Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts

Leicester march to stop the badger cull


In Leicester today, as a citizen journalist, I went along to see people assembling for the march against the badger cull. Then I met someone I knew and decided to join in.

It's a good cause. The government's cull of badgers has more to do with placating the farming vote than it does with scientific evidence for the best way of eradicating bovine TB.

While we were waiting to set off there was a speech, which turned out to be chiefly about the junior doctors' dispute with the government, and a song. The latter, as far as I could tell, was about Liz Truss having blood on her hands.

One of the attractive thing about green campaigning is that it has the potential to decouple conservative voters from the Conservative Party. That possibility was far from the organisers of today's event, but then moderate conservative people do not organise marches.

We marched from Victoria Park down New Walk to the Town Hall Square and then Jubilee Square. In the two squares where we were addressed by Danny Dyer (Badger Trust) and Mark Jones (Born Free Foundation).

At Town Hall Square a couple had just got married and they insisted on having their photos taken with us.

Later, at Jubilee Square, someone was asked to the microphone to read a poem he had written. I became a citizen journalist again and slipped away.






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Six of the Best 592

Andrew Hickey says the Liberal Democrats should support Basic Income: "The person receiving the benefits will always know better than some Whitehall bureaucrat who earns a hundred grand a year what they most need to spend money on at any given time."

Internet voting is a terrible idea. In a video, Andrew Appel explains why.

"Having first placed Eliot in his historical and literary context, then having pointed to what is unique in him, Obama ends by showing how he speaks to any individual reader who pauses to listen. This is what the finest literary criticism has always done." Edward Mendelson discovers Barack Obama the literary critic.

Railway Maniac uncovers Ilkeston's forgotten history as a spa town.

"The last time I had seen Panesar at Wantage Road the club shop was fully stocked with Monty merchandise – “I Love Monty” and “Sikh of Tweak” t-shirts, the ill-advised “Monty’s Cricket Madness” DVDs (a compilation of cock-ups, whose cover made him look as though he had just been pulled up for driving a minicab uninsured), those masks." Backwatersman sees Monty Panesar return to play for Northamptonshire.

Curious British Telly on a forgotten (by me at least) comedy starring Rik Mayall - Believe Nothing.
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Peter Maxwell Davies: Farewell to Stromness



This popular short piece by Sir Peter Maxell Davies, who died last month, is taken from The Yellow Cake Revue.

This was a collection of cabaret-style pieces that he performed with Eleanor Bron, as part of the 1980 St Magnus Festival, in protest at plans to mine uranium ore in Orkney.

Farewell to Stromness is played here by Ezra Williams.

George Mackay Brown said Stromness "is but a tumbling stone wave, a network of closes, a marvel of steps from the seaweed up to the granite of Brinkie's Brae".

I've been there and he's right.
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Mary Wollstonecraft's grave at Old St Pancras church


Before I went to Round the Horne I had some time to spend in London.

The first place I went to was Old St Pancras, the little country church that stands in the shadow of the railway station. I was pleased to find it is now open to the public every day.

As it was International Women's Day I sought out the grave of Mary Wollstonecraft. She was buried in the churchyard there along with her husband William Godwin and his second wife.

Her remains were moved by her grandson Percy Florence Shelley to his family tomb in St Peter's Church, Bournemouth,
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Lizard that leapt out of Christmas dinner is now prized pet for Knighton boy

Well done to the County Times for winning our Headline of the Day Award.

The poet A.E. Housman adds:
And lads knew lizards at Knighton
When I was a Knighton lad.
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Disused railway stations in Gloucestershire


Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
It would also be possible to write poems about stations in Devon, Bedfordshire, North LincolnshireEast Sussex, Leicestershire, Herefordshire, Hampshire, Cumbria, Cambridgeshire, Kent, Lincolnshire, Cornwall, Rutland. Northumberland, Shropshire, SuffolkEast Riding of Yorkshire, Norfolk, Wiltshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Durham, Glasgow, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Edinburgh and Buckinghamshire.
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Music and Poetry For The Weekend: Rod McKuen

















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