#Wales kid number FOUR

[houseofbrat]

For the record, I wish Kate well and a speedy recovery for whatever problem she has been admitted to The London Clinic for.

Because I do not believe for one second that she was admitted for "abdominal surgery." That was "planned." And needs to be in the hospital for 10-14 days, even though it's "non-cancerous."

Once you've eliminated surgeries related to cancer, then you've eliminated a whole bunch of surgeries that have long recovery times.

Hernia surgeries don't require three months of "recovery," and in the US, they certainly don't require you to be in the hospital (aka germ factories) for 10-14 days.

I suppose being in the hospital on iv antibiotics for a diverticulitis procedure is a possibility, except that the recovery from any kind of diverticulitis surgery is A LOT LESS than three months.

Easter is on 31 March 2024. Saying she won't do any public duties UNTIL April is two and a half to three months of "recovery."

And no, hysterectomies do not take that long to recover from.

Just ask Camilla.

12 APRIL 2012 The Duchess of Cornwall is to have a hysterectomy, it was announced last night. Camilla will undergo surgery to remove part or all of her womb at the beginning of next month. She will spend around four days in hospital then a further six weeks recovering. The 59-year-old duchess will still go on a ten-day visit to the Gulf states with Prince Charles, beginning next Monday. It is thought royal gynaecologist Marcus Setchell will carry out the operation at the private King Edward VII Hospital for Officers in London soon after she returns. She has cancelled a string of engagements.

That's right.

Clarence House announced when Camilla would be out of the public eye BEFORE the surgery happened. Not after she was admitted to the hospital.

Somehow Kate's "abdominal surgery" was "planned," yet William's entire schedule needs to be reworked all of the sudden? As in, announcing today that he needs to not do any public duties for a certain period of time until Kate is okay at home. Hey, it's not as if Kate has two parents who are retired. Two siblings. Other relatives. Or a nanny. Housekeeper. Other staff. Etc.

Because if this really was a "planned" surgery and not a sudden emergency, then why were KP comms teams leaking a trip to Rome less than a month ago?

And Russell Myers was leaking that Will & Kate were going to go abroad to visit the British military LAST WEEK???

Someone isn't being honest about what is going on, and it's definitely not me.

It sounds to me that The Princess of Wales had a nervous/mental breakdown and needed to be hospitalized. Except that they can't say that, so they're going with "planned" "abdominal surgery."

Because if it really was "planned" and not cancerous, then why wouldn't William be able to do an engagement here or there over the next few weeks? If the KP comms team is going to pretend that this is just a routine surgery--not urgent or emergent--then why is their behavior NOT matching the statements?

Crown Prince Haakon does engagements even when his wife, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, has been ill.

Prince Albert works even when Princess Charlene has been ill.

But William's ENTIRE schedule needs to be reworked even though Kate's parents are retired and she has two siblings nearby and other friends and relatives? (And and other helpers...)

Yup. There is another announcement coming soon.

Not one that anyone else in the world is expecting--well, except for @mysteriouslytransparentwitch and myself.

It's that Dragon energy already coming in even though the lunar new year doesn't start until 10 February. That Green Dragon is bringing lots of surprises with it.

Super cold in the USA. Volcanic eruptions in an area of Iceland that hadn't had anything in 800 years.

And Princess Basement Baby!

Because Wales fandom ARMAGEDDON is almost upon us.

And is the Wales fandom prepared for it? Nope.

#my gif #2024: Year of the Wood Dragon #kate middleton #Catherine The Princess of Wales #pr games #pr fail #scandal! #ESCANDALO!!! #Prince & Princess OWN GOALS #William The Terrible #prince william #William The Prince of Wales #british royal family #Wales fandom ARMAGEDDON #Wales fans are CHUMPS #twitter #rebecca english #Wales kid number FOUR #princess basement baby #Queen Camilla #duchess camilla

[jaidens]

don’t call me kid, don’t call me baby, look at that idiotic fool that you made me

reader and dean maybe something angsty? i just keep thinking about dean and illicit affairs. reader is in love with him, but he doesn’t know and jokingly calls her baby and kid

illicit affairs — taylor swift

pairing [s] : dean winchester x younger!reader

SUMMARY : in which, dean winchester, only sees you as the younger hunting friend.

warning [s] : mentions of : crying, angst w/o comfort, & unrequited love. cursing x1

a/n [s] : ty for the request!!

Dean Winchester flips open the back of the 1967 Impala, rightfully known as ‘Baby’, and pulls out the supplies needed to hunt the werewolves that were terrorizing the small town. “Take this to Sammy, kid.” Dean instructs, piling the items in your arms and waving you off. You sulk as you drag your feet to take it to Sam as he researches more information on his laptop.

The Winchesters and your family had been hunting since the beginning of time. You and Sam grew up together, and you admired his elder brother. Whether that was watching him play basketball in a baggy sleeveless t-shirt and his muscles exposing in highschool. You were four years younger as well. When he was in senior year, you were just beginning your freshman year.

Shamefully, you loved him. Sam was like your brother and best friend, but Dean was different. He cared for you differently. He was more strict, but inherently you hadn't been angry about him. You couldn't tell him about your feelings; they were shoved deep down in your stomach and head. It was important in your field of work that mental health wasn't the orientation, physical health was much more dominant.

“Hey baby! C’mere.” Dean calls out to you. You turn around and walk over to him. “I want you to stay back at the motel. Get some trashy food and sleep. It's dangerous.” You frown and open your mouth to protest his directions, but he's turned away and back to make sure Baby has everything she needs for the ride down. You grumble and walk away, kicking a piece of gravel away from your shoe.

Another thing about Dean Winchester that laid heavy on you was his appreciation of nicknames. How he called Sam, Sammy. Or his beloved Impala, Baby. You were primarily known as “kid” or, his favorite, “baby”. They made you smile when you heard them, on the contrary the idea of it not having a romantic aspect that wasn't shown, hurt. You loved Dean and his antics, however they sometimes made you wanna scream in his face about how you weren't a kid, nor a baby.

Begrudgingly, you walk into the small motel room, and jump onto his couch that has more stains than a tablecloth. You turn on the TV and let it play some random movie after doom scrolling the channel list. Whenever Sam and Dean went on hunts, an unwanted feeling of worry lay in your stomach. You want to chase after them, and protect them in any way you can. They were the only family you had; after your parents had disappeared one day after going for a hunt in a foreign country.

After three hours, you began to worry even more. Usually, if the hunt was easy, it took less than two hours. You pick up your phone and type the numbers of Dean’s number in. It rings throughout the forty-five seconds, before the voicemail box begins.

‘This is the voicemail of Josey Wales. Say your message at the beep.’

You laugh at the sound of Dean’s voice, his Clint Eastwood false name, and the sound of mumbling after he hadn't recognized the box had finished. You stand up and grab your gun and knife that were sitting on the oak table. Shoving them into your bag and waistband, you walk outside to your car. It was smaller, and not as sexy as Baby, but it had worked for the time being.

You remembered the address Dean and Sam were discussing in the car, and pressed it into the GPS and started following the route. You were anticipating what would be there when you'd open the door. You park the car in the secluded area, shutting it off, taking a deep breath and grabbing your items.

The forest didn't exactly look the safest. Every branch that cracked made you flip your head around your look. The house’s chimney was puffing out smoke, and gave you a Northern Star to follow. The impala sits in the driveway, telling you that they were still fighting the creature that lurked inside of the cabin.

You walk around back and find the door, and push it open. Walking inside, you scan the area and see glass broken and other splatters of random objects that were tossed. “Kid! What the hell are you doing?” Dean’s voice fills the room and you turn to stare back at him. You gulp and he stomps his feet up to you. “Why are you here?”

“Because it's been three hours! I was terrified.” You jump to your defense, pointing at him with your finger. Dean furrows his eyebrows and lets out an annoyed sigh. He shakes his head and clasps his hands on his waist. Sam appears in the doorway, and goes to ask you the same question that you've already been accused of.

“Kid—” Dean begins and you snap.

“Stop! Stop fucking calling me kid! I’m 27 years old! For your information, I'm here because I was so scared of leaving you both alone. YOU! Of leaving you alone! Because I love you and I would die if you did!”

“You’re a great friend for showing up, Y/N.” Dean Winchester mumbles before giving you a small frown. You're attempting to catch your breath, chest rising rapidly. Then, he goes silent and walks outside. You hear his engine turnover and Sam stares at you. Your eyes are crowding with tears, pooling in embarrassment and shame. That's when you desperately wanted to hear that nickname. Even the softest whisper of it, you would be happy.

Maybe that's the thing about illicit affairs— they never stay.

#dean winchester #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester x y/n #dean winchester x you #dean winchester x female!reader #dean winchester angst #dean x you #dean x reader #supernatural x reader #supernatural x y/n #supernatural x you

[mariacallous]

Mark Nelson took the call in an immigration detention center—a place that, to him, felt just like prison. It had the same prison windows, the same tiny box rooms. By the time the phone rang, he’d already spent 10 days detained there, and he was wracked with worry that he would be forced onto a plane without the chance to say goodbye to his kids. So when his lawyers relayed the two options available under UK law—either stay in detention indefinitely or go home wearing a tracking device—it didn’t exactly feel like a choice. “That’s being coerced,” says Nelson, who moved from Jamaica to the UK more than 20 years ago. He felt desperate to get out of there and go home to his family—even if a GPS tag had to come too.

It was May 2022 when the contractors arrived at Colnbrook Detention Center, on the edge of London’s Heathrow Airport, to fit the device. Nelson knew the men were with the government’s Electronic Monitoring Service, but he didn’t know their names or the company they worked for. Still, he followed them to a small room, where they measured his leg and locked the device around his ankle. Since then, for almost two years, Nelson has been accompanied by the tag wherever he goes. Whether he is watching TV, taking his kids to school, or in the shower, his tag is continuously logging his coordinates and sending them back to the company that operates the tag on behalf of the British government.

Nelson lifts up his trousers to reveal the tag, wrapped around his leg, like a giant gray leech. He chokes down tears as he describes the impact the device has had on his life. “It’s depressing,” he says, being under constant surveillance. “Right through this process, it’s like I’m not a human anymore.”

In England and Wales, since 2019, people convicted of knife crime or other violent offenses have been ordered to wear GPS ankle tags upon their release from prison. But requiring anyone facing a deportation order to wear a GPS tag is a more recent and more controversial policy, introduced in 2021. Nelson wears a tag because his right to remain in the UK was revoked following his conviction for growing cannabis in 2017—a crime for which he served two years of a four-year sentence. But migrants arriving in small boats on the coast of southern England, with no previous convictions, were also tagged during an 18-month pilot program that ended in December 2023. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of people ordered to wear GPS trackers jumped by 56 percent to more than 4,000 people, according to research by the Public Law Project, a legal nonprofit.

“Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them,” a Home Office spokesperson tells WIRED. “Where removal isn’t immediately possible, electronic monitoring can be used to manage foreign national offenders and selected others released on immigration bail.” The Home Office, the UK’s interior ministry, declined to answer questions on “operational details,” such as whether GPS coordinates are being tracked in real time and for how long the Home Office stores individuals’ location data. “This highly intrusive form of surveillance is being used to solve a problem that does not exist,” says Jo Hynes, a senior researcher at the Public Law Project. GPS tags are designed to prevent people facing deportation orders from going on the run. But according to Hynes, only 1.3 percent of people on immigration bail absconded in the first six months of 2022.

Now, Nelson is the first person to challenge Britain’s GPS tagging regime in a high court, arguing that the tags are a disproportionate breach of privacy. A judgment on the case is expected any day now, and critics of GPS tagging hope the decision will have ripple effects throughout the British immigration system. “A judgment in Mark’s favor could take quite a lot of different forms,” says Jonah Mendelsohn, a legal officer at data rights group Privacy International. He adds that the court could force the Home Office to stop tagging migrants altogether, or it could limit the amount of data the tags collect. “It could set a precedent.”

The GPS tags are part of an intensifying surveillance regime that migrants and refugees are now subject to in the UK, the US, and Australia, says Mendelsohn. “There is so much tech that’s being rolled out and used almost in an experimental lab-esque way,” he says, pointing to how migrants arriving in Britain on small boats have been told to hand over their phones and pin codes or fitted with bar-coded wristbands. “GPS tracking is just one aspect of that.”

Allegations that the tags are prone to malfunction also aggravate the stress people feel while wearing them, Mendelsohn says. By law, the tags can’t be removed. But they still need charging, either by being plugged into a socket or a portable battery pack. Nelson’s first tag would run out of battery every two hours, he claims, meaning he could never travel far from a plug socket—failure to charge a tag can count as a breach of immigration bail conditions, risking return to a detention center.

The battery was just one in a series of problems, Nelson claims. Between November 2022 and May 2023, he believes his tag was no longer logging his GPS coordinates, with his legal team at Wilsons Solicitors arguing this proved the tag was redundant and should be removed. But until now, the Home Office has refused to take off the tag. “[They said] the law is the law and I’m subject to the law,” says Nelson. “So I’ve got to wear this broken tag whether it works or not.” The company that monitors and maintains the tags on behalf of the government since 2014, Capita Business Services, did not reply to WIRED’s request to comment.

Nelson might have been the first person to challenge the GPS tagging regime in court. But others were close behind. British law firm Duncan Lewis Solicitors is representing another four people forced to wear GPS tags, ranging from EU citizens to people who arrived in the UK on small boats. “Such surveillance of vulnerable individuals is not necessary in any democratic society, and we are proud to represent these claimants in their fight against this poorly run and dystopian regime,” says Conor Lamb, who works in the public law department at Duncan Lewis.

One of the people whom Duncan Lewis is representing is a 25-year-old former asylum seeker from Sudan who arrived in the UK via a small boat and has no criminal history, according to his lawyers. The tag brought up painful memories of being bound and tortured during his journey to the UK, they argued in court. After two psychiatric reports were submitted to the government, the tag was taken off and his data deleted. Despite that, the man, who uses the pseudonym ADL, remains part of the court case in order to challenge the practice of tagging new arrivals.

Meanwhile, Nelson is still waiting for his tag to be taken off. He’s frustrated that he has to wear the tag despite already having served his time in prison. “Before all of this, I was social,” he says. Now, he says, he’s too self-conscious to go out much, in case others see the tag and mistake him for the perpetrator of a violent crime. He describes how the tag has left him feeling “up and down,” as if he has no good choices left. “In order for me to see my family and to be part of my family, I’m still being forced into 24/7 monitoring, someone watching me and watching what I do, every day.”

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday James “Midge” Ure born October 10th 1953 in Cambuslang.

Born to a working class family Ure attended Cambuslang Primary School and Rutherglen Academy in Glasgow until he was 15 years old. For the first 10 years of his life he lived in a one-bedroom tenement flat. After leaving school Ure attended Motherwell Technical College and then began to work as an engineer, training at the National Engineering Laboratory (NEL), in nearby East Kilbride.

Midge started playing music in a Glasgow band called Stumble in 1969, before joining Salvation, a Glasgow-based group that became the bubblegum band Slik in 1974. Upset in the change of direction, Ure left the band to join the Rich Kids, a punk-pop group led by former Sex Pistol bassist Glen Matlock. The Rich Kids only released one album, 1978’s Ghosts of Princes in Towers, before breaking up later that year. Ure spent a brief time with the Misfits (not the American band) before forming Visage with drummer Rusty Egan and vocalist Steve Strange; he left the group to replace Gary Moore in Thin Lizzy, who had left in the middle of an American tour. After the tour was finished, Ure fulfilled an agreement to join Ultravox as the replacement for John Foxx.

Once he joined the band in 1980, Ure helped make Ultravox a mainstream success; during this time he also worked as a producer, making records with Steve Harley and Modern Man. In 1982, Ure released a solo single, a cover of the Walker Brothers’ hit “No Regrets”; it climbed into the U.K. Top Ten. Ure and Bob Geldof formed Band Aid, a special project to aid famine relief efforts in Ethiopia, in 1984. The two wrote the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and assembled an all-star band of musicians to record the single; it sold millions of copies over the 1984 holiday season.

In 1985, Ultravox was put on hiatus and Ure began to pursue a full-time solo career. Recorded entirely by Ure, his 1985 solo debut, The Gift, launched the number one single “If I Was,” as well as the minor hits “That Certain Smile” and “Call of the Wild.” The following year, he recorded the final Ultravox album; in 1987, the band broke up and he began recording his second solo album. The resulting record, 1988’s Answers to Nothing, was less successful than The Gift in the U.K., yet it charted in the U.S., which is something Ure’s previous album failed to do. Three years later, Ure released his third album, Pure; while it didn’t do any business in America, the album featured the Top 20 British hit “Cold, Cold Heart.” He attempted a comeback in 1996 with Breathe, which went ignored by both the American and British markets. Four years later, his score for the Jon Cryer drama-comedy Went to Coney Island was issued by the Evenmore label.

Ure’s recording activity during the 2000s began with Move Me, which featured some surprisingly hard rocking material. A few years later, he published an autobiography, If I Was, and then, with Geldof, arranged the Live 8 concerts.

Following the release of the covers-oriented 10 IN 2008, Ure participated in an Ultravox reunion and continued to record as a solo artist. Fragile was issued in 2014, and featured the Moby collaboration “Dark, Dark Night.” In 2017, he collaborated with composer Ty Unwin on the album Orchestrated, which featured orchestral reworkings of Ultravox songs, as well as songs from his solo career.

In 2020  Midge released an album Soundtrack 1978-2019, he was one of the lucky artists to have completed his tour promoting this in February that year. 

Midge is currently in the middle of doing his  Voice & Visions tour and is currently in Germany, he has a night off for his birthday but is playing Berlin and Leipzig tomorrow and Wednesday before hitting  Sweden, Benelux, italy, Austria and Poland.  Gigs next year include nights in England and Wales as well as The Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Glasgow Barrowlands and Aberdeens Music Hall in May.

#Scotland #scottish #musician #guitarist #singersongwriter #happy birhtday

[ahz-associates]

Education System in the UK!

The United Kingdom (UK) is renowned for its prestigious universities, engaging teaching methods, high student satisfaction rates, and high educational standards.

UK institutions consistently score highly in international university league tables such as the Academic Ranking of World institutions, Times Higher Education Ranking, and QS World Rankings. Moreover, degrees earned in the nation are highly valued by corporations and regarded globally.

What structure does the UK educational system have?

Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England are the four nations that have authority over the UK's educational system. In the UK, there are several educational systems, prerequisites for education, and regional laws and guidelines in each of these domains. The main differences between secondary and general education in the UK are the causes of the distinctive credit systems and certifications found in each area.

Important Phases

In the United Kingdom, there are five educational tiers: elementary, secondary, further education (FE), and higher education (HE). Every child must attend school from the age of five (or four in Northern Ireland) to sixteen.

FE consists of non-advanced courses that can be studied in colleges and HEIs for additional education, including higher education, and is not mandatory. Studying above the GCE A levels and their equivalents constitutes the fifth stage, or the higher education (HE) system in the UK, which is typically finished by full-time students in universities, other HEIs, and colleges.

All English three- and four-year-olds are entitled to 38 weeks of free nursery education starting in September 2010. In the UK, there are many different areas where early childhood education is offered. These include state-run nurseries, nursery classes, and reception classes in primary schools, in addition to locations outside of the state sector including childminders, nonprofit pre-schools, and for-profit nurseries.

In the UK, the number of early childhood educators and childcare providers has grown dramatically in recent years. The Education Act of 2002 added the Foundation Stage, which was first introduced in September 2000 and covered children's education from the age of three until the end of the reception year, when they are five years old, to the National Curriculum for England.

For the purpose of providing learning, development, and care for children in all registered early years settings from the time of birth until the academic year in which they turn five, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is a single regulatory and quality framework. The three phases of the EYFS came into force in September 2008. Each child's development and learning achievements are formally assessed using the EYFS Profile at the end of the academic year in the UK in which they turn five (EYFSP).

Among the UK education system's key phases are:

Primary education in the UK

Senior high school, grades 7 and 8

Years 10 and 11 of secondary education serve as preparation.

Year 12 and 13 as a preparation for university

Vocational courses as a means of continuing education

University: preparatory classes

Undergraduate studies at university

University: advanced coursework

Primary Education in the UK

The primary stage is divided into three age groups: infant (5 to 7 or 8), junior (up to 11 or 12), and nursery (for children under 5). (Key Stage 2). But in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the difference between infant and junior schools is usually not made.

The Foundation period combines the Early Years (ages 3 to 5) and Key Stage 1 (ages 5 to 7) of the National Curriculum into a single educational period for kids between the ages of three and seven, even if the types of schools in Wales are the same. Children in primary schools in England are usually enrolled from the age of four to eleven. Some elementary schools may have a connection to a daycare center or nursery for the benefit of the younger students.

Most public primary schools have mixed-gender classes with boys and girls enrolled. It is normal for pupils in Scotland and England to go straight from elementary to secondary school at the ages of twelve and eleven, respectively.

In England, nevertheless, a small percentage of kids decide to move through intermediate schools that cater to children between the ages of 8 and 14. Middle schools can be classified as primary or secondary, based on the number of students enrolled. All pupils should graduate from elementary school with a foundational understanding of reading and numeracy, as well as the skills necessary to pursue further studies in science, math, and other subjects.

Upper Secondary: Years 7 and 8

Years 7 and 8 are the first two years of secondary study in the United Kingdom. In some independent schools, they are in the senior school; in others, they are in the younger school. All students in the United Kingdom must take English, Mathematics, Science, Humanities, and a Modern Language. A list of elective courses, such as those in art, music, theater, Latin, sports science, design technology, and computer science, is also provided by each school for students to choose from.

Seventh-graders in certain schools sit for the Common Entrance Exam. There are three exam dates available: January, May/June, and November. For such schools, the Common Entrance Exam results could have an impact on the junior-to-senior (year 8–9) transfer. Year 9 of secondary school

Year 9 is a critical year in the British school system since it marks the majority of students' transition from junior to senior high school. It also acts as a springboard for all other institutions and a strong foundation for the GCSE programme.

Languages, arithmetic, physics, and the humanities are studied by the students. In addition, students choose a few subjects from the offerings of each institution's elective list.

Tenth and eleventh years of secondary school

At the age of 14, students start preparing for the GCSE exams throughout their final two years of secondary school, or Years 10 and 11. (Higher Education General Certificate)

For the GCSE programme, students in the UK educational system take nine to twelve courses.

While some of them—like math, science, English, geography, history, and other subjects—are necessary, others are chosen by the individual student in accordance with their interests and skill set.

At the end of the two-year GCSE program, students receive their GCSE certificates after passing exams in every subject they have studied.

Getting Ready for University: Recess 12 and 13

A Level Research

In the UK, students can enroll in a two-year program that prepares them for the A (advanced) level exams after they turn sixteen. Most college students decide to concentrate on three or four subject areas that are essential to their future employment.

A-level results are recognized as evidence of preparedness for postsecondary education in the United Kingdom by all overseas schools and universities.

When students successfully complete all needed assessments at the end of their 13th year of school, they are granted A-level certificates.

The IB, or International Baccalaureate

Under the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, students who wish to study more than three or four subjects can do so at some private schools. Students enrolled in the IB program study six courses: three at the higher level (HL), which is more advanced, and three at the standard level (SL), which is more basic.

Every school offers HL and SL courses in a range of subject areas. The IB's Core Curriculum (CAS) requires the Theory of Knowledge (TOK), the Extended Essay (EE), and the Creativity, Activity, and Service (CAS) courses. Students take a written exam covering the information presented in each unit at the end of the course.

Popular UK Programs

The following are a few well-liked UK programs for overseas students:

Physiotherapy

Law

Actuarial Science

Athletic Administration

Surgery and Medicine

Computer Science

Technical

Commercial Administration

Finance

Civil Engineering

Top Study Locations

More than any other nation save the United States, the United Kingdom boasts ten of the world's top 100 student cities.

Additionally, two new cities—Brighton and Aberdeen—have joined the ranking this year, and London, the country's capital, has risen to the top of the list for the first time. Six of the characteristics utilized to establish each city's ranking on our list of the greatest student cities were derived from data collected from our student survey. These are a few of the top UK locations for both living and studying:

London

Edinburgh

Manchester

Glasgow Coventry

Aberdeen

Newcastle

Birmingham

Nottingham

The UK's Higher Education System

Specifically, the United Kingdom's higher education levels and quality are acknowledged and valued globally. The reputation of its educational system is greatly influenced by the success of its graduates in the workforce. Numerous internationally renowned academics and artists from a wide range of disciplines have come from British universities. Numerous of these universities and colleges rank among the top in the world.

It's no accident that London, the capital of the United Kingdom, is frequently considered to be the center of higher education worldwide. London boasts the biggest concentration of globally renowned UK universities, with four of them ranking in the top 10. The level of the British educational system that follows secondary school is referred to as "higher education."

In order to be admitted to universities in the United Kingdom, students must pass a standardized test at the conclusion of their secondary education. Colleges and universities are handled differently in the UK higher education system than they are in the US.

While the majority of Americans call any higher education institution simply a "college," in the UK the term is used differently. In this sense, a college is a further education establishment that only serves to prepare students for higher education, whereas a university is an accredited institution of higher learning from which graduates will receive degrees.

In summary

The UK's educational system is renowned across the globe for its quality. Within the British educational system, there are normally five main levels: pre-school, primary school, secondary school, vocational training, and university (HE).

In the United Kingdom, compulsory schooling is mandated for those under the age of sixteen. This requirement starts at age three.

The educational systems in England, Scotland, and Wales in the UK are distinct from one another, despite their many similarities. These differences are not significant enough to keep us from speaking of the UK's higher education system as a single system.

#uk student visa #uk education #study abroad #study in the uk #uk universities #study in uk #uk study visa #uk scholarships

[tallmantall]

#JamesDonaldson On #MentalHealth - Young #Americans Increasingly End Their Own Lives

#Suicide is now the second-biggest killer of ten- to 18-year-olds In the 1950s, when the term “#teenager” had been popularised, it brought to mind trouble. Spotty #youths who engaged in risky behaviour outside the house—getting drunk, pregnant or into car crashes—were “the number one fear of #American citizens”, wrote Bill Bryson in his memoir, “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”. Today, the risks #American #teens face come from within. #Boys are now more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a motor crash. #Girls are nearly 50% more likely to injure themselves in a #suicideattempt than to face an unplanned pregnancy. #Suicide is the second-biggest killer of ten- to 18-year-olds, after accidents. The rise in #youth #suicide is part of a broader increase in #mentalhealth problems among the young. This preceded the #pandemic but was probably accelerated by it. In 2021 nearly half of #American #highschoolstudents said that they had experienced persistent feelings of sadness and #hopelessness in the past year, up from 26% in 2009; one in five seriously considered #suicide, up from 14%; and 9% attempted to end their life, up from 6% (see chart). Although the rates for 15- to 19-year-olds are not unprecedented (there was a similar peak in the early 1990s), the rates for ten- to 14-year-olds are higher than ever before. The fact that it has become more acceptable for young people to discuss their feelings has surely contributed to some of the changes, such as the rise in self-reported sadness. Better screening may also play a role. But neither explains the most alarming data: #suiciderates. Attempts, injuries and deaths have all risen among young #Americans over the past decade. Last year, no age group saw a steeper rise than men aged 15 to 24, according to preliminary data from the #CentresforDiseaseControlandPrevention (cdc). The causes are only starting to be understood. The usual suspects (#childhood poverty, parental #substanceabuse or parental depression) have not changed meaningfully; indeed, #childhood poverty has fallen. What has shifted is how #teens live their lives and relate to their environment, and each other. Greater #isolation and #loneliness are probably important. Experts have a reasonable understanding of how to help prevent #suicide and better protect against such thoughts. Not all young people are equally at risk. Although #girls in #America are much more likely to contemplate ending their lives, or injure themselves in attempting to do so, #teen #boys are nearly three times as likely to die from #suicide. Young people who identify as #lesbian, #gay or #bisexual are three times as likely to feel suicidal. During the #covid-19 #pandemic #children who had faced serious adversity, such as abuse or neglect, were 25 times as likely to try to kill themselves as their peers with happier #childhoods. Geography matters, too. As with grown-ups, #children who live in #rural settings are at heightened risk, in part because they have less access to care. #Youths from tribal communities suffer more than any other group. Alaska’s #youth #suiciderate—at 42 annual deaths per 100,000 young people, the highest of any state—is four times the national average. #America is not alone. Australia, England and Mexico are among other countries to have seen big rises in #youth #suicide over the past decade. In England and Wales, more than one in six children between the ages of seven and 16 now has a probable #mentalhealthdisorder, up from one in nine in 2017, found a recent survey by the #NationalHealthService. Between 2012 and 2018 #teen #loneliness grew in 36 out of 37 countries studied, according to a paper in the Journal of #Adolescence. Unfortunate exceptionalism But #America stands out for its absolute rates of #youth #suicide. Although in England and Wales #suicide among 15- to 19-year-olds has grown faster, in 2021 6.4 per 100,000 young people there took their own lives, versus 11.2 young #Americans. #America is also exceptional for its availability of #guns. Use of a #firearm is the most common method of #suicide for #boys, which helps explain why they are more likely to die from an attempt than #girls. Easy access to a lethal method is one of the biggest risk factors for someone in despair. In Switzerland, after 2003 #suiciderates among #men of military-service age dropped sharply after the country halved the size of its army, which often requires soldiers to take weapons home. During the #pandemic, sales of #firearms increased in #America. That exposed an extra 11m people, half of whom were #children, to a gun at home. #Suicides by #gun accounted for the entire rise in #American #suicides between 2019 and 2021, according to an analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. But guns are only part of the story. Speculation over other causes has ranged from earlier puberty to the effects of #socialmedia and even to climate-change despair. Some of the more compelling evidence points to a change in how young people relate to their surroundings. #Children who say they feel close to people at #school were much less likely to suffer from poor #mentalhealth, and 50% less likely to have attempted #suicide, than those who did not, found the cdc. This protective layer may be fraying. “The types of #adolescent activities that would be indicative of that social connection, or of building a sense of meaning or place in your social circle, are fundamentally shifting,” says Katherine Keyes at Columbia University. #Teens spend far less time on traditional social activities, such as playing sport or going on dates, than in the past. In the late 1970s over half of 12th-graders met up with friends almost daily; by 2017 just over a quarter did. Dr Keyes’s study also found a correlation between reports of low levels of social activity and feelings of #depression. One of the fiercest debates is whether #socialmedia alienates young people or offer a new avenue for connection. Just as a #school environment can help or harm a #child, the same is the case online. Feeling virtually connected to peers, family or other groups during #covid had a similar (if smaller) protective effect as feeling connected to people at #school, found the cdc. Young people from sexual #minorities are especially likely to say #socialmedia help them feel less alone and more supported. But it can also make things worse, as a recent inquest into the #suicide of Molly Russell, a British 14-year-old, found. Harmful #socialmedia content probably “contributed to her death in a more than minimal way”, it concluded. Being locked up during the #pandemic increased feelings of #isolation and #loneliness for many youngsters. The evidence of the harm to development and #mentalhealth done by #school closures is increasingly compelling. #Covid appears to have hurt the #mentalhealth of younger people disproportionately, says Richard McKeon at the #SubstanceAbuse and #MentalHealthServices Administration. This was “superimposed on a longer-term upward trend in #youth #suicide,” he adds. For #teen #girls, average weekly emergency-department visits for suspected #suicideattempts were 50% higher in February 21st-March 20th 2021 compared with the same period in 2019. #James Donaldson notes:Welcome to the “next chapter” of my life… being a voice and an advocate for #mentalhealthawarenessandsuicideprevention, especially pertaining to our younger generation of students and student-athletes.Getting men to speak up and reach out for help and assistance is one of my passions. Us men need to not suffer in silence or drown our sorrows in alcohol, hang out at bars and strip joints, or get involved with drug use.Having gone through a recent bout of #depression and #suicidalthoughts myself, I realize now, that I can make a huge difference in the lives of so many by sharing my story, and by sharing various resources I come across as I work in this space.  #http://bit.ly/JamesMentalHealthArticleOrder your copy of James Donaldson's latest book,#CelebratingYourGiftofLife:From The Verge of Suicide to a Life of Purpose and Joy www.celebratingyourgiftoflife.com Keeping the #kids safe Even if the causes are not fully understood, solutions are. “This is not rocket science,” says Jane Pearson from the #NationalInstituteofMentalHealth. “We know what helps #kids develop healthy trajectories that make it less likely they develop #mentaldisorders or #suicidalthoughts and #behaviors.” Most important are a focus on improving family communication and support, family and community attachments, as well as #children’s attachments to #school, so they feel safe and connected. The challenge is to get all parties working together on prevention. #Schools can be at the heart of the problem—or the solution. Programmes that train kids in coping with emotions and social problem-solving have had impressive results. The Good Behaviour Game, first trialled in Baltimore in the 1980s, teaches first-graders how to work in teams and behave in class. Pupils who took part in the original programme benefited well into adulthood in reduced #substanceabuse and criminality, and improved #mentalhealth. Compared with the control group, they were half as likely to think about, or attempt, #suicide later in life. #Doctors’ offices are important, too. Nine out of ten #children who died by #suicide had some contact with the health-care system in their final year of life. If #pediatric practices were better prepared and incentivised to provide #behavioralhealthservices, this could make a huge difference, reckons Richard Frank at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. Lastly, educating #schools and communities in preventing #suicide “contagion” is essential. Between 1% and 5% of #teen #suicides are part of “clusters,” more so than for #adults. The playbook for #schools is clear: deaths should be commemorated but not mawkishly; #suicide should be openly discussed but not normalised; and #students should be encouraged to seek help. Just as important can be the work with staff members, who can become “numb” or even “disengaged” following too much tragedy, says Sharon Hoover from the National Centre for #School #MentalHealth, who often gets called in once a #school has suffered multiple deaths. And yet it is crucial not to overreact. “#Suicidalthoughts have always been common. They peak in #teens and diminish in prevalence with age,” says Christine Moutier from the #AmericanFoundationforSuicidePrevention. “The vast majority of young people having #suicidalthoughts are not imminently about to act on them, or even at risk of dying of #suicide,” she adds. Rather, it is a sign of distress and a reason to discuss their feelings. “It’s crucial that caregivers and providers across the board do not panic when they hear the word ‘#suicide’,” warns Dr McKeon. A #child brave enough to open up about such thoughts then rushed to hospital against their will is unlikely to trust an #adult again. That is the last thing they need.  Read the full article

[melbournenewsvine]

Warning as meningococcal cases rise

But he said he has found friends through sports, having represented Australia in under-23 wheelchair basketball, on his way to participate in wheelchair rugby. “[Wheelchair basketball] Help me feel better about myself, thinking it’s not bad to be disabled, because you can still represent your country.” Meningococcal bacteria. Meningococcal infection is caused by different strains of bacteria called Neisseria meningitidis (also known as meningococcal bacteria), which can cause swelling in the brain and spine. Up to one in 10 people infected with meningococcal disease may die, and up to one in five survivors may develop serious long-term complications, including brain damage, deafness, or loss of limbs. While anyone can become infected, children under the age of two and adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19 appear to be most susceptible. There were 74 cases of meningococcal disease recorded across Australia in 2021, and there have already been 86 cases so far this year with two and a half months remaining in 2022. There have been a number of notable outbreaks including at the Cairns School and more recently in Splendor at the Grasse music festival. Queensland and New South Wales have had the highest number of cases so far with 24 and 22 cases, respectively, while other states and territories have the fewest. Total cases to date as of September 30, 2022 SA – 12 Queensland – 24 TAS – 1 NSW – 22 NT-2 WA – 14 Vic – 11 ACT – 0 Australia – 86 In response to the growing numbers, medical experts and patient advocacy groups have partnered with pharmaceutical company GSK Australia to raise awareness about the dangers of meningococcal disease. Infectious disease expert Professor Robert Bowie, who has conducted extensive research into meningococcal disease, said the increase in numbers could be attributed to the easing of restrictions on the spread of the epidemic. “With borders open and social distancing reduced, we are seeing more viral infections like the flu,” he said. loading “What the flu does is it destroys the lining of the throat where the meningococcal bacteria can live completely unharmed, but it gives them a way in and from there they do the damage.” Booy and other experts are especially calling on parents to be aware of the signs of meningococcal infection, although this can be difficult because it often presents simply as a cold or flu in the early stages. Karen Quick, chief executive of the Meningitis Center in Australia, said that because of the speed at which infection can spread, parents should actively communicate with doctors if they have the slightest suspicion that their child may have the disease. “Trust your instincts,” she said, “if something is not right, seek medical attention, and ask the question: Could it be meningococcus.” “We hear over and over again about parents who take their kids home and suddenly they’re down the slope and it’s too late.” There is a vaccine that covers the four main strains of meningococcal bacteria that is given to all children as part of their standard immunization programme. There is a separate meningococcal B strain vaccine for Indigenous children but it is not widely offered. In 2022, 74 percent of meningococcal cases were caused by the B strain, prompting doctors to order a vaccine that prevents its wider presentation. For more information we urge parents to speak to their doctor, with more information available at knowmeningococcal.com.au. Source link Originally published at Melbourne News Vine

#Melbourne News Vine

[boutiquelong]

Trove books

#TROVE BOOKS SERIES#

Kate's tribute to the Queen: Princess of Wales wears Her Majesty's diamond and pearl drop earrings as she joins her husband William at Sandringham Princess of Wales reveals George 'understands the loss' of the Queen while Charlotte and Louis 'less so' - and that they're 'doing well Prince William reveals 'very difficult' Queen coffin walk brought back haunting memories of his mother Diana's funeral The thirteenth defendant will be tried in March 2021. Thirteen suspects were charged in the UK with conspiring to commit burglaries between December 2016 and April 2019, and to receive criminal property.Ĭourt proceedings are ongoing, with 12 individuals having already pleaded guilty and sentencing is due to take place over four days, beginning on September 28. 'If it wasn't for the hard work of Detective Constable David Ward and others in this Joint Investigation Team these books would have been sadly lost to the world forever.' 'These books are extremely valuable, but more importantly they are irreplaceable and are of great importance to international cultural heritage. Speaking about the most recent raid, Met Police inspector Andy Durham said: 'This recovery is a perfect end to this operation and is a demonstration of successful joint working between the Met and our European law enforcement partners in Romania and Italy - and at Europol and Eurojust. He had already been sentenced to 13 years in Romania for drug and people trafficking, and in 1989 had been sentenced to 15 years for murder. Little is known about the inner workings of the Clamparu family, but a man believed to be the boss - Ioan Clamparu, known as 'pig's head' - was jailed in Spain in 2012 for people smuggling Many of them have avoided prosecution by offending outside of the country. This group is based in the Isai region in Eastern Romania and have a history of complex, large-scale, high value thefts. Scotland Yard said the gang accused of stealing the books is linked to a number of prominent Romanian crime families who form part of the Clamparu crime group. The stolen property would then be taken out of the country by other members of the gang using different transport methods. They operated by flying members into the UK to commit the crimes, before flying them back out of the country a short time after. The Met police the Clamparu are known as specialist thieves, and were behind a string of high-value warehouse burglaries across the UK.

#TROVE BOOKS SERIES#

Police carried out a series of raids that led them to the find on Wednesday. It took the international manhunt made-up of the Met Police, the Romanian National Police and the Italian Carabinieri, along with Europol and Eurojust, more than three years to track the books down. Some of the multi-million pound collection have been deemed to be of international importance and are considered irreplaceable, police said. The name (The Trove means Khazanet in Arabic) was inspired by the great bookmaker and artist Mohieddine el-Labbad, it was his weekly article for the Arab kids in the 80's.The stash - which was due for a specialist auction before being taken - includes works by Galileo and Newton Addressing all ages, especially students and researchers, and opens its archives and shelves for those who wish to encounter this unique experience and explore its treasures.Īt this project, we aim to document the books and publications contained in the Trove and make them available in a digital database platform that facilitates research, as well as tour exhibitions, lectures, and workshops for students, designers, and artists. The Trove believes in the necessity of discovering the past and learning from its successes and failures in order to form a clear-cut ground to move through to the future. It also focuses on exploring the veterans behind this creative product from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. The Trove is concerned with the features of the Arab bookmaking and all the crafts that revolve in its world: such as the creative content, typography, and illustrations. The Beautiful Books Trove: an archival project and a specialized library for the collecting and the studying of Arabic books and publications with an inspiring visual and cultural content.

#Trove books

[vietnammmorg]

Wale the gifted deluxe edition

WALE THE GIFTED DELUXE EDITION HOW TO

How? Murtaza found a bug in Linkedin that allowed users to become premium members without paying anything to LinkedIn. Now Murtaza focused on his passion, and his curiosity gave him more recognition. It was a massive favor for him at that time. She gave him accommodation, food, and some money to travel during those times. He took help from one of his aunts who stayed in Mumbai and has been an integral part of his life ever since. And the stipend from internships was not enough to survive in a city like Mumbai. Murtaza’s parents stopped sending pocket money to him due to his decision to drop out. After working with for four months, he got an opportunity to be the first employee at PriceBaba – another startup by Annkur Agarwal.īut everything was not as rosy as it sounds. And you know what? The city of dreams was indeed kind to him. He dropped out of his college at Jalgaon and moved to Mumbai with an empty pocket and a huge debt, solely on his instinct. Murtaza made a life-changing decision that day. Seeing his passion, boldness, and curiosity, Annkur anyway offered him an internship opportunity at. He denied knowing much about the internet.

WALE THE GIFTED DELUXE EDITION HOW TO

Rather than just mugging up equations, numbers, and formulae, he wanted to find a way to help them build fundamental engineering skills.Īnnkur warmly asked if Murtaza knew anything about websites, the internet, and how to work with them. He very confidently mentioned to Annkur that he wanted to use the internet’s broad reach to help engineering kids make a difference in the world. He did not want to let go of a single opportunity and asked him for an internship opportunity.Īmong other great entrepreneurs, he also met Mr. Bhavish Agarwal of Ola, who was pitching to raise funds for Ola at the time. The very next year, in 2012, Murtaza attended yet another event that prominent speakers graced. After attending the 3-day conference in Mumbai, he returned to his engineering college, trying to calm the storm of thoughts and ideas that floated in his mind. After hearing about how Wikipedia is changing the world rapidly, he realized that the internet is the ‘one thing that will soon rock the entire world. His curiosity made him attend Wikipedia’s first-ever Wiki Conference in Mumbai in 2011, which had Jimmy Wales as the keynote speaker. During his college years, he became more curious about the working of the internet and the formation of networks. It was the first time he had proper access to computers through the college computer laboratory. The charges for surfing the internet were just Rs.10 per hour back then.Īfter completing his schooling, he enrolled in an engineering college in Jalgaon. Even minimal access to the internet via a cybercafé in Burhanpur (his hometown) seemed like royalty at that time. His school didn’t provide any formal education in computers until the sixth grade. Although Murtaza was extremely curious about computers, the internet, and networking, he didn’t have access to that during his childhood. His first stint with the internet was back in 2004, and hardly anyone knew that Murtaza would use it as a tool in his Entrepreneurial journey.

#Wale the gifted deluxe edition

[houseofbrat]

Is there actually a #Wales Kid Number Four or is that a metaphor for something else? What am I missing here? I don’t understand. Stephen Colbert jokes on live TV that William knocked up her mistress. Is that it? Does Wales kid number 4 have a different mother? And is that what caused Kate’s nervous breakdown? What wrong decision did William make that he can’t admit to?

As I posted a few things on William's past this weekend, let's remember that William a) has a temper, b) has a big ego, and c) is thin-skinned.

William's reputation as being a "good" king-in-waiting solely rests on statements and pr games his mother played thirty years ago during the War of the Waleses. His cult of fans love him because he was hot twenty years ago; although, some still think he's hot now. I'll leave it to you to decide.

Anyhow, cut to September 2022 when William became the heir to the throne, The Duke of Cornwall, and The Prince of Wales. After that, William no longer had to depend on his father to bankroll him and his office. Before September 2022, William's (& Kate's) office reported up to Clarence House, office of the previous Prince of Wales, Charles.

Since then, William has proceeded to fuck plenty of things up, even though his über fans view everything with rose-colored glasses. Let's review some of those fuckups & weird shit:

There was the fuckup at Boston in 2022 when William issued a statement throwing his godmother under the bus when all he had to say was “This is an issue for Buckingham Palace.” Except he didn’t.

No foreign tours since becoming The Prince & Princess of Wales.

There was the bizarre photo op of Andrew being driven to church by William last August (2023), when everyone with a functional, long-term memory knows that William has never kowtowed to his father.

Kate’s stretch of wearing thirteen pantsuits in a row, ‘cause she was all about “the work.” Somehow, she didn’t go on a crusade about wearing pantsuits when she was only The Duchess of Cambridge.

Announcing Kate had “planned abdominal surgery” the day after said planned abdominal surgery. If it was “planned,” then wouldn’t they have said something at least the day of rather than the day after?

The entire pr fuck up of not having Kate photographed leaving The London Clinic after being discharged, which in turn led to more fuckups.

Then there’s the timeline of fuckery that’s happened from Christmas until 09 March 2024 that I collated before The 2024 Mother’s Day Photo Disaster.

William is an emotionally damaged, thin skinned, control freak with a privacy fetish.

Due to his natural, control-freak-plus-privacy-fetish state, he fucked up Kate's whole pr when she left the hospital. The entire controversy regarding "Where is Kate?" would never have even happened had he handled it properly.

All he had to do was allow her to be photographed leaving the hospital. She didn't even have to walk out of the hospital. He could have just driven her out the same way he himself was photographed leaving The London Clinic.

Except he didn't do that.

Because he's an emotionally damaged, thin skinned, control freak with a privacy fetish. Again, his über fans who view everything he does with rose-colored glasses because they're parked up his rectum, will write odes and songs as to how William "protected" Kate's "privacy."

Ah, yes, the same "privacy protecting" moves that have garnered comments like this from the UK press:

“I think the thing we’ve actually seen pretty consistently about Kensington Palace since the Prince of Wales took over as it were, isn’t actually–they aren’t very good at communicating with the public. They had that visit which didn’t go very well. They’re doing whatever’s going on with here. I think clearly there’s a problem.”

“The pr machine that can handle Megxit can surely handle the princess getting surgery, and it has–just as Stephen says–spun out into these wild, wild rumors. Most of which are pretty crazy, ultimately stemming from the fact that something doesn’t feel quite right about this in a story with multiple witnesses and no photos. But, you know, let’s see, maybe, in the next 12 hours some photos do emerge. That would be a fascinating development.”

Note that these two comments recognize the before and after William became the heir to the throne. For some reason, the Kensington Palace press office could handle the shitshow of Megxit in 2020 when they were under the auspices of Clarence House. Except today that is no longer the case.

Because the Kensington Palace of today is the one that helps The Daily Show write their script for the evening.

Because they've become an INTERNATIONAL JOKE!

And it's the current Kensington Palace that picked a fight with the British Army over Kate's picture at The Colonel's Review almost two weeks ago.

Because, again, William is an emotionally damaged, thin skinned, control freak with a privacy fetish.

William is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, one beer short of a six-pack, one egg short of an omlet, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, etc.

And yes, there is unquestionably more crazy shit coming our way after William goes on vacation for several weeks.

Again.

#ask #Wales kid number FOUR #princess basement baby #british royal family #William The Prince of OWN GOALS #William The Weak #William The Terrible #prince william #William The Prince of Wales #kensington palace #palace officials #kate middleton #Catherine The Princess of Wales #my gif #Wales fandom ARMAGEDDON #Workshy Will

[tcm]

Paul Williams on His Regrets and Career By Donald Liebenson

“Bugsy Malone is like nothing else,” Roger Ebert wrote in his 1976 three-and-a-half-star review. “It's an original, a charming one.”

Alan Parker’s directorial debut, a one-of-a-kind gangster musical acted out by children (including Scott Baio in the title role and a then-13-year-old Jodie Foster as a sassy nightclub chanteuse), was an early career triumph for Paul Williams. Williams is everything that he wanted to be: an actor, an Oscar-winning songwriter of era-defining hits and composer of iconic movie scores. He’s something else, too: sober. Earlier this month he celebrated just over 30 years of sobriety. “When I got sober, the career I thought I had been gone for 10 years,” he says. “I feel like Lazarus; I’m 80-years-old, and I feel like a tired 34.”

But he’s ebullient talking about BUGSY MALONE, a cult favorite in the United States, but in its native England, it is something of a viewing rite of passage for children, thanks in part to a 1980s stage adaptation by Micky Dolenz. The film itself won four BAFTAs, including Best Screenplay and Best Newcomer and Best Supporting Actress for Foster. Williams was nominated for two Golden Globes, including Original Score and Original Song.

He has completed a new musical, Fortunate Sons, about how the Vietnam War draft lottery affects two households. His last major acting role was as ex-lawyer and informant JT on two seasons of the Amazon series, Goliath. “I’ve always said I’m a pretty good songwriter for an out-of-work actor,” he jokes. “Acting is where I got my start.”

Where in the process did you get involved with Bugsy Malone?  

Paul Williams: BUGSY MALONE began as a bedtime story Alan made up for his kids. Every night he put his kids to bed, they said, ‘Tell us more about Bugsy tomorrow night, dad.’ So maybe the answer to that question is that the headwaters of BUGSY MALONE is Alan’s love for his children and his great love for the traditional American gangster film. He found a place where those two things would meet in a way that was really unique.

How did Bugsy Malone come to you? 

PW: Alan Parker liked my songs, but I don’t know where he got the idea to approach me. It was around the time of A STAR IS BORN (for which he co-wrote the Oscar-winning song “Evergreen” with Barbra Streisand). He sent me a batch of beautiful color drawings of the cars, the splurge guns and the sets. Then he sent me the script, and I loved it. I was playing Vegas a lot and when I agreed to do it, he came over to talk to me. I was opening for Liza Minnelli or Olivia Newton John, I don’t remember who. Alan and I sat down at a deli, drank coffee and I was just singing bits and pieces of songs that I thought would be good ideas. I thought we needed to open with a song about Bugsy. It poured out of me. When the marriage is right, that seems to happen with me.

What was your own connection to American gangster movies? Were you a fan?

PW: Oh, my god, I was a huge Humphrey Bogart fan. One of the great times that I ever had was doing THE CHEAP DETECTIVE, because I was playing Elisha Cook’s role from THE MALTESE FALCON. As a little boy, I knew his name before I knew Santa Claus. I remember when I first came back to Hollywood to try and make it as an actor, one of the first things that happened was I walked into a drug store just as (character actor) Royal Dano was walking out. You’ve seen him in a hundred movies. I said, ‘Hiya, Mr. Dano,’ and he snapped his head around and said, ‘Hello, young man.’ I told that story on Carson, and I got a letter from Royal Dano. He said, ‘Although I don’t remember meeting you, it seems to me you were thinner then.’ I love that.

How did you approach writing the songs, because they are songs being lip-synced by children, but they are not children’s songs. 

PW: The script is the Bible. The two basic tasks a songwriter have are to move the story ahead and to display the inner life of the characters. Alan Parker was similar to Jim Henson in that the rule of writing was to not write down to kids, but to write accurately for character and story. The characters Alan wrote were so strong; they are archetypes of the great Warner Bros. characters. Bugsy was John Garfield meets Humphrey Bogart.

Where did the idea come from to have the child actors lip-sync to adult voices?

PW: They got kids that could act, they got kids that could dance, but the songs had intricate rhythms and to find kids who could sing them was a challenge. I thought that if the automobiles are these weird little hybrids that make the sound of an engine but are being pedaled, and the guns shoot cream, then why couldn’t the kids sing with adult voices? It would have the feel of an animated film. It solved the whole problem. The one regret I will have my entire life is that I put another (singing) voice in Jodie Foster’s mouth; one of the great actors in American film history.  That’s a terrible legacy (laughs). I did that with (the character) Beef in PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE. I used a guy named Ray Kennedy who had a great beefy voice, but when I heard Gerritt Graham sing later, I thought maybe I should have given him a shot.

This was before your collaboration with Jim Henson and the Muppets. Was Bugsy Malone a project you personally wanted to take on as something your own children could see?

PW: Bugsy Malone is the one motion picture I’ve written songs for that I’ve seen more than anything that I ever worked on, and there’s a simple reason for it. When my wife and I broke up, I would spend the weekend with my kids and I would plunk them down in front of the TV with pizza and, god bless them, they must have seen BUGSY MALONE for years. Eventually, I learned how to talk to my kids and be a sober real dad, but my kids just love BUGSY.

The closing number, “You Give a Little Love,” is Bugsy Malone’s legacy song, much like “The Rainbow Connection” is for The Muppet Movie. It was even used in a Coca-Cola Super Bowl commercial.

PW: That song is pretty much my philosophy. I absolutely believe it. My entire life has proven to me that there is something about the elegance of kindness that has always had a solid return. The core philosophy of BUGSY MALONE is, ‘We could have been anything that we wanted to be/and it’s not too late to change.’

In America, Bugsy Malone received good reviews and is a cult favorite. But it’s huge in England. Why do you think it was so embraced there?

PW: We took it to the stage in the 1980s. Every kid in England, Wales and Ireland, but especially in Great Britain, grew up seeing BUGSY MALONE. It’s like GREASE in this country. Edgar Wright did BUGSY as a kid, which led me to a role in BABY DRIVER. 

Where do you rank Bugsy Malone in the Paul Williams canon?

PW: It is probably the best opportunity I ever had in this life to preach a little kindness. It’s probably the best opportunity I’ve ever been given to express the possibilities and probabilities that we could be anything we want to be. I was the runt of the litter from the Midwest; this little dude who didn’t fit into any world. I just absolutely loved music and movies and without thinking twice, I thought, ‘I’m going to do that.’ I hope BUGSY MALONE inspires that for anyone looking up at the screen and is attracted to the possibilities of telling the truth about themselves in a way that helps someone else.

Bugsy Malone is but one chapter in an incredible life and career. Have you given any thought to writing your autobiography? 

PW: You know what? In recovery we call it an inventory (laughs). I think I’m at a place in my life where I feel like a beginner, like I’m just getting started. I know how idiotic that sounds at 80, but I want three digits on my driver’s license, and I think the one thing that gives me a shot at that is that I love being busy and doing the things that matter most to me, and that’s trying to tell the truth in a way that helps someone else.

#Bugsy malone #gangster pictures #warner bros #Jodie foster #child stars #child actor #old Hollywood #classic #TCM #Turner Classic Movies #Paul Williams #Donald Liebenson

[princesscatherinemiddleton]

The Duchess of Cambridge’s Stats - Second Quarter

In the second three months of 2021, the Duchess of Cambridge has completed 43 engagements, averaging around 14.3 a month, averaging higher than her 9 a month in the same period last year. Her busiest month was May - which was her busiest May ever - during which she completed 26 engagements. During May, she was also in 8 released photos or videos (she appeared in 4 in May and 5 in June). Catherine undertook 6 engagements in April, a month characterised by the death of the Duke of Edinburgh and the following mourning period, and 11 engagements in June. Catherine was also spotted 3 times in May. This has been her busiest May, 2nd busiest June, and 4th busiest April, ever.

Of her 22 patronages, she has visited or completed work for 9, totalling 20 engagements in total. During this period, Catherine’s patronages with Nursing Now 2020 and Action on Addiction ended, while she became patron of the Forward Trust, taking her patronage amount to 21. In April, Catherine completed three engagements on behalf of her patronages. 2 of those were for the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, while one was for her role as Honorary Air Commodore-in-Chief of the RAF Air Cadets. In May, she undertook four engagements for the Royal Foundation, as well as two engagements for the National Portrait Gallery, and an engagement apiece for Action on Addiction, the Anna Freud Centre, the Lawn Tennis Association, the NHS Charities, and the V&A Museum. In June, she completed six engagements - five on behalf of the Royal Foundation, one engagement for the Natural History Museum. In June, Catherine also launched the Centre for Early Childhood, as part of her stufy of the Early Years.

Of her 43 engagements, 16 have been solo and 23 accompanied by her husband, the Duke of Cambridge. In April, she attended the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh, accompanied by 29 other members of the British Royal Family. In June, she attended a number of engagements for the G7 Summit, alongside the Queen, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, and her husband, as well as an engagement at Wembley, accompanied by her husband and eldest son, Prince George.

All bar 15 of her engagements have taken part in England (28). Those 15 engagements took place in Scotland. Of the engagements, 28 tLondon-based engagements, 11 took place virtually. She also attended engagements in Cornwall, Windsor, Durham, and Wolverhampton.

Nine of her engagements have been focused on her Early Years Initiative - with another 6 focused on mental health and another 1 focused on children. 4 of her engagements have been specifically linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, while 2 have been based on sport and 1 themed around both the arts and culture. She has also undertaken engagements around the themes of the outdoors and the military, as well as diplomatic related events. Several of her engagements did not fit into the theme headings I have created.

Clotheswise, her most worn designer has been Zara and Ralph Lauren, followed by Catherine Walker, Sezane, Alexander McQueen, Holland Cooper and Unidentified Fashion Objects. Her most carried bag designer was Mulberry, while she has carried only eight other bags from different designers within this period. Her most-worn shoe designer was Emmy London, followed by Gianvito Rossi, See by Chloe, and Veja. Her most worn jewellery designer was Orelia London with 6 wears, followed by Daniella Draper, Spells of Love, and jewellery borrowed from The Queen with 5 wears and Asprey with 4. Her most worn accessory has, again, been Amaia Kids face masks. When it comes to hats, Catherine’s most worn milliner was Hicks and Brown, followed by Philip Treacy and a UFO cap.

#statistics #kate #mine #docquarter

[ladykinrannoch]

BRF reading 27 June 2021

Will she, or has Catherine fallen pregnant in June?

I had some asks along the lines of the above question. But I had felt it was too soon after my last reading on Catherine.

However I had a feeling this morning I should ask this question. I used my Keeper of Words deck based on the Arthurian legends. It is a very pretty deck and the Welsh folklore that accompanies it is fascinating.

The Situation card is High Priestess crossed by the Chariot. The Priestess is intuition, secret knowledge and confidentiality. Crossed by the Chariot which is speed action and determination... also a journey. Such as a pregnancy...

In the hopes and fears position is the Ace of Cups which always shouts pregnancy to me as it is linked to fertility.

So with two major arcana cards in the situation and Ace of Cups in hopes, I interpret this as they have made a conscious and intuitive decision to try and are very hopeful.

In the broader context position I got the World card which is completion and success. Which tells me the decision on number 4 will complete their family.

Interestingly in the position of what happens next I got Page of Cups. Which is child energy linked to Pisces as well as good news! So I am thinking she may have already had a positive pregnancy test for a baby due under Pisces. She could only be five or six weeks along. Or she may yet to fall pregnant in the coming weeks.

In their immediate context position I got 8 pentacles which is a success card. Denoting a successful pregnancy, awards and honors.

In the outcome position I got restriction 8 swords, in the context of the question, I think it may again be a difficult pregnancy for her and that she may be hospitalized for HG and put on bed rest. But as the Balmoral summer holidays are coming up don't expect to see or hear much about that because the High Priestess is at the centre of the spread. I think news will be restricted and all will be kept very confidential until she is well beyond 12 or 16 weeks.

In the goal position I got 5 wands which is usually strong opinions from people. So I expect the secrecy of the Priestess with the restriction card are telling me they want to avoid any strong or critical opinions from the #6s.

In others views I got 7 cups which is about confusion, possibilities and choices, so once it is known in public expect people to be a bit surprised and/or divided on the news.

In the immediate past I got Justice which is a karma card for me. Suggesting this was how it was meant to work out.

Conclusion:

Catherine is already or will fall pregnant in the coming weeks with Camb 4. I have always felt as if HM and Catherine have a close relationship and that Catherine models herself by the Queen's example. And so there is a bit of duty to country here to provide four heirs to William. On a lesser note it ties in with her Early Years work and will give her insight into juggling 4 kids of different ages and a very demanding career role. I also have a feeling they want to "get on with it" (Chariot) in a good way because of HM and PCs advanced ages. While HM had her last child at 39 as Sovereign. I feel that they want to do this before they have to take up greater responsibilities as Prince and Princess of Wales. Obviously the fact that Catherine will be the next Princess of Wales bothers some people, one in particular, and so I get the sense from the spread that they really do want to keep this to themselves for quite a while.

A side note, I always love reading on Catherine because her energy is so positive and loving and just shines out of the cards. I always get such a genuine love of life, family and extreme happiness when I read on the Duchess of Cambridge. This is not a Capricorn who feels defeat or despondency. She has incredible resilience and determination. She is strong but discrete, determined but loving and expressive. I think Catherine is a perfect partner to William.

On the additional question of gender. I drew three masculine cards. I know they are hoping for a girl. But it all depends on when conception happens.

I will read in another two weeks.

[icannotreadcursive]

So we all know JKR is a moron, and one of the places that shows is in the official Wizarding Schools list. Mostly because there are way too few of them

There are officially 11 of them, and we know 8: 3 in Europe (one of which is in the British Isles), 1 in Russia, 1 in Japan, 1 in Africa, 1 in South America, and 1 in North America. That's a ridiculously tiny number, and almost all of them cover ranges that are ridiculously huge and with such diverse cultures and magical traditions within their range. So let's run through what I consider a sensible distribution of wizarding schools.

Starting with the British Isles, we know we have Hogwarts in Scotland.  There would also be one in Ireland—because of the way Irish history has gone, this school likely would have taken a side in the Troubles and therefore be, at least unofficially, either very Catholic or very Protestant. Irish wizarding kids whose families are religiously opposite to the school, or not particularly religious, may then choose to go to Hogwarts instead to avoid conflict. I think there used to beother schools—1 in Wales, and as many as 3 in England, 1 in or near London, and 1 each associated with Cambridge and Oxford universities. The Cambridge and Oxford schools I think would have evolved over time into magic colleges, because I do not believe for a second that there is no such thing as post-secondary wizarding education. The London school can't still exist and have it still make sense that all our Hogwarts friends end up at Hogwarts—if it's a fancy private school, Draco is there not at Hogwarts; if it's a public school Hermione and all the Weasleys are there, not at Hogwarts, and so on. I'm not sure exactly why or when I think it closed, but sometime before the 1990s, probably before the 1950s, Hogwarts absorbed the London school's student pool. The Welsh school I think was a victim of the English destruction of Welsh culture. If it still exists, or has been rebuilt, I think it's very small and teaches at least partially in Welsh.

Moving on to the rest of Europe. We know we have Beauxbatons in France, and I buy that. Then we have Durmstrang, which is allegedly in Scandinavia. “Durmstrang” doesn't sound Scandinavian to me, it sounds German, because it is German. It's obviously derived from the German phrase “Sturm und Drang” which means “storm and stress,” so I feel like Durmstrang must be somewhere that is or has been German-speaking.  I'm inclined to put it in Poland in one of the areas that used to be in Prussia, possibly near Danzig. Durmstrang would then serve most everywhere that has ever been part of that which is now Germany, so most of the middle of Europe.

I do think there is also at least 1 school in Scandinavia. And there's going to be 1 in Spain, 1 it Italy—specifically Rome—and 1 in the south-east of Europe, probably Romania or Bulgaria.

That brings us up to a total of 8 major magic schools in Europe, 2 of them in the British Isles, not counting any magic colleges.

You may note I sort of left out most of Eastern Europe. That's because I think there's probably a school somewhere between Moscow, and Minsk in Belarus that serves Eastern Europe and Western Russia. That is still a very large geographical range, but a lot of that area is quite sparsely populated so I think it works out, especially if we expect that there are smaller, more local schools and/or homeschooling coalitions going on. We'll say this is Koldovstoretz, the canon Russian school. But also, Russia is freaking enormous, there's no way there's only one magic school in all of Russia. I think there must be ant least 1 more, out east, but probably there's 2, one out east and one more toward the middle, possibly near Krasnoyarsk.

I'm willing to believe that there is 1 major magic school in Japan, and that's the canon Mahoutokoro School of Magic. That cannot be the only school in Asia.

There has to be 1 in China. Now, despite China's size, I'm actually okay with the idea of there only being 1 major official magic school. China has a long history of centralizing government and education and its vast bureaucracy. I can see there being one school that's been there since, like, the 800s AD. If there is only the one official school, though, there will also be smaller local less prestigious schools, and again homeschooling.

There's definitely at least 1 in India. Mongolia and Kazakhstan are both traditionally nomadic enough that I expect magic is taught much more on a familial, elder-to-child basis without any large centralized schools. I feel like there would be 1 in Korea, because while Korea is relatively small, it is culturally very distinct from both China and Japan and has historically made a point of maintaining that distinction, so I don't think they'd be sending their wizarding kids to either of the neighboring magic schools.

I am going to very conservatively say there's 1 on the Indochinese Peninsula.

That gives us 5 in Asia. With the 8 in Europe and 3 in Russia, we're already at 16 major magic schools.

There's at least 4 in the middle east: 1 in Turkey, 1 in Iran, 1 in Saudi Arabia, and 1 in the vicinity of Israel that focuses on Judaic magic tradition. Exactly where that one is—whether it's within the modern state of Israel or not—is going to depend pretty significantly on how old it is, whether it's born of Jewish cultural revival and reclamation or if it's ancient. It's quite likely there would be more schools than this, it's a large region with longstanding emphasis on education, but let's just go with these 4.

We're at 20 schools.

Africa. Canon gives us Uagadou School of Magic in Uganda. The idea that there is only 1 school to serve the entire African continent is insane. And I don't think there's any way around the fact that it derives from the colonialist and racist idea that Africa and African people are uncivilized and uneducated.

In North Africa, I'm saying there's at least 2: 1 in Morocco, and 1 in Egypt. Because of regional histories, there's definitely 1 in Ethiopia and definitely 1 in Zimbabwe. I expect at least 1 in Western Africa, probably Nigeria. I was thinking that is there's 1 in South Africa (the country specifically, not the region of Southern Africa) there'd be 2, one white one black, because of Apartheid, but on second thought I highly suspect that until quite recently, most or all white wizarding kids in South Africa would have been sent to Durmstrang or Hogwarts, depending on their parents' backgrounds and socialaspirations, so I'm not sure what magic schools there might be in Southern Africa other than the one in Zimbabwe.

This puts us at (a minimum of) 6 schools in Africa, 26 worldwide.

Hopping the Atlantic to North America where it's just as ridiculous to think there's 1 school for the entire damn continent. There's going to be at least 8 in the U.S. alone. An old affluent white one up east that looks a whole lot like its European cousins (that's Ilvermorny), 2 in the south (one that started off whites only, one historically black), 2 in the midwest (again, one white one black), 1 in California, 1 that at least used to be girls only (this one is probably also East Coast), and 1 that focuses on Native magic traditions that's either west/midwest or in or near the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina.

There's at least 3 in Canada: an English speaking one probably east of middle, an English speaking one in the west that probably also gets kids from Alaska, and a French speaking one in Quebec.

I'm thinking another 3 in Mexico and Mesoamerica, one of which was or is closely tied to the school in Spain, and all 3 of which teach different, even conflicting, magical traditions.

We're at 40 schools worldwide.

In South America, we know we have Castelobruxo in Brazil, which allegedly serves all of South America, but that's also stupid, in no small part because Brazil speaks a different language from the entire rest of the continent. So that gives us bare minimun 2 schools: Portuguese speaking Castelobruxo, and another Spanish speaking school. I'm gonna say there's actually 2 Spanish speaking schools, for a total of 3.

Finally, Australia's gotta have 1.

So, using my numbers, which I fully recognize leave out a lot of places and still give most of these schools impractically large ranges, even taking into account home schooling and community-based education, we get 44 Wizarding schools. That's four times the official number.

Like, wtf.

#Harry Potter #meta #harry potter meta #fuck jkr #international wizarding schools #wizarding schools #magic schools #hogwarts #long post

[watusichris]

Rock Gunfight in the Antipodes

Listening today to the hot new Grown Up Wrong! comp by Sydney’s Lipstick Killers, whose lone officially released single was produced by Deniz Tek of Radio Birdman, it occurred to me that my old Music Aficionado faux faceoff between Australia’s pioneering bands of the ‘70s (all of which I dearly love) has disappeared into the online ether. It’s time to bring it back.

**********

By Chris Morris

The mid- to late ‘70s were fertile days for rock ‘n’ roll in Australia. Here and there across the vast but not terribly populous island continent, fires were started by several attitude-filled bands bent on doing things their own damn way. They all managed to make their way off the island, but if they hit the American consciousness, it was for little more than a nanosecond during their heyday.

Who were the truest Rock Wizards of Oz? For this Down Under face-off, I’ve selected three contenders: the Saints, Radio Birdman, and the Scientists. All of them had fairly slim discographies; ironically, the act probably least known in the U.S., the Scientists, recorded most prolifically, with their core line-up producing several magnificent albums and singles during a productive four-year stretch in the early ‘80s. But none of these bands ever stayed together long enough to make a deep impression among the Yanks.

So where’s the Birthday Party, you ask? There are a few things to consider. First of all, though the band and its precursor unit the Boys Next Door were in business from 1976 on, they didn’t release their first LP until 1980. Also, Nick Cave is well known enough that more (king) ink needn’t be spilled on him. Finally, I still resent the fact that Cave stole PJ Harvey away from me, so it’s personal.

On with the showdown…

HIT ME LIKE A DEATH RAY, BABY

The Saints, founded 1974 in Brisbane

The prime movers of the Saints were a pair of literal outsiders: vocalist Chris Bailey, born in Kenya to Irish parents, and guitarist Ed Kuepper, raised in Germany. Thus the otherness of their work is no surprise.

With schoolmate Ivor Hay – who over time would play drums, bass, and piano with them – the pair founded a combo originally known as Kid Galahad and the Eternals (borrowing their handle from a 1962 Elvis Presley picture), but they swiftly renamed themselves the Saints and began playing in their hometown on the northeast coast of Australia.

Listening to their records, which were made in something of a cultural vacuum, it’s difficult to get a handle on where the Saints’ distinctive, aggressive sound came from. To be sure they were aware of such homegrown precursors from the ‘60s as the Master’s Apprentices and the Missing Links (whose 1965 single they covered on their debut album). It’s safe to assume they were conversant with the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and Lenny Kaye’s 1972 garage rock compilation Nuggets. Yet they bred something utterly their own in the ocean air of Brisbane.

With Hay on drums and Kym Bradshaw on bass, Bailey and Kuepper mounted noisy local gigs that swiftly attracted the antipathy of the local constabulary; they wound up turning their own digs into a club to play shows. In 1976, they recorded and issued a self-financed single featuring two originals, “(I’m) Stranded” and “No Time.” These dire, ferocious songs were distinguished by venomous lyrics, unprecedented velocity, and guitar playing by Kuepper that sounded like a (literal) iron curtain being attacked with a chainsaw.

The record died locally, but a copy of its U.K. issue found its way into the hands of a critic at the English music weekly Sounds, which declared it the single of the week. This accolade got the attention of EMI Records, which signed the band and financed the recording of an album, also titled I’m Stranded, in a fast two-day Brisbane session.

The album, which was ultimately released in the U.S. by Sire Records, blew the ears off anyone who heard it, and it landed with a bang in England, where punk rock was lifting off in all its fury in early 1977. It was hurtling, powerful stuff that stood apart from punk in several crucial ways: While some of the songs were clipped and demonic in the standard manner, the Saints proved they could take their time on expansive numbers like the almost Dylanesque “Messin’ With the Kid” and the sprawling, hellriding “Nights in Venice.” And one has to wonder how British p-rockers took to their perverted take on Elvis’ squishy “Kissin’ Cousins.”

Made by musicians who never considered themselves “punks,” and who in fact abhorred the label, (I’m) Stranded is nevertheless one of the definitive statements in the genre, and it has maintained its force to this day.

Settling in England for the duration, the Saints decided to throw a curveball. One could not find a more profoundly alienated album than Eternally Yours (1978), a series of yowling protests, twisted prophecies, and savage put-downs, including the snarling second version of the single “This Perfect Day.” But, though the record was loud and for the most part swift, the group applied the brakes to their sound somewhat, and a couple of songs, including the caustic album opener “Know Your Product,” were dressed by a soul-styled horn section. Punk loyalists ran for cover.

By the time Prehistoric Sounds was issued in late ’78, the dejected Bailey and Kuepper were moving in different directions, and you can hear it in the grooves. The record is slow, almost listless at times, and its logy originals are complemented by incongruous Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin covers with none of the energy of earlier Saints soul-blasts. It is an album primarily for loyalists, and by then there were few in that number.

Kuepper exited the band on the heels of the third album’s release and returned to Australia, where he enjoyed a long career as leader of the Laughing Clowns; Bailey continued to perform under the Saints mantle with a shifting lineup that at last count numbered more than 30 players over the course of 37 years

Bailey and Kuepper reunited for one-off gigs in 2001 (at the ARIA awards ceremony) and 2007 (at Australia’s Queensland Music Festival).

THERE’S GONNA BE A NEW RACE

Radio Birdman, founded 1974 in Sydney

People who toss the “punk” handle around often throw Radio Birdman into the mix, but the sextet from Australia’s Southeast Coast may be best referred as the world’s youngest proto-punk band.

Its mastermind was guitarist, songwriter, and producer Deniz Tek, a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who emigrated to Sydney in 1971 to study medicine. As a teen, he got a chance to witness Detroit’s most explosive pre-punk bands – the MC5, the Stooges, and the Rationals; he would later wind up collaborating with important members of all those groups.

After apprenticing with and getting bounced from a Sydney band called TV Jones, Tek formed Radio Birdman (its name a corruption of a lyric from the Stooges’ “1970”) with singer Rob Younger; the lineup ultimately solidified with the addition of guitarist (and sometime keyboardist) Chris Masuak, bassist Warwick Gilbert, drummer Ron Keeley, and (on and off and then on again) keyboardist Pip Hoyle.

Rapidly acquiring a fan base made up of some of Sydney’s lowest elements, including members of the local Hell’s Angels, Radio Birdman ultimately took over a bar, re-dubbed (in honor of the Stooges, of course) the Oxford Funhouse, as their base of operations. The band’s severe Tek-designed band logo emanated fascist-style vibes for some; at a co-billed appearance in Sydney, the Saints’ Chris Bailey remarked from the stage, “We’d like to thank the local members of Hitler Youth for their stage props.”

Despite much antipathy and some attendant violence, the band maintained a loyal local following, and in 1976 it issued a strong four-song EP, Burn My Eye, via local studio-cum-independent label Trafalgar. This was succeeded the following year by a full-length debut album, Radios Appear.

Anyone looking for something resembling punk will likely be disappointed by that collection. The band wears its all-American hard rock/proto-punk influences on its dirty sleeve. Radios Appear is dedicated to the Stooges (whose “No Fun” was the lead-off track on the Aussie issue of the LP), and a song co-written by Tek and Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton, “Hit Them Again,” was cut during sessions for the record. Tek pays deep homage to MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer with his playing, and blatantly cops a signature lick from the 5’s “Looking at You” at one juncture. The album title was lifted from a Blue Öyster Cult lyric, and the Tek-Masuak guitar-bashing bows to their multi-axe sound. Finally, in both Younger’s sometimes Morrisonian vocalizing and Hoyle’s Ray Manzarek-like ornamentation, homage to the Doors in paid in full. Given that Sydney is a beach town, there’s even a frisson of surf music in the mix.

Bursting with power-packed originals like the apocalyptic “Descent into the Maestrom,” youth-in-revolt anthem “New Race,” the cryptic, insinuating “Man with the Golden Helmet,” and Tek’s autobiographical “Murder City Nights,” Radios Appear was a power-packed set that established Radio Birdman as Oz’s leading rock light.

However, renown did not equal success in Antipodean terms. In 1978, the band cut its second album, Living Eyes, at Rockfield Studio in Wales; it was a solid effort that included remakes of three Burn My Eye numbers (including the wonderful Tek memoir “I-94,” about the Michigan interstate) and excellent new originals like “Hanging On,” “Crying Sun,” and “Alone in the End Zone.” But, with success seemingly within their grasp, Sire Records – their American label, and the Saints’ as well – switched distribution and cut their roster, leaving their new work without a home. Within months of this catastrophe, Radio Birdman disbanded.

The principals scattered, to Younger’s New Christs and Tek and Hoyle’s the Visitors; Tek, Younger, and Warwick Gilbert later joined MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson and the Stooges’ Ron Asheton in the one-off New Race. Tek also later recorded with Wayne Kramer and Scott Morgan of Ann Arbor’s Rationals in Dodge Main.

Radio Birdman’s original lineup reunited for a 1996 tour; in August 2006 – after four of the original sextet regrouped to record a potent new album, Zeno Beach – the band played its first American date ever, at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theater. Your correspondent was there, and it was freakin’ incredible.

IN MY HEART THERE’S A PLACE CALLED SWAMPLAND

The Scientists, founded 1978 in Perth

Among the important Aussie bands of the ‘70s, the Scientists were among the first to be directly influenced by the punk explosion in New York.

As guitarist-singer-songwriter Kim Salmon – the lone constant in the Scientists’ lineup during their existence – wrote in 1975, “Reading about a far-off place called CBGB in NYC and its leather-clad denizens, all with names like Johnny Thunders, Richard Hell, and Joey Ramone, got me thinking…I immediately went searching for Punk Rock. What I found were The Modern Lovers and The New York Dolls albums.”

Salmon first dabbled in the new sound with a band bearing the delightfully punk name the Cheap Nasties. Cobbled together in Perth – the Western provincial capital of Australia – from members of such local acts as the Exterminators, the Victims, and Salmon’s the Invaders -- the early Scientists were as derivative as one might imagine. Their early songs, heard on their self-titled LP (the so-called “Pink Album”) and an early single and EP, sport original songs authored by Salmon and drummer-lyricist James Baker, the backbone of shifting Scientific crews through 1980. The tunes range from straight-up Dolls/Heartbreakers rips (“Frantic Romantic,” “Pissed On Another Planet,” “High Noon”) to buzzing romantic pop-punk in a Buzzcocks vein (“That Girl,” “She Said She Loves Me”).

Not terribly promising stuff, but, after the departure of Baker for the Hoodoo Gurus in 1981 and a brief stint in a trio called Louie Louie, Salmon assembled a new Scientists who would prevail for nearly four years. That outfit – Salmon, guitarist Tony Thewlis, bassist Boris Sujdovic, and drummer Brett Rixton – promptly relocated to Sydney and started making the noise they are noted for.

By that time, Salmon had begun cocking an ear to the Birthday Party (and no doubt paid careful attention to the sordid noise on the Melbourne group’s 1982 album Junkyard), had discovered the miasmic voodoo of the Cramps, and started grooving to the dissonant, slide guitar-dominated racket of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band. In short order, he would also absorb the bluesy downhome assault of Los Angeles’ roots-punk outfit the Gun Club.

The Sydney-based Scientists hooked up with indie label Au Go Go, which issued a devastating run of careening, mossy records by the band in 1982-83 – the vertiginous singles “This is My Happy Hour”/“Swampland” and the corrosive “We Had Love” (backed by a faithful cover of Beefheart’s “Clear Spot”), and the heart-stopping mini-album Blood Red River, which bore the churning “Set It On Fire,” “Revhead,” and “Burnout.” Others were essaying a similar style, but the Aussie youngsters were beating their elders at their own game.

Eying the big time, the band moved to London in 1984. Some opportunities presented themselves initially: The band got European tour slots with the Gun Club and early Goth act Sisters of Mercy. But their deal with Au Go Go fell apart acrimoniously; while they made a pair of fog-bound albums, You Get What You Deserve (1985) and The Human Jukebox (1987) for Karbon Records (and a set of re-recorded songs, Weird Love, was issued in the U.S. by Big Time Records), they scraped by in Britain.

Defections from the ranks commenced in ’85, and by early 1987 the depleted Salmon used money from a housing settlement to move back to Australia, where he founded a new band, the Surrealists.

Still valued among the cognoscenti, Salmon, Thewlis, Sujdovic, and latter-day drummer Leanne Chock appeared, at the invitation of Seattle’s Mudhoney, at London’s All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in 2006. Earlier this year, Chicago-based archival label the Numero Group issued a comprehensive four-disc box of the band’s original recordings.

So, at the end of the day, who is the all-time champeen of ‘70s Oz rock?

Scoring on points, the Saints are tops for Being Punk First with additional wins in the Pure Noise and Weltzschmerz categories, Radio Birdman takes the Technical Ability and Old-School Attitude slots, and the Scientists prevail in the Loud Young Snot and Grunge Thug division.

And the championship belt goes to…the Saints!

Of course, that could all change tomorrow, but that’s rock ‘n’ roll for ya.

[tallmantall]

#JamesDonaldson On #MentalHealth - Young #Americans Increasingly End Their Own Lives

#Suicide is now the second-biggest killer of ten- to 18-year-olds In the 1950s, when the term “#teenager” had been popularised, it brought to mind trouble. Spotty #youths who engaged in risky behaviour outside the house—getting drunk, pregnant or into car crashes—were “the number one fear of #American citizens”, wrote Bill Bryson in his memoir, “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”. Today, the risks #American #teens face come from within. #Boys are now more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a motor crash. #Girls are nearly 50% more likely to injure themselves in a #suicideattempt than to face an unplanned pregnancy. #Suicide is the second-biggest killer of ten- to 18-year-olds, after accidents. The rise in #youth #suicide is part of a broader increase in #mentalhealth problems among the young. This preceded the #pandemic but was probably accelerated by it. In 2021 nearly half of #American #highschoolstudents said that they had experienced persistent feelings of sadness and #hopelessness in the past year, up from 26% in 2009; one in five seriously considered #suicide, up from 14%; and 9% attempted to end their life, up from 6% (see chart). Although the rates for 15- to 19-year-olds are not unprecedented (there was a similar peak in the early 1990s), the rates for ten- to 14-year-olds are higher than ever before. The fact that it has become more acceptable for young people to discuss their feelings has surely contributed to some of the changes, such as the rise in self-reported sadness. Better screening may also play a role. But neither explains the most alarming data: #suiciderates. Attempts, injuries and deaths have all risen among young #Americans over the past decade. Last year, no age group saw a steeper rise than men aged 15 to 24, according to preliminary data from the #CentresforDiseaseControlandPrevention (cdc). The causes are only starting to be understood. The usual suspects (#childhood poverty, parental #substanceabuse or parental depression) have not changed meaningfully; indeed, #childhood poverty has fallen. What has shifted is how #teens live their lives and relate to their environment, and each other. Greater #isolation and #loneliness are probably important. Experts have a reasonable understanding of how to help prevent #suicide and better protect against such thoughts. Not all young people are equally at risk. Although #girls in #America are much more likely to contemplate ending their lives, or injure themselves in attempting to do so, #teen #boys are nearly three times as likely to die from #suicide. Young people who identify as #lesbian, #gay or #bisexual are three times as likely to feel suicidal. During the #covid-19 #pandemic #children who had faced serious adversity, such as abuse or neglect, were 25 times as likely to try to kill themselves as their peers with happier #childhoods. Geography matters, too. As with grown-ups, #children who live in #rural settings are at heightened risk, in part because they have less access to care. #Youths from tribal communities suffer more than any other group. Alaska’s #youth #suiciderate—at 42 annual deaths per 100,000 young people, the highest of any state—is four times the national average. #America is not alone. Australia, England and Mexico are among other countries to have seen big rises in #youth #suicide over the past decade. In England and Wales, more than one in six children between the ages of seven and 16 now has a probable #mentalhealthdisorder, up from one in nine in 2017, found a recent survey by the #NationalHealthService. Between 2012 and 2018 #teen #loneliness grew in 36 out of 37 countries studied, according to a paper in the Journal of #Adolescence. Unfortunate exceptionalism But #America stands out for its absolute rates of #youth #suicide. Although in England and Wales #suicide among 15- to 19-year-olds has grown faster, in 2021 6.4 per 100,000 young people there took their own lives, versus 11.2 young #Americans. #America is also exceptional for its availability of #guns. Use of a #firearm is the most common method of #suicide for #boys, which helps explain why they are more likely to die from an attempt than #girls. Easy access to a lethal method is one of the biggest risk factors for someone in despair. In Switzerland, after 2003 #suiciderates among #men of military-service age dropped sharply after the country halved the size of its army, which often requires soldiers to take weapons home. During the #pandemic, sales of #firearms increased in #America. That exposed an extra 11m people, half of whom were #children, to a gun at home. #Suicides by #gun accounted for the entire rise in #American #suicides between 2019 and 2021, according to an analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. But guns are only part of the story. Speculation over other causes has ranged from earlier puberty to the effects of #socialmedia and even to climate-change despair. Some of the more compelling evidence points to a change in how young people relate to their surroundings. #Children who say they feel close to people at #school were much less likely to suffer from poor #mentalhealth, and 50% less likely to have attempted #suicide, than those who did not, found the cdc. This protective layer may be fraying. “The types of #adolescent activities that would be indicative of that social connection, or of building a sense of meaning or place in your social circle, are fundamentally shifting,” says Katherine Keyes at Columbia University. #Teens spend far less time on traditional social activities, such as playing sport or going on dates, than in the past. In the late 1970s over half of 12th-graders met up with friends almost daily; by 2017 just over a quarter did. Dr Keyes’s study also found a correlation between reports of low levels of social activity and feelings of #depression. One of the fiercest debates is whether #socialmedia alienates young people or offer a new avenue for connection. Just as a #school environment can help or harm a #child, the same is the case online. Feeling virtually connected to peers, family or other groups during #covid had a similar (if smaller) protective effect as feeling connected to people at #school, found the cdc. Young people from sexual #minorities are especially likely to say #socialmedia help them feel less alone and more supported. But it can also make things worse, as a recent inquest into the #suicide of Molly Russell, a British 14-year-old, found. Harmful #socialmedia content probably “contributed to her death in a more than minimal way”, it concluded. Being locked up during the #pandemic increased feelings of #isolation and #loneliness for many youngsters. The evidence of the harm to development and #mentalhealth done by #school closures is increasingly compelling. #Covid appears to have hurt the #mentalhealth of younger people disproportionately, says Richard McKeon at the #SubstanceAbuse and #MentalHealthServices Administration. This was “superimposed on a longer-term upward trend in #youth #suicide,” he adds. For #teen #girls, average weekly emergency-department visits for suspected #suicideattempts were 50% higher in February 21st-March 20th 2021 compared with the same period in 2019. #James Donaldson notes:Welcome to the “next chapter” of my life… being a voice and an advocate for #mentalhealthawarenessandsuicideprevention, especially pertaining to our younger generation of students and student-athletes.Getting men to speak up and reach out for help and assistance is one of my passions. Us men need to not suffer in silence or drown our sorrows in alcohol, hang out at bars and strip joints, or get involved with drug use.Having gone through a recent bout of #depression and #suicidalthoughts myself, I realize now, that I can make a huge difference in the lives of so many by sharing my story, and by sharing various resources I come across as I work in this space.  #http://bit.ly/JamesMentalHealthArticleOrder your copy of James Donaldson's latest book,#CelebratingYourGiftofLife:From The Verge of Suicide to a Life of Purpose and Joy www.celebratingyourgiftoflife.com Keeping the #kids safe Even if the causes are not fully understood, solutions are. “This is not rocket science,” says Jane Pearson from the #NationalInstituteofMentalHealth. “We know what helps #kids develop healthy trajectories that make it less likely they develop #mentaldisorders or #suicidalthoughts and #behaviors.” Most important are a focus on improving family communication and support, family and community attachments, as well as #children’s attachments to #school, so they feel safe and connected. The challenge is to get all parties working together on prevention. #Schools can be at the heart of the problem—or the solution. Programmes that train kids in coping with emotions and social problem-solving have had impressive results. The Good Behaviour Game, first trialled in Baltimore in the 1980s, teaches first-graders how to work in teams and behave in class. Pupils who took part in the original programme benefited well into adulthood in reduced #substanceabuse and criminality, and improved #mentalhealth. Compared with the control group, they were half as likely to think about, or attempt, #suicide later in life. #Doctors’ offices are important, too. Nine out of ten #children who died by #suicide had some contact with the health-care system in their final year of life. If #pediatric practices were better prepared and incentivised to provide #behavioralhealthservices, this could make a huge difference, reckons Richard Frank at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. Lastly, educating #schools and communities in preventing #suicide “contagion” is essential. Between 1% and 5% of #teen #suicides are part of “clusters,” more so than for #adults. The playbook for #schools is clear: deaths should be commemorated but not mawkishly; #suicide should be openly discussed but not normalised; and #students should be encouraged to seek help. Just as important can be the work with staff members, who can become “numb” or even “disengaged” following too much tragedy, says Sharon Hoover from the National Centre for #School #MentalHealth, who often gets called in once a #school has suffered multiple deaths. And yet it is crucial not to overreact. “#Suicidalthoughts have always been common. They peak in #teens and diminish in prevalence with age,” says Christine Moutier from the #AmericanFoundationforSuicidePrevention. “The vast majority of young people having #suicidalthoughts are not imminently about to act on them, or even at risk of dying of #suicide,” she adds. Rather, it is a sign of distress and a reason to discuss their feelings. “It’s crucial that caregivers and providers across the board do not panic when they hear the word ‘#suicide’,” warns Dr McKeon. A #child brave enough to open up about such thoughts then rushed to hospital against their will is unlikely to trust an #adult again. That is the last thing they need.  Read the full article