“I take an empty space, and call it a bare stage.  Someone walks across this empty space, while another person is watching him, and that is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”  (Peter Brook)

The Dan Crawford Pub Theatre Award is named in honour of the late founder of Britain’s first pub theatre, the King’s Head, which was set up in 1970. The £60,000 Arts Council grant Crawford battled for was cut under Thatcher in 1984, but the maveric American struggled on with a donationas bucket by the exit. No nominations are made for this award which is worth £2,000. They were dark days indeed under the Iron Philistine. When will the arts politicians learn that small grants to cultural giants like Dan Crawford yield enormous returns? The kind of returns no spread-sheet can show, and generate the kind of cultural inter-dependence that will always make London the theatre capital of the world. That will never change and the future is secure in the hands of teams like the one currently trail-blazing at the wonderfully dynamic Cock Tavern Theatre under Artistic Director and founder Adam Spreadbury-Maher. He has the rare gift of making it flow. A class Aussie/Irish act with a class team, spearheaded by inspired (and thorough) actor-producer Matthew Burton.

Check it out: http://www.cocktaverntheatre.com/

These are the glowing words of Judge Mark Shenton (Playbill’s London correspondent and theatre critic of the Sunday Express) :  ”The Cock Tavern, with its tiny auditorium of around 40 seats squeezed into three rows, is a quintessentially cramped upstairs pub theatre; but it is also, thanks to the boldness of its producing team, a newly-essential one, both for restoring some past fringe glories and also moving it boldly forward with new work.”

It might be cramped, Mark, but it is far from the dingy ‘room upstairs’ stereotype. The seats are comfortable and the whole aesthetc speaks of class. My kind of place.

Thrilling news, guys………………………………………………….xxxxx……………………………………………………….

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/the-present-at-the-cock-tavern-theatre-notes/

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/message-for-adam-spreadbury-maher-on-peter-gill/

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/the-present-1995-revived-at-the-cock-theatre-tavern/

River Man (2009, incomplete), photo Kirsten Lavers

SILENCE IS ITS OWN REPLY

I have many reasons to be grateful to Judy Daish, my agent from 1987 to 2001:  http://www.judydaish.com/ I’ve been thinking about the power of  this recently unearthed line from an unpublished song by George Harrison.

I left Judy Daish Associates the day after Harrison’s death, after I found out that The Cenci had been peformed in Germany and my rights were unprotected.  

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/nick-ward-play-texts/

Leaving JDA was never going to be easy.

The Old River Man (these are his paintings) witnessed the struggles I made from his outback township to bring about a reconciliation with Judy. My master had the most profound understanding of reconciliation. Deeper than I will ever know. Big story.

 There comes a point where agents and lawyers simply cannot negotiate between collaborating artists without screwing up the process. I reached that point a while ago. Judy Daish knows all about the intrusive effects of deal-making. Intrusive? Heart-breaking more like. Good luck to her.

(It was a groundbraking piece, Giorgio – no hard feelings, artistically)

  The Nullabor

Where is Ken Loach? It is such a sad state of affairs. I’m  good at them. Telling stories with actors. Banjo Nick doesn’t need Judy Daish. lol. Banjo Nick thinks the tipping-point has arrived and that subsidies should be slashed and the middle-men sent packing. I don’t agree with him. He’s just a fucking busker!

Added 9th Novemeber: PC Dix, from the Cambridge Constabulary, is interviewed in a glossy magazine on belhalf of the Government which landed on my door-mat middle of last week. In it he claims, falsely, that buskers and beggers (there is no distiction in the mind of this unelected representative of Law and Order on desolation row) earn an average of £400 per week. This is an outrageaous exageration and I would like to know where PC Dix gets his facts from. It is also an irresponsible statement designed to create fear and prejudice against the most vulnerable homeless.  He enjoys his job, he proudly tells the captive readership, and recommends the early morning as the best time to harass the rough sleepers (later in the day they’re all too pissed to be meaningfully persecuted). Has PC Dix ever given money to a busker? If so what kind of busker was s/he? What special quality about the busker did PC Dix wish to pay his respects to? Does he have any requests?

read more:http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/the-cenci-1997/

I smoked too much free marijuana when I was nineteen picking grapes in Mildura, NSW, in 1981: so much so that I hardly touched the sacred weed all through my twenties.

It was not until 1993 when I was struggling to come up with a play for the Royal Court workshop I’d been offered by Stephen Daldry that I had another smoke with Tracy, a dope-fueled experimentalist I met in the pub on London Fields (can’t remember the name, lol). Within ten days I’d written (and directed) The Present (then called Danny Rule).

At nineteen it had freaked me out because it seemed to lead to nowhere creative, at 31 it completely unlocked my subconscious mind (right brain, if you prefer) and my subconscious mind delivered a piece of work which continues to thrill me with it’s crystalline (prismatic) depths. Since then I’ve made a serious study of this unique plant and its properties.

I can paraphrase Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (the earliest known treatise on the esoteric art-science of  religious-philosophical ‘union’ – recommending pot-consumption for one in four ‘types’ of spiritual seeker); I can quote the Shakespeare Principle which extols the great virtues of the weed in the sonnets (and elsewhere, if you have an ear for it). I use cannabis carefully. Quite apart from the spiritual-creative applications is is a muscle relaxant and improves my banjo-picking finger speed. I could go on.

Or I can bring to mind the mind-blowing achievements of the singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan, Lennon-McCartney, Bob Marley, Harrison, Ringo. Let’s stops there, Jagger-Richards. I’ve just remembered Bob Marley interviewed by a stiff BBC square in the early-mid 70s who pompously asks the great Rastaman to ‘confess’ that he misuses the dreaded substance and what kind of message is this giving to ‘Youth’? Bob says: You want to talk about religion?

Or cricket?

Again and again the brain-numbing menadacity of Gordon Brown and the New labour pc box-ticking pen-pushers make the elementary mistake of judging the few by the many. To have sacked Professor Nutt (who has given over ten years of unpaid service as an advisor on the dangers of recreational drug abuse to this loathsome Government) is every bit as irresponsible as the hounding of David Kelly. Does M15 intend to murder Professor Nutt for telling the truth? For exciting intelligent debate about a complex substance and its effects on the little understood body-mind mechanism?

The legalisation of cannabis would be good for the Afghan economy, for a start.

Of course cigarettes and tobacco are more dangerous than cannabis! Nicotine and alcohol are more addictive too. As I write this I have not used cannabis for 6 days with no cravings and no withdrawl.

What kick-backs do the British armed forces get for the secret deals undertaken to protect the safe passage of heroin to our streets? Now there’s a deadly trade.

Added 2nd November: When Alan Johnson writes in today’s Guardian that he wishes to avoid seeing young people in his constituency ’sucked into a world of hopeless despair through drug addiction’  he is using the shrill, tabloid, langauge of a Home Secretary who should read the Daily Mail’s front page story which claims that there is an unprovoked attack (in the UK ) fueled by booze every 30 seconds. Alcohol is the violent drug. This Govenment’s relaxing of the licencing laws is doing much to increase hopeless despair and fear - but I guess Brown is only looking at the tax revenue.

Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3EgiuJmYMw

This clip is a tribute to Chris Simon: not only did he produce this highly experimental video of a script I had spent months adapting (and enlarging) from the 1995 play (recently revived in a controversial production by brilliantly provocative director, Adam Spreadbury-Maher at the Cock Tavern Theatre); he also played Michael and persuaded the owner of the silver Porsche to lend it to us for the night.

I was squeezed in the back seat with Julius Werner, on camera. The split screen came to us during the editing process and gives the scene a weird logic, creating the unsettling atmosphere which generates interest: two different head-spaces and no cut until 4.17. Look out for the extraordinary Geno Lechner (who some will remember from Schindler’s List) making her dream-like appearance as Lizzie… and Peter Tate, our Brandoesque executive producer, whose innovative Playground in Latimer Road provided the finance. All in the name of research and experiment.

I gave myself two choices on Tuesday after two nights in Sylvie’s gentle arms in Willesdon Green.

1) Jamming on the balcony of the Inn on the Green

or, 2) busking in one of my favourite spots, Walkers Court, in the heart of Soho.

(Here’s a song I wrote in this very spot (great accoustic too) in 2007, mid-winter: http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/soho-blues/)

I opted for Soho and did what I always do when I’m in the area: enjoyed a cup of coffee at the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Steet followed by half an hour of window shopping in London’s accoustic hub.

I’d just set up my mini Vox amp and was about to launch into some red-light dirt blues when a policemen arrived on the scene and moved me on explaining that until Westminster City Council change its tune I’ll be liable for arrest playing there cheek by jowl with the whores, the pimps, the tourists and the men in suits (amongst others, including roots music afficionardos). 

I try to appeal to his discretion, telling him the shop-keepers love it and last time I played here I had the whores dancing but  he moves me on in such hurry that I leave behind my purse (inscribed, meaninglessly, with the letter R) containing my Abbey-link card, Oyster, Cambridge Water Authority payment card, small lump of hashish, about 20 quid in cash,

Adam Spreadbury-Maher’s calling card (a beaut shot of Shelley Lang as Becky with her legs open from his recent revival of my 1995 play, The Present, at his Cock Tavern Theatre) and my return coach ticket to Cambridge. Not sure what else was in there, maybe nothing. So there I was having a homelessness and non-attachment to material things flashback, big time. (The bad cop knicked it, I know he did, because it was under my leather jacket and when I came back and confronted him he looked very, very, gulity – bastard) I ended up doing what I should have done in the first place: walked via Hyde Park to Ladbroke Grove where I borrowed the coach fare plus enough for a cappuccino from fellow-boatman and enlightened landlord, Dave, played my heart out for a couple of hours in an unforced, unsubsidised, muti-cultural community, and caught the 10pm coach home.

Walking is the best training for sculling for all sorts of physiological reasons, if you can find the time.

An expert rower never loses touch with the ‘ground’, the footplate, and allows the toes to ’stretch out’ with the release of the fully covered blade. Beats running and certainly beats erging.

Ask any wily old Thames boatman, like Bill Colley, in his Richmond Bridge Boathouse.

http://www.yell.com/b/Bill+Colley-Boat+Builders+and+Repairs-Richmond-TW91TH-3188965/index.html

 Walking is the best training for the professional Thames sculler.

Time to think too, as any Barry or Phelps will tell you.

I love the coach because I get a chance to follow the Thames in and out of London.

The stretch from Blackfriars to Houses of Parliament is as tough as is gets for a single sculler rowing up on the flood. Why? Becuase the river is effectively squeezed between the buttresses of the bridges and the river is a constant swirling swell from the commercial river traffic. Just to stay upright requires supreme watermanship on this stretch. Visiting Marathon Scullers beware!

Incidentally: the ’squeezing’ of the London Tideway is the simple reason why the Upper Thames is a time-bomb regarding flooding. There is nowhere for the excess rainwater to go. When that happens, periodically, London’s totally antequated Victorian sewage system becomes automatically overloaded with the run-off and raw sewage is pumped directly into the river via ‘overspill’ outlets at Hammersmith and elsewhere.

 The last time I witnessed this was when I was boatman at Furnival Sculling Club in 2007. It is a depressing, Mayor of London (plus Port of London authority) -endorsed, systematic, licensing of River Thames pollution. The shit takes days to clear and can be seen and smelt washing up and down with the tide for a week or so. No one talks about it. Replacing the Victorian pipes, I mean, because politicians don’t really believe that putting a clean Thames at the centre of their policy-making is always going to win votes, whatever the short-term cost. Anyway, who can blame Boris for preferring to pander to his bloated plutocrat mates in the Finance Sector, the types who don’t give a flying fuck about a clean river as long as no one talks about it ?… ah, there’s the rub, the talking, the vital and dynamic debate. The Freedom of Speech. This is a flood warning.

Two highlights of my two-weekly excursion to the big smoke were meeting the fascinating and brainy anarchist sympathiser, Naomi, on the coach down; and exchanging eye-contact with arms-trading QinetiQ boss, Pauline Neville Jones, who turned up for the balcony gig at the Inn on the Green on Saturday around 5pm.

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/banjo-nicks-open-mic-at-the-inn-on-the-green-ladbrooke-grove-london-saturday-25th-april-and-every-second-saturday-bring-an-instrument-bring-a-tune/

 She wrote in the Guardian (20th October) that the kind of inter-faith music-making which Banjo Nick at the Inn on the Green exemplifies should be supported by funding bodies.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/20/prevent-radicalisation-inclusiveness I was pleased to read that and very pleased that Neville Jones likes to back her ruminations up with experience in the field. Musicians always get there first when it comes to creating the language of peace. Right now, Sufis, like Milo (regular at the Inn), lead the way: creating the conditions necessary for the kind of music-sharing in which Israeli musicians celebrate pan-Middle eastern arabic influences, for instance.

Lets not forget that Israeli jews originate in Egypt according to Numbers 33 (Old Testament) and their ‘right to exist’ as a nuclear-armed blister of racial hatred (a state) in the Holy Land depends upon an exhausted Moses getting his idea of God’s permission to slaughter fellow arabs and grab their land via a burning bush on a mountain side. Forty years on the road. Can we forgive the old rambler for the odd and murderous hallucination? What kind of God is that?  Not mine. My god is a clean river. Musicians tend to offer no safe havens for religious and war-indoctrinated types like the board of QinetiQ and Islamist terror-merchants. When I think about masters of war like Neville Jones I see an MOD hardliner obliged to borrow a langauge she sees no truth in. She gets too much of the estimated £40 Billion the British taxpayer gives over to the Ministry of Defense, annually, to have any credible feeling for the beauty of peace.  Potentially lethal. So intelligent and so sold-out to death and destruction share-holders. Can I prove she has no conscience? Tough assignment but I’ll do my best.

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/banjocaravana-what-are-we-fighting-for/

 
On Discrimination (for Boris). Relaxing of laws against busking in some London boroughs and the recognition that the refusal to license buskers with no fixed address in Mayor of London authorised busking locations on the Underground means that many fine troubadours will be tempted to give London a miss and head straight for Berlin where musicians are welcomed with such open arms it takes he breath away. Much to the evident delight of the majority of Berliners who give generously, if they like it.

Show me the way, Lord, Show me the way

I lost my haystack, I lost my stack

A ya gotta  stack, boy, A ya gotta stack?

I lost my country, I lost my tree

A ya gotta a count, Boy, A ya gotta a tree?

Laws against mobility (the ancient right of the troubadour) are not intended to target troubadours! They are intended to target ‘terrorists’ who might be anyone the police officer thinks might be a terrorist on whatever level of prejudice the police officer is forced to labour. The suspension of Habeous Corpus, the ancient right to be found innocent until proved guilty is a thing of the past, unfortunately.

Message for Boris Johnson regarding harnessing the tidal Thames for energy…

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/4698383.NORTH_KENT__Boris_Johnson_says_he_does_not_want_to_build_Thames_Estuary_airport/

Thanks for looking in. The idea of harnessing the Tidal Thames for energy came to me when I was working as a boatman at Furnival Sculling Club in 2007.

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/bancocaravana-down-on-the-barge-with-pussywillow/

Even as far upstream as Hammersmith the tidal range and power of the water strikes you – and the channel is deep, though narrow (as racing rowers know as they battle for the ’stream’). So a pilot scheme should be tried further downstream. It would work something like this.

The turbine wheels would be anchored and framed within concrete blocks and the tide would turn the wheels. There would be a stopping point, obviously, as the tide changes direction (imagine the Stefano Tartarotti model with flat, reversible, blades, to get a picture of my copyright design). The height of the wheel would be calculated to lie safely below the hulls of boats, again, for obvious reasons.

The flow of the river would not be noticably impeded, even if there were turbines stretching from the mouth of the river up as far as, say, Battersea Power Station.

Everything, including the power cables, would be out of sight. Hard to calculate just how much electricty could be generated until pilot prototype has been tested, but the potential is enormous. Having lived and worked so close to the river it often strikes me how little we use it. What does that tell you?

I worship it! Now, there’s a confession. Also looking forward to having a chat about my proposed marathon sculling race for male and female scullers to chime in with the Thames-friendly Olympic Opening Ceremony in 2012, which I blogged about separately on this site. http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/marathon-sculling-log-1/It’s going to require careful management of Sir Steve Redgrave’s diary because he can’t be in two places at the same time.

An early start coupled with some late night festivities could be the way to go with Steve’s official duties in the Olympic Arena as the meat in the sandwich. All good.

Thrilled to see that my ‘Marathon Sculling’ blogs  retain no 1 position on Google Search. I’ve been so caught up with my full-on work as an environmentalist,  peace-activist, playwright, musician and painter, I’ve not been on the water for weeks. Were you a wet bob or a dry bob?

I see you as a very dry fellow with a love of enterprise. We have more in common than might be supposed. I can very easily see this scheme servicing cities all over the world. This would mean cleaner rivers and substantial reductions in unsustainable dependency on climate-change inducing fossil fuels and war. You may call me a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

Let’s do it together!

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/sculling-log/ (2)

What about Tom Waits?

Charles: Jester dreams of Sir Paul McCartney.

Jester: I can’t be sure it might have been someone impersonating Paul McCartney or it might have been the real Paul McCartney pretending to be someone else, either way, it was a very trippy dream.

Strings break whipping children in the face.

‘Dagoola Malami Gampa’ (2009), photo Kirsten Lavers (upside down!)

I was putting the finishing touches to my painting ‘Dagoola Malami Gampa’ which I painted when I first found out that my Aboriginal master had passed away… when suddenly George Harrison appears with ‘Paul’ and Ringo. No John, disappointingly. Bob Dylan was defintely there playing  the Jester.

‘Bob’ (2008), photo Kirsten Lavers

‘Paul’ is telling me that if Keith Richards is to be on the replacement Chilcot Inquiry committee because of his great knowledge of the heroin trade then so should ‘Paul’ because he knows what it feels like to be banned in Israel.

Keith: It’s a fucking disgrace.

The ‘deadly’ Hammer educating a green Prince into the ways of Zionist self-destruction.

‘Paul’ starts to sing (very beautifully, as always) a verse of song that I wrote to the tune of Midnight Special again and again. George and Ringo are loving it:

Come off it, Israel, in the Gaza Strip

Palestinian children in your death grip.

Then the nightmarish dream ended very abruptly. Bob didn’t join in with the music, preferring to paint. Nick Ward was the dreamer.

‘Domestic Monad’ (2008)

This one’s inspired by a design of John Dee, magician to Elizabeth 1 and some think the universal genius who created the conditions necessary for the writing of the plays of Shakespeare.

 No one is ever going to know because he covered his tracks.

It’s all hunches and clairvoyance. Looking forward, looking back.

 Last night I was reading E.V.Rieu’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey – the Penelope Story – (must have put me in the dreaming mode) and his introduction (1945) makes the case for the single authorship of the ‘first novel’ by stating that his war-damaged readers ‘may feel as sure that they are in one man’s hands as they do when they turn to As You Like It after reading King John’.  What an off-hand assumption! Quite wrong, in my opinion.

 It may have been ‘one hand’ but it was many energies. We’ve lost the art of collaboration and the Enlightenment’s obsession with sole authorship (the denial of the magical art of collaboration, essential to ‘living’ as opposed to ‘deadly’ theatre to use Peter Brook’s terminolgy) is one of the causes. Here I go again, touching on The Shakespeare Principle. This blog-site was getting far too many hits. This kind of arcane speculation will slow down the traffic.

(Hi, Boris! Tube fares hike no  good regarding emissions and congestion reduction or  4 dangerously articulate struggling artists! It’s a kick in the teeth to extraordinary visitors and ordinary Londoners alike, some people are saying, not the bloated plutocrats in the finance sector, they say nothing remotely philanthropic: why not tax them!, there’s an idea,  yes, tax the financial institutions for public transport AND you could have tide turbines all the way up Tideway embedded deep in the channel (out of sight!) and you could appoint me as your  ’special’ arts & culture advisor without fear of any nasty kick-backs from the pc pen-pushers, no worries.)  I don’t like bullies, Munira – especially New Labour box-ticking bullies. I’ll take Munira under my wing, Borrie, teach her everything I know about the transformational power of art.

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/jester-dreams-of-munira/

Munira Mirza, everything to play for.

Popularity isn’t everything, Rupert. Classy conjecture counts too. You need a search engine because your print empire of disContent is crumbling. Slowly crumbling because it’s not sustainable. Call it The Bee! The Bee versus Google. Bring it on! Rupert Murdoch regards pacifists and environmentalists with cold contempt but I still think he’s best mate material. What does his Penelope think? His Queen Bee.

We have no choice. He is the winner. The material world is in his hands, not mine. 

well we know Tarleton was part of it LOL

I am the Boatman (2009)

 

Liza, Liza, dream with me

I’ll meet you by the willow at the house of John Dee

Liza, Liza, boat with me

I’ll take you down the river all the way to the sea

I am the Boatman

 

Liza, Liza, standing tall

I am the Boatman with a crystal ball

I can drown or I can burn

Either way I don’t return

I am the Boatman

 

We embark when the tide is slack

This time round there’s no turning back

The mystic paintings on the cabin wall

The stork and the book and the burning fall

I am the Boatman

 

Liza, Liza, calling back

Stop the day from turning black

Who’s to say that it was just a dream?

floating down  in the Tideway stream

I am the Boatman

Jester: Ringo?

Ringo: Jester.

Jester: You’ve got two choices for a band name.

Ringo: Fire.

Jester: ‘Jester and The Beas’… or… Just ‘The Beas’.

Ringo: Just The Beas.

Jester: Charles?

Charles: I go with Ringo.

Jester: Bob?

(Silence)

Jester: Face it, Bob, I’m the frontman coz it aint gonna work otherwise.

(slight pause)

Jester: Ringo, I’ve got another question.

Ringo: Fire.

Jester: Is Keith Richards joining The Beas cool?

Jester: Keith? Promise me you’ll never change.

Ringo: It’s cool.

Jester: Charles?

Charles: It’s cool.

Bob Dylan: You’re just copying Ringo, Paul.

Denny: What about Tom Waits?

Tom Waits: What about Tom Waits?

Keith: I’ll tell you all about Tom Waits.

 

A Nick Ward Scenario.

For Kirsten, who has the keys to the scout hut.

Added 21st Oct.

Gordon Brown’s latest statement to Parliament on the dismally corrupt ‘President’ Hamid Karzai sinks below the level of primary school intelligence and would  be beneath contempt if it were not for the utter disregard for the sitting-duck British servicemen who will be picked off in the re-run of an election which in the Babaji District saw a turn-out of 150 voters out of a population of 80,000.

Brown admires Karzai’s ’statesmanlike acceptance’ that the British-backed rigging of votes on a scale which is simply beyond belief has been exposed and goes on to say this: ‘ The purpose of being in Afghanistan is to protect us on the streets of London (Amy: ‘Bollocks, Gordon’)

and the other cities of our country from Al Qaeda and the Taliban taking control in Afghanistan’.

What? Brown is either no longer sane and believes this to be true or he is expressing a murderous deception in declaring as truth what he knows to be a lie. Shame on you, Gordon Brown.

Bring them home: Afghanistan is an unwinable  death-trap. Both sides of the border. Humanitarian disaster: refugees on the run with no where to run in Pakistan. No US aid in sight. Hunger and despair, Obama.  Arms traders like Pauline Neville Jones very happy.

Meanwhile under-protected Iraq is kicking off again and bodyguards have subdued a Palestinian man as he approached unelected stomach-churning Middle East ‘Peace’ envoy and multi-millionaire War-Maker Tony Blair, howling with rage and truth ”You are a terrorist.”

 

Added 14th Oct. Gordon Brown will today read the names of the 37 servicemen who have died since the last PM’s Question Time in mid-July as he commits 500 additional, under-equipted, confused, combat soldiers to Afghanistan. This escallation will increase the probability of terrorist attacks in the UK by terrorist cells resident in the UK.

Meanwhile contradictory President Obama strives to enforce his desire to see human aid forces multiplied and to play down the dire consequences of the rigged election and to celebrate the fact that for the first time since US conscription was ended in 1973 military recruitment targets have been met.

Note that in his his first speech following the Nobel Peace Prize announcement he went out of his way to create homosexual cannon fodder. The Arms Traders continue to laugh all the way to the bank.

Pauline Neville Jones, arms trader, former BBC Governor, former Chair Joint Intelligence Committe and chief persecutor of David Kelly is 3rd on the left. She speaks for the Tory Party. She looks like a sweet little grannie but she is a ruthless conscience-free arms-length killer with a very considerable fortune built from undercover destruction. She even gives seminars on the ‘glass ceiling’ to fake feminist businesswomen bullies and no doubt makes lovely home-made jam. Evil. I don’t use that word lightly. Debate with me you evil killer. Come on, Pauline – and bring your bank statements. You have some tax to pay. Oxford academic too. We simply must nail the arms traders, like Trinity College, Cambridge and All Souls, Oxford or there is no future for this tiny world. It’s cruch time.

 

Added 7th Oct, Daily Telegraph: ‘The disclosure that Barack Obama and Gen Stanley McChrystal, the Nato chief in Afghanistan, are seriously at odds over tactics and resources, including manpower, is deeply worrying.’  Understatement.

Meanwhile Blair guns for EU Presidency despite the impending investigation into the unresolved questions relating to the authorship and delivery of the ‘45′ minute speech to Parliament which led to the illegal inavsion of Iraq. With Polanski also awaiting trial who is going to complete the movie The Ghost which concerns the Trial of Tony Blair? I’ll do it, if it’s just a final polish and music. No worries.

Added 13th July: The terrible news of deaths of 8 British soldiers with an average age of 20 in the space of 24 hours is a shocking wake-up call and puts me in mind of Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ (written more than 2400 years ago) Part 3, Chapter 10: Terrain. Opening para.

‘Ground may be classified according to its nature as accessible, entangling, temporizing, precipitous, distant, or having narrow passes. Ground which both we and the enemy can traverse with equal ease is called accesible’. (Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1983)

Three of the dead soldiers were 18 years old and sent into terrain which is far from accessible against an ‘enemy’ so adept that they can disappear in a moment. Our soldiers lack direction, our generals lack a common purpose. For Obama to claim that this war is being waged to prevent terrorist attacks in Great Britain is both false (it is doing much to increase the probability of such attacks – and the potential suicide attackers are already here) and alarmist.

For Obama to contradict the true estimates of experts is down-right murderous. The war is unwinable and there is no just cause for its escallation.

Obama is indeed a double-headed beast and a very dangerous one for he uses the sympathy he elicits in pacifists to silence them. Afghanistan is unwinable.

Israel is 1000 times more dangerous to the world than the Taliban.

Cameron is a sanctimonious prig steeped in his party’s investment in killing machines. Clegg is shooting the only political party which did not vote for the disastrous and illegal invasion of Iraq in the foot. Brown is a curse against honesty. God help us. Not a single voice in Parliament with the courage to speak up for peace in this fragile world.

The most corrupt and senseless Parliament since Magna Carta. Get Mandy and Paulene Neville Jones - they know all about the murder of David Kelly.

englandbet (5 months ago) added:

What are we fighting for?

maybe because we are controlled by governments that claim to have our best interests at heart, but sometimes it looks like “best interests” are best figures on the spreadsheet.

this world modern world is turning into an absolute shame.

great video – thanks x

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/rowing/6284295/Sir-Steve-Redgrave-winning-is-all-in-the-mind.html

‘By the fourth in Atlanta in 1996 even I’d had enough. That was when I came out with my one and only famous quote. After Matt Pinsent and I had won our gold medal we were interviewed by the BBC. It was just after the race – always a dangerous time when the brain is not fully in gear – and the question arose of whether we were going to Sydney.

At that moment, we were not. “Anyone sees me go anywhere near a boat, you’ve got my permission to shoot me,” I said and immediately entered the sports quotes book market. That makes my one to Ali’s thousand.’

Steve, I must disagree. If I remember rightly after winning your 5th Olympic Gold in Sydney Dan Topoloski cornered you (was it Topolski?), anyway, and you said: ‘Everyone makes history all the time’… or words to that effect. Now it may be that the ‘permission to shoot me’ quote was picked up more rapaciously by the media: it seemed shockingly downbeat to those who could not understand what you must have been going through – that race was much tougher than people realise. I caught it in a pub in Subiaco, surrounded by West Australians willing the local boys on, but the Sydney quote is right up there with Ali’s ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’, in my opinion. It is pure philosophy.

Looking forward to reading this book properly… had a quick browse in the bookshop so far. An extraordinary account of grief is what stopped me dead in my tracks. Hats off to Sir Steve Redgrave. Wordsmith.

I’m wondering if you were always going to feel lonely in a single after you lost your soul-mate.

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/marathon-sculling-log-1/

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/sculling-log/ (2)

http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/hats-off-to-liam-gallager-and-ellen-mcarthur/

29th September 2009 RE: conciousness‏. From Nick: In the sense that you are using it (which is valid and interesting, yes, consciousness is a connectedness). In the sense that I am exploring it it might be the opposite: a lack of attachment to all the mechanisms and mental habits which give us the illusion of connectedness. Grief is not an illusion. I am sorry you have lost a special one, Sarah. Hear his voice: talk to him. That`s what I do with the loved ones I lost in recent years: my dear old aussie Grandma comes over so loud and clear…

Katrin…

my Mum…

and most recently my aboriginal guide (who died with a paint brush in his hand pretty much, I am told).

I think of people as separate and distinct vibrations during and after life and love is the phone line! Take care. Nx

From: Sarah Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:50:48 +0000  big questions are what I would expect from you…I guess I’m coming from a psychoanalytic perspective, what is unconscious comes as fate etc…. maybe it is just there and happens but i am interested in the collective unconscious or intersubjectivity, for instance an old flame of mine died and I realised that his death coincided with a deep depression so is consciousness about connecting? oh my we’re not in Kanzas anymore!

lovesarah ps you are clever, I never knew how to think, always thought I could learn how to think..but I am intuitive and creative

From: Nick Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:00:41 +0000  Seeking consciousness? I’ve been probing that old mystery: How do thoughts (or their visualised effects, or precursers) arise when they are not driven by the rational mind? Consciousness is such a deep word. Can it really be sought? Or is it just ‘there’? I’m not trying to be clever. Love N

From: Sarah Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:17:11 +0000  you said it, ‘now that we’re older and wiser’. seeking consciousness. I look forward to see you soon

From: Nick: oh my heart Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:24:08 +0000 yeah… enjoy Paris, Sarah…maybe an old movie or two and a wander along the Seine… see u when u get back… I`m sure there are things only we can talk about and now that we’re older and wiser perhaps a few veils will have lifted…

 friendship and affinity are damned fine things… Nx

From: Sarah oh my heart Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:52:00 +0000 I’d like that I’m away to Paris from 5 oct to 8 oct next week ..let me know when you’re next here in London lovesarah

From: Nick To: Sarah Subject: RE: Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:27:33 +0000 Berlin… then back to Cambridge next week where I have a flat… I’m often in London… we should get together for a heart to heart love N

From: Sarah To: Nick Subject: RE: Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 12:23:24 +0000 did I lose yours I can’t remember.. I wasn’t sure about getting in touch, I was so depressed when we last met I thought you might appreciate my pictures from Thailand where I saw the most beautiful mural of the churning of the ocean of milk (the demons churn the milk to bring forth the treasures..(let’s hope so)) from which Lakshmi the preserving principle of love and grace was reborn.

photo: Sarah Miles

Are you in London? lovesarah

photo: Sarah Miles

From: Nick To: Sarah Subject: Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 10:53:57 +0000 http://nickwardscenarios.wordpress.com/about/ I’d lost your e-mail address but now tis found Love, Nx