New Years Day 2009 is now. Murderous Hamas young men and some not so young are determined to provoke a war between Arab and Israeli. On one hand they have the cause of the plight of Palestinian people. On the other they are financed and supplied by interests outside of Palestine. They are prepared to sacrifice hundreds of the neighbours, men, women and children, in order to try and provoke Arabs in other nations to rise up against Israel and for non Arab countries align themselves with Palestine and against Israel. This is as much a test of the USA and Britain as it is of Israel. Both countries with major economic problems, Britain uncertain of its political future while in the USA, a new untested President is about to take office. Perhaps Israel was given the green light to sort out the situation once and for all during the interregnum and with the news tonight that a top Hamas leader has been killed this be more than a guess.
Russia has cut supplies to Ukraine because of the failure of talks between the two countries to agree a price for 2009. The underlying issue is the alleged failure to pay for previous supplies. Both Russia and the Ukraine say the dispute will not affect the gas supplied by Russia through the Ukraine to European Community members, who collectively are reported to received one fifth of their gas energy needs from Russia.
In his 2009 new Year message Prime Minister Gordon Brown conceded the year ahead would be very difficult for the people who would lose their jobs and some their homes. He said his government was banking on creating sustainable new jobs from the drive to find new energy sources and from the designing and developing new technologies in general alongside major improvements to our roads and transport system and improvement in our public service buildings. In putting the emphasise on bringing forward as quickly as possible planned building projects and transport improvements such as the new across London train link. While the economy will improve in time there was the implied concession that we had to expect further movement of manufacturing away from Britain to the new developing economies where wage costs are significantly less and that Britain would continue to rely on workers from overseas to undertake a substantial proportion of the lower paid work which many longer term citizens of the UK are unwilling to do because of the disincentive of available comprehensive and extensive public welfare benefits and services. The Prime Minister did not remind of the crackdown to significantly reduce the number of those who have become or will become dependent on the state benefit welfare system where they could take the lower paid, part time and casual jobs with current targets single mothers with children and those claiming long term sickness benefit. There will also be further moves to change the basis upon which pensions are paid away from final salary income and lump sum cash payments and with pressure to raise the age at which pensions are paid even if the opportunities for older people to continue in work are reduced. The pressure is therefore to move further towards the Friedman philosophy of an increasing percentage of people moving into stake holding pensions and which by implication means that the size of the pension does not increase when individuals are out of work or take lower paid or casual jobs.
When the Prime Minister talks of moving away from the unbridled free marked policies which created the global financial crisis he failed to admit that this is almost impossible to do given the complexity and interlocking nature of the way the financial and speculative trading markets works. What can be done is to re-establish the appearance of greater control but the reality is that the rich will continue get richer with an increasing gap between those able to advance in current conditions and the majority whose position will either be static or deteriorate.
An article explaining this was so was published by Eric Lipton and David D Kirkpatrick in the New York Times at the end of last year, revealing that former senior government officials were able to make lots of personal money from their work as private lawyers, investors and lobbyists. Some were willing to be quoted such as John L Douglas, a law firm partner who worked for bank regulators and who helped to create the agency which administered the last federal bail out “Fortunes will be made here, no doubt about it, is quoted Gary J Silbersmith a former official now involved in enterprisers seeking to profit from bank bailouts.
The truth is that Billions of dollars of debts and real estate will be sold off at bargain prices to those who can hold long enough for the economic up turn. It is the same principle that governs the stock market. You buy or hold onto stock when the market crashes, you do not join in when the market it is riding high. The re is good judgement involved. Don’t but in Katrina land though, at any price.
The next months will not be the best time to try and raise the millions and billions required to buy out the major corporations, and the lesser ones, until there is better ability to determine those who deserve to survive from those who do not. However as soon as stock value begin to rise again there will be vast capital gains for the Equity funds to buy out and use the existing climate to get even harder on wages costs and other administrative expenditure. When stock values begin to rise vast capital gains can be achieved by buying such companies, because the climate will favour even tougher approaches to keep down staffing and other administrative costs. The present situation also helps to expose the fraudsters. The one certainty is that the system will not significantly change and what governments are saying is designed to prevent dissatisfaction building up into revolution. Things will only improve long term for everyone when the system gets back to where it was before, only better insulated. That does not mean greater security for you or me but greater security for those who own and manage the system. I struggled with the serious today and switched to the frivolous, although it still involved those who made money and those who do not.
The first programme list the 20 most successful individual record disks sold over the past decade While there were surprises about some of those on list the interesting aspect is that eight sold over 1 million copies and the lowest, the 20th 850000.
Will Young was top of the pops with 1.8 million sales and therefore it was no surprising that he was one of Elton’s guests in his live London 02 arena show last night with 20000 attending. The show was opened by Alexandra Burke singing Hallelujah. I did not stick with Elton last night because the priority was the fire works on BBC1 and Jools Holland’s Hootenanny 2008 where he had the best line up of stars since his shows commenced. Hootenanny the British meaning is Party. The show was full of great female talent with an appearance of Martha and the Vandellas some 50 years after they achieved chart success which means they are now in their seventies so there is hope for me yet. They did three number with Dancing in the Street the best. I was most impressed by Duffy who did Lipstick, Rain on Your Parade and Mercy all without the lipstick which makes her look tartish. She also finished 030 in the best sellers of the year with Warwick Avenue, Annie Lennox did Why and one other, and I enjoyed Adele with Chasing Pavements who finished 23td in the best seller list and Ruby Turner (The Informer), and Lily Allen. One of the most hypnotic records of the year was the Manchester duo The Ting Tings No my name and while they did fit in well with Big Band sound all three of their numbers commanded attention. This was girls night but Sam Sparrow did his Black and Gold which is number 8 in the best sellers this year and Kenny Jones( who) did a couple of swing numbers, well, including MyGirl. The Dizzy Rascals and Hold Steady were OK. I will listen to the programme several times on the i player over next 30 days.
Getting back to the million sellers in the UK alone Gareth Gates was number 4 with the Unchained Melody and Shane Ward came in at 10 with That’s my girl, thus confirming the significance of the X Factor and Pop Idol. Leone Lewis could only make 16 but just watch Alexandra Burke top 2 million despite the Credit crunch. There were two non Brits in the top four with Cher at 2 and Believe with Britney you know who at 3. At 5 there was Peter Kaye miming the way to Amarillo and at 12 Bob the Builder sold 1 million beating Cliff with the Millennium Prayer at 910000.
Later in the evening there was the top forty best sellers of the year with one of my favourites Kings of Leon at 9 with Sex on Fire, Sam Sparrow number 8 as previously mentioned. I fell asleep at the desk as the last five were being announced
I then saw the full Elton John TV show from the )2 Arena. It was not the full show as but the last hour or so was shown together with a coupe of numbers from earlier and an attempt to match Kate Thornton against Jools Holland and whoever did the link on BBC1. I will save the fireworks show until tomorrow. Kate Thorn has filled out since the POP Idol days. Did she do the X Factor? Her strength was communicating and empathising with the contestants a role with Cheryl from Girl’s aloud has taken over grand style. She introduced Alexandra Burke and had a brief chat as she came off and then brought her back to sing Auld Lang Sine with Will Young while Elton played the piano and sang the official lyrics. Given an audience 20000, a good size football crowds in a fully covered stadium I would have expected a livelier and more intense atmosphere, or did I? 20000 strangers after all. As for Elton he is looking older and professional. I was not sure he is having a good time onstage anymore,
He sang most if not the favourites- Shine a light; Guess why they call it the Blues; Candle in the Wind Marylyn Monroe edition; Daniel with Will Young; Pinball Wizard; I’m a bitch, I’m still standing; Saturday Night, Tiny Dancer, Yellow Brick Road, Our Song finale. There was the biggest backdrop screen I have ever seen ion which there was very colourful graphics, film, multi screens and such like. The place is vast. Some people had glass of alcohol and the off bottle of super pop was shown from time to time with streamers and balloons.
Once upon a time one had to wait until January 1st for the publication of the names of those who gained honours in the New Year List. Now the list is published in full through the media on the internet and unsurprisingly all the Olympic champions without a medal from previous games were rewarded, and a few were awarded with a higher honour than before. Chris Hoy, the cyclist led the way with a Knighthood and Rebecca Adlington an OBE, but my favourite was the youngest person ever awarded Membership of the British Empire 14 year old Eleanor Simmonds who won two medals on the Para Olympics. She was joined by Lewis Hamilton and the mother of Chris Hoy for her work as specialist nurse.
Terry Prachett the writer was give a CBE for his with bringing attention to severe memory disease which he had in the early stages. The Coach of the cycling team also got a CBE along with Bradley Wiggins. Over 900 others received awards.
There were two films in succession both regular reruns and seen several times The Heroes of the Telemark is a film based on fact in that there was a heavy water making plant built at Vermork Telemark in Norway and a Norwegian advance force hid in the mountains waiting for British Team to arrive who were then killed pr captured and executive soon after arriving. The Norwegian force continued to live in the mountains surviving on moss lichen and one reindeer over four months of winter until they were reinforced by several more countrymen. They then successful entered and blew up key installations without a shot being fired. Six months later the factory was in full production again. London then arranged for the site to e bombed but its location in a gorge meant that most of the bombs fell on neighbouring Norwegian homes. The Germans decided to move production to Germany and prepared to ship the refined water out across the adjacent lake. The decision was taken to sink the ferry despite a number of Norwegian known to the attack force being on board. It was sunk with 14 Norwegian casualties and the four guard as the Germans had not expect any attack.
So they main aspects of the story are contained in the film which stars Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris and Michael Redgrave and Eric Porter.. The raid to blow up the factory involves a gun fight, and the film, suggests the factory was up an running within weeks. There is no love divorced couple remeeting and no rescue attempted of those on the ferry. Those who were involved escaped to Sweden and although the atomic programme was halted after the war it was learnt they were not as close as had been believed,
The second film was pure fiction and was seen during my three week tour of Europe in 1965 at the Sorrento Film Festival in German with Italian sub titles, the year that the film was released and starred Trevor Howard in a Bridge over the River Kwai type of role and Frank Sinatra as a shot down flying Colonel who becomes the senior officer at the POW camp in Italy as the Italians are about to Surrender and who leads the British troops to escape from the train taking them to Germany. The film is based on a book the first of two and there was to have been a sequel but Sinatra insisted on an ending where he is killed. The film was shot on location i Europe and full scale POW camp was created. Was it worth it? Well it rated only 89th in the UK in a poll of 100 best War films,
I got myself going sufficiently by early afternoon to get myself dressed in two layers of clothing for the outside with the intention of taking the new lamp back which has failed to work, although it did when tested, also to get the ticket for the match on Saturday and visit Staples to see if they had a sale of card. When I got to the supermarket car park it was evident the store was shut so I guessed I had made a mistake in not checking what was open and what was not. I had cold ham and a banana for lunch, porridge for breakfast and a Turkey stir fry in the evening with soup and ice cream, One more portion of ice cream to go and then struddle then no more.
Russia has cut supplies to Ukraine because of the failure of talks between the two countries to agree a price for 2009. The underlying issue is the alleged failure to pay for previous supplies. Both Russia and the Ukraine say the dispute will not affect the gas supplied by Russia through the Ukraine to European Community members, who collectively are reported to received one fifth of their gas energy needs from Russia.
In his 2009 new Year message Prime Minister Gordon Brown conceded the year ahead would be very difficult for the people who would lose their jobs and some their homes. He said his government was banking on creating sustainable new jobs from the drive to find new energy sources and from the designing and developing new technologies in general alongside major improvements to our roads and transport system and improvement in our public service buildings. In putting the emphasise on bringing forward as quickly as possible planned building projects and transport improvements such as the new across London train link. While the economy will improve in time there was the implied concession that we had to expect further movement of manufacturing away from Britain to the new developing economies where wage costs are significantly less and that Britain would continue to rely on workers from overseas to undertake a substantial proportion of the lower paid work which many longer term citizens of the UK are unwilling to do because of the disincentive of available comprehensive and extensive public welfare benefits and services. The Prime Minister did not remind of the crackdown to significantly reduce the number of those who have become or will become dependent on the state benefit welfare system where they could take the lower paid, part time and casual jobs with current targets single mothers with children and those claiming long term sickness benefit. There will also be further moves to change the basis upon which pensions are paid away from final salary income and lump sum cash payments and with pressure to raise the age at which pensions are paid even if the opportunities for older people to continue in work are reduced. The pressure is therefore to move further towards the Friedman philosophy of an increasing percentage of people moving into stake holding pensions and which by implication means that the size of the pension does not increase when individuals are out of work or take lower paid or casual jobs.
When the Prime Minister talks of moving away from the unbridled free marked policies which created the global financial crisis he failed to admit that this is almost impossible to do given the complexity and interlocking nature of the way the financial and speculative trading markets works. What can be done is to re-establish the appearance of greater control but the reality is that the rich will continue get richer with an increasing gap between those able to advance in current conditions and the majority whose position will either be static or deteriorate.
An article explaining this was so was published by Eric Lipton and David D Kirkpatrick in the New York Times at the end of last year, revealing that former senior government officials were able to make lots of personal money from their work as private lawyers, investors and lobbyists. Some were willing to be quoted such as John L Douglas, a law firm partner who worked for bank regulators and who helped to create the agency which administered the last federal bail out “Fortunes will be made here, no doubt about it, is quoted Gary J Silbersmith a former official now involved in enterprisers seeking to profit from bank bailouts.
The truth is that Billions of dollars of debts and real estate will be sold off at bargain prices to those who can hold long enough for the economic up turn. It is the same principle that governs the stock market. You buy or hold onto stock when the market crashes, you do not join in when the market it is riding high. The re is good judgement involved. Don’t but in Katrina land though, at any price.
The next months will not be the best time to try and raise the millions and billions required to buy out the major corporations, and the lesser ones, until there is better ability to determine those who deserve to survive from those who do not. However as soon as stock value begin to rise again there will be vast capital gains for the Equity funds to buy out and use the existing climate to get even harder on wages costs and other administrative expenditure. When stock values begin to rise vast capital gains can be achieved by buying such companies, because the climate will favour even tougher approaches to keep down staffing and other administrative costs. The present situation also helps to expose the fraudsters. The one certainty is that the system will not significantly change and what governments are saying is designed to prevent dissatisfaction building up into revolution. Things will only improve long term for everyone when the system gets back to where it was before, only better insulated. That does not mean greater security for you or me but greater security for those who own and manage the system. I struggled with the serious today and switched to the frivolous, although it still involved those who made money and those who do not.
The first programme list the 20 most successful individual record disks sold over the past decade While there were surprises about some of those on list the interesting aspect is that eight sold over 1 million copies and the lowest, the 20th 850000.
Will Young was top of the pops with 1.8 million sales and therefore it was no surprising that he was one of Elton’s guests in his live London 02 arena show last night with 20000 attending. The show was opened by Alexandra Burke singing Hallelujah. I did not stick with Elton last night because the priority was the fire works on BBC1 and Jools Holland’s Hootenanny 2008 where he had the best line up of stars since his shows commenced. Hootenanny the British meaning is Party. The show was full of great female talent with an appearance of Martha and the Vandellas some 50 years after they achieved chart success which means they are now in their seventies so there is hope for me yet. They did three number with Dancing in the Street the best. I was most impressed by Duffy who did Lipstick, Rain on Your Parade and Mercy all without the lipstick which makes her look tartish. She also finished 030 in the best sellers of the year with Warwick Avenue, Annie Lennox did Why and one other, and I enjoyed Adele with Chasing Pavements who finished 23td in the best seller list and Ruby Turner (The Informer), and Lily Allen. One of the most hypnotic records of the year was the Manchester duo The Ting Tings No my name and while they did fit in well with Big Band sound all three of their numbers commanded attention. This was girls night but Sam Sparrow did his Black and Gold which is number 8 in the best sellers this year and Kenny Jones( who) did a couple of swing numbers, well, including MyGirl. The Dizzy Rascals and Hold Steady were OK. I will listen to the programme several times on the i player over next 30 days.
Getting back to the million sellers in the UK alone Gareth Gates was number 4 with the Unchained Melody and Shane Ward came in at 10 with That’s my girl, thus confirming the significance of the X Factor and Pop Idol. Leone Lewis could only make 16 but just watch Alexandra Burke top 2 million despite the Credit crunch. There were two non Brits in the top four with Cher at 2 and Believe with Britney you know who at 3. At 5 there was Peter Kaye miming the way to Amarillo and at 12 Bob the Builder sold 1 million beating Cliff with the Millennium Prayer at 910000.
Later in the evening there was the top forty best sellers of the year with one of my favourites Kings of Leon at 9 with Sex on Fire, Sam Sparrow number 8 as previously mentioned. I fell asleep at the desk as the last five were being announced
I then saw the full Elton John TV show from the )2 Arena. It was not the full show as but the last hour or so was shown together with a coupe of numbers from earlier and an attempt to match Kate Thornton against Jools Holland and whoever did the link on BBC1. I will save the fireworks show until tomorrow. Kate Thorn has filled out since the POP Idol days. Did she do the X Factor? Her strength was communicating and empathising with the contestants a role with Cheryl from Girl’s aloud has taken over grand style. She introduced Alexandra Burke and had a brief chat as she came off and then brought her back to sing Auld Lang Sine with Will Young while Elton played the piano and sang the official lyrics. Given an audience 20000, a good size football crowds in a fully covered stadium I would have expected a livelier and more intense atmosphere, or did I? 20000 strangers after all. As for Elton he is looking older and professional. I was not sure he is having a good time onstage anymore,
He sang most if not the favourites- Shine a light; Guess why they call it the Blues; Candle in the Wind Marylyn Monroe edition; Daniel with Will Young; Pinball Wizard; I’m a bitch, I’m still standing; Saturday Night, Tiny Dancer, Yellow Brick Road, Our Song finale. There was the biggest backdrop screen I have ever seen ion which there was very colourful graphics, film, multi screens and such like. The place is vast. Some people had glass of alcohol and the off bottle of super pop was shown from time to time with streamers and balloons.
Once upon a time one had to wait until January 1st for the publication of the names of those who gained honours in the New Year List. Now the list is published in full through the media on the internet and unsurprisingly all the Olympic champions without a medal from previous games were rewarded, and a few were awarded with a higher honour than before. Chris Hoy, the cyclist led the way with a Knighthood and Rebecca Adlington an OBE, but my favourite was the youngest person ever awarded Membership of the British Empire 14 year old Eleanor Simmonds who won two medals on the Para Olympics. She was joined by Lewis Hamilton and the mother of Chris Hoy for her work as specialist nurse.
Terry Prachett the writer was give a CBE for his with bringing attention to severe memory disease which he had in the early stages. The Coach of the cycling team also got a CBE along with Bradley Wiggins. Over 900 others received awards.
There were two films in succession both regular reruns and seen several times The Heroes of the Telemark is a film based on fact in that there was a heavy water making plant built at Vermork Telemark in Norway and a Norwegian advance force hid in the mountains waiting for British Team to arrive who were then killed pr captured and executive soon after arriving. The Norwegian force continued to live in the mountains surviving on moss lichen and one reindeer over four months of winter until they were reinforced by several more countrymen. They then successful entered and blew up key installations without a shot being fired. Six months later the factory was in full production again. London then arranged for the site to e bombed but its location in a gorge meant that most of the bombs fell on neighbouring Norwegian homes. The Germans decided to move production to Germany and prepared to ship the refined water out across the adjacent lake. The decision was taken to sink the ferry despite a number of Norwegian known to the attack force being on board. It was sunk with 14 Norwegian casualties and the four guard as the Germans had not expect any attack.
So they main aspects of the story are contained in the film which stars Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris and Michael Redgrave and Eric Porter.. The raid to blow up the factory involves a gun fight, and the film, suggests the factory was up an running within weeks. There is no love divorced couple remeeting and no rescue attempted of those on the ferry. Those who were involved escaped to Sweden and although the atomic programme was halted after the war it was learnt they were not as close as had been believed,
The second film was pure fiction and was seen during my three week tour of Europe in 1965 at the Sorrento Film Festival in German with Italian sub titles, the year that the film was released and starred Trevor Howard in a Bridge over the River Kwai type of role and Frank Sinatra as a shot down flying Colonel who becomes the senior officer at the POW camp in Italy as the Italians are about to Surrender and who leads the British troops to escape from the train taking them to Germany. The film is based on a book the first of two and there was to have been a sequel but Sinatra insisted on an ending where he is killed. The film was shot on location i Europe and full scale POW camp was created. Was it worth it? Well it rated only 89th in the UK in a poll of 100 best War films,
I got myself going sufficiently by early afternoon to get myself dressed in two layers of clothing for the outside with the intention of taking the new lamp back which has failed to work, although it did when tested, also to get the ticket for the match on Saturday and visit Staples to see if they had a sale of card. When I got to the supermarket car park it was evident the store was shut so I guessed I had made a mistake in not checking what was open and what was not. I had cold ham and a banana for lunch, porridge for breakfast and a Turkey stir fry in the evening with soup and ice cream, One more portion of ice cream to go and then struddle then no more.
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