John Barry, the amazingly talented musician and film score composer died yesterday of a heart attack.
Of course, I know the Bond Themes. Barry was as much a part of the Bond franchise as Broccoli. (The husband and wife, not the green stuff), but Barry played a very significant part in my music loving life. At the age of about eight or nine, I was taken to see Adam Faith, backed by the John Barry Seven. It was my first ever music concert, if you leave out Billy Cotton.
Faith was second only to Cliff in those days because even the Beatles were further down the bill than Alma Cogan. Barry gave Adam Faith an edge that Cliff lacked. His later incarnation as Budgie Bird shows you how his public persona migrated from naughty popster to naughty character actor. (Faith was seriously intent on an acting career form the outset and trained at the Royal Court).
It was John Barry and his management who turned Terry Nelhams into the pop icon of the time, underscoring the faith in him with Barry's own band while on tour. Faith's breakthough hit "What do you want", with its Buddy Holly hiccup was Barry's arrangement.
The John Barry toured with Faith in his early years, being given a spot on their own on the bill. I remember they had one of those amazing electric pianos, the kind you get on the Del Shannon records. In fact, if memory serves me well, they played "Hats off to Larry".
Having just tried to check this, the Musitron or Clavioline was the name of the keyboard instrument, and indeed, Barry, whilst working with his band did indeed use a Clavioline on several occasions.
Adam Faith ripped off the Musitron sound too in "Don't You Know It" and other songs. John Barry was totally inspired by Max Crook's work on Del Shannon's hits. Barry used a clavioline on his recordings of "Rocco's Theme," "Spinnerree," "Moody River," "Starfire," Rum-Dee-Dum-Dee-Dah," "Watch Your Step," and "Twist It." The latter two songs featured a great trilling work, which Adam Faith adopted soon thereafter.
So, yes, John Barry will be remembered for Bond. But he did a lot more, including this one, that some of you may remember.
Below you can find two reviews, a book and an album. Enjoy the excerpt from the cd and if you like it, buy it! (I get no remuneration from this by the way). Chill.
If you read Inside the Third Reich you may also like...
I have been re-reading Gitta Sereny's account of her conversations with Albert Speer.
In it Speer describes his reasons for following Hitler so blindly and passionately. Sereny provides a mass of background data that sometimes contradicts and sometimes justifies. It is an easy read.
The book is full of compelling and revelatory material:
On the days of the Nuremburg trials, Speer recalled that It was the first time the prisoners could talk freely together.
Already it felt quite strange to be in one's own clothes; very strange how it makes one feel like a man
he said without the faintest hint of irony. I wondered if Albert Speer understood how, shaven headed and dressed in prison garb, concentration camp victims were reduced to the status of objects, overseen by elaborately dressed guards and even more impressively adorned officers. The book goes some way to providing an anatomy of cognitive dissonance mediated by the emotional attachment to an ideal or a figurehead, and perhaps Sereny's book reveals something about our own attitude to the truth, coloured as it is by tribalism and hate.
Richard Strauss (1864-1949) is the kind of composer that ordinary punters like me sometimes miss. Of course, everyone has heard Thus Spake Zarathustra, a tune that has suffered from being abused badly. In recent times it has been used as a fanfare to introduce a crap motor car and some exciting new accounting software, but of course we remember it from 2001, A Space Odyssey.
But I digress.
This album is a selection of Strauss' orchestral songs, sung by the Finnish Soprano, Soile Isokoski. The crystalline purity of her voice, first encountered by me in her Sibelius work, has made me a fan. The piece I include here is Morgen/Tomorrow. Interesting because the lyrics were written in German by John Henry Mackay, a self confessed pederast and Scotsman who died in Berlin shortly before the Nazis did the job for him.
As you listen, you may find the translation helpful:
And tomorrow the sun will shine again
And on the way which I shall follow
She will again unite us lucky ones
As all around us the earth breathes in the sun
Slowly, silently, we will climb down
To the wide beach and the blue waves
In silence, we will look in each other's eyes
And the mute stillness of happiness will sink upon us
And here then, is Morgen!, by Richard Strauss and John Henry Mackay, sung by Soile Isokoski:
Al Jazeera, the august Arab news station that is less biased than the BBC, has had its bureau shut down in Cairo.
It follows the shutting down of the internet and restrictions on the rest of the media.
While President Mubarak apparently cowers in his redoubt in Sharm el Sheik, with a heavily guarded jet, engines running, at the airport, Egypt has descended into a miasma of anarchy and looting. Police are absent from the streets and the shutters are up.
Two things:
The first is that it is now built into the mindset of moribund elites to shut down social media at the first sign of trouble. Perhaps, as bloggers, we need to bear this in mind. Secondly, how does one read the situation in Egypt? Like the fall of the Berlin wall, or a bit of local difficulty? This question obviously resonates with Fraser Nelson today.
What is unclear at the moment is who will arise from the ashes; a broadly pro-Western faction or a more militant Muslim one. My guess is that this will prove to herald decades of uncertainty and instability in the region. Repression, works. It keeps things very normal. New found freedom does not sit well with the general, especially if it is explosive and unfettered. I think Russia is a paradigm: for a while you had freedom and democracy. Now it is a bandit nation run by bandits. Babies, tipping bath-water.
I hope you like the new look. A lick of paint and some help from friends. I have given it a lot of thought. I also took account of comments sent to me on the reader's survey. Primarily, many of you commented on the saminess of blogs. One astute writer called it pasting bits from the Daily Mail and adding a few swear words. I agree. I also think that to make this blog look like a hard, biting newsy one belies its soft fluffy core, and the fact that my readers are a bit more discerning and demand more. And to the respondent who asked, "what are the dancing liquourice allsorts about?" - Some images haunt me, but in a nice way. That one did and always does. I love retro-surrealism - press play to see what I mean:
You can still do my reader survey if you want to help me make this blog better. There are only ten questions and you do not have to fill in the comment fields. Click here to take survey
Please do!
You know, if you are new to the blog you ought to explore. It's not all here today, gone later today. To encourage, ensnare and groom you a little bit, here are two to try:
It is never easy trying to track down people who made sublime albums in the sixties and seventies and then went to ground. Cole D Loxx and the Forbaires are a case in point. But for your writer, serendipity once again prevailed and, during a stopover at Bryan Ferry International Airport I found my self sitting next to, of all people, DWIGHT D. ESCONDIDO, One of the original FORBAIRES! Dwight was on route to a conference of the Mitochondrial Medicine Society in Bruges.
He was understandably nervous about my approach, apart from suspecting I was gay; it has been a long time since the fan worship and heavy tour schedule brought on so many internal band pressures that the Forbaires imploded, and Cole D Loxx with it.
At last he relented and D.D. began the story.
“Everone jumps to conclusions about the origins of the name. Forbes is one of the colleges LINK HERE at Princeton University. Raoul Fargas, Carlos “The Stoat” Ortega and Manuel “Manny” Goldstein and I all met there as students. We were doing typical Ivy League barber shop material: songs from the thirties and forties, all dressed in straw boaters and stripy blazers,with a novelty potter’s wheel act as a filler."
It was then I made my mistake. I asked about Cole D Loxx.
“You had to bring him up didn’t you? You guys don’t care as long as you get the story! The thieving conniving bastard! Cole took us for everything, the little turd. He always made us wear those cheesy crimpeline slacks while he got to look cool in front with white polo necks and the Cerruti suits. I always made sure I wore a suit and tie for Album Covers, which pissed him off, but the other guys were saps and believed the “smart casual” spiel. He got his lawyers to put a contract together that more or less froze us out of the royalties on AMOROSO AMORI CONDOLEEZA and made sure the Forbaires picked up the tab for the kitten in the chilli incident including the lawyers’s bills and the repairs to the mincer.
With that, Dwight Escondido got up and left. I felt bad, but of course everyone asks about Cole. Sorry DD. (As far as I can ascertain, Cole D Loxx reverted to his real name of Rex Satan and is well known on the accounting software exhibition circuit. He no longer plays the pink oboe)
And here's one of those (it's Bernie and the Canoe lady:
He would listen to her sing when night came and when she went quiet, he would die until the next day when she sang again.
Sometimes he would see her in the early afternoons reading at the cafe. Her soft eyes lowered upon the pages of what he imagined were enchanted stories. Once, she looked up from a small green book and glanced his way, he quickly flew off with the rest of his gang. They were intent on mobbing the hawk who roosted on the electrical wires far longer than they thought was fair. He wanted to stay behind, perhaps sit near her, not speak to her, but just be near her . . . he was certain if she knew that he loved her she would be frightened. How could a Thrush love a Crow? It was impossible.
Many may share my concerns about the reported cuts to the BBC's Wold Service. Beamed out to Spilsby, Horncastle and Alford and reaching as far as Claxby Pluckacre and Skegness (if the ionosphere isn't playing up), local people are in shock at the news. Swingeing cuts of up to £15.50 will be applied in a move that the Prime Minister has described as "firm but fair in time of national austerity". 24 - hour repeats of The Archers, the backbone of the BBC's Wold Service will be reduced to a two-hour omnibus edition. The Early morning show "Farming the Land", now in its third year of Portuguese and Somali language transmissions also faces removal from the schedule. "Remarkable People" a popular programme not just aimed at Wolds people but all of Lincolnshire will not be affected. Listener figures have proved its popularity week after week, with such special guests as a person from Scunthorpe, a young lad with a degree and a genuine homosexual.
"It's not fair", said a smock-coated pensioner in Old Bolingbroke. "We depend on the Wold Service for information about the rest of the country. Only last week they did a programme on the popularity of Butternut Squash and the A 158 to Lincoln came to a standstill. This news is like a brog in the eye with a thack peg".
Skendleby family upset at proposed cuts to BBC Wold Service
The Weasel would like you to take part in making this a better blog. Below is a link to a short survey, only ten questions. Please if you can, take the time to complete it, since your feedback is valuable and will help me to focus on areas for improvement.
A round up of the trends and answers will be published, in order for you to find out what others said
UPDATE: As you can see, I posted this at lunchtime and have so far had over 30 responses, which has amazed me! The standard of most comments and feedback is very high. Some erudite and witty remarks and a lot of material that will help me. Some surprises, for example, most of you declared an interest in "science". That is not something I do a lot of, partly because I live with a scientist and that area is strictly verboten, at least on subjects which can be attributed and are not already public domain. (If I did tell, I would at once leap to the top of the wikio rankings and at the same time be needing a place to stay, probably with Julian Assange, who apparently smells) Of course, it has not escaped my notice that many of you are quite clever yourselves. It reminds me to ask that if I post on something that you have specialist knowledge of, you can always email me in confidence with background material because the integrity of the blogging community relies on accuracy and truth and I feel we need to up the game in that respect.
Ireland's Health Service Executive has banned the sale of rare hamburgers in some restaurants. A restaurant in Dublin got a formal written warning from the HSE that it should not serve burgers medium rare or rare. Jo'Burger in Rathmines was even careful to warn stupid people of the risks of eating rare burgers: We will serve your burger as you request it, rare to well-done. Rare and medium burgers are undercooked. Note eating of undercooked or raw meat may lead to food-borne illness - proclaimed a warning on the menu.
But that wouldn't satisfy the HSE. They have gone ahead and "requested" that the restaurant refrain from serving rare and medium rare burgers. According to the Irish Times:
The meat in its burgers, sourced from Dublin butcher Pat McLoughlin, is fully traceable. The burgers are shaped by hand on the premises using 100 per cent beef..In a statement this week, Macken said he considered this “over-regulation”, but nevertheless Jo’burger has removed its disclaimer and now serves all of its burgers medium to well done. It is fully compliant with the HSE advice.
Goodness knows what they would do with Steak Tartare.
When people in the future become faced with a risk, however small, but a risk nevertheless, it is not that they will demand the freedom to make a choice; it will simply never occur to them that they have one.
I was surprised and moved to read about the experiences of readers who, as fathers, have suffered at the hands of vengeful women over the custody of their children.
I happened to me and it seems there are a few of us out there. Harriet Harman and her cronies have seen fit to turn us into victims and scapegoats for the failure of society but I will tell you the truth, all we want is to see our kids and have a normal relationship with them, and yet so many women employ the worst kind of revenge when it comes to failed marriage. Some women think that it is justified to use the weight of the law, a law that is obscenely slewed in favour of them, to extract revenge and punishment.
My troubles are mostly over, but there are people out there whose hearts are broken because a woman has decided to use the children as a rod for our backs. Sure, some men are bastards, but there are an awful lot of women out there who are worse. It is time to call time on the marginalisation of men, whose only crime is to have failed in a relationship with a woman. It takes two, but somehow, society does not see it that way, and it is about time that it did.
Dear reader, The Weasel goes to a lot of trouble to verify stories. Ok, occasionally I get it wrong, but mostly I get the facts right. This involves a lot of hard work; for example, I rarely use Wikipedia and prefer primary sources. Many of these primary sources cost money to subscribe to and I know that without them I shall increasingly resort to cutting and pasting what is left of the online news. I am thankful to readers who have donated money to the blog. One of the things I want to do with the money is to select subscriber news sources. This is important because, although some pay websites are begining to allow free content, this content is normally available elsewhere. Politics Home is a case in point. Not long ago, Politics Home was almost totally inaccessible, but they have relented and now you can use the site as a convenient news aggregator. What you cannot get is primary material.
This would be ok if I did a niche blog, but I don't. This is a magazine blog that draws its sources from everything, so I am going to need to be very sure just how I spend your money.
So soon, I shall be publishing a survey of reader's interests. I hope many of you will fill it in. I hope you have enough faith in me to contribute in cash. You can do so by clicking the button on the right. I also want to know what kind of questions I should ask in the survey. You can help me there.
As regular readers will know, I have been working on different kinds of blog post. Some of these worked, some did not. I need to get to know more about my constituency and learn why they come and what interests them. This is not to say that I shall pander to popular taste, but I do not do this as an ego trip, I do it because I think what I have to say matters. I also think that there are many blogs out there who do some of what I do better. I want to play to my strengths, then. And yet, I am not sure what they are, if any.
Watch out for the survey and please take part. Your opinion matters. Please donate now.
The majority of the population want to see tougher discipline in our schools and more focus on traditional subjects, according to a recent YouGov poll.
82% of respondents declared they were in favour of Teachers being able to search pupils.
79% said they would give teachers the right to restrain pupils
56% said teachers should be able to give detentions without giving notice to parents
69% supported changing the school league tables to reflect success in core subjects
Respondents were also asked if they were in favour of:
"Reintroducing a traditional approach to
humanities subjects, such as teaching the kings
and queens in history and key facts about
countries in geography" and 73% said yes.
These are massive percentages. Even with the usual caveats it shows that everybody, parents included, want a more traditional approach to schooling.
But there is a problem. When asked about the role of trade unions in teaching, the sample polled was in favour of the unions by ten percentage points, though the result was broadly divided by voting intention and less dramatic. There were a lot of "Don't Knows" As any teacher will know, the NUT is a Stalinist organisation that for years has coerced teachers into political correctness and pedagogic stagnation. The NUT is responsible for turning teachers into targets of classroom bullying and catastrophic career failure. And yet, people have a perception that lingers, that this heavy-handed organisation somehow promotes better educational values. Clearly that has to change.
Support for a return to discipline in our schools is decisive and clear, but until people realise that teachers are subject to enormous pressures from their own unions to promulgate and police a leftist/nihilist worldview, it aint gonna change anytime soon.
Ok, time for some hand light relief. Here's a track from 1970. Is not particularly representative of the band who were mostly a blues band. They are one of the few bands I saw at the time they were promoting the album. I hope you like it.
The next one is perhaps easier to get and comes from 1969:
And the next one, it is from 1970 and the album had a cover design by Hipgnosis.
No peeking, but they are downloadable from my divshare database.
I really wish they would stop it. It does no good and it is deceitful. Lord Taylor has been convicted of expenses fraud. He is the only person from a "minority" to have thus far been prosecuted, though there are a few who should be.
Taylor is a black bloke who has done well. There is no doubt that, througout his life he has encountered racism and race hate, but for his brief, Mohammed Khamisa QC, to play the race card cheapens the conduct of the law.
Mr Khamisa said his client had faced racist threats on his way to becoming a successful barrister and peer. He said: “He fought off racists. He fought off insults. He fought off threats to his life."
I have sometimes had a shit life too. I have been threatened and been beaten up for being posh, but it does not entitle me to cheat and steal from the public purse.
If minorities in this country are seeking acceptance and equality, it is about time they stopped telling us "It is because I is black" every time they are called to account.
Don't ever, ever say that. At least, after eight years in Scotland I have learned that one. Scotch is what you drink.
Today I realised I had to go out and do my messages. At the shop counter I was asked, "Is that you then ?", to which I replied, putting my messages in my bag, "Aye, that's me". The crazy thing is, I didny even think about it and I am as English as buttered toast. God knows what they will think I am when I finally move back down South. I shall have to remember not to ask for a sengle fesh.
For those of you who are thinking of visiting, watch the following. (The clip disallows embedding)
Over at the Speckled Potater, Rod Liddle is yet again telling us how terrible Tony Blair was over Iraq.
He writes:
It is the other issue, a separate issue, upon which Blair is terribly culpable; more terribly culpable than any PM before or since. We know for sure now and had indications at the time that Blair’s reasons for taking our country to war were not those which he deemed to share with the country or with parliament. They were not shared because he was well aware that neither public nor parliamentary opinion would go along with him. And in attempting to convince the public of Saddam’s ownership of WMD he misled parliament, misled the public and pressurised, perverted or twisted every institution which might have acted as a check upon his messianic determination to wage war. This included the select committees, the civil service, the security services, the government scientists and even in the end the BBC.Cabinet was ignored. As John Denham put it at the time, Blair demanded evidence of WMD regardless or not of whether WMD existed. This is incontestable; it is the subtext of all those Blair year diaries produced by the either supine, or in Alastair Campbell’s case, conniving, former members of the administration. I do not think it is stretching it to suggest that this was the closest Britain has come to totalitarianism. Regardless or not of whether we were right to have invaded Iraq, we were lied to, repeatedly and the processes corrupted.
My reply to him:
Your terms of reference are blinkered. Not that I disagree with you at all. Everything you say is true.
But you are blinkered. Your implied position is that Tony Blair operated independently of his colleagues, the media and Parliament.
The clue is in the word "totalitarian". In order for a totalitarian regime to function it must embark upon a long and thorough indoctrination process which will emanate from control of the media.
You were part of that media Rob. You took part in creating a culture of being soft on the Labour Party.
Had you and your colleagues at the BBC not showered each other in Champagne in May 1997 and been a little more objective in your general coverage thereafter, St Tony might have ended up with a few less supporters when the crucial votes were taken.
To some extent, the BBC created Blair and loved Blair almost as much as it hated Thatcher. And any subsequent attempt to demolish the myth was, I am sorry to say, too little, too late.
A bloke takes his kid to a creche but it's women only. He goes for a swim but it's only open to Muslims that day. He goes next door to play badminton but it is only open to gays and transgender. His job application was binned because they had too many CVs from white men. I say his kid. He adopted it, but very nearly was unable to because of his Christian faith.
Do I really have to go on?
Bob Geldof had this to say about the way the courts discriminate against men in child custody cases
Mr. Geldof had to fight for custody of his three daughters from his former wife Paula Yates and alleges that British courts "consistently" show bias against men by handing custody to mothers.
"I can hardly read the literature on Family Law without simultaneous feelings of an awful sadness and profound rage. Sadness at what has been done to our children and their families and deep rage for our Family Courts and the inadequate practitioners that work within it.
"In the near future the Family Law under which we endure will be seen as barbaric, criminally damaging, abusive, neglectful, harmful to society, the family, the parents and the children in whose name it purports to act. It is beyond scrutiny or criticism and like a secret society its members - the judges, lawyers, social and child "care" agencies behave like any closed vested interest and protect each others' backs.
"The court is entirely informed by outdated social engineering models and contemporary attitudes rather than fact, precedent rather than common sense and modish unproven nostrums rather than present day realities. It is a disgraceful mess. A farrago of cod professionalism and faux concern largely predicated on nonsensical social guff, mumbo-jumbo and psycho-babble. Dangling at the other end of this are the lives of thousands of British children and their families.
the courts have consistently acted against society's interest through the application of prejudice, gender bias and awful impartial cruelty."
One example of many where men are unfairly discriminated against and I think you will agree it is a fairly fundamental one.
There is no doubt. We are fair game. We are the new scapegoats. All the ills of the world are now placed at our door and the prejudice against us is as deep rooted as any phobia you care to mention.
Harman's "Equality" legislation goes further. Writing in June 2008, for The Times, Minette Marin wrote:
we have a minister who is prepared, with the full backing of a Labour government, to enshrine in law, in the name of equality, the principle of institutionalised inequality against men
White, straight men, that is.
And it is even stranger that the only politicians so far to be arrested and charged with fraud are white, male and straight, bar one, who is a male but black and a Tory. No Muslims, women or gays and yet there are plenty in these categories who could be charged with similar offenses.
Rosa Parks decided she was fed up being sent to the back of the bus. One of these days it is going to be me.
When I wrote this piece I was unaware of Dominic Raab's comments.
Perhaps the time has come to fight back and perhaps many of us feel the same. See comments.
Hat tip, Brian.
Once in a while you read a story about a "Walter Mitty" figure who runs up huge debts in order to fund a lavish lifestyle and impress women. The story ends with the man going to jail, leaving a string of angry creditors and disillusioned women in his wake.
Such is the nature of the Private Finance Initiative a scheme whereby public building schemes were contracted out to private industry in such a way that the companies who signed up were given cast iron guarantees of profit. It was a licence to print money. PFI companies are making massive profits out of the scheme and are understanably shy about discussing them, but a recent FOI request has the truth laid bare:
British taxpayers are committed to pay £229 billion for new hospitals, schools and other projects with a capital value of just £56 billion (Telegraph)
You probably have examples of where PFI has produced a local scandal. One such example in my area involved a school. The contractors went bust having taken the money and run, leaving a building site that stood empty for over a year. They were lucky, at least they will not have to pay for buildings long after they have fallen down.
So what was behind this confidence trick? Why did Andy Burnham sign off 221 PFI schemes? Labour was desperate. They had spent so much of our money that they were unable to raise anymore. More than that, they had a plan to mask this spending by leaving it of the crucial list of public debt. In effect they simply did not admit they were committing this funding for all PFI negotiations were kept from public view. Until now.
I suppose it is pointless to ask that this gutless government calls Burnham, Balls and Brown, the architects of this travesty to account and also that a bill be introduced in Parliament to abolish these contracts. Oh no, that would upset too many important people.
Well actually a few things. Balls was at the Treasury when PFI was taken off the balance sheet, thus masking the eye-watering level of public debt. Balls was there when the banking regulation that so spectacularly failed was put in place. When we achieved the biggest deficit in peacetime history, Balls was there. Balls was Brown's homunculus. Balls screwed money out of the Smith Institute, a fake charity set up to fund the Labour Party. Balls and his wife flipped homes three times and charged a poppy wreath to expenses.
But most of all, Balls has starey, piggy little eyes and a Third Reich hair cut. My dislike of Balls is visceral. Some are already calling him the de facto leader of the Labour Party. He is certainly the true face of Labour.
There is a report out in the Telegraph today in which an academic claims that IKEA manipulates people into making impulse buys. And in other news, Chief Rabbi says "Bacon Sandwich - not for me!"
Shopping is a transaction, a two way thing. Nobody forces you to shop. You shop out of neccessity or, you shop because that is what you do. You have more choice than ever before. Unless you live on Barra you can get any kind of rocket salad, with or without herbs, but of course if you live on Barra you can grow it yourself. You have to be canny when it comes to shopping or you may be one of the few people who end up at DFS when there isn't a sale on. Even then you will be lulled into a cocoon of ease and fecklessness because you will not have to pay for your sofa for a year and spread the payments over four years. The fact that a DFS sofa will need to be thrown out before you have finished paying for it is neither here nor there because you can then get a new one.
Women are the premium compulsive shoppers because they crave attention and control and many have such low self esteem that the little bit of power they get at the point of sale is the only time they will feel in charge of their own lives. It's an industry cliche that in hard times a female in search of cosmetics will buy a lipstick anyway, just to assert themselves.
When you shop you enter into a social deal with someone who, for that moment defers to you. Sales assistantsare in a permanent state of deference. This has the effect slewing social intercourse, just for a moment, making the customer feel good, feel fulfilled, feel, for once that they mean something.
It's a powerful motivator. There is a drug like rush you can get from handing over your card and it is addictive. Moreover, it is possible to be maniplulated to such an extent that in any other context it would be seen as grooming and coercion.
So who is in control? Well, the report I link to is typical of the kind of gibberish spouted by the academic liberal left. It works on the premise that we are incapable of discernment or common sense. And to some extent we are. We are so used to being nannied that the idea that someone may be leading us up the garden path and into the bushes comes as a shock.
I have to put my hands up. In the past I have visited IKEA and come back with a load of crap. What I will not do is blame IKEA. I blame myself, for I am weak, lacking in self-esteem and bored. The upside is that if I surround myself with enough crap, I can go back and find some inspirational storage solutions.
PS
The seminal treatise on marketing manipulation is Vance Packard's "Hidden Pursuaders", written at the beginning of the Mad Men era (1957) when people still enjoyed a two-martini and a pack of Chesterfields lunch. It tells you all you need to know. The book is as game-changing as Orwell's 1984 and if you have not read it, you should.
As if we need more shit; bad roads, third world education, Zimbabwean hospitals and corrupt politicians. The British Comedy Awards demonstrated a new low in Comedy. Just look at the list of winners. Apart from the writers of Peep Show, The Inbetweeners and Peter Capaldi, I cannot see any merit whatsoever. And The Thick of It has been off the air for two years. Michael MacIntyre? Well he had to win Best Male Comic because the BBC says he is, having signed him up to an exclusive deal that means we will see him in everything on all BBC channels. What a puker!
Miranda? Saw one episdode and it looked like the sort of thing Peter Glaze and Lesley Crowther used to do on Crackerjack! Remember them? She's a spin off from Not Going Out, which used to be good but if the first three episodes of the latest series is anything to go by, TV is the box they buried Lee Mack in.
John Bishop got a mention, but he's safe. Where was Frankie Boyle when you need him? Scotland has a grand tradition of comics and if you cannot stomach Boyle (I can) then what about Kevin Bridges? I saw Frankie Boyle years ago live at The Stand and he had the audience dribbling their brains through their noses. Where are your Pete and Duds? Where are your Blackadders and Morcambe and Wises?
Here are three clips that are comedy gold. Fuck the awards, its all fixed anyway.
I saw this one on somebody else's blog, and hat tip, but I cannot remember where.
And Milton Jones
UPDATE: Jim more or less prompted me to include the meister:
We live in an era of mini martyrs. All the big issues have been dealt with and nobody gets burned. (Not in Europe anyway) Martyrdom is like a cell phone. Once upon a time it was the few but now everybody does it. It is so commonplace that it now no longer is the preserve of the noble and innocent.
Specious martyrdom, the kind that encourages young men with a death wish to destroy not only themselves, but innocent people, is a travesty of the concept and so, to some extent is the mantle that gay men take on in order to embarrass and bully those who disagree with their lifestyle. It is the process of replacing one putative victim with another.
For a true martyr does not seek martyrdom or harm to others. A true martyr wishes only to stand up for a belief and ultimately to die for it if absolutely necessary but never, ever plots and plans to overthrow, destroy or otherwise foment acrimony.
Three examples come to mind of modern day martyrdom.
Let's start with Dick Puddlecote type martyrdom. Dick appears to be on a crusade, a libertarian crusade, to counter what he and others see as the unfair treatment of tobacco users. There are some hair raising examples on his blog, sound recordings, of people who, quite legally wish to bring cheap tobacco from the EU into Britain, which, as we know, is also in the EU. By anybody's standards these people are hassled and treated like criminals. They do nothing illegal and seek to assert their rights and yet the UK Border Agency is pursuing a vendetta against them. To some this issue may appear trivial and you may not be sympathetic, but Dick and others have said "enough is enough". They object to being scapegoated and incarcerated which is fair enough. I could not be bothered with this kind of thing personally but if Dick and his colleagues succeed it will be a victory for the little man against leaden bureaucracy and ultimately it will change the balance between them and us. It is macro-martydom, but it is martyrdom nevertheless.
The second is another story, another trivial story of a Chicago man who may face 15 years in jail for recording his own arrest. This is down to an unusually severe Illinois law. The state is one of twelve that requires "two party consent" for recording of persons to be legal. Nine states make an exception, an important exception, in the case of the Police, in favour of arrestees. Chris Drew was a street artist and vendor who has been arrested several times for selling things, earning a living. He knew that ultimately his insistence on selling innocuous silk-screened patches for a dollar was going to land him in trouble but he felt that he should be able to do it. He did not insist people buy them or sue anybody that told him it was wrong. He merely felt he had a right to earn a living. This too is an example of how thousands of people around the world are refusing to bow down to rulers who have no right to rule us.
The third example is perhaps of the more traditional kind of martyr:
The riots and demonstrations that have swept through Tunisia during the past 10 days also began with a small incident. Twenty-six-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, living in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, had a university degree but no work. To earn some money he took to selling fruit and vegetables in the street without a licence. When the authorities stopped him and confiscated his produce, he was so angry that he set himself on fire.
One man has been the catalyst for a revolution. Nobody could have predicted this. He might have died and faded away. For nothing.
In all three examples individuals and groups of individuals have become so committed to a cause that they are prepared to accept personal discomfort and worse for their beliefs. They have the potential to become change agents and yet they do this without trying to preach to others or taking others down with them.
We must understand what contemporary martydom means and be sure that those who merely seek to impose their will on others are exposed for what they are, lest those who make sacrifices for the cause of freedom are sullied by association. The cause may not be the biggest cause and the effect may not be the biggest effect, but it is the tenacity and strength of the human spirit that says, "I shall not bow down before another human" for we are created equal and have a basic right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Rosa Parks
Martin Luther King
William Tyndale
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Aleksandr Solzenitsyn
Aung San Suu Kyi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
The Pilgrim Fathers
Emily Davison
Jeffrey Glenn Miller
Alison B Krause
William Knox Schroeder
Sandra Lee Scheuer
And if you don't know who any of these people are, you should.
If you look at politicians unplugged is sometimes a study in pathos and despair.
Shorn of the trappings of office they appear even weaker than an average ordinary joe. Anyone who saw the TV expose of former British ministers, who engagingly told a hidden camera that they were "cabs for hire", part of a "girls gang" and who exaggerated the extent to which they could influence those in power could only conclude that without a car, a PPS, a few SpAds and a raft of carefully worded briefings, not to mention political spinners who could spot the scam a mile away, these people were vapid; quite devoid of noble motives and imagination. The men looked gauche and venal, the women looked like ingenues.
When John Profumo resigned in 1963 over his affair with a call girl and his subsequent lies to Parliament, Profumo did the decent thing and withdrew from public life. This goes back to the days of Elizabeth I, when a courtier, the Earl of Oxford broke wind loudly, in her presence. At that moment of this indiscretion, he made his mind up to go. He left the country in self imposed exile for seven years. Upon his return the Queen welcomed him and said, "My Lord, I had forgot the fart". Profumo went to a charity and offered to clean lavatories and wash dishes. He spent the rest of his life working for the same charity and largely avoiding the public spotlight. Whatever he was once, he had repented and in becoming nothing, gained so much more.
When one reads the lives of great politicians one begins to understand what made them great. There have been a few men who, had they not been scuppered by trivial scandals, might have become inspiring leaders and agents of progressive change. Gary Hart was one such man. I remember seeing him interviewed years after he gave up trying to be President and he was assured, bright and wise and very much happy in his skin. He graduated from Oxford with a Doctorate in Politics in 2001. It had been quite an odyssey but Hart was an intellectual and a realist and if nothing else it exemplifies a man who, even after seeking the highest office, still felt the need to learn more because he was still seeking to understand the truth.
Hart ran for the office of President of the United States of America in 1988. Because of the scandal of an affair, and quite possibly a campaign by the CIA, Hart's candidacy for the Democratic nomination was rendered moribund. The running list that year ended with Dukakis/Bentsen for the Democrats and Bush/Quayle for the GOP. Lloyd Bentsen, you will remember, demolished Quayle in the VP debate when Dan Quayle had the temerity to liken himself to JFK. Bentsen said, "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy. Peter Goldman and Tom Mathews wrote in The Quest for the Presidency 1988 that Bentsen "was the forgotten man" of the campaign until the exchange with Quayle. Thereafter, his "gray solidarity" was "made luminescent by the pallor of the other three men". At that moment, Quayle was revealed to the world as a dwarf and yet he became Vice President of the United States. After one of the dirtiest campaigns in US Presidential history, Bush won comfortably, more comfortably than at almost any other time. It's hard to say why Dukakis lost but it is interesting to speculate how history might have been different had Gary Hart won the Democratic nomination.
I am going to include a long video, with Hart speaking. Its a book promo, and it is long, so you need to be patient. There is an introduction, Hart speaks for a little over half an hour and then takes questions. It is better to watch it without my adding a comment, for I want you to engage with it without prejudice.
And my point is? Can you imagine our erstwhile ministers devoting their lives to anything so cerebral or indeed public spirited in terms of devotion to political discourse? Tonight, is Alan Johnson thinking about writing a book on the morality of Keynsian economics or is he, now stripped of the shoulders of giants on which to perch, returning to the miasma of mediocrity from which he crawled?
Here is Gary Hart talking about his book God and Caesar in America: an essay on religion and politics You can watch the full programme by following the link on the video bar.
By the end of November 1958, Myra Lou Blanton knew she was pregnant and she was pretty sure who the father was, though nobody in Lubbock knew that. Before anybody could have guessed about her condition, Myra Lou was moved to Panhandle, Carson County. The kid was born in July the following year. His father was dead by then and Betty never talked about him. “I’ll tell you one day honey”.
Troy Hardin Blanton was bright but daydreamed away his school days. Sometimes he wondered who his dad was and what he was doing now and where he lived but all he got was, “I’ll tell you one day honey”.
Troy got a job at the hardware store and stayed around Panhandle for the rest of his short life, until the day he fell off a roof and smashed his skull in the summer of 1976. He was buried next to his mother who had died just weeks before. He had been singing that day. While fixing the roof he’d been thinking of his mother and her secret, the one she never told him and now never would. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore”.
There you go and baby here am I
Well you left me here so I could sit and cry
Well -Golly gee what have you done to me
Well I guess It Doesn't Matter Any More
This post is about Beer. Girls and poofters look away now. We are fabulously lucky these days. Due to the success of CAMRA we can actually take pride in a product that is locally brewed from (mostly) normal ingredients that you and I would recognise as natural.
Favourite Beers?
Oh, don't get me started. I actually brew my own from time to time and that is pretty good, seeing as its source is Woodfords of Norfolk. When I lived in Somerset, my favourite pint was Butcombe. I think they still make it, but it is a small brewery. Time after time I come back to Ruddles County. Fraoch is also an occasional favourite.
Batemans has undergone a transformation since the days when even the Lincolnshire locals drank Watneys Red Barrel in preference. Harviestoun Bitter and Twisted gets an honourable mention, as does Black Isle and Arran. Greene King IPA and Wells Bombardier are never refused.
German beer is chemical free, according to Mark Knopfler and the Reinheitsgebot and Becks is always something you can drink and not feel as if you have had a bad drug trip and so is Perroni Nastro Azzurro, which is sort of de rigeur with a pizza at Pizza Express.
Most pubs can keep a decent cask beer and the good ones will take pride and care with its keeping.
Thank goodness we are no longer in the bad old days of the sixties when all you could get was brown gassed up piss.
I nearly did a story on this two days ago but binned it because I had doubts about whether it was a story at all. Well, it seems it is. William Hague our Foreign Secretary is conspicuous by his absence. Daniel Korski, writing in the Speccie, begins his piece with:
William Hague has been visiting Australia in the last couple of days, alongside half of the National Security Council. But you would not know it. Except for a few comments in the blogosphere, there has been little write-up of the visit in the newspapers.
Korski thinks it has something to do with our lack of interest in world events, but as we know, MSM journalists are spoon fed. There is a news "grid" that Number Ten creates, which determines what the stories are going to be. Like good little boys and girls, the lobby accepts the hand out and gets out the scissors and paste. Hague's visit is just another example of Hague himself being kept out of the media spotlight.
I while back I predicted that he would fade away and finally resign. I wrongly guessed January, but the strategy with a man who has attracted all the wrong attention seems to be a clever one; just don't talk about him. The message has clearly gone out to all those sympathetic to the Government and of course all the gay editors and bloggers who spiked the Chris Myers story before it became apparent that Myers was the second young, under qualified gay man appointed by Hague, to share an expenses paid hotel room with him. The message is, keep Hague under wraps for a bit longer in order for the gay story to die down.
Why is this important? It is important because it tells us something about the way the media is far too close to the government and far too malleable. It tells us that being gay, secretly or not, affords you a certain amount of expected protection from public scrutiny and a lot more toleration of hypocrisy. It also tells us that despite the liberal narrative that loves to tell us that it is ok to be gay, the government has also decided that it is better to be invisible. The only difference here is that had Hague been sharing his bijou boutique bedrooms with women of Myers' age, and with a similar lack of experience and qualifications, the press would be all over him. It is interesting to note that Kelvin MacKenzie commented: If it turns out Christopher Myers is gay it could be a real problem for Mr Hague.
This is just another example of the supine media going along with the politically correct narrative. I am all for Hague having a private life and I do not give a stuff if he is gay. What is sinister is the establishment conspiracy to "protect" him. It began with the resignation of Mr Myers on the fairly unconvincing premise that he did not want to be in the media spotlight. My guess is that it was Hague who did not want to be in the media spotlight and Myers was sacrificed in order to kill further speculation. My guess is that the MSM has had a clear message from Andy Coulson not to do Hague stories. My next guess is that since the only people who publicly cried outrage about the story originally were, Andrew Pierce, Iain Dale and Alan Duncan, the story has some truth in it. My guess is that as soon as it became known that Myers was gay, the MSM spiked the story.
I think that the private lives of people should be private, but in this case there was a possible conflict between the requirements of high public office and the use of that public office for the personal advancement of favoured individuals without due process. (Questions about Myers' meteoric rise from campaign driver to SpAd were never answered, and in particular his entry into a civil service post and his lack of qualifications and experience. Likewise, the other individual who fell into favour with Hague). The press simply killed it stone dead. It is incomprehensible that they should pursue a story and drop it just as the crucial evidence was about to be made public unless as Kelvin MacKenzie suggested, it was about to become a problem.
If anyone out there knows more than I do, please get in touch, particularly if you know for sure that this story has any currency.
UPDATE 2: This post has aroused interest from The House of Commons, no less. And yes, I know who you are. Perhaps you might like to enlighten me on the chances of Hague lasting more than a couple of months longer?
Neil McCormick at the Telegraph has an interesting piece today about the absudity of pie-slicing classic albums that were meant to be heard in their entirety; citing Abbey Road and Ziggy Stardust as two examples of albums that were concieved as a whole.
I listened to Abbey Road just the other day and it struck me was the use of leitmotiv, something usually reserved for symphonic works such as those of Wagner or Strauss. Beatles later work is intertextual (the Walrus was Paul). Cutting albums to pieces can even destroy the lyrical sense if there is one. Even The White Album has a sense of journey about it and you always know, because it is burned into your receptors, which track is coming next.
good brushwork but no cigar
It is therefore artistic sabotage to encourage punters to download individual tracks as MP3s because it is making an unintended, alternative artistic statement and it changes the way the pieces are perceived. You have to listen to Classic FM to underline the point - they play the "best" bits over and over and over again. You feel as if you are trapped in a world of hold music.
Some albums deserve listed status. That is, nobody should be allowed to bugger them up.
I nominate Aqualung, by Jethro Tull. Now, I know Ian Anderson tells everybody that it is not a concept album, but as a whole it tells a story from different points of view. It too has a narrative and the songs are intertextual. Like all albums that should be on the proteceted list, it is part of an experience, part of wine with friends and girls or boys you knew at the time.
Nominations please, for albums that should have grade one listed status.
This made me lol. I might try it myself. Heck, that's not weird for me, I used to go around pretending I was German.
Hat tip to Huffington Post, where you can find more candid camera stuff. I found this because someone at Huffington linked to the Julian Assange story, which is a bit scary.
Take a good look at this photograph. It is a picture of the Coca Cola company's latest foray into the health drink market. It is called Vitamin Water. The label cleverly replicates the kind of label you get in Boots and Health shops. In fact, it looks like liquid medicine! I wonder how they came up with that one? Well, perhaps it's the guy who, a few years ago thought of putting tap water into a fancy bottle and adding carbon dioxide.
According to Coke marketeers this girl cannot live without Spunk
Coke's earlier foray into public "awareness" (the very stupid public) by clever a marketing strategy to get water out of a tap in Sidcup and filter it, went tits up. Called Dasani was sold in the UK with the slogan "Bottled Spunk". To make things worse, it turned out that Dasani had a chemical, introduced during the filtration process, that was carginogenic and thousands of bottles had to be recalled. In fact Dasani was actually worse than the Sidcup tap water it was sourced from.
Well then, let us get back to their exciting new product range, Vitamin Water. You see? It's water, with Vitamins! Bugger me if I did not think of that. The thing is, I might have thought of bottling water and adding vitamins, but Coke have gone further than that which I suppose is the reason I am not a Coca Cola VP. Coke have added sugar!
Every 500ml bottle of Vitamin Water contains 5 teaspoons of sugar (23gms). The ASA have already ruled against Coke marketing the drink as "nutricious". And as if there wasn't enough sickly sweet sticky stuff in this post already, those clever marketeers have even made up a fake "blog" to promote it in the UK, which kind of neglects to tell you who is actually behind it and a Wikipedia entry that is pure marketing. Gosh, they have spent a lot of money to kid us into spending money on sugared water.
Wikileaks director Julian Assange has taken delivery of the details of about 2000 wealthy clients of the Swiss banking system. Rudolf Elmer, a former bank employee handed over a cd with the information at a press gathering in London. Elmer has described the clients, who may have avoided massive amounts of tax across the globe, as "well known pillars of society". Elmer will stand trial in Switzerland, but it is Assange who is going to upset a lot of very important people, for they are not only important, they are influential; they can have him killed and get away with it. Who would want Julian Assange dead? Well, nobody, apart from the CIA and 2000 secretive money men.
Somewhere in a subterranean lair is a man in a Nero suit stroking a cat: "Take care of Mr Assange, he has become a nuisance".
There has been a lot of kerfuffle about Ricky Gervais at the Golden Orbs. As presenter of the prestige event, second year running, Gervais had the job of introducing a lot of Hollywood luvvies and got a bit personal.
On I love you Philip Morris: "two heterosexual actors pretending to be gay - so the complete opposite of some famous Scientologists, then."
On The Tourist (explaining that it was a good year for 3D movies): It seems like everything this year was three-dimensional... except the characters in The Tourist.
and
on Robert Downey Jr: "Many of you in this room probably know him best from such facilities as the Betty Ford Clinic and Los Angeles County Jail."
Americans have to be told what is funny, and then be given permission to laugh. Gervais does not and never did work that way. Nevertheless he comes across as a bit of a wanker. That would be a bad thing if it not for the fact that most of the people, Steve Buschemi excluded, came across as giant wankers, cf Christian Bale.
Much speculation has been made about whether Ricky will be asked back to do the gig next year. The ratings were very good in 2010 and were better in 2011. It will be a battle to decide which has more say in the City of Dreams; reputations or ratings.
NB. If you really want to know what it is all about, this awards stuff, then all you need to know is that The King's Speech nearly did not get an award because of an email whispering campaign claiming that King George VI was anti-semitic, and secondly, Michael Douglas got a standing ovation for having cancer. Neither of these facts add up to a recognition of artistic merit, which I thought was the point of it.
It is a matter of the imagination, and to the question "What is
one to read?" the best reply must always be the most personal:
"Whatever profoundly and permanently stimulates your imagination"
During my days as a market researcher I spent long periods driving up and down the motorways of Britain. The mind tends to wander. I became a lorry spotter. Not only that I was a member of the Eddie Stobart fan club.
You see, in my world Eddie had an entire back story, made up by me on those long journeys.
..It is winter, 1962. A Foden has broken down on Shap summit and Eddie Stobart's number one driver, well, his only driver apart from Eddie himself, was struggling because he had sprained a wrist while trying to undo a frozen bi-furked knoll nut. Normally this would not have worried Teddy, Eddie's number one driver, but Teddy had dysentery that day and a bad cold and his mum had just died and well, he was a bit arrad. He goes to a telephone box and phones his boss for help. Eddie is having Christmas dinner that day, but forgoes the pudding and turns out.
Eddie gets into the cab of his ex army ERF recovery truck. It is freezing in the cab and visibility is down to a few yards due to the blizzard conditions.
When Eddie arrives, Teddy is outside in the blizzard checking the tyres.
"Eh oop, our lad!"
"Torp ring's gone ont crankshaft"
Eddie ponders the situation for a moment.
"You say torp ring's gone ont camshaft?"
"Torp ring's gone ont camshaft"
"Then ther's nowt for it but a tow"
Eddie produces a chain and links the two lorries together. The men do not say much else. quietly and with determination Eddie tows Teddy, stopping to let him have a crap by the side of the road and a swig of tea. The load got through in the end. The two lads find a cafe and have a mug of tea and a bacon sandwich and begin the five hour journey back home.
Things were tough in them days. Eddie built the business wi' 'is bare 'ands. And you 'ad to wear a tie and be polite to other road users. The night little Edward was born to Eddie and his wife, he went to his shed and had a think and decided that his new lorry was going to bear the name of is firstborn. With a tear in his eye, and after mekking sure the bairn and 'is mum was alright, Eddie Stobart sat down to do his books. That month he had made a profit Twenty Six pounds, four and a penny. A fortune. He used to dream of such a fortune. Pity the cost of diesel. Some were talking of a four bob gallon.
Wincanton has warned the government that this week' increase in fuel duty could "obliterate" some of the UK's smaller hauliers, part of its subcontractor base, unless it reconsiders its actions.
Nick Graham, Wincanton's director of transport UK and Ireland, says: "Large logistics companies like us are able to plan for these fuel duty rises, but this latest hefty leap could obliterate some of the smaller, more local operators."
His comments come after fuel duty increased by 0.76ppl this week, while VAT has risen by 2.5%, and ahead of a 1ppl fuel duty rise in April.
"For many of these smaller hauliers, with which we sometimes partner, profit margins are generally well below 5% of revenue, and it has been estimated that fuel costs now contribute to around 35% of their running costs. A growing economy needs a reliable haulage industry and the impact of such drastic fiscal measures should be reconsidered," Graham adds.
