tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post2073093681140496085..comments2024-03-28T16:31:27.365+00:00Comments on call me ishmael: SPOKESMAN OF A CORPORATION. call me ishmaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-73480639117329589742014-09-08T22:00:03.609+01:002014-09-08T22:00:03.609+01:00That is the heart over head argument made here, of...That is the heart over head argument made here, often, when Reason otherwise triumphs, though seldom as gracefully as you frame it.<br /><br />My equivalent but opposite emotional response is that the homgenisation which you mention is an evolutionary good - we need fewer borders not more.callmeishmaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-38184096850982107172014-09-08T18:17:45.548+01:002014-09-08T18:17:45.548+01:00It is not the wisdom of a split that is in questio...It is not the wisdom of a split that is in question -- homogenized in the digital blender of globalisation nations matter increasingly little anyway -- but the legitimacy of the decision. Neither the media nor the establishment -- the SNP hardly count -- were in favour, so whatever pathology the urge represents it comes from the land itself. More misery is masochism than sadism, it seems to me, and there is something strangely thrilling about so pointless a leap into the unknown.tdgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-51344352776962593492014-09-08T13:29:30.914+01:002014-09-08T13:29:30.914+01:00....strapped into the ghost train of progress....b.......strapped into the ghost train of progress....by the way, that's beautiful, that is.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-92054611094136836292014-09-08T13:12:07.992+01:002014-09-08T13:12:07.992+01:00There is little Rumsfeldism about this - knowns, k...There is little Rumsfeldism about this - knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns, all that sophistry.<br /><br />Here are just a couple of facts: the SNP immigration policy will, must, fall outside the Common Travel Arrangement between both states in the British Isles; secure sea, land and air borders will need to be enforced or the South East of England will be ever more overwhelmed by immigrants than is the case; this follows, as the night follows day; pasports, visas, customs, guards; people of both countries becoming even more wretchedly suspects than citizens. Salmond, of course denies this, there is no need for a secure border between NewSalmondia and England, no immigramnts will try to sneak down the M6 to their cousins in Luton. that's just scaremongering.<br /><br />It is alos refutation of your divorce analogy, mr tdg, it is as though one partner is saying, I'm off, but I insist on the right to allow millions of strangers entry to the former matrimonial home.<br /><br />Twenty-eight ragbag members of Europe must all agree Scotland's membership and on the continued advantageous terms enjoyed by Britain, even though the majority of them do not share these opt-outs and exemptions; merely because Salmond blusters that some horse-drawn economy Eastern Europeans will fall over themselves to allow Scotland, a wealthy country, off the taxes which they, themselves, must pay on food and clothes it does not mean it will happen thus. But my little brown friend, Harris, holds these truths to be self-evident, none should need persuading over the perils attendant upon getting 28 nations to agree to anything, any single one of them can veto Scotland's membership, any single one of them, including the rUK. What is not to understand? International law is tricky and complex and time-consuming and nobody gives a fuck about the Clearances or Culloden, absolutely fucking nobody, and nor should they, nobody gives a fuck about Scotland's fathomless, historical grievances, be they Longshanks or Margaret Thatcher, why is anyone going to break laws, breach convetions and ignore statutes? Is it because, as we are led to believe, some fat smirking politician says they must, because of Scotch whiskey.<br /><br />And that's not to go anywhere near defence, NATO, currency, commerce international relations and diplomacy, welfare, pensions, bureaucratic infrastructure. Nor to mention that if Scotland does join Europe every student in the rUK will be entitled to free university education in Scotland which will mean the collapse of free Scottish higher education.<br /><br />We could go on all day but I predicted, in the Scottish newspapers, the imminence of the financial collapse, the collapase to which Salmond, an economist, an expert in everything and a proto-monarch, was oblivious. <br /><br />Who would you trust, mr tdg, he or I? Who could persuade you?call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-35677653402112939492014-09-08T11:09:00.876+01:002014-09-08T11:09:00.876+01:00You may well be right, but how is a third party to...You may well be right, but how is a third party to be persuaded here? In favour of the status quo is only history and predictions of socioeconomic doom no more and no less plausible than predictions about where a hurricane will be a week hence. Against is "the will of the people": they may well be bigoted imbeciles but if the handful is 51% of the population then there is less in any other hand. And the media, prefixed or not, have been strongly in favour of NO, as of course has been Westminster.<br /><br />What amuses me about this is that the fundamental objections are deeply conservative, in the most old-fashioned way, but as we are now firmly strapped into the ghost train of progress, hurtling somewhere, anywhere, with the only aim never to stop, it feels deeply uncomfortable to articulate them.tdgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-52619205937719497202014-09-08T10:27:51.122+01:002014-09-08T10:27:51.122+01:00A deeply flawed albveit common analogy, if you wi...A deeply flawed albveit common analogy, if you will forgive me, mr tdg, marriage; this not two people splitting-up, this is two or three million disrupting the lives of almost half of their close compatriots and fifty-five or sixty million of their fellow citizens. It is a fucking constitutional outrage, ipso facto, this is not divorce, this is vengeful vandalism; leaving aside the fact that it will prove catastrophic for Scotland and thus for all in these islands.<br /><br />As for a hidden, socialist purpose that is as sincere as was NewLabour's; there are no socialists prominent in the SNP, it io the usual ragbag of posturing egomaniacs, thieves, bullies and degenerates; everybody can talk about social fucking justice, especially when they are on two or three salaries, pensions and all expenses paid. You watch, the first thing that Holyrood will establish is an upper chamber, into which all the shit can lu8cratively retire retire.<br /><br />You should not endorse this, even tacitly, this is not about self-determination for a handful of bigoted imbeciles, this is just McMediaMinster, Ruin's Northern offshoot.callmeishmaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-89010495016913132312014-09-08T10:17:14.351+01:002014-09-08T10:17:14.351+01:00Bob has a consummate ability to get good musicians...Bob has a consummate ability to get good musicians to play for him :-)lilithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05011676751221508167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-76307473726506834172014-09-08T10:09:49.888+01:002014-09-08T10:09:49.888+01:00If a majority wants to leave, despite aggressive p...If a majority wants to leave, despite aggressive propaganda from the establishment, then what right has anyone to stop them? Insisting on agreement from the English is like insisting that divorce must require the agreement of both parties. The tacit calculation of those who want it is that it is the only way of ensuring a socialist government in perpetuity.tdgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-66688622536860499752014-09-08T09:30:07.804+01:002014-09-08T09:30:07.804+01:00I simply don't know the answer to that, mr mik...I simply don't know the answer to that, mr mike, at first glance, the English would ditch Jock in an instant, yet the case for the union might overcome natural and wholly justifiable inclinations to do that; imagine, a guarded border at Northumberland or Cumbria; he is such a cunt, that Salmond, he woukd make us foreigners in our own land, he should be jailed.callmeishmaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-71811172250311022902014-09-08T04:04:48.062+01:002014-09-08T04:04:48.062+01:00Indeed, Mr I, the fact that a small fraction of a ...Indeed, Mr I, the fact that a small fraction of a Union could vote on its dismemberment has always struck me as an oddity. But if the English were included, wouldn't this increase the likelyhood of Scotland's exclusion?<br /><br />But your part of the world; wouldn't you be better off joining Norway or even Russia? Geographic proximity has nothing to do with it - pace the Malvinas.<br /><br />Hell, why not go all the way and vote to become a State of Australia!Mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-42030452599108002022014-09-07T22:39:11.932+01:002014-09-07T22:39:11.932+01:00I think the crux of the complaint I mentioned is ...I think the crux of the complaint I mentioned is that since Scotland will immediately cease to be part of Europe upon a Yes vote those living south of the border will be deprived of their European rights without having a say in the matter.<br /><br />My own thought was that a judicial review should consider the circumstances in which a British prime minister can permit the potential destruction of the union on the say-so of as few as twentieth of its population ( a narrow majority in thevreferendum being less than three million.)callmeishmaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-74149270586820242652014-09-07T22:22:32.759+01:002014-09-07T22:22:32.759+01:00And another bloody thing... I see the 'No'...And another bloody thing... I see the 'No' campaign disfavours the idea of Mr Farage being sent North to stiffen the resistance. OK, last time Bute House had arranged a reception committee for him. All the same what are the 'No' people afraid of? A beer and fags man who can work the pubs and clubs and won the sixth Scottish seat in the EU Soviet? At least the man has a pair even if only metaphorically speaking... SGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-5488512063182694512014-09-07T21:54:16.060+01:002014-09-07T21:54:16.060+01:00Its a fucking outrage Mr I. The disenfranchising o...Its a fucking outrage Mr I. The disenfranchising of Scots born voters is an affront to democracy. A nig-nog getting off a boat is given a vote but people born and brought up there who happen to be working elsewhere are denied it (apologies for racist vernacular). WTF is going on? Gerrymandering on an unprecedented scale even for these islands I think... I hadn't thought to check if there are any internatIonal observers in place for 'voting' day...SGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-91354699440058805862014-09-07T21:17:33.444+01:002014-09-07T21:17:33.444+01:00The polls for the last Scottish parliamentary elec...The polls for the last Scottish parliamentary elections were absurdly wrong, in the other direction; Salmond won a theoretically impossible outright majority; even I voted SNP on the basis that they were not Jack McConnell's NewMcLabour, they were not Tavish McHooter and Jim Wallace's Beasting Democrats and the other protest vote, Cocaine Tommy Sheridan's Scottish Socialists, had succeeded only in destroying the Left for a generation. The referendum is an entirely different matter and many will eschew considerations of party loyalty or party hatred, feeling, rightly, that a temporary LibLabCon musical chairs parliament is preferable to separation.<br /><br />It is correct to surmise that Scottish MediaMinster is as partial as it can get away with, all across the piece, gobby minorities, even consisting of one, Patrick Ear-ring, of the Greens, being given tremendous airtime out of all proportion to his significance; itnis no way for adults to behave.<br /><br />I did read that a Scottish expert QC, working in London's Natrix chambers, was seeking judicial review of the whole thing on the grounds that 750,000 expat Scots residing in England are having their rights violated by being excluded from the vote. Even if this fails, I would expect a forest of writs and appeals following a Yes vote, which could, of course, postpone indefinitelybor completely derail independence day; Europe, mr richardproving of some use, at last.<br />callmeishmaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-60767255176806542052014-09-07T18:40:47.941+01:002014-09-07T18:40:47.941+01:00Here's a thing - if Scotland leaves the UK the...Here's a thing - if Scotland leaves the UK then there is no UK. In which case, who signed the Lisbon Treaty? <br />Hooray, big vacuum cleaners and incandescent lightbulbs for all.<br />- richardAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-28306232058177359322014-09-07T13:20:23.996+01:002014-09-07T13:20:23.996+01:00I suspect there is a lot of posturing in this swel...I suspect there is a lot of posturing in this swell of support for the yes lobby so close to the vote and that the independence machine is also better oiled and with better connections among the loud media intelligentsia (self-appointed of course). They'll go for the best of all worlds in the booth: staying on the UK teat but with enhanced privileges. Only fucking idiots would go for Fat Alex's Caledonian twilight zone, so there is that risk; no, they know how to have it all do they not, and the overpowering danger at which they will eventually flinch is that they will be left with nothing to be aggrieved about but themselves. I share your constitutional outrage Mr I at the whole crackbrained procedure but most English people couldn't give a fuck, even if they should.<br /><br /><br />Bungalow Billnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-71103286266308426092014-09-07T12:54:05.659+01:002014-09-07T12:54:05.659+01:00Sorry to go 'off subject' Mr I but the opi...Sorry to go 'off subject' Mr I but the opinion polls are looking ominous this morning. I hope the pollsters have got it badly wrong and the somewhere there is a silent majority of sense that they have failed to tap. Nothing good can come out of this process as far as I can see. Unless there is a decisive 'no' vote of the 60%+ variety, which now seems highly unlikely, it will simply trigger the 'Neverendum' where they will be back again and again until they get it. If Salmond wins it will surely be by the slimmest of margins. Then things will start to get very nasty. I expect to see Salmond levying accusations of rUK engaging in economic warfare if it holds its ground and refuses to let him have 'his' pound. Then watch the anti-English sentiment grow as the Scottish economy begins to tank. I wouldn't want to be one of those English voices that I hear up there from time to time, those who are 'converts' to the SNP cause. Maybe PM Osborne will revoke their UK citizenship and refuse to let them back over the border. Then again it will probably be Millibean in the negotiating seat, in which case Salmond will get everything he wants including the keys to HM Treasury. Lynton Crosby is right about that guy - "as much use as an ashtray on a motorcycle". An independent 'Alba'? Welcome to Albania more like....<br /><br />www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11078096/Friends-The-One-With-George-Lynton-and-tricking-the-Scots.html<br /><br />SGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-12826810417823914692014-09-06T23:14:53.528+01:002014-09-06T23:14:53.528+01:00I stayed with him from Bob Dylan up to Love and Th...I stayed with him from Bob Dylan up to Love and Theft and then I thought I had spent enough time and money on the old fraud. Sales of Tempest were good but that's meaningless - Michael Jackson sold more copies of Thriller than Dylan sold of everything in his entire career and I don't know how awash are Eternity's frequencies with Dark Side of the Moon, the icy precision of its hateful dirges beaming across the Universe. <br /><br />As for consummate musician well it's true that he attracts or his songs attract accomplished sidesmen, behind whose competence he hides his own ineptitudes. The inspired guitar playing on his first few albums was not his but that of tambourine man. Bruce Langhorne, his Don't Think Twice and Corrina, Corrina unacknowledged by Dylan to this day. Like A Rolling Stone was actually defined by Al Kooper, the album, Highway 61, by Kooper and Mike Bloomfield. Dylan's buddy and gofer, Bob Neuwirth, claims that he collaborated, uncredited, on classics such as Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. Dylan, perhaps fretful of his own meagre instrumentalism, has always whined and nitpicked about his studio musicians and producers, as you say, not a man with whom you'd happily spend time. Just to stay with his musicianship or otherwise it was his brother, David and some Minessotan musicians, uncredited, I think, who rendered most of those almost courtly acoustic accompaniments which so hypnotically hallmarked Blood on the Tracks and producer-musician, Daniel Lanois, who made gold from Oh, Mercy's misanthropy<br /><br />Of course I do not decry your enjoyment of the Tempest, ms lilith, it's just that I have come to consider its composer, if that's the word, increasingly obnoxious, bogus and larcenous, his impertinent plagiarism more scandalous even than that of Messrs Led Zeppelin. And that's saying something.<br /><br />Good to hear from you, glad to see you're still alive, lookin' like a saint.......callmeishmaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-59241893685169197052014-09-06T12:33:50.810+01:002014-09-06T12:33:50.810+01:00Well a lost of artists are not the kind one would ...Well a lost of artists are not the kind one would want to share a bottle with and Dylan has always been someone I have found inexplicably repellant. However I LOVE his album The Tempest. He is a consummate musician and his theme time radio hour shows were compelling.lilithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05011676751221508167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-48567531135489982672014-09-06T11:08:18.727+01:002014-09-06T11:08:18.727+01:00isn't it presence he has, Rickman, like Steve ...isn't it presence he has, Rickman, like Steve McQueen, not so much an actor, more a threat?callmeishmaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-2033823347275717842014-09-06T10:25:22.966+01:002014-09-06T10:25:22.966+01:00There are certain ears, mr alphons, in which Bob D...There are certain ears, mr alphons, in which Bob Dylan will never harmonise; for others, it is his tricksy phrasing, idiosyncratic rhyming and rasping timbre which attract and delight; a concert on his 1966 world tour was certainly the most electrifying musical experience of my life. I have seen many, since, more polished, rehearsed and constructed; 66 Dylan, though, was raging, train-crash genius, right befre your very eyes and his songs, some of them, although nof as many as some claim, display the same hard-wiredness to the essence as do the works of Bach and Beethoven and particularly Mozart.<br /><br />.....to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, with all memory and fate, driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today, until to-morrow; Hey, Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me, I'm not sleepy and there is no place I' m going to, Hey, Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me, in the jingle-jangle morning, I'll come following you.<br /><br />If that's what it is, make me dull, Oh Lord.<br /><br />There is a mesmerising live performance, youtube Bob Dylan, live at Newport, Mr Tambourine Man.callmeishmaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-42936609101161485322014-09-06T02:01:37.696+01:002014-09-06T02:01:37.696+01:00Also, for what it's worth, Bob Dylan is, in th...Also, for what it's worth, Bob Dylan is, in that picture, the spitting image of Alan Rickman. <br /><br />Another man who never married. Despite that I think he's a fine actor.<br /><br />Loved him in 'Galaxy Quest'.jgm2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-44959248569069627502014-09-06T01:10:05.598+01:002014-09-06T01:10:05.598+01:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.jgm2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-15362507989685262472014-09-05T22:35:12.514+01:002014-09-05T22:35:12.514+01:00Thank you both re that Tom Waits song. Have just l...Thank you both re that Tom Waits song. Have just listened to For A Dancer by Mr Browne and it is lovely.Bungalow Billnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-31782575309772085552014-09-05T22:27:57.846+01:002014-09-05T22:27:57.846+01:00skyscraper, razor blade, suspension bridge, aeropl...skyscraper, razor blade, suspension bridge, aeroplane....callmeishmaelnoreply@blogger.com