Popbitch On The Naughties

Popbitch, the UK based e-newsletter, who more often than not intends to incite rather than provide insight has a surprisingly thoughtful introduction this week.

Gives their angle on the state of modern life:

Are we re-living the 80s?

    We’re only five years into the Noughties but
    already it’s turning out to be a re-run of
     the 80s. We have an unpopular Prime Minister
     trying to justify a far-off war to a sceptical
     electorate, greed is good in business again,
     puffball skirts are all over the catwalks,
     Desperate Housewives is the new Dynasty and
     the titchy one from McFly has an A Flock Of
     Seagulls hairdo.

    But there is a darker flipside to all this.
     There are signs of a second Aids explosion
     about to hit gay New York. There’s been a
     couple of cases of a virulent new strand of
     HIV reported which is resistant to drugs.
     The gay community is in the grip of a
     Crystal Meth epidemic. Crystal has the double
     effect of inducing a sense of sexual
     liberation and experimentation as well as
     exhausting the body and massively depletes
     the immune system. So a similar set of
     conditions to 1980 is brewing, when the
     hedonistic lifestyle and drug culture brought
     the gay clubbing community’s health so low
     that HIV took hold. And with Crystal flooding
     into London, it could just as easily happen here.

Popbitch