactic of steering attention towards immigration and away from everything their party and its allies have done (and not done) to cause chaos, hunger and misery for so many people. Most of the media are its allies too, it is quite clear, and they also add royal ‘news’ into the mix for those who find the immigration angle too tasteless and prefer some distraction (“yes, isn’t it terrible about those poor people but what is Kate wearing this week?”). 

 

There are some in the public eye talking about the state of the UK, the Government and its terrible policies, but we need far more to speak out to counteract the waves of sewage put out by most of our media (and that’s before the tsunami of coronation hogwash coming our way later this spring). We need songs, poems, art, and everyone who can doing more (and more loudly) to fight the power and all it’s doing to harm people and the environment. Blue Rose Code’s new song is a great example of how to protest. I heard it for the first time this week on one of my favourite radio shows (The Roddy Hart Show on BBC Scotland) and I hope to hear it soon on other stations in the UK, on other shows. It's no good just playing antiquated protest songs from times gone by – we need the protest songs of today as well. It’s been quite the week for the BBC (what with the Gary Lineker story, the David Attenborough story, non-stop stories about their news bias in recent years) and I totally understand why many people have given up on that organisation entirely. I still have a tiny hope that it can be reclaimed from the forces of selfishness and misinformation and still pay a licence fee (just). I did write a little BBC poem earlier this week (I tweaked it a little from the first version that was on Twitter and elsewhere, it’s posted below).

 

But back to today’s song – Thirteen Years is officially released tomorrow [out now] and all proceeds go to the Scottish charity Children 1^st. You can buy it from Bandcamp (I did, pic above) and many other places. It’s really good (all Blue Rose Code music is) so buy it, request it, and then request it again.

Plaything

 

If the BBC is a football

then lately it’s had the blues,

it’s been hogged by the team called ‘me first’,

target: narrowing all the views.

 

There’s been talk about freedom and culture

whilst kicking the truth out of news,

and a dribbled old line about honour,

a tactic they’ll always reuse.

 

Now the field may have never been even

but there’s one thing we cannot excuse, 

Tories never lose sleep over people,

it’s the buck that they cannot refuse. 

RF 2023