“There is no human situation so miserable that it cannot be made worse by the presence of a policeman.” If Brendan Behan were alive today, he would certainly add “nor the arrival of new music from the snivelling, blowhard, tax dodging, gombeen Free Staters U2.”

They have released some new songs which are intended to be political. The only people who would find them in anyway edgy are the sorts of morons daft enough to pay the price of a house to see them in one of their hideous sounding Las Vegas wankfests.

Here is Bongo’s take on Palestine:

“Not the peace of a cease-fire
Not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb
But rather
As in the heart when the excitement is over
And you can talk only about a great weariness
I know that I know how to kill
That makes me an adult
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
How to open and close its eyes and say Mama
A peace
Without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares”

What in the name of Christ is that about?

The man has a house on the French riviera. It’s not even a house it’s a four‑storey pink Art Deco villa with over 20 rooms and a private studio, to say nothing of homes in Dublin, New York and Los Angeles. It is safe to say that his will not die in impoverished old age if he ever does anything to annoy the Epstein adjacent rich people he hangs around with.

Artists who are much younger and much poorer have paid a heavy financial price for speaking out against the genocide. That blowhard multi-millionaire conveys his messages in terms so vague that even the Delphic Oracle would envy his skill.

When he does choose to write something comprehensible it is so open to interpretation that even a Trumpite could sing along. “America will rise against the people of the lie … the power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power”. Even big cuddly Burl Ives sang a song about dancing round Hitler’s grave. No such directness from the Bongo man. Not for him the bluntness of Mogwai’s George Square Thatcher Death Party in his ruminations on Trump.

It is rare for science and informed critical opinion to concur, but Marx famously demonstrated in Volume 3 of Capital that Bono is a clown; Einstein devoted several equations to establishing beyond doubt that U2 are blustering jokers who annoy the arse off everyone, a finding recently supported by the CERN boffins with some quantum jiggery-pokery.

The last good thing they ever did was sign an album early in their career which I sold for stupid money to make donations to Palestine Action (before Labour said stopping genocide was tantamount to terrorism), Medical Aid for Palestinians and Just Stop Oil.

And no, I haven’t listened to the bloody songs. No one should.