Scotland's Economical smiles

Yes we all know Glasgow smiles more but that's because they know smiles aren't taxed, they dont even appear in GDP, but if you ask me a good laugh is something we've exported for years, and its well noted, if not by all economists.

I noted with amusement that @glackinreports is this week talking up independence as he mentions Ireland's main trading partner (40%) is the UK and with Scotland at 60% he's seemingly making the case that its not just about trade. When you realise that over 5% of all our trade is in Whisky, I start getting interested. Diageo a while back realised that alcohol is a brands game. As with cleaning clothes where Lever Bros and Proctor & Gamble benefit from increasing the brands almost daily, Diageo just keep buying them when they reach puberty or whatever brand maturation is called. Whereas the Soviet Socialists Republic just called it vodka, Capitalism proved to beat the competition you need more brands, more names for the same stuff, Poitin! This has become self evident in the boom of Gins in recent decades. In Scotland it used to be that Whisky was consumed but now we largely export it and are more likely to consume Gin or Vodka. The maturing of the market as pubs became gender neutral resulted in Whisky looking to the misty eyed hills, aka the export market. "Hoorah", we shouted, "Hoorah!"  all progress is good....!

We have a number of growing industries but we need the skill and acumen to keep them.

I remember when we were at the bleeding edge of golf club manufacture but, when I was a kid, John Letters stopped making clubs in Scotland, relocating to England after the Dunlop takeover. Siemens did the same with a number of our great engineering companies. I dont remember when we designed electrical sub stations, manufactured them here in Edinburgh and put them on boats in Leith docks bound for another continent but I drink with guys who did the work. We are a great entrepreneurial nation, with ideas and the capacity to collectivise behind them and realise the dreams. Whatever the subject matter, whatever the reason, we just seem to work better with Europe than Westminster. 

During my lifetime we have lost out on a number of the new industries because Scotland has largely been a distraction to the more pressing matters in the UK. A devolved parliament is neither fish nor fowl as its not like we can do an Oregon.

"An Oregon" for those of you who are interested is like doing a Netherlands. One of the huge Global growth markets is Cannabis farming. Legalising Cannabis farming has been a contentious thing since the 80's and while Government Ministers can consume as much Cocaine as they see fit, they still enthuse over drug testing in the workplace unless that workplace is the Houses of Parliament, the HP sauce flows fine there. I know teachers, doctors, nurses, bus and train drivers for whom it is standard practice, and yet you can still pull out a mirror, a wrap, a £10 note in the cabinet room and get on with the business of government never mind getting breathalysed before entering the chamber for a vote. 

Quite simply its not a headline. "Drunk Politician votes wrong way on key vote". Its not even getting a titter from the back row. Some people might think it strange but if a bus driver, nurse, ambulance driver, teacher, turned up with ta rosy tint or he slightest look of a Rubens masterpiece they'd be slandered, we only beat our own.

I've written before about how we could use the old mine workings to generate heat but I've never suggessted making them Cannabis factories. An independent Scotland could approach its drug laws in a different way. We have a huge heroin problem but the pipeline for this has long been identified and we need to move in a different direction.

I joke about Bit Coin manufacture but as a way of tackling the boom bust of generating energy when its required, the trick is to consume it and store it. If battery technology is not keeping pace with generation then perhaps using any surplus for bit-coin type manufacture is a way forward. Its the new gold standard, and goes hand in hand with our burgeoning drug industry. Our police force are familiar with the dark web so mix our financial services guys with those wonderful people from Police Scotland and we have a way forward. 

I've looked at a number of our industries in Scotland and those great invisible earnings that we get from very simple things. Whisky sales are well documented and those who have memberships and live in other countries, but the same applies to other industries, from the arts to the golf course. Most Golf Clubs in Scotland have visitor numbers that have plummeted during the pandemic, but many have overseas, or members in England who continue to pay their fees. I remember speaking to a Japanese member of our club who paid his membership every year but made it over only every 4 years. These exports don't get recorded because its far too granular and we dont do the census like it 1834.

The other side of that coin is that its not 1984 either. Friedman economics were largely booted into touch by many but still made it onto the syllabus for every student. Money supply and quantitative easing are real tools the public have been educated on, like growth. Growth, is everything, we are told. Clinton won an election by saying... its the economy....proving yet again that three words are better than 1428, when last I counted.

Our Covid world has carelessly caressed those in the organising service industries which to my mind are just hobby jobs while kicking the shit out of the health & hospitality sector. The problem is clear to see for me and therefore I do give the politicians a nod on closing them but I dont like they kept them open with optimistic winks. If you find yourself at a loose end because you used to be an organiser, then you needed a bit more training as you should have been organised for this. Rant over, but please, we cant feed our population without resorting to food banks and yet we need someone to help us organise an 18th birthday party.

Oops, I slipped off piste again, but that's that.

Ok, party central Scotland. We are a destination venue and everyone knows this. From T-in-the Park to Grouse shooting on the Moorland, I'm not going to judge, I'm just aying, we are a destination. Tourism is huge now in the western world because we can all afford washing machines and TVs. I have three older brothers and they never got a TV until 1968. I was 5, so I wouldn't have remembered if we'd had one before. Who knew the TV would be so popular. We never used it much, mostly had it on the radio. For my Dad not much has changed as he usually has it on teletext.

Back to the point and an independence discussion. If the SNP are serious then they need to tell me what new industries we will pursue. The Danish famously manufactured the turbines we invented to harness the power and I want us to pursue wave power more vigorously. I want us to look at the work SEPA and others have done on the old mines and the issues with the contaminated water and turn this into a world leading solution. We can transform old mines and we can work with climate change to avoids flooding. Its not about building flood defences, its about working with nature and making shed loads of cash from exporting our savvy.

Its a common misconception that our near neighbours in England have a bad track record of building on flood plains or not understanding the geology of the landscape. The truth is that like us they have solutions but rarely have the backing. Water is a magical resource, which like wind power, often arrives when you dont need it.

Anyone who has ever worked in the golf industry knows how much it costs to water their course. On average it £10,000 a year to keep the grass green. Harvesting water is clearly something all countries need to concentrate their minds on and yet few gain headlines for it. In Scotland alone, 300 of our golf courses will pay £10,000 for their water and for those with a clubhouse, another £20,000 for their gas and electricity. Quite simply £10m and that's before we flush a toilet. 

Golf Clubs are a bad example though as I tried to get us to save the clubs £2m recently by abandoning the use of Vouchers as prizes. In Non-Covid years, Clubs tend to invite visitors to play open competions. They give them a discount to the normal green fee and also pay out a large chunk of the entry fee in prizes while the rest is eaten up in goodwill from helpful volunteers. The hidden costs come after when those prizes are paid out in the form of vouchers. These move around the Scottish mainland and Islands via the postal network and then via the bank system the cash makes its way to the place where the recipient spent said voucher. Often these vouchers are worth less than £20 and 99% are under £60. I pity all golf professionals who receive a £15 voucher with a smile and then have to post it off and wait for the money arriving. Then phoning up two weeks later to chase for the cash, I digress but I know that 30,000+ of these vouchers every year are issued by 450 clubs. Some clubs, like mine issue 200 every year. If only it was like stamp collecting.

The time has perhaps come for more of our courses to migrate to becoming municipal courses like St Andrews or Montrose. I dont know about that but we need to get these green spaces into the green environment so that instead of spending money on utilities they are generating profits by supplying them. I'm thinking of the offshore wind farms at Trump Aberdeen of course, still a source of great amusement. I do wonder if he became president just to get back at Salmond, its a funny wee side show, but no of course I dont think that, ha ha!!

So back to the point. I want to hear more about our inventions being delivered into live. From Games in Dundee to beer in Aberdeen, via Gin in St Andrews, Golf in Ayrshire. I want to hear that Ardrossan wind turbines are going to be used to power something. I want to hear about Euro and Crypto Currency!

Most of all, I want to hear that we are now measuring GDH, aka Gross Domestic Happiness. Yes, how happy we are. I want to hear Danish laughing classes and see Glasgow smiling better!

I seem to have cut and paste a piece here and like a traditional DIY Christmas present, I have a leftover screw, nut and bolt......you decide!

The question about independence that I'd like to hear asked are about the new industries.

We like wind power more than Trump, but if we explain we are going to use our excess capacity to mine Bit-Coin will he change his tune?

lockdown laughter #19

Covid coverage in the media doubled me up this morning. I get newspapers from my Dad who tends to finish with them by 10am and he gives me the option to recycle them. Normally I put them straight out but this week I gathered them up to laugh at the covid coverage for conflicting content.

It couldn't have been quicker when Michael Glackin in the Sunday Times covering the Scottish Scene, slagged off the Scottish Government for not moving Edinburgh to tier 2 in its tottering tier system. I agree the SG have no idea when it comes to numbering, clearly some marketing professional explained its like a lift and we start at ground zero but that's another story, reverse colonialism. The idea that Edinburgh move to tier 2 and help business sounded farcical to me on the ground. Why open pubs for 2 weeks in the run up to Christmas. Really, I asked myself, why. Logistically its a challenge and if its pulled after a fortnight its still loss making.

So today's Scotsman leading story has Rachel Mackie talking about tougher restrictions and the capital being a hotspot.

We've known for a long time that this is a highly fluid situation owing to many factors. The single most important factor is most politicians throughout the world realise that their countries are exposed when riots start outside their hospitals owing to lack of capacity due to scarcity of resource. With this jenga block in place most of the irrational action is explained. FEAR is a driver that politicians understand but it rarely improves their acumen. Our job, as citizens, during a pandemic, is to guide them to the answer.

On the streets in the run up to the Scottish Election we need to push that snowball up the hill for them. While Covid continues my latest walk in from Eskbank to Cameron Toll left me frustrated and not just with the destruction of the bus lanes as my mind drifted on the news.

Commentators have their jobs to do but it does surprise when two unionist papers should be so far off the page from each other, well, not for long as the surprise gave way to more laughter for the sad stato.

As people prepare to go home for Christmas there is much more fluidity in the numbers getting tested. There is still freedom of movement and although only 40 miles apart, Edinburgh and Glasgow, can hear their residents voices in each others cities at this time of year and it's normal. While people are asked not to travel there's clearly a few who do, and this is why I laugh.

Spikes of Covid can mean a rise of 20 cases per 100,000. We've all seen the ads ,so for those who cant do (1*3) cubed, this can be as simple as 1 person carrying covid getting on a bus and three people getting off that bus with it. As they head of to the Dome, the shops or just back to their flat another 9 get it. 

We know this story and we know why its a pandemic, remember the slogan "for the many not the few", well, Covid-19 represents how tax should work. "From the Few to the Many", would be my slogan, but it has too many words.

I do wish our journalists would stop trying to sensationalise both sides of the argument, because a fluid pandemic is not an argument. It is a war of attrition and anyone who had relatives in the 1914 football match on Christmas day will know how long it can take for a war of attrition to conclude.

If the media wants to make a contribution they should assist the public. My take is Scotland's biggest mistake was the care home cull, a massacre I commented on back in April. The catastrophic mistakes of the UK government's Lions led by Donkeys approach does not need me to add to the list, although I'm sure I've made a few observations in my gutteral angry rant, aka, lucky nobody reads this, style.

The UK government's consistently conflicting messaging owes more to Victor comics as their wonderfully adolescent soul shines through. It's merely a spotlight on how unskilled they are for the role, the job of populism is to win elections not run a country. The fact they are more interested in delivering good news than confronting covid has been evident from the hand shaking Boris insisted on doing in March, through their dubious deadlines on 100,000 tests and millions of vaccines. I just want to shout "yes kids, you're doing a great job now take the weekend off and hand over to someone else, anyone else!" 

They need a bit of love and like all the politicians in our country and overseas they need a break. They are totally fucked. They haven't slept well and for many, decision making is a skill they lost during April/ May. 

I'm retired now but when I managed I could tell when I needed to do something (5%) and when I needed to shut up and listen to what I was being told (95%). 

There's been so much talk about the economy tanking and livelihoods, yet the post Brexit levers of government are huge, or so we've been told. In tackling poverty I've heard suggestions that we can go to zero rated VAT, now that's an argument for another day as we filter that through the system, but analysing and modelling the levers at our discretion is obvious.

Identifying what can open or is covid sensitive is not so obvious. I've argued previously that lower division football grounds could open to season ticket holders. Like Golf Clubs and other member clubs it seems an easy way to let significant numbers of people out to carry out transactions and keep the economy going. This is simplistic as it is divisive, and that's where we hit the politicians dilemna. I hate when spell check wants dilemma, but I'm adamant, it was dilemna when I was at school in P4 and I spelt it the easy way too for the Darnestown Elementary school in Grade 5. Am I a dinosaur for thinking that way or are dinosaur's useful. I digress. If you wait long enough I'll bore you about the time Stoke City signed Alan Hudson for $600,000, when I was in Grade 5, January 12 1974, oh I longed for home while in the USA.

Our economy has been a service based one for a while (since we stopped subsidising our nationalised industries and used the oil revenues, council house sales and privatisations to fund the unemployment) and some of those services have been hit hard by Covid , but the biggest, the financial services, will be destroyed by Brexit, particularly if we cant do a deal.

It is no surprise to see Scotland surging in support for Independence in Europe, many financiers know that they're stuck between  a rock and a hard place. ScotLond was a popular phrase post the Brexit vote and will doubtless rock up again in the run up to another independence vote. The key for those pitching independence will depend on their view of the currency. I thought the vote in 2014 should have stated that the Euro was our currency of choice. The foolish notions of allying with Europe but leaving the currency struck me as madness. I'm guessing it was a sop to those worried about losing the Queen of state. For me, that's like Boris' Brexit. Gove and others keep telling us we can have our cake and eat it, but I just think that's the city attitude of late 80's, poetically covered in Liars Poker. Another of Michael Lewis' book was made into a great film, The Big Short, and if anyone wants to understand why the Brexit talks head towards no deal, the ammunition is all there. 

I'll vote for independence if its with a currency change, but I'll not if somebody wants to keep the pound. Divorce is always messy and frequently expensive. Scotland finds itself well snookered. Its married to a shagger with 6 wives and is still trying to work out what will be best for the kids.

Manufacturing has been ignored at best and maligned at worst.

I must commend @glackinreports for highlighting the post Brexit arrangements on WHISKEY not whisky. 

Well Done!

Its a wee snifter as a fellow tipster once said....

Its not very canny, for the wee mackem manny when the Nissan factory goes,

and whether driving a car or pourin' fae the jar

 It's a whiff of Brexit that shows.

Its back to 83 when the driver next to me, said,

its gone on too long, yes I know it was wrong

 I hear the Donkey.

Marcus Rashford is the Sports Personality of the Year 2020

2020 Hindsight will tell us that the odds on favourite should've won the Sports Personality of the year but somehow never made the shortlist.

Ironic isn't it!

The first time a sports personality appears, they're removed and given a special award instead.

Some BBC share options have changed hands again, expect a privatisation soon!

Well Mr Rashford, you are the DEADBEAT Sports personality of the year.

Congratulations

Lockdown laughter #88 nourishing my beard or straightening my hair

In the 1980's Deadbeat was concerned about the AIDS pandemic and 40 years on we've got another threat to the human race.

I cant help thinking our society has really moved on.

My Mum used to put curlers in her hair, but now it seems every household must have straighteners.

As for nourishing my beard, I feel we really have reached deeply into the grooming pot.

For years the pampering industry has failed to sell to half the population but now the products have moved on from Brute 88.

I never saw the need for shaving foam as I always shave in the shower whenever I shampoo. Unbeknown to me my Dad confirmed this has been his practice for a long time too. Its true he's as miserable as me!

We've not got a poodle pamperer locally but I know this is where Jackie sends me when I'm smelling too much.

So my question is two fold. How serious are we about pampering as an industry and how serious are we about sorting poverty both here and overseas.

Sloganism and Just in time theories

I cant remember if it was Deming who was the advocate and often misquoted creator of "Just in Time" philosophies we studied in the 1980's, but its just another example of a theory being misunderstood.

What is really scary is my oft mentioned issue I have with marketing or even more accurately sloganism.

What's sloganism I hear you ask? 

Not another new word that doesn't exist until some idiot blogger with a keyboard adds 'ism' to the end of a quiet wee word. It's quite simply 1984 revisited. Remember doublespeak. Applications like changing the Royal Mail to Consignia followed Diageo even Curriculum for Excellence, which apparently is about education. Sometimes re-branding is good but mostly its just nonsense or abuse.

So Just in time is now an excuse to be wheeled out by governments who will tell you that carrying stock is an inefficient use of capital resources, just after they tell you about PPE or even BPE (cladding for buildings apparently).

Economists stock and trade is to identify the opportunity cost of one course of action against another. They compare what benefits accrue when certain actions are taken and what the negative impacts or costs are. The simple trade off involved in stockpiling bog rolls occurs because money in the bank at 0% interest is better invested in bog rolls.

Us punters looked on aghast as we heard that our hospitals' stock of PPE could be exhausted so quickly or more recently that we pay fortunes to friends of politicians, no mate's rates here. We probably carry a larger stock of poppies, although this is not a new problem. Ask all those in the trenches in WWI as news came through about problems in the supply chain for gas masks. Just not in time for too many of them.

Predicting when you need to stock up is what the retail world specialises in. The pandemic was well forecast, just check the press or the stock markets in January and February. Even if we had no plan surely the medical emergency would have got more than the slogan writers out.

Supplies of PPE require forward planning and that saves money but this government, like its predecessors dont like to invest in intangibles. The trade off, of being ill-prepared is paying higher prices. Had the government increased borrowing in 2010 to ensure Pandemic planning were protected the austerity gods of their party would've have voted it down. Instead, they just waved the axe and binned the plan. If the London Evening Standard makes any noise about PPE they should be rounded on by Londoners as the Sun was in Liverpool. The scandalous Grenfell disaster was a horrible demonstration of the abandoning of planning.

Its simply not vote worthy to say we have stocks of PPE, our supply chains for ventillators....etc etc. 

Sloganism, like leave the EU and put £888bn into our NHS are far more successful, so its not a big step to then make these slogans vague promises or downright lies.

Deadbeat has never said this is the best band in Scotland, but if it had, it wouldn't have mattered, a little hyperbole is good for the sales right?

So my point is quite simply this. Politicians are the last people you want making "Just in Time" decisions and as much as they do or dont want to 'front up' and 'take responsibility', they are ill equipped to help out. 

Their skill set is in the sound bite, the slogan and being elected, shows their success at this key politicians attribute.

Wading through plans that will impact in the eventuality of XY or Z is as far away as you can get from a politicians metier. The vote about leaving the EU was about winning the vote not about leaving. We are still negotiating to stay but on our own terms, ie that we've left but we still get to stay. 

Our society as Deming tried to highlight, has theories for efficiency. Making assembly lines more productive uses specialist suppliers now and guess what? They supply stuff. Unfortunately Government seems to employ people to specialise in messages. I wouldn't ask any politician for professional advice in anything other than slogans.

I cracked a joke the other day when somebody gave me a bag of coffee beans from a well known chain. I laughed and suggested if they'd brought me meat or veggie burgers from another well known chain, I wouldn't have thanked them either! If a retail outlet specialises in sourcing, then supplying a variety of beans or teas I might consider it a treat. 

There's a fine line between people who sell goods and those who source goods, its as narrow as the Champs Elysees!

So to conclude, Politicians sell and others do the work, like Astra Zeneca who are putting union jacks onto vials, a sorry message that needs flogged to death......

I've already said too much...now let's talk about the boundaries between streets.....

Great moments from 2014

Vbcamino3.blogspot.com was where I was trying to finish TTC and kick a ball across Spain. The ball got signed loads and made it to Santiago.....the book got another 40,000 words but no closer to completion. It's now over 100,000 words and a complete rambling mess, just like me and it's now 72% complete. It was 75% complete in 2012......& 80% done in 2009 so soon it won't need done at all!

Great strolls through history

Lockdown lunchtime retreat

A great venue for a lunch time pint, just don't forget your bungees

The penny drops as the mushroom rises

So often a metaphor for the 1980s written early 1981, released 1984. 

music genre - urban wasteland 

lyric genre - grass ain't always greener on the other side

https://youtu.be/NvwOKo21w3g

The song reminds me of Thatcher's Carnage, her Hiroshima. The laying waste to a country, her destruction of the region known as Scotland. If anything re-energised the SNP, the desire the independence, it was quite simply the casual economic experiment she performed in her testing ground. The alluring agricultural allotment as she would have thought after her bad Balmoral experience.

At the end of the eighties myself and my five siblings were all working outside Scotland two through choice and three because their company had relocated, only to return home, after helping with the transition, to a dole queue that had exponentially increased in the 10 years of the 80's.

It's a popular misconception that it was the old industries that were closed down. It's true that steel and coal were flattened like the ship yards but also the new industries like Silicon Glen where many companies also folded, or closed satellite plants and moving their people, back home. Shops that served communities, the cafes and bars, the post office, newsagents, grocers, florists, butchers, bakers, and off licences! Those same shops callously destroyed then are now the beating heart of the economy, the train commuter belt in London as we are reminded today, that served their bespoke passenger communities.  No, this is not new. The venues that miner's went to for a wedding, the local dress fitter, all these industries then, as now, that are the barnacles on our rotting boat. Yes, despair is not new.

A popular Economic misconception is that full employment is good and high unemployment bad. High unemployment is good if you are trying to pay less for your employees. Full employment is good if you're an employee as it means you can easily move job if you find yourself in a badly run one. We're heading for the former and the Government 's backers will be quite happy to see it that way.

The penny drops as the mushroom rises boomed out of the speakers in this house as Thatcher was sacked by her own party, as the digital decade clock ticked over, it was a fitting end to the '80s. She introduced the poll tax in Scotland, was rescued in 83 by an Argentinian Junta, nearly lost the 87 election to the rockstar King Kinnock, and then as we moved into the 90's, BOOM, the mushroom cloud could be seen over Downing street.

She was all alone, oh yes, all alone. "Her plane's away now, miles out of sight...", yes sounds like her ship had sailed and sunk like the Belgrano!

The song, written with deep roots in CND marketing, has  also adjusted well to being a love song in my life.

Teenagers, like me, really had little emotional intelligence. We latched on to things but had no idea. 

Frequently you found out the consequence of your actions and couldn't do a U-turn or felt boxed into the corner, paralysed by who you might offend, so just offend yourself. Freezing in the headlights or stubbornly sticking to your path, who knows, but admitting being wrong certainly wasn't high on the agenda. Going back cap in hand and apologising for being right was never a wise strategy, but cutting your nose off to spite your face was. Then there was no going back. Just ask Vincent Van Gogh which hand he answers the phone with. His penny dropped the day Alexander Bell walked through the door.

This could be splitting up with someone or even going out with someone. It could be jumping on a bus to go to a gig in London and realising that you had no money and not getting off in Edinburgh or Newcastle but carrying on in the hope that Merlin the magician might appear, or a genie and grant you 3 wishes. Clutching at straws you walked around London then got the overnight bus back, aye them were the days. Teenagers committing suicide had a hand in the song too.

It was quite simply, BOOM. A big crash wake up call.

With suicide you usually only get one bite of the cherry. You might not ever get to love someone again but at least you get to love somebody else, when you split up. You may go out or even marry someone but at least you can still divorce.  At least you'll have a dull day to remember the first trip to London when you never cut your losses and got off at the first stop. I can still hear the voices in my head saying I'd paid for a return to London so I'd get value from the experience, perhaps I did. Perhaps I learned to cut my losses.

There's some green shoots but there's none with suicide. I was lucky.

The song's subtext for me explored that against the background of needle exchanges across the table in a Pilton flat, it was a horrible song in it's despair. If you're the last one alive as the rest of the corpses start to rot, it's a bit of a BOOM moment. When Trainspotting came out it was a flashback another BOOM!

https://youtu.be/NvwOKo21w3g

With every verse and chorus you feel there's a chance for redemption and the yet it never happens. Its relentless because it was, like lockdown.

"We are all doomed Captain Mainwaring" 

It's what the 80's were about for many.

Hiroshima & Nagasaki were destroyed and 'lest we forget' the bomb could have been dropped 20 miles outside and the destructive power been there for all to see, but it wasn't. It was dropped to create maximum civilian death, commonly known as a war crime but rarely discussed that way. 

I think the western teaching is that we did the Japanese a favour by finally winning the war and initiating regime change. We kick started their economy as they started from such a low base they employed new technologies, not the quill and ink pot for them. Pump action parker pens please! A philosophy that Empress Thatcher employed in the UK, well the destruction anyway, she just presumed that capitalism would create new industries. She had a few blind spots, and I do laugh wondering what her response would be to someone in cabinet proposing "Furlough". 

The penny drops as the mushroom rises is a magicians cape trick.....or when you open the box after sawing your friend in half, you look again.....it's not the same!

There's been a few economics collapses since and the boom bust nature of our economy demonstrates its structural sensitivity. The blatant bias of by those purporting to set the test reminds me of a famous magicians trick where you end up telling them the answer but you still feel they worked it out all on their own through magic.

I've written before about 2006-2008 and how borrowing stats stopped getting reported in 2007 as they ceased to be relevant by those making the most out of concealing them. Its like businesses talking up turnover as if they were money launderers. Who cares how much cash you've turned over, if you dont have a profit at the end then you're either lying, stealing or really shit at making money so hopefully you're in a charitable business like writing a fanzine. I had a joke about God's banker but making a profit is key to distributing the word, so I'll leave it for now The great thing about writing is that your audience gets to write their own punchlines. Economics can be about markets reaching perfect balance, but never getting there, writing is such a democratic genre, every reader chooses their own ending. A bit like Presidents at election time. So many illegal ballots but do you only count some illegal ballots, and how costly do you make elections. I used my brother's card when I was 17 as he was out of his tree somewhere and there was an hour to go. Yes it was illegal, but who cares, Ancram lost and 1979 seemed brighter, the tories were booted out of Scotland, "oh no they weren't!" said the pantomime villain as she developed her testing ground.

I'll digress a bit about Deadbeat and why, during the inflationary times of the 80's, we never doubled or tripled in price from 10p. I just realised, I wrote earlier about getting on a bus to London, and my emotional intelligence. Deadbeat moved from being a hobby, to a potential career, to a hobby, a charitable thing and then we ran out of time and money!

In the current covid situation I see a lot of the Mushroom Rising but rarely does the Penny Drop. Its quite alarming that we'd all diagnosed it from our living rooms back in April and yet still the mushroom clouds keep rising. Popular Party Politics is about presentation of the facts and the truth is a mind numbing distraction from the message. In the 20th century we developed a blame game, Thatcher saying Labour isn't working is a popluar slogan of the 1979 election when 1m people were unemployed. By 1983 with the number over 3m, the unemployment issue was no longer deemed relevant. Voters don't understand the stats they're producing and so they've always got a new set they prefer to get their message across. Latterly its about counting jobs created, regardless of whether its 1 hour a week on minimum wage or not. It's like watching Economics being destroyed again by rhetoric. The 21st century isn't about the blame game, its about the message. Just talk about your successes whether they're true or not. If you say it often enough some people will believe you and the rest you can disregard as conspiracy theorists, hmm, sounds familiar.

In April we knew that we'd not closed our airports early enough or done the simple thing of resurrecting a plan we binned in 2011. While pubs, shops, hairdressers and physios to name but a few would take your temperature as you entered their space, little did we know we'd still not done anything at airports. For a party built around Brexit and controlling borders it seems astonishing that countries in central Europe closed their airports and yet we freely encouraged passengers from around the world to pretend we were open for business to the world. Too many drugs in Parliament or in the cabinet office? I couldn't possibly comment but I would like to see the police stop and search more ministerial cars. They find more than 10% for sure.

We know that tracking and tracing was inadequately resourced and our health service had a shortfall of resources. It had neither the equipment, drugs, testing or staff to fight it. 

So which do you guess is more lucrative?

Sourcing more staff to handle the increased volume at the hospitals and overspill bed? Dont be silly there's no money in HR.

PPE - face masks, gloves, random specifications and emergency pricing? Now we're talking. 

We can thank all the volunteers doing facemasks for free while trousering £millions. 

The financial mushroom just rises and rises and rises!

https://youtu.be/soh7i7QrOhA

Dont worry about the track and trace we can talk about developing a new app. Use technology buzzwords, GPS location etc. Pokemon covid.

So in April we obviously had teams working on our 2 year road map, on our 1 month plan and our daily emergency situation.

Oh, you mean the short medium and long term plan? 

No I mean the long term plan, the really long term plan and the absurdly unpredictable 1000 years war plan.

Lifting their noses out of the trough, I faintly heard some mangled snort about PPE's very profitable. 

I've asked that the governments across the world take a weekend off to recharge their batteries. Some are in the eye of the storm and dont realise as calm as they feel it is, its not calm. Others are in a completely different place with fingers in the dyke or with the pied piper elsewhere and its mayhem.

All the while, the public are fed a diet of facts that produce a fiction as democratic as any good writer could achieve. Yes, one piece of information can now be interpreted by as many people as read it. This then leads to breaking or adhering to principles as your circumstances allow or dictate. My favourite is using percentages to say how much something has jumped by when the underlying numbers are rising from 3 to 6. Yes 100% increase! When it falls from 6 to 3 its only a 50% decrease so the message moves accordingly.

In my case I have different bubbles of people I'll see, much as I always did, except I used to call them pals but now they are bubbles with venues getting evaluated on the basis of how many of the regulars I know.

My sport is now restricted to digging at the allotment, walking and golfing. I gob too much when I run so jogging is banned. I've got a few pals I go walking with and we do the jakey thing of finding a decent spot to open a few tins and chunter away. Lots of great places I've seen recently, although the Tiger Bar is still my favourite. Jarv and I meet there, its in the woods above the Hermitage of Braid. I'm not giving you the map reference or you might join us and burst our bubble! Ha Ha I knew I'd get that one in.

I like a pub crawl, I've been on one for 40 odd years, so nowadays its in Midlothian or on the John Muir way. You have to carry your own beer, CYOB, but you can bring olives and sandwiches which aren't allowed if you were just going to the pub. Everywhere's a beer garden, I announced as we sat on a log in the woods outside Dalhousie. We looked like builders on the girders, in the famous rockerfeller centre picture.

Lockdown laughter #71

Imagine if you can, being stuck inside an aircraft for 6 months just because you tested positive for Covid-19.

What's more imagine the laugh when they realise it's a false positive!

Ok its a space station so they've got a sofa and a good view....

Is it the glue or the stickiness

As you get into your 50s you wonder what the glue was that kept friendships together then as you head into your 60s you wonder why glue has been replaced by stickiness when it comes to websites.

This isn't a jargon busting exercise but it does make me chuckle. 

It's like perceived truth that makes me chuckle too.

Back in the days of Deadbeat many of the interviews followed a very similar pattern as bands largely wanted control, artistic control, over their destiny. Never for a second did they realise that they were dealing with a music industry where their's was a fleeting moment, while the company execs were in another game, a long career game.

Many bands got single out or an album some got distribution deals but most of them enjoyed the journey. Manny still play today in between shifts working in banks bars or care homes. Some are even residents in the care homes. That's rock and roll with 2020 hindsight.

I chat with my dad regularly about the bands of the era and when I tell him their names he's no idea. When we discuss glue He talks about the many friends that he still has at 88 and how the glue that kept them friends was a hobby, a person, a situation, a reunion.....There was always a glue. The bond that kept them together. 

I remember laughing in 2000 when we were discussing stickiness on the website. For all technology moved us forward to see the word glue replace by stickiness always had me doubled up. So we've gone from one some syllable to three syllables and a word that conjures up some mental image best forgotten.

My 37-year-old self would say technology I'm clearly too old for it, while rolling about laughing at some 27 year old techie. I'm sure nowadays it would just be an emoji of a horse in a compromised position, so that you could either think glue or stickiness

RIP Alan Mackie

Not many people know that Alan liked to do a doodle or two and when Deadbeat first hit the streets, in 1982, a teenager called Al drew a glass or two and the hiccups heading as well as the first Deadbeat cover title.

He's pictures 2nd from the right next to Roger Downing who's wearing quite a natty one sided mohican for a game at the eden in St Andrews back in 2011.

Today at 12 he left us via a Lisbon cremotorio (which incidentally is still on fire!) 

We light a candle at Deadbeat and remember all the fun through the years

Look down laughter #33

I love irony and when the people shouting about lockdown are people who spent their life breaking the law try not paying the proper taxis I do sense some irony.

I want to shout at them just ignore the f****** law it's not as if you were a law abiding citizen.

Why are you morning about people not being allowed to come into your house you used to have people coming into your house and telling them to pay cash. You used to go to people's houses Do jobs and then tell them they'd get a discount if they paid you in cash.

All the time out of NHS was underfunded did any of these people feel the need to pay a bit more than tax.

What makes me laugh so hard my sides hot is that they suddenly want to obey the law.

We are supposed to drive at a maximum of 20 miles per hour or 30 miles per hour or even 70 miles per hour yet how many people take it upon themselves to break the law.

So when the law tells you not to have someone in your house don't do it everyday and don't have 20 which is like doing 110 on the motorway or 40 mph outside of school.

Why is up people The law is there to guide our society Don't pick and choose the ones you obey!

Right I better find a tree so I can pee behind it as there's no toilet nearby!

The Invitation - live from the living room in 2020

I've lost my jack so this is a very coasre recording, like we used back in the 80's !!

 

The Wild Indians #14

It's May 1983 - that election but the electrical storm was all about the new tape!

The Wild Indians #27

Plus back page add for Fini Tribe 22 Beaches and Crazy Maybe at the (Home) Front

My TV career....and other sad celebrity moments

I remember jumping for a ball in a football match down at Longniddry, where instead of shouting Al's ball, I somehow went "Alan McEwan's ball, 4 Marchhall Road ....and the rest of the then Deadbeat address of my folk's house. 

The slagging subsided when Mackie got booked for taken a throw in from the edge of the 18 yard box. 

He'd been on the whisky for breakfast and in the linament infused atmosphere of the dressing room his breath added to a heady cocktail, but back to the folks.

They lived in a boat hoose as my Holy Rood classmates advised me during another of my moments. I tried to argue that we lived nowhere near the canal but my Maryland accent wasn't going down too well. It was 1975 and Americana wasn't well received in Edinburgh.

My Dad had previously got a job as the Agricultural attache at the British Embassy, in Washington DC, he wasn't too diplomatic so we only stayed two years but more of that later. My folks loved the place, I didn't.

I had 2 years, from age 9-11 in the USA and I hated most of it. My Dentist gave me over 100 fillings in baby teeth, as I later recalled at the dole office in Castle Terrace. "I've been sponging off the state for years, even if most of the cash went to Dr Yamaichi, dental practice in Quince Orchard, just along the road from my friend James Harris' house". James had a big family and they lived in a big house halfway along the road between Darnestown and Quince Orchard where the ice cream was great and the dentist was demanding,

My brushes with celebrity were numerous in Maryland as it was the USA everyone is a celebrity. I beat my teacher at chess during lunch one day but 4 lunchtimes later I realised he was just rubbish so it was no claim to fame. James and I played football in the county trials and were soon in demand at state level, but those trials were too far away, so we stayed home. 

No it was 22 miles away when I appeared on Bozo the clown throwing ping pong balls into little red buckets on WDCTV that I got famous, as the wee boy whose mum had to come out the studio audience to take the greeting wee bairn away, having missed with all three attempts. No star prize, no 2nd prize, not even the dunce's prize for just getting one in, just shame, tantrum and distress. I applied many more times but guess what, I was never again to get selected, scarred instead for life as the underdog who delivered defeat.

That Christmas I would make up for it when I arrived at the White House for President Nixon's party for diplomatic kids. Basically allowing a group of under 10's to drink as much coke as they wanted and puke all over the floor. I showed great restraint except in my search for the Green Room. As a Hibby, it was important for me to say I ran down the wing in the Green Room. So I did, evading a basketball player in a uniform before escaping back into the melee that was 100's of kids from around the world, screaming and dancing with balloons, it was a Republican white hoose... I was told to do a lot of networking here as they would be my friends of the future, well that's what one kid said to me and I laughed. They didn't support Hibs, Scotland or Brazil so how likely was it that we'd meet again?

I'd just finished writing a play at school. I'd got an A+++, which in today's parlance is like a Paul Hollywood handshake, its worth fuck all, but in the world of imaginary currency, its worth even more than something else. In my case as I got nothing but A's and A+, except my C for handwriting, an affliction derived from using my left hand and not my right. What I cant recall is any attempt made by my teachers to improve my handwriting. I do know I typed all my letters home owing to this affliction. Even now I feel for my audience so much I type so they can read the shit I write, others have suggested handwritten stuff lets you say, "yes it does say that!"

My play was quite a mind fuck of time travel and dual nationality, It involved Robert the Bruce and Jarzinho played on the wing while we were kicking a haggis around Bannockburn. I got to send a cross over for Pele in my disguise as William Wallace and he headed it home. Home of course was a cave which was full of haggis, because you could only header them into the cave, you couldn't get them back unless the spider, who tried and tried again, shifted one. My career in writing stalled after that.

So I hated my 2 years at Darnestown Elementary School, although I did like sitting down for the "I pledge my  allegiance to....dah dah dah". I saw it as some kind of soviet style indoctrination that everyone had to do every morning. I was a catholic and I'd never been asked to genuflect and cross myself before the school day so I was fucked if I was going to pledge myself to someone else's flag or country. I had enough trouble with what Britain were doing in Northern Ireland and I was only 9. I hated the union jack and later I'd find out even Mao's China wasn't as bad as Darnestown, although he did melt the woks and that was worse.

I remember my Mum being summoned to the school to explain why I wouldn't stand up. She said I was Scottish. I dont remember a big thing happening when I got home, I just remember never standing again. I created even more harmony, when I memorised all the states, their capitals, their populations, rainfall, and the presidents, the assassinations and then proceeded to be a prick and explain to these kids about their country. "Gee, you're really smart" some 9 year old would tell me. I was far too polite to say, you're fucking stupid. They used dumb, which is a word I associated with deaf, dumb and blind kids who could play pinball. Surely dumb is the word for people who cant speak. Stupid is reserved for you, trust me, I'm really clever, I thought, being an arrogant, autistic, self important precocious prick, albeit age 9. 

"When I get Famous" as Patrik Fitzgerald famously sang, I will recount this story, I thought in a time warped way.

I nearly made the font page when my accidental death didnt quite happen. I'd taken the tractor, as we called the sit-on mower, out to cut the back field. The garden in Esworthy Road was 4 acres and so I drove down the hill and back up the other side and started cutting. You could go quite fast going down the hill but it was a bit dangerous (you couldn't exactly do a handbrake tun at the bottom) whilst it was really slow going back up the hill so I elected for not quite so fast, all the time, by cutting across the slope. This was great especially when I started doing the slope as I had to lean into the slope, like I was riding a bike. Then it wasn't so great as the machine rolled onto me and the blades flashed past my head and suddenly I looked like Phil Oakey, 1981, not a great cut for a 9 year old. I was really lucky as nobody saw me and I could keep it that way. As I write this, it feels like my 9 year old self has taken over the narrative and doesn't want to be named. What I remember is putting the tractor back up getting on it and thinking "thank fuck" or possibly "I'd like to thank God, for helping me get the tractor back up, started, and I can now drive it back". The truth is my death was fine but being told how stupid I'd been didn't work well with me.

Watching Gordon, my elder bother, set fire to a tree using an aerosol and a lighter was one of my 10 year old experiences. He wanted to burn the spiders, it's what USA 13 year olds do. He was tormenting spiders which meant he wasn't tormenting me, but it wasn't right that the whole tree was alight and the spider was still evading his flame thrower, (or maybe it was, ha ha). The tree was a cypress and it was higher than the house so I ran and got a hose while shouting "Mum, Gordon's ....set the house on fire". I never missed an opportunity to grass the big tormenting bastard. 

Years later when Gillie was fitting a radiator in the house, he needed to weld a joint while in the midst of the onset of a diabetic seizure. The wallpaper and ceiling were on fire when I suggested, 'will I get the fire blanket', to which he replied 'yes and have you got a mars bar'. I got him a couple of fun sized mars bars and they nearly passed my head as he flung them back at me. Luckily I nodded them down to him and he ate. It calmed him enough so he could go and buy a 4 pack from the shops. I was the water carrier in the team and Gillie played centre half so we knew the drill.

Just as when I was 9 the fire was doused and panic averted. Gordon would get his own back numerous times but fire would play a starring role when one of his pals Chic would receive a wee burn at a party in 1980. Scars had just made their album and my folks had headed back to see friends in the USA so this was a cue for Gordon to invite Edinburgh's finest to his 'emptie'. There was always an active band scene in some part of Edinbugh and this one was an awayday from the Tap. The pubs I recall having a real presence at our house parties were The Tap O Lauiston and The Wig'n'Pen/Coppers crew. I remember putting a Coppers advert in Deadbeat in exchange for a pint of Guinness. But enough about Cockburn Street as everyone already knows it was at the centre of this wee creative universe.

So Chic was always an arrogant wee tosser, as I recall, the kind who beautifully lobs the grenade over the shoulder of someone else before darting for safety, and he asked me for a light. In fact his words were "Get me a light!", in that tone of master and servant. As I was 16, speeding and pretty full of my homebrew, I said "aye", leaned over, struck a match and as he beckoned me closer, so he didnt have to sit up, I dropped it on his hairy but quickly balding chest. "You did that on purpose!" he exclaimed, I smiled and walked away. 'Bastard wont do that to me again' I thought. 

I had a healthy respect for fire, I liked others to learn, and it went back even further than the tree in Maryland.

In 1969 I was playing, as 6 year olds do, and I'd taken two big armchairs and turned them over facing each other to make a cockpit. The game was going great and it was now a car and I had a silver dish for a steering wheel but then we skidded and I could smell burning. Suddenly I looked round and the fire was licking up the chair. The chairs were covered in this new stuff, elasticated chair covers, yes plastic. I turned off the electric fire and batted the flames before shouting, "Mum, the chair's on fire". Gordon was out so I couldn't blame him.

When my Mum appeared she seemed to thank me for saving the day, when in my head, I started it. Strange how the only eyewitness was me and how I should choose to remember the story!

By 10 my brother Gordon had exacted his usual retribution. Its funny how some people will commit 50 times the original deed and still claim retribution will follow. In this case he wrote Schools Out on my new five year diary, on June 20th, 1973. I say this, knowing full well he knew I had 5 more years writing this diary so his defacing my diary would torment me for 5 years. Yes, readers, which came first, the victim or the bully has been discussed many times before and since my long dissertation on the subject. Every religion just like most communities has its fair share of victims and bullies. Yet, still we just choose to call democracy when we vote for one arsehole bully or the other. I find the worst bullies to be those who head up victim causes, the abusers who work helping out after the hurricane are truly the scum of the earth.

By 11 we were happily heading home to Scotland with an overnight stay in New York. Gordon and I were watching some film and he shouted  "you've got a hard on, you've got a hard on!". I didn't know what he meant and as he referred me to my cock which was sticking out of my pyjamas I presumed he meant that. I said stupidly that it just happened sometimes, thinking I possessed some ailment. As time went by I'd remember a day when my mum stopped bathing me with my sister Lucy, being old you're too old for a bath you just need a shower now.

I'm guessing it was because my mum saw me with a "Hard on" as my brother called it. So that's why I dont get a bath anymore. That's really bad.

Even now, I love a hotel with a bath in it. I always have a bath as I feel I've been missing out. Occasionally I have a "Hard on" too. When I soak in the bath, I know I've been missing out. Humans, this one anyway, is supposed to have a bath. We were born from water, well amniotic fluid at least, I'm a bath boy, or a power shower if my limbs are sore....

But back to the TV. I arrived in St Andrews and got paid £100 by the BBC to play the role of a student searching for the end of the raisin string. I'd just become a student so the role was a stretch but for £100 I was fairly elastic. The raisin string thing seemed a bit bizarre. I subsequently found out that at St Andrews you get an academic family, made up of parents who accost you and make you their surrogate. They've been there a few years so are typically in their 3rd or 4th year. 

For many this is a great way to get acclimatised but for someone still in the eager throes of adolescent rebellion, an anathema. I still didn't know why people were studying at university instead of just partying. 

Still, £100? That's a lot of partying, back to work.

So I get filmed climbing out a window in Sallies, St Salvator's hall, holding and following this string. "Look surprised", someone shouted at me so I did. It was 1980, Reagan was about to be elected President, Thatcher had won last year, My 2B's and C's got me into Uni so I could leave school after 5th year, Hibs had lost after 3 games against Rangers in the Scottish Cup, I could do surprised and I could do "Plus ca change c'est la memechoise" easily.

Next thing filming takes me to the castle in St Andrews. I'd never been before and we filmed outside and down into the deepest dungeon and then out again following this fucking string. I'm not sure I got it but, £100 when Guinness was 30p a pint, I got that. I studied Maths, Economics & Psychology, I will enjoy being a student far more with 333 pints of Guinness. That's 33 a week for the whole of the first term, or 60 a week for what's left of it!

"Look scared", "Look surprised", lots of shouts.

"Look thirsty!"  shouted one of my pals, I was, and hungry. "Do we break for lunch?" I helpfully asked. "No we're nearly finished, one more location", came back the reply and off we trotted in the minibus to the sign at Guardbridge, 

"St Andrews 3 Miles". 

I did my "look tired" pose and acted superbly when attempting "try and pull the sign out of the ground".

I'm tiring, but hanging in thinking, 'we've gone a bit too far but my tired and hungry poses were going well, 5 more minutes'. 

So well in fact, that someone said that's a wrap. How different it was 40 years later when I saw close up how Danny Boyle and his film makers worked on Trainspotting 2. I remember looking at some of the older ones and wondering, 'did you ever work on that Terry Wogan True or False game show in the early 80's when people were allegedly rolling cheeses down hills or students received raisin strings attached to things'. 

In my defence there was a lot of time between takes that day as the clouds kept covering the sun.

Just like so many things in our world, the weather is everything.

I never got to see the end product as I'm not sure I watched the programme or if the programme got axed. The 80's were all about the Tube and it wasn't long before I was saying to Chic's wee brother Paul, I'll put you on the front cover of Deadbeat, that beats Chic getting into Smash hits!

Once you had made it into the inner sanctuary of anything back in the 80's it was a golden ticket. Paul had been successful with the Prats and now got a single out on chicken jazz, https://youtu.be/3nu9W4HxkL8. That seemed a perfectly good reason to go on the front page of Deadbeat, that and my photographic credit for snapping Paul with a coffee, ashtray, the Peanut butter and silver tray, last seen in a movie about a cockpit that goes on fire, circa 1969.  

Listening now, it brings back great memories and my bro's melancholic sax gently slides around the lament. I think he was with APF or Funhouse at the time and Chicken Jazz was Mike Scott's label so it makes sense. It is hard to hear expressions like 'you're so dumb', one of those that get the shackles rising in me, but Americana was all the rage then, at least there's no "this sucks" expression.

The cover of #2 was a great continuing of an experiment, one that proved I had no artistic skill whatsoever, but it did show luck is everything. My greatest piece of luck is impossible to say but where Deadbeat's concerned, Hilary's drawing transformed our covers and whether it was Keith or me, even we couldn't fuck it up when given all the ingredients. 

When we interviewed Roddy Frame after the gig in Dundee and Stu the roadie told us its 'all sex'n'drugs'sausage rolls' I wanted a t-shirt made! Only months would pass as we were given free passes everywhere and when Annie Lennox invited us up to share some chat after the Dundee gig it just felt the doors were always open. A huge thanks to the promoters at the time, whether they be Stuart Clumpas, Willie Potts at Night Moves or the guys from Regular. They kept us going.

It's still the best experience I ever had doing Deadbeat and I can close my eyes still and be sitting chatting with Hilary and Annie Lennox and not wondering why I was in the room. We were just out to try and promote wee bands, try and get them a bit more exposure, something to add to their demo when they sent it off to the labels. When Annie asked a roadie to bring some tequila up, I just thought Charlie and the chocolate factory, what's not to like!

Annie gave us her address and we religiously sent her a copy of every Deadbeat, laughing all the time that she must've found a use for it, maybe to put under a leg of the shaky table or pew.

We didn't care, more and more wee bands were getting words written about their music which got them gigs and sometimes even signed. 

No matter how many bands we reviewed and went to see, we couldn't even scratch the surface of Scotland, never mind the UK scene. Like the parties when the folks went to the states, you'd have a small collection, a wee post punk community where random members of the Cubs, Fire Engines, APF, Scars, Josef K would dream, scheme and live. 

In the end, that's all its ever been about, living. If there's one thing Deadbeat taught me it was some people get a voice, get a platform. get signed, but the machinery continues to churn and chooses its own. 

Getting signed, getting famous, making money or being secure enough to make your own art. Or was it just to be able to pout and sit on a throne in your village.

I like to look at Discogs and see the Wee Cherubs single at £200 or even Ahab's Party girl selling for £50. I think someone has a box in their attic - I know I've still got mine.

So if its about money, forget the crypto currency, digging out copies of the Deadbeat tape is my new favourite hobby, I'm selling them for 300 pints of Guinness at 1983, 84 & 85 prices! 

But there's no need for conclusions, there's just plenty reasons to be cheerful, now where's that manuscript, '1000 reasons why I love smoking', i started in 2005, I could do with a big fat one now!

Autumn 1904 - video link - I Heard Catherine Sing

 https://youtu.be/e5C_T5KXb-s is the link to listen to "I Heard Catherine Sing" and watch Billy's mullet. 

The ban had been formed with members having cut their teeth in three or four other Edinburgh bands as was the way. Many bands saw members drift in and out on musical, theatrical or financial ambition, some just wanted to pursue their own art. Many of the bands in the early 80's came from art schools and their creativity saw them return to their first love.

Live, Autumn 1904 produced a great sound and they were in a real hurry which was what the dance floor needed. The 7 piece were quite simply a superb show.

Later in 1985 a new band  merged with some of First Priority to form the Crows.

Deadbeat tape 2 - Dancing Bears 1st attempt - anyone know a good engineer?

 

Screaming Nobodies #18

The photos are slightly better than the printed version as Gary and Davie let rip with some hilarious 1983 observations. It's not often we went to 3 pages for an interview but the only reason it didn't make 4 was KB being a sensitive about Siouxsie Sioux!

It was fine slagging off The Vikings as Nigel Williams never really got the local scene but not Siouxsie!

Nigel tried with the Absentees too but his biggest claim to fame was finding his way into Deb's posthumous memoir, proving Gary and Davie right all along!

Deadbeat tape 1

To celebrate our first anniversary we put out a flexi disc which the wild indians and pop wallpaper supplied for issue #17.

The following month the first of 3 compilation tapes came out to promote Scottish bands to the readers as many couldn't make it to the gigs.

It seemed pointless talking about great bands from around Scotland if you couldn't hear why we were talking about them.

Unlike most of the bands, we never went to art school and our marketing was shit, but luckily their music was great. Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh were represented on the first tape and Inverness, Arbroath and Perth would make the second and third.

To be fair, anybody who said they wanted to be on the tapes usually got on as it wasn't like we had a clue what was good or bad, we just wanted to pass the sounds on to a wider audience, those who wanted to hear bought the tapes and made copies for their mates.

I've got my greatest hits from the 40+ songs and its 3 hours listening!

The Pastels - 1983

Read the interview #20 full of fun as KB talks to Stephen, our Glasgow personality of the year for 1983, on a dreich day in Raintown!

The Very Thing - 1983

Read the full article #20 listen to them on the deadbeat tape

#lockdown 99 - Parallel Pathways -Covid care opportunities - independence or high dependency?

 Across the world there is a huge opportunity to grab the pandemic embrace it and move health to the top of the agenda. 

Fighting the pandemic is clearly top of the agenda and I'm advocating embracing it. At the end of these coming 18 months we should have 3 times the nursing capacity that we currently have. We should have created new pathways in education within the health sector that encourages people to train at any age to be more effective in their role, or to offer development.

The current education pathway for doctors in the UK worked well until 90 hour weeks were banned and can continue to do so but it needs to evolve so we aren't just thieving from other countries. It wont be long before that exploitation loop hole closes and the idea that hospital managers need to get more creative is nonsense. Many weren't very creative before and being opportunistic isn't creative, its opportunistic. The way sterling is plummeting as we career towards a no deal brexit and the final twist in the USA's war of independence looms large.

We are very close to becoming an overseas territory of the USA. It does not take many people to do it and for the NHS see the examples of Manchester United and Liverpool. They are no longer part of their communities and it wont be long until they are no longer part of their cities. Within 50 years, as with sport in the USA, these teams will represent a franchise which can then be bought, especially if they successfully create a super league. The USA will enjoy grinding a post brexit smug UK into the dust, they'll love it, 250 years after independence, they will, in 2026, have destroyed us. Think rust belt states!

Back to the health scene though. Across the globe we are all living longer and therefore we need more people in the 70's and shortly 80's to have a meaningful role in society. These people have lived and their experience is of real value, its a resource we should exploit to mutual benefit. Covid has seen many retirees return to work and sadly many have died in their efforts. 

This is why lockdowns have been required, our nursing capacity is limited and in case you didn't notice, nursing staff died looking after patients, thus leaving the nursing community short of even more staff, including those so dedicated to their job they came out of retirement to help. I tried to apply for a care home job but realised I wasn't skilled enough to earn £9.50 an hour, that's wrong on too many levels.

If we are to do the right thing by them and ourselves it is to build an NHS and work with the WHO to build the world's health infrastructure. 

I do get it that people in the frontline are going to find it difficult to come out of intensive care to sit in a meeting about how to increase the pool of talent but it needn't stop there being parralel tracks. There's a huge pool of talent talking in chat rooms about covid this and that, most of it negative pissin' in the wind stuff with the statistical analysis that makes marketing people proud of saying almost 100% of people loved this product when only 9, out the 10 people approached, replied "yes, if given a pint free I woud say I loved it."

Community clubs can harness some of this. Whether its a sports club like your local football team, golf or tennis club we all have academies and pathways. All I would ask is that everyone be given a parallel pathway.

If I could dream for a moment, I would see the Hibs development squad staying back to discuss their parallel pathway, I would see Scottish Golf Clubs discussing with "getting kids into golf", what else they might do.

I grew up in a generation when paramilitary groups would meet at local church halls in their uniforms and do a sewing badge, first aid badge, or even how to tie a knot badge. We collected a lot of badges back in the days when football cards came with cigarettes.

I'm suggesting we learn a bit from our history and instead of increased isolation that we learn to pool our resources, pull the strands of our society to see if we have a society or indeed we are now 20 million sub societies floating like droplets bouncing into each other from time to time. The spread of the civd virus suggests we do bump into more people than we realise, that our lives are inexplicably linked even when we try to live them in isolation, pre or post lockdown.

Our communities thrive with common purpose, that's down the allotment or walking the Camino de Santiago My twin site fatal-bananas has all the nonsense that seems so real on the camino where you find yourself thriving physically and emotionally in a community that is so uplifting. Its not from the past or from the future, whats beautiful about the camino is its in the moment.

I've seen many community initiatives like the one where common space is given over to food production. What could be simpler than having a productive garden outside a hospital or council building, and it fills me up to know that people are still bashing on and making a difference. They are going through doors that are open. 

Brilliant practical minds lead to wonderfully productive solutions and lets' hope the opportunity the Pandemic has created to rejuvenate our approach to health isn't remembered for no wage rises for nurses, lockdowns that stuttered to a civil disobedient halt and the confused cray bungling Boris and the parlous public representatives. I've argued before they need a rest because they are clearly disappearing down the rabbit hole in their thinking. They have asked the health professionals questions about the current state of the heath system and the pandemic, they need to ask what steps we need now for 5-10 years as well. They need to ask what can the public do to help, not just stay home.

We need the idle masses to contribute, we need to see the brilliant simple solutions in action. We need to know how to become a key worker even if its just how to volunteer at a food bank or to move food from an allotment to a tattie collection point.

As a society we want our people to thrive so please....... Gizza joab!

Carry on up the covid

 It only seems like April when I was mumbling away about the care home cull and it seems everyone and anyone has an observation on how badly or well the politicians are doing. Its like golf club members all knowing more about hoticulture than greenkeepers, or football supporters telling their team managers that they haven't a clue.

It is true, they haven't a clue but that's not unique. We only need to look around the world and how different politicians in different countries approach it differently. What is unique is the situation. Normally flu epidemics are one thing and pandemics tend to be unique things.

Its like the shock and awe of the 'student explosion', that everyone knew about. Its absolutely what most of us expected and while some say its not part of a 'herd immunity' tactic it should work like that. Go to Uni, get Covid in Freshers week, recover by October week, then you can go home at Christmas and see whoever you like.

I'm not sure I share the opinion of locking pubs down at 10pm as Scotland led the way in opening hours 30 years ago to ensure less violence, but it also ensures less covid. Many pubs had moved to regulars only and certainly didn't let pub crawlers in as reserving on line was essential. The cure for me is that all tables must be booked in advance and 10pm is clearly wrong on many levels. Students are fairly good at entertaining themselves and union facilities offer great opportunities.

Whether your a publican or bar worker, a taxi driver or just a punter, the economics of 10pm dont add up.

Its like the resumption of sport. I've been waiting on the rather obvious decision to allow Melrose, Galashiels or Hawick to be allowed to use their facilities for fans, let's face it on non match days they'll be allowed to open their bars. Further up the East Coast the train stops at Kirkcaldy, Arbroath and Aberdeen where a trial match took place. Clearly Arbroath is where the match should've taken place. 

If Arbroath and all lower league teams are allowed to let local season ticket holders into the matches we will have a meaningful statistical trial to see how various towns are doing. For me the logic isn't flawless, but its got a few less variables than a city like Aberdeen where the population is so large that a trial involving a few hundred fans is meaningless as cross contamination on the way to the match or after it would lead to skewed data.

Arbroath being a railway town probably has a consequential higher exposure, but my general thesis, is the virus cant move around town if it ain't in the town.

If Arbroath, Montrose, Forfar or Brechin (I only use Arbroath as they are famous for Pulsebeat Plus TSB performers of great 80's pop tunes) were to hold trial matches the likelihood is the local population are covid free, albeit the players do work in other towns and are at a much greater exposure.

This brings me back to the earlier point about students. Its not really about students but about the great interactivity associated with moving house. The plague upon our halls of residences and student flats of covid were anticipated and have resulted in a spike of testing and positive tests. The only thing we need to remind ourselves is that students know they should keep it to themselves. The ridiculous accusations about students is a wonderful blanket treatment that refuses to accept only 1% are spreading it, but they are doing a great job as they bounce from bubble to bubble.

The previous spikes were produced by the over 25's getting back into partying and the under 50's who still think there's some life left in them and isolated incidents highlighted by track and trace, eg Coupar Angus. Its very easy when a town spikes to convince locals to stay indoors but its not easy when they're told to tay indoors and there's no covid in town. They know it will arrive sometime but the idea of being locked down just because our testing capability is 20 times what it was in April, we should compare like with like and the current analysis is wide, varied and the conclusions randomly chosen.

The real issue politicians need to get their heads around is balancing lockdown against complacency. We know the world will continue but desperation really will hit home as the nights draw in and people see their jobs disappear. 

Social Media creates new movements and as cambridge analytics proved are forces for good and bad. The younger you are the more likely you are to live through your online world.

Apps like Grinder and Tinder will doubtless have covid bolt ons but lets not beat about the bush, (better expressions should be used), sex is going to happen and not from 2m away!

So the rise in cases will continue in the short term but the main thing we need to do is continue to educate people about their responsibility to stop the spread and the vulnerable's to avoid catching it.

Life can and does continue, just in more comfort than before. When was the last time you got a train to London and didn't have to watch someone stand! I always dye my hair grey before getting on the train, or shave myself bald, just to have a wee bit of a chance of getting a seat. I used to book a seat until the rail companies got wise and pulled bookings on busy trains. "Sorry, our ticketing machine isn't working so its free seating", the guard would helpfully announce as he put the 800 reservations in the re-cycling. Its a tip learnt from Michael O'Leary and Ryanair flight turnaround times. If a train arrives at 4.46pm and is due to depart at 5pm, there is no way there's time to put all the reservations out, any 'time and motion' radge knows that!

So back to the students and the Covid 19 or 2020 as it'll be remembered. Within 5 weeks the campus will be covid free and lecturers and tutors will feel afe they wont catch anything as all the students have had it. There will be some extremely sad events where the covid has highlighted a previous hidden condition and taken a fair deeper bite in certain cases and these will be tragic, but perhaps not preventable.

I was never in covid denial and the care home cull I wrote about back in April was because our public policy was trying to catch up with itself having dismantled much of our pandemic machinery in austerity cuts nearly 10 years back. The speed at which we shut down our airspace was comical and even now, we still dont have people being temperature checked before flights, but we do have for going into a chiropodist. Worse still when they arrive, the customs and excise are only worried if they bring a dog with rabies, not a human carrying a virus.

We've closed so many doors but left open the ones causing the largest drafts. Away and boil yer heed springs to mind when the latest suggestions appear disjointed and ill-conceived, I just think they need some time out. Every door they open, eg resumption of sport, bars, whatever, is followed by lobbying for the next door to be open and they are crushed by it so resort to closing.

I recommend the politicians take the weekend off and put some menthal crystals in a bowl of boiling water and with a towel over their heads, steam a wee bit, relax, draw breath and start getting their carrots in a row!

Next week I'll tell you about my allotment