https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Akers
Doris Akers Everytime I Feel the Spirit and , I Believe
Friday, October 04, 2024
FRIDAY MUSIC: Doris Akers (Gospel music), by JD
Doris Mae Akers (May 21, 1923 – July 26, 1995) was an American gospel music composer, arranger and singer who is considered to be "one of the most underrated gospel composers of the 20th century [who] wrote more than 500 songs". Known for her work with the Sky Pilot Choir, she was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2001.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Akers
Doris Akers Everytime I Feel the Spirit and , I Believe
Doris Akers and The Akers Family Cedar Rapids, IA
Doris Akers - Sweet Jesus [Live]
Doris Akers & The Sky Pilot Choir - My Soul Is A Witness For The Lord
Lead Me, Guide Me, ELVIS Gospel, Doris Mae Akers, Sky Pilot Choir, Bill Gaither
Sweet, Sweet Spirit [Live]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Akers
Doris Akers Everytime I Feel the Spirit and , I Believe
Friday, September 27, 2024
FRIDAY MUSIC: The Transatlantic Sessions, by JD
At long last some TV repeats worth watching! This evening (Fri 27/9/24) on BBC4 from 9pm the evening will be devoted to repeats of The Transatlantic Sessions and I believe the Beeb are currently recording a new series of programmes for broadcast in 2025 so in anticipation of an evening beside the telly with a wee dram a small sample from the archives is this week's musical offering.
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"Celebrating the rich traditions connecting Scotland, Ireland and the US, and a regular Celtic Connections highlight, our Transatlantic Sessions feature an outstanding line-up of artists, as great guest musicians and a celebrated house band explore shared roots through original material and age-old songs.
“Captivating duo Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves return on banjo and fiddle, after winning Instrumental Group of the Year and Traditional Album of the Year at the 2023 Canadian Folk Music Awards.
“The house band, led by Aly Bain and Jerry Douglas, features renowned Celtic and roots musicians Phil Cunningham, John Doyle, Michael McGoldrick, John McCusker, Donald Shaw, James Mackintosh and Daniel Kimbro. “A phenomenal group of musicians. . . The synchronicity and tightness of the band was incredible. . . an evening of spectacular traditional music-making from both sides of the great ocean.” (The Arts Desk)…
https://www.transatlanticsessions.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Sessions
Aragon Mill
"Waterbound" - Dirk Powell and The Transatlantic Musicians
Julie Fowlis, Kim Carnie & Karen Matheson - An Ubhal As Àirde | Hoolie 2023 | BBC ALBA
Capercaillie - Ailein Duinn (Official Music Video - 1080p50 remaster)
Skipinnish at the BBC ALBA launch
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Celebrating the rich traditions connecting Scotland, Ireland and the US, and a regular Celtic Connections highlight, our Transatlantic Sessions feature an outstanding line-up of artists, as great guest musicians and a celebrated house band explore shared roots through original material and age-old songs.
“Captivating duo Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves return on banjo and fiddle, after winning Instrumental Group of the Year and Traditional Album of the Year at the 2023 Canadian Folk Music Awards.
“The house band, led by Aly Bain and Jerry Douglas, features renowned Celtic and roots musicians Phil Cunningham, John Doyle, Michael McGoldrick, John McCusker, Donald Shaw, James Mackintosh and Daniel Kimbro. “A phenomenal group of musicians. . . The synchronicity and tightness of the band was incredible. . . an evening of spectacular traditional music-making from both sides of the great ocean.” (The Arts Desk)…
https://www.transatlanticsessions.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Sessions
Aragon Mill
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Scrap National Insurance!
The typical employee’s wage slip is something of a con.
Here’s how it works. For earnings between £12,570 and £50,270 p.a. there are deductions of income tax at 20%, employee NIC at 12% but an additional 13.8% NIC is paid by the employer.
If someone on the average salary of c. £33,000 a year gets a raise of £1,000 the worker pays £320 in tax/NIC and the employer another £138. Thus in total it costs the salary department £1,138 to give the worker £680 net.
You would have the same result if you simply paid the worker £1,138 and charged income tax at 40.25%. From this point of view basic rate taxpayers are effectively Higher Rate taxpayers!
Back in 1910 a working class man might earn £50 - £100 per year depending on his level of skill. There was as yet no National Insurance Fund and the threshold for paying income tax was £160. So no tax and no NIC for the ordinary working person!
Once you were on a lot more - £700 a year - marginal income tax was a shilling in the pound i.e. 5%. In 1909 Lloyd George introduced a super-tax for the very wealthy on £5,000+ per annum: this was an extra 2.5%, bringing the total to 7.5% on margin.
It was a different world.
And in many ways a much worse world. Lives were shorter and illness more common - hundreds of thousands suffered from TB, for example. Certain industries were more likely to be hit by cyclical unemployment which would destroy the security of working class families, so that people who had joined friendly societies or taken out life insurance might have to default on their membership and policies. The edge of destitution was always close, with its threat of the workhouse or infirmary.
So let’s bless the memory of the ‘Welsh Wizard’ who in 1911 presented Parliament with a plan for a National Insurance Fund to tackle these miseries. His introductory speech is on Hansard here. The scheme is complex and brilliantly worked-out. We must admire the intellectual quality of a Debating Chamber that could take in the details and ask penetrating questions; do we have such a one now?
The initial actuarial calculations had called for some fifteen years of extra Government funding to cover the cost of admitting older lives to the new plan, after which the State could step back and the scheme would be wholly reliant on the contributions from workers and employers.
The plan was doomed. The Bill became law in 1912 and benefits began to be paid the next year; but in 1914 a Privy Council meeting declared war on Germany.
The surplus funds designed to take care of future obligations were raided by Lloyd George to help pay the enormous costs of the conflict. Inflation doubled by 1918; then there was a slump and a few years later the Great Depression, bringing a level of unemployment for which the Fund had not been designed. Generally the nation’s finances went haywire, so that in 1934 Britain defaulted on her huge wartime loans from the United States.
Then came World War Two, with more borrowings and the forfeiture of much of our gold and overseas business holdings. Yet the postwar Welfare State was established, broke though we were; how infinitely better would our position have been had we stayed out of both global conflicts?
These are the fruits of war.
Nevertheless, for a couple of decades the post-1945 National Insurance Fund rebuilt its surplus and the system moved to pay-as-you-go, funding benefits from current contributions, while maintaining significant reserves. However, expanding welfare programs and an ageing population saw the reserves dwindle to the status of a contingency fund; we are now on ‘money in, money out.’ Pensioners who say ‘we paid in and now we are being short-changed’ have to realise it is not like a Christmas club; they must accept what the State gives them and be thankful.
So let’s dispense with the National Insurance taradiddle and charge a uniform tax of around 40%.
One advantage is that ordinary people would enjoy a much bigger tax break on voluntary pension contributions.
As for State pensioners, let all of them have the full basic State pension, and the Winter Fuel Allowance, and the bus pass and 25% ‘widow’s discount’ on Council Tax and so on. Below a certain level of income they need all of it and let’s not squabble about marginal benefits and who gets what docked and isn’t it unfair. Let them pay the same tax rate as the working people sweating for a living, but adjust the income tax threshold so that they get all the State will give them plus some extra that they have saved for themselves; then, 40% or so above that limit.
It would work out so that for example someone on a total income that is £28,756 into the 40% tax bracket would be repaying the full cost of a basic State Pension which is currently £11,02.40. Someone less wealthy would be paying a proportion, naturally.
It’s the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Here’s how it works. For earnings between £12,570 and £50,270 p.a. there are deductions of income tax at 20%, employee NIC at 12% but an additional 13.8% NIC is paid by the employer.
If someone on the average salary of c. £33,000 a year gets a raise of £1,000 the worker pays £320 in tax/NIC and the employer another £138. Thus in total it costs the salary department £1,138 to give the worker £680 net.
You would have the same result if you simply paid the worker £1,138 and charged income tax at 40.25%. From this point of view basic rate taxpayers are effectively Higher Rate taxpayers!
Back in 1910 a working class man might earn £50 - £100 per year depending on his level of skill. There was as yet no National Insurance Fund and the threshold for paying income tax was £160. So no tax and no NIC for the ordinary working person!
Once you were on a lot more - £700 a year - marginal income tax was a shilling in the pound i.e. 5%. In 1909 Lloyd George introduced a super-tax for the very wealthy on £5,000+ per annum: this was an extra 2.5%, bringing the total to 7.5% on margin.
It was a different world.
And in many ways a much worse world. Lives were shorter and illness more common - hundreds of thousands suffered from TB, for example. Certain industries were more likely to be hit by cyclical unemployment which would destroy the security of working class families, so that people who had joined friendly societies or taken out life insurance might have to default on their membership and policies. The edge of destitution was always close, with its threat of the workhouse or infirmary.
So let’s bless the memory of the ‘Welsh Wizard’ who in 1911 presented Parliament with a plan for a National Insurance Fund to tackle these miseries. His introductory speech is on Hansard here. The scheme is complex and brilliantly worked-out. We must admire the intellectual quality of a Debating Chamber that could take in the details and ask penetrating questions; do we have such a one now?
The initial actuarial calculations had called for some fifteen years of extra Government funding to cover the cost of admitting older lives to the new plan, after which the State could step back and the scheme would be wholly reliant on the contributions from workers and employers.
The plan was doomed. The Bill became law in 1912 and benefits began to be paid the next year; but in 1914 a Privy Council meeting declared war on Germany.
The surplus funds designed to take care of future obligations were raided by Lloyd George to help pay the enormous costs of the conflict. Inflation doubled by 1918; then there was a slump and a few years later the Great Depression, bringing a level of unemployment for which the Fund had not been designed. Generally the nation’s finances went haywire, so that in 1934 Britain defaulted on her huge wartime loans from the United States.
Then came World War Two, with more borrowings and the forfeiture of much of our gold and overseas business holdings. Yet the postwar Welfare State was established, broke though we were; how infinitely better would our position have been had we stayed out of both global conflicts?
These are the fruits of war.
Nevertheless, for a couple of decades the post-1945 National Insurance Fund rebuilt its surplus and the system moved to pay-as-you-go, funding benefits from current contributions, while maintaining significant reserves. However, expanding welfare programs and an ageing population saw the reserves dwindle to the status of a contingency fund; we are now on ‘money in, money out.’ Pensioners who say ‘we paid in and now we are being short-changed’ have to realise it is not like a Christmas club; they must accept what the State gives them and be thankful.
So let’s dispense with the National Insurance taradiddle and charge a uniform tax of around 40%.
One advantage is that ordinary people would enjoy a much bigger tax break on voluntary pension contributions.
As for State pensioners, let all of them have the full basic State pension, and the Winter Fuel Allowance, and the bus pass and 25% ‘widow’s discount’ on Council Tax and so on. Below a certain level of income they need all of it and let’s not squabble about marginal benefits and who gets what docked and isn’t it unfair. Let them pay the same tax rate as the working people sweating for a living, but adjust the income tax threshold so that they get all the State will give them plus some extra that they have saved for themselves; then, 40% or so above that limit.
It would work out so that for example someone on a total income that is £28,756 into the 40% tax bracket would be repaying the full cost of a basic State Pension which is currently £11,02.40. Someone less wealthy would be paying a proportion, naturally.
It’s the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Dressing Sir Keir
Lord Mandelson is said to be behind the gifted-clothes hoo-ha about Lord Alli, the PM and his wife. Nonsense: this is Hamlet without the Prince.
Casey Michael in the Mail on Sunday says that Tony Blair ‘is offering extensive advice to Sir Keir Starmer behind the scenes.’ Alastair Campbell, too - maybe Ali was behind Starmer’s headline-catching visit to Italy’s Giorgia Meloni ostensibly to learn from the right-winger how to deal with immigration. Mandelson - wasn’t it Blair who mused that maybe Mandy wasn’t as good as his sofa cabinet had thought?
Blair fancies himself as an expert on presentation, though his facial expressions and gestures belong in the am-dram classic ‘The Art Of Coarse Acting.’ When George W Bush was buttering him up to obtain Britain’s support for the illegal invasion of Iraq ‘Yo Blair’ presumed to tell the President of the United States how to comport himself, for example to ‘walk wide’ so as to seem more impressive. Bush played along pro tem; he is more psychologically astute and knows how to stroke a man’s vanity; yet what was on his mind was not Richard Burton but Halliburton.
The right-wing media are playing the clothes thing all wrong. Starmer is not materialistic or sensual. What normal youth would go to a Czech Communist work camp instead of lining up half a dozen quickies in one day on an 18-30 beach holiday as a friend of mine once did?
No, I stick to my armchair analysis: Starmer is high-functioning autistic. Mothers who have sons like this despair of getting their boys to change their clothes because of the associated sensory issues that make the lads want to stick with the familiar. Melinda Gates had to force her nerd husband to abandon dressing like a scruff, otherwise Bill would have carried on with the T-shirts.
These guys live in their heads. This is why they are addicted to making models, if not computer programs then human society. If Starmer were older he’d have watched the revolutionary-leftie 1976 TV series ‘Bill Brand’ (screened in the afternoons because it was too radical for prime time) thinking ‘If not now, when?’
Enter Blair the thespian ‘national treasure’, no longer castable as the juvenile lead but taking on the role of Starmer’s director, managing him as Barrage O’Bomber and co. have managed Biden and will (if Trump can be eliminated) manage the giggly airhead ‘joyous’ Kamala.
Starmer will take stage tips; he doesn’t care, so long as he gets us to curtain down. As to costume, the common people do like a show with high production values, don’t they?
Casey Michael in the Mail on Sunday says that Tony Blair ‘is offering extensive advice to Sir Keir Starmer behind the scenes.’ Alastair Campbell, too - maybe Ali was behind Starmer’s headline-catching visit to Italy’s Giorgia Meloni ostensibly to learn from the right-winger how to deal with immigration. Mandelson - wasn’t it Blair who mused that maybe Mandy wasn’t as good as his sofa cabinet had thought?
Blair fancies himself as an expert on presentation, though his facial expressions and gestures belong in the am-dram classic ‘The Art Of Coarse Acting.’ When George W Bush was buttering him up to obtain Britain’s support for the illegal invasion of Iraq ‘Yo Blair’ presumed to tell the President of the United States how to comport himself, for example to ‘walk wide’ so as to seem more impressive. Bush played along pro tem; he is more psychologically astute and knows how to stroke a man’s vanity; yet what was on his mind was not Richard Burton but Halliburton.
The right-wing media are playing the clothes thing all wrong. Starmer is not materialistic or sensual. What normal youth would go to a Czech Communist work camp instead of lining up half a dozen quickies in one day on an 18-30 beach holiday as a friend of mine once did?
No, I stick to my armchair analysis: Starmer is high-functioning autistic. Mothers who have sons like this despair of getting their boys to change their clothes because of the associated sensory issues that make the lads want to stick with the familiar. Melinda Gates had to force her nerd husband to abandon dressing like a scruff, otherwise Bill would have carried on with the T-shirts.
These guys live in their heads. This is why they are addicted to making models, if not computer programs then human society. If Starmer were older he’d have watched the revolutionary-leftie 1976 TV series ‘Bill Brand’ (screened in the afternoons because it was too radical for prime time) thinking ‘If not now, when?’
Enter Blair the thespian ‘national treasure’, no longer castable as the juvenile lead but taking on the role of Starmer’s director, managing him as Barrage O’Bomber and co. have managed Biden and will (if Trump can be eliminated) manage the giggly airhead ‘joyous’ Kamala.
Starmer will take stage tips; he doesn’t care, so long as he gets us to curtain down. As to costume, the common people do like a show with high production values, don’t they?
Monday, September 23, 2024
Next to leave UK? Schoolchildren!
The average fees of a British boarding school are £37,000 a year. Adding twenty per cent VAT brings that up to £44,400.
In Portugal the cost would be about 30,000 euro = under £26,000. Children can attend established ‘international schools’ to learn in their own language.
But with the prospect of the Starmer regime lasting for a decade or more, enterprising private schools might consider setting up their own establishments in or near Lisbon, Porto or the Algarve, and transfer their teaching staff there. The expense of moving and rebuilding might be more than covered by the sale of school lands and buildings in the crazily overpriced UK property market.
Nice weather, good food and the opportunity to rub shoulders with the citizenry and become fluent in a foreign language.
And the chance to escape the G*d-awful British National Curriculum.
Regular, cheap short-haul direct flights each way. Assuming there’s any reason to return.
In Portugal the cost would be about 30,000 euro = under £26,000. Children can attend established ‘international schools’ to learn in their own language.
But with the prospect of the Starmer regime lasting for a decade or more, enterprising private schools might consider setting up their own establishments in or near Lisbon, Porto or the Algarve, and transfer their teaching staff there. The expense of moving and rebuilding might be more than covered by the sale of school lands and buildings in the crazily overpriced UK property market.
Nice weather, good food and the opportunity to rub shoulders with the citizenry and become fluent in a foreign language.
And the chance to escape the G*d-awful British National Curriculum.
Regular, cheap short-haul direct flights each way. Assuming there’s any reason to return.
Friday, September 20, 2024
FRIDAY MUSIC: Mark Knopfler, by JD
Some lesser known songs from MK as he explores his musical roots.
Mark Knopfler needs no introduction after a very successful career in popular music wih 'Dire Straits' 'The Notting Hillbillies' and susequently as a solo artist. He was born in Glasgow and from the age of seven he lived with his family on Tyneside. Among his lesser known solo work was an exploration of his musical roots some of which appeared on the 2009 album 'Get Lucky' and a few of those songs are included below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Knopfler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Lucky_(Mark_Knopfler_album)
Mark Knopfler - Border Reiver HD - Córdoba 2010
"The Anglo-Scottish Border counties, including Northumberland, were the home to the notorious Border Reivers, the lawless clans of the border valleys, where a lifestyle of raiding and marauding was the only way to survive. The life of the Border Reiver was not necessarily ruled by his allegiance to the English or Scottish Crowns, but more likely by his allegiance to a family surname.”
Mark Knopfler - Piper To The End:
"This song is about Knopfler's uncle Freddie ( mother side : Frederick John Laidler ) who was a piper of the 1st Battalion, Tyneside Scottish, the Black Watch, Royal Highland Regiment. Freddie carried his pipes into action in World War II and was killed with fellow fighters at Ficheux, near Arras in the north of France in May 1940. He was just 20 years old."
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Yankee Poodle Went To Town...
... but failed to blow up the world - this time.
If you live in the Northern hemisphere and are able to read this, it is because Sir Keir Starmer has still not received permission to bomb the Russian homeland.
According to nuclear arms control expert Scott Ritter, he tried.
How can American presidents be allowed to instruct British PMs - e.g. Blair, Johnson, Sunak, Starmer - in such vital matters?
Western leaderships have been gambling that they can play ‘What’s the time, Mister Wolf?’ indefinitely and the wolf will never turn.
But on last Friday the Thirteenth - although the demonic auspices seemed favourable - it seems that utterly emphatic warnings from Moscow via back channels managed to convince some sane persons with influence in the US Administration that firing long-range missiles into Russia would trigger open war with NATO and that America’s heartland would not be exempted from retaliatory action.
The scenario if the bet goes wrong is the death of perhaps 99 per cent of the five billion people in North America, Europe, Russia, China etc. Not all from blast or radiation but also from mass starvation during a long winter caused by dust flung into the upper atmosphere, robbing vegetation of sunlight.
Time Magazine sketches a sequence of events, one that seems unstoppable once escalation begins:
What person not mad would stake the lives, not only of the armed forces but of each and every citizen in their country, against some not clearly defined material gain - say, oil and gas for a few more decades? The irrationality is so extreme that one wonders whether Sir Keir and other Western warmongers should not be made to submit to psychological assessment.
We have been spared, this time, but must take heed:
If you live in the Northern hemisphere and are able to read this, it is because Sir Keir Starmer has still not received permission to bomb the Russian homeland.
According to nuclear arms control expert Scott Ritter, he tried.
How can American presidents be allowed to instruct British PMs - e.g. Blair, Johnson, Sunak, Starmer - in such vital matters?
Western leaderships have been gambling that they can play ‘What’s the time, Mister Wolf?’ indefinitely and the wolf will never turn.
But on last Friday the Thirteenth - although the demonic auspices seemed favourable - it seems that utterly emphatic warnings from Moscow via back channels managed to convince some sane persons with influence in the US Administration that firing long-range missiles into Russia would trigger open war with NATO and that America’s heartland would not be exempted from retaliatory action.
The scenario if the bet goes wrong is the death of perhaps 99 per cent of the five billion people in North America, Europe, Russia, China etc. Not all from blast or radiation but also from mass starvation during a long winter caused by dust flung into the upper atmosphere, robbing vegetation of sunlight.
Time Magazine sketches a sequence of events, one that seems unstoppable once escalation begins:
What person not mad would stake the lives, not only of the armed forces but of each and every citizen in their country, against some not clearly defined material gain - say, oil and gas for a few more decades? The irrationality is so extreme that one wonders whether Sir Keir and other Western warmongers should not be made to submit to psychological assessment.
We have been spared, this time, but must take heed:
So proud and lofty is some sort of sin
Which many take delight and pleasure in
Whose conversation God doth much dislike
And yet He shakes His sword before He strike
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