Inspired by the millennials

It's difficult to know if climate change or conspiracy theories will dominate the landscape in the next 60 years but I do know that the millennials will build their own world in their likeness.

They'll decide what the octogenarian masses will have to eat and whether they'll have a bed in which to sleep. They'll not need to do it with a heavy heart as the age of consumerism ticks down and Kondratieff waves bye bye to the technological explosion that enabled so many good things. Like all things, marketing was at the front of the technology and from elections to pandemics proved that the P.E.N. or push E notifications, can be mightier than the sword.

Stiglitz and the inequality gap, the increasing poverty and national desire for greed

A long time ago greed became a vogue word and then it wasn't and then it was and then it wasn't and for my whole adult life, greed is good. 

As societies around the world we embrace each other just before we debase and in some cases destroy. There are countless genocides where people, races or religions are believed to be the issue. I've always thought it's just greed and control, with a smattering of testosterone thrown in. It's not just religions that do misogyny, but they do it well.

In the UK and Ireland we've had many different religions victimised on our shores from Catholics, Jews and Protestants through to the current victims who are more likely Muslims or as we roll the racist dice, anyone not considered white 'northern' European. The fact that everyone is mixed race and probably mixed religion in this country suggests we really are treading our way carelessly towards a proper backwater.

This is where Stiglitz comes in. He can see multi national power for what it is. Total and utter control, corruption and conformity helps. Conformity comes from an eager neo-liberal bunch who think deregulation of markets will lead to the fabled trickle down. What a load of shite. Most rich people don't give the shit off their shoes so trickle down my arse. Neo-liberal aka fascist fucks.

We are a very obedient lot in the main. South of the border we find culturally the English to be far more deferential than the Scots. There are huge swathes of people who don't believe in the monarchy or the Tory party ransacking their cities and towns with policies for greed, for the 1% but the groundswell for revolution is rare. Liverpool ditched the Sun newspaper after the tabloid trashed the reputation of the victims of the Hillsborough disaster. This was the greatest stand made by any city in England and it still stands today and I still cry real tears of pride in their strength. It stands alone in the last 40 years in my humble opinion. It is England's finest hour and always will be for me.

I'm Scottish, I live up the road and honestly, I'm with Stiglitz. We are culturally different from what is running us. I think other parts of England are the same. I worked for 3 years in Newcastle and happily supported England during a world cup. I'd worked in London 20 years earlier and happily supported Belgium and any other team playing England. Culturally I get the people I'm living and working with or I don't. 

We believe in paying taxes to make a fairer society. I believe as a corporation my company should pay more. I believe at school we should be taught why taxes are valuable and not a disincentive to business.

I do however believe that our politicians really don't know why they are doing their jobs and that's a clear problem. Like any industry it has grown into a corner and we can't see where the thinkers bench is now. The political weeds have just grown over the top and it's why I believe strongly in revolution. I prefer it via the ballot box but revolution, please.

It's not 40+ years of wishing for a better government. It's 40+ years of realising they are getting worse. Not marginally but markedly worse. It's quite a feat for me to suggest Thatcher was better but at least she was honest about hating the socialism the Scots sought.

Nothing has really changed. There is still a significant amount of us in Scotland who would like everyone to have a house and if that be a council or a boat house, a house. Next up a joab. Next up a minimum wage of £25 an hour. 

It is shameful that students carrying a golf bag can earn more in 4 @4 hour rounds than a care worker in a 40 hour week.

I digress as usual but I find that my nonsense from years gone by about why Thatcher's contraction of the UK economy via privatisation and pathological hatred has done little for our economy and even less for our economic health. Friedman weighed heavy at the time, a name rarely heard 40 years on. 

What I feel I have always known, and a grocers daughter should've known is that it's the small money that keep spinning around the economy and the large money that disappears offshore.

I argued for a fiscal stimulus called increase the tax free allowance to £20,000. All the people who receive a £2000 bonus will spend it 10 times over.

Take it back off the people between £50-70,000, such that those at £70,000 are neutral.

This money will largely be spent in their local economy and we won't hear sob stories about local bakers, newsagents and the like closing down and being replaced by Estate agents and pawn shops. I feel like a broken record as it's been a deadbeat mantra so that's 40 years.

Stiglitz knows how bad inequality is for an economy and he's very forthright about it. He's also very simple on his views. He knows that what sorted the USA out wasn't so much Roosevelt and the mass programs but the armaments for WWII and the college education the people received thereafter. 

The influx of brains included my Dad in 1962 in Michigan as well as his Glaswegian pal who stayed his whole life on campus, becoming a professor. This is almost doing what the Chinese government are now doing in placing their people in the UK, but of course we are one step ahead and deport everyone once they get a degree. I almost want to say that again. Once someone is of huge value to our economy we kick them out.

In the USA in 1962 it was the opposite. They might do it now, but back then they couldn't get enough of these brains from around the world. The more they learned, the greater their ambition to learn. I'd say this was the end of one part of a Kondratieff wave in some respect. I know that it coincides with the evolution of technology and the growing ambition to apply it across all fronts from putting people on the moon to washing clothes and keeping milk cool. Putting a TV in every home and latterly a PC and a phone.

We got a black n white TV in 1967 I think, and I got a half share in an amstrad for my 21st in 1983. Followers of Deadbeat will see the font change!

I got my first laptop about 1996 and a dongle so I could work from the pub by 1998.

The blackberry arrived and by 2007 it could never be left unattended. 

It's all bite sized chunks but when I asked the question you have to leave one at home, cash or phone, only Jackie answered cash. 

Yep, by 2023, the phone has displaced us. Whether recording our steps or our purchases it's now the must have chip. It isn't long until the tattoo is that chip. Surely we will just be using our wrist.

1999

I remember arguing unconvincingly that the levels of debt in 1999 were unsustainable for the USA never mind the UK and something had to give. I was a fan of the Prince song but it did rely on people having the money to party and only if they could keep borrowing it. Whilst the actual banking crisis in 2006, which finally manifest in 2008 was real, the seeds had been down long before with the vast majority of people wanting jam today, not tomorrow.

The rising household debt was real. It was spread right across the population and wasn't just the speculative punters towards the end who really just pushed the envelope. This steady demand curve fat outstripped supply and resulted in the full unemployment era of the Blair and baby Bush administrations. I would say all the other politicians too but their names escape me. Latterly called the P.I.G.S. there were a few who the bankers would lay the blame on whole clambering to offload their own septic tank of toxic debt instruments. I like to call it when Europe's penaions foolishly bailed out the USA.

There is no doubt however, this was the end of the demand led economy. From then on demand would be squashed by politicians posing as prudent. They can't be forgiven but pressure from the bankers to be bailed out and trusted for their itinerant incompetence is an odious if accurate excuse. In the UK people like Darling would be easily fooled into thinking it was the only way.

Earlier on this blog I wrote a note about student debt in England is now greater than the national debt of Ireland. When I was reading Stiglitz's great divide I noted in 2010 student debt in the USA had exceeded the $1tn credit card debt. One clearly going down while the other just grows and grows. His point is well made. You can only slide up the greasy pole if there is wealth to help you. If you can buy an internship, masters or move forward in the malaise of your youthful peers. It's quite simply disgusting, divisive and no way to grow your economy.

It's about here that I can see Stiglitz and I are not quite on the same page. He thinks politicians would want to improve the economy but I think power and short termism have never been closer. In the UK, that blink of an eye includes Liz Truss being able to say she was a prime minister, drawing the appropriate pension and pawkle a few pounds on the podium road show.

As I read Stiglitz I'm reminded of my Dad's time in Michigan in 1962. He genuinely wants to believe that people do want to get back to the beautiful American Dream of hard work paying off in the long run. This great myth got hijacked in my opinion by the marketing makeovers that see useless products and people perform like porpoise to capture the imagination, like a lorry salesman at the ingliston Sunday market in the 70's.

I remember coming home with a rotating cheese grater. I felt a wee bit conned. I had been. At 15, it was a good lesson, and for £2, a fairly cheap one. I was still using it 10 years later, so maybe I didn't quite learn the lesson.

No suprise really, I've always been very slow on the uptake, but like the elephant I am, once it's in there I do remember. I'll never know if Darling was complicit with the banks or just stupid. Either way I've always felt he lost any possible points and when he campaigned for better together I realised it was probably time to be apart. Like Brown they seemed to be stuck in an optics war and the sad part was they were convinced that Blair's bubble had come from that successful stance. My believe is Kinnock tripped over at the Sheffield conference and at the time the country had two almost reasonable options. Certainly better options than the USA has faced for a long time, with 2024 being no exception. A year in which the country has to find a way not to elect Trump. The smart money is certainly not on them succeeding.

Stiglitz takes us on a journey back to the 20's when agriculture production processes were evolving at a drastic rate leaving many farm workers out of a job, while food production increased. The general observation in a micro world sees me stop being a schoolboy in the post room and moving upstream into the settlements area. I was lucky in my work and kept evolving but I passed a lot of people who really just enjoyed being good at what they did and going home. I loved what I did and wanted to do it better. This often involved bypassing useless bosses and streamlining procedures that were pointless and replacing them with practical purposeful and valuable processes. Nothing cheersled my colleagues hearts more than another joke job I'd removed. 

Traffic lights management was perhaps my favourite. When you ask people why they perform a task and they tell you it's for management I love to chuckle. If it's not for you to help you manage, it's not for management, I'd reply.

When you remove these jobs somebody always asks how you'll replace it. The answer I'd use was we have a tractor now. We have a combine harvester. Trust me, the guys sitting ticking off every item on the bank statement against every item on our records don't need to as the computer has been born.

Structural changes are at the heart of Kondratieff's thinking and technology is clearly one, both on the agricultural sector of the USA in the 20's and nowadays. You might not need traffic lights but you still need a driver.

I think Stiglitz with his pal Bruce Greeneald nail it. This great depression was a long time in the making in the USA. It's no surprise it arrived, more a suprise it took so long. The collapse on demand is everything and that's where I absolutely adore the hypothesis.

In my time at university I sat and explained that Thatcher had a strategy to confront the unions and it was called high unemployment. It was ironic that she won a landslide election on a slogan that labour wasn't working as the dole queue hit 1 million. When employees in manufacturing fell by another couple of million the queue had reached 3m. People were being bought out of their jobs with generous redundancy terms or unscrupulous laws enabling closures. Unions would see themselves destroyed in a few fitful years. Unable to respond together they found themselves on the back door and their memberships plummet.

The country was told we had to move to a service based economy. In short servitude would've been a better description. Big redundancy payments allowed some to buy a pub, a taxi or even a guest house. This move to the service based economy worked for a few. The vast majority were offered little training because the new jobs didn't exist and retraining for a job that would disappear another few years down the road suggested folly. In the 1980's pop music split down party lines with many Scottish and northern bands holding government to account while London and the south preferred to celebrate with big hair extensions, fake tan and tinsel teeth. The makeover was complete. London would soon be back on charge and the unions despatched like a heffer with a bolt.

The seismic waves through those communities will always be talked about but economic recovery for them became a cause celebre, as getting on one's bike became the prescribed medication.

I often wonder if we had staged a bike protest and had 3 million people cycle to London would they have been as successful as the matches from history. It's a lovely image but one I might ask to draw.

All of which leads us beautifully back to the USA, Stiglitz and the great depression. Farm workers with no money won't be able to support the towns bakery, pub or even a coffee shop. Yep, town closes. We watched mining towns close in the 80's and in the mid west we saw what happened, throw in a few dust bowls too.

Strathaven Hotel November 3rd - Callum Easter

Callum's always good for a special guest or two so please check it out as it should be a good night. I'm fresh off the Gijon good gig guide but hopefully make it down. Steve Jackson and Eugene Kelly should augment a superb evening.

CIRCUS OF HELL

https://youtube.com/shorts/LTymdZJCVUQ?si=2fH0yo3fNCl8i4GQ

One minute of the Dundee band's loose on you, also released on  the Deadbeat Tape 2 and issue #23, 1984 just bed re they became legends

Enjoy 

FANTASTICO Teenage fanclub sweet baboo - gijon

Fantastico Fannies, musica magnifico,

Muchos Gracias!

 It's quite surreal the teatro laboral at Gijon.

Biggest tower in the region perched on a hill in the university area outside Gijon.

Easily reached by a #1 or #18 but not by a 90 Min walk... We are on Camino so we took the bus.

Did I mention there was no smoking or drinking. It's 30° and I'm a tad parched looking forward to the Fannies and a wee bevvie.

Norman got a cheeky wee beer, not us. We nearly stormed the stage but decided big Norm's tin looked half empty.

Sweet Baboo aka Steve, aka the 6th Fannie live, is from Wales and makes up songs that use a lot of his extensive vocal range and chord knowledge. In many songs velvet underground or undertones fans would've been exhausted by the number of different chords used, but just when you think he's run out a major E7 diminishes and a he's onto another level. Musically sweet Baboo challenges you to keep up. It was a battle he won but we were closing the gap in a distant 2nd.

It was tough at first but quickly the audience got the hang of it. I'm guessing it was his first big European tour. Cutting his continental teeth live on this tour must be daunting. Being Welsh in Britain is tough enough but try speaking to a Spanish audience. A few hums and hahs quickly gave way to talking about children and rocket ships. Never has a man grown more confidence than when talking about the magical qualities a rocket ship can have. It was hysterical. Out of the bumbling about came a Billy Connolly shaggy dog story and if it was meant it worked. If it wasn't it's a keeper. We felt alone in laughing out loud but it was brilliant.

For me the picks of the 6 songs were in the later ones and in particular the last 2 from his new album, The Wreckage. If you're going to the gigs in Scotland it's well worth listening to The Wreckage first as his music's sufficiently nuanced to make it worthwhile. Unlike us you won't get lapped on the third song still thinking about the first and second ones.

The Fannies came on 10 mins later at 9.15 and delivered their set. A mix of past and present including many of the favourites, but let's face it there are too many and not enough time.

Norman had some real tuning issues and it was quite cold and as I say a bit surreal. At times it felt like we were at a live practice session it was that relaxed. The audience erupted occasionally but in the main there was almost an eerie respectful distance maintained between the band and the audience as the Fannies moved through their last 30 years. 

I remember seeing the Velvets in London in the 80's and they seemed really old but relatively speaking this gig by the Fannies is even older. That's quite a mind fuck but it is true. A band who arrived long after Deadbeat's deadline are playing music older than the Velvets did at that gig which coincidentally was after Deadbeat's demise too.

The longer I linger in this tardis the faster my head seems to spin. 

In 87,  The Banana album was 20 years old yet bandwagonesque had 30+ in the bin.

I could go on an on, indeed it would be my numbing.

But thats fat Al at the typewriter not thinking it's a sin.

Yes, I see it's putting a bemused look on Rip Van Reihill the Life Support lead guitarist and lifelong Fannies fan....so we will move on

30+ years, 10+ albums and that's a lot of material. There's not much to say except to admire the professional performance, superb melodies, 5 singers so I'll provide the odd bit of sage advice.

..ha ha....ed

Speaking in the local language can work a treat so for Sweet Baboo's Stephen Black when you play San Sebastian just slip in "eskerrik Asko", that's thank you in basque. The crowd will thank you back Stephen. 

Last night I was convinced the roadie with the guitar was going to slip Norman a Spanish phrase like. "Alguien puede ayudarme con mi cadena e"

Norman is so naturally gifted at talking and mumbling to the crowd in a way that is so engaging. Fans will know that inner dialogue is delicately delivered with a pathos fans love 

When they're in the groove there are few bands get near. The songs are so well crafted with false endings, dropping a semi tone or two from where you thought they were going, powering through the ending and creating a new crescendo, a cacophony of icing on the cake of the icing already oozing. Every song played with simplicity and control sometimes giving the feeling of freewheeling and potential car crash before sliding effortlessly into port, sometimes being so lyrically special that the words just capture moments from your life and pop them back into your brain.

I don't need to describe how good the band and the songs are. Anybody reading this already knows and if seeing them in Gijon provided anything, it's just proof positive they keep moving forward and far from an anchor dragging them into the past the songs from 30 years ago are as refreshingly honest and beautiful as they were played back then.those that are 20 years old, 10 years old or 10 months old are the same. Gilt edge, crafted with care and diligence, refined and yet still raw.

 Some subtlety has doubtless been added as sonic technology has changed but magnificent melodies abound. Thank you for a great gig in Gijon and have a sunny stroll along the beaches on your day off.

i know we did....

"In my life,

I've been so uptight

It is

Alright "

Catch up with the Relations from Perth

If like me you fell asleep for 40 years I can recommend listening the planetaryelement! Aka Vinny the bass player of the Relations on you tube.

He's loaded a number of Perth bands up and well worth a listen. No doubting that quality lasts.

I did a video up blackford hill earlier as I'm always listening to them. I'm in a 40 year loop and I love it. 

Out here on the Camino in Spain we are taking a break to see the fannies tonight in Gijon. 

They're a bit more modern....only a 30 year loop!

Watch "the Relations from Perthshire - miles and miles" on YouTube

https://youtu.be/XMipIyepHdA?si=YwpV1TojzPp4DsNS 

2023 Camino to Gijon

Last year we deviated off piste to VITORIA-GASTEIZ to watch the Godfathers at Hell's Dorado and this year we head to Gijon to take in the magnificent Teenage Fan Club.

Yes these fannies Fae Fromista are headed via Leon to catch Wednesday's gig 

yes boys we've got tickets....

 and don't they look happy now.

We've traipsed a long way and now it's time for the big Burgos bus.

There's a new album to hear and we're looking forward to hearing, seeing and dancing away to it.

It'll certainly beat all this walking!

See you there

Interest rates target the wrong people - £220 Billion....count it

Ok, £220bn is the amount that English students owe to the students loans group owned by the government. 

As an economist it encourages emigration at a time when we seem he'll bent on stopping immigration.

As a psychologist I can't help thinking we are seriously fucking around with the heads of our young people (as if they'll want to fund our care in later life). Why should they pay this graduate tax or be forced out of of the country of their birth. How can they buy a house, these new indentured generations.

As a historian... As you all know, in the 1980's when Deadbeat began tuition fees did not exist. Countless numbers of politicians went to university for free and many got government grants not loans to go. A covenant scheme existed for parents to elect to pay financial support for their children. The credit checking inustry did not exist. Did we really want to find ourselves in 2023 with our children unable to buy a property because they pay such a high amount of money back they cant afford the property prices. Property will CRASH in 2024, I'm convinced but there are numerous things keeping it up at the moment. Agents are pushing higher rents claiming housing shortages. These shortages are due to many graduates from 2000-2010 being unable to afford the prices, so they pay increasingly higher rent. As interest rates go up they have no chance of even considering the purchase of a house as nobody would lend them the money. Markets do have a habit of moving towards equilibrium. Anyone who understands geology recognises metamorphosis and economists do too. I want to have a comedic rant about this because the Fringe is on in Edinburgh. There is so much material. 

I grew increasingly alarmed in the 90's when homelessness was rising and the buy to let concept became mainstream. People have always bought second homes or houses for their kids or renting but it suddenly became an industry. This is not a good look for society when but to let mortgages were easier to get than first homes. 

These are the tectonic plates of a society. One person is describing a property while another is describing a home. Tectonic plates have a habit of creating eruptions.

The Bank of England are trying to control inflation, but its the supply side it affects these days. They have no other tool to use so the only debate they have is up or down. They should get brave and flatten it. Ireland has a national debt of 220 bn EURO, the people in England who went to Uni have that on their personal balance sheet. Did Thatcher and Blair really know they were using the young people of this country to underwrite the UK Economy. My stats are just England as per the info on the westminster website. I wrote a review of Bob's great book on Carrillion and the corrupt UK State but this mind numbing discovery does my head in. If the UK Debt was £1 trillion the true figure would be £1.2 Tn if we included or even funded students like Blair and Thatcher received. We moved education off the balance sheet. I'll say it again, we moved education off the balance sheet and passed it to the voters who had gone to University. Our collection rate is 27%. That means 73% default over 20-30 years. That means the 27% who dont default will have to pay more tax later on to fund the defaulters. We have just shut down immigration but if you emigrate you needn't pay back your loan. I'm thinking this policy was ill concieved and yet Student loans continue. In Scotland we dont pay tuition fees but Nick Clegg in England decided a ministerial car and pension was worth more than a principle. I'm thinking, see you next tuesday, and I'm not even a liberal. I think somebody explained how they'd 'moved the debt off the country's balance sheet into the hands of the individuals who received the education' was an argument that won the day. Truth is, if someone said that to me, I'd say immediately, encourage them to become a joiner or a plumber a nurse or a dental assistant. I'd suggest that on the job training that didnt involve going to University and incurring a life and mind changing debt would be wiser. Why would any responsible government ever encourage someone with no money or job to assume a £100,000 of debt in the hope they might get a better job than they would do if they just left school and started working. Growing up I was lucky. I worked from 1978 - 1980 in the post room. I would keep working in WM using the printing to do Deadbeat and the franking machine was my friend. Many on the mailing list received their Deabeat courtesy of the pawkle. I loved the lerning I got and when I was given a clip board and pen on leave to go to Uni I laughed. I returned regularly in holidays and was generally a lifer until the redundancy, spending a year finding the missing £600m, £1m-£3m a day etc which I've mentioned before. My old work hired many kids from school and then as a trainee web developer/dealers or whatever. Most probably got the degree equivalent in under 3 years. I think the nefarious shite should be promoted not reserved for prime ministers. I always said if you meet someone at the bus stop and they smile when they say "gotta job", just say yes. Find them a job they'll love it and you will too. There are numerous forces at work undermining the mental health of the young and calling them snow flakes is just nonsense. We now know a lot more about mental health than ever before. I studied Psychology and like many of my classmates I did it because I wanted to understand myself more, oh, and why the drugs worked. They didn't work for everyone and over my life I've come to an epiphany regarding myself. Recognise who and what you are. Own it, bottle it, it's you. If there are anti social elements from farting and belching to ranting alcoholic, try to minimise these and write a blog nobody will see. Its cathartic and also very helpful to let you deal with what are seismic changes that you are living through but cant change. Stress was always something I understood from a mathematical and physical perspective. Pressure can be an essential catalyst, but stress is when its gone too far and something is close to blowing. Just like getting a rocket up in the air, or a jobby out your bum, light pressure good, too much stress bad. When I was 30 I was on my fifth house. Interest rates were quite high but house prices were relatively benign. I look at the 30 year old today and the majority of house owners that I know did not go to university. When I was 30 the big three stress deliverers were transitions in relationship, house and job. Nowadays they still alrgely go hand in hand as the global market demands we shift around to progress our careers and that means changing you house and in some cases relationship too. This is when the gender gap on student loans can frequently get magnified. A couple who did their degree and post grad together, then get married have good careers then children then divorce will find the parent who took the time off for the child will have watched their debt magnify while the other's continued to shrink. If I was a lawyer I'd expect the debt to be shared equally. Hope it is. House prices in the 80's and 90's marched ever upwards with the odd pause when seismic activity occured, like leaving the EMU and inflation, interest rates and house prices often followed global financial market collapses, eg the time it was famously not going to be too strong a wind in 1987. The winds of change were particularly hammered down during Labour's loss of the levers in the early 2000's. We'd moved through the dot.com bubble and the Y2k disaster to arrive in over-exhuberant times. I've quoted the Big Short many's a time but this is where we can also see the trace elements of our current gangster operations. The poverty today is absolutely real and its not just financial. ITs a poverty of ideqas caused by a poverty of truth. The misleading and plain self confessed liars now wear their mis-truths, their lies like a badge of honour. It was all a game they played dirty and won. For some people someone like Trump or Farage are liars you would never believe but for others they thought they told the truth, even after they admitted that it was all just part of the game. Putting a slogan on the bus about the NHS was one of the simplest lies to tell. I'm suprised they didn't make it "£946mn a week for our NHS', nobody can add up and its all to grab a headline, while people would round it up to £1bn when they told their friends..... My Dad is 91, I'm 60, we still have the same discussion about people n0t wanting to tell the truth and 'they'll be found out'. THat's not the game. The game is lie lie lie, and then roll the dice and move 8 spaces whatever you roll. In the meantime the 30 year old is trying to work out when they will be able to buy a house. As interest rates rise it doesn't dampen their demand, they had no demand. Demand in the economy is not impacted by interest rates. Prices are rising because supply side issues. The supply side issues that have shifted the price of olives and olive oil I can understand but rape seed oil I cannot. Because cooking oil would go down as a bit of a necessity, unless you have the luxury of an air fryer, the only thing I see in the price hike is opportunistic profiteering. First rule of business is move upstream in time of turmoil. Reassuringly expensive is still a successful marketing move. I personally dont think it works with everything in the supermarket though. I wrote before about the government abolishing VAT a lever that would have lowered inflation even if only applied to utilities. Small businesses that creatively hide under the threshhold emphasise why either the threshhold or the tax itself needs reforming. Taxes need to represent the society and the global market. In Scotland as we continue Thatcher decision to make us a service economy we have Education, Tourism, Financial, Games and Whisky. Within tourism we have History, hills and golf. I'm pretty sure the numbers for golf tourism will be getting healthier by the day as the clubs get wealthier by the year. Ireland and Scotland have cornered the $$$ and an average 7 days break to either can be considered in the $10,000-$20,000 bracket. They like to pay, so we encourage them to play. This makes the role that the golf clubs representatives, their own Trade and Sports union, Scottish Golf, a very important one. Cue the gangsters moving ? Is it the same for Education. I've written before about Edinburgh Uni becoming one of the biggest property company potentially in the city or is that the country. Universities have so much money I wonder why their staff need to strike or why they need to give them appalling pensions. THe income Edinburgh receives during the Festivals in August surpasses £60mn now. Those students who need to vacate their flats for the August bun fight compare with other universiteies where you pay for 12 months. Its an entirely huge topic why St Andrews and Edinburgh can earn as much from their summer lets as they do from the time of the year when students inhabit their dorms and tenements. I digress, house prices, yes, no demand here. 30 year olds only aspiration is to avoid sharing a room, to have a living room in their flat, not have it as a third bedroom. They cant aspire to own the building but will half the £22,000 a year to rent it. There is a demand, but its for lower house prices. Will the 'buy to let' people find themselves troubled by the level of their borrowing as interest rates rise. Ha ha I laugh, at long last I've found a small sample of people who will be hounded out of the market by higher interest rates. Unfortunately all the gangster money laundering johnnie foreigners can buy the houses with cash and convert them into more legal routes for that POCA avoiding cash. So the true victims of this retail price hike, that comes with interest rate hikes is the people who have seen their savings vanish, their houses cooler and their cupboards left bare. Oh, and if they were 'stupid enough to go to university', a lovely hint of irony, then their debt is being put through a pressure cooker in a bid to ipe out what they've paid. At £220bn, or as the Irish would laugh, the national debt, our English students and graduates will see the debt rise to £230bn before the financial year is out, on interest alone. Even if you pay £500-£1000 back, your debt will likely be rising by £3000-£5000. At current rates only 27% are due to pay it back and the Government of the day picks up the tab. I would not want to win the next election unless the land and money grab of the past forty years is reversed and that would really upset the markets. This is something the Bank of England cant take into its calculations. They have one blunt instrument. The biggest growth industry in my minds eye is the adverts on tv for credit rating agencies. Now I know Kondratieff was right. We have reach the optimum end of this wave. Greed in the marketplace will not be controlled by interest rates, indeed it may have the opposite effect as profiteering will be forced higher because the alternative is to close the shop or business and bank the money. Ironically interest rates are more likely to hit the supply than the demand side. Children who are now over 50 are still paying off student debt if they did masters or post grad stuff. Children born in the 80's when university places were effectively removed for those whose parent did not own a home (bear with me here) or the broadening wealth classes who tried to encourage their children to aspire, dreams that few could ever achieve Other points to explore Encouraging emigration, 20 year or 30 year payback Interest rates at 8% on the debt compared with 12% on your salary above a certain level means the debt has to increase if you earn less than £70,000-£80,000 depending on the size of the debt. Then the government has to pick up the tab and the only ones to make money are the debt handlers. Let me buy shares in them please!

Tied for second - 16:30 subatomic until 27/8

At £8 a ticket, or pay what you can afford these two write decent jokes, have good delivery and can relax with their audience. Quite simply an excellent hour and with gluten free lager for £4 this doesn't feel like the fringe at all.

Tied for second is what they were in a competition for new comedic acts so they spilt the show with half an hour each. It works really well. 

A Canadian heterosexual with a couple of stints as a step mum follows a gay Londoner with a Catholic past.

It's a good mix of acts and crowd reaction is everything. Laughter throughout and loud applause at the end as they took their bow and we took ourselves off to the bar. I hadn't turned around until the end and I noticed the venue was almost full so whether it was £8 a ticket or pay what you want the crowd had turned out on a Tuesday. It's got to be 5 stars.

Martin Stephenson & the Daintees 19/8/23

First saw the band 41 years ago.

delighted to see them headlining here.

I cant make the gig but they were brilliant back

then and I'm gutted to miss all the fun. I remember the chat like it was yesterday and not 1982, Martin's definitely another great candidate for the where are they now, if only I could get my act together. To see the Daintees website and the new wave connection with JP defintely got my attention Roll on Summertime was reviewed in issue #4 and #7. I couldn't get enough of the album which I bought on tape back in the day. Cue the routinely published picture of the other JP with issue #7!

Enjoy!

Camino Movie alert - from fatal-bananas.blogspot.com

Watch this movie - Simply Superb Stefanie Hurtado's brilliant Walk Through Fire is Filmtastic. I've never enjoyed a Camino video so much. https://youtu.be/U2mrbhPhASA I watched it in 4@15 minute episodes then had a full hour spare to watch the rest. I'm already working out a tinto y tapas night at Swanys with a glass or two of Navarre, then a bottle of Rioja before a nice wee crate of Mencia as she leaves Ponferrade for Galicia. If you've been on the Camino you'll have so many memories of different friends, milestones, bars and views. Every Camino is like a Shakespearean play with different actors treading the same boards. As much as you want the journey to last forever, Stefanie found herself naturally moving faster and like Simon and I back in 2007 did Foncebadon to Ponferrade then to Trabadelo, then to O'Cebriero, and those early fairy steps to Orisson have suddenly become big leaps. Her story is her Camino and far from overstepping the self indulgence many of these videos forget, she has edited her work brilliantly and struck an amazing balance. It's impossible to complete a distillation process that turns a month into 2 hours. This is a gorgeous attempt that encapsulates all the community of the Camino while still giving you the sheer inspirational joy of the walk. What's also amazing is to somehow take the film without it crowding her own Camino. As a videographer it probably is natural to take your work with you but I can't wait for the kiss and tell story in 10 years time when we hear how the camera was left at home! I've had over 20 caminos to finish writing Josephine's story Tommy turns Cars. Every Camino I just add another edit to Logrono or El Acebo. I'll talk more about Miriam and the team at Sante fe in Cardenuela Rio Pico. Another composite character appears and needs inserted. The Camino is an absolute joy and although I had to leave sharpish from Casa Loncho in Olveira just 3 weeks ago when Jackie broke her ankle I'll be back out soon enough as the wine festivals get going in September. Stefanie was probably home when I got Simon back out to Bordeaux in late September 2022. Her story and that of her fellow Pellegrinos is the stuff of legend and yet we live it all over every year, or even twice a year. The international community of the Camino often slip into politics and Stefanie summed up every pilgrim when she wished everyone could do it, even just once. Thank you Stefanie for a masterpiece. Posted by Vinny Bee aka Dancin Al at 07:22

if kondratiev were around today

In the 6th economic wave as the technology wave signals The end of human existence I can't help but laugh at how the Russian economist would view it.

When the car was invented it came with technology and rules were invented to ensure the safety of the species. Some countries licence you to use such powerful technology.

When computers the size of mobile phones were placed in the hands of the masses we saw how quickly a lack of health and safety could see the proliferation of truth. I am the way the truth and the light said anyone with the mobile phone and an internet platform to match. Meantime the mental health benefits of this overload of information, marketing, fact checking and nonsense gathering.

I sometimes think I am going mad because I can see it all and yet nobody seems interested. On the contrary they genuinely believe that this is the truth and whether it be parties where dancing is just part of the meeting or fighting elections on bed blocking when all we are describing is wards that should've been bigger and hospitals that should've been scoped to be able to cope with a 100%  increase in demand every 5 years. With the pipeline for staff scoped and sourced.

With all our technical capability to be able to articulate the increasing demands that will be placed on the NHS over the next five, ten and 20 years to suggest that the cure is better management for bed blocking is just nonsense. 

Yet again I have had the pleasure of seeing the NHS staff at work on Jackie. 

Her Camino since 2005 has been random but with hindsight as regular as clockwork.

I have had as many days walking across  the meseta and the Pyrenees as she has the operating theatres, high dependency and general recovery wards. when she asked me to bring one croc in I knew my gambling chances were good, but ultimately unfounded.

Every time the treatment has been superb and yet the workers from consultant to cleaner have been hard at it.

Technology has given us the skill to bend the truth and quite simply to write lies. These people work while political adversaries make them footballs. The staff as highly skilled as any other part of our industry within their field of expertise and we should reward that. We seem intent on stopping staff joining from overseas while encouraging the few we do grow organically through schooling are encouraged to leave.

One of the nurses was telling Jackie that she would be going over to Australia for a few years to get enough money to pay off her student's debt and get a deposit for a house. An absolute scandal and that is why I back the idea that staff should be able to keep more than £12500, the current tax free allowance. Let's not talk about bed blocking. We know the demands increase year on year so let's not ask the nurses and doctors to pay for this increase in ill health with no pay rise and frozen tax free earnings allowance. Move this now to £20000. 

Bus Passes

Almost all the patients have free bus travel. The staff at hospitals should all have free bus travel. It should be issued as part of their induction. Do something about pensioners pots if you like by leaving their allowances frozen at £12500 but why punish our essential workers.

Yes Kondratieff would wave and laugh. Every big leap forward has brought a new way to keep the fodder feeling benevolent to some greater cause. 

Negreira to vilaserio

Deadbeat hears of new Tory slogans and tax plans - "Tax the pension not the Workers"

In the post covid world of high inflation and greater poverty Deadbeat has just heard the pub chatter about a massive hike in the tax free earnings point, jumping from £12500 to £20,000 initially for public sector employees but surely for all employees in due course.....not for pensioners though. The hard hit low paid will therefore not need a wage rise and the U-turn from the chancellor freezing it at £12500 for 5 years will be felt by those in work. For the vast number of over 55s drawing their pension the £12500 will stick but this was the point of freezing the rate to act as a pensioners tax. Today's announcement, or leak of the 2p off NI is a fantastic rebate to the rich. Let's face 2% of £20,000 is £200 and 2% of £50,000 will buy you a season ticket. As Rishi was alleged to have said, most of these £20k people support Wrexham whereas those on £50,000 are far more likely to be following at least a tier 3 club, but the pub chatter was all about rewarding those hard working NHS staff with a new tax code. Joy could be heard as glasses were clinking in the corridors and bars of power at squaring the circle. The Inland revenue were busy giving the new tax code a unique lettering system. NHS20k which will ensure those on £20,000 a year keep all their earnings instead of paying circa £1500 tax. Governments in London and Edinburgh were busy rushing plans through so they could be first to their electorate as vote chasing starts in earnest. While the tax take drops, inflationary pressure abates and people can keep the lights on this summer. With the pensions rising the tax take rises so everyone wins. Long term plans have often talked about removing a tax free amount for pensioners and concentrating all vote winning on fear and security. You care less about money when someone reminds you about being mugged off for your pension pot. Pollsters and policy makers (surely the same people) have been talking up siezing more of the pension pots and only the enforced retirements of many GPs and consultants has slowed this process down with the recent reversal on maximum pension pot size. The more successful way to raid the people's pension funds is the slow stealth methodology of removing the tax free allowance and removing NI. One hits pensioners so slows down their retirement while the other one makes working longer more attractive. There are £trillions in drawdown now and 10 million people being hit with £3000 less will merely encourage them to draw more of their pension savings and in turn hit another tax threshhold. Low interest rates encouraged many to transfer their final salary schemes into these pots and made early retirement all the more attractive. For those without a calculator that's £30bn to skim off these early and later retirees. The number goes up every year so its no gamble and will encourage many to stay in work as the country hits a skills shortage. You only need to look at the population who have moved into drawdown on their pensions and identify as the baby boomers of the 50's and 60's. They got their university education in the 70s and early 80's free. Some even entered politics and then introduced tuition fees while coming out with mantras about 'Education Education Education', as the political class moved back to the full entitlement. The old adage, if you cant do teach and if you cant teach pontificate was never more pronounced than during the last 30 years. As everyone knows most universities have now diversified into property fund first with the Education business a distant second. Like charity shops in the high street taking advantage of charitable status allows certain assets to be successfully exploited against a competition that cant benefit from this status. The most fundamental being many of our biggest universities have city or town centre locations making their accomodation an asset worth selling in the open makret and not at student rates. St Andrews have their approach and Edinburgh theirs. The Pollock halls of Residence now boasts 3 hotels and thats 200 less rooms for the students. Progress takes many forms and some may argue that those rooms ensure lower charges for the students in the remaining rooms. They certainly dont argue that they can afford to pay their staff more as the current spate of strikes demonstrates, but these are topics for another day. Tax the retired not the workers - that's the new slogan from the Tories and I love it. When all the right wing parties fight over who can claim to do more for the workers you know it's about the message not the welfare of the workers. And if you believe me you must have had a great night last night!

big news freak unique!

Everything is vintage

Everything is Modern

Friday is alternative

So wear that clothing!

Baxter Park Dundee 1985

Where were we on this day in 1985?

Well I'm writing this in May 2023 so I guess what I mean is who can remember 1985?

I'm looking for more clues than just the odd picture.

We all know that Plastic Surgery adorned the cover of Deadbeat and Chilli Peppers would change their name.

Issue #32 had the review of the gig but issue #31 probably is best known by me as another great fake news day! I couldn't remember the name Baxter Park so I typed it up saying a gig was coming with the line up, then I hand wrote caird park. 

We were running out of drugs and were running on steam by this point. Our bodies were temples and more like those found on the Acropolis or in Cambodia than those of the modern rock n roll stars. I liked that it was "free, outdoor and great, so grab a coach and visit dundee"

We worked like dogs for the gig including two practices and a tire change. I'm sure we weren't the only Hibs supporters who heeded the advice to grab a coach.

 General Gary Joyce gave a splendid rendition on the way back of how we sounded.  Oh how we laughed.

I've a few pictures from that day but if anyone has more please forward them or just leave message on the post.

I think we arrived too late to hear the first 2 bands and I know there's a picture in #32 showing us listening to plastic surgery but to be honest, I think I was blasted.

It may not have been our last gig as I'm pretty sure we managed a song or two at a wedding I was at in the old manor in Lundin links. A short-lived affair but it certainly provided the excuse to let the band slowly decay and have me down as a 24 year old fossil. 

Reading these reviews years later you realise how far up your own arse we were and we were only in our infancy of understanding what we were doing. I liked writing songs and later on I realised I liked singing along to them but I would happily have left my ego at the door and watched. It's a tough gig limping the gear and even if you are big enough to get roadies I'm not sure the hotels every night appeal either. I'd sooner an albergue on the Camino and leave the acclaim to those more capable, although my ego did enjoy playing as pkatform99 with Rich in the Sutton Arms in London's barbican area. That ticked a box. I loved how random our songs were and how they cling onto the set list. There were many 2 minute wonder that slipped away when we started trying to fill the hour of a set. That was a shame and so my mission for 2024 will be to load a few of those up.

I loved "Stop", "double Pernod" and other quick thrashy songs. They took very little singing had a cheesy set of lyrics and made me smile. 

"She died of cirrosis of the liver, now I'm never gonna drink again with her"

Ah the rhyming couplet

Friday night May 19 2023 - Leith Depot, only 6 more days to wait!

Platform 99 - Sutton Arms

It's a bit late to do a review of a gig on 1987 but here goes.

It was 1987 our old guitarist Mark and Rich had been ensconced in London and Gordon Tucker had joined Ross Bradford in bringing St Andrews student band life support into a proper band with occasional bits of timing and practice.

The job I'd taken in 1985 saw me working more and deadbeating less. We had the money to go into the studio now as well. So life support and hawking deadbeat tapes around the A & R guys was more my modus operandi. Throw in drinking and it was mental. A lot of alcoholics went dry at the end of the 80's and good luck to them, I of course didn't.

It is to my crying shame that I never got the label started and funded more demoes but I did find a few pints. I got seconded to London to find the missing £600m around 1987 and spent Monday to Friday finding it and then flying home. 

Every day of every week involved a pub crawl home. When we moved to broadgate that involved the railway tavern but it was always the globe.

Sometimes we'd get a pint at wood street.. I don't remember it like this. It was still a pub in the great council scheme of the Barbican although by this time all council tenants had long since gone.

I love the sign saying no drinking outside. That's new in the last 40 years.

I stayed on the 29th floor and rarely used it for the weekend as I always went home.

Finally if we had the energy we'd go over to the Sutton arms. There was a guy who played there on a Thursday and we always went in.

One night he said he was of to Austria so I pitched for Rich and I to play. We brought 50 from the work and the boy was delighted. The following week we forgot to bring the work, and the rest is history!

The Undertones, The Revillos and awayday in Glasgow

What a great day out for Alzheimer's Al as SALT's Simon introduced me to my carers for the day Robin and Sadie. We went for drink food drink then the gig. What a superb time. They even read me an excerpt from my diary from 1974, wee fat Al aged 10 would be so excited to think 49 years on....he'd make it onto the worldwide web.

By 1980 I could do joined up writing they told me before taking me out on the Glasgow tour again.

We even had enough time to pass the traffic cone.

Choice pub on the way to the O2 had to be after we crossed the river. The Laurieston is absolutely superb. 

They say everything is half price across the river and you'd think it was happy hour this Friday night. Getting change from £20 for four drinks is becoming unusually infrequent and more often embarrassing as you rummage for another £10 or your card.

Walking into the Laurieston was like a breath of fresh air and getting folding stuff back off a £20 is taking me back to the last time I saw the Revillos.

It was 1983, issue #21 when I was 21 too. It was the issue that would see us I to the new year of 1984 and all thoughts turned to the Orwellian nightmare being wrought upon Scotland by the Tories Thatcherite theft. The looting of the state by the state for those running it was never far from my mind and as I arrived at 60 last year I'm glad my mind wasn't as sharp as to think what has changed in my life.

Some things have stayed the same and it is for the better when it's the music of the Revillos and Undertones. 

The only thing that has changed is the venue and drink prices.

They dance more than I do too, now that has changed. Back then we called it a "Glam 12 bar sound" and it still sounds great, you never forget a classic from when you were 14. The only thing I forgot is that I knew all the words. As a warm up act they're superb. It's a high energy gig and I'd recommend they drop to 6 songs as you've;

got to think about your hips and knees 

In a different way these ......days. 

The age of the audience was predictable but many fans brought their kids who are all 25-35 so a new generation to enjoy 'TOTP'.

I sing the Undertones songs all the time. When they came on they were brilliant. I love loads of the back catalogue and again I hear myself singing them and think, oh, maybe not all songs about chocolate and girls stand the test of time, but it's what I thought back then and who cares I'm glad I'm all grown up now.

Wednesday week never happened at all.....

I sing it on the Camino and she's usually left me for the church......that or some observations on how there are more cranes in Spain than churches.

Mickey likes a chat and so does the singer Paul. The O'Neill brothers like to power their rhythm guitar in different ways, blessedly complementary and I love the way Billy bashes them into shape. 

The evening was transported to the next level for the encore with what would've been a magnificent 9minutes of love aid. 4 songs without drawing breath. Cousin Key-evan was there, they were all there.

 I didn't want to take pics so apologies for so few as I was too busy watching, oh and stumbling towards the bar and toilets. Some things really haven't changed.

Thanks for a great night!