FRIDAY MUSIC: Lindisfarne

Trying to unravel the origin of Tyneside folk/rock band Lindisfarne and their link to founder member and principal song writer Alan Hull is enough to give anybody a headache so I will not even try. Instead I will just let you work it out for yourselves from these various links if you are so inclined:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011vbk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Hull
https://www.lindisfarne.co.uk/

Sadly Alan Hull died in November 1995 at the age of 50. To those who knew him his early death was not exactly a surprise given his rather unhealthy lifestyle. He drank too much, he smoked too much and consumed too much greasy and fatty foods. The drink and the greasy food all featured in the lyrics of his songs usually in a humorous way. And his love of Newcastle United makes this week an appropriate time to celebrate his and Lindisfarne's music after the 'Toon' won their first domestic trophy for seventy years. At last, let's hope it is not another seventy years for the next one!!

Lindisfarne - Run For Home (Top Of The Pops 1978) (Remastered)

Lindisfarne Meet Me On The Corner

Lindisfarne"Lady Eleanor" 2003

Lindisfarne - Fog On The Tyne (NRK Tenmag 1972)

Coming home Newcastle (with lyrics)

Consequences: PMQs 12th March 2025

Try asking Grok ‘When did questions at UK PMQs cease to be spontaneous?’ For it has come to resemble an am-dram living-room script-reading session. Ministers no longer have to fear the short, awkward questions of a Tam Dalyell.

The consequence of the present arrangement is that it gives the upper hand to the PM. He can answer with phrases chosen almost at random from his staff’s jargon generator, or simply drop a hot potato as he did last week with Richard Holden’s Bill banning first cousin marriage.

The steaming tuber this week was on a related matter, the 2021 murder of Sir David Amess MP by Ali Harbi Ali, the son of Somali immigrants. It was briefly served up by Kemi Badenoch who hoped the Prime Minister would agree that ‘getting the response to his murder right is vital not just to his family but to our democracy’; naturally Starmer did. Disappointingly, Kemi had nothing to add to the Home Secretary’s written response two days ago to Amess’ family that it was ‘"hard to see how an inquiry would be able to go beyond" killer Ali Harbi Ali's trial and recently published Prevent learning review.’

Actually not hard, one would think, bearing in mind that another case three years later, that of the Southport mass-killer Axel Rudakubana, was also one in which multiple referrals had previously been made to Prevent (review here) without success. Old lessons still not learned?

Once again, the Spud-U-Don’t-Like was relegated to almost the end of the session, where Andrew Rosindell (Con) pleaded with Sir Keir to reverse the no-inquiry decision so that the ‘related failure of the Prevent programme’ could be considered. Predictably the PM ignored that last and - with a sorrowing tone - said he would answer the ‘heartbroken’ Amess family’s questions that afternoon.

The elephant in the room is unmissable but nobody in the Debating Chamber is rude enough to point it out. Yet if the Labour Party thinks that by tactical negligence it can hold onto and control supporters from a restive and numerically growing minority it is surely mistaken. Reform’s disarray, if it continues, may suit the established Parties but will merely allow unresolved issues to compound until they come to a head, a consequence something all of us would wish to Prevent.

Worse than the blind official eye is the cross-party collusion to undermine the impartiality of the law. Andrew Snowden (Con) asked whether the Government’s adoption of the Sentencing Council’s recommendation to take into account the ethnicity and religion of offenders proved that the PM ‘has been two-tier Keir all along?’ Another own goal: Starmer reminded him that the proposal had been drafted in 2024 and welcomed by the Conservatives.

Similarly when Labour’s Shaun Davies said that the Tories had just tried to revive the Rwanda deportation plan the PM gloated that they had been running ‘an open borders experiment’ and then wasted £700 million removing four ‘volunteers’ whereas Labour had already ‘removed 19,000 people who should not be here.’

The opening question came from the Lib Dem’s Mike Martin, who spoke of the Russian abduction of Ukrainian children and asked Starmer to confirm that ‘British peacekeeping troops will be deployed to Ukraine only if the peacekeeping deal includes both the return of Ukraine’s children and Putin’s prosecution,’ the arrest warrant for the latter having been issued by the ICC in 2023. It’s not clear from this whether Martin was trying to forestall the insertion of British peacekeepers into Ukraine but in any case the PM generalised his response into a wish for ‘a lasting, just settlement for peace.’ The history of that conflict is a can of worms carefully left unopened, though all can see the terrible consequences.

However Russia must remain our eternal enemy - Classicfm’s news today took pains to reveal that the captain of the cargo ship that rammed the jet-fuel tanker off the Yorkshire coast is Russian. We look forward to early public revelation of all criminals’ nationality and ethnicity in future.

Starmer’s replies to Badenoch were of the usual spin-the-wheel nature. Kemi spoke of soaring nursery fees; Sir Keir boasted of breakfast clubs and how dare she ‘denigrate’ them. Was trash uncollected in Birmingham as well as what Starmer spoke across the Dispatch Box? Why, he countered, wages were up (without saying whose, or how many were still in work to receive them.) Was his Budget killing farmers? Lo, it provided for £5 billion over two years (for ‘sustainable farming and nature recovery.’)

Yet had not the Sustainable Farming Incentive just been ‘scrapped, or withdrawn’? Left hanging, that might have been a Carman-like poser, but no, Kemi pootled straight on to remarks on the trashing of the economy, which allowed Sir Keir to wheel out the 11% inflation under the Tories and his old friend the ‘£22 billion black hole.’

We have to take a longer view on this dire performative political wrangling: our national ruin began in August 1914. Despite the occasional refreshing shower the pond has been steadily drying out since then and the fish are biting each other’s tails. We live with the consequences, economic, demographic and social, of war and war fever.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Maria Muldaur, by JD

Maria Muldaur (born Maria Grazia Rosa Domenica D'Amato September 12, 1942) is an American folk and blues singer who was part of the American folk music revival in the early 1960s. She recorded the 1973 hit song “Midnight at the Oasis” and has recorded albums in the folk, blues, early jazz, gospel, country and R&B traditions.

https://mariamuldaur.com/bio

Midnight at the Oasis

Don't you feel my leg

Live in concert....

Prehistoric civilisations - wiped out in the Younger Dryas?

An intriguing video on the evidence for much older civilisations that may have been wiped out in a global cataclysm some 12,900 years ago.

US: Future History

Looking back forty years, a writer in 2060 remarked on the tumultuous rise to power of a radical figure in US politics:

‘What he offered above all was a fierce, unreflective determination to halt America’s slide into ruin and to restore its prominence in the world. This was such an unlikely prospect that he had to couch it in dream-like terms: “Somewhere ahead lies greatness for our country again; this I know in my heart.”

‘Trump’s election heralded the start of a new era - an era that would be harsher, more divisive, but ultimately more prosperous and less chaotic than the one that had gone before.’

In reality the writer is John Preston and the quotation is adapted from his 2016 book on the Thorpe scandal; substitute Mrs Thatcher for Trump and the UK for America.

Mrs T’s reforms were met with screaming resistance and she herself a bitter hatred that endures to this day in certain quarters.

Now we see the same in the US. It is almost as though Trump’s opponents are praying for his utter failure, blind to the fact that this also implies further turmoil and decline for their own country.

For my part, whatever the President’s personal flaws, I hope that he and the US will succeed, particularly in three areas:

• To cease involvement in foreign wars that do no good abroad or at home
• To maintain the integrity and security of the United States against unnecessary, illegal and potentially dangerous immigration
• To improve the life chances of poorer Americans by protecting their living standards against foreign competitors who enjoy lasting structural economic advantages

There is also the need to cleanse the Augean stables of America’s institutions that have become partisan and corrupt, so undermining trust in authority and the cohesion of the Republic.

Aside from wishing to see peace, justice and freedom in the US as I would wish it everywhere else, I have an interest to declare, in that my family’s future lies with the descendants of my brother, who took American citizenship years ago with my enthusiastic encouragement.

Doubtless Mr Trump’s administration will make mistakes, as all its predecessors have done, but unless his opponents actually hate and despise the common people they should work as a loyal opposition to deter and correct damaging errors.

Britain has not always enjoyed such luck. While there was a need to introduce supply side reforms and to combat doctrinaire Communist subversion, Mrs Thatcher was persuaded to courses of action that (for example) inadvertently weakened our long-term industrial capacity and disrupted our system of occupational pensions. It also took her some time to understand the true nature of the European Union. Who was advising her, when and why? Leaders must remain constantly aware of the dangers posed by flappers who have their own agendas.

Can America stand united again, or will it continue to be a perilously divided house? ‘A republic, if you can keep it,’ said Benjamin Franklin.

Shared with the Bruges Group blog

FRIDAY MUSIC: Trixie Whitley, by JD

Trixie Whitley (born June 24, 1987) is a Belgian American multi-instrumentalist. As the daughter of singer-songwriter Chris Whitley, she began her musical career playing with her father, and recording on several of his albums. Whitley has released three solo EPs, is a member of Black Dub (fronted by Daniel Lanois), and was the vocalist on their self titled debut album.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trixie_Whitley

https://trixiewhitley.com/bio

Black Dub - I'd Rather Go Blind (Bing Lounge)

Trixie Whitley - I can't stand the rain / Pieces @ Gent Jazz 2010

Trixie Whitley - Breathe You My Dreams (Bing Lounge)

Trixie Whitley - Closer [Official Music Video]

Trixie Whitley - Strong Blood (Joey Lacroix Edit)

War and peace – PMQs 5th March 2025

At Eton, they call it ‘oiling’. Half an hour in, newbie Labour MP Mike Tapp applied the grease gun ruthlessly:

“These are delicate moments for the country, and the Prime Minister has led with British values, moral courage and decency, as a true statesman, and with skilled and careful diplomacy.”

He continued: “… so does the Prime Minister agree that a united House could help us to achieve a lasting peace?”

He need have had no worries on that score. “We all support him in that effort,” said Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey. “The Prime Minister is quite right,” said Kemi Badenoch, approving the call for guarantees for any agreement on Ukraine. Even Reform’s Nigel Farage seems to be in a cleft stick over the current US policy of disengagement.

Starmer himself, never happier than when flattening the mood, had opened the session with a reference to anniversaries of British military losses in Afghanistan, sombrely naming the victims. Badenoch fell into line on Ukrainian peacekeeping, but worried about the economic burden on us. Would he change course on last year’s Budget? “We were doing so well,” said the patronising PM, who then gave us his familiar boilerplate about the inherited Black Hole and Labour’s “stability”.

Kevin Bonavia (Labour) welcomed the boost for jobs in Stevenage represented by increased defence spending. But now for the autonomous regions.

Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts asked the PM to consider strategic investment in defence and infrastructure, rather than cutting welfare and international aid. Starmer regretted that her party had “voted against £1.6 billion to fund public services in Wales” and said she “needs to explain how that helps her constituents and the people of Wales”.

Chris Law (SNP) deplored the US’ suspension of military aid to Ukraine, its banning of the UK from intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and its proposed lifting of sanctions on Russia “to appease Vladimir Putin – a murderous, lying dictator”. Would the PM release seized Russian state assets to Ukraine? Starmer said he would consider it, but in the meantime, the SNP needed to reconsider its policy of getting rid of the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

There! Devolution: the gift that keeps on giving.

Another SNP member, Seamus Logan, wished the UK to safeguard Scottish fishing interests in “the forthcoming trade and co-operation agreement negotiations” as it resets its relationship with the European Union. This theme was more to Sir Keir’s liking.

Back to the US. Richard Foord (Lib Dems) indignantly quoted Vice President Vance’s remarks scorning peace-keeping troops from “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”. Would the PM remind the US of our solidarity following 9/11 and in Iraq?

At this point, it should be noted that Vance had not actually mentioned Britain and could have been thinking of certain EU countries. More offensive, perhaps, was Professor Jeffrey Sachs, when he spoke last month to the EU Parliament, likening us to Monty Python’s insanely defiant, yet limbless, Black Knight.

While his EU Parliament audience might have smirked, some people might suggest that if we are weak now, it is because we helped buy their freedom with our blood and the nation’s treasure. Nevertheless, in that same YouTube clip, the Professor also provides a vital context to the Ukraine conflict – one that runs counter to the narrative that Russia is simply out to invade and conquer us all.

When David Davis (Con) mentioned the plight of over 100 special forces soldiers facing enquiries over their conduct in combating the IRA years ago, the PM claimed not to have seen the NI coroner’s ruling that put them into this quandary and generalised that “in the interests of everybody in Northern Ireland, of all those who served and all those who are victims, we need to renew our efforts to find a way forward on this important issue”.

Wendy Morton (Con) linked the Ukraine issue to the needs for our food security and to protect farmers. Starmer replied with the customary litany about Labour’s NFU-approved “road map for farming”, the Budget billions allocated to farming (exactly how, no details just now, please) and the assertion that the “vast majority” of farms would be unaffected by the IHT hit.

Sadly, there is not space for all the other worthwhile contributions to PMQs today, but it is interesting that, maybe not for the first time, a controversial and potentially troublesome matter was relegated to the end. Richard Holden (Con) asked whether Starmer would think again before instructing his Whips to block Holden’s Bill banning first cousin marriage.

Sir Keir responded with a brusqueness that may have taken some by surprise: “Mr Speaker, we have taken our position on that Bill.”

The hot potato rolled in the aisle, steaming.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster