This song has been recorded many times over. The most famous of these is probably the one that gave Jimi Hendrix his first hit but I also know it from Love’s eponymous first LP. [See also Friday On My Mind 3, Alone Again Or. Btw I noticed on checking that the original video I featured there has been withdrawn so I have updated it.]

Jarvis Cocker has been playing various versions of Hey Joe on his BBC 6 Music Sunday Service programme (4–6 pm) roughly every month. The one he played last Sunday (New Year’s Day) surprised me as the performing artists Kasenetz Katz Singing Orchestral Circus are probably more widely known for the “bubblegum” hit Quick Joey Small. I had certainly not paid them more attention than that. Their Hey Joe is much better than I would have thought.

I see and hear a film has been made about a certain former Prime Minister of the UK.

I must say at the outset that I shall not be going to see it – not least because the good lady (my good lady) is still too scarred by that woman’s actions that she cannot bear or contemplate anything to do with her.

I gather the film portrays its heroine as frail and dotty. (I suspect this may be a dramatic necessity for the purposes of making the film.) I have heard a speaker on Radio Scotland – a Tory MP – English of course – complain that it went beyond good taste as the person concerned was still alive and it therefore compromised her dignity. Well, that was rich.

Firstly and brutally, if she is frail and dotty she won’t know, will she?

Secondly, did she in her prime give a shit about the human dignity of all those she condemned to hardship and penury, everything she destroyed, as a result of her policies? You could call it karma.

In any case there were signs in her late Premiership that she was unhinged, if not deranged, so its not surprising she’s not all there in her dotage.

Yet none of this is to do with the thrust of this post.

Coincidentally I read an article from Tuesday’s Guardian that, as part of the setting up of Sky, Thatcher made the BBC pay £10 million a year to have their channels broadcast on Sky’s platform. Yet one more example of the baleful influence the woman had on British public life. And these payments persist: they are happening now.

Is this circumstance more widely known? Because I was outraged.

Does any other broadcaster – anywhere – have to pay another to have its own programmes shown on that other’s channels? Surely not.

Doesn’t the BBC sell programmes/formats around the world rather than pay others to broadcast them? Don’t the BBC, ITV and Channels 4 and 5 pay to the originator for US (or Australian or whatever) generated programmes? And doesn’t Virgin have to pay Sky to have Sky channels on its (Virgin’s) service? Doesn’t Sky itself pay HBO hefty amounts for their programmes?

We all know the reason why there would not have been much protest from the BBC at such an arrangement. The perceived power of the Murdoch Press. The pusillanimity of politicians of all parties with respect to that power.

That power may now be a busted flush and despite the Tories’ antipathy to anything that smacks of public endeavour surely the BBC ought to be demanding an end to this public subsidy of a private company. For that is what the arrangement amounts to.

As it stands it is – and always has been – a total waste of licence fee payers’ money to throw it away on Sky for no content in return.

The boot should be firmly on the other foot. Sky ought to be paying the BBC – and handsomely – for any access at all to BBC programming. Not to mention providing adequate compensation for all the years in which money has been shamefully drained away from the BBC in this way.

Edited to add:- my good lady says the speaker on the radio was none other than Jeremy (H)unt – her parentheses.

I see that the Military Wives are making the news – even in Canada.

Much like Strictly Come Dancing which, while its run lasts is impossible to avoid even when you don’t watch it so determined is the BBC to ensure synergy across all its outlets, the Military Wives never seem to be off the airwaves here.

At least it means that that other pile of kack on the other side – which I also never watch – won’t be providing this year’s Christmas No. 1.

I know that the proceeds from the sale of each Military Wives CD will be donated jointly to The Royal British Legion and the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen Families Association – two worthwhile causes (though it could be argued that the welfare of ex-servicemen is a direct government responsibility) – and that the formation of the choir itself will have boosted the morale of the choir’s members (and for all I know their partners in the forces) but the whole thing strikes me as being something of an exercise in manipulation.

OK, the words may not be the purest poetry, they are taken from letters from and to forces sweethearts after all, but that’s forgiveable.

But does anyone else think the tune is just awful?

Yesterday afternoon I glimpsed a programme called Grand Tours of Scotland. I wouldn’t normally have watched this (mainly because the good lady thinks the presenter, Paul Murton, has an unappealing voice) but we were in someone else’s house at the time.

It was episode 6 of the series, the only one I’ve seen and Murton was “following the sun” up through the East of Scotland’s sea-side resorts. On the way he visited Stonehaven Swimming pool which has featured in my Scotland’s Art Deco Heritage posts (see link above.)

He ended up at the Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen, which is in my Aberdeen Art Deco Heritage posts. Murton undertook some dancing inside the Ballroom. The interior still retains Art Deco features.

Anyway the programme is available on the BBC iPlayer, but only until Wednesday 21/12/11, so if you tune in you can catch some glimpses yourself.

Also on the iPlayer (till tomorrow 20/12/11) is a piece, about 25 minutes in, from The One Show on the Midland Hotel, my post on which you can see via the link.

The above is a Scottish phrase – well West of Scotland really – much used in childhood, which means more or less that things have not turned out to my liking and I’m in a huff, the rest of you can do what you like but you can’t play any more because it was my ball you were playing with and I’m taking it home with me now.

This seems to me to paraphrase what the UK Prime Minister, Mr Irresponsible, aka David Cameron, has done vis-a-vis the rest of the EU. The only differences are it wasn’t his ball and he might have gone home, but the rest haven’t.

Whatever “protections” he sought for British financial institutions* he quite plainly has not got. Moreover he will now have little influence – as he will not be involved in the discussions – over any steps taken in the future in these matters, thereby making it more likely that the situation he professes to avoid will actually come about. Brilliant!

And why does the BBC news keep referring to his veto? It wasn’t a veto. He has not stopped the other 26 members of the EU from creating a new treaty. Indeed by the BBC’s own accounts they seem keen to go on without him (and us.)

He has also thrown a very large bone to the anti-EU elements within his party, who, far from being satisfied, have now tasted blood, and will go for the jugular. UK politics will, as in the John Major era, be mired in endless argument over the EU.

(The people’s response in any subsequent referendum they secure may not quite go the way they want either. Given that the Tories have been banging on for so long about how bad the economic prospects are right now – a self-fulfilling prophesy by-the-by – what possible sense would it make to sever our connections to our biggest export market?)

[*The very organisations to a large extent responsible for the mess several European economies are in.

Who lent money to those countries who are now so heavily in debt?
Aren't those debt holders in part culpable for the ensuing difficulties?
Is it not the responsibility of a prudent lender to make sure there is a good prospect of the debtor paying the money back?

They seem to think they are on a one-way trip to profit and they should receive all their money in full.
Well, they should take a good part of the hit. They helped to create the hole the world economy is in.]

For a wonder I actually saw poppies on sale this year (in my local Homebase) before there was any sign of one on a TV presenter or politician.

While I bought mine a week ago I haven’t put it on yet. Armistice Day isn’t till this Friday (I’ll have a special post for that) and Remembrance Sunday is seven days away yet. I think wearing one for more than a week is excessive. And I have a category dedicated to War Memorials.

So I wasn’t going to mention it this year. But they’re at it again. Hardly a TV programme I’ve seen during the past couple of weeks has had anyone without a poppy. Even Benjamin Zephaniah had one on Question Time; though his was white. I also find the ostentatious inclusion of a poppy on the shirts of English Premiership football teams in the past two rounds of fixtures somewhat bizarre.

On Saturday, Football Focus (for whom a previous instance has to be considered) interviewed David Beckham – presumably in the US (as he’s just helped LA Galaxy into a final or something) – and there he was sporting a poppy. Now where did he get that? While I fully expect Beckham would be extremely keen to wear one I can’t believe they’re on general sale in the US.

And I noticed on flicking through the channels on the TV that Johnny Depp was wearing one on the Graham Norton Show two nights ago.

However, a real nadir was reached tonight (perhaps last night as I never watch the programme concerned.) After Countryfile – whose presenters both this week and last naturally wore poppies (Naturally? How long ago were the items actually filmed?) – on came the results show for Strictly Come Dancing and we were given the spectacle of a troop of barely clad young women writhing about – all with poppies attached to what little costume they did have.

Might I submit that this display was rather inappropriate, not quite sober enough, as a mark of respect for the sacrifice of the fallen?

Oh for someone to appear on TV in late October or early November with, in place of a poppy, a sign saying, “They died for my right not to wear a poppy.”

From Grantham we moved on to Stamford, which is apparently where the BBC TV series Cranford was filmed. The town seemed more prosperous tha Grantham had looked.

The approach was olde worlde but the High Street was a bit more modern. I might have expected Deco like this at the western end of the High Street:-

However on Broad street was a fine example of the style:-

It has a lovely rounded facade and original style glazing. Pity about not being able to get a photo with no street furniture in the way. That lamp post!

Central looks like it was once a cinema but now it’s a nightclub. At least it’s getting used.

I noticed it just after photographing the War Memorial, which is on the other side of Broad Street, set into the wall of quite an imposing building.

A couple more photos of Stamford are on my flickr.

Euro 2012 Qualifying round, Rheinpark Stadion, Vaduz. 8/10/11

I missed most of the first half of this as I was travelling back from Dundee. By the commentary on Radio Scotland it sounded like we were scorning innumerable chances. It was 0-0 when I arrived home. Imagine my surprise when, two minutes later, I turned on the TV and saw we had scored. Chris McKail-Smith, the first double-barrelled surname player ever to start a game for Scotland, took it well.

The second half was a snooze fest – with Liechtenstein shading the mid part of the half – up until the last ten minutes when Peter Jehle in the home goal had to make two great saves in a minute.

So. Only Spain to beat now.

Onwards and upwards to the play-offs.

(No. Me neither.)

The missing days from my blog meant I wasn’t sure if any new posts would appear. As a consequence I did not post about David Francey when his death was announced.

Francey was football’s radio soundtrack to any Scot of my generation and those before. Who who heard it could ever forget his trademark, “It’s a drive!!!”

I remember he was reputed to have been driving home from a commentary game, up around Aberdeen way I think, and spotted a notice for a David Francey sound-alike competition that night. He stopped; not to observe but to take part! He came third and didn’t tell the organisers who he was.

This may be apocryphal but like all good stories really should be true.

David Francey: Feb 1924 – Sep 2011. So it goes.

Last week I heard a DJ on Radio 2 saying when Agnetha came to sing this song for Abba she must have said to Björn and Benny, “The lyric on this is insane! It doesn’t scan or rhyme.”

Silly, silly man.

It does both.

I think this lyric is fantastic, precisely because of the rhymes and scansion.

The rhyme scheme for the first verse is AABB*CC*DEFF* (where the * is for a part rhyme – which is more than common in popular music.) Moreover the D and E lines have an internal rhyme of lunch with bunch. Indeed, if you consider the line break is at “lunch” – which verses 2 and 3 suggest is more correct – the rhyme scheme becomes a near perfect AABB*CCDDEE.
The second and third verses both have an absolute AABBCCDDEE rhyming.

As to the scanning; it’s brilliant. In fact the line, “Undoubtedly I must have read the evening paper then,” is a wonderful iambic heptameter.

“There’s not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn’t see,” is superb; the best line in any Abba song bar none. If you allow the “see-ee” at the end as an iamb it’s also a near perfect iambic nonameter.

The only thing I dislike about the lyric is it’s written in USian. Gotten is now archaic in British English – except for the phrase “ill-gotten gains” – and we don’t say “to go” but “to take away.” But then “to go” provides the rhyme.

Plus there’s an element of SF to it all, with the looking back to something that has changed, the implication of a life transformed.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Blancmange version.

There is also an eight minute version on You Tube.