FRY-DAY MUSIC! A dragon for St Valentine's Day

JD is experiencing technical problems, so today we repost an event from 2013: the dragon that attacked Chelyabinsk, Russia on St Valentine's Day 2013. See, they do exist!

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"A.D. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying across the firmament."

- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

 

In mythology, there are dragons or wyrms, but also two-legged or legless, poisonous or fiery wyverns, or lindworms. I have seen long ago but cannot now find on the Internet an engraving, possibly sixteenth century, of one of the latter, destroying whole villages with its fiery breath. I wondered then how someone could dare invent something on that scale, so disprovable.

 

And then on St Valentine's Day 2013 (or 15th February, depending on the time zone you were in at the time), one visited Chelyabinsk.

 

This time the evidence was direct and undeniable, not merely reconstructed with an artist's imagination. According to James Higham, Russians commonly drive with dashcams because of the risk of fake, compensation-seeking "accidents" like this. And so at last we got the proof, for the world to see.

 

Down it flew, a long, fiery shape with a snake-like body and no legs, its deafening roar sufficient to blow in windows and doors and knock down walls, the flames of its breath bright enough to cast shadows. Had it not landed in an ice-covered lake, but hit solid ground, the destruction would have been enormous, as it had been a century ago in Tunguska.

 

Here be dragons.

 

Images taken from this video compilation, and this.

As for the dragon music, here is a compilation...

Nailing the jelly – PMQs 12th February 2025

The Opposition struggles to wrench itself free of the Conservative Party’s lamentable record over the past years and remains vulnerable to Labour’s easy counterattacks.

If they are to succeed in holding the Government to account, their questioning will have to be more focused and they will need to have strength in depth when dealing with woolly and evasive replies.

For example, the main bout today between Badenoch and Starmer was on immigration. Kemi’s first question was about the decision of an upper tribunal to allow in six Gazan relations of a Palestinian who is now a British citizen. They had tried to use the provisions of a scheme intended for Ukrainian refugees and, although rejected at the first tier, they succeeded this time by reference to ECHR rules on the right to a family life. In this case, the applicant was the passport-holder’s brother – how far can the ‘family’ connection be taken?

The PM himself said the decision was ‘wrong’ and he didn’t agree with it. Would he therefore appeal it, asked Badenoch?

Starmer havered, saying the decision was made under the last government; well, “according to their legal framework”; Parliament should make the rules. The Home Secretary’s team was “working on closing this loophole”.

Noting that the PM had avoided the question, Kemi asked whether he would amend the borders Bill now going through Parliament or put forward new legislation? Without choosing either option, Starmer repeated the ‘working on it’ line and resorted to the usual counterpunch on the Conservatives’ former “open borders experiment”.

Then he muddied the waters further by saying that the Tories had voted on Monday “against increased powers to deal with those who are running the vile trade of people-smuggling” and added some Blair-like sloganism: “Same old Tories: open borders, empty promises.”

Here was Badenoch’s opportunity to nail Starmer’s misleading statement on Monday’s vote. During that debate, Chris Philp (Con) had offered a ‘reasoned amendment’, making it clear that the Opposition did indeed support tougher measures to tackle “serious and organised crime”, but “we do not support a path to citizenship for people who arrive illegally, and we do not support cancelling the Government’s obligation to remove them”. The Tories wanted no amnesty for ‘undocumented’ migrants this time, unlike the huge backlog-clearing of 2011.

She missed the chance to expose in PMQs that serious weakness in the Bill and in Labour’s underlying intentions, saying for Philp’s amendment that:

“… the Bill abolishes laws passed under the previous Government to ensure removals, and abolishes laws passed under the previous Government to ensure a deterrent by restoring illegal migrants’ ability to claim indefinite leave to remain and British citizenship; and because the Bill contains no proposals to limit legal migration, nor limit the eligibility criteria for settlement and citizenship, which means that the Bill will lead to increased illegal and legal immigration.”

Philp also noted that the Border Security Commander “cannot actually command anything. There are no powers at all in the Bill, merely functions … he has no clear powers, merely an ability to publish documents and reports.”

These points had been made in the Commons, but not in the limelight of PMQs, where the public is much more likely to hear them. This was a lost opportunity for a headline-grabbing forensic attack.

Then the PM repeatedly slithered out of the question whether he would appeal the Palestinian case: “She asked me if we are going to change the law and close the loophole in question one – I said yes. She asked me again in question two – and I said yes. She asked me again in question three – it is still yes.”

Three times only! Remember Jeremy Paxman’s twelve, to Michael Howard? In that case, one hardly knew which man to admire more, given Howard’s lightning twists as he evaded the question differently each time. Starmer has not that speed of mind – but he doesn’t need it, since his myrmidon army of MPs can simply bulldoze resistance, as they did to the ‘reasoned amendment’.

Badenoch turned to another vulnerable target, the new Attorney General Baron Hermer, “the Prime Minister’s personal friend and donor”, whom Labour’s Lord Glasman has called “the absolute archetype of an arrogant, progressive fool”.

The Government lawyers appear to have tacitly accepted the tribunal judge’s statement that the family were facing a humanitarian crisis “as a consequence of the Israeli Government’s indiscriminate attempts to eliminate Hamas”. How could that adjective ‘indiscriminate’ have been allowed to pass unchallenged? Did this imply a change of our official position on Israel?

A good pin on which to make the PM squirm, but Badenoch pulled it back out smartly and turned to the new chief inspector of borders, who lives in Finland and wants to work from home. Starmer was happy to deal with the latter: the individual had worked from Finland under the Tories but would now be UK-based. Returning to the AG, he noted that a previous Conservative AG had been “sacked for breaching national security”. So there!

When will Kemi break the habit of asking two questions in one?

Space does not permit discussion here of all the other matters in this session, but let us glance at three:

Sir Ed Davey (Lib Dem leader) recalled our time as brothers in arms with the Americans, deplored President Trump’s tariffs and suggested revenge imposts on US electric cars; Starmer shamelessly referred to the ‘special relationship’ and said “British steel is an essential part of our heartlands” – skating over issues of Chinese ownership, the EU’s impact over decades, as well as the dire costs of electricity thanks to the Net Zero push.

Similarly, he told Harriet Cross (Con) that “farming is top of the agenda”, though on Monday, he had fled to Cornwall by jet while hundreds of tractors jammed London’s streets. No changes to inheritance tax yet, then. The National Farmers Union welcomed his ‘road map’ apparently; not that bit though, surely.

‘Angel of Death’ Kim Leadbeater, fresh from modifying her Assisted Dying Bill so that cases would not be overseen by a High Court judge after all, but by a committee (selected how?), wanted Starmer’s confirmation that her 2023 ‘Healthy Britain’ report was resulting in moves to make the UK “healthier, happier and more productive” – right up to the point of the medical ‘kill shot’, one supposes.

What is it about the Left that loves death? David Steel’s 1967 Private Members Bill legalised abortion with a Labour Government’s support (10 million terminations so far); now, we are opening the door to routine officially-helped suicides. And as for war – today, Sir Ed Davey was yet again gung-ho for Ukraine and Zelensky.

‘Affairs are now soul-size,’ wrote the poet Christopher Fry in 1951. Now, Britain is indeed in a battle for its soul.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

The New Puritans

Our leaders think they can avoid addressing in the national forum systemic issues of public order arising from dangerous ideologies. Better - easier, at any rate - to leave such matters for local police and courts to deal with piecemeal.

Perhaps they don’t know enough about our nation’s past. Fifteen members of the Coalition government of 2010 - including David Cameron - were graduates of Oxford’s PPE program, which currently lists knowledge of maths as ‘recommended’ but of history as merely ‘helpful.’

Yet history will show that ideas, especially in religion, can result in blood and fire. In the sixteenth century Protestant bishops were burned alive outside Balliol College, and hangmen tore the guts out of Catholic priests at Tyburn.

Today we face the challenge of Islamic extremism. The Guardian is happy to focus attention on the ‘far right’ but three-quarters of MI5’s caseload deals with Islamists.

It should be said clearly that the latter activists are very much a minority among their co-religionists, most of whom are not theologians and are busy with work and family.

Like Catholics, their religious community is transnational and so they will feel an affinity with others of their faith abroad. Some of the Muslim unrest we have seen recently in London streets relates to the Middle East and if peace returns there the furore here may die down.

But that is not the whole story. There is an enduring ideological problem. Radical Islamists may be hotheads but they are not ignorant: they are Puritans who can justify their actions from texts in Islam’s holy book and the hadiths - the witness accounts of their prophet’s companions.

The Koran is a book of two halves. As published its chapters or suras - the record of the prophet’s revelations - are not arranged in temporal order. Islamic scholars group them differently, the earlier ones dating from Mohammed’s mission in Mecca as he began to gather his followers. These emphasise prayer and communal charity - which among others drew in younger sons whose life chances were more precarious in a society that favoured the first born and had no welfare state.

The later suras begin with Mohammed’s time in Medina, to where he was driven by the Meccan polytheists who rejected his belief in only one god. As the new movement grew larger and stronger, the tone of the chapters became more uncompromising and aggressive. Peter Townsend, a non-Muslim Australian researcher into Islam, demonstrates from the Koran and the hadiths that physical violence - including killing - in the furtherance of Islam is condoned.

Islamic scholars generally rule that where there are any contradictions in the text the later suras supersede earlier ones; after that the teachings are not to be interpreted and modified according to historical context but apply forever. If that is so, the struggle against the unbeliever cannot end.

Traditionally non-muslims were held to have rejected what we call God and so were His enemies, to be killed or made slaves or second-class subjects. ‘These perspectives have fallen out of favor in recent times, particularly in the West among diasporic Muslim communities,’ says Wikiislam here.

However there is no formal authoritarian structure in Islam - no Pope or bishops. There are respected teachers - mullahs and so on - but it is always possible for some self-appointed firebrand to set the underbrush alight. So there they are, wagging their forefingers on YouTube and inflaming young men and women who desire a shortcut to respect and power.

What is to be done?

Some on social media are talking of a permanent answer: forced ‘remigration.’ This might just be feasible in the cases of illegal immigrants and foreign-born criminals. Mr Trump is planning it in the US; in the UK, the Reform Party’s Rupert Lowe is advocating it. But how can you repatriate someone born in our country?

Besides, most Muslims here are peaceable and law-abiding, so far. As a minority group in Britain and also from the beleaguered outlook of their religion, they are prone to feelings of persecution. What might be their response if they saw a movement to deport them on a massive scale, the innocent along with the guilty?

We should also reflect on the implications for the rest of us. Stalin was able to deport the entire Chechen nation; is that the kind of State we would wish to have? The solution might be far worse than the problem.

Ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia, later a Dutch MP and now a US citizen proposes a different solution - a doctrinal reformation of the religion. History suggests that such a process could be attended by terrible controversy and slaughter - think of the impact of Martin Luther and Jan Hus. They thought they were reaffirming the fundamentals of their faith; but which devout Muslim will be the first to repudiate his own?

In my view the only realistic solution is for us to be watchful and very strong, much stronger than we have been to date. There has to be one secular law for all and it must be rigorously enforced, woke blether ignored. The soft hand and blind eye turned to the utterly disgusting ‘grooming gangs’ have not only harmed countless women and girls but damaged community relations to the point of riots.

Our society is no longer held together as strongly as it used to be by ties of blood, religion, history and culture. We depend on impartial institutions for our cohesion and safety. Should those bonds break perdition will follow.

We need a publicly and frequently stated commitment to civil law and order that disregards any special pleading.

Power is respected. In the early ninth century, a hundred years after Spain had fallen to Muslim conquerors, the Caliph of Baghdad sent precious gifts to Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor, to acknowledge the latter’s strength and signify diplomatic peace. It is weakness that invites bloodshed.

Vigilant, unrelenting and even-handed (not two-tier) justice preserves the social order for the benefit of all; even for malcontents, would-be rabble-rousers and self-righteous Puritans.

Reposted from the Bruges Group blog

Brief Encounter: PMQs 5th February 2025

The first question, from Dr Neil Hudson (Con, Epping Forest), highlighted suicide among the under-35s; another from Calum Miller (Lib Dem) spoke of the crisis in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), which leaves youngsters waiting for years - in a case he mentioned, the girl would only become a priority if she was ‘actively trying to kill herself.’ Our young people are suffering.

The PM’s opening remarks began with the fatal stabbing of a Sheffield boy on Monday. Later, Labour’s Louise Haigh echoed his horror and called for ‘a whole-system, cross-Government approach to address the root causes of violence.’ Sir Keir sidestepped that systemic suggestion and focused on knife crime, saying ‘we redouble every step to ensure that young people are kept safe.’

A recent governmental step is to make it harder for young people to buy knives online. It’s not the purchase that counts - such a bureaucratic deflection - but the carrying. That has been successfully tackled in the past: in the 1950s a Glasgow judge subdued the city’s razor gangs by giving long jail sentences to all caught carrying a blade. Since then the problem has been allowed to get well out of hand, with over 55,000 knife-related offences recorded in England and Wales in the year to September 2024.

We have been soft on crime for too long. As Starmer told Labour’s Claire Hughes, the Tories ‘effectively told the police to ignore shoplifting of under £200-worth of goods.’ He said Labour had got rid of ‘that shoplifter’s charter’ and that they ‘are working hard to ensure that we take a grip.’ Specifics would be nice.

Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch started with yet another portmanteau question combining the ‘immoral surrender’ of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius - ‘so that north London lawyers can boast at their dinner parties’ - with Ed Miliband’s failure to defend the Rosebank oil and gas field in the litigation by ‘eco-nutters.’ Starmer may need a voice coach but Badenoch needs a trainer in forensic interrogation.

Nevertheless Sir Keir went for the Chagos option, using the phrase ‘national security’ five times in his first reply and saying that Badenoch was not ‘properly briefed’ on the implications. Riposting in kind, Kemi claimed the PM had shown last week that he did not know what was in his own employment and education bills. The spat rambled on into energy and investment issues - ‘all she can do is student politics’ said Starmer, clearly briefed to take the sting out of a common accusation against Labour by throwing it back without looking at the dartboard.

Curiously, Sir Keir blurted that Badenoch’s inadequate security briefings demonstrated that she was ‘not fit to be Prime Minister.’ Does he sense that he may not have four and a half years of his premiership left?

We need to return to Chagos. The concern in the US is considerable. Senator John Kennedy broke off from a speech about Musk’s audit of USAID to discuss the history and strategic importance of the islands, the UN’s non-binding legal ruling and how Starmer has doubled down on his potentially disastrous historic error, offering even more money for even less lease time. ‘Please don’t do it, Prime Minister.’ Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will forgive, said Kennedy, ‘but they will never ever forget.’ Watch him here.

During her desultory questioning Kemi Badenoch made two references to Sir Keir’s voice coach as did Gagan Mohindra (Con) who, perhaps mischievously exploiting Parliamentary privilege, went so far as to name her in his query about a possible breach of lockdown rules on Christmas Eve in 2020. Neither was as bold as Katie Hopkins on Twitter/X - but then La Hopkins is notorious for her recklessness.

Labour’s Johanna Baxter spoke about Scotland’s funding crisis and the Strathclyde pension fund slashing their employer contributions. Starmer’s stock answer to Caledonian matters was that the Scottish government is a failure, they have the powers and money and no excuses left.

There are implications for the rest of Britain in that reply. Once the great devolution Bill has split up the country we may expect to hear more brushoffs like this about problems in other regions; and then the PM can knock off on a Friday evening as he wishes.

Labour’s John Slinger used his question to swipe at Nigel Farage, whose Reform Party has just overtaken both Labour and Conservatives in a YouGov poll. Would the PM reaffirm our right to medical care free at the point of use? Of course he would.

Soon after, Farage began by responding on that point and there was much noise. He noted ‘there appears to be some panic on the Labour Benches’ before proceeding and the Speaker said he was keen ‘to get this question over with.’ It turned out to be a link between the Clacton constituents’ loss of the Winter Fuel Allowance and the £18 billion loss of our military base on the Chagos Islands. The PM said Reform’s policy ‘would be to charge them for using the NHS’ and they should vote Labour ‘because we are stabilising the economy and boosting their jobs.’ Are those truths, readers?

On immigration (another Tory embarrassment), there was a Bill coming; law settles all. Would the Conservatives support it?

On Gaza, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey declared himself ‘alarmed’ at President Trump’s proposal to take over the Strip and ‘forcibly displace’ its people. Starmer replied emotively with images of Emily Damari reunited with her mother and of ‘thousands of Palestinians literally walking through the rubble to try to find their homes and their communities in Gaza.’

Crime, energy, health, immigration, Hamas’ nest on the shores of the Med… big ideas and swift executive action on the other side of the Atlantic. Here?

Maybe it’s an age thing. Two weeks have passed and already President Trump (78) has shaken the American and global establishments, with more to come. By contrast the British Prime Minister has little to show after six months in office other than multiple crises and promises of jam tomorrow. Is it time for Sir Keir (62) to make way for an older man?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Dan Hicks, by JD

Dan Hicks, 1941-2016

As he admits, Dan Hicks was in the right place at the right time when, after moving from Arkansas to California as a child, then cutting his musical teeth in the US’ burgeoning folk clubs, he landed in 1966 San Francisco, where the counterculture was coalescing into the city’s psychedelic revolution. As drummer with The Charlatans, he played the acid-coated residency at Virginia City’s Red Dog Saloon credited with kickstarting 1967’s short-lived summer of love, but soon struck out to lead the old-time hothouse jazz of his Hot Licks.

http://www.danhicks.net/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Hicks_(singer)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2pfYcswtVB6ncdkd5PP0H2N/psychedelic-frontiersmen-how-dan-hicks-and-the-charlatans-licked-west-coast-rock-into-shape

Dan Hicks Remembered: 1941 - 2016

Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks-Canned Music

Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks-Payday

Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks on Flip Wilson

A tough game – PMQs 29 January 2025

The match opened with Labour’s Damien Egan asking the Prime Minister to oppose means testing of the State Pension and committing to the ‘triple lock,’ which Starmer was glad to do, despite its estimated cost of £137.5 billion this year.

Instead of means-testing, how about raising the tax on the income of wealthier retirees, instead of persecuting employment with National Insurance rises? Or perhaps the Assisted Dying Bill (if passed) and the continued use of the M&M (morphine and midazolam) kill-shot for the ill and old will help reduce the strain on the Treasury. Sign that Respect form, everybody?

The Leader of the Opposition began with a solemn reminder of the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

(A shame that the Russians who freed the camp had not been invited, but we are / are not at war with them; it’s complicated.)

The Tories have a problem hurling stones at Labour from within their glass house. Kemi focused on the Employment Bill, which she said either followed previous Conservative policies or would cost a lot. She accused Sir Keir of not knowing the provisions of his own Bill, and even of having misled the House on the Education Bill last week – at that, the Speaker blew his whistle.

Badenoch cited various clauses in the Employment Bill that made it a ‘playground for lawyers’ and gave more power to the trade unions. Employers were hesitant about hiring; changes to sick pay rules might cost up to £1 billion extra. Entrepreneurs were disincentivised and millionaires were fleeing the country. By contrast, the US and Argentina were slashing regulation. Despite the PM’s aspiration to economic growth, he could not tax, borrow or legislate his way to it.

Starmer said that his Chancellor had given “a brilliant speech” and the CBI had celebrated its “positive leadership and a clear vision to kickstart the economy”. The Tories’ claimed “golden inheritance” had been tested on 4 July (with that said, the support of only 20.2 per cent of the electorate was hardly a mandate for his radical changes).

After these exchanges, there were twenty questions – half from Labour – which were about:

Home insulation; the poverty of the disabled and the need to support them into work; the Ipswich bypass and the PM’s determination to back the builders over the blockers (oh, to be a construction company these days!); the shortage in council housing; the economic benefits of paternity leave (this from Luke Charters, awaiting sprog #2); compensation for sacked LGBT military and intelligence personnel; the commemoration for the service victims of a 2005 air disaster in Iraq; problem in getting GP appointments.

Rossendale and Darwen’s Andy MacNae was upbeat about the devolution plan; Starmer said it was “moving power out of Westminster and into the hands of those with skin in the game” (though others might say it was weakening the voice of local people). Glasgow’s Gordon McKee made Scotland’s cold an advantage in bidding to become an “AI growth zone” (though cheap Chinese AI may have just shot that fox).

On the other side of the aisle, Rosie Duffield (Independent) asked about the Drax power station, which has received billions in subsidies (possibly illegally) to burn trees. The PM would look into it…

The Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey once again urged speed in hospital construction, and then asked the PM’s support for a ‘UK-EU customs union’; on the other hand, North Antrim’s Jim Allister complained of over 300 areas of EU economic law governing Northern Ireland and the Republic, rather than Britain – what did this imply for the retention of NI in the UK? Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) reminded us of the Omagh bombing; would Starmer encourage the Irish Government to cooperate in this enquiry into Irish terrorism?

Three other Lib Dems asked about building hospitals, one of them about the impact of NIC rises on ward staffing. Another (Paul Kohler) praised the system of restorative justice between perpetrators and their victims (high-minded, provided there is no hypocrisy).

Only two Conservatives had shots at goal, both right at the end.

One was Sir Jeremy Wright, who said the compensation for Covid vaccine injuries was inadequate. The PM merely said he and the Health Secretary would “look at it”.

It’s a can of worms. America’s new Health Secretary is not only claiming that the disease was genetically modified to target certain races, but that countries with a lower vaccination rate suffered fewer deaths.

The other Tory question, right before the whistle blew, came from Andrew Rosindell, quoting the Office for National Statistics, who say that the UK population will rise to 72.5 million by 2032. Sir Keir countered with the Conservatives’ own record on immigration and vaguely promised that Labour would “bring those numbers down”.

Then the referee blew up – no extra time for that one.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

FRIDAY MUSIC: Chas & Dave (aka Rockney), by JD

Chas & Dave (often billed as Chas 'n' Dave) were an English pop rock duo, formed in London by Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock.

They were most notable as creators and performers of a musical style labelled rockney (a portmanteau of rock and cockney), which mixes "pub singalong, music-hall humour, boogie-woogie piano and pre-Beatles rock 'n' roll". For a time, Rockney was also the name of their record label, their major breakthrough being "Gertcha" in 1979, which peaked at No. 20 in the UK Singles Chart, and was the first of eight Top 40 hit singles the duo played on. They had their biggest success in the early 1980s with "Rabbit" and "Ain't No Pleasing You". They also had nine charting albums. In October 2013 they released That's What Happens, their first studio album in 18 years.
http://www.chasndave.net/chas-hodges/

Chas & Dave - Ain't No Pleasing You (Official HD Music Video)

Chas & Dave - Stars Over 45 (Official HD Music Video)

Tottenham Hotspur Squad & Chas & Dave - Ossie's Dream

Chas & Dave - Margate (Official HD Music Video)

Chas & Dave with Eric Clapton - Good Night Irene
From The Chas & Dave Christmas TV Special-1982.
Royal Club - Guildford, Surrey
Band:
Eric Clapton: Guitar
Albert Lee: Guitar
Chas Hodges: Piano
Dave Peacock: Bass
Mick Burt: Drums