CoffeeHousers' Wall, 27 April - 3 May

Sir Graphus

Swine flu:

A few questions come to my mind, which I feel ought to be asked of the Health Secretary.

1. About 5 years ago, we were terribly worried for the same reasons about bird flu. We were told, typically of this govt, that we hadn’t ordered enough of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu, and that it would take a further year for the supplies to arrive. Can the government confirm that it did complete the program of purchasing Tamiflu?

2. The plan was, I believe, to purchase enough Tamiflu for about a third of the population, these being designated “key workers”. This contrasted with France’s plan, already realised, to have enough Tamiflu for the whole of their population. Several years have elapsed since then, enough time to purchase a great deal more Tamiflu. Can the government confirm whether it has now purchased enough Tamiflu for all of us, or whether it sticks to the original strategy?

3. If only “key workers” will get Tamiflu, can we have a proper definition of “key worker”. Obviously, all health service workers need it. The army and the police, too. Who else. The mildly paranoid strain in me worries that “key worker” extends to quite a lot of the public sector, including outreach officers and other Guardian advertised non-jobs. That wouldn’t feel terribly fair to me. Can “key worker” be properly defined, please?

Hunky Dunky

Did anyone see Alan Duncan on HIGNFY last week? Apparently he's facing a possible investigation into a 'joke' threat he made to kill the Californian beauty queen who made a homophobic comment. In fact, Duncan's whole performance was risible, giving rise to suspicions in my mind that his drink had been spiked by pinkoes (of the political variety) in the BBC hospitality room. Any politician vain enough to go head to head with Merton and Hislop deserves what they get, but Duncan came across as smug, shallow, supercilious and pretty abhorrent. Sadly, he epitomises the weakness of the whole Cameron clique : team David largely consists of smoothiechop rich chaps who neither know nor care about the petty problems of ordinary people like joblessness, homelessness and business bankruptcy. If Cameron wants to correct this impression before the GE then he should carry our a June reshuffle - and little Alan should be first for the chop.

Plato-Says

The weather is crap, my dog is wet and there is nothing juicy happening.

Please help!

Plato

I take that back - interim MPs expenses being published this afternoon.

Joy.

RMH

What are people's predictions for receiptgate, and the uncovering of all the beaks in the trough............

Should be fun and games.

Any minsters going down?

Any shadow spokespeople getting busted?

Cassius

The Petition at downing st for Gordon Brown to resign has now received nearly 14,000 signatures (basically since friday).

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/

stepney

Help for Heroes.

Seeing as the mainstream media have been so pathetic with their coverage I urge you to visit here:

http://www.philpacker.com/

and donate.

And then send the link to 10 of your friends.

drakes drum

What plans have this excellent government got, should as the Americans and Sunday Newspapers suggest, the Taliban take over Pakistan, and the subequent millions of Pakistani's, understandably,fleeing that mob of nut cases!

Martin

ORIGINAL DOWNING ST SMEARS VICTIM
RETURNS TO HAUNT NEW LABOUR

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

This guy needs your help.

Jake

Receiptgate - hopefully there'll be a team of red top bean counters looking at which MPs spent the same nights in the same hotels and then both claimed for it despite sharing a room with each other.

William

'Any politician vain enough to go head to head with Merton and Hislop deserves what they get, but Duncan came across as smug, shallow, supercilious and pretty abhorrent.'

I know what you mean. I think, perhaps, Alan has been on HIGNFY too often and was perhaps too complacent. He clearly didn't want to be too po-faced and make serious political comment so tried to joke with the rest of them. Unfortunately, it sometimes came across as being smarmy and smug, particularly in relation to expenses. He was probably joking but some people would have thought 'typical Tory'.

He did make a good joke about 'right to bare arms' [sic], though.

Jane

Check out the Conservative website- they're pushing the EU referendum again!

Jane

Cassius, that's great news.
Despite "signing" my name wasn't added- and it took me ages to check! Feel somewhat cheated, and suspect there may be underhand goings on. Business as usual then...

Rush-is-Right

I didn't see HIGNFY but Alan Duncan would have to be going some to come over as odious as Piers whatsit (formerly of the Daily Mirror) when he was on a while back. What a creep.

Verity

I see the buxom, beefy 22-year old Georgina Gould thumped up a voter's front path in the constituency to which she has been parachuted and handed him a postal voting form, which she had thoughtfully filled in with his name. He was furious and made a formal complaint against her. They have been doing this all over the constituency and the Labour MP who is retiring is so outraged he has made a formal complaint.

Meanwhile, good friend and ally of Philip Gould, the absurd Tessa Jowell, spent the first 10 minutes of s speech about the Olympics praising the beefy young Georgina. Apparently mixing in stump speeches with government business is against the rules and she is in the poo over that. Especially as she offered Olympics money to the constituency if they returned Ms Lardy. The Mail on Sunday had all the juicy details.

Hunky Dunk

Dear Rush-is-Right,
You are quite right. To my utter dismay I happened to find myself next to Piers Moron's party picknicking at Plumpton races on Easter Monday and was sorely tempted to sacrifice a glass of Chateauneuf du Pape over his snowy shirt. But the essential difference between him and Dunc is that the former does not (yet, thank God) aspire to govern us, and the latter does, and is, in my view, quite unfitted to do so. One of the tragedies of our current politics is that the present awful Govt is 'opposed' (but only occasionally) by a team of wealthy chinless ones who give no evidence that they have even grasped the catastrophic scale of our crisis, let alone have a clue on what to do about it. And this severely limits their electoral appeal. At the next election if there was a halfway decent, credible alternative, Labour would suffer a Canadian-style wipeout. AS it is, Dave will struggle to obtain a working majority.

donald fraser

NASA anti-atom victory of 1962

Modern history turns on one conspiracy. Where we are today in space exploration (manned chemical flights with no further reach than the moon) depends on one pivotal ruse. 1066 provides a clue as to the cause of the Anglo-Saxon defeat. An eye-piercing arrow stitched into the Bayeux tapestry. It was a ruse to fool the enemy (Normans) akin to the D-Day Landings. Most historians accept King Harold was hacked to death. What is the comparative historical distinction between a conspiracy and a ruse? Modern history turns on a double ruse, namely a nuclear secret which is only not a conspiracy for the obvious reason it is a guarded secret. It renders upon humanity the following turning point.

In 1962 General T. Power presented the scale model of the “Orion” atomic spaceship to John F. Kennedy at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Kennedy’s repulsion was obvious and it led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963. The scale model disappeared and never resurfaced. NASA's cultural hegemony over atomic physics continues as a consequence today as a result of this political victory for NASA. Search Google with “cultural hegemony over atomic physics” and top of the organic search list is a United Nation published paper with important historical comment on Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962). He is today the greatest legend for many people with any interest in manned space exploration.

What is the British connection? As “The Crises of 1956” by Professor Pat Thane reminds us, everything after Suez is different as regards Anglo-American interdependencies. No post 1956 turning points in British history can ever hold the same global importance as before unless it is about Britain as subordinate to the main American event. It should not be surprising that the only existing history book written on Orion “Project Orion - The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965” is written by the son of Freeman Dyson, a British Los Alamos scientist employed in the USA on it.

dai_16

With Swine Flu all over the news, is today a good day to bury the 'bad news' about Brown dropping his MP's expenses plan?

Forlornehope

Donald Fraser, I've just read the Wikipedia article on project Orion. If the article is on the same planet as the reality, this must be the most insane engineering project in human history. I'm not suggesting it couldn't have worked, but 800 nuclear explosions to get to a 300 mile orbit! By comparison the environmental impact of Concorde is the same as a small child on a bicycle.

The Bellman

@Hunky Dunky: All good points: Duncan behaved like a twit. But the Miss California candidate did not make a 'homophobic' remark. She was asked by one of the judges if she supported 'gay marriage'. She said that she thought that marriage was between a man and a woman. That's not really homophobic, except by the debased standards of debate current in US politics and increasingly so over here. In fact, it's not even explicitly opposed to civil unions for homosexuals.

The judges said they were 'uncomfortable' (that third leg of the po-faced liberal fascist lexicon alongside 'unhelpful' and 'inappropriate' - words necessary mainly because they haven't the cojones to say 'wrong') with a candidate expressing such views - in spite of the fact that they had asked her directly. Otherwise, there was little evidence to suggest that Ms Prejean would use her significant legislative influence as Miss USA to seek to discriminate against or even criminalise those in favour of gay marriage.

The organiser issued a statement about she was 'personally hurt' and the US media predictably spent hours of airtime tearing into her. I am reminded of the rhetorical question 'Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?'

Michael Booth

At the risk of being controversial... has anyone caught anything on the news about the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt? This community, the original 'Ancient Egyptians' or what's left of them, have suffered under Islamic oppression since the 7th Century. Recently attacks against them have increased. An eye witness to a recent attack on a Coptic monastery said
“One of the monks had his arm and legs broken. The other two were tied together with ropes, suspended from a tree, and severely beaten with hoses and sticks. Afterwards, they were placed—upside down and still tied together—on the back of a donkey and shoved off. The monks were further commanded to spit on the cross and proclaim the shahada [the profession of Muslim faith that “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet,” which, when uttered in front of Muslims, transform the speaker into a Muslim]—beaten every time they refused, and even threatened with death.”
Well, I am no religious expert (or fanatic) but this seems yet another example of 'Islam, the religion of Peace'. NOT! Howls of protest from the West? Nope, not a chance. More rose tinted spectacles, anyone?

TS Eliot

Yeah, Macavity's not there again - he's in Pakistan.
Do you think there's any hope that he'll stay there?

Forlornehope

If you visit St Katharine's monastery in Sinai, you will find a community founded by the Emperor Justinian. Mohammed personally recognised the monks as devout believers and put them under his personal protection. Any muslim attacking these Coptic monks is not a follower of the prophet. Historically muslim rulers have quite a good record of protecting religious minorities; though it must be said that they were normally treated as second class citizens and that there were savage exceptions. The more recent behaviour indicates, if anything, a degradation of the muslim tradition that is quite recent. Policy options for the west appear to be to convert all muslims to atheism, unlikely, destroy islam in a great confrontation, messy and probably impractical, or try and help muslims find a way of coming to terms with the modern world, difficult but not impossible. Take your pick.

Frank P

TS Eliot

"Do you think there's any hope he'll stay there?"

No! As you of all people should know, "April is the cruellest month..." and although he is visiting another waste land, he dare not stay long before returning to this one; the knives are being sharpened; I doubt he will last until June 010 - a change of Leader is their only hope. And even then ....

Verity

Tessa Jowell, imho, is lucky not to be sharing a flowery dell in an Italian pokey with her 'estranged' hubby and Silvio. Instead she's entrusted with yet another international milch cow. Funny how 'time' slips away, if you have the right 'connections'.

Bluebottle

Until Verity mentioned it, there has been (unless I missed it)very little comment in CoffeeHouse on the shenanigans going on in the Labour Party in the Erith & Thamesmead constituency.

The story is now engulfing a cabinet minister (whose husband let us not forget has been convicted of corruption) allegedly offering taxpayers' money to the constituency if they would select the Blairite Gould as their candidate.

It has the makings of a good story: a Labour pocket borough (the concept which I thought had been abolished in 1832 but clearly not); the absolute contempt shown by the Labour elite for the party members and electors in the constituency by foisting on them a chit of a girl who has no experience of life, work, paying tax, business or anything outside Labour party machine politics to be their MP probably for the next 40 years; and possible corruption at the highest level. Maybe Scottish Labour party practices are moving south of the border.

I wonder whether, given her background, Miss Gould is the first of many genetically engineered Blairite clones produced from a laboratory somewhere in Islington, who are being created for the sole purpose of taking back control of the Parliamentary Labour Party from the Brownites. They probably don't have navels.

Brave New World!

Michael Booth

Thanks for that, Forelornhope - very interesting.

Verity

Bluebottle - I too have been taken aback by how little comment there has been about this. First, parachuting someone's child who has never had a job into a rotten borough. Second, a minister giving a campaign speech for this individual while she was supposed to be speaking on official business - the Olympics. Third, that this girl has become embroiled in what appears to be a suspicious attempt to get the constituents to vote by post. She even, as I wrote above, rolled up to one voter's front door with a postal vote in her hand, and his name was all neatly filled in for him.

These three incidents are outrageous and one is possibly (I believe) against Parliamentary rules (campaigning for a candidate while on official Government business) and I am surprised that none of our esteemed bloggers of this parish have addressed them.

I am the only one who has been drawing attention to these breaches of, to put it mildly, etiquette.

Wilhelm

Donald Fraser

Have you seen the NASA footage of UFOs taken from the Space Shuttle ?

Type into YouTube, NASA UFO tether incident.

In 1996 a tether, a 12 mile long cable broke off from the Shuttle and drifted 100 miles into space, ufos swarmed all over it, there was so many , you couldnt count them. NASA said it was space debri, funny kind of space debri.

Nasa astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper all have said when they were in space, ufos were observing them. They were very matter of fact about it. There's lots of other clips of ufos taken from the Space Shuttle on Youtube but the Tether incident is the best one.

Archie

Rush-is-Right: I have a car sticker somewhere with your name on it!

You're NOT alright Jack

I put what even I thought was a rather mean-spirited post on last week's Wall deploring the mawkish tributes paid by the likes of Tony Benn and the BBC on the demise of late union leader Jack Jones, who I said was at best a Communist dupe, and at worst a KGB 'agent of influence'. I now realise I was far too kind. According to a letter from Oleg Gordievsky in today's Telegraph, (Gordievsky is the KGB man who defected to GB in the 1980s), he was Jones's case officer and had his last meeting with him in 1984 in Fulham! This means that throughout the 1970s when JJ was doing his best to bring Britain to its knees - and coming close to succeeding - he was acting under the orders of the major enemy power. Gordievsky must have mentioned this during de-briefing after his defection, so even Mrs T's government knew of Jones's spying activities. There is only one word for this : treason. Only in dozy old liberal Britain would we let a traitor and spy die unmolested in his bed. His wife, incidentally, according to OG had also been a Comintern agent since the mid-1930s. Mrs Thatcher exposed one aged Sovuiet spy in Anthony Blunt - a great pity she did not also do so in the case of the far more damaging Jones. A pity also that this loathsome creep didn't end his days twitching and gagging on the end of a rope.

TGF UKIP

Verity, Blue bottle etc, The Coffee House journos are indeed very reluctant to go anywhere near sleazy Labour scandals.

Smith, McNulty, Griffiths and others have all been initially ignored as if in hope they would all go quietly away.

I wonder why this.

And what's happened to my post following up the Bellman's comments on Miss California - not censored again am I?

rmh

Erith and Thamesmead needs a big hitter, not some genetically modified offspring from a nulabour Lord.

It is nothing less than a job for llife getting the E&T gig

Frank P

Why when I press the "Coffee Housers' Wall" side bar do I get last week's entries? Then have to plough through three pages of trivial Coffee House Westminster chit-chat to find this week's wall?

Pete Hoskin

Frank P: apologies, I've fixed that now.

Dog Snob

Forlornehope.

"Historically muslim rulers have quite a good record of protecting religious minorities; though it must be said that they were normally treated as second class citizens and that there were savage exceptions."

So, not protected then?

Forlornehope

Dog Snob, comparatively speaking! That is, they didn't hang draw and quarter them or burn them at the stake. In general their lives and property were protected and they were allowed to have their own places of worship. They were also subject to higher levels of tax and disadvantaged at law by comparison with muslims. However, you cannot judge other periods by the standards of the United States Constitution.

donald fraser

To Forlornehope

Your term “insane”, in my opinion, to describe this engineering project is correct for the wrong reasons. The stated goal of the time was to send manned spacecraft to Saturn. A sane goal to contemplate within a theological context is the discovery of a new Eden, in my opinion. Likewise, in my own view, the hypothesis of accelerative relativity, predicts attainable greater than lights speeds. Under current scientific conventions my hypothesis is insane, but strictly speaking this original project was not. Since I don’t truly question my own sanity, I view it an “insane engineering project” because of its strict adherence to mass relativity. Which is to say that I hypothesize “Mass” and “Accelerative” relativity to juxtapose behavioural distinctions in the M and the A inside F=MA under special conditions found in outer space.

Subsequent but unauthorised theoretical revisions tackled your concerns, including dispensing with a ground launch in favour of in-orbit construction. Other revisions, such as the replacement of a pusher-plate by contained chamber, are also proposed. Other revisions depend on philosophical conundrums such as “how long is a piece of string” for an orbiting atomic space elevator to solve rocket payload ceilings. The insurmountable obstacle is the absurdly optimistic hope of insuring satellites against probable EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) damage. That is why, for me, Danish physicist Niels Bohr’s expectation for it be under the UN flag remains relevant today.

Of course “star jump” proposals in today’s era of climate change concerns might seem absurd. However are international relations going to be more peaceful in the future than political history would allow a sane man to trust with 100% confidence? Even the 1% chance of a future return to the MAD doctrine of a “4 minute warning” might justify some true governmental intervention to re-consider the options back then as evaluated today. Since this has not happened, it is arguable that the End of the Cold War dividend has been squandered or not yet realised.

In contrast the Orion title was recently and deliberately brand-jacked by NASA following an engagement with Internet discussions groups reminiscent of Mao’s Hundred Flowers Movement. Under the origin section of the “Orion Spacecraft”, Wikipedia now says “The Orion spacecraft described here should not be confused with theoretical spaceship designs from Project Orion in the 1950s in which nuclear explosions were to be used for propulsion. The Orion spacecraft described here uses a conventional (non-nuclear) propulsion system.”

The deliberate introduction of ambiguity in 2004 by selecting such a project title supports my previously stated view that NASA's cultural hegemony over atomic physics continues. A charitable view might be that in selecting a project name which adds to the Wikipedia disambiguation page, NASA are hoping to rally support to send human explorers back to the Moon by 2020.

The Bellman

@You're NOT alright Jack: Great post. I shared it with Mrs Bellman and we had a good chuckle over it, especially the last sentence - beautifully put. Creatures like Jones and Benn are lauded in retrospect for the same reason Stalin was a figure of affection for so long, even after the Terror was exposed: they held the 'right' kind of Utopian ends, for which, to a certain type of Briton, any enormity is justifiable. And I'm sure if Stalin had worn a cardie and smoked a pipe, the BBC would be lauding Putin's ressurection of his memory.

Our soft spot for International Brigade Soviet apologists (traitors) and vandals like Wedgewood Benn is similar to the wilful blindness in the US media over 'McCarthyism' and the Communist threat. It's profoundly disturbing. I heard a trailer on R4 yesterday in which some folk singer was implicitly lauded for refusing to co-operate with the HUAC, as though this were self-evidentially A Good Thing. There is now a generation (or more) who, thanks to the efforts of propagandists like Arthur Miller, think that McCarthy's efforts were indeed a literal witch-hunt, and that, just as there weren't any witches in Salem, there were no Communist agents in the US in the 1950s and after. When it is clear historical fact that there were scores of them across govt and public life, working very hard to destroy the US, and, by extension, the Free World. What was then possible only by subterfuge is now sadly the reflexive position of much of the US MSM and academia...

Forlornehope

Donald, I rest my case!

Verity

This didn't get through yesterday - I cannot imagine why - so I will rewrite it and send it again.

Regarding Forlorne Hope's not on Muslim "tolerance", I will write again that people in conquered nations are required to pay a special tax in order to stay alive. It is called the jizya.

Non-Muslims are required to step off the pavement when a Muslim passes and, as I mentioned yesterday, many Muslim women in Britain are already busying themselves with enforcing this rule. I have twice, when visiting London, been sharply and deliberately elbowed off the kerb by a couple of Muslim women garbed in their Hallowe'en attire, so unidentifiable.

Maximilian

And I'm sure if Stalin had worn a cardie and smoked a pipe,

Dpn't know about the cardie, but he certainly smoked a pipe. Always a Dunhill, no less, or so Soviet politicians have mentioned in their memoirs.

Forlornehope

It seems that I have failed to get my point across. What I was trying to point out, was that those villains who assaulted the Coptic monks were damned even by their own religion. The Koran is quite explicit about giving respect to the “people of the book” that is Christians and Jews. Apologists for Islam frequently point to the advanced level of Islamic civilisation in the middle ages and they are correct. However it can also be argued that Islam simply inherited an advanced civilisation and in the following centuries destroyed it. The Grand Mosque at Cordoba may have been the high point of Islam in the middle ages; the most spectacular achievement of Islam in the twenty-first century has been to fly someone else’s aeroplanes into someone else’s magnificent buildings. By the standards of the time medieval Islamic societies were tolerant of other religions. By today’s standards their record on all human rights varies between poor and dreadful. This is a spectacular absolute and relative decline. What we see in Islam in the twenty first century is a religion that has lost contact with every redeeming feature that it ever had. That is my point.

Dog Snob

Forlornehope.

I can't quite figure out your direction or motive here but what you seem to be doing is ameliorating what is basically a form of apartheid.

It is so often bandied about, how the Islamic conquerors were keen to look after the infidels within their ambit, but it's not a care I would like to be subjected to.

As you state in your description of Islam's magnanimity: "...and they (the khuffir) were allowed to have...". That's it right there: a gentle, managed slavery.

Verity

And they had to pay the jizyah, and they had to step off the payment when a Muslim passed and they could not keep their place in a queue because a Muslim was entitled to step in front of them.

Other than that, they were swell neighbours and lots of fun.

Verity

Now David Cameron has refined his notoriously stupid A-List and has declared that the Government, should he be running it, will have to be made up of one-third women.

Is there no way the Shadow Cabinet can control this control freak? Well, at least he'll be gone after the next election and we can get down to business.

stereodog

With regard to the photos of Clegg and Cameron side by side with Joanna Lumley I am reminded of the last verse of Charles Coborn's great song "Oh Better, Far Better It Is To Let, Liberals And Tories Alone You Bet, Unless Your Both Anxious And Willing To Get, Two Lovely Black Eyes." Lesson for the future Gordon?

You're NOT aright Jack.

@ Bellman : The folk singer who 'suffered' so much under McCarthy and whose 90th birthday the Bolshevik Bullshit Corp are celebrating ( he was in jail for a few hours awaiting bail) is Pete Seeger. Like Michael Foot he has reached a great age - but is still either a gullible fool or a conscious Commie dupe. (No fool like an old Foot). Anyone who has studied the Alger Hiss/Whitaker Chambers case will know that there certainly WERE Reds under the bed in 1940s/50s America. Old Joe may have been a booze-riddled lush but he performed a great public service in exposing Communist infiltration. Too many 'left/liberal' academics today (Eric Hobsbawm : this means YOU) are still apologists for the system of organised mass murder that is Communism.

Verity

You're NOT aright Jack - you are correct. Joe McCarthy did a huge service to the United States.

No wonder the widowed Jackie Kennedy raced off to marry Aristotle Onassis. Next to the Kennedy family, he probably looked easy-going and transparent.

THX1138

You're NOT aright Jack- Bobby Dylan had you down pat.

Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues

http://tinyurl.com/d797tp

Rhoda Klapp

I've always liked the left-wing singers. The long US tradition. Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Robeson, Dylan, Springsteen. I'm going to see Baez when she comes to Oxford in October. Don't care for the politics, but they can all sing. But not Seeger. He always seemed to be, well, I don't know. Fake. Insincere. Not much good.

Kevyn Bodman

O/T but I would like to correct a mistaken idea that came up on another thread; I couldn't do so earlier because I was away from my computer.

I am not Kevin B, occasional Samizdata commenter. He has read more libertarian theory than me, I think.

His brother commenter on Samizdata Ian B is often sound, too.

Neither am I KB, occasional commenter on these pages.

95% + of my comments are under my own name.
I use a pseudonym occasionally, but only on one subject.
I've been on these pages under that pseudonym maybe half a dozen times,I'd happily buy a drink for anyone who rumbles that identity, provided, of course that they don't use our blessed government's e-mail and internet tracking powers.I'm sure the sppooks could find out who my alter-ego is.
They can find out about you too.
You should not be happy about this.

(Ooops, when being a bit blokeish I have commented under yet another name, Superficial Sexist, but those are not entirely serious. But Caroline Flint remains a pretty girl.)

Verity

Rhoda K - Aaaargghh! I hate those lefty singers! I LOATHED Peter, Paul and Mary. And Joan Bayez may have the second most irritating voice and vocal mannerisms in the world - after Jodi Mitchell.

Kevyn Bodman

Joni Mitchell! Wonderful,particularly the first 6 'albums', as we used to call them.
I thought Carole King was overrated as a performer, but she was a big star for some time.

Emmylou Harris has produced some outstanding work; I particularly commend 'Red Dirt Girl'.
Mary Chapin Carpenter is a major talent.
I don't know any of their politics.

Right wing singers? I've got a fuzzy childhood memory of Sergeant Barry somebody (?) singing The Green Beret.But that was militaristic, not politics.

What are Van Morrison's politics?
Don't know, don't care.

What were JSB's non-musical beliefs when he turned out the Cello Suites, or the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin?
Don't know, don't care.

I'm told that Ruth Rendell is a Labour peer, but I think she's the finest novelist writing in English of the last 20 years.
Yes, the finest novelist.Not just the finest crime writer.

Art is independent of the artist.
There is an opposing view, of course.

Paul B

I love Joni, Blue and Song to a Seagull are simply exquisite. I should imagine Stevie Wonder is a leftie, likewise Marvin Gaye. Paul Weller is very firmly from the left and Elvis Costello as well with his association with the brilliant Bleasdale yet another bloody but brilliant leftie. I even enjoyed Jimmy Somerville in his younger days, his music that is, before anyone asks. Kevyn, I prefer Sue Townsend to Rendell, although both fine writers

Frank P

Paul Johnson seems to have disappeared from the pages of this Magazine. Anyone know why?
Pete? He hasn't passed on has he? Tell me it ain't so, please.

Rhoda Klapp

Kevyn. Barry Sadler, from memory, no googling. Only because he's mentioned in a Simon & Garfunkel song. Funny how you can remember lyrics for 40 years.

Pete Hoskin

Frank P: Paul Johnson has left the Speccie, I'm afraid. The Mail gave their take on the story a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1168896/EPHRAIM-HARDCASTLE-Why-historian-ditched-Spectator-column-28-years-printed-false-sleaze-rumours.html

In case you need a fix, he wrote the Diary in this week's Staggers:

http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2009/05/pauli-known-work-number-darwin

Horst Wessel

Right-wing singers are a pretty select list but here are a couple:
Iggy Pop
David Bowie
Jarvis Cocker ( who's just called for a Tory govt)
& Katherine Jenkins' rendition of 'I Vow to thee my country' brings tears to my eyes. Also didn't Silvio Berlusconi begin his career as a cruise liner singer? Did he release an album?

Frank P

Pete Hoskin

Thank you for the links; the first imparting the worst literary news that I have read for several decades, particularly as Paul is, happily, still extant.

I'm less than surprised, given his appalling editorship of this magazine so far, that D'Ancona would make such a crass proposition to the eminence grise of its columnists: bloody insensitive upstart! But I am deeply disappointed that Andrew Neil did not travel to Monmouth Road and, on bended knees, apologise for the stupidity of his underling and beg the old boy to stay for the sake of the most senior and faithful readers like myself. For some time now (since Mark Steyn departed hence actually) PJ has been the thread upon which my subscription to the magazine hangs; Melanie Phillips’s arrival strengthened the cord – but she should have been Editor, not blogger, hereabouts; W'Ancona has however just snipped it through with one twattish swipe of his toy plastic sword.

How dare he attempt to insult Johnson in this way? Was it budgetary considerations; space for needed for more leftie cronies; or for reasons of spiteful literary jealousy? He certainly will never be able to write as well as Paul (or any of the many other Johnsons who have contributed to, or edited, this magazine come to that) and he probably knows it. As I remarked once before, less 'Champagne for the Brain', more Arsey Spumanti for the Drain!

Before I depart completely from these facilities I would like to thank you for your occasional help, your polite (if not always successful) stewardship of these blogs and your articles, many of which have been thought provoking and given me pleasure, despite the inevitable generational incongruities.

James Forsythe: sorry, your previous letter some time ago delayed my intention to cancel my sub. This time your idiot editor has produced the straw that has broken the camel's back and left me with the hump.

Letter to Sittingbourne to follow.

Cc:

Andrew Neil
Matthew D’Ancona
Paul Johnson.

(If you would be so kind, Pete – I doubt any of them deign to read the blogs commentariat, the first two should, but no doubt PJ has better things to do with his precious remaining time).

Kevyn Bodman

I flew out of Terminal 3 at Heathrow recently.
After the ridiculous and ineffective 'security' screening (I walked around the outside of the footwear removal and X-ray station in my bulky walking boots) I went to buy a few books.
No bookshop.
That's right, no bookshop.
W H Smith sells some books but is not a bookshop.I've read all of Lee Child and much of Harlan Coben so don't need what W H Smith is selling at T3.
Instead I thought I'd go to Borders for some History and/or Politics.
No bookshop.
I know that most passengers using T3 are not British.
I know the market operates and if the bookshp wasn't making money it would close.
But I am disappointed that the travelling public have become so dumbed down.

Verity

Mick Jagger, despite the stage image, is right wing. The right wingers are better dressers, that's for sure. Both Jagger and Bowie are very elegant men away from the stage.

Frank Sinatra was a right winger. Willie Nelson, Charlie Daniels, Waylon Jenning are all on the right, as is Dolly Parton and just about every other c&w singer.

John Lennon ... aaaarggh! What a pretentious prat. I don't know how anyone could be a fan of The Speccie and be able to tolerate Jodi Mitchell.

Kevyn Bodman

John Lennon gave us 'All You Need Is Love' and 'Imagine', two of the very worst songs I have ever heard.

Joni Mitchell wrote, among many others:
Both Sides Now, The Circle Game, Free Man in Paris, River, Come In From The Cold.
Some of the best songs of the last 50 years.

How can a speccie fan not like them?

Alf Tupper

Pete Hoskin.

What no phots?

Verity

Kevyn Bodman, agreed. For intellectual content and spiritual insight, I would place 'Imagine' quite some way below 'The Laughing Policeman' song.

As far as Jodi Mitchell goes, "I've Looked at Life from Both Sides Now". So what?

Kevyn Bodman

Verity,
Many years ago, in a moment of extremely teenage 'insight' and 'wisdom' I claimed that 'Both Sides Now' encapsulates, in just 3 minutes, the whole of 'Songs of Innocence and Experience.'
I wouldn't make that statement now.
But I still think it is a very pleasant melodic juxtaposition of naivety and cynicism.

Please don't go down the 'so what' route, leave that to Ed Balls and people like him.

Almost anything can be dismissed with 'so what?', from the personal and trivial e.g. I set a 10k PB by over a minute last year, 'so what? That's still 20 minutes slower than the world best' to:
Shakespeare wrote a great tragedy called King Lear, 'so what.I haven't got 3 daughters.'

There is no accounting for taste,I could never appreciate the masterful saxophone playing of Michael Brecker for example, but isn't it better to be disposed to finding pleasure in things rather than the opposite?

Perhaps we can agree on that even if we can't agree on music.

-------------------------------
If I had to choose just one piece of music for a desert island it would be Beethoven's Grosse Fuge.

As this thread runs out of steam at the end of the week would anyone else like to tell the readership the one piece?

Paul B

Kevyn, my desert island piece would be, Bachs Jesu Joy of Man Desiring from Canata 147

Alf Tupper

Kevyn.

Any Coldplay track. It would remind me of the horrible things I don't miss about 21st c. popcult.

Whitney Houston even better.

Michael Bolton would be overkill. Lose the will to live anywhere.

Diana

Fraser/Pete/James - Any chance of a feature from Gordon Brown's constituency to take the political temperature there?

Verity

Kevyn - The Eroica.

Alf Tupper, I'm right with you on Whitney Houston.

Oi! Pete! Where's the new Wall?

Pete Hoskin

Verity: it's a bank holiday over here, so things are a little out of sync. I'll put a new Wall up now.