Lagos, the city of mysteries. Ghosts of slaves in the marketplace – visions of a saint next to the golden church.
When I arrived, one of the mysteries to me was why its pronounced with a ssshhh … Lago-ssshhh.
Well, after a few days here, I can tell you: Somebody in a bar described Lagos as the Algarve’s land of lushness. And they were right. If you want to be a lush, I can’t think of a better place.
A bar at every corner of every ancient cobbled street.
You can start with a gentle Maderia at a harbour bar as soon as the first gull wafts across the face of the sun. Or, you could sip champagne on a million-pound yacht in the marina and watch this beautiful city wake up.
Old fishermen fix nets on the harbour – young girls in Porsches head for the office.
By lunch time you say involuntarily: “I love Lago-ssshhh.”
And I do love it and all its mysteries.
The harbour and the bay are beautiful. Yet it has an ancient shame, the first slave market in Europe. But it hasn‘t been turned into a museum. The streets have remained narrow and if a taxi stops at a bar or restaurant in these cobbled back streets, the city comes to a standstill.
And nobody seems to mind.
You see, in this part of the world men spend hours up to their waists in the rivers catching shellfish – or showing their backs to the sun as they tend their bees.
That’s story of this part of Portugal, the erosion of time, not the decimation of it.
You don’t have to go far, just to the village of Burgau with its rocky outcrop, or Sagres with its white stone fort and its cliffs or the little fishing village of Praia da Luz – or to Salema with its Roman ruins.
And in the evening, as the sun goes down there are a hundred places to eat. Try No Patio, for instance.
Well, there’s another mystery. It’s name, No Patio.
The Scandinavian owners Bjarne and Jitte introduced me to Levellers, port and brandy and cinnamon. The night cooled the patio. Lanterns flickered in the gentle breeze.
We got there about nine and by one Bjarne was juggling ashtrays and telling bad Scandinavian jokes. We had another Leveller on the house.
The sky was so clear I swear you could see clear through infinity and the city was so quiet all you could hear was the rush of the sea.
So we made that soft ssshhh-ooo shuffle all the way back to our hotel.

#lagos #portugal #travel #holidays #europe

The 54-year-old tennis star was declared bankrupt in 2017, owing creditors almost £50m, over an unpaid loan of more than £3m on his estate in Mallorca, Spain.

Now he has been found guilty of transferring hundreds of thousands from his business account and failing to declare a property in his hometown of Leimen in Germany.

Becker was also convicted of hiding an €825,000 (almost £700,000) bank loan and 75,000 shares in a tech firm.

Regular Society contributor Andrew Brel, an LA writer and musician, argues that Becker got caught in a judicial system designed to destroy lives…

ANDREW WRITES: The jailing of Boris Becker shows Britain’s judiciary remains irretrievably flawed. Nothing new there.

The standard of judges in the courts service remains appalling.

Making up a list of 100 most disgusting judgments that are not serving the spirit of fairness in law while abusing basic human rights would take anyone familiar with the British Court service mere moments.

Disgusting rights abusing judgments by entitled idiots remain the norm, not the exception. Protecting the establishments conservative interests at any cost.

The reason, in case you are unfamiliar with the British judiciary, is an inherently corrupt establishment process for grooming, recruiting, retaining and rewarding judges. “Laws made for and by the rich.”

No jury of peers to take a view here. Just judges drawn from a very specific social background. Entitled and empowered to manifest their specific prejudices without fear of consequences.

Judges who are commonly lawyers with provocatively challenged developmental qualities, recruited to a position providing them with enormous power to commit any manner of human rights abuse in the name of a law that is, well, rotten now as it was when this same judiciary ruled the slave trade was good for Britain-first, and carried on reinforcing that ruling for hundreds of years.

The judge who ruled on Julian Assange? Jailing someone so cruelly for so long for a web page?

The judge who ruled Johnny Depp is a wife beater from his experience as a British toff?

The judge who ruled the Chinese should be bombed for refusing to buy our profit generating opium?

And today’s great Judgment from another celebrated member of the Inner Temple, Deborah Taylor who ruled Boris Becker should spend two and a half years in jail from the same legal system that sent Sir Jimmy Savile to jail for how long?

British law, as unjust today as it was when the first Inner Temple judge ruled the slave trade was all good.

The process for appointing Judges, many of whom I have found to be nasty narcissists serving no higher purpose than their own vanity, must be changed or British law will remain the archaic relic of its historical reliance on an entitled goon past to do what they will in the name of British Justice.

If it was up to me, Deborah Taylor would face two and a half years in jail for this abuse of office. How exactly does jailing a Wimbledon Champion whose crime appears to be being born without a high IQ, benefit the British tax payer or appropriately measure against similar terms for other prison worthy offences.

Surely Johnson and friends offences warrant far longer in jail if measured by the same tariff metric.

If the judiciary represents the will of the people, as it should, then how many British people not from entrenched conservative grooming support this individuals judgment made through the lens of her British law entitlement that comes with qualified immunity, as representing the popular version of justice.

She jails him because she is offended by his inadequate remorse and humility?

“There can be no harmony in a lawless society” is widely agreed by British establishment.

Rotten law in the name of law is lawlessness.

The authors of disharmony in Britain’s relationship with human rights have a new star today.

#boris #becker #bankrupt #jail #savile #assange #courts #uk

Eric Lastick is a strange man. He looks lived in, like an old rooming house knocked out and loaded from the inside.

He’s spent his life inside this badly-built walk-on-stilts high-rise of rooms called things like Hope, Aspiration, Dream…

… and still, today, he stares from his rain-melting ancient windows into glistening streets and memories.

Eric Lastick was born in Zurich but never became a gnome… instead he went looking for a place to stay in Pennsylvania, a city built on handmade pretzels, whoopie pies and cheesesteaks

Personally, I’ve never been to Pennsylvania. And doubt I ever will, I have more of a New York state of mind, an Elvis poster across the grey-ness of the days, Minnesota moan and an Iron Range resolve.

But Eric is living in Pennsylvania in his rooming-house mind.

And he is writing in there all the time.

It’s as if there comes a knock at the door, the rent man and Eric’s jailer are standing in the rain. an old railway sign in their hand.

Eric drops a poem into a cup…

Here Eric Lastick writes three short pieces on Dylan, analysing the ways of life that made little Bob Zimmerman what he is today.

Thank you for sharing Eric.

A NOD & A WINK OVER TO MR. BOB DYLAN…by a rather natty and half-off his nut old folksier—who falls and trips—-square off his observatory; and oddly in his presumes—picks the exact

Righten tilt go wrong—the harmonica…southern Louisiana marching & bourbon strung guitar; yet in a flagrant style cool…and party night out, like a Zoot suit trombone Charlie…rye and bated a halfcocked and drunkard path, in natty fedora whims…whom falls and trips over a primitive place of the biblical reems of casting out the sinner…and the those of the stone throwers; as Dylan lays down the tracks of the stoned…Rock ‘n’ roll dashers old folk scene lovers. All in the ambush and its ambushers—go all wobbly and get high—and dance at will too the oncoming stones. Watching as they all come in! The smoke and bourbon air is as if a bouncing effect to the nature of a higher star. A higher calling…and just roll with it, say the offenders. The procurers as everyone must get stoned.

NATTY DAY, NUTTY SMILE sits the observer…and overseer wingspan sky. He squawks and squall too —6 there envied a larger-than-life traditional folk festival …grouped in hundreds… thousands more to come. Observer to the Dylan second set—straight out of intermission came ‘’an electric wave!’’ New discovers reach of festers knee deep in an electric shock trove, as old folky wet down and waterlog. Mud on your shoe. Holes in one’s souls! What one does know is out forefather styled Pete Seager sheath a pun an unplug. Harsh head rhythm’s …ringing 0f his own pained brain—like a fire on a broom stick! Nightmare winds of a sudden backdraft, oft the walls and barriers of the antithesis of all music collides in the aftershock of an entire folk movement—while seeing and abruptly hearing their very own breve folk hero turn and sway as the troubadour of this new-fangled, run straight off the ridge in a circus and carnival ride too rock ‘n ‘roll. Dylan’s whimsical organ player equipped with his dancing keys of flighty flaps … and a strange on the rise strolls of presumed electric mayhem. Yet somehow Dylan pulled it off. There really was a fine beauty too it!

‘’FOR THOSE WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE’’ Dylan of seems on that day as if the taking of the turns of ‘’a wrath folk grape’’ A faze of the tunnel winds. Twists of the weathervane—right too a sour’s end in one powerful and dazzling rock session of sorts! There can be know turning back of this ‘’lightening in the bottle ‘Just all the further responds of one’s desires for all the world too see…with a headfirst slide —-right into the times of the swinging 60’s…which melds ‘everyone must get stoned’’ A natty and half off his s nut observer of ‘’the rainy-day lady’’ take a ticket…have she tag #1235.

#bobdylan #livd

Wanna buy this Sputnik? It fell off the back of a spaceship…

As mad bad Putin threatens again to launch a speed-of-lightning nuclear attack on the world, just how do we survive?

Do we take off our internal doors and make a ‘wooden tent’ out of them in our lounge so that we can be with our families for a few weeks, as Maggie Thatcher told us to do in the early Eighties?

Protect and Survive it was called. Believe me, if the UK had been attacked her civil defence plan wouldn’t have protected us and we would not have survived.

Lying under your car for a couple of weeks ‘til the nuclear fall-out halves its life wouldn’t have worked and setting up home in a ditch was just plain daft!

So, the survivalists of this world with their garages full of plastic bottled water and baked beans are saying we should look at escaping to Mars again.

There’s not, of course, a scrap of evidence that it would work. There is however a lot of evidence of scrap up there! It’s like the Harold Steptoe Space Agency …

You can hear Harold’s dulcet tones; “You wanna buy this Sputnik, it fell off the back of a spaceship!”

Isn’t it funny – and so very human of us – that we can’t really afford to turn the red planet into stellar real estate – but we have already turned it in to a scrapyard!

Look at these beautiful evocative pictures of a planet that everybody on earth from the UK to Moscow have coveted. And what do we see?

The wreckage of our space dreams, that’s what!

At least 35,000 pieces of space junk are being tracked by the Department of Deference’s global Space Surveillance Network all the time. Much more debris — too small to be tracked, but large enough to threaten spaceflight – exists in the near-Earth space environment‘

The European Space Agency says Earth is surrounded by more than 3,000 abandoned satellites, 35,000 objects bigger than four inches, and millions of small fragments travelling fast enough to cause damage to spacecraft.

At least one telecoms satellite has been killed off in a crash, and experts fear a series of catastrophic failures as thousands more satellites are launched in the 2020s.

In another incident astronomers Cliff Johnson and Clarae Martinez-Vazquez were working on an international survey at an observatory in Chile when they became aware of something bright obstructing their view. Martinez-Vazquez said a train of 19 Starlink satellites owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company interrupted their research for six minutes.

So, we might as well dump some other technical detritus on Mars too!

The Ingenuity helicopter captured these images, including ones of the gear that helped land the Perseverance rover on Mars.

During its one-year anniversary flight on April 19, the little chopper took photos of the striped parachute used during Perseverance’s landing — often referred to as “7 minutes of terror” because it happens faster than radio signals can reach Earth from Mars — on February 18, 2021. It also spotted the cone-shaped backshell that helped protect the rover and Ingenuity on the trip from Earth to Mars and during its fiery, plunging descent to the Martian surface.

The engineers working on the Mars Sample Return program, an ambitious and multimission process to return Martian samples collected by Perseverance to Earth by the 2030s, asked if Ingenuity could gather these images during its 26th flight.

As an afterthought, we have already managed to dump 400,000 pounds of trash on the Moon.

After the Earth, Mars is the most habitable planet in our solar system due to it’s soil contains water, it isn’t too cold or too hot, there is enough sunlight for solar panels and gravity is 38pc of that on Earth.

So, it makes sense doesn’t it – litter infinity with all this high-tech trash and leave a little pile on the planets too.

Nice pics though!

#space #debris #sputnik #steptoe #mars #earth #nasa #agency #musk #branson #dump #pollution #putin #war #ukraine

Russia is mobilising marine mammals to protect a key Black Sea naval base, according to war experts.

Satellite images are said to show what military experts believe are two dolphin pens floating off the mouth of its key navy base in Sevastopol harbor off Crimea.

Military analyst H.I. Sutton first broke the news in the USNI military outlet after analyzing current and archival satellite imagery which he says show that the pens were put there in February to coincide with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia keeps some of its most important military hardware at the base and the dolphins are likely trained for operations that would counter enemy divers or retrieve explosives to protect the port.

Russia first used militarized dolphins and whales during the Cold War. In 2019, a giant Beluga whale wearing a curious Russian harness with a camera attached was spotted off the coast of Norway.

The Naval Information Warfare Center says marine mammals can be trained to do everything from attach recovery cords to lost equipment to attacking and even apprehending divers or swimmers who breach security areas. They can also identify and mark locations for underwater mines.

The dolphins at the mouth of the Crimea port are probably used to deter underwater sabotage attempts. Russia kept its dolphin training base in Crimea after its annexation in 2014. The Moscow Times said Russia was training the dolphins to plant explosives on ships.

The U.S. has used highly trained dolphins and sea lions for similar activities since the 1960s.

THE HUMAN STORIES BEHIND PUTIN’S INHUMAN WAR ON UKRAINE

#WHALES #EALIONS #DOLPHINS #UKRAINE #WAR #PUTIN

The Society welcomes the fact that Durham police are to re-examining Sir Keir Starmer‘s beer and pizza ‘party’ at a constituency stop-off while on the campaign trail at the height of Covid fears in the UK.

To the Labour leader, Boris’s own party-time, for which he was fined by the Met Police, has taken up more of his discussion time than looking in what to do about Putin and the Ukraine.

Yet the simple truth is, everything he regularly accuses Mr Johnson of, he did himself in front of a window during the ban on indoor socialising.

The allegations from this ‘little window on his world’ were swiftly dropped. But rules are rules and laws are laws and you’re not supposed to break them – so if Durham police were right to ignore Keir’s beer time, then the Met must be wrong to fine other politicians.

A misinterpretation of the law often becomes a miscarriage – and many people actually feel that what happened to Boris and his band of party people is scandalous and unacceptable. Why is there a 100pc difference in the way things are being treated?

Angela’s bashes … should her legs be such a big deal?

IT’S ALL PANTS AS BORIS LEFT BLUE AND ANGELA SEES RED OVER THIGH-IN-THE-SKY COMMONS BATTLE

Starmer supports simpering Tony as 600,000 say ‘belt him in the garter!’

#starmer #keir #labour #boris #johnson #tory #covid19 #covidparties #police #durham

@AngelaRayner has the moves to be #DeputyLeader leading from the front.

She’s been a true ally to the 🏳️‍🌈 community. #Angela4Deputy #AngelaForDeputy #AngelaRayner pic.twitter.com/iWs3MH0CX5

— Mark Lewis (@charliebach) January 7, 2020

Angela Rayner is quite rightly proud of her legs! What gal wouldn’t be?

But does the stories about the deputy Labour leader and her jokey flirtations with Boris really matter?

We at The Society say they do … and here’s why.

IT’S ALL PANTS AS BORIS LEFT BLUE AND ANGELA SEES RED OVER THIGH-IN-THE-SKY COMMONS BATTLE

Bonehead, the Oasis guitarist from North Manchester, has revealed he has been diagnosed with tonsil cancer.

The musician – real name Paul Arthurs – broke the news on social media, saying he will be “taking a break from playing” while having treatment.

“Just to let you all know I’m going to be taking a break from playing for a while,” he wrote.

“I’ve been diagnosed with tonsil cancer, but the good news is it’s treatable and I’ll be starting a course of treatment soon.”

The 56-year-old, who was born in Prestwich, said: “I’ll keep you posted how it’s going, I’m gutted I’m missing the gigs with Liam and the band. Have the best summer and enjoy the gigs if you’re going, I’ll see you soon xxx.”

He was scheduled to play with Liam Gallagher at a number of concerts this summer.

Gallagher tweeted his support for Bonehead: “Sending BIG love to the 1 n only Bonehead and his family wishing you a speedy recovery we’re all thinking of you rasta you’ll be back on stage before you can say r we doing Colombia LG x.”

Bonehead was a founding member of the Manchester band.

#bonehead #oasis #gallagher #liam #noel #manchester

THE NOs HAVE IT AS LABOUR WIFE’S LEGS SEND FREEDOM INTO A TALE-SPIN

A Tory MP says that Angela Rayner has admitted using her legs to bamboozle Boris at Prime Minister’s Questions.

But Mrs Rayner is apparently livid over the whole thing. Cross, like she is accused of doing with her legs.

However, we all have to accept it is a real news story when a leading opposition member of parliament ‘flirts’ in the upper echelons of power, in public view, with the leader of our country.

And if you are one of the new media gurus – maybe you work at McDonald’s or Nandos and did an ology in modern media, so you believe you are qualified to comment on twitter and tick tock – then look around…

The supposedly non-story about Labour’s deputy leader sex-bombing the PM with her squeaky silk calves and thighs, means somebody somewhere has to ask ‘what is going on here?’

Social media doesn’t ask questions like that – it simply sends out course messages, hatred and childish memes instead.

What Angela has lifted by her impromptu impersonations of Sharon Stone and Kenny Everett in Parliament is the lid on ALL office flirtations. But, in Angela’s case, it is fair to ask, why is she bothering in the first place?

She is in a strong relationship and Boris is a married dad!

So, what is going on?

Are they just having a laugh? Yes.

Are they throwing enticing shapes at the doors of infidelity? Probably not.

Is it a detriment to politics in this country? No, not at the moment.

Does the world need to know about it. Should it be talked about publicly, in a light-hearted manner but with a serious edge? YES! YES! YES!

Yes, it matters, of course it does – and here’s the clue, social media has spent far more time misspelling the situation, accusing Angela of acting like Sharon Stone, sending out childish memes, posts and insults than any of our National Press has written on it.

Angela herself has podcast on the subject and a scaredy-cat MP, who wants to remain anonymous despite his privilege to speak his mind out, thought it was important enough to do the dirty and report her.

But now the poundland press pundits are snarling and hurling invective at the real media saying it is sexist, it is tacky, it is misogynistic, it is offensive women …

Hang on! Hang on!

It wasn’t David Dillon, editor of the Mail on Sunday, who had been flapping his legs about, he just thought it was a good story … which could have deep ramifications.

And now he is not only in trouble for doing his job, he has been told to appear before the hanging judges and publicity vultures of The House and explain his decision.

But good old David has taken another decision, another good old fashioned one.

And that is to tell Parliament to go and stuff itself like the woke, bleating chick-chick-chick-chicken it is rapidly becoming under party-boy Boris’s opportunistic leadership.

Don’t shoot the messenger for God-sake! It would be like shooting your postman and allowing your sausage dog to drag him off down the garden to bury him – and then complain because he doesn’t bring you letters any more!

DO NOT SHOOT THE MESSENGER!

The Mail on Sunday too has revealed three MPs – including one woman – have corroborated the account of Mrs Rayner’s remarks.

And in a podcast in January, she herself raised claims that she had copied Sharon Stone to fluster the PM – and, while saying she was left mortified, she also joked about it in the most vulgar vernacular.

Yet for democracy to function effectively, journalists must be free to report what they are told by MPs about Westminster.

The Speaker has plumbed new depths. Why should newspapers fear having their wings clipped by Parliament, because some find a story unpalatable and others think they can make political capital out of it?

Oh, and of course, there are those who think they should stand up for freedom of speech by going on social media demanding that the Fourth Estate is muzzled so we can all say what we want as long nobody reports on it …

@AngelaRayner has the moves to be #DeputyLeader leading from the front.

She’s been a true ally to the 🏳️‍🌈 community. #Angela4Deputy #AngelaForDeputy #AngelaRayner pic.twitter.com/iWs3MH0CX5

— Mark Lewis (@charliebach) January 7, 2020

#ANGELARAYNER #BORISJOHNSON #SHARONSTONE #KENNYEVERETT #PARLIAMENT #WOKE

The truth about the war on the Ukraine is too hard to take. It’s not a fake war and it wasn’t wholly unexpected.

But it has been devasting and awful and inhuman. And with his impassiveness, his reptilian eyes and lips as thin as a snake’s Putin has secured his place in history along-side Hitler and Saddam.

Politics, rhetoric and propaganda do not defend-eth the monster … ‘it’s nothing personal,’ the monster says on his Syberia breath, “it’s just war…’

Here at The Society we have tried to look at what is really happening to people and their lives as Putin and his generals cross the Rubicon.

The stories below are harrowing and shocking. But each one has a basic theme … and that is that each of these victims has become an inspiration, in one way or the other, to the Ukrainian people, to the rest of Europe and the World.

Here at The Society we will keep publishing these stories until this bloody war is over and Putin, one way or the other, is cast from this world, the only memory of him being a mass killer.

PLEASE READ AND SHARE THESE STORIES:

https://leighgbankspreservationsociety.blog/2022/04/05/war-propaganda-all-is-phoney-help-us-tell-the-russians/

Looking back on the lady in the blood-red lake

Parsons knows – EU, the chickens of Kyiv

CHEMICAL VLAD?

UKRAINE MUM’S DEFIANCE AS SHE PLAYED PIANO IN HER BOMBED-OUT HOME

Kate tells of Ukraine horrors as Europe neighbours stare into the jaws of the bloodied bear of Russia

https://leighgbankspreservationsociety.blog/2022/03/22/blasters-of-war-never-ending-hope-as-bobs-mate-charlie-joins-ukraine-protest/

Saving the lost boys and girls of heroic Ukraine

Not-so-Priti in the UK as Boris and his gang don’t give a pluck about Ukraine’s refugees

HOW JOSEPH, THE WASHING MACHINE MENDER, BECAME A SYMBOL OF HOPE FOR THE UKRAINE

Keir the Stormer goes to war on Freedom-Day Boris as Vlad the Inhaler sniffs up the Ukraine

Wizz Air’s final-destination baggage. Is it a wheeze – or are they just taking the wazz out of Ukraine refugees?

Oh, what have we done to ourselves? Special offer on Boris and Biden – but Putin and Zelensky came free!

MEERSPLATS! Orlov and Sergei are kicked in the ads by Putin’s mad war