Albums

Recently, I thought about 1969 and 1970 and the music that coloured those twenty four months. Here on this very blog I shared with you three of my favourite singles from each of those special years.

Back then I was always delighted to visit Kingston-upon-Hull's two best record shops - Sydney Scarborough under The City Hall  and Stardisc Records on Silver Street. Of course then there were no CD's or cassette versions of albums so you leafed through the record stacks checking out album covers. Album covers were becoming more imaginative by 1969 - they were more than just sleeves to hold the discs. In fact one might argue that they complemented the music within.

Before making this blogpost, I checked out lists of albums published in those two iconic years and picked out three of my favourite albums from each year. I owned them all and played them to death till I knew just about every lyric from beginning to end. Perhaps I should have devoted  an equal amount of dedication to my school work but much of that bored me to tears when I was fifteen and sixteen. Music was different for it really meant something to me - much more than politics or world affairs or tedious Science lessons.

These are the six albums I have chosen:-

1969...

"Liege & Lief" - Fairport Convention:-

"Nashville Skyline" - Bob Dylan:-

"Songs from a Room" - Leonard Cohen:-

1970...

"Tumbleweed Connection" - Elton John:-

"After The Goldrush" - Neil Young:-

"Sweet Baby James" - James Taylor:-

If a record producer stopped me in the street and asked me to pick just one song from each album to make a compilation disc, these are the songs I would pick:-

"Farewell, Farewell" - Fairport Convention

"Girl from The North Country" - Bob Dylan

"Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" - Leonard Cohen

"Burn Down The Mission" - Elton John

"Don't Let It Bring You Down" - Neil Young

"Fire and Rain" - James Taylor

And here's just one of those songs to listen to before you go, from one of Canada's greatest sons:-

Honours

Sir Gavin Williamson

Here, in Merrie Olde Englande, there are several national honours that are theoretically available to all citizens. At the lowest level and for good service in a wide range of fields you might receive The British Empire Medal (B.E.M.). Moving up, a more prestigious honour is the M.B.E. (Member of the British Empire) and above that is the O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire). Above that is the C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire).

Beyond these medals, a man may receive a knighthood and a woman may be awarded a damehood. This gives the bearer the right to be addressed as a "sir" - for example Sir Ian McKellen - who received his knighthood for services to theatre arts - similar to Dame Helen Mirren.

Above this level your have barons and baronesses - a noble honour indeed but not all baronetcies get you a seat in the upper house of parliament - The House of Lords. That place is occupied by unelected hereditary peers,  bishops and nominated "Lords" and "Ladies" known as life peers who do not pass their titles on to their children.

It is all very complicated and not always transparent.  Some honours are nominally awarded by the monarch and others are political honours. When a prime minister resigns, he or she has the opportunity to make a list of "Resignation Honours". Even the hapless Liz Truss, who was in office for only forty five days during which she exploded our country's economy, may yet get to honour her own chosen citizens.

Johnson was the PM before Truss. He seemed to delight in awarding honours to his chums and supporters - ignoring wise advice and the usual protocols of the honours system. He even had the gall to make his younger brother Joseph a "Lord"  - he now sits in The House of Lords as The Lord Johnson of Marylebone. Quite sickening.

But what is more sickening is Johnson's honouring of two especially undeserving  men. Firstly - a loyal but ineffectual  Conservative politician called Gavin Williamson who ran Johnson's leadership campaign in 2019. Secondly - the forty two year old wealthy  son of a Russian KGB agent   - Evgeny Lebedev.

Forty six year old Williamson became  a "Sir" and a Knight Bachelor for his political "service".  And Lebedev became a life peer - Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation. Johnson partied at Lebedev's holiday mansion in Italy on more than one occasion.

Giving these two undeserving men such prestigious honours stinks of corruption and  cronyism and insults every hard working and decent citizen on this island and indeed all those who gained their honours on merit. But that is what one might have expected from Johnson. Several of his other nominations are also highly questionable. Perhaps it is really time to scrap The House of Lords and revise The Honours System so that only truly deserving people are honoured.

Lord Lebedev with his pet wolf, Boris

Quizmaster

November 6th at "The Hammer and Pincers" quiz. No Danny again as he and his lady have now moved to Buxton - the highest market town in England. It is twenty eight miles away from here. Mike is suffering from something called myasthenia gravis - a rare long-term condition that causes muscle weakness. It most commonly affects the muscles that control the eyes and eyelids but is also affecting his speech and ability to eat. And then there's Mick - our James Bond, film and pop music specialist. We each bring something different to the quiz table.

Here are just five of tonight's questions with answers below. No cheating now.

1. Which Indian curry accompaniment consists of  yoghurt, mint, cucumber  and mild spices?
2. Which pop artist recently issued "Midnight" -  her tenth hit album ?
3. Anagram - a flying creature - VIBRATE MAP.
4. Which European city airport has the code BCN ?
5. Who taught Oliver Twist to steal in the Charles Dickens novel of that name?                            

ANSWERS

1.  RAITA
2.  TAYLOR SWIFT
3.  VAMPIRE BAT

4.  BARCELONA

5.  THE ARTFUL DODGER

Ratner

Gerald Ratner was the managing director of a big jewellery business. In the eighties "Ratners" jewellery shops could be found in every British city and large town. They were very profitable and took the mystique and stuffiness out of  traditional jewellery retailing.  The market they aimed for was distinctly working class - making jewellery affordable for the masses.

Everything was trucking along very nicely until Gerald Ratner made a much reported speech to The Institute of Directors on April 23rd 1991. He said this:-

"We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap."

It was what has become known as his "Ratner moment". Feeling grossly insulted, hordes of previously loyal customers voted with their feet and stayed away from "Ratners" shops causing the value of the business to drop by £500,000  or half a billion almost over night. Shops had to close and nowadays there are no Ratners shops left.

I think of Gerald Ratner in connection with Elon Musk - purportedly the richest man in the world. He bought up Twitter for $44 billion (US) and for spurious reasons related to  his weird perception of democracy. Like King Midas, I guess he thought that everything he touched would turn to gold.

But now it is all turning to excrement for Musk. Advertisers are falling away and many thousands of Twitter users are voting with their feet and staying away just as Gerald Ratner's customers did in 1991. Maybe Twitter was already becoming old-fashioned and uncool. It will be interesting to see if Musk can ever revive Twitter but giving Donald Trump his old platform back is hardly going to endear Twitter to intelligent liberals around the world. It is also extremely misguided and dangerous to champion the notion that democracy is about allowing people to say what the hell they want without moderation or verification.

Musk may be a genius in some respects but when all is said and done he's not a very likeable man. I know that it is not quite the same and I may be very wrong but I think of Musk buying Twitter as his Ratner moment even though it may have little impact on his Tesla business. We shall see.

Serlby

 

Sign at Scrooby Top

Sunny weather was predicted for Friday and that forecast came true. I should have set out earlier but as the old saying goes - better late than never. It was 1pm when Clint touched down in the tiny estate village of Serlby in North Nottinghamshire. Of course, night comes much earlier nowadays - more so since we in Britain put our clocks back last Sunday. I knew that by five o'clock it would be dark.

I had planned a circular walk and printed off the requisite map. I guessed that it would take me around three hours and so it came to pass. If felt so good to put one foot in front of the other once again, moving gradually over the landscape.

By 4pm I was drinking hot coffee from a flask with Clint's tailgate lifted. I had seen many things in the afternoon, marched like a soldier and taken fifty six pictures. At one point two snarling Alsatian dogs bounced down to the bottom of their long garden to greet me with their raucous barking. They were not saying  a friendly "Hello". Thank heavens there was wire netting between us.

I saw an oak tree on Moor Lane, a bungalow by The Great North Road in Ranskill, a cat and a pig at Scrooby Top Farm, sunshine piercing the trees on the path that runs by Black Cat Plantation and one of the old  gatehouses connected with Serlby Hall's estate...

1970

At this time last week, my blogpost contained music videos of three of my favourite singles from 1969. It was a great year for popular and progressive music and so was the year that followed it - 1970. I became seventeen years old in the autumn of that year and music meant the world to me. Without any more ado, I give you three of my favourite singles from 1970:-

Free - "All Right Now":-

Melanie Safka - "Ruby Tuesday":-

Mungo Jerry - "In The Summertime":-

Cartoon

In the past I have drawn Johnson, May and Truss - posting their pictures on this very blog. Now it's Richie Sumac's turn:-

I changed his first name from Rishi to Richie simply because he is very rich. He doesn't need to think about rising energy costs, his supermarket bills or the cost of a family holiday. But how did Richie become so rich? Certainly not through physical labour or a 9 to 5 job. This is what "The Week" had to say in January of this year:-

Sunak became a “multimillionaire in his mid-twenties”, according to The Sunday Times. He was a partner at the hedge fund TCI, where bosses “shared nearly £100m after an audacious stock market bet that lit the touchpaper on the 2008 financial crisis”.

As a young man he operated in the financial world like a successful gambler in a casino, placing his bets wisely and then he married Ashakta Murthy who just happened to be the daughter of  billionaire Indian businessman Naryana Murthy.

Richie  registered "a blind trust" in July 2019 after being appointed chief secretary to the Treasury by then chancellor Sajid Javid, and it is believed to contain a multi-million pound fortune. Blind trusts allow people to make interest from their investments, without knowing where the money is actually invested. This is supposed to remove any conflicts of interest.

As PM, Sumac has already made a few mistakes but I will give him this - he seems a lot more prime-ministerial than either of his predecessors.  At least he does his homework  and his ego does not appear to be the size of an over-inflated hot air balloon. Perhaps that is partly down to his Hindu heritage.