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 ...
Say what thou wilt … that’s the evil that caused the ‘wilting’ of your freedom to speak your mind out
Hate speech online will become a criminal offence under proposed legislation.
But there will be a high tolerance before any prosecution.
Irish Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has revealed the findings of a consultation on Hate Speech and Hate Crime.
And she is expected to launch legislation within the next three months and curtail at least some of the internet’s wild west of incitement and hatred.
The world should watch the progression of this Bill.
So many people, like me, who use freedom of speech to lampoon, irritate, ridicule and expose liars and cheats in power see it as an enshrinement of liberty.
Freedom of speech is there to protect people of all races, creed, religion and political persuasion.
The new Bill repeals the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 because it is no longer fit for purpose and needs bringing in to the cyber-led 21st century.
The proposed legislation aims to tackle online speech that is racist, abusive to religion, gender expression, gender itself, Travellers and disabled people.
It will be there to protect freedom of speech and social media outfits if they prove they took reasonable action to prevent the publishing of irrational and dangerous attacks.
And attacks by the right, the left and the middle-ground will all have to face the responsibility of what they say.
It is expected too to contain protection for freedom of expression, reasonable and genuine contributions to literary, artistic, political, scientific or academic discourse, and fair and accurate reporting.
This will be tempered by high thresholds for criminal incitement to hatred and it will not be necessary to show that anyone was actually influenced by the incitement or acted on it.
But will this kind of legislation take away the right to speak their minds out from the common man, the man on the street, the keyboard warriors, the angry and the dispossessed and hand it squarely back to those, like me, who have traditional and cyber platforms to make their points of view public?
I and so many others believe that everybody should have freedom of speech but, if you have that hard-won right, then you also have an implicit duty to behave responsibly and to respect other people’s rights too.
The rules surrounding freedom of speech exist to protect national security, territorial integrity, protect public safety, to prevent disorder or crime, to protect health and morals, protect the rights and reputations of people, prevent the disclosure of confidential information and allow authorities to restrict views that encourage race or religious hatred.
Freedom of speech has never been absolute, and never should it be. Libel, slander, obscenity, extreme pornography, sedition, incitement, copyright violation, trade secrets, non-disclosure agreements, perjury. All this things are damaging and offensive to society.
Jo Glanville, editor of the Index on Censorship, said that ‘the Internet has been a revolution for censorship as much as for free speech’.[
The Internet for so long has been unfiltered, vulgar and indecent. Why does the world have to face this every time it switches on its screens.
Surely this just gives us all disinformation, misinformation, insults and ultimately chaos?
Let’s repeat the tenets of the right to free speech …
1. don’t lie about people to do them harm
2. don’t say things which could damage people and countries
3. don’t defend evil
4. don’t incite violence and wars
5. don’t do what Assange did – a scatter-shot of state secrets
6. don’t incite racism
7. don’t publish damaging pornography
don’t encourage hatred
It just seems right, doesn’t it?
Squalid end to Tycoon of Teen Spector… the man who thought he could improve Dylan
Phil Spector was known as the first Tycoon of Teen. And yet he thought he could ‘improve’ Bob Dylan.
It’s hard to say that it is sad that Spector has died aged 81 in squalor and prison, rumoured to have been dispatched into the after-life by Covid.
After all, he was a murderer and a gun-toting madman.
But on the other hand he revolutionised pop music and created an amphetamine rush that had generations dancing like dervishes for more than half a century.
It is fair to say however that it is sad that Phil Spector died trapped in the Walls of Prison when his Wall of Sound set so many of us free.
He was born in the Bronx and began his career in 1958 with the Teddy Bears, singing their US number-one single “To Know Him Is to Love Him”.
Spector became a music producer known for creating The Wall Of Sound used by 60s bands like The Ronettes and The Crystals.
But in 2009 he was sent to prison for the 2003 murder of Lana Clarkson, sentenced to 19 years.
He caught coronavirus in prison four weeks ago and died after being transferred to hospital.
Before the murder Spector had lived an exclusive and eccentric life in his electrified 10-bedroom mansion in Alhambra, LA. It had electric fences covering the windows and front door. Inside it was festooned with framed pictures and clippings all about Phil. There were pinball machines and jukeboxes with his hits firmly on the playlist.
His hero was John Hammond who, while with Columbia Records, brought Bob Dylan to the label.
But Dylan had created his own wall of sound on his incredible Like a Rolling Stone.
And mad Spector didn’t appear to like it when he heard the howling vitriolic poetic dramatic attack on the middle-class senses of America and then the UK.
Records, his attitude was described this way: “Phil doesn’t hear fresh and new and revolutionary in “Like A Rolling Stone”. He hears stolen chord changes, handing Ritchie Valens the credit to a timelessly reworked rock & roll rhythm; that’s how it feels to Phil, that’s how it feels.
“The production’s all wrong in Phil’s eyes, too dependent on the genius of the artist, but the canvas ain’t right. The recording’s never been right.
“He dreams of taking the reins and ringing the thing for all its worth. He dreams of making something like opera with a folk-rock fat lady… He dreams of improving Dylan.”
Hmmm.
Finally, when Leonard Cohen collaborated with Spector on Death of a Ladies Man – which featured Bob on backing vocals on one track with Allen Ginsberg – Spector pointed a loaded pistol at Cohen’s throat, cocked it, and said, “I love you, Leonard.” Cohen responded, “I hope you love me, Phil.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WovFPbLrnro
#spector #covid #dylan #cohen #prison
How Slovakia has become street-wise in Covid-19 battle
As US President-elect Joe Biden outlined his $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan Slovakia has decided on a street-wise way of administering vaccines outdoors in cities and towns.
Slovakia’s parliament has decided that ‘jabs’ will be given outside doctor’s surgeries, despite freezing temperatures, to speed up the inoculation process.
In the US the pandemic death toll could pass 400,000 before Biden is sworn in on Wednesday, according to a CDC ensemble projection.
But in SlovakiaCOVID-19 infections are decreasing with 2,502 new infections reported on average each day. That’s 77% of the peak — the highest daily average reported on January 6.
There have been 222,752 infections and 3,417 coronavirus-related deaths reported in the country since the pandemic began.
And in another move showing the determination of Slovak leaders have negotiated a deal that, if hospitals fill up beyond capacity patients can be hospitalise in neighbouring countries. Their health care will be covered, with health insurers told to issue patients with documents free-of-charge.
There is also a clampdown on perceived corruption. People who attempt to give shots to people not on the authorised list will face a fine of €10,000.
The latest moves received support from 79 out of 89 present lawmakers.
Third and fourth-grade medical students are to give COVID-19 tests without supervision.
Following reports of the new coronavirus mutation in Slovakia, a local company has presented a dedicated PCR test to help combat the spread.
The test’s developer, MultiplexDX International, reported that trials have ended last week.
Meanwhile The UK has banned arrivals from multiple Latin American countries and Portugal following reports of a new coronavirus variant in Brazil.
Derek Buckham is a British singer and songwriter with a career stretching back almost half a century …
In the early ‘80s he put together a band called Tokyo Rose with Val Ophfield, Graham Bradley and Geoff Pybus.
Their first big gig was Annabels in Sunderland, still Derek’s home town and pretty quickly Tokyo Rose recorded a single called Dry Your Eyes which became a collectors item in Japan!
Vinyl dealers were selling it for £100.
And that prompted Derek to dig out the music and videos and put them on social media which rapidly lead to a series of lock-down songs.
One of them, Angels in Blue, dedicated to the NHS bears his strident vocals as he reaches ‘middle age’ … Derek said: “This is my tribute to the bravery of our NHS. Any money from the sale of it will go to the NHS charities.”
Well done mate! Let’s see if we can help Derek to help the NHS!
ANGELS IN BLUE
I’ve never known this in my lifetime
Doctors and Nurses dying on the front line
They are on their knees
They begging us please
Stay at Home to Beat this Disease.
So when this is all over
clap clap clap
the Bravery of our Medical Staff
and when this is all over
say thank you
to the bravery of Our Angels in Blue
The streets are empty
The shops are full with idiots
stocking up on toilet rolls
The Pubs and Clubs are on Lock Down
And fear is spreading around our Town.
Angels in Blue
Angels in Blue Angels in Blue
looking after you.
When this is all over
say thank you Say Thank You
to our Angels in Blue
When this is All over
clap clap
the Bravery of our Medical Staff
The Bravery of our Medical Staff
#nhs #tokyorose #covid19 #hospitals
Did Donald finally ‘kill’ the great white American Trump defenders? Questions and answers…
Donald Trump is a conservative rich white American.
And nothing wrong with that … just as there is nothing wrong with being a black and poor American.
Forbes estimated Trump’s net worth at $3.1 billion in March 2019.
And all we can say is – well done Donald; you are successful and you have the trappings to prove it. You have become all of the things white Americans – and black Americans too – aspire to be.
But there is a disparity here which many rich conservative Americans try to ignore … and those are shocking racial disparities.
The net worth of a typical white family, at $171,000, is almost ten times larger than that of a black family. Those figures come from 2016 and I’m sure they haven’t improved incredibly.
Gaps in wealth between black and white households are a product of differences in power and opportunity. And this goes back to the beginnings of American history.
Yet, racism towards black people in America has little to do with immigration or nationality.
It is made up of domestic alienation, dehumanisation and criminalisation.
These are the sophisticated narcissistic psychological weapons of hatred and control.
And it doesn’t stop with black people, Mexicans are targeted for being who they are.
This statement by Donald Trump right at the beginning of his election campaign just a few years ago is shocking: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.
“They’re sending people that have a lot of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
And when he said this, millions in America metaphorically applauded him, seeing him as a tough guy – after all he”d used the ‘rape’ word.
And nobody really understood what was going on in this statement, particularly when he mitigated it all by implying Mexicans only raped their own, in the moonlight, in the desert, in the shadow of his great wall.
Well, that’s alright then Donald.
Certainly Trump gives the impression of loving his great country but like many Americans he is a bit of an isolationist.
He is also a reality TV presenter with a beautiful wife and an acerbic and cutting wit. He is ambitious, energetic and determined … and these qualities – along with his mountains of money – took him to the heady climes of world politics.
Yet, he had no real experience to take over the helm of the world’s most powerful ‘ship’. But sometimes he steered it with aplomb. Other times though he steered it with abandon. Most of the times he steered it in the shallows of rhetoric and misinformation.
The siege at the US Capitol on January 6 has to be his great downfall in the eyes of worshipping Americans.
The US has a history of mob violence stoked by white politicians seeking support from rich white conservative Americans.
But what was a shock for them this time, was the fact that it was a white mob turning on white politicians, rather than people of colour.
And some of these white Americans died.
The traditional targets are undeniably African-Americans. Look at history – black people trying to vote, fighting to use buses, fighting for housing and schools. Fighting to stay alive as the poplar trees dripped with blood.
And what about native Americans trying to protect their hunting grounds.
So did Trump see this all this as he addressed the gathering mob who believed they had turned up to save America? “Let the weak get out. This is a time for strength,” he shouted.
And there can be no doubt that America’s culture of white mob violence goes hand in hand with its gun culture. There are hundreds of millions of privately owned firearms in the US and the bulk of them belong to white people. Some of them took their guns to what so many are trying to portray as a peaceful march on Capitol Hill.
So peaceful that five people died – one shot through the neck – and 120 have been arrested.
The Republican Party has backed Trump and his politics right up until the happenings on the afternoon of January 6,
And now people are starting to realise that he may have besmirched all that is normal in American democracy.
He has turned white against white.
Below we have compiled 11 questions about the man who, despite everything, will always be able to call himself President Donald Trump and we have given links to fact-check sites and some others to try and answer them fairly.
But the answers are actually more or less random, to avoid accusations of supporting our own argument. We used, generally, the first answers we came to. We only rejected those that appeared to be unedifying or illegal.
Neil Young says that those who stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC, had been ‘manipulated’.
In a message posted to his website, he says:I feel empathy for the people who have been so manipulated and had their beliefs used as political weapons. I may be among them. I wish internet news was two-sided. Both sides represented on the same programs. Social media, at the hands of powerful people – influencers, amplifying lies and untruths, is crippling our belief system, turning us against one another. We are not enemies. We must find a way home.
The veteran rock star criticised the outgoing president, saying he “has betrayed the people, exaggerated and amplified the truth to foment hatred”, but said his feelings are now “beyond” Trump.
“Resentment of the Democratic party among the insurrectionists at the Capitol was rampant. We don’t need this hate,” he wrote. “We need discussion and solutions. Respect for one another’s beliefs. Not hatred … With social media, issues are turned to psychological weapons and used to gather hatred in support of one side or the other. This is what Donald J Trump has as his legacy.”
He also criticised the “double standard” that saw heavy crackdowns against Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington in 2020, and relatively light policing of last week’s Capitol breach.
The one and only time I met Scott Walker – who would have celebrated his 77th birthday recently – was after one of his solo performances in Manchester. We were both very drunk indeed.
But that was the fashionable way to be after midnight all those years ago in the early 1970s.
I was working on the Stockport Advertiser and for some reason Scott had agreed to meet me after his show for a chat.
Big deal for me – believe me!
So, I got to Fagins on Oxford Street unfashionably early and alone. I found myself a table next to the dance floor, lit a cigarette and began downing pints of warm fizzy lager. I felt cool, tall, well-dressed, hair cascading below my ears and making notes in my spiral reporter’s pad.
I was around 20 and people could tell I was a journalist, on my first steps to my journey to being a writer.
Fagins, like all the underground nightclubs across the UK was brash and noisy, deadly smokey. And the beer was rubbish. But it was a step up from the beer kellar.
And Scott Walker was performing there tonight … and I was his guest of honour (in a way, in my mind).
The club went silent, there was the odd obligatory scream of course and a lot of coughing in the fug of fag smoke. The smoke had a spooky affect as it played in the stage light that focussed on Scott’s lonesome barstool and mic stand on the tiny stage.
He barely looked at the audience as he crossed the stage, took his seat and launched into a sonorous, sombre, deeply moving solo version of Johanna (I seem to remember).
I have to say Scott was beautiful. Skinny enough to snap, handsome enough to break anybody’s heart and as romantic as a first kiss.
His career was on the wane already and he’d only been going as a chart topper in the UK for less than a decade.
But he will always be remembered as the voice on some of the most dramatic singles of the era like Make It Easy on Yourself (1965) and The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore performed with the so-called Walker Brothers.
By the time we had a few drinks at the bar after his show, the Walkers Bros were falling stars and Scott said he missed them.
He was drinking heavily, something he had always done. I remember him shouting to me above the hullabaloo and waving in-between signing breasts and bras, beer mats and menus for his fans. In fact I think I signed a few lightly sweaty thighs on his behalf.
We ordered a few beers and chasers and Scott asked for them to be taken to a backstage room where we could talk.
The club was still throbbing in the distance but we chatted in what was little more than a cupboard about his new songs, like the mysterious Montague Terrace in Blue and Big Louis. He was charming and witty but given to long silences that I tried clumsily to fill.
He told me too that he didn’t like live performances, they took too much out of him and, like now, he was physically and emotionally drained.
I never saw him again. And rarely did his fans. He made some comebacks and some very good albums, a television advert and a couple of promotional documentaries. But true his words to me… he proved he wanted to be alone.
To be Mr Invisible.
He went on to be a successful record producer and made the odd – some say very odd – album. And lived a quite life in the UK and Europe.
He died last year aged 76.
I am glad he granted me some time in his company and was so warm and charming.
Lou Reed said with his usual acid-faced aplomb: ‘If I hadn’t heard rock and roll on the radio, I would have had no idea there was life on this planet.’
And he was right. Is right.
Almost all of us, even in this digital age, hear music for the first time on a car radio or on the air floating from the kitchen. And it became the background wall of noise to our lives as we blundered in to sex, in to love, in to drugs, in to alcohol, in to heartbreak, in to life itself.
Lou died unbelievably almost a decade ago, in 2013.
But 2020, the year of the Covid catastrophe, has continued the cull of those greats who kept on keeping on.
The Covid year has taken some of the greats, John Prine, Bucky Baxter, Peter Green.
Scroll down the landing page to read short separate tributes to these fallen stars and listen to some of their music…
I will always remember the five minutes I spent with the funny and mournful John Prine who has died due to complications from coronavirus. (see video inside).
He was 73 years old.
Prine had been in hospital in Nashville since last week with coronavirus symptoms, with his wife and manager, Fiona Whelan Prine, posting updates about his condition online.
I met him briefly… he was touring the UK with Nanci Griffiths. It was many years ago now and I had just witnessed them performing a beautiful version of Speed of the Sound of Loneliness.
When we met after the show, Nanci was smiley and reserved and Prine was husky and funny, sharing tales of his rumbustious life on the road and while making records… he told about spending days making an album, then forgetting all about it.
“We were all so high,” he said.
But Prine was revered by his peers including Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.
He also said that his success was down to luck. “And when the luck and timing comes along, you’ve got to have the goods.”
It was a good meeting which lasted barely five minutes. But I will always remember him.
Following news of his tragic death, many musical icons and fans alike have taken to social media to voice their sadness and share their condolences with his loved ones.
