For The Coalition of The Right: A Song for Christmas.

Clifford T. Ward

STOP CHARLES.

As the above states Charlie is also having his tax affairs scrutinised by MP's and the commons public  accounts committee over unfair breaks for The Duchy of Cornwall. Is this country to be ruled by this serial adulterer and chump, as King Charles III, in the twenty first century? If so the rest of the world will regard us as a laughing stock.

 But then we are also unique in allowing ourselves to be ruled by madmen, traitors, lechers and murderers who award knighthoods and honours to pedophiles, fraudsters and crooks.

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Great Lost Hits: Part Unknown - Del Shannon

 The guy led a complicated life, marrying his brothers wife and suffering from acute bouts of alcoholism and drug taking, but he was widely respected for his stunning falsetto voice and towards the end of his life Jeff Lynne produced an album with him. There were rumours that he was to join the Travelling Wilbury's after Roy Orbison's untimely death but before he could do so, he shot himself with a rifle at his home in 1990, aged 56.

 I include another favourite of mine by him, "Don't Gild the Lily Lily":-

And just for good measure a different song with the same title by the Coors:-

Great Britain Sold Off To Foreign Countries and Fraudsters.

 We once proudly boasted of a fine rail network, and our power, water, airplane and haulage networks were proudly owned by the British taxpayer. Nye Bevan, the man reponsible for the NHS, and who built over one million new homes between 1947 and 1951, once boasted that we were a rich nation built on an island of coal and surrounded by fish. Now even Royal Mail has been sold off and the queens head will probably be printed for profit by crooks like the Murdoch's and Mittal's of this world. In fact, there is a good possibility that it may soon be taken over by Deutsche Post - how ironic that would be.

 People desperately trying to pay their power and water bills or who have to pay excessive fares for poorly provided and inefficient train services have been ripped off by the privatisation of our great national assets, which are now largely owned by foreign companies. Even the new nuclear power plant at Hinckley is to be built by a French company (EDF) and part financed by the Chinese government.

 And don't be in any doubt that this government's legislation on schools and the NHS mean that they are, essentially, being privatised. Control is now being taken away from democratically elected Councils and Local Health Authorities and given to cheating companies such as G4S and Serco who have been given huge multi billion pound contracts to provide inferior services in these and other government sectors.
  
 Whilst Serco's difficulties include the poor handling of pathology labs and fatal errors in patient records. At St Thomas' Hospital, the increase in the number of clinical incidents arising from Serco non-clinical management has resulted in patients receiving incorrect and infected blood, as well as patients suffering kidney damage due to Serco providing incorrect data used for medical calculations. A Serco employee later revealed that the company had falsified 252 reports to the National Health Service regarding Serco health services in Cornwall.
In September 2013, Serco was accused of extensive sexual abuse cover-ups of immigrants at Yarls Wood prison in Bedfordshire. 

In September 2013, Ireland rejected a tender by Serco when the company was found to be involved in a series of multi-billion pound frauds in Britain. 

 Whilst their their money grabbing mates at G4S, who failed totally to provide the security required in their contract for the London Olympics, are under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office for allegations of criminally overcharging tax payers.

 And if you have ever wondered where that smirk on Richard Branson's face comes from then look no further than the selling off to him, at a cheap rate, of the good part of Northern Rock (whilst we the taxpayer, retain the massive loss making section) and the rail franchises that have been handed out to him.

 I have never understood economics and I doubt if many of the economists who run our world do either. Put two of them together in a room and they will disagree and none of them predicted the massive economic crisis in the banks in 2008 which the poor in the world are picking up the tab for.

 Having gone through the Thatcher years, when moneterism was king and the money supply had to be restricted, we have now done a complete about turn and the Bank of England and the Fed. are printing billions of pounds and giving it to the banks. This was supposedly done in order that they could lend to industry and individuals, when in fact they have used it to pay off their still huge debts.

 Neo liberalism is now being used throughout the western world and if, like me you ever wondered what that is Shamus Cooke recently wrote:- 

 “The essence of neoliberalism can be reduced to the following: government should be used exclusively to help big business and the wealthy with tax cuts, subsidies, privatizations, anti-labour laws, etc., while all government programs that help working and poor people should be eliminated. It’s really that simple.”  

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Children in Need - (of protection from the BBC).

 I am amazed at the gall of this pro-establishment, royal arse licking corporation having the nerve to present this program, once again, when the abuse of children at this organisation has been endemic over the last thirty years. Instead it will carry on, as if all were normal, with a boring  evening of second rate has-beens and dreary newscasters doing their bit, not to protect children, but to promote their vanity and themselves. If they wish to do something for charity then why not donate portions of their large salaries, anonymously, instead of presenting themselves as paragons of virtue.
That well known master of jollity and immigrant tax evader to this country, Sir Terry Wigon even got paid a salary for presenting this charade. And what's Rolf Harris, that embarrassing fawner who had to be marched off of the stage at Queenies Golden Jubilee, doing with that poor bear? As for the name Pudsey, not only is it the name of a fine town in Yorkshire but it also defined as,  "The curious-shaped flat wads of dough left on a kitchen table after someone has been cutting scones out of it". Humm, all very curious. Poor Pudsey, poor public,they surely deserve better than this amateurish back slapping orgy for the poor.

 The four hours wasted on the output of this programme would be better spent in revealing why child poverty exists throughout the world. And the answer to that is to be found in their own corridors and that of the governments and the financial organisations such as the IMF who manipulate our world. These are the people that are punishing the poor and starving for the mistakes of their friends the bankers and without them there would be no Children in Need.



                                                                              Doesn't he know that its rude to point a finger at HM?
                                                                         


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Roy Orbison.

The Traveling Wilburys, 1988. L–R: Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Tom Petty. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I think his story is too well known for me to repeat much of it here but I remember the awe that my friends and I were in when we first heard "Running Scared". We had never heard anything like it and he followed it up with a string of hits over more than forty years. Although he died prematurely fortunately he had just had a  revival with the hit song, "I Drove all Night" and had had great happiness and success with,  "The Travelling Wilburys".
His voice was unique, and there will never be another like him and he was respected and revered by singers and groups all across the musical industry. I first saw him at the Town Hall in Birmingham where the backing acts include Olivia Newton John and a young group, who had just had their first minor hit called, "The Beatles". I saw him live on one more occasion live, at the Gaument cinema in Cheltenham.
You got your monies worth: he would be on stage for about an hour and just launch into every song, note perfect, without any interruption, or that annoying time wasting chatter in between his songs. A great, great artist and a true professional.
 This song has been taken from his album, or long player as we used to call them then in the UK, "Crying" released in 1962, It was written by Roy and one of his close collaborators Joe Melson, but strangely I have never heard "Our Summer Song" played on air. Nor do I know who played the brilliant saxophone solo, so if there is anyone out there who knows who it was,  then please let me know.

 Just for good measure I have also included. "I Drove All Night".

   

The Dirty Blackleg Miner.

Those of you who were part of the Folk Club scene in the 1960's may well remember Bob Davenport. He was a Geordie and had a hugely powerful voice, which had no need of microphones, and I was told that it exploded, like an atomic bomb, in the largest of halls. I only saw him once and have found most of his early recordings almost impossible to find. He sang a number of memorable songs including "Hanging from the Old Barbed Wire" a WW1 song of anger about the  countless millions of men who were needlessly killed because of the power games of government and royalty across Europe. Yes the same ones who hypocritically lay their wreaths on war memorials at this time of year.

 He also sang, "The Dirty Blackleg Miner" which way before the strikes of the 1980's and had been going the rounds for decades. It was a song about miners, brought in from other parts of the country to break a strike, and the bitterness that was felt towards them. Bob sang the song from the pit of his stomach and vehemently spat out the title line. Unfortunately no recording of this, by him, seems to be available and sadly modern folk singers have prettified and gutted the song but this version is nearer to the original.

Spying and Conscience.

The National Security Agency (Photo credit: @mjb)

English: Cattle by GCHQ radio station This site was a World War 2 airfield, RAF Cleave. It is now GCHQ Composite Signals Organisation Station Morwenstow (being renamed GCHQ Bude). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Lord Harold Wilson portrait (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 Edward Snowden follows in a long line of people employed in the spying game who, have had to consider whether or not they have a conscientious objection to what they are being asked to do. Not too long ago a young lady at GCHQ was threatened with prosecution, subsequently and rightly withdrawn, when she was troubled about  GCHQ's spying activities on The United Nations. In my own case, whilst working there, following a promotion I was transferred into the middle east section, and as you can  read here, immediately asked to be moved when, by chance, I discovered that the results of my analytical work were being passed to the Israelis. At the time I was young, but was well aware of what was going on in the middle east, and not only did I not take sides, but was also concerned about the appalling human rights records and the terrorist activities of the Israelis.
 To this day I am concerned about the issue and believe that GCHQ had a moral right to inform me of this, before I took up my duties in my new post. Eventually I was to leave over the ban on Trades Unions becoming an appellant against the ban as described here.
Whilst working at Bude I was also heavily involved in a rather curious incident. Harold Wilson had cleverly negotiated a deal over the site which would give the NSA the access that they desperately needed to civil and governmental communications going, by satellite, to and from the middle east. In the deal they were to pay for all of the equipment but the site was to be manned entirely by British personnel. The whole operation was run by American computers and software, coded at NSA.
The intelligence tasking was carried out by a joint Anglo/American team based in Cheltenham and when they hit problems I was the first point of reference, as The Computer Operations Officer at the site. One day whilst trawling through some code I came across something that I can only describe as a software switch. As previously stated all of the tasking came through Cheltenham but, hey ho, there was a program, which if enabled, would hand all of that tasking, and essentially control of the site to the NSA. But, Washington, you had a problem. The code had been installed many years before, probably when GCHQ Bude started its operations, but it clearly had never been tested as I discovered that it wouldn't work because of coding errors in the software.
 What to do? Had this been agreed between GCHQ and the NSA? I think not as I believe, particularly because of the importance of GCHQ Bude to the NSA (see the above link), it had been put there as a contingency measure should the British operations have problems. So, being the conscientious kind of guy I was I trotted off to my boss, a nice man for whom I had enormous respect, and notified him of what I had discovered. He immediately arranged for me to see the Officer In Charge who clearly, because of the political sensitivities, didn't want to know but suggested that I should go up to the Combined Opeations Centre at Cheltenham and discuss the matter. As I met with the British head of the section and the NSA officer serving alongside him in Cheltenham I was aware of some embarrassment, on their part, and it was suggested that I take it up with the head of the software team in the NSA the next time that I visited Washington. This I duly and dutifully did and a few days later the error in the software was fixed.
 Now, to go back to the start of this diatribe, was there ever an issue of conscience for me over this matter? I like to think that I had a pretty firm grasp of what was going on at Cheltenham and Bude at this time and I am as certain as one can ever be in these affairs, that at that time GCHQ and the NSA were not up to any of the dirty tricks against their own citizens and allies that they appear to have been doing in recent years. If they had been then, like Snowden, I would have been out, as I was eventually forced to do over a rather different issue of human rights. I guess when it comes down to it everyone has a duty to their conscience and anyone who uses the defence that they were just following orders should learn the lessons of the Nuremburg Trials. In the end it is only the rebel and the conscientious objector or whistle blower that we rely on to protect us all from the jack boot of government.

The Rape of Our Land - The Big Hewer from The Radio Ballads, and Lost Cornwall.

IMG_5999 (Photo credit: foto_mania)

The Radio Ballads are widely regarded as one of the great triumphs of radio, made by Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, they recount through song and word the history of some of the working class peoples of these islands. A few months ago I posted the first episode, of a series of four adapted for film, on mining and include the next three episodes here. On later posts I hope to include some of the others about fishing, travellers, the fight game and other topics.

 The Big Hewer - Part 2 of 4.

The Big Hewer - Part 3 of 4.

 The Big Hewer - Part 4 of 4.

 I live in a part of Cornwall close to what was once the biggest copper mine in the world at Devon Great Consols and like most of the mines around here the capitalists moved out leaving their spoil heaps to contaminate the area and their mines shafts to collapse and ruin homes and roads. Once they have ripped their money out of the rock, it is no use to them and they move on leaving a trail of destruction and unemployment. Down here many of the miners emigrated to Australia (in particulr Tasmania),  South Africa, Canada and other parts of North and South America to find work. Those miners in far off parts of the world were often refered to locally as Cousin Jacks and this song records some of the bitterness that still exists over the rape of my county.

Where do YOUR loyalties lie?

Peoples of Britain circa 600 (Photo credit: Wikipedia). Brummies might wish to note that they are "Hwicce".

 I was once summoned to the offices of the Officer In Charge (OIC) at GCHG Bude and the cheeky bleeder asked where my loyalties lay. I replied, "Firstly to my family, secondly to my conscience and thirdly to humanity and mankind". I suspect that this was not the answer that he was looking for as he clearly expected me to spew out that my loyalties were to Queen and country. Firstly, as a republican, I regard the Saxe Coburg mafia as a drain on me as a taxpayer who belong, not here, but firmly in their German roots where their loyalties lie (Edward The Lecher, who verbally abused my late mother, was a Nazi supporter) and also to that other incestuous mob of royals scattered around Europe. They were imported here in the nineteenth century and have nothing to do with the historical Anglo Saxon roots of this land.
 As for country: then I am a citizen of this beautiful, but imperilled, world of ours. A world which is being ripped apart by those who use nationalism as a cloak and protective foil to legalise their worldwide dealings in furtherance of their greedy destructive activities. Fortunately they have been rumbled and increasingly there is world wide protest against their operations. They are behind nationalism and religion, the two forces that have combined to bring war and destruction to our planet. In fact Karl (good name that) Liebknecht put it far better than this when he said that:-

"In my eyes a patriot is little more than an international blackleg."

The greatest event in the history of this century. Rejoice!

 And almost certainly the greatest moment in history since the ending of the Second World war. But, sadly, there will be few films or books about this occasion and our newscasters from Paxman through to many uninformed and indoctrinated journalists looked positively glum in announcing this event. No spectacular firework scenes to display as bombs shredded human beings into slices of bacon and destroyed homes and families. No embedding with the heroic forces of the west as they, and their terrorist allies, take their revenge and mutilate the country's leaders. Just as there is little reporting of the armed gangs who kill and torture the people of those other countries that we liberated in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. Well this blog congratulates Edward Milliband and the Labour Party and those few brave souls from the Conservatives and The Liberal Democrats who defied their parties and voted, as MP's should do, with their consciences.
 So never mind the media, let us have a peoples celebration of this momentous occasion in the history of the world. Those of us who protested and marched, AND did not sell out, in the 1950's and 60's have finally won. Rejoice indeed.

THE working class - lesson for today.

“The consciousness of a worker is not a curve that rises and falls with wages and prices; it is the accumulation of a lifetime of experience and socialization, inherited traditions, struggles successful and defeated . . . It is this weighty baggage that goes into the making of a worker’s consciousness and provides the basis for his behavior when conditions ripen . . . and the moment comes.”

– E. P. Thompson

Annies of Liskeard, Cornwall, Europe, The World, The Galaxy, The Universe.

 Now, I have written about Parallel Worlds on this blog before but, I think, that I can guarantee that two of these do not exist. In the mission statement of this blog I stated that, from time to time, I would promote special places of interest, including businesses, pubs, and eateries that for some extraordinary reason the world has not yet properly noticed. This place has to be top of my list because it is quirky and run by a couple of crazy eccentrics who live, in a car parked outside the shop. Everything is for sale including Chris but his associate Annette is very definitely not. Financially, she may be down but not yet out but she is a fighter and deserves to be one of life's winners. Anyway enough of my words so let the pictures do the talking. Firstly what you see at first fright:-

Secondly, Annette inspecting her window display:-

And a gaze at some of the contents of this magical, mysterious place:-

Allo, Allo, Allo, not only are the spiders a protected species in here but the roof's been a leaking!

Whatever happened to the Tetley tea men?

Ahhhhhh or was that Bisto?

Sore point!

Junk?

That bird has been there for ten years, in that dress to my certain knowledge.

                                                                                               Pastie or pastiche?

Implements of torture or sexual deviation?

Scary?

 I haven't a clue what they want for any of this stuff but Cris or Annette can be contacted, in deepest and darkest Kernew, in the pixies coven, on 01579 342762 (landline) or 07977821833 (mobile). If ringing from abroad I think the prefix for the UK is 44 and then you drop of the zero from the front of the number.

Beat the Spooks - Join the Gang

Prism (Photo credit: Arenamontanus)

I am grateful to this blogger for the following early posts on beating the spooks. Follow the link for more up to date info on HOW TO BEAT THE SPOOKS.

Prism: there are alternatives

6

Since the Prism surveillance scandal broke in the Guardian and revealed the extent of government access to internet users data, many including myself have been looking for alternatives. The Prism Break website has listed a huge number of these, which is great but a number of these aren’t particularly user friendly so I’m using this blog to highlight my picks all of which are available free.

BrowserPrior to the revelations I had been a committed (Google) Chrome user, it offered faster feeling experience than IE and had the then innovative omnibar which allowed Google searches to be undertaken without visiting the search engines home page. The best alternative to this is Mozilla Firefox; it’s free, open source and customisable and available for Windows, OS X, Linux and Android.

The Omnibar add-on gives you the ability to search straight from the browser address box, as per Chrome. DoNotTrackMe and Adblock Plusare also must adds, which block both annoying ads and hidden java script, which track your movements across the internet.

Mobile Web BrowserAgain wanting to ditch Chrome from my iPhone, I tried Opera andDolphin; both of which are available for iOS and Android. While Opera offered data compression features it seemed to freeze when data coverage was poor. Dolphin on the other hand seems slick and is easily customisable to force searches through the privacy conscious DuckDuckGo (see below).

Search
If you want to get away from the dominant Google, Bing and Yahoo, worth trying are the European StartPage or the US based DuckDuckGo, both of which promise no logging or tracking of searches. Both offer good web search but lack the niche video, news and blog searches of the established players. StartPage, however, does have a reasonable image search.

Cloud StorageThe best alternative to Google Drive, and (Microsoft) Skydrive I’ve found is the 256 bit AES encrypted Spider Oak. The service is hosted in the US but the level of encryption means even their staff don’t have unencrypted access to your data, the downside to this is if you lose/forget your password there’s no way of recovering your back-up. They offer 2gb for free to anyone, or those clicking through this linkshould get a 1gb referral bonus (3gb).

Mapping
Open Source Routing Machine finds the fastest car route in seconds, the only quirk for UK users is that postcodes need to be separated correctly unlike Google Maps. A slight downside is that it doesn’t offer walking or cycling directions.

Mobile Messaging
The Wickr app for iOS offers free encrypted messaging that self erase within a predefined time, which can be set up to 5 days. It’s unbelievably easy to use and Mashable reports it has been approved by IT security consultant Dan Kaminsky but the developers reluctance to release the source code has left some doubtful of its claims. My take on it is, can it be any worse than iMessage which is archived and probably accessible by the NSA. An Android version is promised in future.

It would be foolish to believe you could ever fully escape a security services or police investigation, but this software should stop or limit the wholesale archiving of our digital lives, help us regain our privacy, and send a message to the established players that their are consequences of breaching our trust.

Please feel free to comment below and follow on twitter:@madeupnamethree

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Jun21

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