Month: June 2016

My friends in the city used a word to describe the roughest neighborhoods: rampy. These tended to be the blocks with the worst violence, the most shootings, the most recently paralyzed young men in wheelchairs, with new ramps attached to their homes so they might get in and out.

Days after the independence referendum Chris warned that it would be a travesty of democracy to allow Scottish MPs any say over English laws. Chris wrote an article in the Telegraph just after the indyref in which he fulminated against the injustice and unfairness of allowing Scottish MPs to foist socialist policies on England. Funnily enough, he’s pretty laid back about the idea of allowing English MPs to have a say over Scottish laws and foist reactionary conservative policies on Scotland. Scotland having its laws made, its budget set, nuclear weapons imposed on it, and its social security system ravaged all on the say so of a single Scottish Tory MP with the aid of his English Tory pals isn’t a travesty of democracy, it’s just how Westminster works. Suck it up Scotland, is the message from the Tories.

Actually where we are rarely affects what we write,” Chris admits, “except when we were in South America and we heard a lot of reggaeton. We’re the opposite of Damon Albarn and – what’s it called? – world music. We don’t go to Africa and come back with lots of African vibes. Wherever we go it always ends up 80s electro,” he admits, laughing.

Chris Lowe