Day 1968: Rational : INTEGRAL : Sterile : Eternal

Wednesday:


"If you've done nothing wrong / You've got nothing to fear
"If you've something to hide / You shouldn't even be here"

That is the opening of the song INTEGRAL from the PET SHOP BOYS fabshious new album FUNDAMENTAL and Daddy Richard has had it on continuous loop since he first heard it.

Who would have thought that those icons of emotional minimalism and wry detachment would have had such a capacity for INCANDESCENT RAGE?! This is the blistering attack of a betrayed lover and you don't have to look very far to find the deserving object of the Boys' scorn.

The Project.

Conformity, uniformity, technology,
for your protection, for your own good,
like a self-programmed machine the New Labour Project is on a mission, almost a holy cause,
to improve you, to upgrade you,
for you own good,
whether you want it or not, whether you voted for it or not,
and they won't stop, they won't listen to you, they already know what is good for you,
and if you resist then you are a threat, a concern,
they are relentless, implacable, superior, empty,
they are CYBERMEN.

I can already see the video in my fluffy head – an endless stream of numbered plastic cards falls past the camera, each and every photograph the dead metal face of a Cyberman.

The only security that the Cybermen have to offer is the security of the dead, to be a corpse in a walking coffin with a cold metal heart.

Is this an exaggeration? Is this the extreme end point? Does anyone think that if Tony Blair took it into his head to upgrade the lot of us that isn't exactly what he would go and do?

Cybermen don't commit crime (unless you count genocide, of course) so that's the Home Office finally sorted.

Cybermen don't get sick, that's the NHS fixed.

Cybermen don't get old or die, pensions crisis avoided.

And Cybermen all do what the Cyber Controller tells them, well that's the end of back bench rebellions and embarrassing protests in parliament square.

No crime, no sickness, no death, no protests. You would have to be out of your mind not to want that.

Only Humans 2.0 deserve Human Rights.

Crikey, now I'm REALLY worried!



Go and BUY this song.

Find a place to stand one kilometre from PARLIAMENT.

Turn up the volume to VERY LOUD.

And press PLAY!