Angélique Kidjo covering Talking Heads. This is the stuff.

Hard to define. Punk/rock/metal?

Strong Beastie Boys vibes.

and oddball onboard effects as well……

I have an armchair theory that the technically better musicians become, the worse they sound.

The Park Stage has had a TBA against it for a while for the 1815 slot; just been checking who’s on elsewhere and it’s now changed to Jack White

An expressive drummer. And noodling wig-out riffs.
I’m tapping out.

Fairly unremarkable regional town (recently given city status).
Town itself is a bit of a mess with no real centre.
Football club is a big thing at the moment because of Hollywood owners.
Lots of great places within easy reach for mountain bike – Llangollen, Llandegla etc.
Some tensions around identity because it’s a border town – lots of people now use Welsh spelling ‘Wrecsam’.
Has a good annual FOCUS Wales music event in August.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Good
Idles. Nope. Shouty middle-class Camden vegan music
Seun Kuti & Egypt 80. Love afrobeat but didn’t click for me
Saint Etienne. Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Billy Eliot. Nah

On-One Sandal

Find him unwatchable. Not really a reviewer more of a hired demonstrator.
Could stick him on a £10,000 Penny Farthing and he would do the same routine – yabbering out tech specs and babbling about its brilliance in the style of that Fast Show character.

Kier Starmer, like Jeremy Corbyn before him, has done a sterling job in providing the one thing that Labour supporters appear to want above all else: Lots of opportunities to fight bitterly amongst themselves.

Yep, it’s what Labour is all about.
Both left and right factions – united in their devotion to yabbering on about themselves.
An English-centric party that’s devoted to fighting an illusory enemy that shares their core British nationalism: military, monarchy and freemarkets.

I clicked on this and now my computer is warning about a virus.

I’d love to see your research on this topic.

There’s plenty of research to show how private education imbues certain attitudes and values: British Social Attitudes

“Put another way, if this was a ‘snapshot’ opinion poll among people who attended fee-paying schools, the Conservatives would hold a 31 point lead over Labour. Conversely, Labour would lead the Conservatives by 10 points among state-educated respondents.”

Or you could just take a look around you at British society in general.

There is one common denominator. They all care and want their kids to do well.

Aye, only a caring parent would send their kids to a right-wing incubator where they’re liable to be bullied based on the type of car owned by their parents.
Great way to equip a child for a happy and content life.
Stiff upper lip and all that.

Dont push your own narrow minded views on to your kids. Everything you say above is about parenting not schooling

Look more at what opportunities you can give them and bringing up well rounded kids

The whole point of private school education is to allow people to pass on a set of attitudes to their kids. Which is why I think they should be abolished.

I don’t get this idea that going to a private school means you only interact with rich people and don’t understand how the normals live. It’s total bollocks. You can still retain friends from the state system, and shock horror, even meet kids who go to other schools as part of your teenage funtimes.

Some of my best friends are normals.

You want to give her the best chances of having a childhood in which she interacts and socialises only with wealthy people.
The best chance to become overly confident and to struggle to empathise with or relate to the vast majority of people who haven’t received a private school education.

Stretch Armstrong. Attacked him with a penknife to reveal treacle guts.

The british state is historically, and remains to this day, a hugely malign and evil force which does far more harm to the world than good to further the interests of a tiny number of rich and powerful people. And you want me to like it?

Well said. The justification for the British Empire was racial superiority. That Anglo Saxons were a superior race, which allowed all of the invading, killing and exploiting to be presented as ‘civilising’.

That’s what Winston Churchill believed – the person repeatedly voted as the greatest Briton. A white supremacist with a belief in eugenics that was very similar to one of his contemporaries and admirers.

A Churchill who’s the role model of the current UK prime minister. The blatant racism of the past has been replaced by a Farage style, BBC friendly British patriotism that fetishizes the military, monarchy and freemarkets.

But that fundamental bigotry remains – the belief that British people and culture are in some way superior. It’s an ideology that dominates British life and has never been challenged. It’s pushed by the media and is supported by both Tories and Labour.

Labour and Starmer don’t want to challenge it – they want to harness it.

What’s better, a hard left protest group or a centre-left government?

Welsh independence.

Copa i pay myself the same as our senior consultants and deliver 150 days consultantcy into my business each year.

I sure as shit dont sit and take profits.

Why don’t you pay yourself less as you’re generating less income than your senior consultants?

My rambling post shows how a day rate converts into a salary… in summary you need to make lots of money (in the real world) to pay good salaries.

Have you ever estimated your own value to the business? Maybe you should be paying yourself less.

Or are we going to pretend you are either pro-business, or pro-worker, and you can only be one or the other?

I think that’s roughly the case. The solution the UK has found to the conflict between workers and business owners is to completely strip workers of any collective power.

If we’re going to have this form of capitalism then I think it’s reasonable that the role of the state should be to shield people (ie workers) from the consequences of the imbalance.

Nobody’s holding a gun to your head to make you buy it…

Adverts should be flagged so I don’t have to click on them.

A sugary drink ad. Yay.

Fair play. That’s really good.
I’ve never bought a new bike.

Now, he has posted an update from the hospital on his multiple injuries, which include breaking his left and right hip sockets into multiple pieces, breaking a piece off the top of his femur, breaking a piece of his lower vertebrae, and separating his shoulder.

What a buzzkill.

The live, breathe and dream of bigger, the pros I mean. It defines them both as riders and humans, bigger, better, harder

Aye, that’s the problem.
It’s why a sugary drinks company throws money at it – for people like you and your kids.
Keep watching them ads. You can do anything.
Just do it!! Impossible is nothing.

Without the sponsorship the event probably wouldn’t gain the traction and progression in the sport it has.

This isn’t sport. It’s marketing.

As the commentary crew are clearly explaining, it’s definitely not simply that.

Aye, commentary crew behind a desk emblazoned with Red Bull, whose wages are paid by Red Bull.

I dont think that’s true really

You think any of these people would be doing this without sponsorship money?

Everything about it is horrible.
People risking life-changing injuries for the benefit of a sugary drink company.

But at least they’re not burning holiday homes down like they used to in the 70;s and 80s

Bit rich coming from a British nationalist.
A national identity borne out of a belief in the racial superiority of the Anglo Saxon.
British empire. Iraq. Slavery. Indian famine. Irish famine. Brexit.

The girlfriend had favoured North Wales but I have close friends in Caerphilly.

Something to consider, particularly in areas of north Wales, is the social impact.
There’s been a lot of protests recently, similar to ones in Cornwall, with local people complaining about being priced out of their communities as house prices rise.

It’s caused by the move to remote working and a surge in properties being bought up for second homes/retirement – people doing similar to what you’re doing.

In Welsh-speaking areas there’s the added impact on the language and culture.

Can you explain why it wouldn’t improve?

Starmer did that yesterday.
Generic policies and an outlook that would be equally at home in a Tory/Lib Dem manifesto.
Work hard, support business, invest in green stuff, education x 3, be patriotic, give rapists harsh sentences, protect the union etc.

You honestly think that life would not be improved by having a Starmer led Labour Government in power compared to this current lot?

Well, it’s not going to happen by magic.
It needs people to come up with ideas and to implement them. What are they?

Eh?

Can you explain how life would improve under a Starmer Labour government?

Result, the Spectator and New Statesman both seem to approve, people who want a Labour Government should be pretty bouyed up this morning.

You’re one of those people who treat politics like supporting Chelsea.

FPTP isn’t a truly representative democracy. There not enough people who call themselves “socialists” in enough seats to remove the Conservatives from government, and put a full blooded socialist into no10.

Which is why I support Welsh and Scottish independence.

What do you lot want from him or any other politician?

Personally, I want a socialist politician who seeks to change society for the better.
Shouldn’t be a big ask in a representative democracy.

..it was clearly laid out, in many areas of policy and daily life, what Labour is proposing that is very different to what Johnson is doing.

Help with home insulation.
Investment in green stuff.
Tougher sentences on rapists..or something.
Compulsory work experience.
Saving the union.

Could have been copy and pasted from a David Cameron speech.

This is nonsense, Johnson and his mates are dragging us way to the right.

I disagree. There’s no substantive difference.
What are the policies announced by Starmer which shift politics to the left?
That speech today could have been delivered by Johnson or Cameron or Clegg or whoever.
Work. Patriotism. Education. Crime. Military. Green.

You also have the strange position where Tories can push through policies that would be hammered if they came from Labour. And you have Starmer, a career politician who’s desperate to avoid ever being labelled as ‘left’ on any issue.