Author: Leigh Banks

Gerry and the Pacemakers singer Gerry Marsden died at the age of 78, two years younger than Bob will be soon. Gerry’s band was one of the biggest successes of the Merseybeat era, and in1963 their first three songs hit the top of the charts. The band’s second best known hit, Ferry Cross The Mersey,… Continue reading How Dylan has set the pace for remembering his contemporaries like the Liverpool ‘ferryman’

Where life matters… in the hearts of police officer and a young girl Joe Biden told the USA that the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial sends the message that nobody is above the law. He called the killing of George Floyd a stain on the nation’s soul. Biden was speaking after the jury… Continue reading GEORGE FLOYD, the man who could finally change racist America

Jim Steinman, a self-confessed creature of the night, has died. He was 73. Jim wrote for Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler and Celine Dion. No cause of death has been given. His songs sold more than 190 million copies worldwide. He was nominated for four Grammys over the course of his career as well. His best-known… Continue reading A rock’n’roll dream comes to an end… Jim Steinman is dead, aged 73

How things that came around come around again in our Covid world… this story was written almost a year ago to the day in 2020. Our world had begun a slow creaking revolution in the universe and we thought we were making our first clod-hopping, aching steps back to normality. How wrong we all were,… Continue reading How the corona-virus darkness has started to lift on our little mountain city in central Europe

European writer and photographer Mary Fagioli investigates the story of a Bologna student who is facing 25 years over his views on Facebook More than a year has passed since the detention of the Egyptian student from the University of Bologna, but it appears nothing is happening to free him. There appears to be no… Continue reading How activism on social media lead to the torture of ‘forgotten’ Patrick in a Cairo jail

Lock-down blues … We’ve been having a long chat on Zoom – and on this site – with friends and fellow Dylan fans. Some of us were drinking beer, others whisky and rum … and one couple were drinking coffee. They are coffee aficionados and good on them. They are a quite animated pair, smiley… Continue reading Did Uncle Tom fit the bill with one more cup of coffee – or should he be scarlet-faced in town?

Britain is getting better. And Covid is a burst balloon against our summery blue skies! And that seems to be official, if you believe officialdom… … and many people don’t. Indeed, it has always been my job to doubt and investigate anything put out by governments, councils, officials and those whose decisions make a difference… Continue reading Well, UK is ‘getting better’ – but were Covid figures just a load of hot air or a stinking lie?

You could say Bob is back on everything – including a roll! Yep, at almost 80 Bob is still rolling out a new catalogue of hits. After the shock release on the internet of Murder Most Foul, the enigmatic rock hero of two centuries then dropped I Contain Multitudes on a world in lock-down. And… Continue reading Bob still contains a multitude of hits as 80 beckons

It’s the way of the Brits! Beer we go, beer we go, beer we go! The UK kicked off ‘the Glorious Twelfth’ with drinkers rushing to sub-zero pub gardens at midnight for a pint.  Good on ya lads and lasses! Temperatures dropped to -3C overnight and there was heavy snow in some areas but that… Continue reading Alrite my sun! How UK brightened after midnight cry of freeze-dom– ‘waiter there’s water in my pint!’

Picture this … it’s 1984 and you are inside the towering plastic walls of your laptop. All you can see are the walls and the billowing cyber clouds above them. Yes, we have taken an ‘Orwellian’ lemming’s leap down into the electronic desert deep inside The Machine. Big Tech has harvested and monetised us all…… Continue reading Is there a pandemic – or are we all living in cyber cloud f**k-you land?