The Plot Against Common Sense

So I’m ambling through Cardiff city centre and it’s like UKIP have staged a coup because everywhere I look is strung Union Jack bunting. And shoppers are swinging their Nazi-porn Hollister bags that could have been designed by Leni Riefenstahl - all sleek depilation and Reinhard Heydrich cheekbones. And for some reason all the young women of this city appear to be wearing denim shorts over black tights in a fit of collective bad taste. And just walking past the queue outside Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is causing me acute Diabetes anxiety. And from a clothing emporium Radio Banality is leaking out a particularly irksome Red Hot Chili Peppers track. And to compound my distaste a fawning DJ refers to them in glowing terms as “the Chilis” which also awakens within me a dim urge to go on a killing spree. And opposite the Hayes Island Snack Bar an Orwellian Big Screen is spouting non-stop Olympic propaganda, so that having a coffee there is like spending 5 minutes of your life inside Abu Ghraib. And in the Ballardian expanse of the St David’s 2 shopping complex I notice an advert which refers to children as “little shoppers”. And the earnest busker on Queen St is droning his way through Wonderwall by Oasis - a band whose cultural conservatism depresses me more than I can say. And today all the mothers seem to be graduates of the Aleister Crowley Do What Thou Wilt School of Parenting. And across the street I glimpse a snacking office worker fending off a lesser black-backed gull with her handbag. And a man in a tee-shirt that says MEGA LOLZ is asking me if I’ve had any accidents in the last 12 months. And from a bench I pick up a discarded newspaper which contains a free colour supplement celebrating the Queen’s diamond jubilee. And everywhere I look there are Union Jacks…

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Cardiff-based Future of the Left have a new album out on June 12 entitled The Plot Against Common Sense. If their previous releases are anything to go by it will create royal havoc inside your ear-holes and provide incontrovertible proof that the world is not entirely peopled by ****s.