UK households and businesses are hoarding according to the banking industry.
The Bank of England reporting record increases in the amount of money held in bank accounts.
In fact, Sterling money holdings by private sector companies and households rose by £57.4bn in March, the biggest increase on record.
In the previous six months it went up by only £9bn
But is that because the bloody banks are making it so difficult for the ordinary man or woman on the street to get hold of his or her dosh in this time of face masks, lock-down and corona-virus fear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGbUQpFu4Q4
A few days we reported on one couple stranded by the virus in Slovakia who were band from their internet banking because they were asked ONE question about the opening of their account 20 years ago.
They gave the wrong answer!
BONG – HSBC KO’d them and left then without money to buy food or pay their rent!
We also reported on a couple stranded in Portugal – locked out of their account by Santander…
Now we have been sent the tragic story of an elderly lady from Manchester, whose husband died recently. Most of their money was in his name and this, in her own words, is her story about trying to get it transferred. She has asked to remain anonymous…
She writes:
Here’s the scenario.
Your other half dies and it hits you hard. Harder than you would ever have believed. It’s not just one chair less at the table – it’s life as you knew it completely changed. Especially if you are alone, family in other parts of the world and you are too old to simply make a new life. But you try; you join groups and for a long time sit as isolated as if you were in your own four walls.
Bleakly non-functional.
Then, just a few weeks later a pandemic contorts your every move. You are self-isolated, there is lock down through most of the world. The telephone and social media is your new reality. A new kind of fear. Now you know what ‘isolation’ can do to the way you think and function. It is hard to say whether your physical or your mental health has been hardest hit. And you have all the time in the world to dwell upon it.
But, Hey, as friends said when your loved one passed away: “If he left a Will you won’t have any trouble with getting your assets sorted.” He left a Will – and they said it in good faith.
This is where the banks, the building societies, the Post Office, The Bank of England take over what you now call ‘life’.
Even without a pandemic, you would have been grief stricken and lost. But still there is a force which is ready, willing and able to turn hopelessness into despair.
It starts with the forms for Probate, including a form regarding Inheritance Tax. You’ve worked, you and the spouse since you were fourteen – and managed to save. The fortunate ones who studied and got careers. But not in the Inheritance Tax class.
So you need help with these forms in the weeks following the death. You find out just how much solicitors charge to do the job and, putting all papers aside, you think you will get to it later.
When you do eventually start trying you realize that you have spread your savings out, as suggested by the government following the collapse of banks throughout the world in 2008.
After a lot of trying to make an ageing and distracted brain come to terms with the challenges, you send off the forms. And after two or three months find that you must have added and subtracted and driven yourself mad and come up with acceptable results. You now have Grant of Probate.
This is where the real battle starts.
The battle to get the money which is still in the spouse’s name to be finally accepted as now yours. The money you both saved which he left in a clear and simple Will is still not yours. Well it IS actually by every moral standard ever discussed.
But not to the Banks.
It’s not yours, and it’s not his – the institutions are still using it, virtually owning it.
When you approach each one the reaction is surprisingly similar. They will send you a series of forms which you will attempt to sort out and send back. Together with the Grant of Probate, The Death Certificate, plus two ways of identifying yourself as the person you say you are (a passport, a driving licence etcetera, etcetera).
Oh, yes and a ‘covering letter’. If you manage to get these various documents into the correct envelopes and someone to post them for you in the middle of a pandemic you might think that you have reached the conclusion.
You are then awaiting the Forms and Documents which will be sent back to you after they receive the Forms and Documents. These forms will be to ascertain where you wish the monies to be settled (hopefully, all being well, in your name).
Meanwhile your phone bill has become astronomical as you have spent on average an hour and a half speaking to sympathetic but immovable telephone representatives at every juncture.
The simple end to this is still far away, some eight months after the spouse’s death.
May I say, to end this diatribe, that if I sound frustrated it is because I am.
Cannot the hierarchy, the management of all these self-righteous, robotic institutions see that at the end of their ‘rules and regulations’, their implacable demands there sits some bereaved, elderly, despairing human being.
Name supplied.
PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS – LYRICS
Oasis
Put yer money where yer mouth is
Yer mamma says that you was real
Put yer money where yer mouth is
Yer mamma says that you was real
Ready or not, come what may The bets are going down for judgement day So put yer money in yer mouth And your hands right upon the wheel
Put yer money where yer mouth is Yer pappa says that you was real Put yer money where yer mouth is Yer pappa says that you was real
Ready or not, and come what may You betcha going down on judgement day So put yer money in yer mouth And yer hands right upon the wheel
Corona virus – what is really happening – journalist and broadcaster Leigh and TV guru Rodney try to unravel the truth and take on the NUJ … and have a laugh along the way
Here’s a song for Leigh … I Love My Shirt by Donovan and the Smothers Brothers!
Should Bob have donated a 68,000 pound set of wrought iron gates to Mozambique – the place he definitely used to love?
The US State Department approved the four-feet high iron artwork gift to the ailing African country some time ago and paid $84,375 for them.
The sculpture was paid for with federal funding and has raised questions about how the State Department spends its money.
Dylan’s ironwork was bought under the Art in Embassies programme, which places American art in US diplomatic outposts across the world.
But, it comes as the Trump administration is said to be trying to slash funds for American diplomacy.
And because Bob has made himself a few, well, bob, over the last half a century and more, critics are saying that he should have given the gates to the embassy himself. After all in 1975 he wrote what was almost a travelogue about Mozambique’s ‘magic in a magical land…’
And because he must have made a few Mozambique meticals out of that too, it appears to be another good reason for him to give his gates away.
Cameron Hume, a former diplomat and ambassador to Algeria and South Africa, says he was shocked at how much they cost.
He said that he supports the Art in Embassies programme, but he thinks the money could be better spent on development or aid in Mozambique, which has some of the worst health of any country in Africa.
Hume and another US official also questioned why Dylan, with a reported net worth of some $300 million, couldn’t donate the piece instead of having taxpayers foot the bill.
Representatives of Dylan treated the question with the contempt it deserves and ignored it.
A spokesman for the embassy art work programme was reported as saying Dylan’s ironwork“relates to themes of art made in Mozambique”.
Mozambique is in the south-eastern part of Africa. It won independence from Portugal on June 25, 1975. Desire was released in January 1976.
However, the victorious People’s Republic of Mozambique were communists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3ghjrGe378
And the song was dubbed as a public statement about the state of the country’s politics because it says “people living free”.
But everything else about the song has no relevance to that idea .. “couples dancing cheek to cheek” and “magic in a magic land” and ”There’s lots of pretty girls in Mozambique – And plenty time for good romance…”
Lyrics
I like to spend some time in Mozambique The sunny sky is aqua blue And all the couples dancing cheek to cheek It’s very nice to stay a week or two And maybe fall in love just me and you
There’s lots of pretty girls in Mozambique And plenty time for good romance And everybody likes to stop and speak To give the special one you seek a chance Or maybe say hello with just a glance
Lying next to her by the ocean Reaching out and touching her hand Whispering your secret emotion Magic in a magical land
And when it’s time for leaving Mozambique To say goodbye to sand and sea You turn around to take a final peek And you see why it’s so unique to be Among the lovely people living free Upon the beach of sunny Mozambique
A chat with PJ Nobody, 81 – yes, he was once as big as Elvis but he was also Savile’s friend … and a man acting like complete idiot too often
I have known PJ Proby – the great pretender to the crown of pop – on and off for more than two decades.
I have spent time with him, interviewed him, set up shows for him on the BBC and almost ended up as his driver from gig to gig…
However, although I enjoyed his company, I felt there was something a bit sinister in his attitude towards young people. He came across as a dirty old man in some ways and ultimately I steered clear of him.
Jim has had so many opportunities to make a comeback and refind the audience he says ‘went away’ … but even at 80 years old his finger still hovers above his self-destruct button.
Less than five years ago he had a major opportunity when he was invited to the Cypress Avenue gig with grand old Van Morrison. They were both brilliant but Jim didn’t endear himself to the audience when he did ‘Rabbit Ears’ behind Van the Man’s head.
He was up there with Elvis for a short time and could have been one of the greats, but – sorry Jim – you’re just a very silly man.
Recently, the Mirror published online, that the 81-year-old former star had “not been in a relationship for 22 years because he only wants to date underage girls”.
It quoted him as saying: “The last lady in my life was Elizabeth Conway in 1997. She was 13 when I met her. I don’t think there’ll be another because it’s against the law.
“I won’t marry a girl I can’t raise from the age of 12, 13 or 14. I like that they’re young and fresh-looking and don’t come with baggage – nobody’s messed with their heart and broken it.”
The Mirror, which is owned by Reach, also said that Proby had been friends with Jimmy Savile.
Proby, who was once a rival to Elvis Presley in the charts, said that the paper had reported his comments accurately but “had presented them out of context”, according to IPSO.
He said they were “hypothetical, light-hearted and not to be taken seriously” and denied he ever “boasted” that he was attracted to underage girls or shown any “lust” for them.
Proby also denied making the comment that Savile was “undeserving of condemnation”.
He said the Mirror’s report suggested he had dated Conway when she was 13 but in fact he had only met her at that age and dated her 20 years later.
The title agreed to publish a clarification on that point online but denied any breach of the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice.
It provided a transcript of its interview to the regulator and denied its use of quotes was misleading or inaccurate, noting that Proby had not contested the accuracy of the quotes.
This is what PJ Proby had to say about young girls some years ago…
“I got into trouble again right away for trying to do the right thing. I’d bought me a big house and founded The Nymphet Club of Hollywood, It was a kind of after-school club for girls aged 11 to 15. I wanted to instil in them all my standards, military training. You gotta remember that in the South, we married our cousins at 11 and Elvis used to walk his new wife Priscilla to school. But I never touched any of those girls, I was just trying to give them an education.
Judy Howard, my second wife, was my own age, I wasn’t a pervert.”
Here’s an interview I did with Jim a few years ago but never published for various reasons … now sadly it has some relevance.
The 1960s really were a blur to me. One day my house in Hollywood exploded.People say I did it myself but I was in a bar when somebody came in to tell me. I called Bobby Darin and said: ‘Will you see if my house is still there? ‘ He said: ‘No, it sure isn’t, Jim. Lots of fire engines, but no house.”
****
The day I died was the day my life began again. I dropped dead in a Florida pharmacy and it was the drink that did it make no bones about it. I’d been taught to drink by Frank Sinatra in the 50s. Frank told me: “You sip. You have a glass in your hand all day – but you never get drunk.”
But by the 60s I was drinking on the scale of Richard Burton – I’d drink two fifths of jack Daniels before lunch…
…Now what year was it that I died? I guess it must have been 1992. I know I was in Fort Lauderdale with my girlfriend, Elizabeth… I’d been drunk the night before and we’d argued and, well things got a little out of hand.
Anyway Elizabeth came and got me out of jail and I went home to bed. When I woke up the next morning she said: ‘You’ve been foaming at the mouth and throwing up.’
Well, I remember I just needed a beer but there wasn’t any so I decided to go to the pharmacy to get me some of these little blue pills, Ativan, they were called, to calm me down. The pharmacist told me I should go straight to hospital. Then I dropped deader than a doornail. The paramedics were trying to get my heart started. It stopped twice.
And that’s when I did it, I never drank again.
****
I’d had an unhappy childhood, I couldn’t even trust my mother. She just couldn’t stay faithful to my father and then, one day, when I was ten, I watched as he loaded his 300 Savage rifle with three bullets. It took a male relative to disarmed him. But it was too late, I’d seen it and there’s no doubt it affected me and the way I acted.
In court I was asked which parent I wanted to live with. I said, ‘My mother.’ Daddy went berserk. My mother had custody, but I was sent to military academy till I was 18 and I remember Daddy leaving me at San Marcos Academy, near Houston. He watched while they showed me how to make a hospital tuck in the bed then he told me to stop crying and be a man. I watched again as he walked away.”
I don’t come from a musical background, I come from a banking and ranching background but my mother wanted to be a tap dancer and her brothers wanted to be singers or barkers at the circus. My grandmother would let them do it, she said entertainers were all whores and pimps…
My other grandmother came from the same line as John Wesley Hardin. Bob Dylan got the name wrong when he wrote his song John Wesley Harding. He doesn’t know what he was talking about. John was a gun slinger, the most ferocious in Texas … I don’t know if that lineage had any effect on me but I’ve never run with the establishment or done what the Government calls for you to do.
****
It all stems back to my childhood I guess and it took me a long time to come to terms with myself. Then, after I stopped drinking I started to understand, alcohol just hid away the pain. Even though I was one of the biggest stars in the world I drank because it gave me courage to do things I wouldn’t normally do, like approaching girls.
I still keep a wet bar in the house because I don’t trust a man who doesn’t drink but almost two decades ago I caught on to the fact that I’d been running from a ghost that wasn’t gonna do me no harm.
My love affair with Jack Daniels went on for decades but it wasn’t the Jack Daniels that damaged my career… it was powerful people who did that, they didn’t want me around. I was too good.
****
People say I’m the comeback king but I never went away, it was the audience who went on vacation, I’ve always been here. It was the system you see that banned me for 40 years and they didn’t allow me back on the popular stage until the year 2,000.
They supposedly banned me because of the pant splitting thing, nobody would touch me … I was banned from all Odeon’s and Ranks, anything that had to do with the Rank Organisation, anything to do with the Grades and the Delfonts that’s what screwed my life up, it was those people. In reality it wasn’t anything to do with the pants-splitting incident it – it started when Gordon mills wanted me off the Cilla Black tour of the UK so he could replace me with Tom Jones.
But he couldn’t just do that, I was too damned popular. Then Mary Whitehouse joined in and said she would get me banned on a morals charge. That opened the door for Tom and I became for Adults Only. The problem was I just didn’t have a good crooked manager like Gordon Mills or Elvis’s Colonel Tom Parker … let’s face it, if you don’t have a good crooked or homosexual manager you won’t make it in this business.
I was bigger that Tom Jones, he’d only just put his first record out – I was the next big thing to Elvis and the people in power needed to get rid of me to give Tom his big break. Engelbert wasn’t even in the running and he used to imitate all my hit songs and he could do me perfectly except for those high notes. Well, I told him I had to strangle my nuts to get there myself. But do you know, even now I can still hit them and I’ve started putting them back in my shows.
I’d never put the trouser splitting back in though and do you know when it happened, which was always and accident you never saw anything. My trousers split across the knees, never to the crotch. These days Iggy Pop gets his tackle out on television and nobody pays any attention. They’d never experienced anything like me in England. Adam Faith and Cliff Richard? They were momma’s boys. I was Britain’s Errol Flynn, the rough mother of pop. I was Jimmy Dean all busted up. I was Marlon Brando. They wanted rid of me.
It was like nothing ever worked out for me, I always tried to do the right thing and it went wrong all the time. In 1966 I left England to go back to Los Angeles. I’d had enough.
****
I got into trouble again right away for trying to do the right thing. I’d bought me a big house and founded The Nymphet Club of Hollywood, It was a kind of after-school club for girls aged 11 to 15. I wanted to instil in them all my standards, military training. You gotta remember that in the South, we married our cousins at 11 and Elvis used to walk his new wife Priscilla to school. But I never touched any of those girls, I was just trying to give them an education.
Judy Howard, my second wife, was my own age, I wasn’t a pervert. She came to one of my parties in LA and at my parties you checked your clothes at the door. We all just wore loin cloths. Judy’s family owned the Seabiscuit. She arrived wearing no underwear and I knew then that she was class. Once we got married, though we argued like cat and dog.
The phone rang once and Judy answered. I said: ‘It’s one of your lovers, right?’ She said: ‘How did you guess?’ I picked up this glass table and smashed it. Judy died in the 1970s in La Hiena, Hawaii and left two notes but neither of them were for me.
My third marriage to dulcie was pretty bad too. One time I got charged with shooting her but they acquitted me. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t done mean things – I got fined for attacking my secretary with an axe, she’d over-spent on the groceries”.
You see women find it really difficult to live up to my expectations. . . I was living by the standards that we in the South respected. The lady’s place is the house and the man brings home the bacon, that’s the way it is but girls won’t accept that nowadays.
****
That’s the way my life’s been. I‘ve got my biography waiting to be sold for £60,000 but I can’t get any takers. It’s just more of the same, I can’t make money out of the publishing market, either music or words. In all my time I never got paid for anything, not a penny for an album or a single, I have lawyers working on it at the moment and they are suing for millions. I only ever made money out of personal appearances and the like and there was a famine of them for 40 years, they’d never experienced anything like me in England.
****
Adam Faith and Cliff Richard, they were mummy’s boys. I was the rough mother of pop.
Lord longford did offer me £25,000 back in the nineties for my book but it wasn’t enough… then Random House turned me down saying it was too long at 500 pages, I told them 300 pages wouldn’t even get me from the toilet to the living room, they also told me that nobody was interested in my stories about Clint Eastwood or Kirk Douglas, or even George Best.
I used to wake George up every five minutes as his head hit the bar, how can that not be interesting? I told them ‘very sorry’ I wasn’t born with Robin Williams. I could have it published tomorrow without an advance but I don’t trust publishers enough to pay me and they don’t seem to realise they are paying me for my name, PJ Proby and he’s been round for more than 50 years.
I guess what it all boils down to is, I just want to continue working and maybe get back in the hit parade. But they still won’t let me, they’re afraid of me, they’re afraid of my longevity, I’m too old and too knowledgeable. I have my own record company now and I record all the time but I can’t get a distributor to put it out in Woolworth’s or anything, I can’t find a distributor any place. I’m wanting to record Autumn Leaves with just me and a classical guitar like Eva Cassidy did with Over the Rainbow.
****
Here in Evesham, I’ve got the pick of people to back me, Joe brown’s brothers have retired here, all ofELO, everybody is retired around me here, even Paul McCartney’s daughter lives here, so does Robert Plant. He’s good but he’s not a singer, he’s a screamer. Robert was with Led Zeppelin when they were my backing band, they were known as the New Yardbirds back then.
Evesham is a retirement spot for old rock stars and I’ve grabbed me five acres of it and now I farm plums and apples.
I got a taste for farming when I was living up in Charlotte Bronte’s barn – that’s when a couple of mancunians put out a single of me and Madonna. I was helping on the farms, bringing in the hay and I heard Madonna threatened to sue them. I never had one thing to do with that, but people thought I did.
I’m nearly 80 now but I’m still pretty active and keep performing and each Christmas I go back to the states to help my sister with the horses. Age is just a number and I’ve always been athletic, even when I was drinking and I’ve finally started to learn to ride an English horse and saddle up an English saddle and I’m going to learn to play polo now, but they’re finding it difficult to get me to wear a hard hat, you need the speed and wit of a 25 year old and I have!
These days I spend my time lying in the sun under the palm trees in my garden. The sun still comes out sometimes in Old Blighty, but it’s freezing if the sun doesn’t come out.
It’s just me here now, just me and Tilly my little dachshund.
I don’t want everybody to know where I live, but I do open my garden up to the public in the summer, I keep myself to myself and they don’t know it has anything to do with me. Sadly though the apple trees are dying because the rabbits ate the bark off them and this place has become like a wilderness.
I feed the rabbits and the birds – I leave the windows open
I just watch old movies on TV, old black and white Bogart movies … or American football, if I’m not touring and I go to bed at about 8pm and watch things until the next morning. I’ve always been a bit of an insomniac even when I was a drunk. I could stay awake for days.
People think I’m reclusive and call sometimes but they say the phone is off the hook. But it isn’t, it’s usually the field mice that’ve eaten through the telephone cable.
I had to go to Tesco today and buy a new wire. They eat through the wires all the time … I cam down yesterday morning and they’d eaten through the washing machine … that was the third time in a month they’d eaten through the hoses. It’s been happening since I moved here nearly ten years ago but I don’t mind, I won’t hurt a fly now, an animal has as much right to life as we have.
In fact when I go, I want to be fed to any kind of animal I’ve eaten in my life, cows, sheep, chickens, fish, let me give back a little bit of what I took off them.
TAGS: Music, pop, rock, Savile, Proby, Elvis, girls
Tom Hank gives right type of gift to boy, 8, bullied over his name Corona
Tom Hanks has sent a letter along with a Corona-brand typewriter to an Australian boy who says he is bullied because of his name.
Yep, Corona.
The name Corona means Crown and is of Spanish origin – but is also a Latin word for circle of light.
Sadly, Corona De Vries, aged eight, has realised people in the area where he lives have no idea about the meaning and has been insulted and bullied by them,
According to reports Corona wrote to Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson after they fell victim to the virus in Queensland.
“I heard on the news you and your wife had caught the coronavirus,” the boy wrote. “Are you OK?”
He added that he loved his name but was being called “coronavirus” at school.
“I get very sad and angry when people call me this,” he wrote.
“Your letter made my wife and I feel so wonderful! Thank you for being such a good friend – friends make friends feel good when they are down.”
Hanks and Rita are back in the US after spending three weeks recovering from the virus on the Gold Coast.
Hanks wrote
: “You are the only person I’ve ever known to have the name Corona – like the ring around the sun, a crown.”
He also sent a Corona-brand typewriter, which he had used during his quarantine in the city.
“I thought this typewriter would suit you,” he said. “I had taken it to the Gold Coast, and now, it is back – with you. Ask a grown up how it works. And use it to write me back.”
Top man Tom!
TAGS: Tom Hanks, Australia, corona, typewriter, bullies, gift, Gold Coast
Tourettes and tantrums as more lock-down victims find themselves one question away from banking oblivion
Banks generally are looking at opportunities as we lock down our lives.
And nothing wrong with that under the world economic system we have at the moment.
In fact, all four of the big London-listed lenders have suffered steep share price falls since the virus crisis began, so like us, all they need is a way of finding stability.
And one stands out as being much better able to cope with the crisis.
That bank is Barclays.
And the reason it is coping is that it has a large investment banking operation behind it.
But what about their human face?
Last week the preservation society highlighted the plight of international journalist Leigh G Banks who is locked down in Slovakia and was having problems with his telephone and online banking.
He said: “Well, I suppose today is as good as any for a faithful customer to be left to die as far as HSBC is concerned.
“Forget coronavirus for a moment and let’s look at the virus of stupidity spreading through our fabulously faceless world of technological brick walls…”
Read what happened here:
Now veteran broadcaster and boss at AirTV International Rodney Hearth has faced a similar crisis… here he tells about his brush with the ‘deadly bankers’ in his own words:
“Locked down in Portugal.
No money.
It has taken one week to get in touch with Barclays Bank – nobody there – just a computer trying to sound human.
During this I wait on a mobile international call average 45 mins every day.
Every time listening to the dreaded telephone message machine going through all the options, the last one being –
“You may have to wait for up to another 2 hours!”
“But leave a message we will get back to you in 48 hrs “– they did not.
Eventually I got through to somone human – Semi-human.
You guessed it – Can I take you through security.
I remember the last time I was taken through security by another British Bank – not to be named on this occasion – 10 questions! I thought I was on Millionaire.
Got 9 right – do you want to go for the 10th – I was supremely confident – even though I could loose all.
You first opened your account in 1999 tell me the first transaction you made?– Honestly!
The effluent hit the fan! You can´t talk to me like that she said!. I then pointed out to her that I suffer occasionally from
Bi-polar with a touch of Tourettes and by the way could I offer to pay for some counselling for her – can’t be fairer than that –
but the line was dead.
This time with B’s that’s Barclays although I now prefer the former. I fell at the first.
What are the first 2 letters of you password – I gave them – no, wrong, she said triumphantly! – not right I tamely questioned’
Then I was informed that Barclays use three different passwords depending how I get in touch with them.
Computer– App or Telephone.
The call ended in a similar manner to the aforementioned but ths time with a lot of Tourettes.
It only happens with British Banks and in both incidents I didn’t even have the pleasure of speaking to anyone in India –
I now actually prefer that – you can say what you like and they come back for more – they are ever so polite.
“What’s your name?” I demand. “It’s Richard” – said in a classical native accent – What!? – I retorted You’re not called Richard.
“I can show you my birth certificate” he said.
“Go on then!”
It was so absured we parted as friends – I informed him that I really loved his curry – He liked that.
It’s much better in both Portugal and Spain – you can leisurely spend the whole morning having a coffee with the manager whilst a long queue builds up at the Teller’s desk.
If you’re lucky you can get the assistant manager invariable a lady with all the usual Charms and Attributes – the Tourettes has never bothered me on such auspicious occasions.
DO THE MONEY SHUFFLE – lyrics
Richard Thompson
love kittens and little babies Can’t you see that’s the guy I am And your money is so safe with me You never met such an honest man Glossies on my office wall The rich and famous, I know them all
Come on and do the Money Shuffle I’ve got you right there where I want you Come on and do the Money Shuffle Can’t find your money if you want to Stock market going through the roof now So rich I’ll never add it up now I’ve got your savings here somewhere
Here at Warbrook and Jones it’s all tradition We never pimp and we don’t hustle If you’ll just bend over a little I think you’ll feel my financial muscle Spread it wide, wide as you can To get the full benefit of my plan
Come on and do the Money Shuffle I’ve got you right there where I want you Come on and do the…
Writers beware – THERE ARE COPYRIGHT PIRATES ABOUT!
And we are fighting one right now – somebody who has stolen the work of at least a dozen people.
Ask yourself, what kind of man lives in a room in an old Stalag of his own dishonest and disgusting making .,. he sweats and he lies and he cons, he stabs you in the back, kisses you to your face and steals from you what he can.
Copyright theft is a weapon he likes, it is cheap, free, difficult to chase up … but what he likes is the fact it hurts people, gives them a sense of loss, makes them worry. And he will get away with it generally, because people don’t know how to fight back.
I have been in publishing since I was in my teens many decades ago … AND I KNOW WHAT TO DO!
WE WILL EXPOSE HIM SOON SO NOBODY SENDS HIM THEIR WRITING AGAIN.
BELOW ARE THREE PIECES, WRITTEN, TV AND VIDEO …. PLEASE SHARE AND PROTECT EVERYBODY’S WORK
READ ABOUT COPYRIGHT AND WHAT IT MEANS BELOW THE VIDEO – BUT ALSO LISTEN TO LEIGH AND RODNEY TAKE THE THIEVES TO TASK 30 MINUTES IN TO THE VID!
LEIGH ALSO MAKE A PLEDGE TO HELP GET YOUR WORK BACK FOR FREE IF YOU BECOME A VICTIM!
COPYRIGHT PIRATES ARE THE SHAME OF THE INTERNET!
COPYRIGHT is the exclusive right for the maker of a creative work to reproduce and be recognised as the creator of that work… inside Leigh and Rodney talk about lockdown, virus chaos – and the pros and the cons of the copyright pirates of the internet – on AirTV International – LISTEN TOO TO PIRATE JENNY!
A SIMPLE GUIDE TO COPYRIGHT – DON’T ALLOW ANYBODY TO STEAL YOUR CREATIVE WORK
Copyright means the person who created a piece of work is the owner of it. The owner has to be asked for permission before anybody else can use it.
In simple terms that’s how it works – and it works that way for Meghan Markle too as she tries to sue parts of the Press for what she says is using her writing without the necessary permission …
In the Duchess’s case it is a bit more complicated because, yes the content of the letter belongs to the writer – but the actual physical letter belongs to the recipient.
This still means that in order to share the content of a letter, the permission of the writer would be required in order to avoid copyright infringement.
There are exceptions to copyright. These are circumstances where permission is not needed – for example, if the use is for the purpose of criticism, review or quotation, or for the purpose of reporting current events. Each of the copyright exceptions have specific requirements that must be followed in order to benefit from them.
The exception for criticism, review or quotation requires that the material used was already available to the public – so this would not apply to a private letter. The exception for reporting current events requires that the use of the material is fair.
When considering if a use is fair, a court would take into consideration if the work had already been published, or whether it was confidential. The courts are unlikely to decide that use of material that is confidential was fair unless a legitimate and continuing public interest could be demonstrated, for example “leaked documents” with a clear public interest.
But the basic principle is, that if you wrote it you own it and even if you sell it to a publisher like a magazine etc, you only grant them first world writes, then it reverts right back to you again!
So, be warned, there are conmen liars and cheats haunting the internet who are ripping off young and inexperienced writers and STEALING their work!
Don’t let it happen to you – and if you do tells us at the Preservation Society and we’ll hang the PIRATES for you, for nothing! Free! Gratis!
Let’s stick together!
Below is Pirate Jenny by Nina Simone – nothing to do with copyright at all, just brilliant (and it mentions pirates!)
You gentlemen can watch while I’m scrubbin’ the floor And I’m scrubbin’ the floor while you’re gawking And maybe once you tipped me and it made you feel swell In a ratty waterfront in this ratty-old hotel
But you’ll never know to who you’re talkin’ You never know to who you’re talkin’
Suddenly, one night, there’s a scream in the night And you yelled, “What the hell could that have been?” And you see me kinda grinnin’ while I’m scrubbin’ And you say, “What’s she got to grin?”
And the ship, a Black Freighter With a skull on its masthead will be comin’ in
Then you gentlemen can say, “Hey girl, finish the floors Get upstairs, make the beds, earn your keep here You toss me your tips and look out at the ships
But I’m countin’ your heads While I make up the beds ‘Cuz there’s nobody gonna sleep here Tonight, none of you will sleep here
Then, that night, there’s a bang in the night And you yelled, “Who’s that kicking up a row?” And ya see me kinda starin’ out the window And you say, “What’s she got to stare at now?”
And the ship, the Black Freighter Turns around in the harbor Shootin’ guns from the bow
Then you gentlemen can wipe off the laugh from your face Every building in town is a flat one Your whole stinking place will be down to the ground Only this cheap hotel standin’ up safe and sound
And you ask, “Why did they spare that one?” And you ask, “Why did they spare that one?”
All the night through, with the noise and to-do You wonder, who’s the person lives up there? Then you see me steppin’ out in the mornin’ Lookin’ nice with a ribbon in my hair
And the ship, the Black Freighter Runs the flag up its masthead And a cheer rings the air
By noontime the dock Is a’ swarmin’ with men Comin’ off of that ghostly freighter
And they’re movin’ in the shadows Where no one can see And they’re chainin’ up people And bringin’ them to me
Askin’ me “Kill them now or later?” Askin’ me “Kill them now, or later?”
Noon by the clock And so still on the dock You can hear the foghorn miles away
In that quiet of death I’ll say, “Right now Then they’ll pile up the bodies And I’ll say, “That’ll learn ya”
And the ship The Black Freighter Disappears out to sea And on it is me
What’s your opinion? Should we go back to the way things were – read inside – also listen to Hold On (Change is Coming) by Sounds of Blackness …
Well done Captain Tom – you deserved the Spitfire flypast for your 100th birthday. And you deserve the Number One hit with Michael Ball – and thank you for raising more millions for the NHS than most of us can ever imagine.
This charming, affable and a bit flirty old soldier Captain Tom is rightly classed as a real gentleman and a quintessentially British hero.
Yet there are millions more in Britain who are heroes, almost 70 million of us. Millions of adults in UK who have quietly accepted being held hostage in their homes by an enemy of the state that we can’t see and we have almost no weapons to attack.
This enemy’s army, in truth, is made up of tiny spherical particles surrounded by an envelope of fat with club-shaped spikes all over it. Yep, a tiny brain-dead bug has brought most of the world to its knees.
It has also sent a chill through global economies causing markets to cough and splutter in a terrifying state of uncertainty and panic.
But it also has taken away many our human rights, those that throughout the centuries we have fought other armies to make our own..
Yet, in the 21st century we have literally been ‘buggered’.
The main right many of us have lost is the right to be with our loved ones in a time of crisis.
How many of us have had that right taken from us?
And now, as we stay at home – many of us totally alone – we are being patronised about it.
The Government says it thinks the British public are doing rather well in this coronavirus crisis.
Thank you Government!
How nice of you!
Yes, cabinet ministers are said to be ‘astonished’ at how fully we are all complying with enforced lock-down.
And, apart from some as brain-dead as the coronavirus itself, we are not making a fuss.
We are showing common sense.
And so the common man and woman of all ages in the UK, becomes an unsung hero.
Well, the preservation society applauds us all!
But there are two questions we should be shouting from our balconies, banging on about on social media and sending emails about to anybody we can think of!
One – the incompetence we have had to deal with from our leaderless, rudderless, government since Boris got KO’d by the virus?
And the other is, why have we been treated with such condescension and disdain?
For instance, why are we constantly told we must stay at home, protect the NHS and protect lives? We are already doing that!
We are not idiots!
Then there is the determination to keep us in a dark place about when lock-down will end. If we aren’t disregarding the rules now, why would we if we knew what the near-ish future holds for us?
I am writing this sitting in the sun on the balcony of my loft apartment in Central Europe.
I am looking down on couples on their bicycles keeping healthy, couples strolling with their dogs, families BBQ-ing in their isolated gardens, bars and restaurants delivering to our doors – all done with masks, social distancing and dignity.
And the Slovak government generally is keeping us all in touch with what’s going on.
Remember, Slovakia, is a country that came out of communist rule less than half a century ago … and yet looking at the UK, 2,000klm away it looks like it is flying all the flags of a totalitarian state.
It looks like it is using the mushroom method of management to keep us locked up in our homes, more or less in the dark with the klaxon-clarion cries of “Stay in your homes! Protect and Survive!” ringing down the streets.
But behind all this confusion and misinformation we have to accept that – whether it was created in a Lab in Wuhan or not – Coronavirus is an overlap of an environmental and natural problem. And it is socially driven by our need to live in a relatively stable economy across the world.
Looking at climate change… we have to understand the reasons we keep emitting greenhouse gases.
And with coronavirus we also need to understand how world economics relies on us.
I read recently, I can’t remember exactly where, that tackling both coronavirus and climate change is much easier if we put a spoke in the wheel of economic activity.
As far as climate change is concerned it would mean us producing at lot less ‘things’. We would have to re-evaluate how many ‘things’ we actually need.
But one thing is for certain we’d be using less energy and emitting fewer greenhouse gases.
And as far as coronavirus is concerned, it’s people mixing together that spread the infection.
So, reducing this mixing together – even with our relatives – is likely to stop the transmission and lead to fewer cases overall.
Now we have to look at business – obviously businesses are there only to make a profit.
Coronavirus and climate change make this very difficult which means, because of them both, many of us will be out of work, not able to pay our mortgages and basically loose our homes if there is no benefits system left to support us..
Because of the two things we are facing a world-wide economic depression.
And lock-down is bringing depression closer because it is meant to stop people going to work, where they spread the disease.
Economist James Meadway wrote, the correct Covid-19 response isn’t a wartime economy – with massive upscaling of production. Rather, we need an “anti-wartime” economy and a massive scaling back of production. And if we want to be more resilient to pandemics in the future (and to avoid the worst of climate change) we need a system capable of scaling back production in a way that doesn’t mean loss of livelihood.
So, what is the future for us?
Here are four potentials:
State capitalism means a centralised response, prioritising exchange value 2. Barbarism is a decentralised response, prioritising exchange value 3. State socialism, acentralised response, prioritising the protection of life 4. Mutual aid, adecentralised response, prioritising the protection of life.
State capitalism is the dominant response we are seeing across the world right now.
But Barbarism is likely to be the future if we refuse to extend support to those who get locked out of markets by illness or unemployment.
People will die.
Barbarism is ultimately an unstable state that ends in ruin.
State socialism means the nationalisation of hospitals and payments to workers are not made to protect markets, but to protect life itself.
All sounds really good here, but sadly this can lead to authoritarianism, exactly that which my adopted country as only recently escaped from.
Mutual aid adopts the protection of life as the guiding principle of our economy. However, in this scenario, the state does not take a defining role. Rather, individuals and small groups begin to organise support and care within their communities. It becomes unwieldy and difficult to control.
Then there is dystopia … state capitalism descended in to barbarism.
Right now planes are grounded, people are locked up, and industry is shut.
Yet, there is a plus side and that is that air pollution over China and Europe has improved.
Over China, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) spotted a significant decrease in pollution between January and February.
Satellite imagery showed a reduction in nitrogen dioxide – caused by cars, power plants and industrial facilities.
The agencies compared the change before the lock-down in Wuhan on 23 January and during the quarantine between 10-25 February, and found concentrations of the gas had fallen significantly. The reduction was first noticed in Wuhan but eventually across the country.
According to calculations done by Stanford University scientist Marshall Burke, the reduction in air pollution may have helped save the lives of 77,000 people in China under the age of five, and over 70.
And we cannot just ignore this … we need to get rid of both enemies of all our states. We must not ignore the fact that the brainless little virus is actually starting to do that for us all by default.
However, if we do ignore this, state capitalism will step back triumphantly and the whole horror story will start all over again.
Anyway, like most people across the world, I’ve been well behaved.
And funnily enough I’m getting used to it.
As Jeremy Clarkeson said recently; “I used to love going to the pub, but now I’m thinking, ‘Why drink standing up when I can stay at home and drink sitting down?’
He also said: “It was my 60th birthday last weekend and all year I’d been planning a party to celebrate. In the end though. I spent a day in the sunshine with my children and I could not have been happier.”
Well now, there hangs a tale and a lesson to be learned about how things can change.
TAGS: coronavirus, Covid 19, UK, Boris, Captain Tom, NHS, politics, economy, world, global, finance, Jeremy Clarkeson, Clarkson
Bob thinks twice – and yep, he still contains a multitude of hits (click here to listen and read lyrics)
You could say Bob is back on everything – including a roll!
Yep, at 78 bob is still rolling out a new catalogue of hits.
After the shock release three weeks ago of Murder Most Foul, the enigmatic rock hero of two centuries has just dropped I Contain Multitudes on a world in lock-down.
And it is another ruminative beautiful gravely clock-ticking mixture of hip memories, a trip through Americana and a sad love song.
He rumbles … Today, tomorrow and yesterday too
The floors are dying
Like all things do
And he refers to a quaint element of his live performances and his obsession with painting … I fuss with my hair
He also recognises David Bowie and Edgar Allan Poe … Got a tell-tale heart
like Mr Poe
Got skeletons in the wall
of people you know
Here is the full lyric as far as we know:
I CONTAIN MULTITUDES
Today, tomorrow, and yesterday, too The flowers are dyin’ like all things do Follow me close, I’m going to Balian Bali I’ll lose my mind if you don’t come with me I fuss with my hair, and I fight blood feuds I contain multitudes
Got a tell-tale heart, like Mr. Poe Got skeletons in the walls of people you know I’ll drink to the truth and the things we said I’ll drink to the man that shares your bed I paint landscapes, and I paint nudes I contain multitudes
Red Cadillac and a black moustache Rings on my fingers that sparkle and flash Tell me, what’s next? What shall we do? Half my soul, baby, belongs to you I relic and I frolic with all the young dudes I contain multitudes
I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones And them British bad boys, The Rolling Stones I go right to the edge, I go right to the end I go right where all things lost are made good again I sing the songs of experience like William Blake I have no apologies to make Everything’s flowing all at the same time I live on the boulevard of crime I drive fast cars, and I eat fast foods I contain multitudes Pink petal-pushers, red blue jeans All the pretty maids, and all the old queens All the old queens from all my past lives I carry four pistols and two large knives I’m a man of contradictions, I’m a man of many moods I contain multitudes
You greedy old wolf, I’ll show you my heart But not all of it, only the hateful part I’ll sell you down the river, I’ll put a price on your head What more can I tell you? I sleep with life and death in the same bed Get lost, madame, get up off my knee Keep your mouth away from me I’ll keep the path open, the path in my mind I’ll see to it that there’s no love left behind I’ll play Beethoven’s sonatas, and Chopin’s preludes I contain multitudes
TAGS: Bob, Dylan, Poe, Rolling Stones, Black, Mick, new, single,
This one’s for you Donald Trump – listen to Isolation (click here)
When Peter Alexander, from NBC, asked President Trump about the psychological toll of the covid-19 crisis, Trump shot him down with: “I say that you’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I say. I think it’s a very nasty question, and I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.”
Read the lyrics as you listen (scroll down for lyrics)
In fact, as far as I’m concerned, it was a nasty response from the world’s most terrible President.
Everyone knows isolation is causing anxiety to go spiralling like a scream across a world which has been forced to slam the breaks on.
This car crash is eerily apocalyptic—and, except for Trump apparently – very scary.
World data last year showed that more than twenty per cent of households are single-person occupancy.
And psychologists say that most people miss the ‘given’ to see others, talk with them, hug them, or spend time with friends. Life just seems shallower now. Empty even.
Science shows that anxiety and isolation take a physical toll on the brain. They increase vulnerability to disease among people who might otherwise not get sick.
In 2015, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Brigham Young University, found that social isolation led to an increased death rate of twenty-nine per cent.
Well, President Trump I think Peter Alexander, asked you a good question and it gave you an opportunity to come across as a human being, not an arrogant unfeeling fool. But of course you didn’t take it.
How do you sleep at night?
Drinking too is a problem caused by isolation … personally, I’ve always drunk a lot of alcohol and, according to my doctors, far too much for my well-being.
I like to joke I have had a 40 year hangover but I have to admit that it’s actually very very close to the truth.
But I like drinking and I’m just used to it. After all I was brought up in the roughest part of Machester with a pub on every corner and a drunk in every gutter, my father was a rough tough builder and so were all his mates.
And I went into one of the hardest drinking professions of them all … the isolated world of the writer.
Along the way I have been lucky enough to be employed, amongst other things, as a music journalist and, apart from free concert tickets etc, one of the bonuses is that people send me their music. And so do big record companies.
Well, a few years ago a record company – I think it was EMI – sent me a remastering of John Lennon’s frantic Isolation.
Yesterday, another day high above the town of Poprad in Slovakia, in our loft apartment, looking down on empty streets, closed shops and cafes and a rusting railway line, I was searching through my old collection of ‘freebies’.
And there is was … Isolation. A howl of emotion.
President Trump this one is for you.
“Isolation”
People say we got it made. Don’t they know we’re so afraid? Isolation.
We’re afraid to be alone, everybody got to have a home. Isolation.
Just a boy and a little girl, trying to change the whole wide world. Isolation.
The world is just a little town, everybody trying to put us down. Isolation.
I don’t expect you to understand, after you’ve caused so much pain. But then again, you’re not to blame. You’re just a human, a victim of the insane.
We’re afraid of everyone, Afraid of the sun. Isolation
The sun will never disappear, but the world may not have many years. Isolation.
