CoffeeHousers' Wall, 12 January - 18 January

Colin

Last night I listened to Obama admitting that one of his key campaign pledges - namely, to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, may be "more difficult than some of us realised". This latest expectation adjustment comes hard on the heals of one or two other tactical "row backs". Do any other coffee housers think "The Free World" could be in for the mother of all let downs?

Joe Camel

This week, once again, Dot Wordsworth's Mind Your Language column is missing from your main contents page:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/

Why do you want to force readers to access her column through the Search button? I don't understand your motivation.

Paul B

The Tamla Motown record label is 50 years old this year. Thank you Berry Gordy for all the wonderful talents you introduced to the world. You where the soundtrack to my childhood and teenage years- along with The Kinks /Beatles and a multitude of other fine bands and singers.

Motown was unique,even today my toes start a tappin` and the volume button gets cranked up on the car stereo if the DJ plays a funk brothers back tune. Timeless brilliance.
http://classic.motown.com/default.aspx

Raffles

Reading Fraser's latest piece on Purnell/Davis reminded me that the current credit crunch/recession is very much a them and us scenario. The old North/South divide is now Public/Private Sector. I mean, if you are safely ensconced as one of Gordon's client State and you have a nice final salary pension plan then you are currently watching your mortgage fall and prices on the high street plummet. Your pension has not been obliterated by the Stock Market, so as long as you didnt have loads of money in equities you are doing very nicely thankyou. Ultimately of course the Public Sector is paid for by the Private Sector but until Cameron gets in, there is no danger of The Public Sector taking the same medicine as the Private Sector is being forced to.

Verity

Paul B - Didn't Tamla Motown also give us most of those incredible black groups - Diana Ross and the Supremes - to my mind, the best girl group ever - Martha and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Gladys Knight ... an incredible string of talents and hits. And all from the mind and energy of a genius called Berry Gordy. And all out of "motor town" - Detroit. Unbelievable. I feel like ordering all of them right this minute.

Hysteria

Here's my rant for the week.

I am am overseas elector - and re-doing my registration. Interesting that they only send out ballot papers for postal votes as little as 4 working days prior to an election.

Even in mainland UK this would be a very tight "out and return" timeframe. For, I would assert, 100% of the overseas electors this is an impossibility. Meaning that in effect all overseas electors are disenfranchised.

And from a political point of view, I bet the majority will be like minded individuals and likely to vote in a similar fashion.

Is this deliberate policy? I have written to the electoral commission to try to find out the specific regulation that limits postal ballots to such a short time frame.....Stay Tuned...

Paul B

All those bands/singers and more Verity. Fancy a dance ?

Verity

I'm still putting on my heavy black eyeliner. I'll catch you later.

What is so outstanding is, he didn't accomplish all this in Hollywood or New York. He did it in Detroit. And how did he gather so much talent? And promote it so well?

Paul B

Sometimes, I believe, its about being in the right place at the right time, good luck luck, and having the talent to exploit that luck. In some ways it would be interesting to compare Detroit to Liverpool of that era

However, I think there are lots of factor involved in the labels success, which persons far more clever than I, maybe able to discuss & explain at length.

Some of those factors which I believe contributed to Motowns success are :
1/growing confidence in the black community in the States, with MLK becoming a national (inter)national figure.

2/Elvis Presley making it acceptable for white people to enjoy and explore music of black origin- which The Beatles and The Stones amongst others built upon, citing Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke and as major influences.

3/A surge in wealth in the general populace that enabled them to buy more radios, televisions and records- especially 45s.

4/Motown music although distinctly soul, is very pop orientated, with great lyrics of boy meets girl and great hooks lines that anyone could remember and sing.

5/ The was nothing threatening about the performers, all clean cut, well turned out & performing dances than people could mimic in their bedrooms in front of mirros.

6/TV - with advent of shows like TOTP, RSG etc beamed this instant music straight into peoples homes.

As I said above, there are many clever people who will be able to cite many sociological reasons why Motown took off, but for me, it was just great tunes married to simple but effective lyrics " I`m sticking to my guy like a stamp to a letter, like birds of feather, we stick together" that did the trick.

Augustus

Why is the R/H Wall button a week behind?

THX1138

Diana Ross & the Supremes

The Happening

http://tinyurl.com/83yftg

See if you can stop smiling & tapping your toes

Susan Hill

Prince Harry already. Can we all grow up now please ?

basementcat

I second that motion. I find it incredible that people feel the need to dredge up a bit of army banter from three years ago and parade it as racist abuse - I have to say I give him the benefit of the doubt on this.

It's worth noting that one of the biggest social networking sites in Pakistan is called - you guessed it - paki.com.

If Harry was abbreviating the word or using it in friendly cameraderie, then I really have no problem with it. The use of the term has to be taken within the context it was used - it's a bit like referring to a gay friend as 'queer'. Taken out of context, I'm sure the PC brigade would leap on it.

Dizzy makes a very good point about it on his blog, worth having a look over there.

Oh, and am I right in thinking it was The News of the World that ran with the story first? If that's the case, I wonder if they can spell hypocrite...

Michelle

I have long ago placed all my monies in British building societies away from those high street banks that deal in sharia finance for the reasons set out by Dr Zuhdi Jasser, President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy:

"Make no mistake, Sharia-compliant finance (SCF) is neither about religion nor about God. It is about Islamist control and collectivization of Muslims against the West and free markets. SCF systems are nothing more than a ruse to give transnational Islamist movements and their controlling Muslim theocrats an economic power base. Attempts to appease requests by Islamists to provide so-called SCF are misguided.

“SCF provides sanction of a dangerous separatist economic system which incubates Islamist ideology among Muslims and keeps them apart from the general population. Islamist theocrats exploit Western deference to religious freedom in order to lay the foundations of a system which feigns religion in order to control the economic decisions of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

“SCF allows governments and banks to empower Islamist theocrats who really only want to control Muslim economics rather than actually stimulate the open economic freedom of Muslims. This is the difference between theocracy and liberty, instead of lay citizens controlling their own economic transactions, the invisible hand becomes the hand of the Islamist cleric."

http://anti-jihad.org/blog/2008/11/coalition-conference/

As if this behaviour weren’t bad enough, though, I found out last week that one of these now virtually-owned-by-the-taxpayer banks has been up to this:

"Lloyds TSB has agreed to pay $350m (£231m) to the US government for helping customers get around American sanctions on dealing with Libya, Sudan and Iran."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/4213151/Lloyds-TSB-agrees-to-pay-fine-of-350m-for-sanctions-help.html

Iran, for heaven’s sake. The nucleus of the jihad and it has been helped out by the bank down the road.

There is some positive news in all this, though. Because of their reputation for being so cashless the government has had to back them up, the public are now shunning the insurance policies sold by many high street banks. Who is going to take out an insurance policy with a company as in the red as most of our high street banks?

Good.

Tiberius

Has anyone else heard the latest Balls from Ed? He wants to bribe "good" teachers to leave "good" schools to teach in "bad" schools.

So, we won't reform education to improve everyone's lot, but we will wrench a little bit tighter, the screw that ruins everyone's education and wastes teaching resources.

Verity

And Berry Gordy garnered all that talent, marketed it, promoted it, and he was black and he was gay. And almost all his artists were black. Only in America ... even back then.

THX1138

Well Done Created in Birmingham Best UK blog in the 2008 weblog awards.

http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/

Hysteria

I promised an update on the postal vote issue and the disenfrachisement of 100% of overseas electors - well I have the answer from the Electoral Commission and guess what is driving this? Yup - European Legislation !!!!

Specifically European Parliamentary Elections Regulations 2004 Para 33 of Section 2.

So yet again the EU is driving what should be something we as a sovereign nation can determine - it makes me SO BLOODY angry !

Paul B

THX- what are those Tiny urls I keep see you using. Are they to do with Tiny computer which went bust a few years ago?

TINYURL1138

Paul B tiny urls just make long urls tiny

http://tinyurl.com/

Very useful

EUSSR GO HOME

Me too, Hysteria!

They say what goes, and that includes us. eu invasion drove us out; and they say that should keep us out.

We are not a sovereign nation. We have not been a sovereign nation for a long time. Those nasty little red passports with eu plastered all over them were the first really overt statement of the facts.

I keep trying to explain some of this to Americans. They just think I'm nuts and that it couldn't happen to them.

Paul B

Thanks Tiny/THX 1138. Will certainly help me with my two builders fingers trying to type and invariably missing letters and getting ahead of myself in thoughts so words don`t appear. Trouble is, on a read back before posting to check, I don`t see my mistakes, then could shoot myself afterwards when such illiterate gibberish appears- D`oh !!

Alf Tupper

Dyslexia: substantive condition or voguish bolt-hole for the 'progressive' teacher?

Dicsucs.

Alf Tupper

"Tears of a Clown" that wonderful skipping intro'. Does it every time. Takes me back to the late Sixties - Smokey and the chaps crooning along as I polished my beloved Chopper.

Pub quiz: which 80's Brit duo hit was based on this riff?

THX1138

Paul B-I know how you feel, you never see the mistakes until you post the dam thing.

Alf - I'll Dicsucs it. Dyslexia is substantive condition as a dyslexic and the father of one I have absolutely no doubt that the condition exists.

If your interested you can hear Jackie Murray the principal of Fairley House my child's specialist school destroy the fatuous arguments of Graham Stringer on PM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00gkvsx (From 22mins in)

Fairley House has revolutionized my child's life. I'm so glad that we can afford the fees and I just feel so sorry for parents who can't and who have to rely on the awful special needs provision in the state system. I just wish I had, had the opportunity to go to school like it when I was a child

Great discussion on the PM blog.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pm/2009/01/dyslexia_is_a_myth.shtml

Paul B

Alf, could I be so impertient and ask you what colour your chopper was? :) Mine was purple, with a three shift.

Im trying to think of the answer to the question you pose without reaching for google. UB40 keep springing to mind, but they were (are?) a band and a not a duo.

Kaka worth 110 mil? Obscene? Discuss.

As I believer in the market, if thats the price it takes City to prise him away from AC then no, its not obscene.

Joe Camel

Another new issue of the Speccie and, once again, Dot Wordsworth's Mind Your Language column is missing from the main contents page:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/

Can't the omission be rectified?

Alf Tupper

Paul B. No problem Paul. The cherriest of reds. How do you mean 'was'? ;-)

All this Motown talk reminds me of the time I popped into Shuttleworth's Music Emporium with my 47 new pence, to pick up Gladys Knight's 'Help...through the Night' whilst at the same time put in some more groundwork on my Sandra on the till project.
Chatting away about record collections, I thought what the hell and says to her that I've got 'What Every Woman Wants' on seven inch. A little hesitation and she does that bottom jaw thing and says that's not a record is it?

I says it's not bad for a fourteen year old.

The quiz: think she ginger Jock, he shades.

Anglica

Tiberius, a schoolfriend of mine..early-retired teacher... said good teachers are hard to find these days anyway. The well-educated, well-qualified, ones don't want to teach, she said; they refuse to churn out the rubbish they're required to feed the children!

Teaching's hard work; but theorists and regulators make it harder for teachers who care. For example, people who sit around making regulations that forbid memorization of multiplication tables make the work ten time harder for anyone who wants to get the point across - the theorists don't care about educating live students. I imagine the same difficulties apply for people who aren't allowed to correct spelling, word choice, or grammar.

And Joe Camel - until the Speccie corrects the omission for Dot Wordsworth: I find we can access the wisdom of her philology via the 'Search' box @ top right of our pages.

Anglica

I'm sorry - I may have just rendered my remarks unto Augustus instead of Tiberius.
O Caesar! If so, Nollem Factum.

Paenitet - and this blog doesn't offer a means of revision!

Paul B

Sir John Mortimer has passed away aged 85. The creator of dear old Rumpole, brought to life so vividly by Leo Mckern, in the eponymous Thames Televison series. A golden thread of dry humour and great humanity run through all of the Rumpole books, reflected in other Mortimer works, like the Paradise Postponed series.

The country is a lesser place for Sir Johns sad demise. I raise a glass of bubbly to you sir.

Paul B

In Alfie Tupper- the famous runner from the Wizard I believe- it must be Annie Lennox & Dave Stewart,but I`m sure they were not called the Eurythmics at the time, they had some punky name,prior to renaming to the Eurythmics- still thinking.

Alf Tupper

Correct, Eurythmics (once The Tourists)

Paul B

Boris was a delight on Andrew Marr this morning, in his interview with Fiona. He was on top of his brief imo, playful, witty and engaging. Londoners voted for the right man.

Verity

Ah-doo-ron-ron-ron, ah-doo-ron-ron.

Cole Porter could not have penned it better.