Cats just have to be the centre of attention. Watch how the girl’s face changes from thunder to sunshine.

Scientists invented animatronic rabbits to lure pythons fom the swamp but things developed from there…

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“Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American blues and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer of Louisiana Creole descent. Morton was jazz’s first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential characteristics when notated.

“Jelly Roll Morton got his famous stage name from a combination of an adopted family surname and a risqué musical moniker. Born Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, he took the last name Morton as an anglicized version of his stepfather’s surname (Mouton) while playing piano in his teens. He adopted the nickname “Jelly Roll”—which was common early 20th-century sexual slang—while performing piano in the brothels and red-light districts of New Orleans.”

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

Doctor Jazz - Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers - 1926

The Crave - Jelly Roll Morton

Original Jelly Roll Blues - Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers - 1926

Jelly Roll Morton - Tiger Rag

Pearls

Tank Town Bump

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https://www.biography.com/musicians/a45530830/jelly-roll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelly_Roll_(singer)

Jelly Roll - Liar (Official Music Video)

Jelly Roll – God Never Let Me Stay Down | New Country Gospel Song 2026

Jelly Roll ‘How Do I Say Goodbye’ | Lyrics Video

Jelly Roll - Thorns (Official Music Video)

Jelly Roll -God, I’m Sorry | Draw back to God with this song|

I think it is Channel4 which shows The Grand Ole Opry on sunday nights and I saw him on there a few months ago and liked his style more or less immediately.

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The three “people”, as the BBC does not say, were women.

La Dépêche du Midi, a newspaper based in Toulouse, France reports (auto-translation):

“According to initial information gathered by Delta FM, three of them did not die by drowning… An investigation will be opened to determine the circumstances of these deaths.”

Dubai-based National News reports

“French authorities have said… three women suffered heart attacks after their boat launched…

“The women, reportedly aged about 20, 30 and 50, were brought ashore by the French emergency services, but attempts to resuscitate them failed, and all three were declared dead.

“They were on one of the so-called taxi boats operated by human-trafficking gangs that were sailed along the coast to pick up people at designated spots before attempting the crossing.”

The BBC merely says that “three unconscious people” were “found dead.”

Our national broadcaster may think it is being responsible by omitting and glossing over facts, perhaps to prevent inflammatory speculation by “far-right” commenters but as we saw with the Southport murders committed by Axel Rudakubana if the public feels it is being deceived the speculation is intensified.

Already the questions must mutiply.

Had this incident occurred on a boat travelling from Dover to France one might have expected all the surviving travellers to be arrested by British police pending investigation into suspicious deaths. Instead the French appear to have simply taken off the corpses and allowed the other migrants to proceed towards England; and to have diagnosed “heart attacks” in advance of post-mortems.

Little wonder that public trust in authority and established institutions is eroding. We cannot safely allow them to be, in Alan Clark’s 1992 phrase, “economical with the actualité.”

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Hope you enjoy his bit of time travel and leave behind the cares of this mad modern world!

***************

Every generation has its ‘own’ music which is usually incomprehensible to previous and/or subsequent generations. My own musical generation lived at the time of the ‘beat boom’ of the sixties. My parents did not criticise ‘my’ music, in fact they liked some of it. Their generation would listen to the music played on the BBC’s Light Programme. They never claimed that it was better than our modern ‘rubbish’ just that it was different. One of the names that cropped up in conversations was Henry Hall and I just listened and nodded and thought that’s probably what I may have listened to had I been born in that era. But curiosity led me to look for and listen to a selection of the music of Henry Hall.

“The BBC Dance Orchestra, led by Jack Payne, made its first official broadcast on 12 March 1928. The band had proved its popularity as The Cecilians, occasionally broadcasting from the Hotel Cecil. Given the title Director of the BBC Dance Orchestra, Payne moved his 10-piece band to the studio at Savoy Hill. His regular radio performances ensured his success, and made his signature tune, “Say it with Music”, a hit.

The BBC Handbook of 1929 acknowledged the importance of dance music on the radio and called it “the voice of something very typical of ourselves and of this post-war age”. Radio dancing lessons were all the rage, and the listeners’ appetite for dance music was huge. The BBC Dance Orchestra was soon receiving 10 thousand letters a week.

Jack Payne left the BBC in 1932 and was replaced by Henry Hall, who continued the success with another line-up of the BBC Dance Orchestra. Hall was followed by Billy Ternent and then Stanley Black, until 1952. The orchestra provided the music for many hit programmes, including The Goons, Ray’s a Laugh and Much Binding in the Marsh.”

https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/march/first-broadcast-by-the-bbc-dance-orchestra

1934 Vintage - The BBC Dance Orchestra dir. by Henry Hall

I Like Bananas Because They Have No Bones - Henry Hall Lyrics

Henry Hall with the BBC Dance Orchestra ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’ Original 1932 78 rpm

The Teddy Bears’ Picnic - Henry Hall

Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?

1936 Vintage - The BBC Dance Orchestra directed by Henry Hall

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https://bluegrasstoday.com/bluegrass-beyond-borders-eric-shi-brings-bluegrass-to-china/

jambalaya-Chinese bluegrass band Erhu and banjo

Amarillo By morning - Bluegrass Cover

Hard Times Come Again No More|Bluegrass Arrangement by Eric Shi

Turkey in the Straw Breakdown-Top 1 Chinese Favorite Bluegrass Song

Chinese Bluegrass band-Can Can dance ,Filmed in Dali, China

Alan Jackson-Chattahoochee Bluegrass Cover(by Eric Shi)

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So here is Randy Newman who I see is 92 and still going strong. Music obviously keeps you young!

Randall Stuart Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, composer, and arranger. Born in Los Angeles to an extended family of Hollywood film composers, he is known for his Americana-inspired songs, non-rhotic Southern-accented singing, and lyrics that are often mordant or satirical and delivered by an unreliable narrator. Since the 1990s, he has worked mainly in film scoring, most popularly for Disney and Pixar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Newman
https://www.randynewman.com/

Randy Newman - It’s Money That Matters (Official Video)

Randy Newman - Falling in Love (Official Video)

Randy Newman - Short People (Official Video)

Randy Newman - I Love L.A. (Official Video) [HD]

Randy Newman - “I’m Dead (But I Don’t Know It)”

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Professor Longhair had only one national commercial hit, “Bald Head”, in 1950, under the name Roy Byrd and His Blues Jumpers. He also recorded his favorites, “Tipitina” and “Go to the Mardi Gras”. He lacked crossover appeal among white and wide audiences. Yet, he is regarded (and was acknowledged) as being a musician who was highly influential for other prominent musicians, such as Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint and Dr. John.

After a few years during which he disappeared from the music scene, Professor Longhair’s musical career finally received “a well deserved renaissance” and wide recognition. He was invited to perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1971 and at the Newport Jazz Festival and the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1973. His album The London Concert showcases work he did on a visit to the United Kingdom. That significant career resurrection saw the recording of the album “Professor Longhair - Live On The Queen Mary”, which was recorded on March 24, 1975, during a private party hosted by Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney on board the retired RMS Queen Mary.

Walk Right In/Shake,Rattle,& Roll” Professor Longhair & The Meters 1974

Professor Longhair - Go To The Mardi Gras

Tipitina (Album Version)

Professor Longhair --- Stag O’ Lee

Professor Longhair - Mess Around

That should set your feet tapping!

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Reich has released five albums. Her most recent multi-instrumental CD, ‘BRAVE BIRD’ won a Gold Medal for Female Vocalist in the 2018 Global Music Awards and LA Critics Award for Best Folk Artist.

www.marthareich.com

Song For Tessa ~ Martha Reich ~ Official Music Video

Martha Reich ~ WOODY’S LULLABY ~ A love song to those forever in our hearts

Martha Reich ~ ‘FADE AWAY’ ~ 2019 New Mexico Music Awards Winner ~ Best Singer Songwriter Song

Martha Reich Braden - If you Only Knew (Live and Amplified)

BUDDHA BLUE ~ Official Lyric Video; Feat. Gregg Braden ~ Guitar & Flute and Michael Kott ~ Cello

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Before I begin you should know that this meeting will remain completely secret. That means no off the record briefings of any kind and no private minuting or diarising. We shall need at least ten years before any of this comes out.

So far ninety-odd MPs have called for my resignation as Party leader and I have let them have it, for now. Let a hundred flowers bloom, as Mao said; unless they change their minds they may find they are cut flowers. Let September’s Conference crown Andy Queen of the May - he’s taking group selfies already - but I am still and intend to remain Prime Minister.

For why and how I now pass you over to our new Cabinet Secretary whom you all know. Everything he is about to say to you has my full backing.

Good afternoon.

We have a choice before us.

If Andy took over this would be the last Labour government for a generation, perhaps for ever. He may have made the trams run on time in Manchester but he’s aiming for Number Ten on the basis of no prior planning. The bond traders would skin him alive for his uncosted notions of seizing privatised enterprises, the markets and pension funds will tank and the country will fall into chaos.

He’s a nice guy. He likes to be liked. That is a fatal weakness. When the wolf is at the door love will fly out of the window.

You must all understand that this is a revolutionary government. We came to power in order to save the country and it’s going to happen, if we hang together.

We’ve spoken of change and fixing the foundations and most people think that means the economy. Not so. It’s about the Constitution. Everything flows from that and if we get it right the Tories are dead for good.

Look at what we have achieved already.

Take the House of Lords. In 1980 Tony Benn said create a thousand peers and abolish the House; twenty years later when Tony Blair came in he tinkered with the Lords but had no idea what to replace them with. What those two dreamed of we’ve done. The hereditaries have gone and we have a second chamber we can fill with our appointees.

Resistance has moved to the shires and we have an answer for that too. Local government reorganisation and the new unitary authorities will bury the far right under a pile of confused and apathetic voters. Rupert Lowe, to take one example, will find his base utterly diluted when East Norfolk Council comes into being. Regional politics will be about roads and bins.

And a good thing, too. Why were the people ever given the vote? In 1918 it was to prevent revolution by giving them forums to complain and squabble. We’re here to deliver that revolution and we don’t want to be bogged down with whingers and rabble rousers.

Speaking of which, the social media need to be curbed. Everybody gets to be identified and answerable and we have the tech means to put them all on their best behaviour, as Tony’s mate Larry Ellison says. As for TV and the Press, they’re pretty much on the leash already.

We’ll put a lid on the griping but we’ll also give them less to gripe about. And we’ll do it in a systematic way, not like Andy’s piecemeal populism.

Take energy. Ed is right, we are now approaching the limits to growth but Net Zero will bankrupt us even as China and India are on the rise. We have to get to sustainability by the right route so the lights don’t go out. Drilling, fracking, small nuclear reactors, anything necessary while we build the alternatives.

Ed, we’ll need your brains and diligence in a different area and sorry, you can’t refuse unless you want out altogether. If the international economy goes down and the world stops feeding and clothing us we’ve got seventy million potential victims on our hands. We have to reduce the population and your brief will be to manage net migration well into the negative. That should take the wind out of Lowe’s and Farage’s sails. Apart from anything else AI is going to destroy white collar jobs and the knock on effects of lost salaries will give us severe deflation and soaring structural unemployment. We have to find a way of keeping necessary talent and losing the useless eaters.

Now we come to the biggest resistance, the unelected money-shufflers. We have no intention of being Trussed-up by the bond traders. The reason why this gathering is later in the day is that there was a Privy Council meeting this morning as a result of which we’ve already told the City that if they fuck with us they will find out. We’ll honour any bonds already issued but we’re not going to be at the mercy of lenders and speculators. Anyone who tries it on will lose their licence to trade.

Debt growth is on track to kill us and so we’re going for Modern Monetary Theory. In future we will print our own currency, not borrow it. This will help counter the coming economic deflation.

Free trade just suits the free traders, at everyone else’s expense. Their time is over. We are adopting the approach of Alexander Hamilton’s American School: protective tariffs, infrastructure investment and a national bank that fosters productive enterprise instead of global financial crises.

One of this morning’s Orders in Council is a declaration of national emergency. A consequence is that until we are back on an even keel there will be no General Election. The public doesn’t need to know that yet and the MSM are instructed not to ask.

Social media, emails and phone communications are under intense computer-assisted surveillance and selective suppression. The intelligence services, police and armed forces are prepared to handle any attempt at fomenting discontent and sedition.

Colleagues, this our best and likely our only chance to complete the revolution. Either we will go down in history or we will go down altogether.

Individuals will shortly be called for discussions on appointments and tasking. I shall of course be assisting Sir Keir at such interviews but in any case my door is permanently open to any and all of you.

This meeting is ended. Please leave your folder on the table for collection and secure storage. Thank you.

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Barrett Strong - Money (That’s What I Want) (Lyric Video)

Pink Floyd - Money (Official Music Video)

Rosanne Cash - There Ain’t No Money

Bruce Springsteen - Pay me my money down

Dolly Parton - 9 To 5 (Official Video)

ABBA - Money, Money, Money (Official Music Video)

… Yes, the ‘beautiful game’ has been tainted by the curse of avarice!

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Mackinder argued that the latter would be able to boost their trade and economic power - and military capacity - by building railway networks that could do more than their river systems naturally allowed. He worried about a forthcoming clash with the British Empire.

The discussion following the reading was even more illuminating, thanks to the comments by Leo Amery, who said that as to armed conflict modern ships could carry far more troops than could trains but - and this was in 1904! - sooner or later both means of locomotion would be supplemented by air which would lessen the importance of geographical distribution.

Amery went on to say that no matter where they were situated “the successful powers will be those who have the greatest industrial basis… those people who have the industrial power and the power of invention and of science will be able to defeat all others.”

If only our government had understood this in 1914! For by then Germany’s steel production was more than twice Britain’s and industry accounted for 60 per cent of their GDP. By mid-1915 we had run out of artillery shells and had to import them from the USA on borrowed money - defaulting on our war debt to America in 1934.

War is “the sport of kings” and only the richest can afford it. We couldn’t then, even less so in 1939 and not at all today, when all three branches of our national defence are dangerously weak and two ministers have just resigned on the issue.

If we wish to be a sovereign nation providing for and protecting seventy million people we need a strong manufacturing economy, with abundant, reliable and cheap sources of energy so we can conduct international trade on profit margins that can pay for all our imports.

Instead our liberal globalist leaders have done exactly the opposite while increasing the population by mass immigration, so boosting the numbers of potential victims of economic collapse.

Our overall losses in the international trade in goods are largely offset by our income from services. However other nations - east or west of us - may eventually develop significant competition in the latter field. When that happens our net earnings may become perilously negative.

Amery warned about this also. In 1906 he published “The Fundamental Fallacies Of Free Trade,” arguing that the total volume of British trade was less important than the net international balance. He was a lifelong advocate of tariffs between the British Empire and non-Empire nations.

Our current rulers seem to think that GDP growth is the same as paying our way, but the rest of the world is not obliged to feed and clothe us.

Perhaps a final reference to Amery would be appropriate. During the wartime “Norway debate” (7 May 1940) he made a speech that helped terminate Chamberlain’s premiership, concluding with a quotation from Cromwell that might be used now to Keir Starmer, the self-declared “fixer of the foundations”:

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”

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Hamilton Camp served as one of the links between the Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger folk music of the ‘40s and the singer/songwriter school of Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, and Phil Ochs in the ‘60s. [Apple Music]

Camp is probably best known as the author of the song “Pride of Man”, which was recorded by a number of artists, notably Quicksilver Messenger Service, Gram Parsons, and Gordon Lightfoot, who included it as one of three songs by other songwriters on his first record. Camp died of a heart attack on October 2, 2005, four weeks before his 71st birthday. He was survived by his six children and thirteen grandchildren. [Wiki]

Hamilton Camp :: Pride Of Man

Girl of the North County

Celts (the lyrics are from the poem The Stolen Child by W.B.Yeats)

Hamilton Camp : Here’s To You

Hamilton Camp - Get Together

Gibson & Camp - “Sing For The Song” 5/21/87
Hamilton Camp And Bob Gibson, two renowned folksingers, singing together on Art Fein’s Poker Party in Los Angeles. Gibson died in the 1990s, Camp in 2006. Gibson started in folk music in 1955 and maintained a successful career. In 1961 the two teamed up for a world-famous recording “Gibson & Camp at The Gate Of Horn,” then they returned to their solo careers. The duo resumed performances in the late 70s.

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No socio-economic excuses, no cultural relativism special pleading.

It can be done because it has been done before:

The judge who stopped knife crime

Lord Carmont rocked the underworld of Glasgow in the Fifties when he began handing out long sentences for knife crime. Judges should follow his example now, says ADAM EDWARDS

• Daily Express

• 24 Jul 2008

RUTHLESS: Carmont imposed lengthy sentences on those who used blades

ONE terrible fact leapt out of the crime figures published by the Government last week: a knife attack takes place in Britain once every four minutes on average. There were 129,840 violent attacks involving a knife last year – more than 350 a day. The stark numbers bring shock and surprise – surprise that the Government has little idea what to do about them.

But a dip into fairly recent British history suggests the solution to the knife-crime epidemic is obvious.

Back in the Fifties, Glasgow was in the grip of razor gangs when Lord John Carmont, one of its leading judges, decided to do something about it.

The hawk-faced adjudicator, who died more than 40 years ago, was ruthless in his determination to rid the city of its stabbers and slashers. His answer to the wave of knifings was simply to give long jail terms to anyone caught carrying an open “cut-throat” razor.

His tough stance became known as “copping a Carmont”. From 1952, he became so notorious for punitive sentences that even today the French language still contains the phrase “faire un carmont”. The message quickly reached the gangs and carrying razors fell out of fashion. He “rocked the underworld of Glasgow”, wrote a contemporary, and stopped knife crime in its tracks.

“When I was a teenager in Glasgow, I remember the sporadic terror wreaked in the city centre’s dance halls by gangs intent on recreational violence,” says Charlie Gordon, Labour member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow Cathcart. “It took exemplary sentences issued by Lord Carmont to stop a razor-slashing culture that was growing in the city.”

Born in 1880 to a distinguished Catholic family, John Carmont was educated both in France and at the beautiful Abbey School in Fort Augustus in the Scottish Highlands. Called to the bar in 1906, he saw active service during the First World War both in the ranks and as an officer in the Black Watch.

He took silk in 1924 and established himself as one of the most formidable characters in the Scottish judiciary. He had an unusually retentive memory, could quote verbatim from legal texts and was admired for his sturdy independence of mind.

Though his sentences were harsh, he was personally “the gentlest and kindliest of men”, notes his 1965 obituary, adding that his sentences were “the logical outcome of his sense of priorities which demanded that the public was entitled to protection from the anti-social activities of the lawless”. Would that all judges had such views now.

With the constituency of Glasgow East voting in a by-election today, it is significant that the retiring MP, Labour’s David Marshall, has also spoken of the impact of Carmont’s crackdown.

In a speech on law and order, he told the Commons: “I feel sorry for the police. I give them my full support and they do splendid work but much of what they do is to some extent negated by the courts, which let down the law-abiding citizens of this country and its police force. If the courts were to make an example of some criminals, particularly those who commit acts of violence, crime would rapidly decrease.

“I cite an example from 40 or 50 years ago. Lord Carmont sentenced a few razor-slashers in Glasgow to 20 years’ imprisonment at a time when 20 years meant precisely that. Overnight, razor-slashing ceased.”

In fact, a standard Carmont sentence was one decade behind bars rather than two but Mr Marshall was on the right lines.

In the first half of the 20th century, Glasgow had an unenviable reputation for violence. The city took the brunt of the Depression in the Thirties with very high unemployment, substandard housing and poor levels of health.

The worst of the suffering was in the run-down district known as the Gorbals where, according to the writer Colin MacFarlane who was born there: “Human waste ran down the tenement stairs and filth, violence, crime, rats, poverty and drunkenness abounded.” A novel No Mean City by Alexander McArthur was published in 1935 about slum life in the Gorbals. Its anti-hero was “razor king” Johnnie Stark. The book was so grim that many libraries refused to stock it.

Glasgow and knives were inextricably linked in the public’s mind. The nickname for a slashing, for example, was known in some quarters as “a Glasgow smile”.

“By the early Fifties every gangster carried an open razor,” according to Danny Grant, a former policeman whose beat included Glasgow’s toughest districts.

When Lord Carmont, by then a senior high court judge, saw how many of Glasgow’s criminals were being sent to his court for knife crimes, he knew that the city was in the grip of a violent crime epidemic which had to be stopped.

“Carmont stated that in future anyone appearing in front of him who had been found in possession of an open razor would be sent to prison for 10 years,” says Grant. Back then, a 10-year sentence meant 10 years behind bars.

Carmont’s reputation for being tough was already well known to Glasgow criminals, as his treatment of John Ramensky attests.

Ramensky was the best-known safe blower in Scottish history, as famous for his prison breaks as for his crimes. During the Second World War, he was recruited by the military to blow up enemy buildings and steal important documents. He won the Military Medal and had been given a free pardon.

Shortly after the war, at the age of 50, Ramensky appeared before Carmont after being caught blowing a safe. He made an impassioned plea for clemency and cited his war record. He pleaded with Carmont that he had undergone more than his share of suffering. “Give me a chance, as only good can result from it,” he said in mitigation. But Carmont sentenced him to 10 years with the cold remark that “any sentence of less than 10 years would be useless”.

AS SOON as Carmont had decided to solve the blade problem, he was merciless. In one court sitting he passed sentences of up to 10 years on eight men – 52 years in all – simply for carrying razors and knives.

Those sentences had an immediate effect. For a brief period in Glasgow’s history, razors and knives vanished from its streets.

Today the plea for tougher sentences for knife crime echoes across the country.

In 2006, Charlie Gordon moved an amendment to the Criminal Justice Act going through the Scottish Parliament calling for mandatory jail sentences for possessing knives. His amendment failed.

But now he has renewed his call for automatic jail sentences for knife possession. “This is an idea whose time has come,” he said.

It is time for all MPs and judges to take note of the views of the public. It is time a new generation of violent hooligans got to know the meaning of “copping a Carmont”.

______________________________________________________

Found via https://www.pressreader.com/ and previously shown on Broad Oak Magazine in 2019.

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It will be fifteen months before the inquest into Henry Nowak’s death is held. By that time the goldfish attention of the media will have been turned elsewhere, but when it turns back we shall be told that lessons have been learned and someone will make sure of something.

But even now it is clear some things went wrong in the police appoach to this incident. If a young man appears physically distressed and says he has been stabbed, would you check carefully rather than tell him (as recorded) “You’ve been stabbed? Whereabouts? I don’t think so, mate”?

The pathologist at the murder trial said that Nowak’s wounds were not survivable. That is a professional opinion but not the only possible one, as we shall see. Had the lad been taken to the nearby trauma department within what is known as the “golden hour” who knows?

If he could have been saved the way the police reacted may have reduced his chances. A doctor who is trained in combat medicine has seen the bodycam footage and read the autopsy report. He thinks that Nowak’s cut clavicular vein might have clotted as a natural defence but the rough handling and the process of handcuffing could have reopened the wound and that may be why the victim then bled out and lost consciousness three minutes later.

If paramedics had arrived first on the scene, Henry’s chances of survival would have been as high as 50%, says Dr Magier according to “Basil the Great.”

Were these police officers not trained in dealing with stabbing injuries? There are around 50.000 such incidents annually in England and Wales and we now often see a “bleed control kit” next to a defibrillator in public places. Or is it that anti-racism training biased the officers to make a fatal assumption, bearing in mind that the killer’s brother called the police to say it was a racist attack by Nowak and that no weapons had been involved?

The possibility of prevention goes back further. There were signs that if correctly read should have flagged Vickrum Digwa for monitoring - in fact his father and brother too. The family had collected an array of weapons and brother Gurpreet brandished a sword in a different road rage incident. The killer was already known to police, had stolen weapons from a gurdwara (Sikh temple) whose leaders described him as “argumentative with the congregation and confrontational.”

Perhaps there should be less reporting of infants to Prevent for potentially racist comments and more careful noting of genuine danger signals. Perhaps old-fashioned beat policing would have been able to use the local community knowledge and judgment of officers instead of the current reactive system that uses them as the bin men of crime, cleaning up after the event has happened.

And perhaps we should then not have a febrile people lashing out around them because of systemic governmental failure to protect us. We should not have to see political speakers in a wild bidding war to see how many first and second generation immigrants should be deported.

Rather than the divisive and inflammatory “two-tier” policing and justice (denied to be such by the present PM) we might benefit from a return to the pre-2002 attestation for constables. The wording used to be:

I, [name] of [place], do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve Our Sovereign Lady the Queen in the office of constable, without favour or affection, malice or ill will; and that I will to the best of my power cause the peace to be kept and preserved, and prevent all offences against the persons and properties of Her Majesty’s subjects; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law.

Back on the beat!

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Status Quo - Pictures Of Matchstick Men (Official Top Of The Pops Video)

Chris Farlowe with Out Of Time
This song was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and Farlowe’s version was number one in the pop charts in 1966 on the day England won the World Cup!

Ride My See Saw - Moody Blues {Stereo} 1968

Fleetwood Mac Albatross 1969
This is the real Fleetwood Mac which featured Peter Green, Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer; probably the only rock group with three lead guitarists.

The Box Tops - The Letter (Upbeat 1967)

Rolling Stones - Paint It Black LIVE (1966)

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Now technology is coming for the knowledge workers and many in the middle classes will feel the cold wind of insecurity blowing around their ankles. Quasi-intelligent machines with vast memory banks will take over many functions where experts and skilled managers used to be needed.

There is a building boom in “data centres.” The State of Ohio has 250 of them planned or under construction; Texas has 962.

They also have the capacity, and it will be used, to monitor and control the people and shut down dissent. Technology multi-billionaire Larry Ellison, chairman of software company Oracle, said in 2024:

“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on.”

They are like the chain of castles (the “Ring of Iron”) built by Edward I in Wales, to keep the Welsh down. Their modern equivalent will be needed to oppress a people increasingly poorer and less free.

In the two years before that Ellison’s personal foundation invested $130 million in the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) and has pledged $218 million since then. Blair is a firm advocate for digital ID and has been photographed “living the dream” on Ellison’s yacht “Rising Sun”:

Blair is a fantastic narcissist:

- but there is no reason why we should be cast in his Matrix-type dreams (do PM Keir Starmer and Labour not share them?) and every reason not to.

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According to the presenter China’s debt-to-GDP is far higher than commonly understood (c. 50%), because we must also take into account local government debt and debt taken on by corporate business. The national government is progressively absorbing quantities of the last two in order to disguise their potential bankruptcy.

The total debt load is equivalent to over 300% of GDP. At the same time China’s foreign debtors are running into difficulty and they may fail to service the loans China granted them.

The economy that has seen such dazzling growth has been supported by revenues from land sales and they have declined sharply. Internal consumer demand and international trade are also affected by worry and pessimism.

In the 1979 disaster movie “The China Syndrome” a nuclear power station malfunctions and threatens a meltdown (the title exaggeratedly implies a really deep one!) Already ballooning debt plagues the US, UK and many other developed countries. Maybe China will encounter a financial crisis it cannot hide or overcome; but maybe a collapse elsewhere could be the trigger instead.

For us the lesson is not to gloat at Beijing’s problems but to hope for the best and to prepare to retrench.

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The reference to the Golden Oldies channel on Freeview still applies and, if anything, it is worse than last year. Freeview used to have three channels devoted to ‘golden oldies’ but now there is just one and this is how they describe their ‘best of the sixties’:

“A selection of live performances from TV music shows in the 1960s for a genuine taste of the best of the ‘60s!

‘From TV music shows’ ought to have been a clue because a good proportion of the videos are from American TV variety shows and a lot of them feature unknown singers who are definitely not giving us a genuine taste of the Sixties.

This is what they ought to be playing but you will never hear them on golden oldies channels either on TV or on radio. And it is a very eclectic and always melodic mix.

Cream - Badge

Mary Wells - My Guy

The Drifters - Under The Boardwalk (Official Video) Re-Mastered

The Scaffold - Lily The Pink

The Doors - Love Street

Martha & the Vandellas - Heatwave

Ben E. King / All Star Band - Stand By Me (The Prince’s Trust Rock Gala 1987)

Plenty more where that came from. The problem was what to leave out!

And yes George Harrison did play on that Cream song but for copyright reasons he was listed on the album cover as l’angelo Misterioso.

Ben E King’s song has been covered by 400 artists and is a timeless classic. It was inspired by a gospel song By Sam Cooke called ‘Stand By Me, Father’

Hope you enjoy that selection as much as I do.

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Coincidentally or not, the front page also features a piece in which Tony Blair offers his statesmanlike advice to the Labour Party. Apparently a change of leadership is not helpful if there is no change in policies. A longer summary on page 10 says that compared with the big boys - the USA, China and soon India - we are in danger of being ‘marooned on an island of irrrelevance.’

That ship has sailed, you may say. Though when the real ‘Robinson Crusoe’ was marooned it was for predicting his ship would sink - which it did shortly afterwards. He was ‘better off out’ then and so are we now, if only we seize the chances Brexit gave us.

More bullshit on page 5 where Home Office Minister Mike Tapp tells us that while Reform are squabbling ‘the Government is actually bringing down immigration.’ The official gross figure for y/end 2025 is c. 813,000 compared with 948,000 in 2024. But that’s assuming the Government actually knows the numbers. For over a decade MigrationWatch has predicted our total population will eventually hit 70 million; last October Ed West guessed that we’re already past that point; some think that given data on shopping and utilities it could be millions more than that.

Blair’s rich fantasy life pitches his Party the idea of representing a ‘Radical Centre.’ Hardly a new notion: the 1997 manifesto said ‘New Labour is the political arm of none other than the British people as a whole.’ Now his Institute is recommending ditching various 2024 manifesto commitments so we don’t go under.

I would suggest that the average Briton 1) is not a radical and 2) does not know what is in the various Party manifestoes, 3) would be a fool to think they are binding and 4) votes partly tribally and partly in an emotional spasm when disappointed.

Apparently, according to ‘The Master’, Labour won the 2024 General Election by being ‘an acceptable… default option to a Conservative government.’ If he is implying that voters switched from Tory to Labour he must be hard put to explain why Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership got more ballots in 2017 and 2019 than Starmer’s.

Corporate bullshit.

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