It’s been a couple of months now and even the most jaded observer would have to admit it’s been fun. Bath-plugs, wide-screen LCDs, bookcases, duck-houses, wisteria/moat-clearing, biscuits, 1p phone bills, fright-wigs for charity bashes, poppies, new bathrooms, porn-videos and of course, the ‘flipping’ of houses. The public reputation of our Members of Parliament has, incredibly, sunk further than ever before.

Considering that in national polls before this scandal broke, MPs regularly occupied a lower position in our regard than even estate agents (but still above, of course, journalists), this new level of opprobrium is some achievement. Not so much bottom of the barrel but a breaking through the bottom of the barrel and tunnelling into the floor below.

However, though rage has been justifiably great and the calls for the bastards to be strung-up/electrocuted/made to appear on Celebrity Big Brother ever-louder, I’m going to add a note of caution to this.

The quiet passing of Clement Freud was a bit more poignant than I might have expected. It brought to mind a wonderful episode of a forgotten series on gambling. Following those forlorn features around as he lived out his addiction, he was asked why. His answer was so honest, so unexplained and so close to the truth that the presenters chose not to delve. Or maybe they didn't understand. I am heavily paraphrasing here because I have not seen the programme since, but he told them that the aim of his gambling was to lose all he had.

Okay so I am sure he meant metaphorically, and that he usually stopped when what was readily available had gone, but so much deep emotional significance is held there.

There are two elements to gambling addiction that I can see and most people seem to have a blend of both but one predominates and drives them on. Clement's reasoning is the least obvious but most powerful. Its all about purging. When nothing else seems to make sense to you, when life seems to lack patterns, just driving yourself to the point when you have nothing is the only sense you can make of life. It provides control, its your decision and beyond that it proves that nothing material really holds you. Why have a little forced on you when you can choose to have nothing.

The other element is simpler, possibly more common, but maybe, as its easier to portray dramatically, it seems more common. That is the the craving to turn your life round with one stroke of fortune. The lottery prays on this. Those of us with little sense of deferred gratification can be easily seduced. Of course those controlling these experiences know exactly what triggers it and how to load things heavily in their favour.

There is of course in certain aspects of gambling a casual non-addictive element. A social thrill, a shared buzz, but this side of it again is very rarely a fair gamble. It is usually an accepted part of the experience. An accepted loss as we bet on the same thing as everyone else not to be left out.

To win, and you can quite easily, all these aspects must be ignored. You have to remember the people who set the rules are not the people you are betting against but all those people who fall into the traps that we have already looked at. Desperate gambling, gambling for fun, gambling out of loyalty, gambling with a fatalistic belief in the law of averages rather than an understanding of probability. Seek these patterns out and coldly back against them and you will win. You need nerve and a way of stockpiling against the vagrancies of probability but you will win. I will explain how, maybe some other time, but not now, because despite the fact that I fall into all three of the categories of losers, I am going to pretend you are my prey and I need you not to know.

Lone Lady is a solo performer from Manchester. For gigs she now works with a drummer but she creates and records the music by herself on a four track recorder. Cult Cargo caught up with her in Manchester. Listen to hear her music on her Myspace page and you can go to her label, www.filthyhomerecordings.co.uk for further information.

Can you tell us a bit about your songs, the driving emotions behind them?

Understanding who the Acid Mothers Temple are takes a little bit of research. They are not a band in the normal sense. They are a collective of musicians from Japan who form into different projects, such as Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno, Acid Mothers Gong and Acid Mothers SWR. They have released many records on almost as many different record labels around the world. Each collaboration plays it's own version of space rock cum ambient and each has the talents of AMT leader Kawabata Makoto within it. The incarnation on tour at present, Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. , played the Cult Cargo Launch Party very recently, and along with DJ Roger Hill From radio Merseyside I spoke to kawabata about all things Acid Mothers. Fortunately for us translator Minako Ueda was also there to help the interview along.

It seems quite appropriate that Bill Drummond has proposed a day of no music. He ceased his considerably active participation in music in the late 1990's to concentrate on less high profile and artistic projects. His management of Echo and the Bunnymen had helped them to become one of post-punk's more intriguing and atmospheric bands, and with KLF he helped spread revolutionary mayhem in the world of pop for a good few years. Always one for a provocative idea, Mr Drummond proposed the No music day, which he set for 21st of November. The concept came from his ever increasing discontent with how music works and is presented in our society. In 1994 he invented for himself a way of listening to music in a different way. He created a lottery system, which was basically putting the letters of the alphabet in a bag and picking one out for each year. In that year he would only be able to listen to musicians and bands beginning with the letter picked out. And once the year is over he can't consciously listen to anything beginning with that letter again until after he has gone through the whole of the alphabet. This year he is on the letter G. I spoke to Bill on the phone to find out what he was really trying get at.

"I stumbled into the world of music despite myself"

Half Man Half Bicuit's Nigel has for twenty years filled in the gaps between the miserable romantics and the cocky wannabe scallies in North West's rich pop legacy. Presenting the band as a throwaway novelty act he has got away with some of the wittiest and sharpest documentations of British culture and lack of, that has been set to a beat. What we really want to know is how much of his unique vision is down to the band's background in Birkenhead, a very different cultural existence from the city close by as Nigel explains.

‘I’m just that lazy, no-good-for-nothin’, long haired, four-eyed son who wrecks it all,’ is how former Tramp Attack front man Matt Barton describes himself in his song ‘Short back and sides’.

I meet him in the Lago bar early on a Saturday afternoon, he chose here because ‘you get a cheap pint’. This is a fact not lost on the various drunken men already holding confused conversations around the bar, despite it being only 1.30.

With Liverpool’s musical landscape now colonised by drainpipe wearing fashionistas, Barton cuts a humble figure in his lived-in parka coat and blue jeans.

“Is it all finished for the band now? Yeah, pretty much. I wanted to do one last gig but none of the others wanted to do it,” says Matt.

Before There's a Riot Going On, Sly Stone had produced so many classic slabs of funk that he was likely to be forgiven anything by his adoring public. He decided to test this faith to its limit.

It might seem odd to be suggesting a mega selling album from a multi-mega selling band is an under-appreciated album. However, even though this weird, messy, low-fi, downbeat funk classic had an immense effect on so many artists it's possible that if any other band had produced it at any other time it may have wriggled into a corner of cultdom that even cults shied away from.

When you hear Cut by The Slits for the first time you may be duped into believing that you are listening to some early attempt at a punk/reggae crossover. Listen again and you'll notice that this is not even close to being a hybrid. The Slits were unique. Formed at the age of 14 when girl bands were becoming even less frequent, two of the members had been chucked out of their first band by Sid Vicious because they couldn't play. And they barely could play but the compensation was a stop start scratchy punk style that they used to emphasise and enhance lyrics that were so harsh, witty and provocative that they are scratched into your memory for a long time after.

Un-Convention, which ran from the 4^th to the 6^th of June in Salford, attempts to bring together musicians on a grass-roots level, with the goal being: 'to bring together like minded individuals to discuss the future of Independent music'.

Consisting ofpanels and live music, with the inevitable opportunities for networking, a large theme within the conference was the difficulties in marketising artists' products in the light of the digital/online revolution that has swept the industry since the beginning of the millennium.