Basilides🌱🌳🍃

The BBC are making a much better job of the sound of the enormous orchestra used for this work. I had the same impression the last time I heard it in a Radio3 concert about 15 years ago.

I think my interest im Scriabin's 3rd Symphony The Divine Poem is being reignited. This performance sounds better than any of the recordings I have. Just take the time bar back to the beginning. bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/li…

Today, the Russians once again "vanquished" purely civilian sites – ordinary passenger buses in Odesa, ordinary apartment buildings in Zaporizhzhia, and an ordinary hospital in the Kharkiv region. Every single day of this war that Russia is waging against life only proves that supporting Ukraine is the right thing to do from every perspective – defense, political, and simply human. And everyone around the world sees it. They see that Ukraine needs more air defense, more protection for people's lives, and that the Russian authorities have gone insane over this war and are completely irrational in refusing to end it. But pressure on Russia must work. New sanctions against the aggressor, new support packages for Ukraine, new projects – like our European anti-ballistic initiative, FREYJA – all of this must work. Thank you to everyone who is helping. In the near future, there will be meetings and negotiations that must strengthen our defenses.

OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH getting another outing on BBC Four from next Wed (24 Jun), preceded by a new "Remembers..." show with writer Peter Flannery. Has the serial been remastered in HD for its 30th anniversary..? Really hope so. 🤞

"He Heated Up My Hairpin and Branded an ‘M’ on My Bum So Other Men Would Know I Belonged to Him”: How Mohammed Karrar Turned a 12 Year-Old British Girl into His Branded Sex Slave Pimped Out for £400–£600 While Police and Social Services Looked the Other Way in Oxford’s Operation Bullfinch Scandal The Harrowing Story of the Girl Branded with "M" in Oxford's Operation Bullfinch Grooming Gang Case One of the most disturbing details from the 2013 Operation Bullfinch trials reveals the extreme sadism and sense of ownership displayed by the perpetrators. The Victim A vulnerable 12 year old girl who acted as a carer for her deaf and ill parents. She was targeted by an organized grooming gang in Oxford. Mohammed Karrar, a ringleader of the gang, later sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years Karrar repeatedly raped her from the age of 12, alongside his brother Bassam Karrar. In a brutal act of marking her as his “property,” he took one of her own hairpins, bent it into the shape of an “M”, heated it with a lighter, and branded it into her buttock. Her court testimony: "It was M for Mo and he said I belonged to him. He was branding me so people knew I was his." All over the country these vile foreign monsters are still actively doing this to children across our country and it must be stopped , people must be held accountable that looked the other way whoever they are and whatever position they have or still hold !

Today the Radio4 adaptation got to 1987 and the second great housing scandal of the story.

It’s taken me 30 years to finally watch it but Our Friends In The North was better than I could ever have imagined. The most poignant and powerful TV I think I have seen, I am in absolute bits! Whoever directed it thank you.

@West_Stand_Dan Very good in the Radio4 adaptation too and the repeat of which has been running in parallel.

Helena Munktell (1852-1919) is recommended too.

This oboe concerto by VW deserves to be as well known as The Lark Ascending and for similar reasons.

@a50671419 @Labourheartland It's both, but they are the surplus.

@RolandBasilides @Labourheartland Millions must go.. that might help.. not a population problem, we have an invader problem

Westminster has built a country where we spend more money on the planning paperwork for a single road than it costs other nations to build an entire mountain tunnel. This isn't a system accidentally strangled by red tape: it is a highly lucrative industry. A vast priesthood of consultants and lawyers is making a fortune they have no interest in the work being done. It is corruption by bureaucracy, and working-class communities are footing the bill for projects that never even see a spade in the ground. The absolute paralysis of modern Britain was laid bare in a recent parliamentary committee. A single witness gave them the truth with both barrels, exposing the administrative vampires sucking public money dry while the work goes undone. The details are an insult to every community waiting for homes, decent transport, and cheaper energy. Take the Lower Thames Crossing. The planning application alone has swallowed more than a quarter of a billion pounds. For that exact same amount, Norway actually constructed the world’s longest road tunnel. We spent it on paper, and we have not even turned a sod of earth. This is a permission state eating itself alive. Look at HS2, the most expensive railway line on earth. Part of the reason it cost so much is that we are spending £121 million on a specific "bat tunnel" to protect a few hundred bats living in a nearby wood, a wood the line does not even pass through. Look at Hinkley Point C, the most expensive nuclear power station in human history. For eight years, developers locked in a multi-million-pound wrangle with regulators over installing an underwater "fish disco", an acoustic deterrent to stop fish swimming into the pipes. 20 years ago, we built nuclear fleets at a fraction of the cost. Today, we sacrifice national infrastructure to the gods of endless compliance. The final absurdity is the plan to reopen just 3.3 miles of an existing railway line between Bristol and Portishead, a route already built but closed during the Beeching cuts. The planning application is 80,000 pages long. Over one thousand of those pages are about bats. We have created a system that trades in paper while the real economy rots. The working class pay the price for this institutional cowardice. They pay for it in soaring energy bills, missing homes, broken transport links, and a country that cannot build the future it keeps promising. Protecting the environment is vital, but drowning ourselves in paper is not environmentalism. A system that takes 80,000 pages to clear three miles of existing track is broken. It is not governance: it is managed decline with a clipboard. It's the bureaucratic vampires drinking the country's wealth...

Nothing illustrates the prophetic works or work of William Blake better than Vaughan Williams' music for Job. The music should be used to promote 'English Blake' and his philosophy more widely than Job.

Bill's Climate Catch-up #23 Subscribe to read the latest content in my #CoolEarth substack newsletter Lots of free stuff too 🙂

No forests = no clean water. Forests filter drinking water for 1.6 billion people worldwide and influence rainfall patterns across continents. The Amazon alone makes “flying rivers” that water farms 2000 miles away. #WaterSecurity #Forests #WorldWaterDay

Record heat in JAPAN continues unabated. Today Uozu,in Toyama Prefecture, had a Minimum Temperature of 26.8C: The highest ever recorded in July

Q. HAS RAPID MINOR/MAJOR MASS EXTINCTION BEGUN? A. YES Abrupt climate warming? ✔ Expansion of ocean dead zones & acidification? ✔ But that's not all. Wildlife & habitat destruction? ✔ Pollution? ✔ Pesticides? ✔ Invasive species? ✔ Inertia in capitalist/growth systems? ✔

@SaulStaniforth Leave out the reference to the Russians. That's just Leftist complacency. 'Stomping down our streets' is not how it would happen. The far-Left and far-Right 5th and 6th columns in the UK would welcome a Russian victory.

For weeks we've been bombarded with people screaming hysterically that we need billions more for war, but when it comes to climate adaptation theres largely silence. And whereas Russians stomping down our streets is pure fantasy, climate change is happening.

There are only a few places on earth where thousand year old trees still stand. The west coast of Canada is one of them but every day they are logged. Time to stop the logging: buff.ly/CKJRcLy #ProtecttheIrreplaceable #ActOnClimate #nature pics @TJWattPhoto #cop16cali

How is this not headline news around the world?? The Loire is one of the world’s greatest rivers. The Po in Italy, another legendary river, is also running dry. The Colorado. Great rivers running dry is apocalyptic. We’re in a 5-alarm crisis and the establishment is ignoring it.

The Danube is also drying up, as are the Colorado and Mississippi Rivers and the Rio Grande. You'd think politicians might be concerned about our food supply. Droughts are a standard feature of Climate Collapse. #WaterIsLife x.com/peakaustria/st… worldatlas.com/rivers/4-us-ri…

💧 A single large tree releases 100+ gallons of water vapor daily into the air. 🌊 Remove forests → less rain → droughts. But also more runoff → floods. The Amazon alone generates 50–80% of its own rainfall. Destroy it, and rainfall plummets across continents. #WaterCrisis #ForestsAndWater