Wings Over Scotland

Prog Rock?

Nah, this is prog rock!

link to youtube.com

Ok, guys and gals, the comments certainly picked up with all the interest in oxi, oxi, oxi! Kudos to Greece, taking the dog by the tail and telling them it ain’t good enough!

Liked the prog rock links. A wee bit o’ anarchy can be a tonic!

@ Bdtt I shared an FB post about the Treaty of Union last night and come on here today to find you are on to it already. Is your Dundee residence really the home of the National Archives? 🙂

@ Paula R. 12:56am

Thanks for you particular “prog rock” preference 🙂 You know how to stroke souls like mine.

Attended such a service in North Uist when we live in the Hebrides; no organ music thank goodness, just pure voices and a rather Hellfire type of meenister! Bare wood church floor and probably a good thing it was a summer night because I doubt there was any heating. One of the few memorable church services I have attended.

The scenes in that video made me nostalgic and fairly “homesick”… despite the fact I’m not a born islander. Must visit the islands again soon. Thank you (again!) :-))

Liar Liar!

link to youtube.com

@ Thepnr

Hi Alex, definitely worth trying to keep up with Brian’s links even if you need matchsticks to keep the ol’ eyes open. Ta Brian, our very on version of Wikipedia; would that be Tecklepedia, iye?

Loved the Liar Liar link although they missed out yon ither pairty.

@ Bdtt

You got the big guns out with Freddie! Unsurpassable.

One of my favourites, this one has a few liars featured too, but, right now I like it particularly because it chimes with the “Nae Fear Greeks”, except the very end bit 🙁

link to youtube.com

Jiss catchin’ up on other pages.

Re my ‘Rock’ mention of a wee while ago…

You want to check out the posts since this time last night on this page:-

link to wingsoverscotland.com

Methinks someone’s trying to frack this web site.

@ Bdtt

Felt compelled to follow your last link to the main pages. There are times when the comments section of this site become more than a bit intemperate and displays all the charm of p***ing contest.

I’m sorry to say I felt further compelled to make comment, but, probably more would be gained by just a few deep breaths.

This is not a ‘normal’ boom and bust cycle.
This is not going away any time soon.

This a consequence of unfettered capitalism and the lunatic ‘policy’ of globalisation bought into by Reagan and Thatcher (both sufferers of degenerate brain disease) and carried on by Bush, Blair and Brown. But these ‘leaders’ were just mere puppets. The multinational corporation mentality is the real villain of the piece.

Those ‘captains of industry’, most of whom are unable to chart a course beyond next month’s balance sheet, sought only two things:

1) To run after the lowest available wage bill using workers with no rights in China.

2) To create a Global market place whereby they could maximise profit.

In order to pursue these policies, Western leaders of gullibility or criminality or just plain bonkers were connived into place and the required trade deals and other changes made.

Whether they were incapable of understanding the consequences of blindly pursuing those policies on the stability of the World economy, on the stability of World peace or on the environment or whether they simply did not care doesn’t really matter, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Huge sectors of manufacturing have headed East to the slave prisons and low wage resource of China. Lovely balance sheet. Only problem is the loss of manufacturing jobs in the West.
But never mind eh? We can all service each others jacksies and those nice Easterners will pay us handsomely for our ‘services’ too, right?

What a load of bollox. Does anyone really believe that once China had most of the manufacturing industry that they were going to hand money back to the West for ‘services’ they could easily provide for themselves in order that we can buy goods from them?

And look at the effect this has had on the environment. China is very nearly 100% coal burning for its electricity production. So goods once made in Europe where a high percentage is nuclear, hydro, wind etc. are now being made using coal. Not only that, but because of the cheaper prices for goods due to the artificially low labour costs, we are using far more, changing and discarding far more often. Meanwhile our idiotic and/or dishonest Western leaders crow about GGE reductions in their country which are largely due to reduced manufacturing when the relocation of that manufacturing is actually resulting in a massive increase in Global pollution.

And the new, as yet in its infancy, affluence all that manufacturing is creating in China has already, even at their still low GDP pc, put pressure on food and oil prices World wide too.

Now I am certainly not against China being capitalised and their standard of living raised to Western levels but China is quite a different kettle of fish from the other Pac Rim capitalisations of the past. Quite aside from human rights issues, the difference in scale is huge and way beyond anything the World economy can ‘ride out’ as per it did for Japan, Korea, Taiwan etc. this needs to be done in a controlled manner which does not create destructive instabilities.

For a start, to create the basics of a level playing field, workers there should have normal workers’ rights. The environment should be protected by insisting on clean coal burning technology.

From the capitalists’ point of view the extra costs involved in those measures would make China less attractive and that would have slowed things naturally and in a constructive way.
However, the Chinese government was certainly never going to put these measures in place voluntarily.

Foreign investors would have had to insist on them but that would have required what amounts to a UN backed investment policy which would never have flown.

Anyway, capital has probably already accrued in China beyond the critical mass required to self-fund its own expansion, which, although perhaps at a lower rate, is still way fast enough to continue to destabilise the World economy and environment.

And China has learned from the orchestrated East Asian Banking crisis of the 90s and made sure the yuan is seeded away in dollar, pound and euro areas, there is no option of selectively destabilising and slowing things in the that way again, a ploy which was used to throttle back on Japan’s expansion when it threatened American economic hegemony in the 90s.

The introduction of capitalism to the Pac Rim countries was not without its problems for World economic stability in the past but those bumps, although large, were rideable until their wage rates approached Western levels which restored balance, halted the drain on manufacturing and even reversed it in some areas.

However, the same thing cannot be done with China it is simply far too big. Development there has to be controlled. The World economy would simply not survive a 20 year timescale expansion of China from zero to Western levels as seen in other Pac Rim countries. China is like ten Japans rolled into one. Also Japan was largely nuclear so there was not the environmental consequences historically either.

Demand on food and fuel will continue to increase, the West will stay in recession and unemployment will continue to grow until,… someone points out “Wait a minute just a couple of decades back Europe and America grew all it needed to eat and produced all the goods it needed as well. Why can’t we go back to that?” And so trade tarrifs and a degree of isolationism will inevitably need to return which will enable the West to get back to similar standards of living they enjoyed previously (provided we stay cosy with Russia for oil and gas). But the interim will be grim, and sadly NOT just for the Gadarine swine parasites of the City or Wall Street.

And we are talking at least 5 years before that can be fully implemented. So that is how long I expect things to keep going down.

Oh there will be normal boom and bust cycles driven by domestic policies in countries superimposed over the downward trend, sometimes even hinting that things are on the way back up, but always the underlying trend will be down until a Western manufacturing base is restored.

One lesson that should be learned is that a roughly equitable geographical spread of manufacturing base is a requirement for World stability and needs to be maintained by sensible trade agreements.

Although this may entail local subsidy to counter exchange rate differences, to ensure efficiencies are still market driven, there should be no local monopolies allowed and fixed and equal support for all local competitors.

Strategic controls need to be overlayed over the investment process. (e.g. min. hold time limits etc.)

The other lesson that should be learned once and for all is the difference between wealth creation and wealth acquisition.

How often do we hear in Scotland how much wealth is ‘generated’ by London and the SE? In point of fact they are very very poor at generating wealth on a pro rata basis.

Wealth is simply the things we use in life. Food, fuel, clothes, cars, shoes, TVs, fridges, microwaves, computers etc.etc.etc. The generation of wealth entails, mining, drilling, growing, manufacturing, fishing, hunting etc. etc. etc.

The invention of money made exchange of wealth easier, however it also brought an inherent problem. Through various mechanisms e.g. speculation, ‘service’ charges, exchange rates etc. it is possible to accrue money without actually generating wealth.

The general effect of this on ethical values can be bad enough, but when those who indulge in some of even the more primarily wealth accruing practices equate them to wealth generation the delusion has become pathogenic.

Wealth acquisition is not wealth generation, doesn’t matter how clever or devious the particular little scam someone may have thought up to accrue wealth is, it just isn’t.

And whereas a parasitic micro-economy may be tolerated in a host nation (with the complicity of the Government, say), when such self-delusion leads to notions that the entire Western economy can be likewise based, with the East generating nearly all the wealth, the plot has been well and truly lost. When parasites grow to a similar size as their host, there is a problem.

It will take 5 years before things turn around but the lessons, if learned, will be beneficial in the longer term.

Taking a laissez-faire approach in a market a la Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand of God’ does generally lead to a more rapid rate of real progress (i.e. real increase in pro rata wealth creation) than other systems, provided there are safeguards against monopolies and cartels of course.

However, that presupposes that ‘a market’ is a self-evident thing. Is ‘a market’ only about supply and demand, or is it required to work with inbuilt social criteria as well?

In the socially developed World we have things like the right to strike, collective bargaining, welfare infrastructure, health care, health and safety, building regulations, environmental regulations and a lots more. Those things are what most would consider the trappings of a society which would call itself socially civilised. Most people, certainly in the West, would consider that these things, which do indeed cost a lot of money, are required target outputs for ‘a market’ to achieve.
A basic social development level is part of the Western market.

These things are not natural developments of the market however. They have had to be won by countless struggles over 200 years or thereabouts.

It was understood that Western economies exist and compete in a market which accepted these overheads and where the provision in each country was broadly the same.

However, with the acceptance into the market of China etc. where a lot of those things we would consider basic social expectations and provisions are not provided or paid for, then we have a situation where it can be quite viably claimed that we no longer have ‘a market’ where everyone is playing by the same rules, but we have instead two markets competing with completely different rules.

In that scenario, Smith et al, falls down.

I’m all in favour of bringing China into a ‘Global’ market, but it should have been done in a way which maximised the social progress for the Chinese people and which preserved sufficient genuine wealth creation capability in the West to maintain the socially civilised standards that it had attained there.

To do this, trade with China should have been subjected to a tariff system where tariffs were reduced as pro rata percentage GDP spend on social infrastructure and citizens rights and freedoms targets were met.

Instead not only did we allow China full access to the WTO (Clegg lead the EU team which accepted China) but the GAT tarrif levels were ludicrously, massively in favour of Chinese exports.

It is as if, Global strategist capitalists want to use China to ‘reset’ workers rights in the West to circa 1850.

If that is the case, then they are in for a rude shock, because the people of Europe know that, even in isolation, they could easily go back to a situation where they grow and manufacture all they need to maintain the living standards they are used to AND to maintain social provisions as well. So if that is the plan it will not wash and there will be a new wave of revolutions.

Or mibbees yer jist a Scots fermer that reads a lot?

Hi Ian B.

I’ve always had a penchant for prog rock and when I first heard “Down In The Sewer”, I was dumfoonirt, coz The Stranglers came in on the punk tide. “DITS” is classic prog rock, IMHO.
Mind you, The Stranglers had been pro musicians for a fair old time before The Stranglers evolved.

There was a Dundee band called “The Visitors”, whose keyboard style was very similar to The Stranglers, and they were on the go at the same time.

If I can find time, I’ll upload the B Side of The Visitors only single to my webspace, so you can have a listen.

Won’t be tonight though…

@ Chic McGregor

Some of us realised much of what you describe would happen way back when Thatcher was doing her worst to our manufacturing industry. Most of us, however, could not have produced such an eloquent and descriptive analysis.

When it comes to our Western leaders, it would be bad enough to consider them inept, but, really, I think they just didn’t/don’t care about the consequences of their actions upon people.

@Thepnr

I have taken a holistic interest in economics since I was an undergraduate. Still have my copy of Mill’s ‘Principles of Political Economy’ on my bookshelf from student days. A tough read by the way, as indeed are most of the tracts on economic theory. In that respect, it is a subject equal to that of Law and Medicine in creating a linguistic fence.

However, my approach to economics is from a scientific perspective.

It is known as the Queen of Sciences, but IMO it is just about at the same stage of development as science was circa 1600 with astrology, alchemy and pseudo-science along with their shamans, shysters and charlatans still being given more or less equal credence with the emergent astronomers, chemists and physicists of the nascent rational age.

It should be a genuine science and treated as such. The problem is, up till now, it has not attracted the serious interest of the scientific community. First because, well frankly, it is not interesting enough and secondly because of the extreme opposition they would have to endure, given the vested interests involved.

If a team of genuinely scientifically minded people were to address the problem, I think it would fairly quickly be put on a far sounder, more rational basis, than it is at present.

The first thing they would address, is the fundamentals, as they did in science. Without those, no rational progress is possible.

To take one as an example.

What is an economy for?

Being somewhat subjective, that is not an easy question to answer.

For some people, it is entirely about competitiveness. It’s a game to be won. Winner takes all. This is a manifestation of that kind of thinking which has at base, the justification that there is still some meaningful level of ‘survival of the fittest’ evolutionary process going on for humanity. I would suggest two major flies in that particular ointment. First, human population has long since passed the numerical point where any such evolution could actually (statistically) take place and secondly the human characteristics which are most useful in succeeding in that scenario, dishonesty, lacking in empathy and ruthlessness, by most reasonable interpretations would be considered recidivist rather than progressive in human evolutionary terms anyway.

Then there are those who might take the polar opposite view, that no one should be economically disadvantaged by their lack of ability, since they did not choose to be born in that position. Therefore the economy should provide for everyone equally, regardless. The main fly in the ointment of that approach is that ‘regardless’ can pertain to lack of effort as well as lack of ability. Humanity has evolved a capacity for laziness. A capacity which we should realise has perfectly reasonable evolutionary credentials based on the often precarious balance between energy expelled versus energy intake (i.e. food). Therefore, there is more than a danger that such a system would lead to mollycoddling, encouragement of indolence and lack of incentives to the detriment of most of the recipient population in terms of their own personal development as well as to the sum production of wealth available for distribution.

However I hope and believe, that were a World wide poll ever taken to test for a fundamental consensus (as it would be if scientists were charged with the task) that the vast majority of humanity would plump for something like this:

As a fundamental principle, an economy is there to enable as many people as possible to get as close as possible to fulfilling their personal potential. That requires an economy to make sufficient welfare, health, housing, infrastructural and educational provisions as required but also, sufficient reward for those who are extraordinarily innovative, creative or imbued with a strong work ethic, thereby acting as an effective incentive while keeping that reward differential within reasonable limits (e.g. by income gap capping). There should also be restrictions on the size a corporate body can get to before it is required to fracture into competing entities to guard against monopolies.

If something like that third option was demonstrated to be a World consensus, then it could be enshrined in a UN Declaration of National Economic Principles.

Against which nations could be assessed for either admiration or admonishment (via tariff settings).

However, I do realise that such enlightenment is some way off, but hopefully not the full 4 centuries worth.

Andrew Tyrie – Chair Treasury Select Committee is a ignorant, arrogant, pompous and totally out of touch.

Stewart Hosie brilliant.

Osbourne furious

link to youtube.com

Ronnie, proofs sent to your hotmail account – awaiting your verdict!

Some Thursday morn entertainment for y’all..

The Streak ~ Ray Stevens
link to youtube.com

@Brian Doonthetoon
Yes, that’s the theme song inspired by this budget.

And speaking of Burdons and animals:
The unionists see Scotland as a burden the UK has to bear. The reality is we are their ‘beast of burden’, doing all the work of keeping the UK solvent with our export earnings, while being whipped like a mule.

Rolling Stones “Beast of Burden”
link to youtube.com

Hey Ken you missed out the i from iscot.

link to iscot.scot

Cheers Ken

Sounds good, looking forward to meeting others that I haven’t met before as well as some old friends from past meet ups.

Tam Jardine, TJemmy, Quine fae Angus. Jock Scot Hello!

Just a quickie, furnoo…

Finally got the ‘Proud Pedant’ badge design finished.

————————————————

Kendomacaroonbar – if you’re still hingin’ aboot here…
I’ll email you in the next 24 hours.

Paula Rosa 4.05pm
Didn’t see you at the Harley D gig yesterday.

@BDTT

Brian,

I’ll be furtively lurking for a wee while. You can get me on e mail if needed ?

@ Mealer, anent the Celtic Connections, how about Babbity Bowsters or The Old Print Works.

Don’t think we’ve ever had this one. What a fantastic tune it was, and right at the height of the Thatcher years.

Culture Club, ‘Karma Chameleon’ –

link to youtube.com

Fred 9.28
Thanks for that.

@Cadogan Enright –

Happy to try and help, but the Google results don’t throw up anything obvious. So much out there right now…

Have you any specific phrases which might help whittle it all down a bit?

@Macart

Have a good one!

@Ian Brotherhood 12.02
It was posted on Wings – possibly by or near a post be De Valera – with a link to Wolfgang Schaeuble talking in English

@ Ian Brotherhood – sometime around the 440 000 comment I believe.

@Paula Rose –

I want it carved into my headstone (or at least, to be printed on the big sticky label they put on the plastic jar) – ‘Supplied The 440,000th Comment On WOS – Verily, He Was Never The Same Again’.

@Ian Brotherhood

Hahaha “The Establishment” old school though before they all became lizard people 🙂

@Thepnr –

Remember him on ‘That’s Life’?

I could never stand the prick. He had that wee bit screened-off on the stage, decorated with pot-plants, and he was wearing a smoking jacket or a tuxedo. Throwback to Edwardian ‘The Good Old Days’ shite, and he was so un-funny that the audience didn’t even know when to laugh. A creepy cross between Roy Orbison and Noel Coward, with none of their talent.

And as for Esther?…

Bleeeuurgh – the further we get away from irrational trust in these people, the clearer their behaviour becomes, and the BBC, as a ‘brand’, plummets exponentially. When the BBC is finished? That’s the ‘Empire’ officially done.

Please, all known Gods, let us see that day, and let’s see it soon.

@Thepnr –

🙂

Good shout there mister. Never saw that video before.

Here’s a disco tune from around the same time:

Pointer Sisters, ‘Automatic’ –

link to youtube.com

Hello dear Wingers

Sorry to have to say that one again I won’t be able to make it along to the Helensburgh Wings Night.

This is because I will be down in Merry Old England that weekend for a classic rock fest known as “The Ramblin’ Man Fair”.

Hope my Wingy friends will forgive me when I say that the line-up was just too tempting to turn down:

The Temperance Movement, FM, Ian Anderson, Rival Sons, Saxon, Blue Oyster Cult, Greg Allman and The Scorpions!!! I’m sure you can imagine the excitement of a quiverin’ Quinie at the prospect of such a panoply of rock gods a’struttin’ and a-strummin’ against a Kentish sunset.

However, love and solidarity to all the Wingers and here’s hoping that I’ll be able to join you all again for the next one.

Are any fellow Wingers going to this Ramblin’ Man Fair? If so it would be a hoot to meet up for a drink! (I will of course be wearing my Yes and Wings badges, including my precious “Wings over Invergowrie” one, and the classic “I’ve been stroked by Paula Rose”, so I should be easily identifiable).

Ian Brotherhood, you want Cyril Fletcher, you can have Cyril Fletcher, as spoofed by the ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’ team:

link to youtube.com

Spot on, and viciously funny.

Haha David, very good. That doesn’t mean to say that now is the time to get yourself carried away 🙂

@Ian Brotherhood says:
13 July, 2015 at 9:05 pm Got a rough time frame? Was it in the past week?

Yes

Hi Cactus.

I’m keeping a list in ‘Quarantine’, of those who want personalised badges for the Helensburgh get-together.

As it was suggested some weeks ago, that personalised badges may put off lurkers, we’re only doing badges for those who actually request them.

Therefore the badge list is not a list of everyone who’s intimated that they’re gonna be there. You’d have to trawl back through ‘off-topic’ to collate that list…

P T Camera ,
Ref JB

Aye an they (RS/JB ) had to get the “scaled Back Bannockburn Event ” No mention o the other crap that was put on the same day in Stirling no less , aye for spite nae doot.

David @ 9.50 Excellent , email it to Lewis Hamilton for the crack!

Hey Brian Doonthetoon, cheers for the directions, heading for the containment suite..

So aye, see ye there lurkers, bar’s open till 2am.

..teleporting to Q the now..

@ majestic12, 13/07/15, 11:07pm

Thanks for that link; I’m fair helpless noo! 🙂

So, NASA have already made discoveries that challenge current scientific wisdom. What other amazing discoveries do you reckon there will be? Perhaps a positive case for the Union?

Nah, this isn’t science fiction.

Plutopia (1951)
link to youtube.com

If Carlsberg did Paula Rose’s favourite songs…

link to youtube.com

I believe this was on the sound system, during that famous Invergowrie pool party.

Nah, they haven’t got enough power to left to get to another universe!

@ X_Sticks

Well done, you! Where do you get the stamina? 🙂
That was encouraging, hopeful even, hearing all those young folk enthusiastically belting out “Hope over Fear” at T!!!

Hope for the future yet. Still trying to figure out if the organisers knew what they were letting themselves in for.

Glad to hear you survived wallowing in mud with thousands of other people// Oh, sorry that was ‘communing with nature’ was it not?

As they say, your as young as you feel (afterwards!)

@ Tackety Beets, ta, but I don’t want to distract poor old (young, successful, rich) Lewis Hamilton from his day job.

@ Jock Scot, thanks for the suggestions, but I think the world is a better place without my ‘vocal stylings’. I’ll stick to typing. 🙂

(((((HELP)))))
Can anyone give me the name of the background music to this vid?
Try and ignore the videos content, it’s the music i like and it’s
doing my head in, i can’t remember where i’ve heard it before.
I may be wrong but i think it’s a Scottish tune.
link to youtube.com

X sticks
Thanks for posting that video.Great reaction from the crowd.We know there was big support for Yes among young folk,but a lot in that crowd didn’t bother voting.I hope that song prays on their minds and haunts them a bit.Make them more likely to get off their butts and vote next time round.And there were bound to be atleast some No voters in the crowd.I wonder what was running through their minds.Great stuff.

Cheers, Mealer, you’re a star!
😉

Nae probs,Stoker.I was actually playing it earlier this evening,so there’s a coincidence.Though I probably wasn’t playing it quite the way it was written.More practise required!

Well, you know, Thepnr, on this site, anything goes…

link to youtube.com

Aweright Brian Doonthetoon ~

Might be a good idea to have both live music and pro-indy/Scottish videos at The Clyde Bar, Helensburgh.. options are always good.

‘It’s aye better tae have and nae need, than tae need and nae have’ 🙂

D and me’ll arrive earlier in the day to set up stage.

Ronnie A – thanks for asking. We are OK but Alyth Square and streets in that area are in a helluva state. Will take a huge clear-up operation. Good folk of Alyth out in force. John Swinney & Pete Wishart have both turned up to help/show support.

@bddt love the unicorn badge 🙂
Busy so won’t be at Helensburgh.
Next time.

Can’t post this on main thread as it’s just too ‘out there’ and may put folk off, but Alex Salmond is going to be tearing strips off the Tories on Monday over the whole ‘Isisgate’ scandal, and that will, in turn, involve raising the unpleasantness of Blair/Iraq etc etc.

Just checked the Iraq Body Count website – 408 civilians killed/executed in the past week (not including the estimated 80 killed by a car bomb tonight). And that’s just the confirmed fatalities.

When the Tories (and any Blairites) get up to defend what’s happening, and/or what’s happened, it may help to mentally blank out whatever they’re saying – this could be a suitable alternative soundtrack for anyone watching British ‘democracy’ in action:

Joy Division, ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ –

link to youtube.com

Ian,

Oor Alex had a big prescence on PM this afternoon talking about this in some detail.

I don’t think Labour are too worried (don’t want to upset the tory voters, don’tcha know.