A selection of music in celebration of football’s World Cup, 2026...
Barrett Strong - Money (That’s What I Want) (Lyric Video)
Pink Floyd - Money (Official Music Video)
Rosanne Cash - There Ain’t No Money
Bruce Springsteen - Pay me my money down
Dolly Parton - 9 To 5 (Official Video)
ABBA - Money, Money, Money (Official Music Video)
... Yes, the ‘beautiful game’ has been tainted by the curse of avarice!
Ten years before the outbreak of the First World War Sir Halford Mackinder read a paper to the Royal Geographical Society in which he related history to geography. In it he noted Britain’s strength as a sea-based empire but also that there was the growing potential for a rival among the nations of the central European landmass.
Mackinder argued that the latter would be able to boost their trade and economic power - and military capacity - by building railway networks that could do more than their river systems naturally allowed. He worried about a forthcoming clash with the British Empire.
The discussion following the reading was even more illuminating, thanks to the comments by Leo Amery, who said that as to armed conflict modern ships could carry far more troops than could trains but - and this was in 1904! - sooner or later both means of locomotion would be supplemented by air which would lessen the importance of geographical distribution.
Amery went on to say that no matter where they were situated “the successful powers will be those who have the greatest industrial basis… those people who have the industrial power and the power of invention and of science will be able to defeat all others.”
If only our government had understood this in 1914! For by then Germany’s steel production was more than twice Britain’s and industry accounted for 60 per cent of their GDP. By mid-1915 we had run out of artillery shells and had to import them from the USA on borrowed money - defaulting on our war debt to America in 1934.
War is “the sport of kings” and only the richest can afford it. We couldn’t then, even less so in 1939 and not at all today, when all three branches of our national defence are dangerously weak and two ministers have just resigned on the issue.
If we wish to be a sovereign nation providing for and protecting seventy million people we need a strong manufacturing economy, with abundant, reliable and cheap sources of energy so we can conduct international trade on profit margins that can pay for all our imports.
Instead our liberal globalist leaders have done exactly the opposite while increasing the population by mass immigration, so boosting the numbers of potential victims of economic collapse.
Our overall losses in the international trade in goods are largely offset by our income from services. However other nations - east or west of us - may eventually develop significant competition in the latter field. When that happens our net earnings may become perilously negative.
Amery warned about this also. In 1906 he published “The Fundamental Fallacies Of Free Trade,” arguing that the total volume of British trade was less important than the net international balance. He was a lifelong advocate of tariffs between the British Empire and non-Empire nations.
Our current rulers seem to think that GDP growth is the same as paying our way, but the rest of the world is not obliged to feed and clothe us.
Perhaps a final reference to Amery would be appropriate. During the wartime “Norway debate” (7 May 1940) he made a speech that helped terminate Chamberlain’s premiership, concluding with a quotation from Cromwell that might be used now to Keir Starmer, the self-declared “fixer of the foundations”:
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”
Hamilton Camp was a British-born actor and singer, who relocated to the United States with his family when he was a young child. He is known for his work as a folk singer during the 1960s, and eventually branched out into acting in films and television.
Hamilton Camp served as one of the links between the Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger folk music of the ‘40s and the singer/songwriter school of Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, and Phil Ochs in the ‘60s. [Apple Music]
Camp is probably best known as the author of the song “Pride of Man”, which was recorded by a number of artists, notably Quicksilver Messenger Service, Gram Parsons, and Gordon Lightfoot, who included it as one of three songs by other songwriters on his first record. Camp died of a heart attack on October 2, 2005, four weeks before his 71st birthday. He was survived by his six children and thirteen grandchildren. [Wiki]
Hamilton Camp :: Pride Of Man
Girl of the North County
Celts (the lyrics are from the poem The Stolen Child by W.B.Yeats)
Hamilton Camp : Here’s To You
Hamilton Camp - Get Together
Gibson & Camp - “Sing For The Song” 5/21/87
Hamilton Camp And Bob Gibson, two renowned folksingers, singing together on Art Fein’s Poker Party in Los Angeles. Gibson died in the 1990s, Camp in 2006. Gibson started in folk music in 1955 and maintained a successful career. In 1961 the two teamed up for a world-famous recording “Gibson & Camp at The Gate Of Horn,” then they returned to their solo careers. The duo resumed performances in the late 70s.
All we need is to have law that applies to everybody and is strictly enforced. They do have to be just laws that make sense to everybody, of course. But lawmakers, police and courts have to “get a grip.”
No socio-economic excuses, no cultural relativism special pleading.
It can be done because it has been done before:
Daily Express
24 Jul 2008
RUTHLESS: Carmont imposed lengthy sentences on those who used blades
ONE terrible fact leapt out of the crime figures published by the Government last week: a knife attack takes place in Britain once every four minutes on average. There were 129,840 violent attacks involving a knife last year – more than 350 a day. The stark numbers bring shock and surprise – surprise that the Government has little idea what to do about them.
But a dip into fairly recent British history suggests the solution to the knife-crime epidemic is obvious.
Back in the Fifties, Glasgow was in the grip of razor gangs when Lord John Carmont, one of its leading judges, decided to do something about it.
The hawk-faced adjudicator, who died more than 40 years ago, was ruthless in his determination to rid the city of its stabbers and slashers. His answer to the wave of knifings was simply to give long jail terms to anyone caught carrying an open “cut-throat” razor.
His tough stance became known as “copping a Carmont”. From 1952, he became so notorious for punitive sentences that even today the French language still contains the phrase “faire un carmont”. The message quickly reached the gangs and carrying razors fell out of fashion. He “rocked the underworld of Glasgow”, wrote a contemporary, and stopped knife crime in its tracks.
“When I was a teenager in Glasgow, I remember the sporadic terror wreaked in the city centre’s dance halls by gangs intent on recreational violence,” says Charlie Gordon, Labour member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow Cathcart. “It took exemplary sentences issued by Lord Carmont to stop a razor-slashing culture that was growing in the city.”
Born in 1880 to a distinguished Catholic family, John Carmont was educated both in France and at the beautiful Abbey School in Fort Augustus in the Scottish Highlands. Called to the bar in 1906, he saw active service during the First World War both in the ranks and as an officer in the Black Watch.
He took silk in 1924 and established himself as one of the most formidable characters in the Scottish judiciary. He had an unusually retentive memory, could quote verbatim from legal texts and was admired for his sturdy independence of mind.
Though his sentences were harsh, he was personally “the gentlest and kindliest of men”, notes his 1965 obituary, adding that his sentences were “the logical outcome of his sense of priorities which demanded that the public was entitled to protection from the anti-social activities of the lawless”. Would that all judges had such views now.
With the constituency of Glasgow East voting in a by-election today, it is significant that the retiring MP, Labour’s David Marshall, has also spoken of the impact of Carmont’s crackdown.
In a speech on law and order, he told the Commons: “I feel sorry for the police. I give them my full support and they do splendid work but much of what they do is to some extent negated by the courts, which let down the law-abiding citizens of this country and its police force. If the courts were to make an example of some criminals, particularly those who commit acts of violence, crime would rapidly decrease.
“I cite an example from 40 or 50 years ago. Lord Carmont sentenced a few razor-slashers in Glasgow to 20 years’ imprisonment at a time when 20 years meant precisely that. Overnight, razor-slashing ceased.”
In fact, a standard Carmont sentence was one decade behind bars rather than two but Mr Marshall was on the right lines.
In the first half of the 20th century, Glasgow had an unenviable reputation for violence. The city took the brunt of the Depression in the Thirties with very high unemployment, substandard housing and poor levels of health.
The worst of the suffering was in the run-down district known as the Gorbals where, according to the writer Colin MacFarlane who was born there: “Human waste ran down the tenement stairs and filth, violence, crime, rats, poverty and drunkenness abounded.” A novel No Mean City by Alexander McArthur was published in 1935 about slum life in the Gorbals. Its anti-hero was “razor king” Johnnie Stark. The book was so grim that many libraries refused to stock it.
Glasgow and knives were inextricably linked in the public’s mind. The nickname for a slashing, for example, was known in some quarters as “a Glasgow smile”.
“By the early Fifties every gangster carried an open razor,” according to Danny Grant, a former policeman whose beat included Glasgow’s toughest districts.
When Lord Carmont, by then a senior high court judge, saw how many of Glasgow’s criminals were being sent to his court for knife crimes, he knew that the city was in the grip of a violent crime epidemic which had to be stopped.
“Carmont stated that in future anyone appearing in front of him who had been found in possession of an open razor would be sent to prison for 10 years,” says Grant. Back then, a 10-year sentence meant 10 years behind bars.
Carmont’s reputation for being tough was already well known to Glasgow criminals, as his treatment of John Ramensky attests.
Ramensky was the best-known safe blower in Scottish history, as famous for his prison breaks as for his crimes. During the Second World War, he was recruited by the military to blow up enemy buildings and steal important documents. He won the Military Medal and had been given a free pardon.
Shortly after the war, at the age of 50, Ramensky appeared before Carmont after being caught blowing a safe. He made an impassioned plea for clemency and cited his war record. He pleaded with Carmont that he had undergone more than his share of suffering. “Give me a chance, as only good can result from it,” he said in mitigation. But Carmont sentenced him to 10 years with the cold remark that “any sentence of less than 10 years would be useless”.
AS SOON as Carmont had decided to solve the blade problem, he was merciless. In one court sitting he passed sentences of up to 10 years on eight men – 52 years in all – simply for carrying razors and knives.
Those sentences had an immediate effect. For a brief period in Glasgow’s history, razors and knives vanished from its streets.
Today the plea for tougher sentences for knife crime echoes across the country.
In 2006, Charlie Gordon moved an amendment to the Criminal Justice Act going through the Scottish Parliament calling for mandatory jail sentences for possessing knives. His amendment failed.
But now he has renewed his call for automatic jail sentences for knife possession. “This is an idea whose time has come,” he said.
It is time for all MPs and judges to take note of the views of the public. It is time a new generation of violent hooligans got to know the meaning of “copping a Carmont”.
______________________________________________________
Found via https://www.pressreader.com/ and previously shown on Broad Oak Magazine in 2019.
The point of training is so that you do not have to be wise after the event.
It will be fifteen months before the inquest into Henry Nowak’s death is held. By that time the goldfish attention of the media will have been turned elsewhere, but when it turns back we shall be told that lessons have been learned and someone will make sure of something.
But even now it is clear some things went wrong in the police appoach to this incident. If a young man appears physically distressed and says he has been stabbed, would you check carefully rather than tell him (as recorded) “You’ve been stabbed? Whereabouts? I don’t think so, mate”?
The pathologist at the murder trial said that Nowak’s wounds were not survivable. That is a professional opinion but not the only possible one, as we shall see. Had the lad been taken to the nearby trauma department within what is known as the “golden hour” who knows?
If he could have been saved the way the police reacted may have reduced his chances. A doctor who is trained in combat medicine has seen the bodycam footage and read the autopsy report. He thinks that Nowak’s cut clavicular vein might have clotted as a natural defence but the rough handling and the process of handcuffing could have reopened the wound and that may be why the victim then bled out and lost consciousness three minutes later.
If paramedics had arrived first on the scene, Henry’s chances of survival would have been as high as 50%, says Dr Magier according to “Basil the Great.”
Were these police officers not trained in dealing with stabbing injuries? There are around 50.000 such incidents annually in England and Wales and we now often see a “bleed control kit” next to a defibrillator in public places. Or is it that anti-racism training biased the officers to make a fatal assumption, bearing in mind that the killer’s brother called the police to say it was a racist attack by Nowak and that no weapons had been involved?
The possibility of prevention goes back further. There were signs that if correctly read should have flagged Vickrum Digwa for monitoring - in fact his father and brother too. The family had collected an array of weapons and brother Gurpreet brandished a sword in a different road rage incident. The killer was already known to police, had stolen weapons from a gurdwara (Sikh temple) whose leaders described him as “argumentative with the congregation and confrontational.”
Perhaps there should be less reporting of infants to Prevent for potentially racist comments and more careful noting of genuine danger signals. Perhaps old-fashioned beat policing would have been able to use the local community knowledge and judgment of officers instead of the current reactive system that uses them as the bin men of crime, cleaning up after the event has happened.
And perhaps we should then not have a febrile people lashing out around them because of systemic governmental failure to protect us. We should not have to see political speakers in a wild bidding war to see how many first and second generation immigrants should be deported.
Rather than the divisive and inflammatory “two-tier” policing and justice (denied to be such by the present PM) we might benefit from a return to the pre-2002 attestation for constables. The wording used to be:
I, [name] of [place], do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve Our Sovereign Lady the Queen in the office of constable, without favour or affection, malice or ill will; and that I will to the best of my power cause the peace to be kept and preserved, and prevent all offences against the persons and properties of Her Majesty’s subjects; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law.
Back on the beat!
And some more golden oldies from this ageing baby boomer reminiscing about the good old days when life made more sense and there was such a burst of creativity and a sparkling variety of good music. I do hope I am not boring the youngsters of generation X or Y or Z or whatever/whoever they are. But have patience, we will not be here much longer: all of the artists featured this week and last week will now be in their late 70s or early 80s and more than a few are no longer alive.
Status Quo - Pictures Of Matchstick Men (Official Top Of The Pops Video)
Chris Farlowe with Out Of Time
This song was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and Farlowe’s version was number one in the pop charts in 1966 on the day England won the World Cup!
Ride My See Saw - Moody Blues {Stereo} 1968
Fleetwood Mac Albatross 1969
This is the real Fleetwood Mac which featured Peter Green, Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer; probably the only rock group with three lead guitarists.
The Box Tops - The Letter (Upbeat 1967)
Rolling Stones - Paint It Black LIVE (1966)
We’ve watched as industrial jobs have been scythed away and young people face life as shelf-stackers or on the dole.
Now technology is coming for the knowledge workers and many in the middle classes will feel the cold wind of insecurity blowing around their ankles. Quasi-intelligent machines with vast memory banks will take over many functions where experts and skilled managers used to be needed.
There is a building boom in “data centres.” The State of Ohio has 250 of them planned or under construction; Texas has 962.
They also have the capacity, and it will be used, to monitor and control the people and shut down dissent. Technology multi-billionaire Larry Ellison, chairman of software company Oracle, said in 2024:
“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on.”
They are like the chain of castles (the “Ring of Iron”) built by Edward I in Wales, to keep the Welsh down. Their modern equivalent will be needed to oppress a people increasingly poorer and less free.
In the two years before that Ellison’s personal foundation invested $130 million in the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) and has pledged $218 million since then. Blair is a firm advocate for digital ID and has been photographed “living the dream” on Ellison’s yacht “Rising Sun”:
Blair is a fantastic narcissist:
- but there is no reason why we should be cast in his Matrix-type dreams (do PM Keir Starmer and Labour not share them?) and every reason not to.
The YouTube video below, viewed today, is disturbing in its implications not only for China but for our interconnected world economy.
According to the presenter China’s debt-to-GDP is far higher than commonly understood (c. 50%), because we must also take into account local government debt and debt taken on by corporate business. The national government is progressively absorbing quantities of the last two in order to disguise their potential bankruptcy.
The total debt load is equivalent to over 300% of GDP. At the same time China’s foreign debtors are running into difficulty and they may fail to service the loans China granted them.
The economy that has seen such dazzling growth has been supported by revenues from land sales and they have declined sharply. Internal consumer demand and international trade are also affected by worry and pessimism.
In the 1979 disaster movie “The China Syndrome” a nuclear power station malfunctions and threatens a meltdown (the title exaggeratedly implies a really deep one!) Already ballooning debt plagues the US, UK and many other developed countries. Maybe China will encounter a financial crisis it cannot hide or overcome; but maybe a collapse elsewhere could be the trigger instead.
For us the lesson is not to gloat at Beijing’s problems but to hope for the best and to prepare to retrench.
I see we have been here before when I did a post of music ‘The Likely Lads’ would have been listening to in their younger days - https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2025/08/friday-music-classic-hits-of-50s60s-by.html
The reference to the Golden Oldies channel on Freeview still applies and, if anything, it is worse than last year. Freeview used to have three channels devoted to ‘golden oldies’ but now there is just one and this is how they describe their ‘best of the sixties’:
“A selection of live performances from TV music shows in the 1960s for a genuine taste of the best of the ‘60s!
‘From TV music shows’ ought to have been a clue because a good proportion of the videos are from American TV variety shows and a lot of them feature unknown singers who are definitely not giving us a genuine taste of the Sixties.
This is what they ought to be playing but you will never hear them on golden oldies channels either on TV or on radio. And it is a very eclectic and always melodic mix.
Cream - Badge
Mary Wells - My Guy
The Drifters - Under The Boardwalk (Official Video) Re-Mastered
The Scaffold - Lily The Pink
The Doors - Love Street
Martha & the Vandellas - Heatwave
Ben E. King / All Star Band - Stand By Me (The Prince’s Trust Rock Gala 1987)
Plenty more where that came from. The problem was what to leave out!
And yes George Harrison did play on that Cream song but for copyright reasons he was listed on the album cover as l’angelo Misterioso.
Ben E King’s song has been covered by 400 artists and is a timeless classic. It was inspired by a gospel song By Sam Cooke called ‘Stand By Me, Father’
Hope you enjoy that selection as much as I do.
A front page article in The Times says a study from Cornell University shows that people who are taken in by ‘corporate bullshit’ tend to be stupider and more likely to find their leaders inspirational.
Coincidentally or not, the front page also features a piece in which Tony Blair offers his statesmanlike advice to the Labour Party. Apparently a change of leadership is not helpful if there is no change in policies. A longer summary on page 10 says that compared with the big boys - the USA, China and soon India - we are in danger of being ‘marooned on an island of irrrelevance.’
That ship has sailed, you may say. Though when the real ‘Robinson Crusoe’ was marooned it was for predicting his ship would sink - which it did shortly afterwards. He was ‘better off out’ then and so are we now, if only we seize the chances Brexit gave us.
More bullshit on page 5 where Home Office Minister Mike Tapp tells us that while Reform are squabbling ‘the Government is actually bringing down immigration.’ The official gross figure for y/end 2025 is c. 813,000 compared with 948,000 in 2024. But that’s assuming the Government actually knows the numbers. For over a decade MigrationWatch has predicted our total population will eventually hit 70 million; last October Ed West guessed that we’re already past that point; some think that given data on shopping and utilities it could be millions more than that.
Blair’s rich fantasy life pitches his Party the idea of representing a ‘Radical Centre.’ Hardly a new notion: the 1997 manifesto said ‘New Labour is the political arm of none other than the British people as a whole.’ Now his Institute is recommending ditching various 2024 manifesto commitments so we don’t go under.
I would suggest that the average Briton 1) is not a radical and 2) does not know what is in the various Party manifestoes, 3) would be a fool to think they are binding and 4) votes partly tribally and partly in an emotional spasm when disappointed.
Apparently, according to ‘The Master’, Labour won the 2024 General Election by being ‘an acceptable… default option to a Conservative government.’ If he is implying that voters switched from Tory to Labour he must be hard put to explain why Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership got more ballots in 2017 and 2019 than Starmer’s.
Corporate bullshit.
“Creativity grows out of two things; curiosity and imagination”
- Benny Goodman.
Benjamin David Goodman was an American jazz clarinetist and bandleader, known as the “King of Swing”. His orchestra did well commercially. From 1935 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing big bands in the United States.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benny-Goodman
https://www.bennygoodman.com/
Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman - Stealing Apples (high quality)
Benny Goodman Quartet - Moonglow
King Porter Stomp - Benny Goodman 1985
Benny Goodman Trio (China Boy and Sheik of Araby)
12-min version of “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)” live @ Carnegie Hall, 1938
Our current Prime Minister is fond of using law as an expression of his autocratic power. A recent government press release states:
Eleven foreign far-right agitators intent on coming to the UK to spew their extremist views have been blocked from entering the country, as the Prime Minister takes action to protect British communities from vile hate.
Note the intemperate emotive language: “spew” and “vile.” This is not merely cool-headed administration but propaganda. It goes on in similar tone:
… violent thugs who spew hatred on our streets will face the full force of the law.
Among the banned speakers are a Polish MEP and a member of the Belgian Parliament. This does not sit well with Starmer’s assertion to the US President and Vice-President last year that he is proud of our tradition of free speech:
We all remember the case of Lucy Connolly but the Europe to which the PM wants to draw nearer can be even harsher to dissidents. Last year a German pensioner was investigated for calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz ‘Pinocchio’ on social media. Under Article 188 of the German Criminal Code a politically damaging criticism can be punished by up to five years in prison.
In 2024 the European Union itself extended the list of EU crimes to “hate speech” and “hate crime”; the potential for stretching this to include expressions of anger aroused by the negative consequences of mass immigration is obvious. Nevertheless two months ago the EU Parliament voted for tougher measures against illegal migrants, with deportation to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The thing about “reactionaries” is that they are often reacting to something. Where does the fault lie?
We are entering what may become an age of social instability and it brings to mind China’s “Spring and Autumn” period a couple of thousand years ago. During this time the great teacher Confucius (born “Kong Qiu”) lived and taught his principles, which are based on “ren,” empathic “human-heartedness.”
A different approach to his was “Legalism” whereby order should be maintained by incentives and draconian punishments. Master Kong observed:
“If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue, and uniformity sought to be given them by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of the shame, and moreover will become good.”
For Confucius social harmony is promoted by the personal example of individuals who are benevolent and have mastered their own passions.
Here Sir Keir fails, not only in his use of language in public messaging but shouting in the House of Commons and hitting the Speaker’s chair when reprimanded for his persistent failure to answer Opposition questions. If certain rumours are true his lack of self-control has also been expressed in other, grosser ways.
If the Kingdom is to be restored to peace and prosperity we shall need fewer damaging and divisive policies forced through in a tyrannical way, and more “ren” from our leaders.
This is the music of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. It may not be to everyone’s liking but when I first heard it about 30 years ago it ‘grabbed’ me immediately and it gets better as I get older. It is certainly different, I’m sure you will agree.
Pärt was born in Estonia in 1935. He has composed music since the 1950’s, music which in Soviet-controlled country was alternately praised or banned, but was completely unknown in the West until the 1980’s.
In 1977, he wrote a trio of works that were to define his own style, and set his future course of composition. In that year he wrote the three works that made him famous in the West, the three works that are still regarded as his best are Fratres, Cantus for Benjamin Britten and Tabula Rasa.
“I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note, or a silent beat, or a moment of silence, comforts me. I work with very few elements - with one voice, two voices. I build with primitive materials - with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells and that is why I call it tintinnabulation”- Arvo Pärt
https://www.good-music-guide.com/reviews/071_arvo_part.htm
Pärt – Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten – Norwegian Chamber Orchestra
Spiegel im Spiegel for Cello and Piano (Arvo Pärt)
VOCES8: The Deer’s Cry - Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt De Profundis
Tabula Rasa Part 1 “Ludus”
A marvellous video tells how China is reversing the progress of a desert that was heading towards Beijing.
At first they planted great numbers of trees, which sucked water out of the ground until the water table sank so far the roots couldn’t reach and the trees died.
Then they tried introducing an ancient wild breed of horse - Przewalski’s. This stocky creature broke the barren crust of topsoil with its hooves, allowing rainwater to gather in puddles and seep into the lower ground. Plants came out of suspended animation. As the horses roamed they spread seeds carried on their hooves and in their dung. Insects colonised the greening area and a complex ecosystem began to re-form.
Isn’t this a metaphor for the failure of top-down bureaucratic planning of a command economy and the success, allowed the opportunity, of the “animal spirits” of private enterprise?
The final ward to declare its result in last Thursday’s local elections in Birmingham was Glebe Farm and Tile Cross. At stake were two council seats.
The Labour leader of Birmingham Council, John Cotton, was ousted. The two new councillors were Jess Ankrett (Reform UK) and Shehryar Kayani (Workers Party of Britain.)
It was close. There were two recounts on Saturday (no change announced) but on Monday (it is said) seven new ballots were discovered. Rumour had it that the margin between Kayani and Cotton was only six votes and the extra seven were all for Labour and would have returned Cotton. Here is the controversial former diplomat Craig Murray jumping on the bandwagon:
A Birmingham seat is being recounted for the third time.
The Workers Party won the first count by 6 votes. They won the second count by 6 votes.
Then the Returning Officer - who is of course an employee of Labour run Birmingham City Council - “Found” seven Labour votes that had gone astray.
Here is former Labour MP and now Workers Party leader George Galloway furiously responding to the allegation by “Losrafascartel”:
If we are cheated of this famous victory Legal Action will follow immediately @WorkersPartyGB
But the official return shows that although there was (ultimately, if not before the recounts) a six-vote gap it was between Kayani of the Workers Party and (third in the list) Satnam Tank of Reform. Had the new seven ballots all been for one or both Labour candidates it would not have made the slightest difference to the outcome:
It’s not been established who asked for the recount, but given the results it could easily have been on behalf of Reform.
These are feverish times. As I write we still don’t know whether the Prime Minister himself will stay or go.
Even veteran journalists can get things hopelessly wrong: “In a democracy we get the politicians we deserve,” said the Daily Mail’s Andrew Neil last week.
This is not a democracy, it’s a constitutional monarchy. The franchise was extended in 1918 to prevent Communist revolution and since then there has been intense effort to misguide and distract the public via mass media.
“The people have spoken—the bastards” said a US Senate hopeful 60 years ago and when much later they spoke for Trump - twice - all hell was let loose. They simply don’t know what’s good for them. They have to be managed.
Early results from yesterday’s UK elections suggest that the Greens have split off votes from Labour and let Reform come through on the First Past The Post system. “But why don’t Labour enact electoral reform to stop this from happening?” asked the Guardian’s Owen Jones, but he opposed the Alternative Vote in the 2011 referendum because it might help a third party.
What matters to him and so many others is the outcome, not the process.
And if the outcome is the wrong one, the apparatchiks have to put it right. The country voted for Brexit; the politicians undermined it. There was a General Election to break the logjam. The Bill was passed perforce but the subversion continued. Now we have Labour pursuing a damaging “dynamic alignment” with the EU’s laws; if that follows the trajectory of our membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism we could all end up singing in the bath.
Some commentators think Starmer stands for nothing. Again this is completely wrong and misleads people into believing that getting rid of Sir Keir will solve our problems. He does have an agenda and it’s not just his; it is a continuation of the Left’s long-running program to destroy our “democracy” so completely that a Conservative government can never return. He has said so in terms:
“We’re trying not just to defeat the Tories, but to defeat their entire way of doing politics.”
In that same speech he then proposes to unite the country!
Starmer has picked up the baton from his mentor Blair. Emasculate the House of Lords, devolve power away from Westminster via a forest of quangos and surrender to EU rule-making, split the country into sub-nations and regions, amalgamate local councils into entities so large that they mean nothing much to the voters (especially when local TV and papers report so little.) Use mass immigration to promote “diversity” but not so much because diversity per se is valuable as it is a weapon to smash the British cultural unity that has taken centuries and blood-sodden fields to develop.
And of course abolish the monarchy, the obstacle identified at the end of the fiery right-on 1976 TV series “Bill Brand”; our unifying symbols must be destroyed, as before when Cromwell sold broke and melted the royal regalia. The first muted trumpet call of the current battle was on 17 July 2024 when the Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood turned her back on the Monarch after handing him his speech; that deliberate discourtesy was introduced by the Blair government back in 1998. The King blinked: he had not missed its import.
Everybody hates democracy. In the 1980s the Tory leader of Westminster Council introduced a scheme to sell off its council houses to build Labour out of the area. In the US there has long been gerrymandering by both sides to game the voting in their favour and the competition is intensifying, as Lionel Shriver discusses in this week’s Spectator magazine.
National harmony does not depend on unity of opinion. Every time someone says “hey gang, let’s all…” a fight begins. There is no “all”; peace is founded on a great number of issues where we agree to disagree. Unless we can get political and religious militants (of various kinds) to accept that then the “diversity” project will backfire dramatically.
Most of human happiness does not come out of debating rooms. It lies in personal relationships, work that does not smash them up with its demands, adequate comfort and security and if desired the opportunity to better oneself or one’s offspring through additional striving.
Where is a gardener government wise enough to plant, weed and stand back?
“Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American pianist who was the greatest jazz composer and bandleader of his time. One of the originators of big-band jazz, Ellington led his band for more than half a century, composed thousands of scores, and created one of the most distinctive ensemble sounds in all of Western music.”
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Duke-Ellington
Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn - Take the “A” Train
Duke Ellington - Caravan
Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”
Rockin In Rhythm
Duke Ellington Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue
With those last two numbers you could almost say he helped to invent -rock and roll.
In this post JD argues that the threat of AI is overstated - but we wonder whether it may narrow the gap between the blue collar and the white?
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
- from The Rock by T.S.Eliot
https://www.wisdomportal.com/Technology/TSEliot-TheRock.html
Where indeed? Were he alive today Eliot might have continued “and where is the information swallowed up by AI; Artificial Intelligence?”
AI is all over the news media. Huge amounts of money being invested (gambled?) on its potential.
We have been here before of course. In the 1930s Alan Turing was working on what he called Machine Intelligence. Continuing with that work he eventually came up with what became the Enigma machine. We have all heard of that because it was able to decipher the German secret communication codes and helped to bring an end to the second world war.
https://www.vectra.ai/blog/alan-turing-and-the-birth-of-machine-intelligence
AI consists of pure information which it is able to transfer between machines/computers. What it cannot do is perform physical tasks. All the speculation about AI taking over everybody’s job is just that, speculation or scaremongering.
As an example, let us suppose you are driving along and get a puncture in one of your tyres. How is AI going to help you get the spare wheel out of the boot and replace the wheel with the puncture? It can’t. Or when your car needs its annual service, is AI going to change the oil or the spark plugs? No of course not. So the motor mechanic’s job is safe, he will never be replaced by AI.
Another example is my garden fence which is leaning at a perilous angle after some high winds. What will AI’s contribution be to restoring my fence to the vertical? None whatsoever. So the fencing contractor’s job is not going to disappear any time soon.
I’m sure you can readily think of many examples of your own.
Iain McGilchrist FRSA is a British psychiatrist, philosopher and neuroscientist who wrote the 2009 book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. In this video he explains how and why AI cannot become conscious because it is entirely parasitic. In other words it is dependent on information created by others. It has access to all of that information. AI will search and retrieve information according to what it is asked to retrieve. It will then display such information in the way it is asked to display or use it. But it will always require people to make use of the information. The machine that is AI cannot do anything without instructions from whoever is operating the machine; it cannot carry out any physical function. It is humans and only humans who are able to do that. Iain McGilchrist explains it much better than I can in this video.
Iain McGilchrist - Can AI Become Conscious?
There is another aspect to AI which is usually ignored by commentaters and that is the idea of computer chips being implanted into the brain in order to ‘enhance’ the brain’s capacity. I have already read about people who have done just that but I have seen no ‘progress reports’ telling us whether these implants have been successful or not.
The following video comes from Gregg Braden who was for a number of years a software designer working for the US government as well as for Cisco Systems and others. He explains the current situation and the pitfalls which lie ahead.
Artificial Intelligence vs Human Awareness | Gregg Braden
Birmingham used to be called the City of a Thousand Trades. It had a large skilled workforce and a diversified industrial base, with many small businesses so that if one failed there were nearby competitors to take over.
In 1945 a new Government came in with Big Ideas. One was to provide more employment around the regions by restricting growth in areas that were already successful. The Distribution of Industry Act required central government permission to build or expand a factory by more than 5,000 square feet (465 square metres.) This forced development to be sited elsewhere.
The big-picture intention may have been good, but one consequence was that Birmingham was handicapped like a horse that wins too many races. The city where I live became over-dependent on a limited number of enterprises, especially car manufacture, and when global competition and economic recession hit we suffered.
China has learned from our ivory-tower political stupidity. Its industry clusters with their synergy have made the country a world-beater.
Now Britain has another high-handed grand-plan national administration determined to distribute wealth production, diluting and weakening our productive capacity. Add to that the back-to-Eden fantasy of high-cost and unreliable “sustainable” energy creation and we have a whole nation headed for the doldrums.
Like schools, Parliament need to send its Members on “work experience” before they presume to run the economy.
For more about the introduction and effects of Industrial Development Certificates please read this excellent article in the Birmingham Dispatch and/or watch the video below:
