I am a journalist, writer and broadcaster ... lately I've been concentrating on music, I spent many years as a music critic and a travel writer ... I gave up my last editorship a while ago and started concentrating on my blog. I was also asked to join AirTV International as a co host of a new show called Postcard ...
It’s a restless hungry feeling that does everyone some good…
And the first stop along the way will be the town of Spokane with its fish trucks and mountain shadows.
It’s the first time in more than two decades that he’s performed in Spokane and he will be at First Interstate Center for the Arts on May 28. Spokane is near the Selkirk Mountains, and Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Canadian border.
Tickets are being sold at $59.50 to $129.50 from Friday at TicketsWest.com.
And ol’ Bob has pledged to stay on the road with this stint of the Never Ending Tour way in 2024.
Here’s a list of new dates and, hopefully, more will be added:
05-28 Spokane, Washington – First Interstate Center for the Arts 05-29 Kennewick, Washington – Toyota Center 05-31 Portland, Oregon – Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 06-01 Seattle, Washington – Paramount Theatre 06-02 Seattle, Washington – Paramount Theatre 06-05 Eugene, Oregon – Hult Performing Arts Center 06-07 Redding, California – Redding Civic Auditorium 06-09 Oakland, California – Fox Theater 06-10 Oakland, California – Fox Theater 06-11 Oakland, California – Fox Theater 06-14 Los Angeles, California – Pantages Theatre 06-15 Los Angeles, California – Pantages Theatre 06-16 Los Angeles, California – Pantages Theatre 06-18 San Diego, California – San Diego Civic Theatre
Bob did co-headline a show at the Greyhound Park in Post Falls with John Mellencamp in 2010. But his last appearance solely with his band was on Oct. 5, 2001, at the Spokane Arena.
Matt Meyer, director of entertainment for Spokane Arena and First Interstate Center for the Arts, gave an insight to booking Bon for a show.
He said: “I’ve been working on getting Bob Dylan to Spokane since early 2019. Later that year, I was the only meeting the booking agent and promoter took at a conference in Chicago and, honestly, Bob was targeted to play late in 2020.
“Here we are three and a half years later with arguably two of the top, if not the actual, best songwriters of all time performing in Spokane separated by one month.”
Matt is of course talking about the Singing Tortoise Paul McCartney who has been Beatle-ing about the music world reminding people of who he used to be.
(Ed’s Note:Leigh has no time for McCartney – particularly, so he says, he mulled over Kintyre and decided it was a song about his back garden by the sea!)
Matt said: “I did that knowing there was potential of Bob landing right after Paul and adding to the storyline of the best songwriter of all time coming to Spokane.
This religiously-based festival with its focus on chick-chick-chick-chick chickens, chocolate eggs, rubbish telly and bob-tailed bunnies has left my tongue as dry as a pair of the Baby Jesus’s discarded flip-flops.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and anybody else who is reading, I can no longer commune with those little ol’ wine drinkers them, those pouring themselves under the vestry door like yellow mercury, heading to the pews, pews where barmy mad-crews dibble-dabble in the spirit(s) of the day …
I’ve drank that much that I’ve spoilt it for myself.
As the late great Jim Morrison, who died of, amongst other things, alcoholic hiccoughs, once almost said: “Your barroom days are over baby, night is growing near …”
Well, actually Jim, some might say I’ve seen the light (ale) of day! Cheers!
But, I was a bit worried about the UK and its Easter economy as I was forced to keep my beer tokens in my smeg-musty trouser pocket.
I needn’t have been though because all the Beer Monsters of Great Britain got together for Easter, egged each other on and drank the pubs beer-less, so much so that an SOS went out across the country for more booze.
The first bank holiday without Covid restrictions since Christmas 2019 had breweries – large and small – trying to order extra deliveries.
And then there was the sunny-day-in-Blackpool weather.
More 85 million pints were drunk in pubs, the British Beer and Pub Association said. And 65 million pints were knocked back at home.
The BBPA said: “It’s the first holiday period since Covid and good news for beer sales across the UK
“Off-trade sales for home consumption are also increasing due to the nice weather.
“Pubs have not been able to trade properly over a long weekend since 2019. Brits are supporting their local pubs.”
I’ll drink a non-alcoholic lager to that!
It’s these special days alone when we all need help
We know when the special times come around the feelings are amplified.
This time Easter but can be anytime
Please reach out we are here to lend a hand
1. Contact denial.
2. Mental health.
3. Psychological injury
4. Frustration
5. Not fit for purpose
6. High risk of suicide
Contact denial.
Post separation when there is the estrangement bitterness jealously or the war on want.
Very often this is brought about by the failure to agree any contact.
Though most people co parent and get on with it there are those who simply can not.
This leads to children being used in parents disputes.
Andrew John Teague
Innocent forgotten children not one of them wishes to be used not one wants to choose a parent. This is the entrenchment brought about by parents and inevitably family courts.
Throughout groups and pages on social media we see the parents who speak of loss. Grieving hurting suffering prolonged agony and torture. For me it is seeing far beyond and understanding the children their loss pain suffering heartbreak and being forced.
Contact denial is without a doubt child abuse when there are no safeguarding issues. Healthy loving caring parents denied contact often including the grandparents and extended family.
#childrenfirsteverytime
Mental health
Hell yes of course how can any parent endure the barrage of abuse reigned against them. Ex partner they once loved and indeed some still do and the family secret courts who spend much of their time bullying and terrorising the all ready targetted parent. The easy most of the targeted parents font have lawyers.
Unlike many ex who use allegations to gain legal. Stress anxiety depression unable to function the easiest tasks become mammoth tasks eating disorders sleeping disorders low self esteem hell yes mental health.
Millions are spent to raise awareness on mental health and encourage people to speak out and seek help for their mental health. Oh except family courts who often drive parents into mental health then wait a minute use it against them oh indeed mental health. Not only that many are then expected to litigate in person. Having to learn as they go if they even can. Must point out here that also the children’s mental health is under constant attack with serious concerns on their future.
Psychological injury in the child
This is disgusting form of child abuse. More often than not brought on by a controlling parent. Can also be grandparents family members or indeed new partners. The term the non accidental pysical injury on the child is all ready being used in the courts. This should be extended to the non accidental psychological injury in the child. Child abuse the psychological injury in the child is horrific and has life long affects. Even as adults what happens to these children has a profound damaging aspect in the aligned families dynamics. Evevitably the high risk of serious mental health historic and the cycle continues. Children should be helped under the mental health and well-being save before its far far far to late.
Frustration
Often by professionals targetted parents Frustrations are mistaken for anger. When really would we or even could we blame any parent for feeling angry. Court cases go on for months into years with the strangest tales to tell. A good point woukd be put the so called professionals on anger management courses help them to avoid driving parents to feeling frustrated and angry prevention is always the best cure get them to learn instead of transfixing on the one side.
#childrensmentalhealth
Not fit for purpose
Family courts with the aid of fca(family court advisors) likes of cafcass. Cause more family break ups and child trauma than anything else. Certainly not fit for purpose when all avenues should be explored. Behind secret family courst this is often not the case not on your nelly. Instead there are those behind the family court who shield behind yhe children using the terms such as in the best interest or childs wishes and feelings. Remember many of the cases go on for months if not years. While the undue influence is the very controlling parent causing the child trauma. Often adultifying the children brainwashing causing the child to denigrate the other parent often forc8ng the child to be more like the parent and using them as their vessel to erradicate or control the targetted parent. Children often align with the controlling parent out of fear or control also as a means to cope the chikd may reject contact. Every opportunity every avenue explored not in family courts behind the secret doors.
High risk of suicide/suicide
Many parents have taken their life over the decades. There is no doubt in my belief having been through this twice. Damned straight it has a high impact on parents mental health. The potential to cause the suicide of parents and long-term potentially the children as they get older. Parents feel so depleted so empty so lost and feel the pain of their children. All they want is to get away from the agony torture heartbreak.
If we ask any healthy loving caring parent how the feel about being denied contact they will all say it is killing the.
Driven to suicide by a draconian system not fit for purpose.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has condemned the Boris’s shocking plan to send fleeing migrants thousands of miles to Rwanda in his Easter sermon.
He said the proposals – hammered through by Priti Patel – as the “opposite of the nature of God”.
In his sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, Justin Welby criticised the plans to ship those who have made terrifying trips in small boats across the Channel thousands of miles away to a country with a history of murder and horror.
The proposals have been slammed as “evil” and “cruel”, with the UN Refugee Agency claiming it’s a breach of international law.
The Home Office still defends the proposals.
But the archbishop said there are “serious ethical questions about sending asylum seekers overseas”.
“Let this be a time for Russian ceasefire, withdrawal and a commitment to talks. This is a time for resetting the ways of peace, not for what Bismarck called blood and iron. Let Christ prevail. Let the darkness of war be banished.
“And this season is also why there are such serious ethical questions about sending asylum seekers overseas.
“The details are for politics. The principle must stand the judgment of God, and it cannot. It cannot carry the weight of resurrection justice, of life conquering death. It cannot carry the weight of the resurrection that was first to the least valued, for it privileges the rich and strong.
“And it cannot carry the weight of our national responsibility as a country formed by Christian values, because sub-contracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God who himself took responsibility for our failures.”
Rwanda is generally a nice place to be nowadays. It’s warm but not too hot. And cool in the evenings because its thousand mountains are five thousand feet in the air.
The people are very nice and friendly and, if you migrate (or are exiled there) you need about £100 a week to live on in a country where cars cost about £1,500, diesel is about three quid a gallon, you can get a good solid house for about £10,000 and beer costs you about 75p a pint.
Unemployment is below 2pc too … so, come to Rwanda, get an average job, an average house, an average car, an average standard of living. And a cheap beer!
And there are guerrillas playing happily somewhere in the mist too.
Nice for our immigrants who may have just fled war and genocide, tyranny and death.
They look just like Brits going on holiday to Blackpool as they traipse across our telly screens … Tesco bags of memories and photographs in their mits, dressed in all the clothing they can wear to keep warm, gripping the hands of their young children who themselves grip fluffy toys…
But they’ve fled madmen, bullets and bombs over mountains and deserts, winterlands and vultures, they’ve done deals with criminals and killers to jump in a leaky boat to freeze in the dark in shipping channels where any second you could ride a wave in to the After Life.
In Blackpool you just phone up Mrs McManus, from |Belfast, at the Seaview Guest House next to the Prom and a Greek kebab shop, a Chinese chippy, an India take-away and an Italian restaurant.
Very cosmopolitan … hang on! They’re not immigrants too are they?
But wait! All you whinging illegal migrants – that very nice big bashful bunny Boris and his pretty assistant Patel have sorted it all out for you!
They’ve even come up with a Bog-Off offer for you – yeh Bog Off to Rwanda!
And they’ll even pay about £20,000 each for you to go there!
Do you know, for that money they could have got you a business class ticket (they didn’t) – far better than trying to find a new life on a wing and a prayer heh!
Whatchoo moaning at? You fled thousands of miles for your lives, headed for countries, like the UK, which are seen as sanctuaries, not kangaroo courts like Australia where people are left at the coast to drift into oblivion.
Yep! Arrive in the UK and get a free plane ticket to the land of a thousand mountains in a place time has almost forgotten.
One warning though, as you step off your 4,000 mile flight from the rainy climes of the UK, be careful not to slip on the blood at the doors of the airport, blood on the streets, blood in the house, the schools, the farms and the fields.
Yes, Rwanda is a landlocked country in central and eastern Africa, best-known in the UK for its 1994 ethnic genocide.
In 100 days of a brutal civil war, up to 800,000 Tutsi people were murdered, with many of them hacked to death in their homes by armed militias of the Hutu majority.
Up to half a million women were raped as violence gripped the country. Neighbours turning on neighbours.
But, don’t worry, everybody says it is far safer now than it used to be … in fact a new report only attacks Rwanda for ‘highly questionable’ human rights record.
US State Department produced its annual analysis of the country highlighting unlawful or arbitrary killings, forced disappearance, torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, arbitrary detention, of political prisoners or detainees, arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy.
The report said: ‘The government took some steps to prosecute or punish officials who committed abuses and acts of corruption, including within the security services, but impunity involving civilian officials and some members of the state security forces is a problem.’
In a separate report, Amnesty International says similar things: ‘Violations of the rights to a fair trial, freedom of expression and privacy continue, alongside enforced disappearances, allegations of torture and excessive use of force.’
Is that what that Big Bad Bouncy Easter Bunny and that ever-so Pritti Patel really want for our migrants, so many of them came to us hoping democracy and compassion would help them step out of hell?
Well, what a telling photograph this has turned out to be … a multi-layered commentary on the state of our beleaguered nation.
I love my car – but can I afford to run it?
This picture was taken last year, just after we arrived back in the UK from five years abroad. We drove in to a fuel crisis caused by HGV drivers and the like blocking delivery terminals.
It was also due a 10.65% increase in the price of oil from $71.29 to $78.88 throughout September, said the RAC.
Unleaded increased by 1.5p to 136.83p while diesel rose by 2.5p to 139.25p, making the price of petrol 22p a litre more expensive than a year ago (114.61p 30 September 2020) and diesel 21p dearer (118.10p).
And today I paid a few pence under a TENNER for a gallon of premium diesel – you know, that types that cleans your jets for you! YES! A TENNER!
We are back, just over six months down the line, we are back in a fuel crisis again.
This time caused by climate protests blocking major fuel depots, increased demand post-Covid lockdowns and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine…
***
My first thought, when the picture of this man standing in libe arrived on my desk, was ‘what a joke’ … a bloke who’s ‘forgotten’ his car but is still queuing for his few litres of diesel. What a fuel, I thought in my tabloid mind.
But I looked again and I saw a man lost on the dystopian highway we are all now negotiating. An ordinary man standing in line because that’s what those who drive this country today have told him to do.
He appears to have no defiance, no anger, no embarrassment. Just a need which, to fulfil, he allows himself to be subjugated.
And in a queue in Middle England he will almost certainly be allowing himself to be ridiculed, insulted, scoffed and sneered at.
And all because he is standing in line where the sneerers are sitting in their hot metal boxes with steamy windows and tiny jukebox radios slipping around the back seat.
Not one of them stands out in the crowd…
But he does.
He stands out in the crowd, just like people did in Eastern Europe’s bread queues did, how the mum who queued for food in the snow in the second world war did, how the Muslim man stood alone for a Covid vaccine in Bolton.
This man isn’t a fool, far from it. He is a symbol of how our freedom as been eroded in the past few years … a second Brexit vote to protect Britain’s democracy that ultimately blew us all in to the facelessness of mass control and the virus which wiped out freedom even behind the blue-painted doors of our homes.
I for one will be happy to stand in line with people like this man who, perhaps without knowing it, are making a silent protest against this world that has been dropped upon us all like a dark, dense terrifying cloud.
The world is coming to a full stop, like somebody has flicked the switch and red lights have shut down our motorways and major roads. To go back to our home in Europe will now cost us about £7-800 one way…
But that’s still easier than trying to do it in an electric car!
Putin is pulverising the Ukraine like a butcher with a piece of bloody meat, Boris gets a £100 fine over lying, lying, lying for his party piece.
Pinch-faced Macron accused in 2bn state scandal, Kim Jong-un bombs a golf resort.
And bumbling stumbling Biden gets sh*t on by a pigeon.
Oh, what a world we live in…
But our politicians have all done very well for themselves:
Putin has blasted his way to an estimated – £70bn
Boris. he may be posh but he’s ‘poor’ – £1.5m
Macron, is French toast as far as dosh is concerned – £800,000
Kim Jong-un, has a hair-raising £5bn
Joe Biden, a fluffy forget-me-not £9m
Zelensky, is apparently worth an amazing £500m
These are the people who run our lives. And, on the whole, we chose most of them and call it democracy.
We went out one cold dark night, scraped our inarticulate cross on a ballot form, stuck it in a wooden slit and the very next morning a big, bleary-eyed, bumptious, pot-bellied buffoon called Boris welcomed himself to our world with a big floppy-haired grin. And led us down so many quintessentially garden paths we ended up with hey fever?
“Hey? What’s he made up now?”
Well, he didn’t make it up that in everything but name alone, we are at war in a place we once called home. We are being threatened with nuclear bombs by a man who is allowing the murder, maiming, rape and vaporisation of civilians.
But Boris did try to paint a better picture of a Brexit future … and here we already are:
UK workers suffered the biggest fall in their real pay for nearly nine years as the cost of living crisis began to hit households.
The ONS said regular pay excluding bonuses tumbled 1.8 percent in the three months to February when taking soaring inflation into account – the biggest fall since August to October 2013.
Yep, inflation is now at the highest rate since March 1992.
And now we are just being told to get on with it all – oh yes, and we might as well live with Covid too!
Oh what a world we live in …
AND THEN, OF COURSE, THERE IS THE WAR
Gen Richard Dannatt, formerChief of the General Staff in the UK says the situation in Ukraine is looking like genocide.
There is no doubt reviled Putin has the chemical formula to bring the world, finally, to the brink. And he sneers at the dead already in the streets when he says he’s not afraid to use it.
This is a madness beyond the original decision of our leaders and our warmongers to make them in the first place.
Among the chemicals is one that burn through your flesh at 2700c. A chemical that was mixed and grown in a lab and sold to us as a protector of peace and people.
Oh, what a world we live in…
So, is ‘partygate’ a spin? A distraction from what actually matters in the world?
News from Ukraine has been so bad that we citizens of ‘peaceful and patrol’ Britain are said to be showing signs of ‘war fatigue’.
War dead or celebrity ‘naughty’. Well, in some was we chose celebrity ‘naughty’.
Sausage rolls, ‘chocolate mini bites’, a cake and a can of lager. But it’s the wrong obsession, so many say.
But I say no: Boris and so many of his people cocked a snook at us, told us not to party but had their own. The arrogance, ignorance and pomposity does us or them no service at all.
Brexit, covid, monetary crisis and a potential third world war, all of these have made us focus on our politicians and those of others in a way not done since the last world war.
And what do we see?
Boris’s ‘magical thinking’ if you are looking from the clod-hopping climes of the UK – two contradictory things at once. Often it comes down to saying one thing and doing the exact opposite.
And he was fired from his first job, at the Times, for making quotes up, he was fired from the Tory frontbench for making things up too.
And even Ukraine’s president himself, a diminutive actor, comedian and hero, who appears to have laughed his way to the bank to deposit his estimated half a billion, is accused of lying.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Volodymyr Zelensky lies when he announces that he is ready to discuss the neutral status of the country.
Kim Jung-un is accused of trying to deceive the world about the type of missile it fired recently… why lie about potential wipe-out. Nobody would be around to know afterwards Kim!
And then our favourite doddery ol’ Biden … he invents stuff in order to make a connection with his audience, but is it real?
He told a crowd of “having had a house burn down with my wife in it — she got out safely, God willing.” In fact, the Associated Press says, it was a minor kitchen fire.
Mr Biden still talks about meeting an Amtrak conductor in his seventh year as vice president, when the man had been retired 15 years and had died by the year of the claim.
Television has been the showcase for the re-telling of the Jimmy Savile story in recent days.
Savile was a pervert, a bully, cruel and slimy. Nobody liked him. But he was Teflon and no matter how much muck we journalists on the Sun, Sunday People, Daily Mail and Daily Star threw at him, it just wouldn’t stick.
I personally spent ten years on his trail. This is the story of that time and how the British establishment cover-ups cheated the public and put young children – and even dead people – in danger from this celebrity pervert:
WRITTEN AS LEVESON MORALISED:
In recent years we have seen many dark days indeed down in the UK’s gutter.
No matter how pointless the Leveson inquiry into the morals and actions of the British Press, its political fog has descended over journalism.
And, like the London smog used to, it seems set to be sticking. The reputation of newspaper journalists has never been so low.
And yet, despite the balding bespectacled lord of the rings for journalists to jump through fiddling so discordantly with the furtiveness of investigative journalism – I can see the Tabloid Terror back out there shifting listlessly under a murky street lamp outside the last pub in the ghost town that was once Fleet Street. Amazingly, he actually isn’t even tending a bloody nose.
The Pack is gathering again and thoughts are once more fixed on what The Pack does best – shining a light in the beds of the lords of the unzipped flies and the ladies who do lunchboxes. The politicians and the business gods. In fact, anyone who wants to sweep scandal under the carpet in the hallowed halls of infamy and celebrity.
And none of the potential targets of exposure realise that it was the spectre of a cigar-smoking dark knight of the realm which pulled the Tabloid Terror up by their belt and braces. The catch-phrase from the BBC’s Jim’ll Fix It was echoing around the UK again: “Now then, now then, now then…”
Yes, it was that old pervert, Sir Jimmy Savile, who really fixed it for the tabloids to survive the scrutiny of the very ones its slathering pack were put on this earth to hunt.
“…Now then, now then, now then…” Yes! It was the clarion cry of Savile, that friend to royalty, politicians, NHS bosses and charity chiefs, the pied-piper of pop’s shame, that despicable child molesting purveyor of mediocrity on the airwaves who got the press digging again, now in the backyards of our rich and elite football heroes.
Called Off the Story
Way back in 1989, I was commissioned by The Sun – Britain’s toughest newspaper – to expose Savile. The background was simple enough, a tip-off that the DJ was renting a council flat in a Manchester back-street tower block … well, we all knew that Jim could fix things but how did a multi-millionaire who swanned around in a Rolls Royce Corniche manage to fix himself up with a bit of tacky social housing on a litter-strewn council estate?
Savile, of course, was well-known on the rainy city’s night club scene and had homes dotted across town. His council tenancy just didn’t add up.
Then I started picking up tangible rumours of young girls traipsing through sodden nights to his door. It was yet more confirmation of everything journalists across the UK were hearing about him.
Out of the blue, my story was quashed. The diminutive Ken Tucker, Northern news editor at The Sun, offered no explanation and I was dispatched to track down a well-known comedian rumoured to be having an affair with a barmaid while his wife lay dying of cancer.
That story disappeared off the radar, too, as did the revelation that the 30-stone Liberal MP Cyril Smith was a dab-hand at spanking young boys.
A decade later, though, Savile, who raised £40 million for charity, was secretly banned from taking any part in the BBC’s flagship charity fund-raiser Children in Need by its chairman Sir Roger Jones. But nobody told the rest of the world.
Enter Lord Leveson
Even as the Leveson grinder ground on, Savile’s antics were known about, but the BBC covertly decided that its own Newsnight investigation into him would devastate its Christmas schedule. It included a ‘fun’ eulogy to Jimmy.
It finally became public in an ITV Exposure documentary on October 3, 2012. It sent Scotland Yard off following literally hundreds of lines of inquiry, hundreds of potential victims have come forward.
Yes, almost forty years down the line, the shame of Savile that the powers-that-be stopped me revealing is finally in the public domain.
And yes it’s us, the good old tabloids, the red-top press, still running with the stories about child sex abuse, like the Cheshire footballers scandal which is spreading across the country, or the latest lot of scout leaders jailed for kiddy-fiddling. Yes, the tabloids are still going despite facing being officially gagged by the very people it’s our job to investigate.
Those very people didn’t exactly put the top dog on getting its teeth into the tabloids though. No, the British government allowed Lord Leveson, a 62-year-old bespectacled lawyer whose greatest claim to fame was his failed prosecution of an elderly British comedy for tax evasion in 1989, to trample across the Fourth Estate.
Leveson scratched at and whimpered over the practices and ethics of the press. The News International phone hacking debacle had quite rightly scandalised society.
But society loved Savile. Look what it did for him: it gave him an OBE in 1971, a knighthood in 1988, a Papal knighthood in 1990, the keys to Broadmoor high security hospital, a flat at Stoke Mandeville hospital, a job as an auxiliary at Leeds hospital, the chieftainship of the famous Scottish Lochaber Games and the friendship of Prince Charles who had lunch at his Highlands home in Glencoe. And when he died on November 9, 2011, it was the Royal Marines who carried his coffin into Leeds Cathedral.
Swashbuckling, Warty Public Defenders
The simple question every Tabloid Terror is asking, but nobody is answering is this: why didn’t all these people in authority, including the honours scrutiny committee, the Papal intelligence service, Prince Charles’ security chiefs and the bosses at the BBC ask ‘now then, now then, now then – is this man really a child molester?’
And that, very simply, is why the Tabloid Terror – with its 30 million UK readers a day – is back and mutating, ready to be the swashbuckling warty and immoral defender of the public and its right to speak out and fight back.
Long let the world see red (tops) when those who claim to serve – but really rule from behind a veil of secrets and lies – accidentally step into the arena of the daily news schedules.
ClaimsUkraine civilians ‘stop breathing’ as chemical weapons dropped on them by drone
Gen Richard Dannatt, formerChief of the General Staff in the UK says the situation in Ukraine is looking like genocide.
There is no doubt reviled Putin has the chemical formula to bring the world, finally, to the brink. And he sneers at the dead already in the streets when he says he’s not afraid to use it.
This is a madness beyond the original decision of our leaders and our warmongers to make them in the first place.
Among the chemicals is one that burns through your flesh at 2700c. A chemical that was mixed and grown in a lab and sold to us as a protector of peace and people.
And numerous reports say that the diminutive dictator has already taken that step beyond and has launched a chemical attack on civilians in Mariupol.
Witnesses say that victims ‘stopped breathing’ in their tracks.
Officially, Mariupol’ Azov Battalion – a far-right all-volunteer infantry military unit forming part of military reserve of National Guard of Ukraine – said ‘Russian forces have dropped a “poisonous substance of unknown origin” from a drone on military and civilian targets in the besieged port city, Mariupol. People are reportedly suffering respiratory failure and neurological problems as a result. The Regiment’s report states: “The victims have respiratory failure, vestibulo-atactic syndrome. The consequences of using an unknown substance are being clarified.”
Gen Richard Dannatt said shortly before the attack said: “I think this is quite possible that at some point the Russians might decide to use chemical weapons. I think we also have to look at who’s now in command for the operation in the east of the Ukraine, General Alexander Dvornikov, who established a pretty fearsome reputation in Syria. And certainly in Syria there is clear evidence that he and Russian forces used chemical weapons, so I’m afraid it’s quite possible that we might see chemical weapons being used. Reports are unconfirmed at the present moment. Something like this is beyond the pale, but it’s not beyond possibility.
When asked about how the west should respond, Gannett said: “I think here that Nato has been quite sensible not to set firm hard red lines. Because once you set a red line, and say if this action takes place, that we will do this or the other, and if you do cross that red line, then you become a bit hollow if you don’t carry out that action. “We are accusing Russia quite properly of war crimes, the indiscriminate shelling of civilians, which they’ve been carrying out very widely that we know about. Pressure has got to be continued to be piled on Putin and his senior people, that there are some things that are totally unacceptable, and some things that fall somewhat more within the rules of war. But virtually everything the Russians have been doing is pretty much outside the conventions of war currently.”
James Heappey, the UK armed forces minister, said: “These are appalling weapons to think about. That they are parts of the discussion is sobering. Let’s be clear, if they are used at all, then President Putin should know that all possible options are on the table in terms of how the West might respond. “It’s important to recognise that there are all sorts of ways in which these things could be used, from the use of gas which is effectively a riot control measure, all the way through to devastating lethal chemical weapons systems. “So I don’t think it’s helpful to be too binary about the situation because these things are highly nuanced. “There are some things that are beyond the pale, and the use of chemical weapons will get a response, and all options are on the table of what that response could be.“
I am back in the UK after many years of travelling like a troubadour across Europe in my long black limousine.
Right now we live on top of a hill in a rented farmhouse in a place called Middleton Scriven. It’s on the borders of Shropshire and Worcestershire, two counties where sheep and rock stars choose to live cheek by jowl.
It is a woolly place out here, a thousand miles from home and in the middle of nowhere. The nearest pub is five miles away – and the diesel station at least 10.
But this is Merry ol’ England, home from home, fields and hedges, hay ricks and the smell of tractors. You’d walk for country miles to get back to a city where everybody is bothered about disease and global warming.
Yes, up here the green and septic land of our conscientious countrymen seems so far away. And long ago.
Funnily enough, if you stop a flubbery farmer here, his purple face may well light up at the mention of Bob Dylan’s name. “He’s that girly type who plinked and plonked on his guitar while moanin’ about war and shootin’ and huntin’ isn’t he? Arr, I was very sad when he fell of his motorbike and died.”
Of course Dylan’s not dead you silly sheep … err, err … shearer. It’s doubtful he ever fell of his bike either.
Anyway the point is that at least the country folk – after all that constitutes a lot of his music – remember him. Down in the valley where cities like Wolverhampton, Telford and Shrewsbury pollute the atmosphere with their factories, car parks, scrapyards, chimneys, woodburners, vapes and bad breath, its a different thing.
Bob Dylan in the cities here means: “Oh! That’s the company that makes that fabulous brandy in Martinique isn’t it dear.”
No!
Dylan is Dylan – possibly one of the most famous men in the world – the brandy is made by the Dillon dynasty. And there’s not one of them singing for their supper at 80.
Country music, country ways, they go together in this part of the UK, rock’n’roll, rock cakes and a cheese bap, rhythm and blues – what happens when you forget about the rhythm and end up with a splodge of child – gospel and spiritual – the truth about drinking – the Great American Song Book, Gatsby on a ukulele.
And there is something coming round the bend in a little town by the River Welland not too far from Spalding, on the metaphorical doorstep of Peterborough and near to the fantastic Fens.
It’s very nice in Market Deeping indeed. It has a couple of pubs, a couple of fish and chip shops and a BMX track where you can be sick when you’ve had over the odds of Hopshackle bitter.
And, at least at the Market Deeping Model Railway Club, there a lot of Bob Dylan fans around. Or should that be fens?
Club members had been unable to meet for two years. Then, as the government told us all that Covid was just something to be sniffed at, they had a day out to celebrate the opening soon of their new clubhouse premises in Essendine.
And they chose to go to the Castle Fine Art gallery in Stamford High Street to ‘meet’ Bob Dylan and his Train Tracks work and his Retrospectrum series.
Bob wasn’t there of course – like the rest of us he probably couldn’t afford the UK train fare.
Model railways club boss Peter Davies said: “The paintings are truly atmospheric and trace the history of both his life and recording career. It is definitely a ‘must’ to visit!”
Mark Henson of Stamford’s main Ford dealership TC Harrison, went with them too. He sponsors the club’s annual exhibition.
George Belham, an art consultant for Castle Fine Art, added: “We are delighted to be exhibiting Bob Dylan’s work in Stamford.
“He’s very famous for his musicianship as a lyricist and we are the lyricists of his artwork.”
The gallery has six limited edition prints from Retrospectrum, signed by Bob Dylan, which are available as a portfolio, framed or as individual picture. Prices start at £2,950.
Market Deeping Model Railway Club is no stranger to celebrity: Sir Rod Stewart was said to be donating £10,000 to them after their exhibition was destroyed by vandals.
For Market Deeping Model Railway Club and its exhibition visit www.mdmrc.org
