FRIDAY MUSIC: Merle Haggard, by JD

Merle Haggard will forever be remembered as a true American treasure whose work often reflected his complicated life – his problems with the law, five marriages, six children and the complexities a life in the music business yielded.

Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1994, they said about him:
“Merle Haggard stands, with the arguable exception of Hank William, as the single most influential singer-songwriter in country music history.”

Upon his death, The New York Times agreed: “In Mr. Haggard’s case the sound defined a body of work as indelibly as that of any country singer since Hank Williams.”
Rolling Stone said Haggard: “composed and performed one of the greatest repertoires in country music, capturing the American condition with his stories of the poor, the lost, the working class, heartbroken and hard-living.”

And also at that time, The Tennessean called Haggard “the working man’s poet, an architect of the Bakersfield Sound and a fiercely independent artist who influenced country music like few others.”

Needless to say, much has been written about the importance of the singer-songwriter. But If nothing had ever been reported about Haggard and we only had his music, we would still know the man, his loves, his pains, his demons and his life.
https://merlehaggard.com/pages/biography

Merle Haggard - New San Antionio Rose (Live)

Are the Good Times Really Over (I Wish a Buck Was Still Silver)

Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson "Okie from Muskogee"

Merle Haggard: "Sing Me Back Home"

Merle Haggard "Silver Wings"

Has Boris Johnson lost his mind?

Writing in today’s Daily Mail Boris Johnson says Starmer should stop ‘pussyfooting around’ and let ‘heroic’ Ukraine use British Storm Shadow missiles inside Russian territory. Apparently they are ‘bunker busters.’

Speaking of which, does Johnson have a bunker underneath his Oxfordshire home? He may need it, since Russia has made clear it reserves the right to retaliate against third parties who lend their military resources to Ukraine. Does Boris’ first-class brain comprehend what he and his Green Goddess will face when they finally open the airtight hatch and climb out into an ashen landscape?

Or will he and his family be on a plane halfway to New Zealand when the ‘99 red balloons’ go by? They have no bolt-hole there yet, as far as I know.

By contrast, Rishi already has a second home in California, having signed a perilous ten-year 'security agreement’ with Zelensky in January, warned of nuclear escalation in May and, allegedly not wanting to be a war leader, called an early General Election he was certain to lose. The Sunaks will be okay, if they move in time.

It’s not just the British who have gone mad… or rogue: the G7 declared joint support for Ukraine a year ago, France signed a UK-style security agreement with Ukraine six months ago, and the US another in June.

It’s coordinated.

Do European leaders carry burner phones dedicated to messages from Washington, like husbands conducting furtive affairs?

Does the US think there will be no use of nuclear weapons in Europe? Or do its war planners believe the escalation will stop there and America will be safe?

FRIDAY MUSIC: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra by JD

The orchestra was jointly founded in 1999 by Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, who named the Orchestra and workshop after West-östlicher Divan, an anthology of poems written by the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - a central work for the development of the concept of world culture ( as distinct from 'world government' you will notice which is not the same thing at all).

In 2016, the Barenboim–Said Akademie was established in Berlin, Germany, as a state-accredited music conservatory offering Bachelors of Music and Artist Diplomas. The Akademie, for which Barenboim serves as president, is based on the founding aims of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra.

In 1999, Barenboim and Said, who had become friends in the early 1990s, founded the West—Eastern Divan Orchestra in order to foment a feeling of sympathy and co-existence, chiefly between Arabs and Israelis, through Middle Eastern musical ensembles. Shortly after it was founded, the first workshop was opened in Weimar, Germany, after the organization had received over 200 applications from Arab music students. Barenboim has also expressed interest in musicians from Iran, allocating three chairs for Iranian musicians to play in the orchestra each year; though Iran is not an Arab country and therefore has not been a belligerent in the Arab–Israeli conflict, that particular environment exists in light of the Iran–Israel proxy conflict, which began a few years after Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979.

In 2016, Ban Ki-moon, the erstwhile United Nations Secretary-General, designated the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra as a United Nations Global Advocate for Cultural Understanding, praising the organization's push for peace and unity, particularly between Israelis and Palestinians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West%E2%80%93Eastern_Divan_Orchestra
https://west-eastern-divan.org/

Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3 | Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 - Eroica - BBC Proms

WEEKENDER: The degrading of the Olympic Games, by Wiggia

 

My original thought was I felt sorry for the organisers and participants at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in gay Paree. After watching for some time my mood changed to one of NGAF based on what I saw.

Difficult to know what was the intention of all this but it has nothing to do with sport unless of course Paris is being lauded as some sort of capital of perversion.

 
https://x.com/i/status/1816931037055775055

As a young child in simpler times I used to love the Olympics and remember my father taking me one day to watch the games at Wembley. The only person that sticks in my mind was the ‘Flying Housewife’ Fanny Blankers – Koen winning one of her four gold medals, but that was in more enlightened times when an Olympic gold really meant something other than an opening to wealth creation.

But inevitably the games became professional as the eastern block and others did not play fair and actual amateurs stood little chance against government sponsored athletes and government approved drug programs, not just the eastern block either.

As a track cyclist in the late fifties and sixties I was more than aware of the drug problem my sport had then and still has, though to be fair the testing in the sport today is almost non stop which is more than can be said for many other sports.

I did compete abroad a couple of times, and in those days even Olympians had to pay for travel in some sports, but few minded as the fact one was representing the country was reward enough. Not a lot of support then in fact virtually none; today for the current background team:

https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/getinvolved/article/20181114-about-bc-static-British-Cycling-Talent-Development-Team-0?c=EN

The above was non existent in those days, never mind nutritional experts and help in all areas of mind and body on hand. It was as with so much a very different world.

Yet looking back I have more respect for the few successes we had then as they were against the odds, very much a case of surmounting difficulties that today would not be countenanced..

The going professional era changed all that in the Olympics and world championships in all other sports. Sponsorship pulled in money and the world of sport changed. Much was good as the artificial amateur was confined to the dustbin of history and everyone knew where they stood.

But back to the Olympics. This edition as with all has had its downsides, probably more than others recently, apart from the dreadful, on so many fronts, opening ceremony. Whole teams have been seeking hotel accommodation to avoid the cardboard beds, the supplied vegan meals have been supplemented with supplementary foods flown in in some cases, the Australians had a ton of meat flown in for instance, and several triathletes have become ill after competing with the merde in the Seine, and we have a boxing competition that has been totally hijacked by a couple of men fighting women, a ridiculous situation that should have been sorted in all sports long ago, only the woke agenda in some hierarchies of sporting institutions keep this nonsense alive.

There have been reams written about this subject, but in the end in a contact sport particularly, it is not only an advantage but dangerous, and of course you never see the reverse with women wanting to compete in male sport, I wonder why .

And to top it all the IOC seem determined to dilute the games by expanding into areas that are difficult to see as legitimate sports, such as break dancing? Strange rock climbing competitions, surely no rope should be allowed for realistic reasons, skateboarding at a time when the craze for skate parks for kids is waning and they become white elephants, BMX cycle racing which does not involve a lot of pedalling and the riders should grow up and ride proper bikes, downhill racing known as ‘gravity’, Golf, please, kite surfing where the only physical attribute is to gain weight that gives more speed, pie eating medals, trampoline etc etc.

There have and still are sports that have little in the way of promoting inclusion and diversity as is so popular these days. The equine events are hardly likely anytime soon to be seen in African countries are anywhere else, they are hugely expensive and confined to mainly rich western societies. They have their own championships anyway, so called new team events that involve numerous mixed men and women events by nature favour countries that have a depth of talent like the USA, smaller countries can never put together a team of equals from such limited resources.

They seem intent on diluting the games so a gold medal is within reach for all regardless of worthiness. Many will disagree with me but I would like the games to get back to basics, it is primarily a track and field event and so it should be.

I am not anti Olympics, far from it but it is straying far away from the original ideals and including what many would call ‘mickey mouse’ sports or what were recently leisure activities does the organisation and sport no favours.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Grappelli / Menuhin, by JD

Continuing our musical journey with an unlikely combination:

In 1971, British chat-show host Michael Parkinson, a longtime jazz fan, came up with the idea of including Grappelli on his show Parkinson, where he would be joined by the classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin, with the two musicians performing a duet. Although Menuhin had no jazz training and a distinctly classical style of playing, the result went down very well with the British public. The pair went on to record three collaborative albums between 1972 and 1976, with Menuhin playing parts written out by Grappelli while the latter improvised in a classic jazz fashion. During their appearance on Parkinson's show, Menuhin played his prized Stradivari dating from 1714, while Grappelli revealed his instrument was made by Goffredo Cappa in 1695.

Stephane Grappelli & Yehudi Menuhin - Autumn Leaves

Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli - Minor Swing

Lullaby of Birdland

Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin

Menuhin (violín) & Grappelli (teclado)

‘Golden’ Brown’s cattle raid on pensions

Reposted from ‘Wolves of Westminster,’ 5 August 2024
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The new Labour Government plans to use our pension money to fund infrastructure and clean energy, but there are some major problems with this idea.

We can see the attraction for a cash-strapped government. The total value of British pension investments is over £1,800 billion. Taken together with the near £2,000 billion assets of UK insurance companies, there is enough to pay off the national debt and still have a trillion left over. A goldmine! Why not put it to use for the nation?

The idea is in the Brown Commission’s comprehensive plan for Britain’s future, as tasked by Sir Keir Starmer and issued in 2022:

‘We see scope for greater private investment in our infrastructure from careful, long-term investors, like some of our large pensions and insurance companies, who need stable long term assets to support pensions in payment. The regulatory framework which governs those investments should not discourage it, and government and local leaders should work with the industry to devise the best mechanisms to attract private capital into these long-term public projects.’ [p. 83]

It was then included in Labour’s 2024 General Election manifesto:

‘Britain’s world-leading financial services industry has a major role to play in mobilising trillions of pounds in private capital to address the greatest long-term challenge of our age. Labour will make the UK the green finance capital of the world, mandating UK-regulated financial institutions – including banks, asset managers, pension funds, and insurers – and FTSE 100 companies to develop and implement credible transition plans that align with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.’

The late, great Frank Field MP foresaw the temptation offered by juicy pension funds when he set up the Parliamentary Pensions Reform Group. The 2002 Civitas discussion document stressed [pp. 37-38] the importance of trustees in protecting the assets from outside interference:

‘Because it is desirable to curtail the influence of the government in running the pension, the trustees will be invested with quite considerable powers. These will also be established in the Act and will include:

• the power to appoint and dismiss fund managers and decide on the number of fund managers the scheme requires;

• the setting of investment strategy;

• the power to make changes in contribution rates.’

The primary responsibility of pension funds is to provide pensions. Using their assets for political objectives, e.g. to boost investment in the UK, risks compromising fund performance and thus the financial security of the pensioner.

Here are three drawbacks to Westminster’s proposed tinkering:

Over-investment in the UK. Writing for CapX, Tim Worstall says that UK pension schemes already allocate too much to the domestic market, when they should be seeking higher returns abroad from more dynamic economies. This is especially important now that many schemes have moved away from final-pension ‘defined benefit’ arrangements to ‘defined contribution’ plans, thus shifting the risk onto the beneficiaries, who will not know until retirement how much money they have, and what annuity or other form of income based on it they will receive.

The use of funds to develop ‘clean energy’. So far, most of the alternative energy provision is nowhere near cost-effective compared to oil, gas and coal. Without government subsidies and revenue guarantees, even nuclear power might falter. Besides, the supposed progress we have made in cleanness has been achieved by transferring industrial production to countries that press ahead with polluting power plants as they continue to catch up with our standard of living.

The ability of the market to front-run official initiatives. We saw this when Gordon Brown announced (on 7 May 1999) that he was going to sell half Britain’s gold reserves:

‘The advance notice of the substantial sales drove the price of gold down by 10% by the time of the first auction on 6 July 1999. With many gold traders shorting, gold reached a low point of US$252.80 on 20 July.’

If the Labour pension/insurance initiative proceeds, look for pinstripe suits buying into the boost – maybe even forming start-up green energy companies, then exiting as soon as they sniff a policy change coming. Exploiting pensions and other investments for political and eco-fantasy ends may result in hobbling fund performance, hitting pensioners and savers while enriching smart hedge fund managers.

In short, ‘Golden’ Brown’s idealism and naïvety could cost the country heavily – again!

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tuba Skinny encore, by JD

We have featured Tuba Skinny a couple of times so far. Well here they are again with their interpretation of Country Music. It seems they are regular guests at the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival.

https://delawarevalleybluegrass.org/

Tuba Skinny- Any Old Time, Jimmie Rodgers song, “Bluegrass adjacent” Del. Valley Bluegrass Festival

Tuba Skinny- It Hurts Me Too, Tampa Red song from 1940

Tuba Skinny- All Night Long at the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival 8/31/19”

Tuba Skinny - "Blue Moon Of Kentucky"

Tuba Skinny - Hank Williams New Orleans Style - Your Cheatin Heart

Tuba Skinny plays "I'm Going Back Home" from their album "Some Kind-A-Shake".