When Bob Dylan’s second album hit the shops in 1963 there was a howl of protest from the Secret Police in Czechoslovakia.
Dylan’s Freewheelin’ album was seen as a call for freedom across the world and became one of the anthems adopted by Hippies who were bringing revolution to the streets and music to cafes like Gerdes Folk City.
In fact its most famous song was just an opaque piece of poetry which posed question after question but left everything Blowing in the Wind when it came to answers…
However, it was seen as enigmatic and powerful enough to be latched onto by the Civil Rights Movement and immediately placed Dylan firmly at the top of the list of folk luminaries like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seger and Utah Philips.
In a simple twist of fate though, somebody in Czechoslovakia’s State Office of Censorship gave the go-ahead for the album’s release in what, at the time, was one of the most oppressed countries in the world.
They had obviously missed the point of the nuclear war protest of Hard Rain, the attack on governments and war mongers in Masters of War and the strange Talkin’ World War Three Blues – and, an anathema to any communist state, a song called I Shall be Free.
Supraphon, one of the three major state-owned labels, jumped the gun so-to-speak and rushed the album out. Supraphon had come into being in 1932 and was better known for its offerings of Czech classical music.
Jan Sestak, later to be known as shadowy Railway DJ, says in his fascinating book The Royal Ruler and the Railway DJ, co-authored with top British disc jockey Tony Prince: “It was spell-binding when we heard of the release, I couldn’t believe it, the world’s most dissident and political song-writer had his album released in our oppressed country. Songs about America, the Empire of Evil were in our record shops…”
But the joy didn’t last long as the hard reign of communism caught on to the mistake and the whole of the management at Supraphon’s head quarters disappeared.
Still, Jan, who for many years had been listening to Western music under his pillow in his bedroom, with the Secret Police prowling the streets near his home, by now had his copy. Jan, who is now in his 70s, but still lives in Brnu, near Prague, translated Dylan’s convoluted lyrics and distributed them to fans of Western music and local bands who played the songs in dark and dingy clubs across the city.
Jan ultimately became friends with Tony Prince, the “Royal Ruler” of pirate radio who he’d listened to for years on a small transistor radio in his room and had become a big fan. They finally met when Tony, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, became the first Western disc jockey to penetrate the Iron Curtain.
Ultimately Jan began DJ-ing and because he had worked for a while of the state’s train network he became known as the Railway DJ.
Seventeen minutes to kill … an amazing visual telling of Bob’s Murder Most Foul
We publish this video looking at Bob Dylan’s strangely enigmatic and poetic history of America, basically because the vid is quite brilliant, a perfect companion to a brilliant song!
It was edited and directed by Bob Mori, award-winning film creator.
Both Dylan’s song and Mori’s film have been attacked – the film for featuring former US President Obama – and Dylan for the odd clunky lyric … but that’s all part of the art of creation.
Mori has edited feature films commercials, promos and experimental media projects.
His latest project was for Lionsgate and is a heist-thriller ’10 Minutes Gone…’
Well, all we at the preservationsociety is … this song and its companion video are 17 minutes gone … but well spent.
Five years and five Christmas Days … I am always campaigning to raise awareness on contact denial and the secrecy of family courts.
And over the years I have trudged city to city on Christmas Days delivering reports and DVDs…I have walked and climbed mountains and i have stood defiantly outside the family courts.
This year though I will visit seven family courts.
Yet, I know that if we could put just one person outside each family court it would have a massive impact throughout social media. And, maybe, traditional media.
The new campaign is called ‘Kids Free Christmas – Not by Choice’.
We are aware of course social gathering under pandemic rules and we are not expecting anyone to break the rules.
But if we can get to as many courts as possible this Christmas Day it will certainly show the world.
A sheet, a piece of cardboard – anything you can write the words on. That’s all you need!
‘Kids Free Christmas – Not by Choice’ and a selfie sent to us at DAD’s so we can make the 2020 Kids Free Christmas – Not by Choice in to a short movie.
Awareness is the key and education is desperately needed help us show the way ahead.
If you can get to the family court in your area please join us. Stand up for your children stand up for everyone’s children. Turn against being used as the weapons behind secret family court doors is child abuse.
We are aware the world is in crisis – but equally we are aware the family courts are in crisis too.
The pandemic has forced changes and actually forced changes behind secret family court doors. Some hearings have changed dramatically.
Sadly, the system hasn’t.
The aligned parents force the targeted parents to seek the help of the family courts to sustain a relationship with their children.
The ex is dragged through the family court wringer. Targeted parents are forced to enter family courts.
And they are ‘dirtied’ (made to look all bad)
They are rinsed (money, fees etc)
They are squeezed (mentally and emotionally)
The abusive family court system should come with a public health warning.
There is a definite risk of serious mental health – and even of death.
My Christmas Day journey will start at Reading family court, followed by Chippenham , Gloucester, Newport, Cardiff, Port Talbot and finally Swansea,
The heart of Hope family tree
The family fight the cross we bear
Will both be there with me.
There is no designated time allowing parents to make in their own time.
Let’s do this!
Let’s show the world for all children for all parents grandparents and family members
The non-accidental psychological injury of children destroys them, destroys family destroys heritage and the huge void left in these children lasts a lifetime/ The mental abuse these children go through lasts a lifetime.
This Christmas Day when the judges and the agency workers, your exes and their families, are sitting down enjoying family time with their mince pies and cream, join us at the court in your area, anytime, however long.
All we ask is a selfie. This child abuse has to stop to save the children from a lifetime of Sadness sorrow pain and mental health.
These are trying times so please remember to stay safe.
Post selfie or court photo with plaque or banner on dads
Lets do this
#heartofhopefamilytree
#thefamilyfightthecrosswebear
#shirtoffourbackday
#childrenfirsteverytime
May I say a big thank you to Leigh G Banks and Andrea Martin the following our campaign and reporting on progress.
Big thank you also from everyone out there going through contact denial. Merry Christmas Leigh and Andrea from all at DADS and NAAP.
Inexorably bad, contrived, cynical, amateurish – apart from some of the riffs, but there’s nothing new there either. A shamefully conspiracy theory blues bash at a time most of the world is going into a Yuletide lock-down.
Just old, cold and useless.
And is that what two of our greatest rock ‘n’ rollers have become too?
Well, Van the Very Awkward Man wrote the lyrics to what is being described as the world’s first anti Covid lock-down protest song … and it is so easy it made me feel green (vomitously green).
For a long time Van has been decrying social distancing at live concerts as “Pseudo-Science” – but seriously Van:
“ I don’t wanna be a pauper And I don’t wanna be a prince I don’t wanna be a pauper And I don’t wanna be a prince I just wanna do my job Playing the blues for friends”
What’s that got to do with Covid!
And now – he becomes the conspiracy theorist, sounding bit like Adam Ant as an MP:
“Stand and deliver You let them put the fear on you Slow down the river But not a word of it was true If there’s nothing you can say There may be nothing you can do
Stand and deliver Stand and deliver Dick Turpin wore a mask too.”
Did he? Poor old Dick!
I get the point though …and it would be brilliant if you were 14 Van and doing a school essay – but you are a rock of ages and ‘could do better!’
And what are you doing Eric, coming along for the ride?
I think you’ve just hidden your own glittering career behind a mask of complete pointlessness.
Here are the lyrics and here is the song – please tell us what you think!
Stand and deliver You let them put the fear on you Stand and deliver But not a word you heard was true But if there’s nothing you can say There may be nothing you can do
Do you wanna be a free man Or do you wanna be a slave? Do you wanna be a free man Or do you wanna be a slave? Do you wanna wear these chains Until you’re lying in the grave?
I don’t wanna be a pauper And I don’t wanna be a prince I don’t wanna be a pauper And I don’t wanna be a prince I just wanna do my job Playing the blues for friends
Magna Carta, Bill of Rights The constitution, what’s it worth? You know they’re gonna grind us down, ah Until it really hurts Is this a sovereign nation Or just a police state? You better look out, people Before it gets too late
You wanna be your own driver Or keep on flogging a dead horse? You wanna be your own driver Or keep on flogging a dead horse? Do you wanna make it better Or do you wanna make it worse?
Stand and deliver You let them put the fear on you Slow down the river But not a word of it was true If there’s nothing you can say There may be nothing you can do
Stand and deliver Stand and deliver Dick Turpin wore a mask too
#vanmorrison #clapton #slowhand #covid
This week Leigh and Rodney have got the grump – cheating banks, cash just an I.O.U. and much more
This piece was originally commissioned by the European Journalism Centre almost a decade ago and was resting listlessly in our archives.
But with all the threats of anarchy in the US and new violence breaking out in the streets of Washington DC, we thought it was time to re-run it. Far-right groups have clashed with counter-protesters after a march by conservatives protesting against US president-elect Joe Biden’s election victory.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump fills the heads of the nation with lies, sulks and viciously misleading statements on social media – and racism is rumbling loud. Guns are on the street in the hands of fear-mongers looking like bald bulbous blow-up tattooed dolls in mask and combat gear.
As 2020 draws to an unhappy close, the Land of the Free is quivering with hatred, dis-information and covid-fears …
The article below was published after the editor of a relatively small circulation daily in Westchester County, New York, made a controversial but legal editorial decision about the coverage of the horrific killing of schoolchildren on its doorstep and ended up looking down the barrel of a gun.
The New York Journal News published the names and addresses of 33,000 local gun owners in the wake of the massacre of 23 young people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut, just before Christmas last year.
This is what happened … what’s changed all these blood-stained years down the road?
Gun law in the land of the lying bullet…
THE EDITOR of a relatively small circulation daily in Westchester County, New York, made a controversial but legal editorial decision about the coverage of the horrific killing of schoolchildren on its doorstep and ended up looking down the barrel of a gun.
The New York Journal News published the names and addresses of 33,000 local gun owners in the wake of the massacre of 23 young people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut, just before Christmas last year.
The response to the inter-active map they produced from public records was immediate and revealed a frightening trend to stifle the news in the land of the free and the brave.
In an unprecedented attack staff at the Journal News offices in White Plains had their pictures, their names and their address plastered across the internet – and editor CynDee Royle had to call in the bomb squad after a mysterious envelope arrived in her mail.
The fury reverberated around America and even that English ex-redtop editor turned America’s Got Talent judge Piers Morgan was under threat as vitriol flew like hot lead.
He’d also had the temerity to question his adopted country’s gun laws and in return faced demands for his deportation for ‘exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens’.
Morgan stood accused of waging a ‘hostile attack against the US Constitution by targeting the Second Amendment’ and 25,000 people signed a petition calling for his expulsion on the website of the White House.
I have to say that I was relieved that, unlike this former editor of the UK’s Daily Mirror, I wasn’t an Englishman abroad.
Yet tucked away in my rose tinted cottage at the heart of Merry Old England where guns and bullets are almost never seen or heard, I too was witnessing what I can only describe as a terrifying reaction within the American press to this awful – and preventable – tragedy.
I was privy to the private ruminations of US news disseminators on a members-only internet forum.
To a man, and woman, they were roundly condemning the Journal News for printing its list – not only did they claim that this piece of graphic journalism – background to a tragic story – had put the lives of gun owners at risk, they also failed to see any news value in it at all.
I was mystified.
Was this actually evidence of differences in the way editors in the UK and the US evaluate news or was it in fact something more sinister?
For more than a week I communed with members of the site and what amazed me was that any compassion for their slaughtered innocents was masked by fury over what they saw as an attack on their right to bear arms.
I will not ‘out’ the journalists and editors on this site because it was a private forum but I was shocked that my contemporaries across The Pond were openly admitting that they would deny the readers of their publications basic facts about a news story because it went against their desire to be able to settle arguments in a good old fashioned Wild West shoot-out.
And they were not alone – media pundits across the States were of the same mind. Controversial brietbart writer Ben Shapiro described the map as ‘targeting gun owners as the root of all evil’.
Websites like examiner.com openly attacked the Journal News and quoted from other publications including one which set the ball rolling by saying: “How about a map of the editorial staff and publishers of Gannett and Journal News with names and addresses of their families?”
It was Christopher Fountain, a real estate news blogger for For What It’s Worth, who took up the cudgel and published the names, home addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, facebook pages and twitter handles of nearly every Journal News employee.
But that wasn’t the end of it by any means. As he did so the massively powerful and extremely media-savvy National Rifle Association took out an ad blasting President Obama. They described him as a hypocrite because armed guards look after his daughter at her school.
Today the site where the 33000 names were published by the Gannett-owned newspaper is like a tattered flag to freedom of speech fluttering in the winds of controversy.
But perhaps the local rag with 85,000 readers has done its job by publishing and being damned. A new gun law has just been signed by Andrew M Cuomo, the 56th Governor of New York. It significantly expands control of assault weapons and made New York the first state to change its laws in response to the mass shooting.
However, a widely published news story following the change to the law revealed this:
Texas attorney general Greg Abbott is advertising for gun owners in New York to join him in Texas.
His ads, on news sites in Manhattan and Albany, promote the state’s low taxes and gun culture. In one he asks: “Is Gov. Cuomo looking to take your guns?” The other reads, “Wanted: Law abiding New York gun owners looking for lower taxes and greater opportunity.”
The ads lead to a Facebook page where Mr Abbott promotes Texas’s strong economy and lack of an income tax, allowing transplanted gun owners ‘to keep more of what you earn and use some of that extra money to buy more ammo’.
These are dark days indeed for journalism both sides of The Pond when celebrities in the UK can hide their dirty little secrets with the backing of Her Majesty’s Courts of Justice and Americans appears to be able to hold a gun to the head of freedom of the press.
Another Postcard from the world, the grumpy old men discuss major issues including transgender children, Covid and many other subjects. And they have a laugh too
Is divorce preferable to listening for the millionth time to ‘I saw mummy kissing Santa Clause’? Oh no it isn’t! Oh Yes it is!
For more than half a century now I have listened to Jingle Bells, Away in a Manger and Slade doing 1973’s Merry Christmas.
Sadly though, old Noddy screaming like a Brummy rat up a drain pipe “Merreeeeeee Chriiiiiiiistmassss!” has totally lost its charm for me.
I just don’t like it…
But by God am I attacked, berated and insulted for unwrapping my festive peccadilloes!
YES! And all because it’s f*!king Christmas, the season of goodwill to all men.
Well, I’m a man!
What about good will to me?
Do, you know, I’ve even been driven to suggestions of divorce because of the inane copycat second-rate crass pop rip-offs of Phil Spector’s magnificent Wall of Sound.
I am heartily sick of hearing Gregg Palmer sonorously ploughing his way through the jingling bells of 1974’s I Believe in Father Christmas and Mariah Carrey’s risible All I Want for Christmas is You from 1994.
And what about Bing’s White Christmas from 70 years ago? It was, I’m sure very good indeed way back then, homely and warm and charming in the battle-riven era of the early 1940s.
Even I liked it a bit in the Sixties, and I tolerated it in the 70s, viewed it as a charming relic in the 80s, got a bit bored with it in the 90s and tried to ignore it after the turn of the century.
Then in a paranoid way I began to feel personally insulted by it during the last ten years of hearing it over and over.
Over and over.
Over and over.
Seriously, am I wrong? I ask you, am I wrong?
But I get attacked by my wife in my locked-down penthouse apartment above the tinselly lights of Slovakia’s mountain city of Poprad – and then face a pincer movements by friends in the Covid-safe green tents that have replaced the snug bars and restaurants we used to meet in.
Do you know, in the bleak mid-winter last year I actually heard Please Come Home for Christmas by the Eagles being played at a funeral parlour where the painted face and bleached-out body of my friend lay. That was followed by Merry Christmas Darling by the Carpenters …
And at his funeral they played Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.
A few days before his death the poor chap – in his 70s – had to suffer Do You See What I see?
I believe he had been Christmas-songed to death.
Here are the festive songs which dominate playlists across the Western World: Stay Another Day – East 17, All I Want For Christmas Is You – Mariah Carey, Last Christmas – Wham!, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Darlene Love, White Christmas – Bing Crosby and Fairytale of New York – The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl.
And there lies rub… it is the grand old museum to moronicism, the BBC that’s losing me wives left right and centre, family, friends and sanity.
Yes, let’s put blame where blame lies … it is the mindless, moribund cynicism of the Christmas List compilers at the smug twee BBC that are driving me to distraction and making me hate what was once the celebration of an inspirational life.
The Bible may be a mythology but it’s a mythology intended to take us to a higher place – not to Heaven 17.
So, where do the fabled fantasy delights lie in John Denver’s Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk on Christmas), Maroon 5’s Happy Christmas (War Is Over) and Justin Bieber’s Mistletoe?
They should drive you straight to the pub, but you can’t even escape there because of lock down… unless of course you indulge in a mince pie and a Scotch egg when that obviously go very well with a pint of bitter.
The Jackson 5’s I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus and Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmas Time should barely be allowed to claim airplay on an elevator. But they do because elevators are all over shopping malls all over cities all over the world.
We have two here in Poprad.
But then retailers have been using Christmas to get us to spend money for centuries. So, when did the tragic tradition of screaming like Noddy “Only 300 shopping days left til Chriiiiiiistmaaaaaaas” begin?
Well, Stephen Nissenbaum, author of The Battle for Christmas, says that a crucial shift happened when the festival became a domestic occasion, centuries ago.
And when Clement Clarke Moore wrote “’Twas the night before Christmas”, almost 200 years ago, he was glossing over the hell that New York was, streets patrolled by gangs of yobs. Moore wanted to evoke a quiet stay-at-home family Christmas with not a creature stirring, not even a mouse.
The commercialism of the Coca-Cola Santa came about because of the retail revolution of the early to mid-19th century. Advertisements for Christmas presents appeared in the US in the 1820s, and Santa Claus himself was wholeheartedly endorsing products by the 1840s.
And so died the Christian story of salvation.
But right now we have a growing anarchy on our streets and this crass Christmas music has replaced the clarion cry of We Shall Overcome with the Do They know it’s Christmas?
We’ve all seen Covid deniers flinging away their Santa beard-like masks with revolutionary relish. We’ve all watched anti-vaxxers rioting on the street because they believe that Bill Gates is using vaccines to inject us all with micro-chips of control. And what about believers of the Great Trumpian dystopia who are waving guns in the faces of the good and honest and believing its all in the great battle for freedom of speech and spirit.
But what nobody seems to accept is that the Christmas playlists championed by the BBC and local commercial radio are the most mind-numbing, sheep-mentality creating, empty, lazy, thought-controlling unedifying way of separating you from your wife, your family, your wallet and your sanity ever invented by man.
Wait! Actually, I’ve just got it!
The anti-everything, Fake News believing brigade of new anarchists are behaving so badly because 30 days in jail is infinitely preferable to 30 days in your home being force-fed you All I Want For Christmas!
I rest my case.
Have a merry, happy, truthful lifetime with good music everybody!
An international businessman is making sure that part of a European mountain city will be forever England.
The Central European entrepreneur is transforming part of the tiny city he rescued from poverty into a monument to English-ness.
Poprad, at the foot of Central Europe’s High Tatras mountains, had been devastated by decades of communism. Slovaks were leaving the country in their droves looking for a better life. Many headed to the UK.
Jan Telensky was one of the first. He fled in the 1960s after Russia led the Warsaw Pact countries in the bloody invasion of his homeland, Czechoslovakia, now called Czech Republic.
As a teenager he’d fought the invaders and ended up being sentenced in his absence on his head. Dr Telensky was exiled for more than two decades.
Now half a century later the hotelier and property developer who is credited with building the world’s greenest hotel is seen as just the business in Slovakia.
And as Brexit looms, he is honouring the country that gave him back his life.
Creating his living monument is a dramatic endeavour for Dr Telensky. It takes him back to when he was a teenager, camped in a graveyard in Dunstable. It also takes him back to the awful night he tried to call his family, 2,000 miles away.
He lost the last of his money when he accidentally pushed Button B instead of Button A in the old red telephone box outside the cemetery gates.
But Dr Telensky recalls later saving enough to send a Christmas parcel home and a letter to his parents, telling them he was safe. He had built up a sandwich round at the local Vauxhall car factory and was finally eking out a living.
The first things he shipped back to Slovakia were a red telephone box and an old pillar box which tourists now use to send letters and postcards home.
It was these two items that began his museum of memories in the mountains.
But it hasn’t stopped there and he has had a 40 year old London black cab ready to take pride of place outside his flagship hotel, Aquacity.
But his ambitions kept growing and he decided to turn a nearby decrepit fishing ‘hole’ into a duck pond based on those you see in Britian’s leafy parks.
The next idea was to mark the game of football too – many UK teams were already flying out to use AquaCity’s facilities for training.
So, he festooned the walls of the hotel with an amazing collection of signed football shirts.
Then in 2006 the Queen and Prince Philip paid a whistle-stop tour to Central Europe and stopped off at AquaCity, by then regularly voted the world’s greenest hotel. Dr Telensky says he was so proud that he immediately commissioned a portrait of the Queen.
That now hangs proudly in reception.
But one of his most ambitious projects was to help build the city’s new multi-million football stadium as a replica of an English stadium.
Dr Telensky, who has office in Luton, said: “Football fascinates me, it’s the will to win and the strategy you need to make it happen. But I can’t always be there, so it made sense to build Poprad’s disintegrating stadium in the image of footballing excellence.”
And for good measure, in each of his five hotels he has installed a Victorian-style gentleman’s club where cigars and brandy are the order of the day.
He also uses his 2,000 acre farm on the outskirts of the city, to produce Cumberland sausages for traditional English breakfast at his five luxury hotels.
He said: “England helped me realise my dreams. Now I want it to remain in a small enclave of Europe forever, no matter what happens with Brexit.”
And he is particularly fond of the statement his red telephone box and post box make.
“They were just something else that I learned to love and I want my guests from all over the world to experience them too. People really like the idea of using the post box to send their cards and letters home,” he smiled.
There were many times in the life of Dr Telensky that he thought he might never be able to return home himself.
He was born into a family with a military background but wanted to be a concert violinist. The thunder of invading tanks and troops however, forced him to go to ‘war’.
He said: “At 21 years old I’d nearly gambled my life away over the freedom of my homeland. I fled to Britain before they could shoot me and I learned to never be afraid of anything again.”
However, for the next 20 years he was a true exile, not even allowed to return for his father’s funeral.
He said: “I slept in a graveyard, but the opportunities were there and I could see them and. The UK helped me build a life for myself, like it has for so many from my homeland. And I want to be remembered no matter what happens with Brexit.”
Poprad is known as the gateway to the mysterious High Tatras mountains. But when Dr Telensky arrived there all that time ago it was more like a creaking gate.
He met his wife, Alenka, in Poprad and it was because of her family that he first saw his ecological vision of the future. They had showed him the blow-hole of the subterranean thermal lake which was about to buoy up his future.
He was about to create one of the most ecologically sound hotels in the world …
AquaCity powered by a geothermal lake.
Dr Telensky said: “When finally I could return I was deeply disappointed by the consequences of 40 years of communism. Something had to be done and I dedicated myself to the transformation of the region and I am very proud to be part of her progress.
“I believe in the tremendous potential of Slovakia and its role in the future of Europe.”
And now this tiny corner of the High Tatras will be forever England with all its memories, charm and intrigue.
Wait! Do you hear what I hear? Coming from over there – way way over the manger.
Yes, look! You can just pick them out in the starlight now, under those boughs of holly … a motley crew, fat men dressed in red, little elves hi on their own ho, white angels and the wise, camels and donkeys – and that Russian weather forecaster – Rudy the Red-knows-rain-dear.
Now the tinkling of bells grows into the tremor of strings, timpani (timpani timpani, they’ve all got it timpani), guitars and the howling voices of those who are long dead on the edge of a Dystopian world…
Yes, we are talking about the mindless repetitiveness, the over-blown feel-good factory of Christmas music.
Derek Buckham, Tokyo Rose songwriter, takes an alternative view of Christmas songs!
On December 1st 2023 the British Broadcasting Company sent down a snowy-bright, white-light torrent of tinselly notes and pointless saccharine lyrics to drown out the moribund dystopia.
Ah, it just makes you want to deck the BBC’s bosses with boughs and brollies!
So if, like me, you have no time for a month-long onslaught of Christmas pop-up pap and pointlessness – you don’t have to feel like Scrooge. We are not alone.
So, we really need this mind-numbing ‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas…’ sung in the sonorous tones of a long-dead crooner with a horse face and a pipe?
In 2023, this is actually the season of folly, the season to be jolly careful … the season when only three years ago the powers-that-be tell you not to hug your granny to death and don’t go to the pub without having a scotch egg to line your stomach. And if you’re Welsh make sure you’re home by 6pm or you’ll be in trouble, boyo!
Well, what does that tell you? Your granny or your money?
It’s money of course it is.
Capital gains? Capital shames!
And don’t forget, because we were not allowed out or to go on holiday just over two year ago we’ve been leaving loadsa money in the bank – billions in fact – so the good opportunistic burghers of mammon are actually lending you your own savings so they can grab them back of you in far more useful bricks and mortar.
Do you see what I see?
And it’s all played out against a soundtrack of jingle jangle goodwill to all of those sitting on a lemmings precipice wearing a Father Christmas’s hat at a jaunty angle.
They still want us to believe in this middle-class wonderland of pan pipes and alcoholic puddings.
But trust me, this – including the music – is pushing people over the edge.
You will all become Christmas killers by dawn – and Yuletide will be logged down as a big fat failed turkey if you don’t turn off your radios!
Just turn off your radios!
This is what the BBC’s chief content officer, said: “This Christmas, more so than ever, we’ve created perfect soundtracks that are full of festive cheer and stardust, celebrate our most loved shows, make space for reflection and tell extraordinary stories both real or imagined. In what’s been a difficult year, millions of people have turned to our stations and Sounds for company through long periods of isolation and so we want to give our listeners schedules filled with special treats and surprising guests to celebrate the festive season.”
Well, with the greatest of respect, what a load of b*ll*cks!
The banks are fiddling while Britain is burning and there is new meaning to it’s not the cough that carries you off, it’s the coffin they carry you off in, and you are packaging it all in cacophonous carbolic crap which makes your ears bleed egg-nog and squirty cream!
Bob Dylan – one of his alternative Christmas songs!
