Many of you will be aware that I have been locked up as a political prisoner in psychiatric wards (mental hospitals) for large parts of the last eight years.

 

I have in fact been incarcerated under sections of the Mental Health Act for one year, three months and a week. Today I was discharged!!!

 

I celebrated, first of all, by having a coffee with my primary nurse for the last six months, the wonderful Hannah Moolna. However, this evening I went to the most appropriate pub - the Revolution in Fallowfield, Manchester, to celebrate further.

 

As I write this, I am under the influence of two Mudslides, which contain both vodka and Bailey's. I am teemainly (as opposed to teetotal), in that (as a result of sampling a wide range of anti-psychotic medications, plus some mood stabilisers for good measure) I have become highly opposed to drugs in general, knowing how they make you less rational than you would be otherwise. Alcohol is of course a drug, and I have generally avoided it, drinking J2Os most of the time in pubs in England or Wales, and IrnBru (or "diet IrnBru" more recently in order to shed some of the excess weight that psychiatric medication has encouraged me to put on in recent years) in Scotland. However, a day like today is one for letting your hear down, and after sampling a strawberry flavour non-alcoholic drink at the Revolution, it was time to advance onto the more serious stuff!

 

I met two very nice (and very good looking!!!) women in the Revolution called Kylie and Fiona, and had a great chat with them, including singing parts of my Galaxia songs "Do They Know It's G8 Time?" and "The Revolution Starts Now!" (downloadable for free from the Galaxia website, www.galaxiamusic.org). We arranged to meet again for karaoke at the Footage pub on a week tomorrow (Tuesday) [on the corner of Oxford Road and Grosvenor Street in the centre of Manchester]. I had already discussed meeting with Sabrina and David of the Greater Manchester Democratic Socialist Alliance (GMDSA, as the best local socialist organisation will soon be named) and Sabrina's ex-partner Burhan Fatah (the leader in this country of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, which unites ordinary working class people of different religions and nationalities in Iraq opposed to the occupation) in that pub the same night. [Karaoke starts at 9pm, or later if there is football on the TV.] I am publicising this get-together widely in order that anybody reading this who is curious about my karaoke ability can witness my rendition of "Great Balls of Fire" and the odd other song that I may perform. Those who are not to curious, or who live rather further away, can wait for the world tour of Galaxia.

 

I am moving to Glasgow real soon now, although I'll be popping up to Manchester from time to time as it wouldn't be sensible to abandon a city that I have been conducting political activity in since the start of the anti-poll tax campaign in 1989. [That campaign of mass non-payment, which involved about 18 million people, at its height, not only forced the abolition of that hated tax, but brought down the supposedly invincible Margaret Thatcher, was led by the Militant Tendency - and I joined Militant in 1990, and stayed with it for eight and a half years as it became Militant Labour and the Socialist Party. I left when it failed to support the setting up of the Scottish Socialist Party, which now has six members of the Scottish parliament - because I wanted to expose the high level of infiltration (not just to spy on what we were doing but to destabilise the organisation from within) to a wider audience, and I thought it was better to resign first than get expelled for being disloyal.

 

In Glasgow I will set up my revolutionary socialist band Galaxia, and we will go on a world tour before the G8 summit in order to publicise the idea of a worldwide general strike then. In fact, bearing in mind that the current UK number one has reached that spot on download sales alone, Galaxia may possibly reach the same spot with "The Revolution Starts Now!" without needing to splash out on CDs...