FRIDAY MUSIC: Brian Eno, by JD

Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, also mononymously known as Eno, is an English musician, songwriter, record producer and visual artist. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to ambient music and electronica, and for producing, recording, and writing works in rock and pop music. A self-described "non-musician", Eno has helped introduce unconventional concepts and approaches to contemporary music. He joined the glam rock group Roxy Music as its synthesiser player in 1971 and recorded two albums with them before departing in 1973.

https://www.brian-eno.net/about/#

stiff

Another Green World (theme music for BBC's Arena)

Brian Eno & Roger Eno - By This River (Live at The Acropolis)

Spinning Away

Brian Eno "Ring Of Fire"

Slither and strike - PMQs 13th November 2024

Sir Keir’s counterattacks on the Opposition are a standard Prime Ministerial way to respond to questions, but his evasions and stock ‘we’re fixing the mess’ routine are becoming irritating. There is only so long he will be able to divert attention to the lamentable performance of the previous Government. Soon his side will have to cope with some difficult hatchlings from what is now their brood.

There were three in his opening remarks. One was his reference to Monday’s Armistice Day event in Paris where he and President Macron reaffirmed their ‘unwavering’ support for Ukraine. There’s a troublesome item for Starmer to discuss in our special relationship with America, for President-Elect Trump’s son has taunted Zelensky about losing his ‘allowance’ under the incoming US administration.

Another was COP29 on Tuesday, where Starmer raised the UK’s CO2 emission reduction target to 81% down from 1990 levels by 2035. He told the Commons his focus was on ‘British energy security’ although it looks like the dash towards national dysfunctionality and poverty has just thereby accelerated.

A third was Islamophobia Awareness Month. Ayoub Khan, one of five pro-Palestinian independent MPs in the House, later used this hook to press the PM on his definition of ‘genocide’ in relation to casualties in Gaza. Sir Keir reminded him of October 2023 and said he was ‘well aware’ of the definition, which is why he had never used that term. British foreign policy - not just Labour’s - faces a growing challenge from Muslims who take an internationalist angle; in 2017 Pew Research estimated followers of Islam here will soar to 17 per cent of the population by 2050.

The questioning began with revisiting the Chancellor’s hike in employers’ National Insurance Contributions. Christine Jardine (LibDem) highlighted the impact on GP services. Starmer spoke of extra money for the NHS and social care and carers’ allowances, and was grateful for the next question, a sitter from his side inviting him to attack the Opposition’s ‘damaging’ policies on maternity pay and the minimum wage and its ‘dangerous’ backing for fracking. Sir Keir said here was the Opposition leader’s chance to explain why she opposed Labour’s beneficence.

Kemi Badenoch came out swinging: ‘The Prime Minister can plant as many questions as he likes with his Back Benchers, but at the end of the day I am the one he has to face at the Dispatch Box.’

But yet again she offered him an escape route by a question that both commented on the extra costs of his COP commitment and asked whether he would ‘confirm that he will keep the cap on council tax?’ Naturally the PM bolted towards the first (‘lower bills, energy independence and the jobs of the future’) and left the key point unaddressed. He will always slither out, Mrs Badenoch - if you let him.

Nevertheless Kemi pressed him on the latter, asking how much extra local authorities would have to raise to adjust for NIC rises and cover the social care gap in the Budget? The PM replied to this ‘knockabout’ by repeating his earlier stated figure of £600 million more for social care - had Badenoch not been listening? Yes, she had, and it was the Government that had not been listening to ‘the Labour-run Local Government Association;’ ‘It is clear that the Government have not thought through the impact of the Budget, and this is the problem with having a copy-and-paste Chancellor. Did they not realise that care homes, GP surgeries, children’s nurseries, hospices and even charities have to pay employers’ NI?’ Starmer struck back with his standard ‘we’ve-done-more-than-your-lot-did’ but clearly a point had been scored.

Then came the usual: badly damaged economy, £22 billion black hole, fixing the mess… ‘Nothing to offer but platitudes,’ commented the Mongoose. The hissing is failing to deter.

Ed Davey, too, asked for ‘more reassurance’ on the impact of NIC on GPs. The PM repeated what he had said to Jardine earlier: ‘We will ensure that GP practices have the resources that they need’ without clarifying the funding gap issues.

Brendan O’Hara again raised the Winter Fuel Allowance, reminding the PM how he had sympathised with pensioners two years ago, but Sir Keir struck back against the SNP’s own economic record.

Lincoln Jopp (Con) thought he’d caught Starmer on Sue Gray and the special envoy job: ‘Will he finally admit that it was an invented job on taxpayers’ money for one of his cronies?’ ‘It wasn’t,’ came the reply - short, and short of explanation.

Once more we see the need for Opposition speakers to polish their snake hooks.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

FRIDAY MUSIC: Carolina Chocolate Drops

"The Carolina Chocolate drops were an innovative black string band founded in 2006. The original members — Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson, with assists from Sule Greg Wilson — spent a lot of time with the revered string band elder Joe Thompson, an 86-year-old fiddler from Mebane, North Carolina. His music formed the core of their original setlist, but blues, jug-band numbers, originals, novelty songs, ballands and other kinds of Americana rounded out their repertoire. They won the last official Folk Music GRAMMY in 2010 for their Nonesuch Release, Genuine Negro Jig. Justin Robinson was the first to depart, followed by Dom Flemons; Malcome Parson, Hubby Jenkins and Rowen Corbett came on board for the rest of the CCD tenure. The group is no longer together but they have inspired a new generation of musicians of color to pick up the banjo, bones, and fiddle."

http://www.carolinachocolatedrops.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Chocolate_Drops

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Country Girl [Official Video]

Carolina Chocolate Drops "When the World's On Fire"

Carolina Chocolate Drops - No Man's Momma - Newport Folk Festival 2011

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Genuine Negro Jig [HD]

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Hit 'Em Up style [HD]

Carolina Chocolate Drops ft. Rhiannon Giddens "Jackson," Grey Fox 2013

No More Bromance - PMQs 6th November 2024

Emily Maitlis loved last week’s PMQs: ‘Just imagine if PMQs was like this every week. Conciliatory. Helpful. By [sic] partisan. Passionate and compassionate.’

Your correspondent was thinking more on the lines of ‘get a room.’ It may have suited Sir Keir to face Walter the Softy but cross-party collusion has often been the bane of good politics, whether re Brexit or destructive Covid lockdowns. The Commons and especially PMQs should be a bear garden.

La Maitlis herself was not all sweetness and light this morning as Trump became President-Elect: she had to be told off on Channel 4 for swearing about him. Remember the tears of the righteous in 2016? Wait for Rachel Maddow’s reactions on MSNBC (there’s something about her to Make America Grate Again) and all the other tremendously well-paid Care Bears.

Yet the US may now have avoided the ramp to nuclear war and a transformation (by mass illegal migration and fast-track citizenship in a handful of swing States) into a permanent one-party government. The garbage can - and just did.

Over here, we face ‘four more years’ of radical incompetence, unless it gets so bad that the IMF returns, and then we shall all be sorry. Meantime Team Tory has a new captain and the initial signs are that she is a good bowler; the question is whether her side will ever bat again.

The PM opened by congratulating Donald Trump first and then ‘my fourth Tory leader in four and a half years’; Mrs Badenoch thanked him for his ‘almost warm’ welcome and promised to take a different approach by being ‘a more constructive Opposition’ than the last one. Tighten the shin pads! Did the PM and Foreign Secretary take the opportunity of their last meeting with DJT to apologise for Lammy’s derogatory remarks and ‘scatological references’ - some of which she quoted - about him? If not, would Starmer do so now on his colleague’s behalf? Sir Keir swished the air, saying the House was united on national security and Ukraine which was ‘far more important than party politics.’

Kemi noted he had not distanced himself from the Foreign Secretary’s remarks, and expected Trump ‘will soon be calling to thank him for sending all of those north London Labour activists to campaign for his opponent.’ Since most of the Cabinet had signed a motion to ban Trump from addressing Parliament, would the Prime Minister ‘show that he and his Government can be more than student politicians’ by asking Mr Speaker to extend the invitation instead? Starmer replied that Badenoch was ‘giving a masterclass on student politics’ but again he failed to answer the question; which Kemi noted, saying ‘he just reads the lines the officials have prepared for him.’

Perhaps it is a matter of having too much body armour (those 400 Labour myrmidons) but Sir Keir has a habit of chesting away deliveries rather than attempting to score. Again and again he counters with semi-irrelevant boilerplate blether: ‘economy, security, conflict’; ‘fixing the foundations’; ‘stability’; ‘black hole’; the last lot’s ‘mess’; ‘schools, hospitals, homes.’ He is becoming a ‘doubleplusgood duckspeaker’, a Shogun of slogan.

That, or he hurls the ball back. Mary Glindon (Lab) quoted Kemi as saying the outrage about Covid-time Downing Street partying was ‘overblown’ and Starmer shared his honourable friend’s disapproval - without adverting to ‘Beergate’ or his own role in promoting lockdowns. Sir Keir also sided with Torcuil Crichton (Scottish Labour) in challenging the SNP to use its powers and the additional funding now in place to improve public services in Scotland.

There were some easy underhand tosses: the need to support children’s special needs and youngsters’ mental health, the benefits of the minimum wage increase, fighting misogyny in Ireland and the economic abuse of women’s credit, developing infrastructure, cleaning rivers and so on.

And there were hands across the aisle as George Freeman (Con., Mid Norfolk) urged the use of pension funds to invest in innovative businesses; welcomed by the PM as already being addressed by Labour’s British Growth Partnership.

An issue on which we might wish for less consensus was raised by Ed Davey: the House’s unity on Ukraine. This may be a hot one when Trump pushes for peace there.

On a currently contentious matter, at last we got some clarification on the impact of taxation on small family farms: ‘the vast, vast majority of farms will not be affected’ - a shame this could not have been established earlier - followed, of course, by boilerplate about the NHS, schools and homes.

Coming back to the Leader of the Opposition: Badenoch’s inquisitorial approach is promising, but she needs to spend more time in the nets to practise shots under Starmer’s Stonewall Jackson defence.

A slightly edited version of this appeared first on Wolves of Westminster

Stop smashing the system!

We need to be clear: the aim of the Blair-Brown-Starmer constitutional changes is to take power away not from Westminster, but from us.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 put the Crown under parliamentary control, counterbalancing it with a Protestant male bourgeoisie. In the centuries since then, we have seen a Glorious Evolution into a secular non-sexist democracy, with religious and ceremonial trappings.

At long last, we the people who are subject to the law are at the same time the citizens who make the law, through our representatives. Since 1928, all adults have had an equal voice in national self-government.

It is our country. This is what ideologues want to smash.

After Hitler invaded Russia, a London publican said to Claud Cockburn (p. 226):

“I can see it coming, Claud. The Communists are going to take over the country when this little lot’s finished with. And I don’t say they shouldn’t. I don’t say you don’t have common human justice on your side, Claud. All I ask of you is just one thing.”

“What’s that, Harry?”

“All I ask, Claud, is when you and your pals take over and make that great revolution, that you’ll just leave me my King, my constitution and my country.”

He had tears in his eyes, and it was hard not to be able to offer him a binding guarantee.

The power of Parliament is awesome. If sufficiently explicit, an Act passed by both Houses and receiving Royal Assent overrides any other law, treaty or authority anywhere. That is absolute sovereignty. The Crown in Parliament is not bound by any principle or aim other than the expression of the people’s will in pursuit of the nation’s interests.

Its unpredictability and complete liberty is what political zealots cannot stand; they wish to replace a purely procedural system with some programme and administrative arrangement that embodies their philosophy, and then our debates can be at an end.

Nor is it only the Left that undermines us. We have been betrayed on all sides by Quislings enriching themselves by colluding with multinational corporations and supranational organisations trending towards centralised global control. If they succeed, we shall find that absolute power, as Baron Acton said, corrupts absolutely, and that “RULERS”, as Coleridge said, “are as bad as they dare to be”.

How quickly politicians will shake off the common people who give them legitimacy! A touchstone for this misbehaviour is the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s arrogant dismissal of democracy when she said she would stand with Ukraine “no matter what my German voters think“. It is especially ironic that she was not voted into the Bundestag personally, but simply through leading the Green Party under Germany’s proportional representation setup.

Our own system is still imperfect, and has flaws that can be exploited by the ruthless to turn it into a self-destroying machine. When in 1780 John Dunning moved that “the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished”, it was not anticipated that the office of the Prime Minister might become a tyranny, using the monarch’s Royal Prerogative; yet (for example) almost the first act of Blair’s New Labour Government was to politicise the Civil Service in a Privy Council meeting. The comprehensive damage to our constitution had been planned in advance like a bank raid.

In 1789, Thomas Jefferson mooted a periodic constitutional convention so that the living citizens of the United States could re-determine how they governed themselves. If we British value our freedom, then we must find some way to do the same; it cannot be left to a crypto-Communist cabal ruling us on the basis of a freakish electoral result that has already lost a significant portion of its tiny minority of supporters after less than four months.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster.

Jumping Fences - PMQs 30th October 2024

The Left proves it is progressive by being transgressive. Customs are for breaching, rules for breaking. How else is one to smash the system?

So it was that the Lord Chancellor turned her back on the King after delivering his Speech; that the PM removed Mrs T’s portrait from Number 10 and Rachel Reeves followed suit in Number 11 - replacing Nigel Lawson’s with one of the early British Communist Ellen Wilkinson (no Che Guevara poster?)

Parliament must be disrespected, too. Speaker Hoyle had to roast Reeves a couple of days ago for her ‘extreme discourtesy’ in leaking Budget details in advance to American reporters; and after PMQs today the Deputy Speaker reminded ministers and the Treasury bench that such infractions were a discourtesy to the Speaker and the House and went against the Ministerial Code. Did their faces look bovvered?

Now, off to the races with the PM. We are early in the steeplechasing season and this session was a lesson in how not to set up fences.

Rishi Sunak’s were easy ones, more for Thelwell ponies than mighty steeds. His stepping down from leadership was an opportunity for the PM to wish him a ‘joyful’ Diwali (was he thinking of Kamala?) and to thank him for his service. There was a flick of the hoof as the PM said that, seeing how fast the Conservatives went through leaders, he might possibly be facing Sunak again sometime.

Sunak’s response to Starmer’s congratulations on being the first British Asian PM was to self-identify as a Yorkshireman and hope that Sir Keir would support cricket in schools - the latter agreed, of course. The pair also concurred on the importance of AI for the economy, and of support for Ukraine and NATO. Rishi’s wish to keep Stormont going was a gift to his oppo, who reflected on his own work in Northern Ireland.

This last was a high hedge that the final questioner, Mark Francois, could have used to make Sir Keir come a cropper. In 2023 Starmer committed himself in Opposition to repeal the Northern Ireland ‘Legacy Bill’ that gave British servicemen immunity from prosecution for alleged war crimes, and as PM reaffirmed it in July 2024 over Guinness with the Irish Taoiseach. There was a more carefully qualified statement a few days later, saying ‘it would be irresponsible to repeal the Act in its entirety without anything to replace it’ but giving various citations of the ECHR to show its conflicts with the Act’s amnesty. It is a most serious matter, threatening ex-servicemen in the autumn of their lives with the prospect of endless investigations.

But Francois fluffed his chance, in two ways. Here is his question: ‘Why, Sir, are you throwing these veterans to the wolves to pander to Sinn Fein?’ Despite over twenty years in Parliament he had addressed the PM in the first person rather than through the Chair, which caused the Speaker to remind him that Hoyle was not ‘you.’ This bought a few moments for Starmer to frame a short and ambiguous response: ‘I’m not.’ Not amending, or alternatively repealing and replacing the Act? Not doing it to satisfy Sinn Fein, some of whose fugitive supporters may themselves have received ‘comfort letters’ that indemnified them against prosecution for their own crimes? Over the safety barrier and away rode Sir Keir, free and clear.

Another imperfectly erected obstacle was the work of Lincoln Jopp, who has only been an MP since 4 July. He made a tyro’s mistake of raising three issues at once: the army of Labour MPs interfering with the US Presidential election, the ceding of the Chagos Islands, and the Foreign Secretary’s unsatisfactory performance at the recent Commonwealth Heads of State conference. Did the PM have full confidence in Lammy? ‘I was going to say he was an upgrade on his predecessor,’ came the reply, charging straight through the gap in the shrubbery. What a shame: either of the first two could have been challenging, if framed correctly.

Similarly, Rachael Maskell asked whether Starmer would set up a pensioner poverty task force, but because she had also mentioned child poverty the PM expressed his concern about that alone. Carla Rayner (Green) came a little closer to tripping him, deploring Israel’s hampering aid to Gaza and banning UNWRA, but when she used the word ‘genocide’ Sir Keir expressed his worry and concern yet said he had never described Israel’s actions with that term; a skilful swerve.

The Opposition benches need to study the example of the late Tam Dalyell, whose undodgeable queries used to instil ‘fear and Lothian’ in ministers.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

FRIDAY MUSIC: It's A Beautiful Day, by JD

This review by Lindsay Planer is part of the notes alongside the first video:

"Although they are not one of the better-known San Francisco bands to have emerged from the ballroom circuit of the late '60s and early '70s, It's a Beautiful Day were no less memorable for their unique progressive rock style that contrasted well with the Bay Area psychedelic scene. Led by David LaFlamme (flute/violin/vocals) and his wife, Linda LaFlamme (keyboards), the six-piece unit on this album vacillates between light and ethereal pieces such as the lead-off cut, "White Bird," to the heavier, prog rock-influenced "Bombay Calling."

“One of the most distinct characteristics of It's a Beautiful Day is their instrumentation. The prominence of David LaFlamme -- former violin soloist with the Utah Symphony and original member of Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks -- adds a refinement to It's a Beautiful Day's sound. Likewise, the intricate melodies -- mostly composed by the LaFlammes -- are structured around the band's immense virtuosity, a prime example being the exquisitely haunting harpsichord-driven "Girl With No Eyes." It's a Beautiful Day remains as a timepiece and evidence of how sophisticated rock & roll had become in the fertile environs of the San Francisco music scene."

It's A Beautiful Day - White Bird (1969)

It's a Beautiful Day - Don and Dewey [Jazz Fusion - Jazz-Rock] (1970)

Girl With No Eyes

It's a Beautiful Day - Hoedown

Galileo

Do You Remember The Sun