Funny to see a failed politician who spent his career opposing unions suddenly finding one he's interested in

Uncle Jimmy has stopped posting lies and hypocrisy (oh, don't worry, I'm sure normal service will soon be resumed) in favour of dredging up interminable posts from his archive about how the "cash for peerages" enquiry into allegations of corrupotion under Blair meant that Britain was becoming a police state, or some such nonsense. Which is surprising in a week when there has actually been a story about Tony Blair's impending return to British politics. You would think as that is something Jimmy has been calling for ever since Blair cut and ran, and especially as he pretends to be a Glaswegian himself (incidentally, another reason I call him Jimmy) that Jimmy would be filling his blog with this wonderful news. Labour Party calls on Blair for help? Blair to the rescue?

*Crickets*

Of course, maybe he just had the sense to realise how Blair's involvement in a campaign to save the Union would play in Scotland. I'm sure the SNP are partying like it's 1314 right now at the thought of Blair campaigning against them. This is the man who while supposedly camapigning for devolution said that if the Scottish people voted for a parliament with tax-raising powers he would veto any attempt to use them. That is to say, he forgot that he was supposed to be in favour of such a parliament; he set himself up as being a better judge of such matters than a referendum of the Scottish people; and he fondly imagined that in the event of a parliament's being established he would have a veto to exercise. Tactical imbecility, an arrogant assumption that he knows better than "little people" who have to work for a living, and the even greater arrogance of imagining that anyone gave then, or gives now, a flying fuck for his opinion. Oh, I can't wait.

The comments under the Guardian article are all pretty funny, but I was especially taken by the one which read "You can mock, but intelligence sources conclude that Alex Salmond has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own English population."

Over my dead body (either that, or those of thousands of my countrymen)

I find this story deeply worrying for many reasons. A major increase in US government military spending, and a change in US foreign policy, slipped through Congress with hardly any discussion? Only two Congressmen voted against it? (Let's hear it for Ron Paul and John Dingell, two Congressmen who put America's interests before those of foreign countries.) It contravenes the Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act by providing military assistance to a country with unregulated and uninspected nuclear weapons, and is thus arguably an act of treason.

Oh, and it calls for the United States to support the entry of Israel into NATO. Now THAT strikes close to home, as if Israel is allowed into NATO (which one can only hope is a Teapublican fantasy, but with Pres. Obama's spinelessness when it comes to Israel, who can tell?) my taxes will be paying for, and my countrymen potentially dying for, Netanyahu's attempts to spread his reign of theocratic terror from "all his immediate neighbours" to "anywhere else we like the look of and feel like settling our thugs in". One can only hope that however gutless President Obama and his minions are, the other NATO countries will take a more sensible view of a rogue state with uninspected nuclear weapons and a propensity for launching invasions and sneak attacks (not to say murdering other NATO countries' citizens).

Needle of Death

I posted recently about my opposition to the death penalty. I oppose it in principle, but can understand that there are folk who disagree with that stand. Nevertheless, there are sound practical reasons for opposing the DP, of which the most obvious is the risk of executing an innocent person.

I recently read John Grisham's The Confession, which is set in the run-up to execution of a man in Texas for a murder he didn't commit. he was bullied and tricked into confession got the crime he didn't do: meanwhile the real killer has a terminal illness and decides to come clean and stop the wrong man being killed.

It's a very good book, and I was aware that many innocent people have been executed in the USA (and indeed in Texas). But until reading this recent report I hadn't really appreciated the scale of the slaughter of innocents. Read it and weep. Or if you're a US citizen, complain to your Congressman or state Governor.

Blair stamps little foot, walks out on Sedgefield constituents. BlairSupporter stamps little foot, walks out on Syrian pro-democracy protestors, Difference is, the Syrians will never notice.

As promised, I return to Uncle Jimmy's recent demonstrations of bewilderment and barefaced mandacity. In a post on the Responsibility to Protect he takes us through the United Nations' policy and procedures governing interventions of various kinds, including use of military force, to sort out the internal affairs of a country whose government is systematically and incorrigibly denying the human rights of its people. He lists (correctly as far as I can tell) the various ways in which these criteria might apply to President Assad's suppression of democracy in Syria.

He then tells us, astonishingly that he does not in fact support such intervention in Syria, not because he wishes to see both sides in the Syrian conflict wipe each other out, but because he's become fed up with having to justify the Bush/Blair "intervention" that was the Iraq War.

If he is serious about not simply wanting the two sides to kill each other (which is, after all, the stated position of his Nazi pal Bonni) then he is very bewildered indeed. After all, the United Nations had no involvement in the Iraq War. The Security Council was not asked to approve it, because Bush and Blair knew that they did not have the votes to get approval.

Of course, perhaps Jimmy is simply arrogant rather than befuddled. He will refuse to support the UN (which is never likely to ask for his opinion) on intervention in Syria because it refused to support Blair (who never asked for the UN's opinion) over Iraq. How sweet: he imagines he is relevant. Mind you, he imagines Blair is relevant, so why not?

As to Jimmy's outright blatant lying, he posted about a very silly "poll" conducted for some BBC programme or other. Most of what he has to say about it is fair enough, but when discussing the reasons given by those questioned about their reasons for their opinions he comes up with this beauty:

Next, a man said, “he ran away from the country, didn’t want to be an MP any more, did he?” [Factually incorrect. He was forced out by Gordon Brown, Tom Watson, Chris Bryant and the rest of the treacherous curry plotters.]

Now whatever one's opinion of the rights and wrongs of the "curry plot", all that it attempted (and achieved) was the ousting of Blair as leader of the Labour Party and thus as Prime Minister. As Jimmy would know if he were actually British (as he pretends to be), the only people who could have caused Blair to stop being an MP before the next election would be his constituency Labour party. They were unconnected with any Westminster plotting, and perfectly content (one assumes) with the MP they had returned to parliament six times (with more than 50% of the vote the last five times). If Tony Blair had cared as much for his constituents as they did for him, he could still be their Member of Parliament today. the fact is that the very same day that he was ousted as Prime Minister, this feckless and corrupt wate of space simply abandoned those constituents by resigning his parliamentary seat in a fit of pique. If he couldn't run the country any more he wasn't interested in the affairs of little people with no money. No, they could have a by-election to sort out their puny local concerns while he swept off to feel important and line his pockets.

So Blair precisely "ran away from the country" because he "didn't want to be an MP any more" (on the day he resigned he took up his new and lucrative role in Jerusalem as Middle East Envoy of the Quartet). And for Jimmy to suggest otherwise is simple, flagrant, lying.

Is telling Eine Kleine Nichtmusik from Intergalactic Source of Truth really that much harder than telling shit from Shinola?

I just checked my secondary email account (the one where comments to this blog get echoed) and found that I'd been spammed by this piece of Teapublican shit who had in some way attached my email address to the blog of "Col. Bunny". I suppose "Col. Bunny", perpetrator of this even greater heap of dung, may have found it funny to pretend to be me, but I doubt he has the gumption to try. I suspect it's simply some kind of screw-up by one or other of these antiscience jerks who are still waiting for the stars to align properly so that they can enter the fifteenth century.

Anyway, any further communication from either of these creeps other than via comments to the blog will be met with extreme prejudice via Google's Department of Vermin Extermination. Teapublicans are fine in their place, which is either in a comment box where everyone can giggle at their ignorance, or somewhere off-planet without a spacesuit. (I'm sorry June, I can't do that.)

Of course, in the unlikely even that June or Bunny shows up in a comment box with an apparent willingness to learn something, there may be no necessity to point and laugh. Until then, these buffoons are easily as hilarious as Bonni or Jimmy, and probably no danger to the public. Enjoy.

Lock up: yes. Throw away key: why not? Kill: no way

I think it's heartening news that George Zimmerman, the vigilante who admitted killing Trayvon Martin, may be charged with a hate crime.

I think it's worrying that he could get the death penalty for it. I don't believe it's ever right for the state to put someone to death, whatever the legal processes involved and however vile the crime. Apart from any other considerations, it causes more suffering to the prisoner's family and arguably less to him or her. Anders Breivik, for example, wants to be executed rather than imprisoned for life, which seems an excellent reason to lock him up until he dies).

Every major's terrible

It's about time we had another xkcd cartoon. This one is especially fine.

You may think it's a long way to the chemist but that's just peanuts to Port Stanley

Just spotted this story on the BBC website. Funnily enough I've just finished reading Vulcan 607 by Rowland White, which is the story of the fist of the amazing Operation Black Buck air raids launched by the RAF on Port Stanley during the Falklands War.

Though the BBC didn't say, the Vulcan in the flypast was XH558, the only one still airworthy.

I grew up very familiar with Vulcans. My first RAF camp during my time in the Air Training Corps at school was at RAF Scampton, home to 617 Squadron (the Dambusters) and 27 Squadron, both flying nuclear-armed Vulcans (617 carried what we would now describe as air-launched cruise missiles, 27 just free-falling "buckets of sunshine"). Not only that, my family lived just a few miles from Woodford Aerodrome, where the Vulcans were built and refitted. Not many days went by without the thunder of Vulcan engines either under test or heaving a Vulcan aloft (in which case it often passed over our house). I can testify to the racket they make.

XM607 herself, incidentally, is now the gate guardian at RAF Waddington, the base from which she left for Ascension Island and then on to the Falklands. (And coincidentally, the scene of my second RAF camp with the ATC, though at that time Waddington operated Harrier jump-jets.)

Nazi: no. Hypocrite: you betcha!

I wouldn't describe BlairSupporter as a Nazi. For a start his politics are too incoherent, for another he doesn't have the requisite hatred of Jews. He hates leftists, and gays, and Muslims, and anyone who isn't white, and he would dearly love to throw out all that elected government nonsense and have the country run by right-thinking people (which is why I nicknamed him Uncle Jimmy after the character in the Reggie Perrin series). I feel justified in tagging him as a neofascist, but by comparison with Bonni and the fellow-travellers sharing the space under her rock, he's comparatively harmless, and provokes laughter more frequently. (I note though that despite all Bonni's declarations that she doesn't care if the people she supports are open supporters of Hitler provided they hate Muslims enough, and despite all her Holocaust denial and diatribes against "vile Jews", Jimmy has still never wavered in his support for Bonni and her Nazi pals.

Jimmy these days doesn't have much to say about Muslims, preferring to concentrate on whitewashing the tattered reputation of the washed-up failure whose name he attaches to his site (and indeed his own alias). But that doesn't stop him from trotting out hypocrisy, lies, and simple bewilderment.

Let's start with some hypocrisy. Here is a post linking to a video clip where an interview between Tony Blair and Andrew Marr has been edited to make it appear that Blair is talking about having a sexual relationship with Gordon Brown. Jimmy's comment is "I challenge you to watch this edited Andrew Marr interview of Tony Blair (2m 45s) without laughing, or at least smiling. Brilliant work."

OK, I didn't laugh (the humour is a bit infantile for my taste) but I can certainly see that some folk would find it hilarious. Jimmy has every right to be amused by it. But can you imagine for one second that he would take such a benign view if a similar clip were to be aired in which an interview with Blair had been edited to make it seem that he'd had a sexual relationship with George W Bush? Or Benjamin Netanyahu? Or if an interview with Gordon Brown were to be edited so that he appeared to be describing a session of buggery with Blair?

Oh, wait, we don't need to imagine, because Channel 4 did something similar last year, airing a supposedly humorous piece called "The Hunt For Tony Blair". I didn't watch it: it was a good deal longer than Jimmy's little Youtube clip, and while I don't mind watching a couple of minutes of puerile junk by way of research I drew the line at an hour of "alternative comedy" by The Comic Strip Presents.... when none of their earlier offerings had brought a smile to my face. I don't know whether Jimmy watched it either, though I rather doubt it. The point is that one of the gags in THFTB was the idea that Margaret Thatcher seduced Tony Blair. So how did Jimmy react to this? Here's how (capitals are all Jimmy's):

OUR SOCIETY’S MORAL VALUES HAVE BEEN SAVAGED AND WRECKED IN NO SMALL PART BY A CORRUPT AND MENDACIOUS ALL-PERVASIVE MEDIA AND ITS SOULMATES – THE SO-CALLED “ARTS” WORLD. BOTH REGULARLY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OUR “FREEDOMS” WITH IMPUNITY IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION. <

Even better, he adds this:

Tony Blair ...has children, one of just 11 years old, who will be aware of this inane hogwash. They may even be personally affected, if only through ribbing or bullying.

Perfectly true, of course. And so does Gordon Brown: two sons, one eight years old and the other just five and suffering from cystic fibrosis. Does Jimmy give a shit about the effect on them of his promotion of a video portraying their father as a homosexual who was in a relationship with Tony Blair? Clearly not.

Call this “film” a comic strip; call it a satire; call it a film noir. Call it what you will. I call it a disgrace.

But when similar "humour" is directed against Gordon Brown - a man without whom, incidentally, Blair could never have been elected and without whose solid support he could never have run the country - then Jimmy calls it "brilliant work".

========================================================================

While we're doing Jimmy's hypocrisy, I wonder who else has noticed that nowhere at all on Jimmy's blog is there any mention of Anders Breivik, perpetrator of the worst terrorist attack in Europe this century. None. Nothing. Not a single word of condemnation for this killer of innocent adults and children. (I just Googled again to be certain.) I won't speculate on why that might be, though I will point out that Jimmy shares many of the views expressed by Breivik on the "Islamisation" of Europe, the evils of multiculturalism, the wicked left-wing media and the complicity of "leftists" in the (imagined) attempt to impose a global caliphate and sharia law. Also on the need for "right-thinking people" to overthrow governments which pander to immigrants. No doubt Jimmy deplores Breivik's actions, but he's never said so.

Which is strange when you consider Jimmy's reaction to Muslim idiots who set fire to a wreath of paper poppies at a Remembrance Day ceremony. They "should be locked up", they should "burn in hell", and even if they are "legal citizens of our country" they're "not BRITISH" (damn that pesky skin colour). The BBC are accused of "disgraceful bias" for reporting that the leader of the EDL had been charged with assaulting a police officer, and Jimmy wonders whether they are in cahoots with all three main political parties, which are in denial about the threat from Islamic extremism. And in a couple of chillingly Breivik-like asides he warns

To the politicians in this blighted land of ours – time is short. It really is.

and

Too many students today. Too few brains.

And the news story which prompted Jimmy's original puff piece for Bare Naked Islam was the murder of two adults and three children in the Israeli settlement of Itamar by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Jimmy found that worthy of pages and pages of condemnation. Yet none for the Oslo and Utoya victims. Is that because the Itamar victims were Jewish settlers (not a group generally known for their left-wing attitudes), while the victims at Utoya were socialists? Or is it that the Itamar killers were brown and Breivik white?

So to sum up. Muslims set fire to paper flowers and yell a lot, and Jimmy goes berserk, declares them non-British and demands that they be locked up. A white guy attacks a police officer and when the BBC report it they are guilty of "bias" for failing to cover up this exemplary British behaviour and focus on the paper-burners. A couple of Palestinians murder 2 adults and 3 children and Jimmy's outrage knows no bounds. Meanwhile, another white guy slaughters 8 adults and 69 children and Jimmy has nothing to say about it at all, possibly because the white guy shares Jimmy's own views on Muslims, immigrants, leftists, multiculturalism, politicians and students.

Perhaps when Anders Breivik is sentenced Jimmy will find something to say. Though somehow I suspect he may find some fascinating piece of Blair puffery to pull from his archive that day so as to avoid any awkwardness.

I'll come back to the bewilderment and lies in a bit. I think the amount of hypocrisy on display both over acts of non-violent and violent protest, terrorist murders and tasteless adolescent humour is enough to be going on with.

Ain't nobody here but us Jew-hating Nazis

It's Laughing at Nazis time again.

First of all, let's take a look at Greece's Golden Dawn party, briefly part of the government in its attempts to form a coalition.

So Holocaust denial: check. Admiration for Hitler: check. Violent supporters beating up opponents on the streets: check. Sound like good little Nazis to me.

Now let's toddle across to BareNakedIslam and see what Bonni and her pals have to say about them. One of the most vocal of these is "Aussie Brett", in whom I must declare an interest as he has appeared on this site as a troll (here, protesting that although Bonni believes that Jews under the Third Reich were completely free and that it was their own fault so many got gassed, and although she believes that no gays were persecuted by the Nazis, that doesn't make her a Holocaust denier).

Here is Bonni's take on the Golden Dawn party. The comments are hilarious, though. Brett starts the ball rolling, wishing that Australia had a proper Nazi party of its own. Then he goes on to assert that "we have laws that prohibit news bulletins about illegal boats arriving".

A couple of comments down, in a reply to Brett, ShirlinOz writes:

Where on earth do you get that the media in Australia are banned from reporting the arrival of illegal boats from? I have never heard so much rubbish in my entire life. As to this political party it should be banned. It’s a neo-Nazi group and they will target Jews, Gays and Blacks too.

It then gets really funny, because Shirl helpfully posts reports from the Australian media demonstrating that the arrival of boatloads of immigrants is indeed being reported. What's funny, is that here posts are simply ignored totally. Someone called Valhalla posts that these stories are being suppressed, and Bonni tells him to send reports to her so she can print them. Shirl patiently points out to Bonni, whose reading skills clearly aren't up to much, that she has posted evidence that such stories are being freely published in Australia. And Bonni's response?

Shirl, as you know, I have posted a lot of stories about the boat people.

Which rather misses the point. However, eventually Shirl agrees that Bonni has posted a lot of these stories (Bonni admits she alters them before posting to make them less sympathetic to the immigrants, which is interesting though hardly a shock, as she happily makes up totally fake stories when it suits her), and just rages that there are supposedly Australians posting at BNI who clearly haven't a clue about what's in the Australian media. (Are you listening, Brett? Can you read the big words?)

But let's go back to those heroic Nazis of the Golden Dawn. A number of people, Shirl included, post compelling evidence of GD's anti-semitism and Nazi credentials. Stan chips in, and is pulled up by Bonni who firstly denies that GD are Nazis then says it doesn't matter that they hate Jews as there are hardly any Jews in Greece. (Gee, I wonder if she takes that view about antisemitism in Saudi Arabia? Just kidding.) When Stan provides evidence, Bonni says that one of her other readers disagrees about GD being Nazis, so who cares about evidence? So Stan provides more evidence, which provokes the following astonishing outburst from Bonni:

Stan, typical left wing Jewish crap. They always sympathize with Muslims as if they have anything in common. They don’t support the EDL or any other anti-Islam group. Rabbis are the worst, always kissing up to their enemies. Whenever Muslims are bitching about something or fighting to build another mosque, they always have scumbag Rabbis and Jews siding with them. These Jews are as vile as muslims. I don’t give a damn. I support anyone who is against Muslims. Don’t post this stuff again. OR you will be banned.

Shall we just run over that again? "These Jews are as vile as muslims." And we all know Bonni's feelings about Muslims. So unsurprisingly her response to evidence of Golden Dawn's Jew-hatred is "I don’t give a damn". She threatens to ban Stan if he posts such Jew-supporting anti-Nazi stuff again, and when he demands an apology (after all, he is a good little Muslim-hater like her and has supported her before) she does indeed ban him. Which is ironic when you consider all the spleen being vented about (totally false) tales of wicked censorship in Australia.

Anyway, in one post we have Bonni not only showing her opinion of freedom of expression, but demonstrating her hatred of "vile" Jews, and especially their rabbis, AND exhibiting fervent support for a party whose members praise Hitler's policies, sing Nazi songs and give Nazi salutes, whose bookshop sells Hitler's books, and whose leader denied the existence of Nazi gas chambers for killing Jews.

So, Brett, if you've managed to read this far, you can quit your attempts to whitewash Bonni's Holocaust denial, her Nazi sympathies or her general Jew-hatred. You're both entitled to your views, of course: and I am entitled to hope that when Barack Obama is re-elected in November with a large majority she and you, and a substantial number of the hillbilly survivalists who festoon her site, all have strokes and are forced to keep still and silent as your dreams of replacing elected democracies with Nazi dictatorships crumble to dust.

The police and CPS know that crimes are committed by criminals, who may be of any colour or religion depending where they come from. How hard is that to understand?

Even my non-UK readers are probably aware that there have been a couple of recent court cases, in Rochdale and Liverpool, in which a number of Asian men (mostly of Pakistani or Afghan backgrounds) have been convicted of a catalogue pretty grim incidents where young (white) girls were tricked into going with one of the men before being raped by the rest of them. A number of people, including Nick Griffin of the BNP, Trevor Phillips of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and Baroness Warsi (co-chair of the Conservative Party) have emphasised the racial element in the case, as though this were in some way a uniquely Muslim (or Pakistani, or Asian) sort of way to behave. Meanwhile, people one might presume to be more knowledgeable about crime such as the Northwest regional director of the Crown Prosecution Service (Nazir Aftal) and the Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (Steve Heywood) warned against playing the race card, patiently explaining that when crimes are committed in an area largely populated by Asians the perpetrators will tend to be Asian. (Duh.)

But let's not take their word for it. In the Sunday Times (not a paper known for its sympathy for immigrants, socialists or political correctness) last week (13 May) a report explained

"While much of the coverage of the Liverpool trial focused on the fact that the perpetrators were Asian, those working in the field warn against attaching too much significance to race. Traffickers tend to reflect the demographic of the area. In Bristol it is Somali men; in Oldham, Derby and Middlesbrough they tend to be Afghans and Turks: in London they are Afro-Caribbean and in Devon and Cornwall they are white British."

Then of course there is this report. And this one. Oh, and this one.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the reason for citing these reports from Northern Ireland is that its ethnic make-up is overwhelmingly white Christian. So if sexual exploitation of children (and others) is primarily to do with feelings of superiority among Muslim men, how to explain the greater incidence of it in part of the UK where there are hardly any Muslims at all?

Or to return to the Sunday Times article, let's take Devon and Cornwall, where three cases a week of sex trafficking are reported to the police. And what are the demographics for Devon and Cornwall? 95% white and only 1.6% Asian, that's what.

So please will the attention-seekers and racists shut up and leave discussion of crime statistics and population demographics to those who know what they're talking about?

The St John Flaschen.....

You know how sometimes you're looking for something and find something quite different but even more interesting?

Organist Martin Stacey on the organ at St John the Evangelist, Islington. Read more here.

They think it's all over.....

One of the most famous brands in international football is Manchester United FC, who make a habit of winning things. So I could hardly fail to comment on the delightful fact that their local rivals, Manchester City FC, have just become Premier League champions.

Good news: this is the first time for 44 years that MCFC have been champions of the top English division.

Better news: the title was decided on the last day of the competition, in the last match, in extra time, when City came from 2-1 down to beat Queens Park Rangers 3-2 with two goals in two minutes.

Best news, the team who must have been thinking they had won the title by winning their own match when City were 2-1 down was Manchester United.

A friend of mine (Sue Barnard) who lives in Manchester took this picture of the victory parade, which was going on outside the Central Library where she was at an evening class.

Irony Spotting In The Yemen

There have been a lot of reviews of the recent film Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, ranging from the adulatory to the dismissive. My own response to it fell somewhere between those extremes: I thought it was an enjoyable enough romantic comedy-drama. Clearly a lot of people enjoyed it, as is shown by this report of the interest being shown in the Yemeni Tourist board's website. (I'm not sure which is funnier: that people might actually think there was salmon fishing in Yemen, or the Telegraph's splendid misprint of Salmond Fishing.)

Hilary and I visited Yemen just over 26 years ago. In those days it was two separate countries, and the one we went to was the Yemen Arab Republic which was safe if remote. (The People's Democratic Republic of South Yemen was more iffy.) There may have been direct flights on Yemenia (Yemen's national carrier) but the cheapest way to get there was on Egyptair, changing at Cairo.

All of which is by way of scene-setting for an observation. A major part of the film's plot is that some Yemeni fanatics consider the Sheikh's plan to build a dam and make the desert bloom (and of course provide him with sport fishing) as importation of wicked Western ideas. Now then: there are plenty of Muslim nutters who might well take that view, but I doubt whether you'd find any of them in Yemen, despite its currently being the home of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Why do I say that? Well, Yemenis are big on national pride, and mostly consider themselves Yemenis first and Arabs second. And Yemenis are no strangers to big dams for irrigation of the desert. If you take a trip to Mareb, right on the edge of the Arabian Desert, you will see a very big dam indeed, built by Korean engineers and completed in 1986 (opened just after our visit). Not even the al-Qaeda types have complained about it.

But more to the point, about a kilometre downstream of that Mareb Dam is a much older one, often considered the eighth wonder of the ancient world and constructed by the ancestors of Yemen's biblical celebrity, The Queen of Sheba. Amazing as it may seem, the sluices of this vast edifice are still standing.

So it's deeply ironic that a storyline about dams being treated as wicked western imports has been tacked onto the country whose early civilisation gave mankind its first known dam, and which has been refining the idea of "making the desert bloom" for thousands of years. And surprising that nobody - not even the Yemeni Tourist Board - has drawn attention to that irony.

We are normal and we dig Joss Whedon

Went to our local cinema last night to see Cabin In The Woods, the genre-bending horror flick from Joss Whedon. It didn't disappoint. It's difficult to say too much about a film with so many twist and turns without giving things away, so instead I shall refer you to a review which pretty much sums up my reaction. DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM AND WISH TO DO SO.

Here it is.

My monarch, 'tis of thee, 'Cos it's your Jubilee, Of thee I sing

This Saturday my main orchestra (Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra) is doing a programme with an American theme. The main work is Dvorak's "New World" symphony, which is preceded by Barry Deacon playing Copland's clarinet concerto (written for Benny Goodman). The programme begins with William Schuman's orchestration of Charles Ives's delightfully anarchich variations for organ on "America". Or as we know it over here, "God save The Queen". It's sheer coincidence that we ended up playing that piece so close to Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee, but you can't fight serendipity.

Here's the best version I could find on Youtube. The first time we read it through, the "ting" from the glockenspiel at 1:29 reduced the entire orchestra to giggles. It's that kind of piece. Enjoy it

Underground Music

I just saw the second video here for the first time, and it reminded me of the first one. But the effect is better if you come to them the other way round. (Work with me here....)

So: here are Kit and the Widow, a comedy musical duo in the same mould as Flanders and Swann or Tom Lehrer, doing probably their most famous number, Norwegians.



Now we take you, not to the London Underground, but the Copenhagen Metro. Where we encounter, not hundreds of Norwegians but dozens of Danes playing the music of one Norwegian.



Cool, huh?

Fire, water, winter, summer, and drunken rivalry. Swedish pop: it's not all "Mamma Mia", you know

Time for some music, I think.

And staying with nyckelharpa-paying Swedes, here are Nordman in lyrical mood:

And here are the lads with what is surely the catchiest tune they ever came up with.