I have 2 pals in the UK who are volunteer drivers for the Olympics.
One is doing the paralympics, which I love and would gladly support and go to see, if I could, but also:
I know one person who has tickets for an event he wanted to see. He doesn't say how much he paid. I also know of a family of 4 who've spent 5,000 pounds just on tickets.(jaw drops in amazement that anyone can afford this for one day of entertainment)
We looked the prices up, after hearing this as we couldn't believe they'd been so ripped off and, true enough, tickets for anything but the first days were starting at 800 pounds EACH.
What is going on? Are they ticket touts, or are the Olympics a total rip off?
Not watching UK TV means we don't get the full picture so I'd like to know more about this. Is anyone going back to see them? A few french people have asked me this question.
All game belongs to the landowner it is found on, never mind if it has just strayed over the hedge from the local estate.
There is a closed season for all game, you can't just shoot it when you want to.
I am not sure if it still exists, but there was a welsh miners hunt and anybody less like a toff than a miner I cannot imagine. There are many farmers' hunts and it is far less a "class" thing than you might imagine. Of course, the hunt has to have permission to cross your land.
There was a part of Exmoor bought by a an ant-hunting organisation and the RSPCA had to bring in the local hunt, as it was so badly managed that the stock was over-populated for the amount of land and diseased.
We used to get our venison from the Badminton estate.
too many deer? Sounds like cheap venison to me. Why arn't people shooting them? I suppose the ones with the hunting rifles are not the ones in need of cheap meat.
If a fox population is a problem for farming and disease etc, and more foxes are killed by driving them to a gun, then culling them that way is proven more efficient and less cruel and the change is therefore successful. It's not the actual "culling" that many anti fox-hunters object to, I think, but rather the elaborate,macabre, drawn out way of using groups of over-excited toffs to torture them across the countryside first, in the name of pretending to be "top dog". It was exactly the same as cock or dog-fighting, but with horses and silly trousers. Of course, seeing that the people controlling the laws in the UK were influenced by the silly trouser brigade, it was not surprising that it took a century or so longer for their blood sport to banned than it did for the lower classes.
I wouldn't mind a freezer full of free venison though. I don't eat much meat but free venison sounds just the ticket Jane!
Oscar Wilde on foxhunting " The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable".
I do agree about bull fighting, however, all wild animals that now have no natural predator, except man, need to be culled,otherwise there will be insufficient food in their territory and weakness and disease will result.
Also, old and diseased foxes target chickens, new born lambs etc. and hunting with hounds is the safest way of actually finding the right animal and ensuring a quick kill. In Scotland, where hounds drive to a gun has resulted in more foxes being killed than previously.
Shooting on its own is not the best way to ensure a clean kill.
Urban foxes more often carry sarcoptic mange than their rural counterparts and provide a reservoir of infection for pet dogs and cats.
There are now more deer in the UK than at any previous time in our history and their numbers need to be controlled. Wild deer are carriers of foot and mouth!!
Having lived in Gloucestershire, which is one of the hot spots for TB, there is a need for a radical solution and that has to involve culling.
Most of all and included Ban Fox hunting.
Ban bull fighting.
I REALLY should be a vegetarian.
Given that it is gradually a dying sport in Spain (sport???????????????????????) it ought to be gone here too. With you 200% on that.
just to proovethat I don't always focus my attention on social injustices in the UK, here's a problem in France I think vould easily be solved with a few hundred thousand signatures. BULLFIGHTING! UGGG! Come on, you Brits, I know you're mostly animal lovers. We're all part of Europe and the planet, we all have a say in this!
London changed. Mike lives in Spain and is re-issuing old Blue Horizon albums, but mainly pretending to be retired. He and Richard run the New Horizons festival in Spain wherever it is, we e-mail every now and again, so I am up-to-datish.
I love 'black' music beginning with blues, but also jazz, soul, reggae, hip-hop, etc. In London none of it amounts to anything any more and you can pay a fortune to go to an overcrowded club where the bands playing are bull**it. Which takes us back to the original question and why should people pay £20 and more to go to a club with an idiot dj who talks over everything, second rate bands and a really high chnace of having your pocket picked if you are green enough to carry cash or a wallet? And then a beer costs three times as much as at a pub, who knows what other drinks cost? Rip-off London will love these Olympics!
The Marque Club!!!
john Gee...
I think that one of the highlights of my young life was seeing that shoe box of a dressing room
when my band played there one night...support for Ten Years After.
Whatever happened to Mike Veron.
Brian and I aretalking away about these magical days of flower power and such because we
cherish our memories.
May I say that in those moments music was music and talent blossomed and
flourished without the major financial fanfare behind it. It was the goods which sold and
not just the packaging.
The great managers of that time were focused.
We had Ken Pitt who looked after David Bowy, Brian Epstien and his Beatles, Andrew Loog-Oldham and The Rolling Stones.
Was a time when your dreams could come true and for me....and my basic school passes I managed
to write for the Chelsea News, manage a pretty good Blues band, dance on RSG scores of times and eventually cook for the London crowd who loved to eat.
Did I change or was it London?
Started maybe 12 years ago when the days seemed to get darker in winter and everyone
was so focused on money and how to find it that I knew that it was time to leave.
I knew a few people but forget a lot of names. My room mate and I used to come down from Cambridge on a Friday night to see bands then and Saturday at places like the Nag's Head in Battersea, Richmond Athletic Ground, Eel Pie Island and the Marquee. Was a good time back then. My friend Bill the photographer and I helped Mike and Richard Vernon set up Blue Horizon record label, which if you have old Mac records will be on that label. They did the business, he did the pictures and I wrote sleeve notes...
HE was my best friend and flatmates boyfriend and he lived in Putney near us but I never met
his family.
I believe I FIRST heared¨Peter play at the Manor HOUSE.
I MANAGED a blues band called SYE Wine at the time...I believe it was around that time.
I thought that Peter was a great guitarist.
The story goes with Viv....she married an enginier who's feet
were firmly on the ground.
Her brother sadly died in the Locaby bombing and he was bass player
with Cockney Reble.
Viv lives in UK but when we meet we talk about the good old days
and the crazy life of music.
Was a lot of fun...
I knew Pete... Remember his first gig with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers even before Mac.
Do you remember his dad Mr Greenbaum who was a real life Alf Garnet? At the Albert Hall concert where Duster Bennett, Fleetwood Mac, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and B.B. King played in April 1969 when Mac came on he stood up in the front row on the floor, pointed up and said "That's my boy Pete!", sounding just like Alf Garnet but so proud.
Many of the early pics of Mac are by a certain Bill Greensmith who is a specialist blues and jazz photographer, long since in the USA now, who was my best mate when we were in our teens. Anyway, the real point, SW London certainly does seem to be on track for a world take over.
Met Phills brother in Pizza Express a couple of days before we left for France
he told me not to look so miserable. But it was all about memoreis
Kensington House where we cooked for all the BBC boys and girls who created
all those programmes....ARENA....
Arena. Endomol .....just outside the doors of the Pizza Express.
PETER BAZALGETTE .
ah I did not live in Wimbledon but I lived in Putney where I held Peter Greens 21st birthday
party and was eventually asked to find alternative accomodation.
Dear old SWLondon at the posh end.
Peter Green will be known to some of you as an amazing guitarist who founded Fleetwood Mac.
Ironically, I was just thinking whether being where the Olympics are and all that, will they be having Phil Mitchell beating everybody up for the UK?
The power and the glory visus the congestion, the hell like conditions for the diminishing
police and the rise of hot dog stalls.
or the only way is Essex....JUST a few stops away on the central line.
Not a lovely place...
Cowdray Park, nice memory. One of my Cambridge fellow fellows was a polo player from Midhurst originally and since in and around Cambridge the standard was far too low for him we had many nice weekends as a bunch of pals there. Nice and unostentatious gven the reputation polo has among people of my own social background. The picnics were memorably good.
I only know about polo, but the same applies.
Cartier Day when the England team, of which my friend's son is a member) plays against another nation is one of the "Season" days. We avoided it for many years after we became fed up with all the stupid girls.
The best day for polo is semi-final day for the Gold Cup at Cowdray. There is some corporate hostility. but the "real" polo people are there and we always have a huge picnic and watch and enjoy the games, with pertinent commentary!
Precisely David, but I think host nations are getting a bit above themselves and this time it happens to be the UK, Brazil in four years is already suffering overbloated national ego to illustrate the point.
@alan lloyd
I think most of us were criticising the Olympics, which has grown into a self-serving monster, not the UK.