If you’re a medium-sized European company, don’t put someone in charge of one of your most important business units whose only qualification is being a pop star’s father. They’ll fuck it up; then you’ll be screwed.

SBBS heartily endorses the Smokers Liberation Front, which plans to use direct action to prevent halfwitted smokebannery. Go read their Active Smoking manifesto…

Discuss.

Damn, Andrew Collins‘s 6music show is good. This week it also features SBBS favourites Richard Herring and Billy Bragg. Go listen.

Other relevant news, good, bad and tragic (in that order): the new Britblog roundup is out; Countdown joker and all-round silly man Richard Whiteley is dead; utter wanker Richard Madeley isn’t.

It appears to be fashionable among pro-war and anti-war types alike to write lists of what one likes about the US. Presumably in the former case this is to convince people of American greatness; in the latter case, to remind people that you’re not a shrieking Septic-hating fanatic.

Alan Johnson‘s list goes too far, however: "I love the ridiculousness of the fact that one square mile of Manhattan has produced more great music in the last thirty years than the entire European continent"

What? I mean, what? How can anyone with even vestigal levels of hearing and sanity possibly make that claim? I assume he doesn’t count the UK and Ireland as part of Europe here, otherwise he actually needs to be imprisoned indefinitely without trial for his own safety and the safety of those around him.

But even if you only look at the mainland, his claim is flamboyantly mentalist. Yes, New York managed to produce Patti Smith, Blondie and Television in the punk boom at the tail-end of the 1970s, and we’ll be enternally grateful for that. But what’s it produced recently – The Strokes? Compared with continental Europe’s utter mastery at innovative electronic music, New York’s scene of derivative rock and up-its-own-arse jazz pales into insignificance.

Do you like mash-ups? Do you like strange podcasts? If so, it’s vitally important that you go here and listen to this.

If you believe literally in Creationism, you’re also seeking to get anally fistfucked. And if you believe life begins at conception, then you also cruise for rent boys.

Or so it would seem. Via Sarah, who (like me) is disappointed by the tame sexual preferences implied by British youth culture’s new hanky code.

According to the Aussie press, American students in Queensland are terribly upset by the horrible, nasty and rude things that the sheepshaggers have been saying about them.

"Griffith University student Ian Wanner, 19, from Oregon, said abusive Australian students had repeatedly called him a ‘sepo’ – short for septic tank. ‘It is so disrespectful. It’s not exactly the most welcoming atmosphere here,’ he said."

Oh fuck off, you whiny little tosser. ‘Septic’ is recognised Anglosphere rhyming slang for ‘Yank’; it’s not a suggestion that you’re literally a cesspit. Aussies take the piss out of each other and everyone, all of the time. In future, you may wish to try learning something about a country’s culture before deciding to live there – although I’m aware that this would be a bizarre novelty for most of your countrymen.

1) Shooting unarmed students is a bad thing.

2) A country that puts soldiers on trial for shooting unarmed students is better than one which doesn’t.

3) However, a country where army snipers don’t shoot unarmed students is better than one where they do.

4) Similar points apply to countries where soldiers deliberately run unarmed students over with bulldozers.

5) If you seek to justify the murder of unarmed students, then you’re vicious, filthy scum.

The Spanish are a bunch of dicks. This is basically all you need to know.