Red Hill: A Mining Community by Tony Parker (Coronet Books 1986)

- He says it'll burn me up in flames one day, my husband does, me and my blazing hate. He says it can't be kept up for ever, you've got to forgive and forget. I'll never forget, that's one thing that's sure: and I'll never forgive neither, at least I can't see myself doing. The Coal Board's turned my husband, who all his life's been an honest upright working man, into a criminal. They've made him someone with a conviction, and a criminal record for it. And as well as that they've made him into someone who because of it'll never again in his whole life get a decent job. He did nothing wrong in the first place: but they won't relent and give him his job back. So neither will I relent either. Those people, the Coal Board, Ian MacGregor, Maggie Thatcher, the Tories - I hate every one of them and I'll hate them till my dying day for what they've done to my husband. He can forgive them if he likes, and if he does he's a better person and a better Christian than I am. To me they're the biggest bastards who ever walked the face of the earth, and every morning when I get up I curse them and I curse them every night when I go to bed.

(from 'Me and my blazing hate')

Killing Bono (2011)

30 Day Song Challenge - day 02

day 02 - your least favorite song

I'm not the angry young man I once was so picking a least favourite song was more difficult than I imagined.

My decades long hatred of Bon Jovi's 'Living On A Prayer' melted away once I moved to the States and realised that Jon Bon Jovi didn't stand a chance. The poor swine's from New Jersey. He couldn't help myself. My loathing of the BritPop also rans such as the likes of Cast and The Seahorses is so all encompassing that I couldn't pick out the one song to hate above all others. Their combined back catalogues merge into one mass of mediocrity; and it's a cop out to hate a novelty hit or a charity comedy record. They're there to be shot at.

Ten seconds before penning this post, this tuneless pious crock of happy clappy liberalism shite was stepping up for the gold medal - dishonorable mentions also go out to here and there - but I suddenly remembered that one particular song that I always hated above all others from the first moment I heard it. Twenty years on and it still raise the hackles.

Step forward James, Ian, Derry, Mark and Zac:

Number 1 in the US Charts back in '91, and still number one for me - but in a very different sense - all these years later.