FRIDAY MUSIC: Slim Gaillard, by JD

This time from Slim Gaillard. The comments to these videos show that most people have never heard of him which surprises me. The man was a genius! Unique, a one off, never to be repeated!

Bulee “Slim” Gaillard, also known as McVouty, was an American jazz singer and songwriter who played piano, guitar, vibraphone, and tenor saxophone. Gaillard was noted for his comedic vocalese singing and word play in his own constructed language called “Vout-o-Reenee”, for which he wrote a dictionary.

This man’s life is remarkable. He spent his childhood in Cuba cutting sugarcane and picking bananas. At age 12, he accompanied his father on a round-the-world trip but was accidentally stranded on the island of Crete. He spent four years sailing the Mediterranean, learning the basics of Greek and Arabic, and eventually boarding a ship bound for North America. During Prohibition, he drove a hearse carrying a coffin full of whiskey for the Purple Gang. As an adult, he taught himself guitar and piano, earned the respect of such big names in jazz such as Charlie Parker, Flip Phillips, and Coleman Hawkins, and he was capable of speaking six languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slim_Gaillard

Slim Gaillard Trio in Burghausen 1986

SLIM GAILLARD

George Melly & Slim Gaillard - Part 1 - Jazz Juke Box

George Melly & Slim Gaillard - Part 2 - Jazz Juke Box

Hellzapoppin’ in full color Slim Gaillard & Slam Stewart, the Harlem Congeroos

Slim Gaillard - Flat Foot Floogie (Live 1988)

Davos and PMQs, 21st January 2025

To adapt the My Fair Lady song, “Why can’t a Yankee be more like a Brit?” It was fun watching Andrew Neil sizzling ever hotter on X as President Trump spoke at Davos - “If the folks at Davos had a spine they’d be walking out en masse now. Leaving him to an empty room.” Neil seems to prefer the English habit of cautious precision, apology and understatement; I once unintentionally misled a Californian when I told him Colman’s mustard was “fairly warm” and watched him impressed as he slathered it on his hot dog.

Richard North takes a different angle: “Most of [Trump’s] speeches are self-aggrandising waffle with multiple factual inaccuracies. You have to listen to the song and not the lyrics.”

North is correct. The WEF, EU and Starmer’s Ingsoc are still playing with their citizen-paralysing legal architecture while China is bulldozing its way around the world. By contrast Trump is combative - who will ever forget his reaction to being nearly killed in Pennsylvania?

When Montgomery first met Churchill in 1940 and Winston overmatched him the General later said he’d thought “we’ve got our man.” Churchill didn’t get everything right either - Alan Brooke did great service in moderating most of the PM’s ideas; but what counted, and what still counts, was the fighting spirit and sense of direction.

But how Trump ruffles feathers! Suddenly Starmer has discovered “values and principles” in relation to Greenland and told the Commons he “will not yield.” To clarify, on Monday he said “any decision about the future status of Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark alone.”

That prompts us to ask, “which of those two?” For the Danes have not made themselves loved among the Inuit, on whom the Copenhaven government inflicted forced contraception decades ago, apologising only last August.

Naturally some people say, if the people of Greenland must make their own decision about national sovereignty, shouldn’t we also respect the result of the Brexit referendum? (And as Badenoch said, what about the Chagossians?) But don’t expect Starmer to have consistent principles on that, any more than with free speech, trial by jury and liberty generally.

Turning to national defence, where Sir Keir boasts of boosting funding, we struggle to square that with giving the Chinese the go-ahead on building a fortress-like embassy in central London, and yielding (to use his new favourite word) the strategically important Chagos islands to China-aligned Mauritius. On Monday the PM shared custard cream biscuits with Samaritans representatives; perhaps he should offer Cowardy Custard Creams to the FCO and intelligence services?

This week’s PMQs was rowdy. The Speaker issued multiple warnings to his unruly class but shadow Transport Secretary Richard Holden persisted and was ordered out. Holden has been an MP since 2019 so ignorance could not be an excuse; did he want to bunk off for a fag behind the bike sheds?

He’s not the only one to transgress protocol. Starmer once again introduced the session with a party political broadcast and when the Greens’ Dr Chowns asked about agricultural water pollution she was treated to an aggressive interrrogation of Zack Polanski’s policy toward NATO. Speaker Hoyle brought him up short - “We do not ask the Opposition questions” - but after eighteen months in power surely the PM should know how not to be a hooligan.

The first query was a softball about the new Warm Homes plan. Even if the figures are right the £15 billion investment might take over a decade to pay for itself but that doesn’t solve the problem that our energy prices are four times higher than in the US and consequently our industry is withering. Does the unyielding PM have the spine to cancel Net Zero and redeploy Miliband the Mad?

It’s odd how Starmer is willing to pay for palliative measures rather than seek fundamental cures when it comes to energy, immigration and wealth production. Instead his radicalism comes out in cowing and de-democratising the people.

On the other hand Trump is resented for his willingness to use America’s might in order to tackle systemic matters. Would-be statesman Ed Davey said today that the Don is a “crime boss”; Labour’s Steve Witherden called him a thug and bully. One supposes they prefer the bureaucratic gradualism of their European political colleagues, the ones who so dragged their feet when Ethiopia was starving and needed Bob Geldof’s popular support to galvanise them into action.

It’s not just that Trump is an old man in a hurry. Like his predecessors he is under the gun, having only two years (if that) to make his mark before the mid-term elections (all members of Congress and a third of the Senate) that could change the balance of power and hamstring his efforts to restore the Republic and cleanse its institutions of subversive zealots (both Left and Right.) He is a flawed and fallible man but we need to rise above soap opera judgmentalism to consider the great challenges in this newly multi-polar world.

FRIDAY & BURNS NIGHT MUSIC, by JD

This week something different (again!) The music comes from Kenneth McKellar, known as ‘the Scottish tenor’ and because Sunday night will be Burns night I’m sort of combining the two by including a couple of Burns songs.

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Kenneth McKellar (23 June 1927 – 9 April 2010)

McKellar studied forestry at the University of Aberdeen and after graduating he worked for the Scottish Forestry Commission. He later trained at the Royal College of Music as an opera singer. He did not enjoy his time with the Carl Rosa Opera Company and left them to pursue a career singing traditional Scottish songs and other works.

In 1965, the BBC selected McKellar to represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest in Luxembourg. He sang five titles from which viewers selected “A Man Without Love” as the 1966 entry. According to the author and historian John Kennedy O’Connor’s The Eurovision Song Contest – The Official History, the Scottish tenor – who had changed into a kilt at the last moment – drew gasps from the audience when he appeared on stage.

The Irish jury gave the UK song top marks, one of only two occasions the Irish have done so in Eurovision history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_McKellar_(singer)
https://projects.handsupfortrad.scot/hall-of-fame/kenneth-mckellar/

The Midges

Ae Fond Kiss

MY LOVE IS LIKE A RED, RED ROSE - Kenneth McKellar

Flower of Scotland

YE BANKS AND BRAES KENNETH MCKELLAR

Skye Boat Song

Comedy Club: PMQs 14th January 2025

Too much of our political judgment is simply visceral. If Starmer were a teacher the class would begin playing him up out of instinct, sensing him to be “different.” But there is little point in complaining about his personality. A battering-ram does not need character. What counts is who is using him and for what.

Granted, it would be easier for his Party if he were a slicker like Blair. Failing that he has a team who write jokes and insults for him as he trudges through the inconvenience of Prime Minister’s Questions.

Who is on that team? Judging by the material they feed him they are half-educated and louche. Here is Sir Keir on the Tories’ frequent management changes:

“They had more positions in 14 years than the Kama Sutra. No wonder they are knackered; they left the country screwed.”

That is bar-room talk, not Commons decorum. Soon after he turns to sneering at

“…the Ikea shadow Cabinet. The trouble is that nobody wants to buy it, it is mainly constructed of old dead wood, and every time you lose a nut it defects to Reform.”

Yuk, yuk, yuk. How we nearly laughed.

Not as good as the old one about Cecil Parkinson impregnating his mistress: “Why are the Tories like MFI? One screw in the wrong place and the whole cabinet falls apart.” But again, that wasn’t said in the Debating Chamber.

How much further will the PM’s ground crew take it? Will they start inserting jokes alluding to drug-taking, which I assume is as rife in Spadland as in advertising and PR? If they really want to get edgy they can come up with something about colostomy bags (if you know, you know.) It could be a sell-out performance…

… like Chagos, which Trump has finally criticised as “an act of total weakness.” Can the country recover from the structural damage inflicted by this administration?

The evisceration of PMQs continues. Yet again Sir Keir padded-out his introduction with remarks on Iran, deploring brutality to protestors there (but not to those in London) and Labour’s development plans for the North of England. Another time-filler was thanking before answering - Starmer did it eleven times to questioners and once to an NHS hospital.

In the main exchange with Badenoch his gibe about defections to Reform was given further point the next day when Robert Jenrick crossed over - officially he was sacked though one rumour has it he left his draft resignation lying around to bounce Kemi into action. I heard Jenrick’s name muttered as a possible Conservative leader in a side meeting at the Birmingham conference several years ago; perhaps his moment passed when Badenoch’s Parliamentary performances began to strengthen.

Nevertheless his subsequent speech at Reform’s presser confirmed what we see weekly at Westminster: the two main parties have ruined us. If Kemi’s October conference comment is right, that Labour acting on its principles must fail, then the question is why the Conservatives copied them for so long.

A blue reset (rinse?) might be possible, but only if the “broken Britain” failure is frankly addressed and according to Jenrick’s account of a recent shadow Cabinet meeting a few of them

“… had a third view. It is broken but we can’t say so because the Conservative Party broke it.”

If they don’t say so then Labour will, and does it regularly.

Worse still, reform with a lower case “r” may now be unachievable. The several crises that beset us may not be resolved by a little tax-cutting here and a little benefit-pruning there. Drastic action is needed, on a scale that the general public may not feel able to support and that certain elements may oppose vigorously, even violently. Look at Minnesota and at Democrats like Bernie Sanders fanning the flames.

In the meantime we must endure Labour acting on its principles, the first being to maximise its chances of re-election. In this session Badenoch called for the sacking of the West Midlands’ Chief Constable but in the event the easy way was taken instead: his early retirement. Politics is personalised and this scapegoating is useful to distract attention from how the decision to exclude Jewish fans from the Villa match was made, and what that reveals about influencers within the safety committee as well as the organisers of mob intimidation outside the ground itself. No Grunwick grit here and weakness invites more and worse.

The Opposition leader also had fun twitting Starmer with his alleged U-turns, missing what is really going on: not a turning around but a stepping back to jump higher. Inheritance tax on farmers has not been abolished entirely, nor has digital ID or the crushing business rates on the hospitality industry. The ground has been broken.

The Seventies dreamers spoke of “smashing the system” and we are getting to the point of having a smash but possibly no working system after that.

There is a deal of hope riding on Farage’s creation but he has steep hurdles to jump. If he is to be ready by 2029 he has to attract experienced individuals so that he does not take over with ignorant ingenues like Labour did. But can he control them? And can he control himself - is he able to run a Cabinet without firing dissidents? Farage has spent decades as a political heckler; will he be able to stand in the spotlight and deliver? Does he have it in him?

Do we have it in us?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Julio Iglesias, by JD

This week in the videos we are among hot blooded latin ladies and the dulcet tones of Julio Iglesias.

Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva is a Spanish singer and songwriter. Iglesias is recognized as the most commercially successful Spanish singer in the world and one of the top record sellers in music history, having sold more than 300 million records worldwide in 14 languages.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julio-Iglesias

On a personal note, I was aware of Iglesias; difficult to avoid really. His devoted fans call him Agosto Catedrales i.e. one step up from July Churches.

And then I was persuaded, very reluctantly, to see him in concert at The Bernabeu, Real Madrid’s stadium. And I’m glad I went, he was very good. Not that I will ever buy any of his records but he is worth seeing in concert.

Julio Iglesias Canta - Videomatch

Julio Iglesias - La Gota Fría

Willie Nelson, Julio Iglesias - To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before (Official Video)

Julio Iglesias - Agua Dulce, Agua Salá (Video Oficial)

JULIO IGLESIAS- 2001--MAL ACOSTUMBRADO

Julio Iglesias - La Carretera

"The Archers" and the EU

A couple of days ago I watched a TV interview about a British radio serial called “The Archers.” It features a fictional Midlands community and began 75 years ago as an entertainment vehicle to convey useful information on farming matters, as our country needed to modernise agricultural practices.

The BBC interviewee said that the educational role was removed in 1972. OpenAI offered me a number of reasons, mainly that it had achieved its aim.

But then I realised that we were just about to join the EEC aka the Common Market which we did formally on 1st January 1973.

Imagine if farmer Dan Archer had to muse daily on the impact on his business of European legislation, grants etc. Perhaps a coastal fisheries contact could also have been telling him of the disastrous Heath government’s decision to let EU nations - especially the French - catch fish in our waters right up to the shoreline.

So, was the remit of this narrative modified simply to suit the political narrative of that time?

Law vs custom :PMQs 7th January 2026

He’s done it again. Defying the Speaker’s displeasure, Starmer indulged in yet another time-wasting preamble, starting with a crack at Reform:

“I begin by saying that I hope all colleagues had a happy Christmas. It probably feels quite a long time ago now, but not for Reform, of course, because today is the day that they celebrate Christmas in Russia.”

The fool who wrote that for him invites comparisons that are not entirely to our advantage, whether in balance of trade, governmental debt-to-GDP, assertion of national sovereignty or democratic validation of the leader. Pound shop Russophobia isn’t enough to win elections. No wonder Labour is busy disenfranchising 10 million Britons.

Sir Keir ploughed on, first with what Labour has done for the people of Reading, and then about his “coalition of the willing” in support of Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader is now unelected, what with a war being on. (PM: hmm…)

At last Starmer delivered the short conventional formula about ministerial meetings and let MPs get a word in edgeways.

After an initial puff from Labour’s Ruth Cadbury inviting the PM to speak about the forthoming leasehold and commonhold reform Bill, Kemi Badenoch was invited to begin the session proper.

She did not disappoint, targeting Starmer’s disregard for long-established protocols. Kemi asked why he had not made a statement to the House that day about his commitment to put British troops in Ukraine.

Chiding Labour ‘chunterers’ the Speaker concurred: “I have also requested an early statement; the House should always be informed first.”

Badenoch said:

“His comments about making a statement in due course are frankly not good enough. It shows a fundamental lack of respect for all of us here, and for the people we represent... Why is today not the earliest opportunity? The truth is that the Prime Minister does not want everybody in this House to be able to ask him questions.”

Ah, “the people we represent”! That opens a can of worms. Who listens to the people? Christmas is coming for uniparty turkeys in May; that is, wherever voting is permitted.

Sir Keir even thinks it is for him to speak for the Opposition:

“She has six questions, and she is not even asking a second question about what we did yesterday. She has the opportunity.”

Sir Lindsay quickly put him right (“That is their job.”)

Funny how a punctilious lawyer is happy to trample custom and tradition underfoot.

Starmer over-reaches in other ways. He is threatening to ban X under the pretext of child protection and not at all because it is a talking-shop for his critics. Why not go further? Iran has shut down the Internet to help maintain its authority. There must be many good central-control ideas flying about at Davos, which (like the UK) Tehran’s Strategic Affairs VP attended last year; certainly the PM feels more comfortable there than here.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey quoted Geoffrey Robertson KC as saying President Trump’s intervention in Venezuela “is in breach of the United Nations charter.” This is an era in which the legitimacy of government and law - especially international law - are coming into question and this video by barrister Steven Barrett may help clarify our thinking.

We need less jabbing of fingers at rule books and more concentrating on realism and social cohesion; less commanding and more leading, conciliating and persuading.