Month: April 2016

Not so immaculate huh?

canterbury

Even a Primate can’t choose his family, it seems.

It turns out that that there was quite a lot of monkey business in Churchill’s corridors of power – and an ocean of alchol (hic) to wash away the detritus. So Justin’s mother, Mary, managed to conceive only days before her marriage but it has taken her 60 years (allegedly) to find out that Justin’s father wasn’t the man she wed. Despite the clear facial resemblance between her paramour and her son. She blames the booze.

I suppose if Justin had stayed in the oil biz nobody would have taken much notice, but you’d think the Lord would have arranged things a bit more decorously, wouldn’t you? Or perhaps it’s another of his little jokes.

Just another Canterbury Tale really.

It’s just not Portugal…

This post is to placate Janus.

I’ve been in Spain for over a month now. I haven’t entirely been sure what to say about it because it has made so little impression on me – and that I haven’t seen that much of it. For the first month I lived with a Spanish family in el Barrio de Salamanca, one of Madrid’s ritzier neighbourhoods. This month I am living in Usera, one of Madrid’s poorest and roughest neighbourhoods. Continue reading “It’s just not Portugal…”

A different world

As our music editor has opined, the world has changed since the digital revolution.

Remember Kim Philby, who spied for the USSR? Fiendishly clever? Ahead of the technological game? A modern spook whose expertise led his British masters up the garden path?

Well – no. A filmed master class he conducted in the DDR in ’81 shows what an amateur affair it was. He ‘borrowed’ paper files every day, took them home to be copied and returned them the next day! No fancy equipment, no 007 tricks, no subtlety at all.

The Beeb has the story. Fascinating.

The Great Vinyl Rip-Off

A slogan posted on the wall of HMV stores proclaims, in a hubristic paraphrase of the famous Buggles song “Vinyl is killing mp3s”.

Vinyl might be a murderer but it has definitely revived the fortunes of the ailing music industry. Every man, woman and his dog is flocking to HMV to buy vinyl. It’s back in Vogue and Fashion and Stylistics. The shelves are cluttered with black plastic again. A recycled Sevenfold Nightmare. I don’t understand this nostalgia trip. While disagreeing with FEEG over the hi-definition rip-off I have to admit that the CD format is superior to vinyl.

The re-emergence of vinyl is a record industry attempt to stop the file-sharing pirates that download music for free. Seeing those record covers again and reliving Glory Days is Nirvana to a lot of soul sisters and brothers, so it’s a Gimme, Gimme ,Gimme Rush for the needle players. Me, I gave most of my LPs away while retaining the coloured vinyls, bootleg albums and rare promotional issues as family heirlooms. It pays to have a Record Collector guide book handy. Like Yazz, the only way is up for these beanstalks.

While old-timers are taking longer to Knock on Heaven’s Door maybe other brands will seek to fleece the Old Sheps from their Money and Time. Betamax could tape us to the future. Sodastream might teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. Another big lift-off and we will be Fooled Again by Ground Control putting another Man on The Moon.

The vinyl revolution won’t last but it has brought a memory revival of all things past; Melting tar on the road, running through clothes lines, eating blackjacks then sticking out your tongue, footie in the street, chapping doors and running away, climbing trees and falling out of trees…

Nee

Te he he. Under a new Dutch law any issue that garners at least 300,000 signatures must be put to a consultative plebiscite. Yesterday, the Dutch had the first of such votes. The matter concerned the EU-Ukraine Russia-baiting treaty. Turnout was, to be fair, relatively low — just over 32pc. The results, however, remain telling. By a margin of nearly 2-1 the Dutch, unwilling hostages of their governments’ Eurodelusions rejected the deal. Continue reading “Nee”

There’s not a team like the Glasgow Rangers

“Let the others come after us. We welcome the chase.” – Bill Struth, legendary Rangers manager.

Congratulations to Glasgow Rangers on winning the Scottish Championship and being promoted to the top tier of Scottish football. Well played, Rangers.

If you’re not from the west of Scotland it’s hard to explain the passion of being a supporter of the world’s most successful football club. Quintessentially British, Rangers are more than a club, they are an institution. My grandfather supported Rangers, my old man supported Rangers, I support Rangers and my sons support Rangers. You don’t need to ask who the unborn grandweans will support. It’s a Rangers family thing. And there’s hundreds of thousands of Rangers families like that. Now we’re back where we belong, next season we’re going for title 55.

History. We’re Rangers, we’ve got plenty of that.

Offshore squalls

So Wikileaks now confirms what we have suspected for ever: rich, powerful people hide their money from tax authorities.

No names, no pack-drill but I often ask myself how the head honchos of big corporations (in DK for example) manage to work here and pay the taxes demanded. And how come the allegedly ever-vigilant tax folk don’t seem to do anything about it?

We shall now witness governments issuing their usual lip-service responses to the ‘news’, much sighing and tutting and promises of crack-downs, all lasting the requisite nine days; whereupon business as usual.

The people of Iceland will perhaps spill some blood but there’ll be no volcanic dust and the storms will be confined to tea cups around the world.

The europlot thickens

The story so far:

Negotiations for Cameron’s Stay campaign ended in stalemate. The Tories started to fall apart, as ever unsure what Europe has to do with real life. Cameron shows signs of panic, faced with his own party’s schizophrenia. The Leave campaign shows clear signs of winning the battle,  with so many reputations at stake.

Enter the IMF, the perennial prophet of economic doom, to announce that the UK’s referendum will coincide with a very relevant event: another Greek default! Mama mia! (Sorry, my modern Greek is shaky, like their economy.)

That should liven up the debate, nicht Wahr/n’est-ce pas?