Golf Tango Foxtrot

 In the news today the European Commission is taking the "UK" to court because it discriminates against other EU nationals when it comes to receiving benefits.  In fact the "UK" places additional conditions on nationals of other EU countries before they can receive welfare benefits. So much for "Benefit Tourism". For some reason, I haven't heard anything from the feeble minded whingers who post crap on social media about "immigrants" getting more than indigenous people. The people who write for the "Daily Heil" know they are simply writing lies because that is what they are paid to do.  Only the feeble-minded believe it.  There seems to be growing numbers of the feeble-minded out there,  judging from the fact that the "English Defence League" managed to walk through London 1,000 strong last weekend. So I wonder how many of these fine fellows will mention this amazing fact that if you are an "immigrant" you ...

Thinking about the murder (it IS murder) of the young soldier in Woolwich the other day makes me think about the entirely paradoxical nature of it.  If the deed was politically inspired it is surely the act of the powerless.  If there were any popular support for the act, there would be no need to carry it out. Needless to say the far-right are making hay. They seem to be the only ones who stand to gain from it.  The British National Party and English Defence League are trumpeting their filth to anyone who will listen and find willing allies in the press and on social media. The paradox is that an act of powerless individuals representing no-one but themselves is recast by neo-Nazis and their state collaborators as the fiendish plan of some powerful conspiracy residing in the heart of every Muslim. This is simply untrue.  Like so many other lies and falsehoods peddled by those who should know better but silence their conscience for money. It is not true that...

Just back from two days in Amsterdam.  And a fine trip it was. Visited lots of my old haunts and discovered some of them were still there.  Chief among those was the "Fort Van Sjakoo".  A radical bookshop which has been on Jodenbreestraat since 1977. To be fair I only ever dealt with them since the first time I went to Amsterdam in 1981. From a radical political point of view, things appear to be very different.  In 1981, with the squatters movement in particular and all sorts of other campaigns and struggles there was more of a feeling of ferment and striving for a new world than seems to be evident these days. Nowhere was I reminded of this more than when I sat on a bench in the sunshine in Museumplein and recalled that one day I had been there with a million other people protesting against nuclear weapons.  That was a phenomenal demonstration. I don't think I have ever been part of a larger gathering.  Perhaps the demonstration in Glasgow agains...

The older I get, the more receptive to Anarchist ideas I become and less and less enamoured of any notion of the Leninist vanguard party.  This was one of the shibboleths of my youth.  A sacred cow that turned into a white elephant. Aside from the fact that the "vanguard parties" of the left seem to consist of two men (rarely are women involved) and their dog, there are other similarities.  Common to them all is an absolute disregard of doing anything that actually defends the working class or promotes its interests. The job of the vanguardists seems to be to build the party.  Sod the interests of the working class.  Let's build the party. Typically this consists of selling the paper and infiltrating the Trades Union movement.  Even the most far out of Trots seem to have given up on infiltrating or entering the Labour Party. The "Scottish" Labour Party must be the most undemocratic institution in the world.  At one time every single person I k...

This morning my Facebook and Twitter is vexed with the question of George Galloway's blog denouncing Scottish Nationalism and all its works. That's a rhetorical flourish there, George didn't actually use these words but I digress. As someone who usually finds himself on the same side of every argument as George Galloway it always intrigues me that the only thing that separates us is his unionism.  I nearly said "strident" unionism there but that would have been just another rhetorical flourish. In his blog http://redmolucca.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/scotland-farage-and-me/  George raises the spectre of an independent Scotland turning on immigrants and minorities.  If I believed this I would vote NO.   Where George and I will have to differ is that I believe it is the "UK" which turns on immigrants and minorities.  It is the "UK" which is a threat to social harmony and justice for all. George raises the question of sectarianism.  His ol...

Yesterday saw the UKIP leader Nigel Farage run out of Edinburgh by an angry mob.  I was delighted to see him on the receiving end of some mob rule. Even more so did I enjoy the petulant interview he had with BBC Scotland which culminated in him hanging up the phone in high dudgeon. As the saying goes, you don't stop being a racist just because you put on a suit. So farewell Nigel and don't trouble yourself to come back.  A party with only two policies; opposition to immigration and rejecting the European Union has little to offer Scotland.  Simply put; Farage is a would-be populist appealing to the basest instincts that the Daily Mail can whip up. Scotland needs immigrants, even from England (and I'm sure we'll get  many refugees from there when we declare independence).  We're getting older and need more working folk to pay for our pensions and care homes. Why is Farage and his shower of numpties so popular doon south?  They took more than one in fo...

Looking forward to going to Amsterdam for a couple of days next week.  I shall need to decide what I want to do.  In  no particular order I want to visit the Stedelijk, the Rijksmuseum, and the Van Gogh Museum. A trip to a Surinamse Restaurant is in order and perhaps a Rijstaffel.  A visit to Piet de Gruyter and my old haunts in the Stadsliedenbuurt will fill in most of the time I have at my disposal. The Surinamse restaurant I have in mind is the first one I ever visited.  Spraang Makandra is the name.  When I first visited in 1981 it was a real greasy spoon eatery.  It reminded me of the old Khushi's in Edinburgh's Drummond Street. I can recall my first meal there.  Moksie Mettie.  Literally translated as Mixed Meat. A linguistic reminder that Surninam used to be an English colony until the Dutch swapped it for New York.  It was a super meal. Surinam food must be the original fusion cooking.  The South American country re...

As I write one ear is listening to the Europa League Final.  Chelsea play Benfica in Amsterdam. So far there is no scoring, about twenty minutes in.  The commentator has noted that Eusebio is in the crowd watching the game.  Watching Eusebio play on an old grainy Black & White television as a child was the start of my fondness for Benfica. Eusebio was a super player, clearly world class and a man who could have played in any team in the world. Benfica was the team he played with for almost his entire career.  He was and remains a fan of the people's club. Benfica  (or Sport Lisboa Benfica to give it its real name) is the working class team in Lisbon.  Sporting is the club for the middle classes.  Benfica, owned by its fans is the team of the workers. Formed in 1904 the club has always been owned by its fans.  Members or "Socios" of the club have owned it since the start.  Tempted by higher wages some players left in 1906 to join ...

Aberdeen and Dundee (among a host of others) are currently locking horns for the title of "UK City of Culture 2017".  Aside from the fact that I sincerely hope there will not be a "UK" in 2017 I would have to come out in favour of Dundee. Dundee has Dundee Contemporary Arts, The Dundee Rep Theatre, its going to have the V&A Extension museum.  Dundee has a rich and varied tradition of working class and in particular women's cultural endeavour. It also has William McGonagall, "poet and tragedian". Dundee's music is second to none.  It is home to the Dundee Blues Bonanza, the biggest free Blues event in Europe. It spawned a whole heap of bands from the Associates and the Average White Band  to Deacon Blue through Skeets Bolivar. The traddie music crowd are also active and Jazzers abound. I must put down the old joke about Dundee and its accent.  This is the place where Jazz is "a film aboot a shark". Dundee singer and songwriter...

One might have anticipated that these times with the possibility of Scottish Independence at hand would cause a resurgence of interest in Scottish traditional music and culture.  It does not appear so. With honourable exceptions like the Scottish Culture and Traditions project in Aberdeen and other similar initiatives, young people do not seem to be interested in traditional music in general and ceilidh dancing in particular. There is certainly a resurgence in performing traditional music, but not for the original purpose, for dancing.  This is a sad state of affairs. Setting aside the question of how you learn to play for dancing and in dance bands, there is still a disquiet in me that traditional music as it seems to be played these days is being divorced from its roots in dancing. I use the term traditional music in its broadest sense.  New tunes in a traditional idiom have always been a healthy thing, however, most modern tune writing seems to be about virtuo...

On this Blog we've had political reflection, we've had musical commentary, we've even had unabashed nostalgia.  What we haven't yet had is the cookery section. One of our old pals on the Aberdeen Voice website, the wonderfully talented Fred Wilkinson passed a remark that he wanted our bean stew recipe.  Regular readers of Golf Tango Foxtrot will know that the bean stew is one of our favourites. So then, this is the time to mix cooking, culture and politics.  My bean stew is really an adaptation of the Greek dish, the name of which translates as "Giant Beans".  I would give you the name in Greek but I haven't worked out how to make this keyboard do the Greek alphabet.  To be truthful, it struggles with the Latin alphabet. I first ate this dish in a wonderful restaurant in the City of Ioannina in Epirus, the province of Greece which borders Albania.  The restaurant was called in Greek HbH, (pronounced "Evie").  A great Epirot greasy spoon c...

After a day job meeting in Edinburgh today, a trip to the Alexander Bell Institute of non-specific study for a well-deserved pint. Sandy Bell's has been my favourite boozer in Edinburgh for more years than I care to recall.  I have been drinking there since the 1970's. Not a lot has changed in that time other than the clientele I first knew have got older and some have died.  New ones have cropped up in their place though and the pub seems as busy as ever. Sandy Bell's is synonymous with music of course.  Traditional music.  I have many happy memories of Sunday afternoons in particular with Ian Grant, the moothie player.  A wonderful player and a fount of knowledge regarding pipe tunes in particular. The pub was also a labour exchange for traditional musicians.  I picked up many paying gigs simply from being in Bell's at the right time.   It was always the right place. This afternoon I fell in with some old pals.  One looked frail and muc...

The plan is to walk across the Forth Bridge today. This is a wonderful way to pass the time.  There are views of the Forth, of much of the central belt extending to the west highlands and of course the existing Forth Rail Bridge and the currently under construction third crossing. There is a consultation allowing the public to choose the name of the new bridge.  Everyone of course will call it the Third Forth Bridge.  So why bother asking? Like so many consultations by bodies of all kinds it is about being seen to be offering a choice or to be listening to what (the people who bother to respond to consultations) actually think and feel. It is a common saying that local authorities in particular will "consult until they get the answer they want". I can just hear the scorn being heaped upon me by the brown-nosers and dilletanti who actually run these things.  I am accused of being a cynical, negative old fart. While admitting to being an old fart, I deny cyn...

What a grand day it has been.  I've not spent much money.  I've had a lovely amount of fresh air and I have rounded off the night with some recording. Lets work backwards and start with the recording.  "Goodnight Irene" first came to the attention of punters on this side of the pond from Leadbelly records.  I don't know if Leadbelly wrote the song or not but any number of people have recorded it.  This recording is simply the latest. The first time I heard the song was by Scottish Dance Band Pianist and Band Leader Jim Macleod. Jim Macleod led the band at the Dunblane Hydro for many years and was also featured on music shows on the Television. "Goodnight Irene" was kind of his signature tune on the TV. It opened or closed the show (this is a memory from forty five years ago or so). Lots of other good versions have influenced my reading of the song as well.  Ry Cooder's version with Flaco Jimenez was a great arrangement.  Ry kept the simplici...

A trip to Dundee today on a two-fold errand.  Firstly, to attend the May Day Rally (in this case four days after May Day) and secondly to pick up a fiddle bow which had been in for rehairing. Attempting the latter before the former was a grave error as Vintage Strings in the Perth Road does not open till 11am. So I parked up in the Wellgate Car Park and walked up the Hilltown to the starting point of the rally. Those of you who know Dundee will know that the Hilltown is a very steep hill out of the centre of town.  The rally was beginning from the top of that hill.  I strode up and surprised myself by not collapsing in a wheezing heap on the pavement.  This weight loss is fairly helping. Arriving at the Hilltown Park in plenty of time I had a quick pint in the Shakespeare Bar.  A fine wee pub.  Good service and friendly customers and staff.  Considering they had only been open ten minutes by the time I got there it shows what a popular bar it is...

I was in one of the last cohorts of nurses trained in a non-academic way.  We trained by apprenticeship really.  With college blocks in between placements in various areas of practise.  All nursing students shared a core initial eighteen months of training then we separated into streams related to General or Psychiatric nursing.  by the nomenclature of the times when I qualified I was a Registered "Mental" Nurse.  A source of much amusement. I have not practised as a nurse for some years and am no longer on the Register.  I could no longer be arsed keeping up with the training requirements and the expense of Registering (the demand for ninety quid from the Nursing & Midwifery Council was the last straw). None the less nursing was a hugely positive experience for me. I learned a great deal from working with people on what was conceivably the worst day of their lives.  That was an experience I have always taken with me. The skills needed to co...

I am sitting at the keyboard humming an old song.  "The Banks Of The Roses".  In my head I am hearing the late Jim Reid sing it on the Foundry Bar Band's second album.  A super song and a super singer.  A great band as well. I remember the first time I heard the Foundry Band.  It was in a squat in Amsterdam.  A French couple who lived in the flat below regularly took pity on me and used to invite me down for my tea and such like.  One evening after we had eaten, they put on a tape of  Scottish Dance Music and described a Bar in Arbroath where they had spent an evening listening to tunes. It was a lovely sensation hearing music from home.  Traditional music, timeless music.  Music that spoke to loss and emigration and being far from home. I was an economic exile.  Alain was a war resister.  As a pacifist he had left France to avoid compulsory military service in the French Army.  Alain effectively spent the whole of ...