Imprints Mighty Sam Mclain and Mahsa Vahdat

A wonderful duet between a blues singer and an Iranian folk singer. I love it

Hawkwind - Hassan i Sabbha

From their 1977 album Quark, Strangeness and Charm. It remains a regular part of their setlist but including a section from the 1993 piece Space is their Palestine. This version was filmed in 1997 and features Ron Tree on vocals

Photo Hunt - Digital

It's been awhile since I participated in a photo hunt. High time I got back in the swing. The theme for the week's Photo Hunt is digital.

The photo is digital, being taken with a DSLR but the subject is emphatically from the analogue age. It is the centre of a carnival glass bowl

Oh poor BNP (hahahahaha)

I'm glad to see Labour making reasonable gains in England and Wales (I'm glad I'm not a party member in Scotland though!) while the Lib Dems are getting a pounding.

What does please me intensely is that so far the BNP has lost all six council seats declared so far (five in Stoke and one in Boston). Oh how sad. Perhaps they will now crawl back under the stone they came from

Post script. the BNP's descent into oblivion continues from last year when they also took a pounding in the local elections. Of the 12 BNP seats up for re-election they lost 10. Two too few in my opinion but good enough!

Mimi returns

An adjusted version of an old photo of the dear departed , Mimi yawning. Apparently her yawn is the most viewed photo on this blog

The last combat veteran of WWI dies

Claude Choules,110, has died has died at a nursing home in Perth, Western Australia. He was the last known
combat veteran of WWI

Choules was born on 3 March, 1901, in Pershore, Worcestershire, He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 14 . In 1917, he joined the battleship HMS Revenge, from which he watched the 1918 surrender of the German high seas fleet, the main battle fleet of the German navy during the war. He also witnessed the scuttling of the fleet at Scapa Flow the following year.

He remained in the Royal Navy after the end of WWI. In 1926, he went to Australia on loan as an instructor at Flinders Naval Depot. He subseequently transferred permanently to the Royal Australian Navy. During WWII Choules was the Acting Torpedo Officer of HMAS Fremantle. He was also the Chief Demolition Officer on the western side of the Australian continent. He was tasked with sabotaging Fremantle harbours and related oil storage tanks in the event of a Japanese invasion. Choules was also responsible for dealing with the first German mine to wash up on Australian soil during the war.

He remained in the RAN after WWII transferring to the Naval Dockyard Police (NDP) to allow him to remain in service until he was 55.

Coules was married to his wife Ethel for 80 years, until her death aged 98. He had 3 children, 11 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren.

With his passing the only WWI veteran remaining is Florence Green who served as a waitress at an RAF station in 1918. It cannot be long until she will have passed too. I understand that there are a few people who claim to have served in WWI but whose record is unverified. It may. Just, just be possible that there are one or two more veterans out there. If there are I will be posting here.

In the meantime rest in peace Mr Choules. The world is poorer for your passing.

Red Valerian

White valerian

The obligatory Alternative Vote post

Few issues have gripped the nation as completely as Thurdsay's referendum on the adopting of a new voting system. Go to a pub and there is no other talk but the relative merits of the Alternative Vote (AV) over the current First Past the Post system (FPTP). Even at a street party to celebrate the royal wedding little attention was given to footage of the event as people argued passionately about the merits of casting a second or even a third preference on a ballot paper.

Needless to say of course that the issue has hardly set a fire under the nation and to be honest I cant blame them

AV, which is used in Australian elections allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate obtains 50% of the vote the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second preferences are counted. These are then added to the remaining candidates. This process continues until one candidate has 50% of the vote (plus one).

FPTP elects the person who received most votes. This means that a person can be elected with far less than half of the votes cast (for example the first Green MP, Caroline Lucas, was eleected having received just 31.3% of votes cast. SHe is not alone in being elected with a relatively low percentage of the vote).

The First past the post system may tend to provide stable government but it does not accurately reflect the voting intentions of the nation - The conservatives in 1983 and 1987 and Labour in 1997 and 2001 received between 41 and 43% of the vote yet ruled with disproportionately large majorities.

AV is a little fairer in some respects. The Liberal Democrats are likely to win more seats under AV than FPTP (or in the current climate avoid being annihilated!). It may make the election of a minor party candidate a little easier (but not a lot). We are not likely to see coalition after coalition - the chances are though that the main parties will still obtain majorities out of all proportion to the votes received.

The bottom line is that we are being asked to choose with an unfair voting system with a system that is not an awful lot fairer.

For me the benefits of AV are not great enough to make me want to change from FPTP. As a result I just can't get enthusiastic about it. I will probably vote no. Had we been asked to vote for a proportional representation system then I would have voted yes with gusto.

Hi Ho...

Ian Tomlinson unlawfully killed

The jury at the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson have ruled that he was unlawfully killed during the G20 protests in London in 2009.


The jurors said Tomlinson died of internal bleeding in the abdomen after being struck with a baton and pushed to the ground by a police officer. The jury said also that Metropolitan police constable Simon Harwood had used "excessive and unreasonable" force when he struck the newspaper vendor who "posed no threat".

The family's lawyer, Jules Carey, said : "Today's decision is a huge relief to Mr Tomlinson's family. To many, today's verdict will seem like a statement of the blindingly obvious. However, this fails to take account of the significant and many obstacles faced by the family over the last two years to get to this decision."

Tomlinson had been trying to walk home from work through the demonstrations near the Bank of England on the evening he died. An alcoholic, he had been drinking heavily that day. At 7.20pm, he stumbled on to Royal Exchange Buildings, a passage police had been ordered to clear. Tomlinson had his hands in his pockets and was walking away from police when he was struck with a baton and pushed from behind by Harwood. He died shortly after.

The Metopolitan police initially denied Tomlinson had contact with police officers before his death on 1 April 2009. An Independent Police Complaints Commission only launched a criminal inquiry a week later, after the Guardian released video footage showing the incident

An initial post mortem, conducted by pathologist Freddy Patel stated that Tomlinson had died of a heart attack as a result of coronary disease, Patel, who has since been suspended for misconduct, incompetence and dishonesty, was contradicted by three other pathologists who examined the body, all of whom found he died of internal bleeding in the abdomen.

PC Harwood, 43, told jurors that he believed at the time that Tomlinson was obstructing police and he his actions were therefore proportionate. He will face a Metropolitan police gross misconduct hearing at which he stands accused of "inadvertently causing or contributing to" Tomlinson's death. If found guilty he will almost certainly be sacked.

More importantly the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has stated that he would "review" a decision taken last year not year not to prosecute Harwood. It is therefore a distinct possibility that Harwood will be tried for manslaughter.

I hope that this verdict will be of some comfort to Tomlison’s family. Tomlinson was in the wrong place at the wrong time and happened upon a police officer who was clearly unfit to wear the uniform (If you think that this is unfounded then read up on Harwood’s past career)

Had it not been for the footage taken by investment banker Christopher La Jaunie and others perhaps Patel’s post mortem findings would have been accepted and there would have been no inquest.

In my mind Harwood should now be sent to trial. While he had no intention of taking Tomlinson’s life there is no doubt now that his actions contributed to the man’s death.

Not to try Harwood for manslaughter would be to continue a grave injustice.