FRIDAY MUSIC: Classic Hits, part 6, by JD

One Fine Day

At The Hop

BBC Proms: Booker T Jones and Steve Cropper: Green Onions

The Isley Brothers This Old Heart Of Mine

Ritchie Valens - La Bamba (Live)

Big Bopper - Chantilly Lace

Lammy has NOT backtracked

Wikipedia says 16 Labour MPs are of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Is David Lammy, appointed Deputy Prime Minister last month, really the best of them?

He was previously made Foreign Secretary even though when in Opposition he had called Donald Trump a “tyrant”, “xenophobic”, “a racist KKK and Nazi sympathizer.”

Now he has said Reform’s Nigel Farage is “someone who once flirted with Hitler Youth when he was younger.” The accusation is manifestly absurd not least because the Hitler Youth was disbanded at the end of WWII and Farage was born in 1964.

These are dangerous times, when self-appointed assassins have felt obliged to rid us of turbulent right-wing politicians.

So the BBC called him out on this allegation and the Deputy PM was “happy to clarify” his comment. Here is his clarification:

“He [Farage] has denied it and so I accept that he has denied it.”

Not “I accept that it was untrue and defamatory.” Not “I accept that it was a reckless and disgraceful lie and I apologise.”

Implicitly he has restated his slander.

He claims that “the prime minister is keen for us to focus on the policies not the individuals.” In other words, he could be taken to mean “it’s true, at least of Farage’s fascistic mindset, but as honourable politicians we are bound to conduct our debate on a more civilised basis.”

Unless he is willing to retract unequivocally his thoroughly unscrupulous and unprofessional slur he should resign.

Irrationality and the middle class

Professor Ed Dutton “The Jolly Heretic” has often quoted research indicating that our average IQ has been dropping for a long time, because our soft lives mean that foolish behaviour is not punished by Nature in terms of failure to survive and breed replacements.

But even today poor people have enough to do with the challenges in their daily lives and cannot afford luxury show-off beliefs. A life on benefits is no joke and even a small financial setback can throw a family into panic.

The middle class have much less excuse for stupid actions. Looking at the sort of people who adopt and protest fashionable causes that are ill-supported by logic one wonders how seemingly intelligent and well-educated people can behave so, and with such fanaticism.

Our population may be getting stupider on average but one wonders whether that element of the middle class that glues itself to roads, throws soup on paintings, marches in support of mass murderers, neuters itself or its children etc may be getting dafter faster than the underclass.

The Jolly Heretic tells me he is unaware of any research to show this but the suspicion remains.

Is there any longitudinal study of IQ by social class and sub-groupings?

WEEKENDER: The Assisted Dying Bill, by Wiggia

 

Why are they all smiling!

The title gives the impression this Bill is all about helping those in extreme medical circumstances out of their dilemma by killing them. For some it makes sense, for many it is a form of legalised murder.

Far too many influences are involved that are not in any way wanting to help the afflicted but hasten them on their way for their own advantage, whether they be individuals or organisations i.e. the State.

The fact this Bill is a private members’ one does not disguise an element that shows all the signs of relieving older people of the help they need as they approach their later days.

There was a time when older family members were automatically brought ‘home’ to see out their days in the bosom of the family. That of course was a long time ago, now they become a nuisance only. Contact often is because family members can see a pot of gold within reach, I doubt if many reading this will not have across the family members descending like vultures when a grandparent dies in the belief they are entitled to what is left; I have seen it in my own family, it is not something to be proud of and the usual suspects turn up every time like locusts.

I have heard many such cases from friends over the years so I am hardly surprised how widespread it is when it happens.

Now it appears that governments want to get in on the act. In the Lords Matthew Parish was mentioned for his recent piece in the Times…..

https://x.com/i/status/1968979274775277584:

“The elderly and infirm are a ‘drain on resources’”. Lord Curry of Kirkharle quotes Matthew Parris in The Times saying it would be good if they felt pressure to end their lives early. This is the chilling attitude that legalising assisted suicide would normalise.

An interesting issue is the MP who put forward this private members bill. Kim Leadbetter is a strange choice for Westminster. Being the sister of the murdered MP Jo Cox seems to be enough to have chosen her for the shoo-in, hardly a reason on its own for being selected but many both in the Commons and the Lords have got there by association of one sort or another over the years and it still goes on. Her main distinction since winning the seat is to be very coy about her sexuality as her Muslim supporters are not known for being tolerant to sexual deviation so she butters them up to the detriment of everything else. Still she has got this far with the Bill and it looks as though it will pass in one form or another. What her motivation was for presenting the bill in the first place is not known, was it actually her or is she a proxy for the government as a whole?

There is generally a support group for assisted dying that is purely financial. Many commentators have voiced concerns over the cost of social care and the NHS (in general unaffordable), coupled with the increase in the aged population. Yet this is not a problem that has crept up unforeseen. The figures since the start of the last century show a steady rise in longevity and as with so much else little has been done to meet the inevitable demands it would bring, yet strangely the government of the time while worried about the costs is introducing ever more items to increase life expectancy, such as medical advances, better (though that is increasingly abused) diet, and lifestyle changes.

As with most advances there is a downside, in this case the cost as the recipients are of the older retired age group.

So once again many who believe they are being in some way robbed of services and financial gain see assisted dying as a way to lessen the load so to speak by targeting the group that takes most of the resources.

We saw some of this during Covid as explained in my last piece on the NHS, and the care home murders, for that is what they were went unchallenged and no one has been brought to book for the decisions made, truly one of the most disgraceful decisions made in recent times. That was even repeated when and after the instances leaked out, no one cared, so there is a problem and we cannot trust governments to legislate on this matter; they are not to be trusted.

And if anyone believes the never ending lawyer fest that is the Covid enquiry will bring answers to this and people to book, I have a bridge to sell you.

Strangely during all the discussions on this Bill between the great and the good and the indifferent, at no point has the use of DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) notices in hospitals been raised. As I have previously written I am one of the few to have had a DNR notice put on them and lived! I do know what I am talking about. Finding other examples is easy: I have spoken to three people I know, one an old friend, who have had partners and family members suggested for DNRs at their time in hospita. These were thankfully resisted by family members and all those patients are leading normal lives, which begs the question about the criteria in place for issuing these notices in the first place - or is there a simpler explanation? I leave that thought with you.

In my case the protocols were not followed, to the extent that my wife was not aware of what had happened. When she visited me the day after being told ‘I was unlikely to make it’ she found I had been moved and put in a bare room and all the medical support had been withdrawn. The ‘doctor’ was summoned to explain what had happened but failed to appear and made an appointment for the following morning. He failed to show again and my wife rightly went ballistic.

Fortunately one of the nurses that had been looking after me got hold of the doctor’s superior who came down and came in to see me and reported back to my wife. He felt it was a wrong decision, had me fed, cleaned up , changed my medication put me back on a ward and here I am. The original doctor to all intents disappeared never to be seen again.

https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/do-not-attempt-cardiopulmonary-resuscitation-dnacpr-decisions/

If you read the above it shows that little or nothing applied to my case and what was not revealed to my wife/family.

That story has all the hallmarks of the NHS not wanting to spend any more money on a patient. That one doctor who never went through the protocols thought it was an easy way out. Harsh you say? Not really, to not even have the decency to explain what he had put in motion was at best poor and at worst a dereliction of duty. How many in the same position would have accepted the original decision and let the patient die believing all they had been told (or not told)?

Despite my semi comatose state I was aware of my position and remember vowing to try and go home. I actually managed to get out of the bed and crawled because I could not walk at that stage, before (I presume) being found on the floor and put back in the bed. Surely my being able to do that would have triggered some sort of message that something was not right here. The memory of being in that windowless barren room very much alone is something that the comatose state I was in only partially blots out and will always haunt me. God knows what it must be like for someone who is fully functional.

But the Bill is for people who have full mental capacity and with a prognosis that they have only six months to live. Who decides the six months. The examples I have given presumed the patients were not going to survive but all are still here, one of them ten years later and living a near to normal life.

The safeguards are a problem. In my case we had Health Power of Attorney, but it was not asked about and my wife did not know that it applied to DNRs; it does of course and except in extreme cases a DNR can not be given to anyone with that power of attorney without going before a judge first to decide on the way forward. Where does this sit with the Assisted Dying Bill?

Yes I can see circumstances where excess pain and suffering that have become intolerable with no hope of a reverse in that status are grounds for a decision to end life. But what happens with mental problems? I had an aunt who suffered from dementia and suffered from mini strokes. She was in a private nursing home because she had the money to fund it and was not expected to last beyond a year or so. In fact she lasted fifteen years with no quality of life at all for most of that period; for her an end would have been merciful.

There are so many variables in this that a one size bill does not fit the case. It has never been an easy decision even when using DIGNITAS as the same problems exist there.

The great and the good in the Lords have to my surprise passed the Bill. Considering the age of many in that place I can only assume they voted that way in the belief that this bill will in no way ever affect them. The talk of saving money that came up with some of them was a case of this is for them not us. Beware: this is a very dangerous path to set out on.

Unbiased news is our bulwark against chaos

On 8 September, BBC1 breakfast time news headlines referred to the two men who machine-gunned six people at a bus stop in Israel as Palestinian “activists”.

In itself, it doesn’t necessarily confirm anti-Semitic bias in the Corporation, but that soft-handed term clearly betrays bias in favour of a different group, whom it can portray as freedom-fighters, uncritically relaying claims by Hamas.

The BBC is not the only institution to fall prey to it. The British Foreign Office has long been seen as Arabist, and it’s not just Jews saying that – Nigel Jones repeated it in The Spectator last year.

When both the Government’s advisers on foreign affairs and the nation’s official broadcaster have lost their objectivity, we have a problem.

The erosion of trust goes further.

The United Nations – such an optimistic, feel-good title – recently ruled that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza, so giving official validation to a word used by many in their allegations. The verdict was issued by a UN ‘Independent International Commission of Inquiry’ on 16 September. It was referenced on X the following day by a group of ex-BBC journalists calling themselves The News Agents, who also quoted a Labour MP calling on the PM to stop Israel.

I replied: “You are journalists. Please look carefully at who is on that UN committee and come back to us.” They haven’t yet done so. That is a pity, because the Committee resigned in July amid accusations of anti-Israel prejudice – but are still serving out their terms. Perhaps this latest ruling is their Parthian shot.

The UN was created in 1945 as a way for the world to be run better and more peacefully. Yet when ex-diplomat Craig Murray told them last week that the UK is a force for evil in the world, “people from all over the globe interrupted with spontaneous applause”. That could be saying more about them than us.

Murray was advocating Scottish independence; yet seeing how the Scottish politico-judicial system dealt with him, one wonders what worse it might have done had it been completely sovereign.

He is an idealist. The UN members are people, and like all people, have a host of agendas. They are also capable of childish resentment when someone comes to tell them unwelcome news, as we saw when both the escalator and his teleprompter suddenly failed President Trump.

Speaking of childishness, see when Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers donated a minute of his speaking time so that the EU Parliament could remember the death of Charlie Kirk and “declare that our right to freedom of speech cannot be extinguished”. Instead, the noise from various quarters was a “rejection” of what Politico calls “right-wing and far-right groups”. Or, to put it another way, bad manners from good haters.

When you know in your bones that you are what Leo Kearse calls “good kind people”, then all opposition must be from the Devil and eradicated by any means possible. Brexiteers are unbelievers in the Great Dream and must be punished.

The liberal civilisation we have depends on not being so sure.

English history has been plagued by doctrinaire Catholicism, firebrand Puritans and revolutionary Communists; now, we have to deal with the threat of millenarian Islam. Most Muslims here are not jihadists, but as their population numbers grow, the underbrush is building up in readiness for radicals to set fire to it. The Left is still smouldering too; perhaps there could be a temporary alliance as there was in Iran. Spiked thinks it is happening again in the West.

As our society fragments into mutually incompatible cliques, it becomes ever more important to consider what could bind us together. Oppression is one answer, and an authoritarian regime like Starmer’s might hold things for a bit; but not forever.

What we need is the truth. The news media are our eyes and ears, and if they feed us illusions, we risk crashing. The Fourth Estate must know that journalism is not propaganda. It should abandon its self-conception of leading a righteous crusade by hiding and twisting facts to tell us stories. We are fallible human beings, not angels and demons. Enough of holy panic. Let’s hear it all, good and bad.

Then, we need our other secular institutions to recover their impartiality.

It has been fascinating to watch US Senate hearings as they try to restore the FBI and the Federal judiciary to their proper functions and root out political activism. To achieve that here, we may need to undo much of what has been done structurally since 1997 to tie up the powers of the people like the threads that held down Gulliver.

But it must be done. Trust is eroding; when it is gone, the nation will collapse.

Our liberty and stability depend on not being certain, on hearing all sides, on avoiding being drawn into a great quest, on not following some charismatic captain, on not delegating our judgment and conscience to international arbiters. We need truth the debunker, not truth the pillar of smoke by day and fire by night.

It starts with the news. We need the news, the whole news and nothing but the news.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

FRIDAY MUSIC: The Birth Of Rock 'N' Roll, by JD

The first rock and roll song:

Rocket 88 (Original Version) - Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston

Widely acknowledged as the first “rock and roll” song. The Oldsmobile Rocket 88 was America’s fastest car at the time and cars have often been the subject of popular songs and pop culture in general. The song was written by a 19 year old Ike Turner, the same Ike Turner more famously associated with his wife Tina Turner. The song has been credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats but has also been credited to Ike Turner’s Kings Of Rhythm; in truth they were probably the same musicians.

And here is a brief history of the ‘birth’ of that first Rock ‘n’ Roll Song.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Classic Hits, Part 5, by JD

Mary Wells - My Guy

Frankie Ford "Sea Cruise"

Ronettes - Be My Baby (remastered audio)

Eddie Cochran - Twenty Flight Rock

The Clovers - Love potion number nine.

Little Darlin' - The Diamonds 1957