Virgin Media’s most basic TV package is free. All channels on their TV M package are Free.

Or so the website advertising says. If you don’t believe me, see for yourself.

These are the channels you’d get on Freeview. That’s how free they are.

Except it’s not true. It’s a big fat heaving stinking sweaty Branson lie!

When I phoned to get it, I was told I had to pay over £4 a month for what everyone else gets for free.

I checked back today to make sure it wasn’t a mistake.

And lo and behold it was! The last Virgin rep had indeed been mistaken.

But don’t get too celebratory. Now it seems that to get the free channels I have to pay over £7 a month.

Why?!!! It’s FREE!!

Well, they gave me a loyalty discount last month because I’ve been with them for ages on their broadband service and I was going to switch to a cheaper option elsewhere.

So they slashed £15 off my bill. Just like that. (Phone them and tell them you’re an 02 customer planning to switch and they’ll do the same for you).

But now I want to add free TV channels to my line rental and broadband package. And they say it’ll cost me £7.05.

It’d be free for anyone else to be upgraded to free TV. But because I’m so loyal that I deserve a loyalty discount, it costs me £7 to get free TV.

The bizarre set of reasons used to try vainly to justify this ridiculous state of affairs was almost comical.

Switch to me, purple faced and exasperated, saying “BUT ITS FREE!!”

Them: “Yes Sir, we CLASS it as free, but in actual fact due to your loyalty discount it will cost £7.05 extra.”

So they class it as free. Yet it costs £7.05. Hands up if you can identify what brain-mashed logical paradigm they are in.

And then, just to add to what is already on the edge of satire, their website proudly boasts: “Once you become a customer we like to think of you as an individual.”

Fetch the spare trousers while I piss myself laughing.

It’s October. Just a year ago this very month, the friends and family of 18 year old Michael Causer were attending his funeral. He was murdered following a vicious homophobic attack here in Liverpool.

On Sunday night, another young gay man, James Parkes, aged just 22, was attacked in Liverpool City Centre by up to 20 youths.

Local media report that he is in hospital with life threatening injuries which include multiple skull fractures, a fractured cheek bone and a fractured eye socket.

In 2007, The Independent reported that 60% of Liverpool’s lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people in Liverpool have suffered some form of homophobic crime.

From my own friends and family, I know this to be true.

I wrote Waiting For The Lovers (song and vid below) a few years ago after a friend of mine was beaten up for having the temerity to hold hands while walking down the street with their same sex partner.

And a straight friend of mine was beaten up a couple of years ago after emerging from one of the city’s gay bars following a pint with his best mate at work, who happens to be gay.

It strikes me that homophobic abuse is considered far more acceptable in our society than racism is.

Look at football as an example. We’ve had Kick Racism Out Of Football. Where are the Kick Homophobia Out Of Football campaigns. Homophobic abuse seems much more widespread at football matches in my experience.

At a non league football match last season for instance the young goalkeeper went down injured and was pilloried with some venom for being “a fucking queer!!”

When I tried to tackle this on the club’s fans forum I received very little support and in some of the viler quarters outright hostility.

But homophobia, as the attacks on Michael and James have shown, is just as vicious as racism and needs the same challenging reaction.

Two such attacks in our city in such a short space of time demands a genuine response.

The annual Homotopia Festival, which starts in Liverpool on Sunday and runs for the entire month, is part of that response. It’s focus this year is “Homotopia NOT Homophobia”.

But the challenge cannot be limited to the gay community. It must be fought by all of us wherever we encounter it.

Homophobia is not funny or comical or acceptable or a non-issue. It is deadly.

It is time to treat it as such.

Waiting For The Lovers Song:

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Waiting For The Lovers Video:

At the end of this post is a cracking short film on The Limerick Soviet, a tale I wrote about in my song of the same name.

The wonderful thing about the film is that it shows the actual strike proclamations featured in my song, and shows the currency that the workers issued when they printed their own money.

The lyrics of the song are repeated below. And you can hear the song itself by pressing play on the audio player.

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The song is featured on my album We Can Make The World Stop which is for sale here.

The Limerick Soviet

1919 was the year the trouble all went down
The Defence of the Realm Act was invoked by the Crown
They imposed martial law upon old Limerick town
And they made the local people foot the bill

The local trades and workers council met for 12 long hours
And said we will not recognise the British Army’s powers
This city is the people’s, we reclaim it now as ours
It ever was and shall be ever still

We are the Limerick Soviet
We answer only to the people’s plea
We care no more for their martial law
Than the British Army cares for you and me

The printing workers laboured through the darkness of the night
To urge the population to resist the army’s might
Within two hours the city walls proclaimed a General Strike
And Limerick responded to the call

Workers in their thousands were parading through the streets
The Irish Times was horrified and called for their defeat
But the people were in charge now not the Army or elite
They held the torch of freedom for us all

We are the Limerick Soviet
We answer only to the people’s plea
We care no more for their martial law
Than the British Army cares for you and me

The Soviet of Limerick it lasted two weeks long
A forgotten revolution overlooked by history’s song
John Cronin and his strike committee’s beacon has not gone
It lights the path to justice for us still

We are the Limerick Soviet
We answer only to the people’s plea
We care no more for their martial law
Than the British Army cares for you and me

So Nick Griffin sits there on Question Time, sat next to an American black woman no less, and describes the terrorists of the Ku Klux Klan as a non-violent organisation.

Next day, after getting the “good old political rough and tumble” he said he was looking forward to and making himself look like the absolute gobshite he is, he then describes a studio audience as a “lynch mob”.

Lynch mob eh. A term kind of made popular by? Well, you finish that thought.

Anyhow, one of the best protest songs of all time is undoubtedly Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit.

Here is Nina Simone’s version remixed by Montecristo. I like Billie’s version best but this comes with a devastating video.

So here’s a message for any smarmy fat Adolfs who run scared of a mere studio audience: this is what a lynch mob REALLY looks like, you turd.

Fuck the BNP! Fascists out! Refugees welcome here!!

Watch this video, hear these words, and remember that this is what the fascists are really about. Never again.

Dreams. No, not the sleep kind.

I mean the kind of dream that result in my mate Mark going on a skydive on his 40th birthday.

I’m sat here with a book. It’s one of those how to change your life for the better malarkeys.

And it tells me that I need to write down my dreams, to imagine I can’t fail, and then write down what I’d have, or what I’d be doing in twelve months time.

Exciting huh!!!!

Well, actually no. It’s scary. Because I’m looking at the damn thing and I’m drawing a blank.

Okay I want to keep gigging and I want to record more music, but I don’t need to dream to make that happen. That’ll happen anyhow just by me being me.

But if I have time on my hands to do whatever I want, to fulfill all of my dreams, or to have whatever I want, what would that be?

Answer? Dunno. Picture me with my hands in my pockets and my shoulders mid shrug.

Is this common I wonder? Does everyone else reading this book start scribbling enthusiastically with a list so long that it needs a toilet roll to fit it all on? Or has everyone else lost the power to dream personal dreams too?

Well I think I need some help, and who better to help me than you.

I want some dream suggestions. You can nick em from the internet if you like. I don’t mind.

I’ll start the ball rolling with these that I nicked from a search on Google. But then it’s your turn, right?

# Attend at least one major sporting event. (Already done. Istanbul among many).

# Throw a huge party and invite every one of your friends. (hmmm both of them??)

# Swim with a dolphin.

# Skydive. (no chance!)

# Have your portrait painted.

# Learn to speak a foreign language and make sure you use it. (Moi?)

# Go skinny-dipping at midnight in the South of France. (Last time I partially disrobed in the South of France a policeman – yes a bloody policeman – ordered me to put my shirt back on).

# Watch the launch of the space shuttle. (Meh).

# Spend a whole day eating junk food without feeling guilty. (That’s called a weekday).

# Be an extra in a film.

# Tell someone the story of your life, sparing no details. (Surely not. That’s bordering on abuse!)

# Make love on a forest floor. (Eeek what about the crawlies!!)

# Make love on a train.

# Learn to rollerblade. (Ha! Maybe!! That might be hilarious).

# Own a room with a view. (A womb with a what?)

# Brew your own beer.

# Learn how to take a compliment. (Then teach the Woolly how to as well hehe).

# Buy a round-the-world air ticket and a rucksack, and run away. (Tempting!!!!!)

# Grow a beard and leave it for at least a month. (It’d take me six months to grow the beard).

# Give your mother a dozen red roses and tell her you love her. (Aww I do too).

# Be a member of the audience in a TV show.

# Put your name down to be a passenger on the first tourist shuttle to the moon.

# Send a message in a bottle.

# Ride a camel into the desert.

# Get to know your neighbors.