Welcome to Bushell On The Blog – the web-page that is proud to drink Top Totty beer.

Feb 3. Top Totty ale has been kicked out of Parliamentary bars after feminist MPs objected to the glamour model silhouette on the label. It’s believed to be the first time the phrase “the Totty’s off” has been used outside of Walford. Obscure Labour MP Kate Green, who looks more of an Old Peculiar kind of woman, has brewed up this storm in a beer glass prompting speculation about which beers she’d prefer to see. Possibly a Miliband Mild & Bitter. The first instinct of the joyless clown is to ban anything they don’t like, and this is a depressing 1980s mindset is gaining ground again, with campaign group Turn Your Back On Page 3 boring the tits off of the Leveson Inquiry. But don’t these middle class control freaks patronise women far more than the newspapers they hate? They paint glamour models as simpletons manipulated by scheming men, when in reality many are bright and strong-willed, exploiting their own lucky genes to make a few bob and escape from the poverty they were born into. It’s their decision, their choice. If you don’t like Page 3 don’t buy the papers that run topless shots. If you don’t like Top Totty, boycott bars that sell it. But stop trying to tell the rest of us how to live our lives. The real Commons bar scandal is that our taxes subsidise the prices.

Kate Green: Scottish-born divorcee, elected via a women-only shortlist, previous claim to infamy, failing to declare an interest when tabling an amendment... which part of this surprises you?

I don’t know whether Chris “Buff” Huhne was driving or not, but he’s in the right seat now... the ejector seat. It’s just a shame we can’t get shot of his barking mad energy policies so easily.

The US republican race has moved to Nevada. Ah, Las Vegas, home to endless buffets and wedding chapels – so, perfect for Newt you might think. But I reckon the big winners are likely to be Mitt and Ron Paul. Here’s why. The large Mormon vote in the state will swing massively behind Romney. Gingrich knows he’s blown it, while Santorum hasn’t bothered campaigning here. Ron Paul on the other hand has a strong campaign machine in Nevada, and a philosophy that ticks all the Vegas boxes. His stand on public land is popular, and he’s right on the Constitution, pulling out of foreign wars, and beating the state out of the lives of the citizens. Ron Paul is the freedom candidate. He’s the man.

Feb 1st. What more fitting development for a Big Brother society than the Two Minute Hate? Fred ‘The Shred’ Goodwin has been stripped of his knighthood, two days after the current RBS boss was bullied into handing back his bonus. Who next? Former RBS chairman Sir Tom McKillop? Or Sir Callum McCarthy, of the FSA? I’m not sticking up for Goodwin who drove RBS to the brink of bankruptcy, but this kind of demonization diverts our attention from the real problem. Fred’s a totem, a smoke screen. Why not turn the righteous spotlight of wrath on the politicians who let it happen like ‘Lord’ Prescott and ‘Lord’ Mandy Mandelson, the man who was always “intensely relaxed” about the filthy rich, especially those with yachts. If Fred can be stripped of his title, then why not LORD Archer, LORD Taylor, BARONESS Udin, LORD Hanningford, LORD Browne and the rest of the lying, cheating, fiddling scumbags? When will we wake up to the scandalous corruption, avarice and largesse that runs through Brussels – the real seat of power? My heart goes out to Mandy’s chum Tony Blair who is struggling to get through these difficult times on a measly £45million. Let’s hope our former leader isn’t forced to flog one of his seven houses.

Jan 30. Dave Lee’s family and friends did him proud today. More than a thousand mourners crammed into Canterbury Cathedral, including many of the comedian’s famous pals such as Jim Davidson, Chas Hodges, and Shaun Williamson. The 80minute service was funny, moving and magnificent in equal measure. Richard Digance wondered if it was a coincidence that on the day the 18-stone funny-man died 67 Little Chefs had closed up. While Bobby Davro said he was paying a tribute because the alternative had been to carry the coffin. Kent-born Dave, 64, was a wonderfully warm comic who could light up a stage with his smile. So naturally fashionable TV executives didn’t want anything to do with him. Audiences did though. Dave’s annual charity show at the Marlowe Theatre sold out within hours of the tickets going on sale. He will be posthumously awarded the Freedom of the City in a ceremony at the Guildhall tomorrow. The Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, the Very Reverend Robert Willis said that Dave has now also been given “the freedom of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Hymns included The Lord Is My Shepherd and Jerusalem. Dave, a life-long Spurs fan who died of pancreatic cancer two weeks ago, was awarded the MBE in 2003 for his tireless charity work. I knew him for 25 years and every one of them was a pleasure. Others paying their respects included Gillingham FC boss Paul Scally, Joe Pasquale, Shane Richie, Vicki Michelle, Roger Kitter, Derek Martin and John Altman who read Luke 12. 22 - 32. The service ended with a standing ovation as Dave’s coffin was carried out and the choir sang the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. He will be sorely missed.

* Remember December? David Shameron vetoed EU plans for a Fiscal Union (FU for short) to control the budgets of debt-ridden Eurozone ‘nations’ and was hailed as a hero by the short-sighted. Naturally all of that went down the gurgler today with the PM’s craven but unsurprising u-turn. Cameron has achieved nothing. He’s gone from FU to FA. He didn’t even use the opportunity to cut us a better deal. Anyone who opposes European integration and remains inside the Conservative or Labour parties needs to extract their head from the sand fast, before reality takes them squarely and painfully up the jacksie.

Jan 29. Divers believe they’ve found Horatio Nelson’s sword in the wreck of the HMS Victoria. What a shame we can’t locate his spirit...

Jan 28. Economics explained: ‘experiencing negative growth’ is pretty much what happens to a man when he sees Denise Welch topless.

Jan 27. Newt Gingrich plans to establish manned US bases on the moon and land a man on Mars. Nice, he clearly wants to hook up with his own people again. Humanity’s long term future must involve space exploration of course (especially with Gingrich in the White House). But it’s more likely in the short term that for practical reasons machines will be doing our exploring. What really excites Newt of course is the idea of Lust In Space. Newt probably thinks NASA stands for Nookie At Sensational Altitudes.

Jan 26. In his State Of The Union address, Barack Obama told how the sub-prime mortgage racket created the global economic crisis. Oddly Obama forgot to mention his part in campaigning for the US Community Reinvestment Act – the act that made the whole mess possible.

Jan 25. Apt that the World Economic Forum is meeting at Davos – a Swiss ski resort. The global economy is on the slide... there’s a scale five snow storm coming... and our political leaders can’t see two inches in front of their hooters...

I listened to Nigel Farage speak tonight, he was extremely lucid, and bang on the money. UKIP are increasingly the only political party that makes any sense of the mess we’re in: paying £19billion a year to stay locked in an ailing regional bloc that has ruined our fishermen, hog-ties our small businesses, nobbles our farmers and sticks its tentacles into every aspect of our lives while clinging on desperately to the sacred cow of the Euro... Shameron’s “tough talking” day-trip to Strasbourg today is show-boating plain and simple. It won't change the way their judges over-rule our own be-wigged wonders one
iota, but hey, it keeps the Sun happy.

Jan 22. Newt Gingrich pulled off an amazing victory in the US Republican presidential race last night by taking the South Carolina primary and basically doing for Mitt Romney’s chances what he was doing to Calista throughout his second marriage. Newt won by a game-changing 40per cent of the vote. If he carries on like this, it’ll be the biggest boost for Obama since the Navy Seals met Bin Laden.

Jan 20. The Labour Party is taking on the unions, the papers tell us. Ed Miliband is standing up to “bully boy” Len McCluskey in the name of sanity. Of course he is. The phony war between the two clowns was triggered by Dead Ed trying to sell public-sector pay restraint as part of Labour’s allegedly new ‘responsible capitalism’ campaign. The unions are calling it ‘betrayal’. Both sides conveniently forget that the last Labour government imposed exactly the same one per cent cap on public sector pay rises. You’d think Ed would remember, he was Minister for Energy at the time... The truth is it’s all a con. Despite the Parliamentary showboating and hullaballoo, you could barely slip a fag paper between the economic policies of the Coalition and this sorry excuse for a Labour Party. Yet it suits McCluskey to turn on Miliband because it stops his members noticing that he’s not actually fighting the Government, just as it suits Ed to look like he’s toughing it out and having his “Clause 4 moment” fighting for “the soul of Labour” – a party that deserted the people decades ago, betraying all of us with their open-door immigration fiasco and feeble subservience to Brussels. And this would be just as true if the party were led by Prime Minister Cooper or even Chairman Len. No-one represents the interest of the English working classes these days. The time for Labour was yesterday, the time for action is now.

Ed Miliband began calling for a more humane capitalism at Labour conference last year; now politicians of all persuasions are jumping on the bandwagon. Even they realise that people are sick to the back teeth of the parasitical super-rich: bankers, private equity big-shots and hedge fund managers – a breed of tax-swerving, unproductive anti-social parasites rewarding themselves for failure. We bail them out, they give us the finger. And while this new aristocracy prosper, the working class is hung out to dry – jobs are lost and wages are undercut, while our old values (the work ethic, self-improvement) are under-mined by a deformed welfare culture, self-destructive immigration, the victim mentality, emotional incontinence and a limp-wristed judiciary. HMS Blighty is heading for the metaphorical iceberg and which would-be captain has the brains and integrity to put us back on course? Certainly not Ed, whose party abandoned the people to give crony capitalists a leg up in the Noughties, or Shameron, a creature forged in PR and privilege. Let Fred the Shred keep his knighthood to remind us how much the system stinks. We need to start rewarding hard work, industry and creativity again, and pull the rug from under the Gilded Ones.

January 17. RIP Dave Lee, a wonderful comedian and a good friend. Heaven just got funnier.

Jan 14, 2012. Sometimes our lives really are like The Matrix. There isn’t a political debate in this country that acknowledges Actual Reality. Instead debate exists in a virtual world that it suits the establishment for us to believe in. So the argument about the unwanted HS2 rail line is couched purely in terms of money and conservation. We’re told that it’s a clash between the go-ahead forward-thinkers of the Coalition (be still my aching sides) and various toffee-nosed NIMBY protestors. Will ancient woodlands and wildlife habitats be desecrated in the name of “progress”? (No, not really). Or is it all an infuriating waste of money that could be better spent improving the dismal commuter network in the South East, or constructing a decent East-West link. Yes, but... the real story behind HS2 begins and ends with the European Union. It begins in fact back in the Jacque Delors era nearly 20 years ago, when a decision was made to construct a Europe-wide high speed rail network. It has proved financially disastrous on the Continent (ask a Dutchman) and will be here as well. But you know how it is: what the Eurocrats wants, the Eurocrats get. Similarly you may ask why will Scotland get a referendum on “independence” when the whole UK is denied one on EU membership. Again the answer is simple: we only get the democracy Europe wants us to get. It suits the EU to carve up the UK into composite parts; all that ancient history stands in the way of The Project. So the debate is couched in terms of when the referendum should be held, what the question should be, and what currency “free” Scotland would have. No-one asks how “independent” and “free” Scotland could ever hope to be if it removes the “shackle” of British Union only to carry on living under the tightening straightjacket of the European Union. Salmond’s whole case is built on phony nationalisation and weasel words. The union between Scotland and the rest of Britain was a merger not a take-over. There is no yoke of imperialism to throw off. The wily and increasingly smug Salmond isn’t proposing “independence” but the dissolution of the UK. The real radical alternative is a free United Kingdom, with devolved parliaments, operating as an independent democratic federation outside of the economic follies and bureaucratic quicksand of the Brussels dreamers.

Leading Republican candidate Mitt Romney has been exposed as a callous corporate ghoul – not by the Democrats but by his own right-wing rivals. Romney made his millions as a private equity investor with Bain Capital, an enterprise Newt Gingrich categorises as “rich people figuring out clever ways to loot companies” and which Rick Perry dubs “vulture capitalism”. Romney for his part says he likes “being able to fire people”. Yeah, he’s the “sacking candidate” – that’s going to play well with blue collar voters. But is restructuring failing companies now a crime in the US? Odd that a party nominally wedded to free market capitalism should bust Romney’s balls for being a free market capitalist. Gingrich (whose record as a consultant for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not a proud one) now appears to be advocating “capitalism without failure.” How could that work? It’s like Ant without Dec, or the earth without gravity. As we’ve seen in Britain, bail-outs of economic failures amount to nationalism through the back door and are as inefficient as hell. Newt and co don’t want that, they are free marketers to a man, but right now their pressing mission is to kick front-runner Romney out of the running by any means necessary, and that means making ‘Mitt’ look like it’s short for unmitigated disaster (as opposed to Mittens?) As I’ve said before the only Republican candidate with a genuinely alternative economic outlook is the gnomish Ron Paul; and if he runs on the Libertarian ticket he could well hand the election to Obama anyway – if the warring Republicans haven’t done enough damage already.

I happen to believe there is a real alternative involving devolved power, widespread ownership, living inside our means, valuing communities and Making Things again, but it’s not an argument anyone is making. Call me a miserablist but I can’t see any way out of the mess the West is in. Our governments can’t ever repay what they have borrowed, are borrowing and will continue to borrow, in order to continue to over-spend until the crisis topples into global conflict again. But no-one has the guts to say so.

Jan 7. So here we are in the fourth year of the slump, and like the Butchers on EastEnders nothing’s getting any brighter. The Eurozone is more stuffed than Beckham’s pants, and the only light at the end of the tunnel is an on-coming train called World War III. Pessimistic? Consider the evidence: the Eurozone crisis is killing any chance of a global recovery, there is no quick or simple solution to the growing Euro gloom, and the Eurocrats are clearly powerless to avert disaster. On Monday, the French and the Germans will hold yet another emergency summit, this time to discuss Spain which can’t meet its debt payments, and Greece which has run out of dosh again. The best thing the bubbles could do of course is leave the Euro, bring back the drachma, devalue and watch tourism boom. The EU is fighting that sensible option because the Euro has never been about economics, it was and is a political venture, designed to symbolise the Project’s greater (and for a long time hidden) goals – the creation of a lumbering, top-heavy super-state. Brussels can’t accept that Euro membership could ever be temporary and will carry on frantically papering over the cracks like clowns in a silent film... but not indefinitely. Struggling France is likely to lose its triple A status this year and even the Germans won’t be able to carry the weight of the bail-out for too long without stirring up a domestic shit storm. One thing that is guaranteed to flourish in 2012 is extremism. You can already see it: neo-fascism in Hungary, the Red Brigades in Italy, the FN in France, angry bible-bashing populism in the USA, old discredited ‘isms’ reviving in Spain and Greece... and if China devalues, we’ll see the politicians’ love affair with globalization dissolve rapidly into protectionism (not old school protectionism but the new kind we’ve seen a lot of recently - export subsidies, discriminatory bailouts, discriminatory investment measures and so on.) So maybe the Ancient Mayans were right. Batten down the hatches, folks, it’s going to be a rough ride.

Jan 6. Mitt Romney is on course to be the Republican presidential candidate. Iowa wasn’t exactly an over-whelming endorsement for the former Massachusetts governor though, was it, rolling in eight votes ahead of odd-bod Rick Santorum. Apparently Iowa voters found Romney dull – which is the British equivalent of being considered uninteresting in Arbroath. Religious bore Santorum is being touted as the ‘rightwing’ candidate when his voting record shows that economically he is no different from the rest of them, and just as likely to plunge the US into another reckless war, this time against Iran. At least Ron Paul is a genuinely radical alternative, a) he’s anti state expansion, b) he’s not a war-monger and c) he’s a garden gnome.

An alternative (Marxist) view on the Dobson/Norris trial and associated media hysteria here: Racism stinks; Big Brother stinks more.

Jan 2. Dance Craze - my 2-Tone book - is back in stock at HMV, in store and on-line. Great stories from the glory days of Madness, the Specials, Bad Manners, the Beat, Selecter, Judge Dread and the Bodysnatchers. You can get it on line from acid jazz. And like it here (if you like).

Jan 1st 2012. It’s the year of the London Olympics, the Queen’s Jubilee and the second London International Ska Festival. But what else will be worth getting out of bed for? Here’s my guide to some of the biggest and best cultural events and releases of 2012.

In movies, film festivals have been abuzz with talk of Woody Harrelson’s electrifying performance as dirty cop Dave ‘Date Rape’ Brown in Rampart (February). Also due out this year: the eagerly awaited East End Babylon – the Cockney Rejects documentary (April), from the makers of Oil City Confidential; The Hobbit (December); The Avengers (April), The Muppets (Feb) and The Dark Knight Rises (July). Sci-fi fans will welcome John Carter (March – after decades of false starts) and Cloud Atlas (Sept).

Live events: The Boss plays the UK in June, the London Int Ska Fest (featuring The Pioneers, Dandy Livingstone, Buster Shuffle, Neol Davies and many more) takes place from 3rd-6th May at the Islington O2 Academy, Jerry Seinfeld plays Birmingham and Manchester in May, the Stone Roses reunion tour kicks off in June and Rancid headline Rebellion in August. In art, the Turner & The Elements exhibition will be unveiled at the Turner Contemporary Museum in Margate later this month. An early contender for the serious book of the year is Roger Scruton’s clever and challenging Green Philosophy (out this week). Saul David’s All The King’s Men about the history of the British Tommy from the Restoration to Waterloo is published by Viking in February. I don’t do telly previews but Google TV will revolutionise the way we watch and industry bods are excited about Homeland, Boss, Hit & Miss, Alcatraz and Titanic. In music, pop’s miserable old git is coming back with a curmudgeonly new album. And as well as Paul Weller’s ‘Sonik Kicks’, Leonard Cohen is releasing his first album for eight years too. Folk punk will continue to grow with acts such as Louise Distras and Liberty Hayes at the helm. But if noise and anger float your boat, new albums are due from Rancid, NOFX, the Cockney Rejects, the Bouncing Souls, the Dropkick Murphys and of course the glorious Gonads...

Previously.....