Lyrics meme again

Oh, why the frod not. You know the drill by now. Spot the title and if possible the artist. Comments will be screened, and answers will be revealed in a couple of days time.

1. Not a lot of ladies drive an open-top Mercedes...
2. At the top of the stairs there's hundreds of people...
3. Believe it or not, I've been there too...
4. Life, mysterious life, where we're moving around, dancing the rhythm of life...
5. Sunlight sneaks around the edges of the window...
6. Dirty white caravans...
7. If I listened long enough to you...
8. Pretty girl on every corner, sunshine turns the sky to gold...
9. The Conservative MP for Spelthorne, Surrey...
10. Orgasm has become the most mystified state of feeling...
11. In the place they call Silicon Valley...
12. The streetlamps are on in Chicago tonight...
12a. Oh, Mercury, shootin' through every degree...
14. Wiry Twerp, Wiry Twerp, long may his memories remain...
15. Lonely, unmarried, looking for love, life was passing me by...
16. Sweet lady mine, my loving and my life...
17. Well, friends, hereby hangs a tale...
18. Lovely to know the warmth your smile can bring to me...
19. Waking up one morning I saw smoke against the sky...
20. When I feel I'm overreacting and I'm trying too hard...
21. Somewhere in the darkness there's a man they call the Skipper...
22. September '77. Port Elizabeth, weather fine...
23. At the edge of the world, the sun pouring down...
24. One man on a lonely platform, one case sitting by his side...
25. It's a hard life, never let yourself get down...
26. Oh my dear how boring, he's defecting...
27. We come down here with our boots on our feet...
28. Is there no sign of light, as we stand in the darkness...
29. I'm so tired of being here, suppressed by all my childish fears...
30. Just like his old father before him, who served in the Great War would sing...

EDIT: sorry one comment got through before I remembered to do the screening thing. You're all too quick for me, I tell you.

FURTHER EDIT: italicised entries have been partially identified, while those that have been crossed out have been got completely. I'll leave it another day or so before I unveil the answers and credit the, erm, winners. :)

(no subject)

So the latest thing going the rounds is "OMG they're using socialism on us!" The idea has permeated the web and become one of those things that nobody questions.

Newsflash, guys. Okay, the government may have bought some assets, but calling that socialism is like calling it Christian worship when a man stubs his toe and shouts "JESUS!!!" Socialism is when the government owns and administers the means of production and distribution for the benefit of the people and as the normal state of affairs. Buying up a bunch of dodgy loans to save your venture-capitalist friends from having to face the consequences of their greed may be many things, including but not limited to unconstitutional, impractical, hypocritical, desperate and just plain stupid, but socialism in any meaningful sense it ain't, and calling it such is simple scaremongering, because for some reason Americans are more terrified of socialism than of, oh say, theocratic despotism.

To be fair, I'm sure Bush and his friends would much rather have simply handed over the original $700bn to the bankers with no strings attached (it's the American way), but something prevented them. I don't know what.

My gods! It's a builder!

Two guys (not the original ones) have turned up to plaster the conservatory. They are currently staring at the inside of it and making those sucking noises through their teeth because something about the way the wall was knocked through is going to be a problem.

Why am I not surprised?

One little side note...

My definition of "my money" is fairly narrow, confined as it is to that money which is at any given time actually in my possession. When I pay for a thing or a service, I regard the money I pay as no longer mine, and what the recipient does with it, while it may cause me some concern, is not something over which I expect to have any control. Similarly with taxes, which I regard as the price I pay for living in a country which is to some extent governed (though I've remarked before that it seems to be taking them a demnition long time to beat that devil Bonaparte). I pay them, the money leaves my possession, and while I am convinced the price is too high and the service substandard in the extreme, there is a lamentable lack of competition in the governing biz, and it is, in the time-honoured phrase, the only game in town.

I mention this because I am (I confess it) a little amused by the outraged fulminations of various people about the government using "their money," sometimes millions of pounds/dollars of "their money," to bail out the banks. I agree with the sentiment entirely...it's just the way it's expressed that gets me. I mean, whose money are they supposed to use? As far as I know, government's main if not only source of actual funding is taxation. All the rest is borrowed, and you can't use credit to pay for credit.

It would be nice if the government, instead of demanding outright payment, had to borrow money from its citizens, and return it with interest on demand (given a suitable period of notice, and of course a minimum term). If you kept lending them more and more and left it with them till retirement, that would be your pension taken care of. But then, I suppose, how would the government come up with the extra?

It probably wouldn't work...but at least then there would be some reason to refer to one's paid taxes as "my money."