Are we really living in a world gone wrong?

#Spain #UK #Russia #Ukraine #BorisJohnson #Sunak #Marbella #Putin

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When that bloated Grim Reaper Putin invaded the Ukraine he spun the world by its tail.

And the gut reaction of many global property speculators and ex-pats was that `particularly the Spanish market, would fail as Russian money was frozen in the world’s air like black ice.         

But far from it.

The market in Spain is actually still booming – although house prices in places like Marbella, Torreveija and so many parts of the Costas are so inflated that it can be cheaper to buy a house in the leafy suburbs of the UK and an expensive sunlamp.

Yep, the country which has been a favourite with Brits, Irish, Swedes and Russians for decades is no longer the cheap bunfight of wine women and thongs.

Many of the sunny resorts are becoming oases for elderly couples moving in to  Moorish retirement homes close to the beaches or pinned on a mountainside near a fly-blown lake.

Rich Russians have for decades been big buyers of swish and not so swish holiday homes in the Costas – Mad Vlad himself owns a 4.5 acre compound in La Zagaleta  in the mountains outside Marbella.

It was thought that the freezing of Oligarch-ish fortunes in a panic response to the blood and destruction in the land of the sunflowers and corn would take the boom out of the market.

Certainly there were reports of deals falling through because of the big buck sanctions but the market held on to its hopes and prices more or less remained.

Actually. one reason Spain may have been seen as a safe haven was its initial inability to freeze any Russian bank accounts, despite detaining at least three luxury yachts linked to ‘blacklisted individuals’.

In fact after weeks of war even neighbouring Portugal had blocked only one account owned by a sanctioned ‘individual’, with just 242 euros in it.

So, there are many reasons people – including Putin and his lot – still love to be beside the seaside, soaking up the sun and the vodka-laced sangria. In fact he still owns a 20 million mansion in Marbella.

And despite the war speculation and investment in the Land of the Bull – and nobody can deny how much ‘bull’ has gone in to boosting the price of homes in Spain over the last decade  – it still seems the way to go for people looking for a cool new life in the sweltering heat.

 The Russian Federation against Ukraine was bound to affect the foreign real estate market in Europe. And the world.

Well, after the Russian invasion, interest in countries that, due to geographic location or neutrality, can be considered safe for the foreign real estate market, has gone up.

“After the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, there was a shock that meant a decline in purchases of foreign real estate,” Jan Rejcha said. He is a foreign real estate specialist.

However, the invasion brought an immediate positive response and interest now continues to grow month by month, in Austria by 68 percent, Croatia 72 percent. And in Spain 45 percent.

In Switzerland the hills are alive with the sound of cash tills… interest increased by 210 percent! In Italy, it is 168 percent.

In 2020 the Costa del Sol property market suffered travel restrictions, But 2021 was  totally different. The market has seen strong growth in all areas. And people who work in the property sector say the second half of 2021 was  one of the busiest periods ever.

By the end of the second quarter, sales had picked up by  5.4 percent.  

#spanishproperty #aplaceinthesun #migrants #putin #marbellA

It’s up the apples and pears as Rodney pips Leigh to the post of woe, wind and petulance. And that’s just in Spain!

Wait till they get on to the UK! Outrageous? you can bet your life they are!

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A minute’s silence in the UK led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak marked the first anniversary of the day Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the Ukraine, triggering the largest war in Europe since World War Two

The tragedy and horror of what Putin is doing to the people of the Ukraine are portrayed sometimes in the intimate detail.

The intimate details of what it is really like to meet death without warning on a street corner.

We are brutalised by modern ways of dying – the glint of a lone-wolf’’s knife on London bridges, a refugee child drowned in freezing black sea, fleeing diplomats hanging from rescue helicopters, teenagers blown up at a concert, shopping families mown down by brain-washed drivers …

But in this picture – credited to Reuters – it’s not the horror that brings it all back home, it’s the quiet devastation.

The moment your own life ends but you are left standing.

And your child is lying torn and dead before you.

Callous killers had flown their tin cans overhead and killed this man’s son for no other reason than he was standing with his dad and sister at a bus stop in northeastern city of Kharkiv.

Hurricane salvo rockets tore through the grey sky and sucked the air of the streets as they hit.

Then this thirteen year old boy was gone.

Yes, the horror is in the detail, the dad’s sensibly-worn man bag, his tick tock zip-up loose at his waist, his dark designer denim jacket… they all meant something before this moment. In a way they defined the man, the dad.

The son’s black trainer protrudes from the red tarpaulin which are used to hide carnage. They cover the bodies for dignity, they say.

But dad and son are holding each other in the veils of death.

***

At least three Ukrainians were killed in this Russian airstrike.

The dead teenager’s 15-year-old sister was also injured, according to the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office.

In another image, the father was seen with his hand on the boy’s exposed chest. Another distressing photo showed two other men moving the boy’s corpse.

A 69-year-old man and his wife were also killed in the attack, authorities said.

#putin #war #ukraine #death

Once spread a campfire on a rustic cold late summer with a former Chess King on the Dis-ta Not Boris!

(My Version and how i see it) To the coldest of New York winter’s…and to the stalls of avenue street lights of wind-blown hazy snows. Pegged like stick-on’s. Frozen walkers. Frozen breaths in the night air, seemingly to never leave—as my mind in the mire of the images of my 1962 Black Bug, wedged and avalanches on a local side street of a New York city drive—–sustained! My friend Bobby, a recluse and reprobate of his own brand of sweeping negativity. Renounce of an age of all religion…somehow & in some crazy way, has requested me as his practitioner…and opposite on his heavy inundated sole chess board of the uncommon, in an opportunity to be a kind of intellectual sparing partner; or just someone to forward the knighted horse handed Bishop…as the pawn that i was…and that i am. Our other friend, Steve, a Domino king in his own writ—–said that Bobby needed someone to hep hone his craft…and help learn a social type of language, by picking me? A lost tenured former small college English professor—-with a proclivity to tilt the bottle a bit to often, and at most inopportune times! Steve, the Domino champion, always felt that Central Park’s own Social security Grey hairs…and  day trippers of the passers by—-with cigar smoke and luncheonette stops, in the bested of your move, then his move.  (CHECK MATE!’) 

So in all this ballyhoo of all our January’s…New Years…old hats…old crews. Old but unwise, too a precocious young Wiz, booting through the thick of snow. The inner rain. Warmth out of the storm. Shovel and hollow-out, like a gilded caravan, too meet at the Chess table…& another take of the Queen—-taking for-granted just how good Bobby really is—while i lose another practice match, looking out windows of ice freezing rain, and nod to the pained of a real master. A player about to go all crackers. (“INSANE”) Odd, but what’s new. Bobby needed a rival. Yet i kept asking myself in quiet mind: “Why me?” —As i lose once again. I raise my head in exhaustion…so sincere of a winter storm, of high packed winds that just will not go away. There are no pleasures at this very table. Squared a board of the calculated. Yet in reflection, it taught him how to win.To even be on schedule as his simulated Russian martyr—too another red-eye loss; though this one time, i actually won! It was crushing for him…as it made him work harder and harder, although this part will never be known. Soon he will be world renowned…world known; as i sit in the day of a lonely table, giving strength, by losing, but making it tougher and tougher on his mind…our mind’s. Inter-connected!

There was a cold War going on. There was also Bobby’s War of mind. Chess was all of life. Relating to everything. I proudly held those coat tails …and gladly watched the match of Television—attached rabbit ears of the early nineteen seventies. And though i never got there…& never received mention, i felt a part of something. Something big! N0, not a second best. Not a seat at all—-too one American…one Russian, Fought on a game board of War not peace! Ironically, there never really was any peace. No peace of mind in which he never had.

AT THAT LAST ICELANDIC ICED, LATE GOODBYE; A hardy sip of good Russian Vodka, with the sounds of the Kodiak…and cross shooting stars. Cool too cold. The look and feel of the sounds of hot springs, whale watch waters. Late Summer campfire burn of flames of his angst. Bitter of his own…as i could not persuade him. Now the chess king, though it now was yesterday’s news. He strung so many negative issues. I suggested to not look back.’One must move forward, yet too no avail…as to leave abrupt with backpack, solely down hill. I watched and i tried to explain it to myself that he would get past the pain of mind. The soaks of genius which often becomes a terrible place.Then it all just fades away, yet the biggest Chess victory ever!

I’ve always been a Walker … not in the Walking Dead way, more in a fay

Thoreau way.

I just got lucky, I suppose. I was brought up on the edge of ‘Ravine Park’ in the heart of Manchester and spent most summer days down among the dumped trolleys and detritus in the ravine with my dog, There were drunks, tramps and preacher men down there, they went by like old flickering films.

I guess by disassembling their minds, sneering at bricks and mortar or bashing a Biblical story of redemption, they felt they weren’t walking the line.

But they were.

The line is always there, the way to go, the farewell conveyor belt.

Yep, the road ain’t long but it is entirely confined by lines … lines of lanes, lines of sidewalk, streets of coordinates, left and right turns, the aesthetic lines of cars and big trucks.

Walking down the line with only one place to end up.

Thank God I haven’t arrived yet!

In my late youth I got luckier. I became a writer for the rest of my life. I lived in my own confines of fact and fiction, the strict lines  of news, broadcasting and travel. I once had a show on the BBC called Travels with Banksy.

The thing is, I got paid to be on the road, just expected to come up with

a few good lines every day that would sell newspapers and magazines. I was good at it!

But like most Walkers, I lost a lot of things along the way that I really needed, like a family and a couple homes. Often, I slept in my car, drank in cheap bars and ate out of old newspaper on street corners.

It was the way to go.

Then a few days ago, LA film director Bob Mori emailed me his new video of Canadian Mike O’Neill performing Bob Dylan’s 1963 song Walking Down the Line.

Bob Mori – IMDb

It is generally seen as a hobo song but its child-like poetry, its sense of joy against its elemental misery make it something extraordinary.

  Mike O’Neill is a St Louis singer-songwriter, apparently.  But I couldn’t track him down for a chat! So, little info on the man who created this very gentle, breathy slightly gruff version of a very old song… So, little info on the man who created this very gentle, breathy slightly gruff version of a very old song…

Get in touch Mike, let’s tell everybody about you!

#bobdylan #bobmori #mikeoneill #walkingdownthe;ine #1963 #hobo

Paul Gadd – a monster up there with the likes of Jimmy Savile and the BBC’s laughing hyena Stuart Hall – is back on the streets of the UK at the age of 78.

Gadd who used his fame as Gary Glitter, a bargain-basement Elvis look-alike with pop-shlock pointless songs, was jailed in 2015 for sex offences on three schoolgirls.

The twisted glam rocker now only has hours to register with his local police station after leaving Portland, Dorset prison.

The sad thing is society needs to never forget about him – in the 80s he had glittery, tacky fame. Now he only has infamy and shame.

And I can find no real signs of a man who cares. Obviously, the powers that be found something about him which they felt they could allow them to throw away eight years of his incarceration.

But as this child molester dresses to the nines and hits the streets, now a Quentin Crisp look-alike, society should never forget his victims.

This is what one victim had to say after she heard the diminutive disgusting devil was being released.

It is her words that matter. We are protecting her anonymity.

“I can’t believe this is happening to me. I just can’t do this anymore.

‘He should never been let out of prison for what he did. He’s just done eight years but I’m doing a life sentence. I can never forget what this monster did to me and I’m still struggling to deal with it. I really believe that he is still a danger to society, who knows what he could go on to do?’

‘What he did to me has affected my whole family and it’s ruined my life. I feel as if I’ve been let down by the justice system and that I’ve been attacked by Glitter again.

‘This is not right. I’m sorry, it’s all just too much for me, I can’t handle what’s happened today, it’s brought back too many painful memories.’

The victim was aged 12 at the time of the attack and gave moving testimony during Glitter’s trial, describing how the musician plied her with champagne in his hotel room before raping her.

Gadd is thought to be worth up to  £6million despite the fact he is blacklisted on most UK radio stations. But he still gets airtime in caring-sharing America raking in up to £250,000 a year. 

How pervert Savile fixed it for Tabloid Terrors to get back to exposing the truth

#GADD #GLITTER #PERVERT #VICTIM #HALL #SAVILE

Tom Jones’s murder ballad Delilah has finally been banned at the Principality Stadium, the Welsh Rugby Union has revealed.

The lyrics ‘why why why Delilah’ from  the 80s hit have been sung at the games for decades – not in glorification of killing your wife!

No, in glorification of a knock-about classic sung by a ‘boyo from the hills’.

But from now, the song won’t be played during the Six Nations again.

This comes as Charlotte Wathan – former head of Wales women’s rugby – alleged that a male colleague joked in front of others in an office environment that he wanted to ‘rape’ her.

Yes, Wathan’s claim needs resolving quickly and nobody, male or female, should be confronted with such insensitive, brutal and old-fashioned insults… but does that mean that a piece of pop culture should be banned from a sporting environment where it has existed for more than half century?

Yes, the song tells of the murder of a woman after she was caught with another man. But it is a power/murder ballad in the old tradition.

It was written  in December 1967. The lyrics were written by Barry Mason, and the music by Les Reed, who also contributed the title and theme of the song. It earned Reed and Mason the 1968 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically.

Do you find it offensive?

And then should Johnny Cash’s Delia’s Gone now be banned? 0r Sonic Youth’s Death Valley? Or Springsteen’s Nebraska?

Should we also switch off films like Double Jeopardy or Sleeping with the Enemy?

Sexism and misogyny claims about the Welsh Rugby Union have been known by the Welsh government after they were raised in the Commons last year, an MP said.

Labour’s Tonia Antoniazzi said the ministers should be asked what action they took over the allegations.

Ms Antoniazzi, the Gower MP, said she also raised the concerns directly with the Labour Welsh government after her speech in Parliament last March.

#rugby #welshrugby #PrincipalityStadium #tomjones #delilah

British fashion guru Paul Smith is said to have failed to explain why his goods were still on sale in Russia.

At least three British top-notch companies were still doing business with Russia despite the horrific war in Ukraine.

Paul Smith and lingerie brand Agent Provocateur still have stores open in Moscow, while Rolls-Royce has new cars for sale in the country.

RR claims it does not know how they got there.

AP argued it only runs stores operated by a franchise partner.

Chairman of the Commons defence committee Tobias Ellwood MP claimed that by refusing to withdraw their products, the brands were failing to stand up to Russian aggression.

#rollsroyce #paulsmith #agentprov #russia #moscow #ukraine #war #business

Nadhim Zahawi has been removed from Government after he was found to have committed a ‘serious breach’ of ministerial rules. The now ex-Tory chairman has been mired in a row over his tax affairs after paying a penalty to HMRC. Rishi Sunak wrote to him: ‘Following the completion of the Independent Adviser’s investigation – the findings of which he has shared with us both – it is clear that there has been a serious breach of the Ministerial Code. As a result, I have informed you of my decision to remove you from your position in His Majesty’s Government.’

#rishi #sunak #Nadhim #Zahawi #uk #tax