#crying in european succession monday

[theoldkyokodied]

tomgreg doodle dump <3

#tomgreg #succession #tom wambsgans #greg hirsch #gregory hirsch #this is my sleepover and i can choose to make them softer than they are!!! #i am drawing a bigger piece rn and kind liveblogging it on my insta story bc i am going insane about this #anyway in the meantime enjoy these silly doods #and happy succ sunday to those who celebrate. see you guys on the other side #crying in european succession monday

[my-chaos-radio]

Release: May 8, 1989

Lyrics:

OK, you're on your own, it's late

Your girlfriend is on another date with the hero in your dream

Turn around, ask yourself. So, you think you're gonna win this time Manchild?

Is it the pain of the drinking

Or the Sunday sinking feeling

The car never seems to work

When it's late your girlfriend's on a date

And the hero with her in your dream

In your sleep it seemed to like you

Turn around and ask yourself

Turn around ask yourself

Manchild, will you ever win

Manchild, look at the state you're in

Could you go undercover

And sell your brand new lover (could you)

Be someone else for a night

Maybe someone else will love you

You sell your soul for a tacky song

Like the one you hear on the radio

Turn around ask yourself

Turn around and ask yourself

Manchild, will you ever win

Manchild, look at the state you're in

Manchild, he will make you cry

Manchild, Manchild, Manchild

From Monday down to Friday

You're working on another man's car

Or is it in the factory?

It doesn't matter where you are

Just turn around and ask yourself is this communication

Accentuate the positive and give some illustration

See Manchild, you're no one, you turn the microphone on

Control communication when I'm kickin' it and so on

To the point that I need, the air that I breathe

Into an audience that's waiting and ecstatic to receive-

For the meantime another mean rhyme, I keep on sayin' it

I know what the time is the crowd will keep playing it

Through the speaker boxes loud's my diagnosis

'Cause I believe in miracles and words in heavy doses.

Enough R-E-S-P-E and C-T

Respect yourself express no stress the mike is easy

Just believe that all you need is the air that you breathe.

Turn around ask yourself

Manchild, will you ever win

Manchild, look at the state you're in

Manchild, he will make you cry

Manchild, Manchild, Manchild

He's the apple of your eye

Once bitten twice shy, why don't you bite me again

Just take it in the right and go tell your friend

Are you ready for the words I turn the microphone on

A figure of speech to reach you at the back and so on

The style I'm stimulating dance floors

Raise your body temperature now and

This demands for power in the amp you know louds my diagnosis

'Cause I believe in miracles and words in heavy doses.

Songwriter:

Cameron Mcvey / Neneh Cherry / Robert Del Naja

SongFacts:

"Manchild" is a song by Swedish singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry, released as the second single from her debut album, Raw Like Sushi (1989). The single was a top-10 success in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and several European countries. "Manchild" did not chart in the United States or Canada. It was the first song Neneh sat down and wrote. She composed the song on a Casio keyboard (the same one she uses to this day), using an auto-chord setting and ended up with 7 chords in the verse alone. Neneh's stepfather Don Cherry commented on this praisingly, comparing it to a jazz song structure. Nellee Hooper did the beat for the song and wrote the rap with Robert Del Naja. Neneh then gave it to Cameron McVey, who helped to shape the song with the parts and "made it make sense".

The song's lyrics are "directed at a full-grown man who has a little more growing up to do". Neneh expressed the significance of the song for herself, stating it's where she found her sound: "I think "Manchild" was the song where I kind of found my style. I think that song, the style of the song, the spirit and the feeling of the song has reappeared; it always reappears along the way in other songs that I've written; therefore it became the most significant song that I ever wrote, in a way". The music video for "Manchild" was nominated for "Best Video" at the 1990 Brit Awards.

#Youtube #Spotify #music #music video #hit of the day #video of the day #youtube video #chaos radi o #good music #80s #80s charts #80s music #1989 #r&b soul #uk r&b #pop #hip hop #rap #hip hop rap #contemporary r&b #uk street soul #lyrics #songfacts #100 #Neneh Cherry #Manchild

[journeysfable]

Recap of The Event for Europeans

I'm planning to unpin this on Monday btw.

This is the first time I've watched multiple streams btw. I did that for y'all. You all now owe me 1000 cookies (American version of the word not whatever cookie means in Europe)

Forever woke up!! He was wearing his president outfit lol. He had a weird dream before he woke up, though, of Richas waking him up and then it glitched to Ordo Theoritas. All the Brazillians were there with Richas in the center and then Forever woke up for real.

Cellbit was the first to see him and immediately caught him up on all the stuff concerning the maze. So many people came to visit him. Foolish, Tubbo, Roier, Mouse, Pol, Niki, etc.

He had a private talk with Bad. (I missed the first part of their convo.) Forever said he didn't choose to be drugged. He called Bad his family and promised to bring his color back. Bad said the only way to do that was to bring the eggs back. Then he asked if the Feds told Forever anything and Forever said he didn't remember much but would tell Bad if anything came to him. Bad also gave him a bunch of stuff.

Pac and Forever had a heartfelt convo, too. I don't speak Portuguese (yet) and the subtitles wouldn't work but apparently they were talking to each other about how coming off the drugs felt. For Forever, it felt like being ripped in half.

Forever asked where Phil was, since he remembers him, Bad, and Cellbit being there before he got knocked out. Tubbo said he should be back by Monday.

They all got a message to pick up Bagi. Apparently she was requested by Forever according to The Duckling.

Bagi met Walter Bob, who working on some tasks. He asked Bagi to help him. So she started doing some tasks while everybody else failed to complete a puzzle while lava slowly rose (Feel like it's worth noting the buildings they were in were white with black splotches. Another thing is they got the riddle, "What must be broken before it can be used?" "An egg") (Fun facts about q!Bagi: She's vegetarian and she has an imaginary friend named Jorge(her chat) and she's an amnesiac)

Admins eventually teleported everyone into the building with Bagi (after Walter Bob left), which eventually started to get filled with lava. The admins eventually had to teleport everyone else out if I remember correctly.

Bagi also got a book that gave her access to The Main Channel.

She also hates Forever for bringing her to the island.

According to liveblogs, Forever tried getting some info from Quackity. Idk if he was successful. He eventually went back to the house with fake Richas and broke the pictures of flowers and the Rochas. That's where his stream ended.

Also according to liveblogs, Tubbo wrote a secret book to Fred asking for their side of the story about the maze. He also went looking for eggs again.

Bagi was given a tour of the island by Roier and Cellbit.

Bad was sadly singing happy birthday to Pomme and Dapper. Tina, Foolish, and Pac saw how sad he was and joined in. Then Bad apparently threatened Pac when he asked if he was crying.

And it's started to get late for me so I'm going to bed. I hope this was helpful and I hope future events are earlier for you guys.

#qsmp

[chwrpg]

Murray, I have asked you repeatedly not to call me "woman".

A NOTE FROM ADMIN R: Oh, oh, oh ! Y’all don’t know how happy I am to be accepting this application. Dylan is truly one of my CHW faves and to have her taken up by you, Cailin... that’s just an honor. I can not wait to see what you do with her, but I know one thing... this dash ain’t ready fro the looks Dylan is about to serve us. Thank you so much for applying and welcome back, love !

OOC NAME/ALIAS, PREFERRED PRONOUNS, AGE & TIMEZONE:

cailin, (she/her), 25, est

DESIRED CHARACTER:

queen mother, dylan davenport

HOW ACTIVE WILL YOU BE?

8-10

SECONDARY CHOICE:

taylor flick

DESCRIBE THE CHARACTER:

Dylan is shrouded in beauty, bold fashion choices, witty comebacks, and her daddy’s debit card. But the woman wearing the Amina Muaddi heels to 7/11 is much more interesting than her out of this world clothes. If Chanel’s head is in the clouds, Dylan’s feet are planted on the ground. She’s the fuel to the fire, the one who gets shit done. Things don’t move without her — and that includes the fashion scene in Rosewood. Dylan could’ve been a surgeon, she has the brains and attention to detail for it, but, you see, what Dylan says or doesn’t say goes. She predicted high waist jeans making a comeback before Vogue did, telling the girls one day during first period. So she’s a bit of a culture oracle. It’s why people care about what she’s thinking, who she’s endorsing, what designers she’s buying. They even want to know what she’s watching on a monday night. Her confidence and sincerity is inspiring. When she’s not taste making though, she’s the loyalest, most straightforward friend you can find in her tax bracket. Balancing the thin line between being no-nonsense and fun to be around. She does it well, though. In fact, she does most things well (driving not included.)‌ Her peers boast about her style and charisma, her professors brag about her work ethic and creativity, her boyfriend….well, her love life is a tumultuous roller coaster but every icon needs a fixer upper. Plus she gets diamonds every time he fumbles.

SAMPLE WRITING:

( Alexa, play Daddy )

The day Dylan was born she became a daddy’s girl. Stevie Wonder could see it. Dada was her first word much to her mother’s chagrin. He never raised his voice at her, never got impatient with her when she spilled her juice or threw her food. He got up in the middle of the night so his wife wouldn’t have to even though he had meetings at 7 in the morning. It didn’t stop there, though. Mr. Davenport didn’t put her down at parties. He carried her around on his hip as he mingled and held court, demanding on no one use baby talk for his brilliant baby girl. “She’s smart like her mom.” He would say to his captivated audience. For her third birthday he rented out an entire amusement park. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t yet tall enough to ride the rides, she had asked for it so he made it happen. He was a doer and a fixer, but he wasn’t perfect. Mr. Davenport had always been a better father and provider than a husband.

So, when she was five, her parents went through a nasty divorce. The papers their lawyers drew up cited irreconcilable differences but she’d come to realize, many years later, that was just how rich people skirted around the truth in hopes of keeping people out of their business. In truth, Mr. Davenport had spent the better part of his career sleeping with secretaries, temps, and clients. Basically anything that was of age and not nailed down. Mrs. Davenport had only grown tired of it after watching Halle Berry cry over Eric Benet  on Oprah. But like she’d taught  Dylan, Mrs. Davenport thought three steps ahead, and had arranged to have a cheating clause in their prenup. She saw the board before she’d even stepped foot on it. And, Sure, they’d been in love when they got married at twenty three, but a cheater never changed its spots, just his lies. In an instant, she got half of everything. Twenty percent of his future earnings, and 360 lipo for a girls trip to Maui to celebrate her emancipation.

All Dylan got out of the deal was two houses, two birthdays, two Christmases, two cars she still couldn’t drive when she turned sixteen. The court awarded them joint custody, ruling they both had enough sense to figure out the schedule on their own. But since that was the year her mom went back to school for her PhD, Dylan spent the majority of her time with her dad and a nanny. Those double holidays also served as a good distraction from the heartbreak she couldn’t explain. Though she was sharp as a whip and actually funny, not laugh because it’s a kid funny, but really funny, she still couldn’t wrap her little mind around why her parents drove to separate houses at the end of the night now. At all those parties, what stuck out the most was everyone saying what a handsome couple they were, how lucky they were to have another. They danced and laughed. They seemed so happy. But looks are deceiving and lucky for her, the loneliest year of her young life was also the year she met her best friend.

( Alexa, play Wannabe )

Dylan and Chanel became an instant package deal, and she thanked her father for not being able to keep his dick out of seedy holes because she wouldn’t have went to school in another district if her mom hadn’t won the house in the divorce, and she wouldn’t have sat down next to Chanel at show and tell, and they wouldn’t have bonded over their pretty dresses, or shared their organic apple juice. God worked in mysterious ways like that. She had a partner for life, and nothing came between them. Not even boys. And, despite having the power to date any eligible bachelor in her grade, she really liked one in particular.

The day she brought Paxton home her took one look at him and chuckled. Dylan figured it was because of the grill he hadn’t learned to talk without slurring with yet, but her mother had other ideas. “He reminds me of your father.” She said, long after he’d gone home, but not before Dylan spent fifteen minutes walking him to his car. The driveway was super long but her lipstick was nonexistent when she returned. That didn’t matter though, because Dylan knew what that meant. Her mom thought Paxton was charming, likable, handsome — but she also knew he was a liar and a dog. They argued for well over an hour, and she said some things she regretted but that’s what teenage girls did, they rebelled against becoming their mother all while doing so. She didn’t realize just how much he was like her father until she caught him DMing other girls on instagram and got a diamond necklace out of the deal. Still, it was clear that he could shoot a man in broad daylight and she would always be daddy’s little girl, nothing could change that.

“Daddy!” Dylan whined, clinging to her dad’s arm as they traipsed through another commercial property with their real estate agent. Today was the day she was finally going to buck up and switch locations from her dad’s pool house to an office space in scenic, downtown Rosewood. Being interviewed by magazines had been life changing, sitting front row of the hottest runways next to A-listers had its perks, doing a skincare routine video for vogue was dope, but expanding her business because the calls wouldn’t stop coming in to be styled be Dylan and her associates? That was something she’d done herself from the ground up. She’d started with styling her friends and now she was going to style the world.

( Alexa, play Successful )

Her heels were tall enough to greet God but she still only reached his shoulder. “I hope this one has vaulted ceilings.” Her tone was way past passive aggressive. She would’ve dialed it back had their agent not been set to make serious bank off of this, but had only been showing them office spaces with disgusting lighting and rude doormen. For all of their sakes, she hoped this one was better. “I need two sessions of hot yoga after the last mess you showed us, at least. My chakras are all out of wack now. Thanks a lot, A.” She was being dramatic but her dad didn’t stop her. He just smiled that infamous smile at the agent and excused himself to the back of the elevator to take a call. Dylan rolled her eyes when she caught their real estate agent, Angela, fawning. She was a slender woman with the proportion of a fashion model who only modeled in theory, never practice. With cropped hair and full lips. She’d been their families real estate agent for decades, found the house her mom had one in the divorce, but Dylan couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d slept with her dad while he was married to her mom, and for that she hated her.

The light dinged to signal they were at their floor, and the elevator doors slid open. When she bothered lifting them from a lengthy text she was typing to her beau, her eyes lit up like when her dad gifted her a patek for her eighteenth, or the G-Wagon that was still collecting dust in the garage for her sixteenth. Whatever the occasion was, she was aglow just like then. The floors were European oak, all the walls were white sans a charcoal accent wall that would be the space of her future desk, and yes, the ceilings were vaulted with windows to match. It was beyond.

“Daddy!” She squealed, running around the space and dreaming up renovation ideas. “This is the one. It’s, like, perfect.” Dylan ignored the real estate agent when she repeated the price tag. 1.2 million may have been a lot for some people, but some people weren’t his little girl and Angela should have known that by now. “Wait. I need to call Chanel!”‌ Dylan could bet she’d be calling Chanel the day Play got down on one knee ( What?‌ A girl could dream ) before she even said yes. She was greeted with a selfie when she unlocked her phone, tapping her chanel platform sneaker clad foot against the wood while the facetime call connected, “What do you think about staining the floor another color?” She asked before absolutely beaming when Chanel’s face appeared on the screen.

“I found it! I found the perfect space.”‌ Without another word, she flipped the camera and did a little dance when Chanel’s excitement nearly exceeded hers. She knew a squeal of absolute glee when she heard one, “I know! Ok, so Just imagine a chaise here, we can install some shelves here. Do you think we can get a Prosecco fountain?…” She walked her through the office like Angela had done moments before, moving out of earshot so her dad could handle business, while they discussed all the possibilities. “Today an office with a view, tomorrow Dylan Davenport’s Fashion Academy,” she beamed.

All her daddy had to do was sign on the dotted line, and she knew he would. He was, after all, her doer. He wouldn’t dare break that illusion…right? The journey from the bathroom back to the main area of the office space was a short one, and she was all smiles until she rounded the corner only for her dream to turn into a nightmare. Her face cracked along with the screen of her phone as it hit the ground and shattered, “DADDY!” She screamed. The sight of her dad and Angela kissing over paperwork causing her to gag instantly.

“Honey, let me explain…..”

There was nothing to explain. Horrible step parents was Jasper’s lane, not hers.

( Alexa, play Ring Off )

ANYTHING ELSE?

1985.

#accepted #submission

[amoralto]

MOJO: Paul McCartney – the MOJO interview. (May, 2003)

(Note: Finally, finally finished typing this up after @sweating-cobwebs requested the full interview what seems like ages ago. Quotes from this and the Yoko interview from the same issue - which I’ll probably type up in full later as well - can be found under the #2003 tag.)

-

In troubled times, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono remained undaunted and have found peace – with themselves and each other. Johnny Black met Macca in London.

by Johnny Black

When Sir Paul McCartney’s dark blue Mercedes drives into Docklands Arena and pulls up at the side of the stage, the 60-year-old man who climbs out looks sprightly, even jaunty. He throws his elegant grey jacket over one shoulder, as he proffers a broad smile to everyone he greets. There’s a ripple effect as he moves away from the vehicle, a small knot of his employees drifting along with him. Press officer, catering manager, sound man, security personnel… and they each have a little something they need him to do if and when he has a moment.

He appears to be taking it all on board, seems to placate them all, and by the time he pauses about 30 feet in front of the stage, the knot has dissolved and they’re all heading back to their appointed posts.

The figure briefly watches his mainly American band as they jam cheerfully around the distinctive chord progression of Walk Don’t Run by The Ventures, then joins them on the stage, immediately changing the mood as he leads them into Shakin’ All Over, the first truly great pre-Beatles British rock track. Given how much we seem to love speculating about McCartney’s motives, it would be easy to interpret this as a statement of intent – the British boss asserting his personality over his yankee staff – but it’s also undeniably a great track to warm-up on, and he seems to relish playing it. Up there on that stage, bashing away in front of an audience of less than 20 onlookers, he seems just as happy as he would be if he were basking in the approval of 20,000.

It’s March 14, 2003, and for the next few days the 12,000-capacity Arena – a far cry from the Liverpudlian sitting rooms where The Beatles first knocked their live sets together – is serving as McCartney’s rehearsal hall in the run up to a major European tour.

McCartney’s personal fortune was recently estimated at £620 million by People magazine. In the last year alone, he raked in £120m, of which £65m came from US tour receipts and album sales. But money, as he once famously pointed out, can’t buy love. And love, in the words of another Beatles’ classic, is all you need. In the enduringly poignant country music standard A Satisfied Mind, written in 1955 by Red Hayes and Jack Rhodes, such sentiments are explored more fully in the lines, “Money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old, or a friend when you’re lonely, or a heart that’s grown cold.”

Looked at in that light, just how wealthy is Paul McCartney? Here’s a man, adored by millions, disliked by millions, whose young life was shattered on October 31, 1956 when his mother, Mary, died of cancer in the Northern Hospital, Liverpool. The following year, he befriended John Lennon, only to re-live his own grief over again when Lennon’s mother, Julia, died in 1958.

With George Harrison and Ringo Starr, he and Lennon formed the most successful band the world has ever seen, then watched helplessly as it was destroyed by drugs and greed, turning their friendship to dust along the way. After years of acrimony, he and Lennon had just begun healing their wounds and rebuilding their friendship when Lennon was stolen away from him again by the bullets from Mark Chapman’s gun.

The other major relationship that had brought stability into McCartney’s life was his lasting marriage to Linda Eastman, but that was also taken from him too soon when she died from cancer in April 1998, aged just 56. And it was cancer again that claimed the life of George Harrison on November 29, 2001.

To what extent can £620m heal the scars left by those assaults on McCartney’s famously cheery – and oft derided – bonhomie? The answer, as any fule kno, is that it can’t. So what is it that keeps those legendary thumbs aloft? It has to be more than just the buzz of playing Shakin’ All Over with a band half your age.

When, after an hour and a half, the first rehearsal is over, MOJO is pulled into Macca’s wake by press officer Geoff Baker. At the end of a walk through bare and stark backstage corridors, we arrive at the inner sanctum, a dressing room converted into something not unlike a Persian boudoir, complete with velvet cushions, exotic drapes, dishes groaning with fresh fruit and the smell of incense perfuming the air.

Sitting opposite him across a low table, there’s very little feeling of being in the presence of greatness. He wears his celebrity comfortably – like a favourite old shirt. He is perfectly polite, knows how to put a stranger at ease with an amusing aside but, above all, the passage of the years has made him even more gentlemanly. In the flesh, his boyish demeanour compensates for the lines and wrinkles that have come with age. Look into his face at close quarters and what you see are his eyes, still twinkling. Somewhere behind that twinkle, however, there’s a mind like a steel trap. You don’t get to where McCartney has got without one.

What would be a typical day in your life, like when you’re not working?

I tend to be the one who gets up to make breakfast. You’d die for my breakfast. It’s my Zen thing. I cut up all these lovely exotic things, normally in this order: I cut up a melon, a papaya, some kiwis, bananas, peach, and I make a fruit plate and it looks a bit like a mandala when I’ve done it – there’s all sorts of reasons why but it just have developed into this. We’ll also have tea, bagels, humous – quite a big, fancy breakfast. Then it’s a walk in the park with the dog, or if I’m in the country it might be a horse ride.

Later in the day, I like going to the pictures. We’ve got a great local cinema… Normally I’ll go with Heather, but I went to see Lord Of The Rings on my own. Loved it, whacking great film.

You can go to the cinema without being hassled?

Yeah. I do everything without being hassled. It’s actually been one of my pleasures. I actually like getting on the Tube, getting on the bus. I’ll do it if I’m walking and I see a bus going my way, I’ll just jump on. I did it in the 60s. George’s dad was a bus driver and he could never believe I’d do that. People can’t believe it. I had a guy in the street the other day, he was really worried that I was out on my own with no security. I said, “Gerraway.” I’ve always done that. I used to sometimes walk to Beatles concerts, and you’d get a screaming mass of girls and I’d say, “Come on, girls, calm down.” I’d do the big brother thing. I’m very comfortable with that. If not a movie, we’ll watch TV or a DVD in the evening – I usually try to see Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Blind Date.

Most of us watch Millionaire because we’d like to be one, but that can’t be the appeal for you…

I want them to be millionaires. Actually Heather wants us to go on as a couple. It was funny because we met Chris Tarrant (the show’s presenter) the other night and Heather, in her keenness, said, “We should come on the Celebrity Millionaire show,” … which is for charity, so it’s a good thing… she said, “I know all the answers Paul doesn’t know and he knows all the ones I don’t know.” Chris said, “No, you shouldn’t come on. You’d be terrible.” He just completely took the piss, which was hilarious, because you’d expect him to be really keen.

Somewhere in the evening I’ll have a drink, and get to bed maybe about 11. Is that early? And then I’ll go to sleep and snore. Apparently I snore, but not a lot.

A brace of young women arrive bearing a tray laden with Paul’s lunch – chunky raisin scones, toast and a major pot of tea. Immediately he’s on his feet, exchanging pecks on the cheek, addressing them both by name, inquiring after their well-being. He points at the various delights on the tray to indicate that MOJO is welcome to partake.

Your band on this tour is noticeably young and energetic. How did you find them?

My keyboard player Wix has been with me for years, but I was going to make a record (Driving Rain) in America with David Kahne. He rang me about 10 days before the first session and said, “Do you think you might want to play live in the studio?” So I said, “Yeah, maybe.” So he said, “Should I get a couple of musicians in case you do?” I said, “OK, if you like.” I just left it very sort of casual.

So he thought about some people he admired. He’d never worked with Abe (Laboriel Jr, drummer) but he admired his work. He’d worked with Rusty (Anderson, guitarist). So he told me he’d got these people with great attitudes and who were great players and who could sing.

So I came in on the Monday morning, met the guys, and immediately started making the album, basically live. And that was it. Then, when we did the Superbowl, we needed one more guitarist for that so I asked David, “Do you know anybody?” And he said, “Yeah, this guy Brian Ray.” And he seemed to fit in great.

What do you think people expect from you when they come to a show?

I’m trying to keep a balance, proportionate, between Beatles stuff, Wings stuff and solo stuff. I don’t want it to just be a Beatles show, but I don’t mind giving an audience my most popular stuff. If I go to see David Gray, I’d like to hear him do Babylon because I like that song. And I’d be pretty disappointed if Coldplay didn’t do Yellow, you know?

We still have to rehearse to stay fresh, we’re making some changes to the screens and the lights (at these rehearsals), and I am adding a couple of songs to the set, so it’ll be a slightly longer show.

You were always the one in The Beatles who would turn up at a pub and sing songs. You did it during Magical Mystery Tour and you did it in 1968 on the way back from recording Thingumybob with the Black Dyke Mills Band.

I’d been up in Bradford with (Apple press officer) Derek Taylor, and we were just driving back to London, and we all got bored, someone wanted a pee, so we stopped in a little town called Harrold. And I think when we got to the pub it was shut but we got it to open up and we had a drink and there was a piano there so I sat down and played Let It Be.

Is that as much fun for you as playing in Earl’s Court or wherever?

Yeah. It is. It’s just a different kind of fun. I really do like it. If there’s a piano around it would be very difficult for me to just sit and watch it. It seems to me, in my naivety, that it’s something you approach and tinkle, to see if it’s in tune. It’s not a great desire to perform, I don’t think. I think it’s more that I like music, I like piano… but guitar is best.

Your first instrument was a trumpet. Was that something you wanted, or was it foisted on you by a well-meaning parent?

At the time, I think I must have sort of coveted a trumpet. My dad was a trumpet player and I did like it but when I realised I couldn’t sing and play the trumpet at the same time, I asked him and he said he didn’t mind me trading it in for a guitar. I thought he might be a bit insulted, but he didn’t mind.

The head of another aide pops round the door. It seems the BBC has arrived to show Paul a DVD of a commercial he’s done for the Corporation. Then there’s more rehearsal to be done but maybe we can reconvene later. Not for the first time, McCartney is ushered politely out of reach.

Docklands Arena, soon to be ripped down and replaced with more commercially viable properties, is virtually devoid of character. Fortunately, the stage show devised for this tour offers no end of distraction for the senses. As well as serried ranks of lights of very sort known to man, and some ear-splitting pyrotechnics in Live And Let Die, there are over 30 giant video screens forming a semi-circle around one humongous mother-screen which can be raised up and down as required on worryingly noisy pulleys.

“All our fuckin’ technology and it sounds like a building site,” wails the sound man. He’s consoled by a crew member who’s seen it all before – Gerry Stickells, the legendary Hendrix roadie tempted out of retirement for this tour at McCartney’s personal request.

When he returns to the Arena floor after watching the BBC DVD, he notices that the text on the mother-screen – via which audience members can text each other from their mobiles – is smaller than it used to be. He calls over the lighting director and suggest that “maybe… it might be better if… don’t you think?” Moments later, with the text size already increased, Macca is onstage running the band through the entire show – not that they seem to need it. The set runs almost faultlessly, synchronised with the lights and screens to such an extent that even the ‘Na Na Na’ audience participation section of Hey Jude is rehearsed in real time, with Paul exhorting the imaginary throng – “OK, just the ladies now… fantastic… now just the guys…”

He’s on-stage, performing with more energy than at any time since the heyday of The Beatles, for almost three hours in all, but he comes off at the end barely out breath, and we repair once more to the inner sanctum.

It’s interesting that you use the on-stage screens during Lady Madonna as a gallery of feminist icons…

They actually had Madonna among the visuals, but I thought that was too obvious. So they asked what I’d like to replace Madonna with and I said, “The Queen Mother.” This was two weeks before she died, so when we started touring ti looked like we’d put her in as a tribute.

I didn’t notice Yoko Ono either. Are you two still feuding?

I know that’s the public perception of it, but I do not have a bad relationship with her. We’re not enemies, me and Yoko. We send each other Christmas cards and everything. She’s more like a distant relative.

But you are tussling over the credits to the Lennon-McCartney songs…

There’s no tussle at all, but if, on my songs, like Hey Jude or Yesterday, which John openly acknowledged, particularly in the Playboy interview, that he had nothing whatsoever to do with… John actually made a list for the Playboy thing showing which songs were his and which were mine. I would be quite happy if, on one of the songs, it would be allowed, for my name to just come first. But I’m really not fussed. It’s not anywhere near as big an issue as it looks. It gets played up in the press. It’s a hot little story. And it makes me look stupid. “Why the fuck does he want that?” It’s actually just a very little request.

More importantly for me, it’s Trades Descriptions. It’s so complex and I hate to go on about it but, for example, I was reading a book, an anthology of poetry, and one of the poems in it was Blackbird, which is my lyric. And it said by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Now John had nothing to do with those words, especially once they’ve been extracted from the music and put into a poetry book. I think it’s fair enough to put Blackbird in a poetry book by Paul McCartney. Give Peace A Chance… take my name off it. It was a great, great anthem of John’s.

It’s sort of a mild request I made to Yoko and it’s sort of been turned down. If she’d have said yeah, the publishing company could probably have sorted it out.

Do you think it matters more to other people than it does to you?

I don’t think anyone gives a shit.

But Alistair Taylor, who worked for you at NEMS and Apple for many years, told me he was very upset that you would want to change the credits. He says it was agreed at an early meeting that it should be Lennon-McCartney, and you agreed to that…

Well, number one, Alistair was not in the meeting where I agreed it. It’s all very nice these guys having these opinions, but here’s what I say and this is the truth. There was a meeting with me, John and Brian, in Hilly House, above a carpet shop in Albemarle Street. We went in and they said, “We’re going to call it Lennon-McCartney.” I said, “Well, OK, fair enough, but it would be good to have it occasionally McCartney-Lennon, wouldn’t it, just for fairness for me?”

And they said, swear to God, hand on heart, but there was nobody else in the room and they’re both dead, so there’s no way of me proving this, except I believe it, I was there, and nobody else who talks about it was there, and they said, “We can change it as we go along. And we can change it any time we want out of fairness.”

This was why, many years later, when the Anthology came about, I and Linda, who had just been diagnosed with cancer, rang Yoko, and said, “Could we just, on Yesterday, could we just switch that one track?” That was the original request. It was just for that one song. And Linda, God bless her, spent quite a bit of time ringing Yoko and that was the start of it all.

And now, I must just be resigned, because it doesn’t really matter, except from the point of view of this Blackbird credit. There is an unfairness there, I think. But it’s an unfairness I’m willing to live with. I don’t mind, and I do think it has rebounded on me a bit because people want to know, “What the fuck does he think he’s doing?” I’ve had letters from people saying, “Paul, you’re doing yourself no favours. I was a big fan of yours but this terrible thing of trying to ruin John’s reputation…” I’m not trying to ruin John’s reputation.

When Yoko was interviewed by MOJO, she said it wasn’t all black during the making of the White Album. There was some lighter moments. Is that how you recall it?

That’s absolutely true, yeah. We’d never have got an album made if it was as black as it was painted. It’s a good album. I remember we presented John and Yoko with an inscribed teapot, and that was a fun time. Unfortunately, because The Beatles were splitting up, the only thing anybody wanted to know about was the split.

It wasn’t all black, even then. We were all pretty friendly, and the times when we weren’t friendly was quite a small proportion of the overall thing. Unfortunately, that’s what gets remembered because it was the most significant proportion because it ended up in a divorce, as it were. In a divorce court, you don’t say, “Oh, she was really great. She’s actually fabulous, and I’m sorry we’re getting a divorce.” That’s what happened to us. Because of the circumstances we had to talk about all the shit.

I think because the Beatles had been by and large a happy, successful thing… four lads getting out of Liverpool, getting out of the working class money trap and doing well… that had all been an up vibe and then with drugs and stuff towards the end of the ’60s it was all taking a bit of a dip. The drugs weren’t working, nobody was giggling anyore, and the word ‘heavy’ came into the vocabulary.

Because all of that was going on it did get nasty. The thing with me having to sue the other guys. I wanted to sue Allen Klein but I couldn’t, so the only way to get out of everything for me and them was for me to sue them, and that was unconscionable, that was something I would never have thought of doing.

It was unfortunate because, in suing the other guys, not only did I get their backs up for a number of years, but the public perception was of me being the guy who sued The Beatles. I held off doing it for months, but it was pointed out to me that the only other option was to go with Klein. So I did it but, luckily, all things must pass, and it did pass. In the end, the others were glad I’d done it. There wouldn’t be Apple now. But it was a very ugly period, and ugly things I had to do to make it work.

You still seem very interested in politics, supporting the campaign to get ride of landmines. But the Wings single, Give Ireland Back To The Irish, was a very direct political statement.

See, I thought we were Irish. So it was a home problem for me… McCartney… Liverpool being the capital of Ireland… it was like a very personal take on it. What if there were Irish soldiers on the streets of Hendon or Speke? Would you like it? That was my take on it.

As evening falls over Docklands, McCartney is whisked off home to dinner with Heather, leaving a promise that if MOJO returns on Monday, a little more interview time will somehow be squeezed into a hectic day. Over the intervening weekend, his Radio 2 commercial, a radically reworked version of Band On The Run, begins airing, along with a short TV film about its making.

When we reconvene at the Arena on Monday morning, the ambience has changed. A troupe of dancers – including a young woman bent on squeezing herself into a tiny Perspex box – is rehearsing backstage; two insurance brokers have arrived to check out the pyrotechnics; the MOJO photography crew, rpomised first access to Macca, is anxious; and there’s an entirely new set to be rehearsed.

As before, Macca opts to take to the stage first. A guitar tech hands him a jumbo acoustic and they lanunch into For No One, followed by Things We Said Today, C-Moon, Honey Don’t… this is the Coliseum set. The band is still unfamiliar with several of the tracks so Macca strums through I’ve Just Seen A Face yelling out the chords as he proceeds. As Geoff Baker strolls past, MOJO inquires whether McCartney will perform Mull of Kintyre when the tour hits Glasgow. “Absoutely not,” says Baker. “We’re frantically seaching for a pipe band at this very moment for an entirely different reason.”

Up on the stage, McCartney says, “OK lads, let’s try Cor Blimey Luv!” and they thunder into Can’t Buy Me Love. Come lunchtime, he is unexpectedly taken off for a meeting in central London, but promises MOJO a swift return.

Two hours later, precisely as predicted, McCartney reappears.

A couple of the post-Beatles songs like Coming Up and Let Me Roll It seems to me to be much more powerful than the originals. Is this how you really intended them to be in the first place?

No. It’s an evolution caused by playing with this band. The parts are already there. What I like about this band is that I don’t really have to tell them. What I’ve done on this whole tour, this band, this new thing, is I’ve let everyone be, let them do their thing, and then if I don’t like it, I’ve reined it in a bit.

Rather than me dictating how to play it, I figure my dictatorial moments have happened – I wrote those songs and I did the original records, so now I don’t feel the band has to stick note-for-note to the original arrangements. It’s also a bit of a louder band than I’ve had before, a bigger sound, so that adds to it.

I know that Rusty is working on his own CD at the moment, but there’s presumably no chance in this band of the other members being allowed to contribute their own songs on the set?

I’ve had to take on the role of boss ever since Wings. It wasn’t like The Beatles any more. Denny Laine, for example, had the reputation of having done Go Now, so you might want to do that, but really the promoters and the audience tended to want to hear my stuff.

At your level of success, you’re effectively the head of a small company. How do you know whether the people are saying that what you do is great because it is great, or just because you’re the boss?

It’s almost impossible, but I think I’ve been at it long enough now to suss… I actually see people telling me, “That’s a great idea!” but I prefer people to speak their minds. So in this kind of team, they’re not just sycophants. They’re more likely to be people who’ll say, “Yeah, that’s a good idea but what if we did this?” And I’ll go, “Wow! Shit! That’s a great idea.”

Do you take to the role of boss easily?

I used to be frightened of it when I was younger because I thought, “We all hate bosses, don’t we?” But I had to get over it because with Apple, we suddenly had this company losing a lot of money we’d earned so I then had to actually tell people what to do – I’m talking about secretaries and staff, The Beatles was still a democratic thing, but we all became bosses then.

That was a strange moment for you, when you had to take over the business side as well as the creative…

We all had to do it, and that had all its famous problems associated with it. After that I had to decide how I would do it in my solo career, which is when I put MPL together. Very small beginnings, one little room in some film production offices, and at that point I really did become the boss. I had a secretary and everything, and then that thing grew, so yeah, I’ve got more and more comfortable with it. I don’t think I’m a very hard boss, but I kick ass when things go wrong.

Do you think your continued success over 40 years – which seems to include a fair number of younger fans – is a bit odd? It’s as if, in the ’60s, Al Jolson or Rudy Vallée had still been pulling in huge crowds.

I think our thing was stuff that goes for all generations. I’m singing things now that I wrote years ago and thinking, “Shit, that’s still appropriate.” Doing Calico Skies, for example, talking about “crazy soldiers, weapons of war”… and look at what’s going on around us right now.

I certainly don’t think it’s any reflection of the state of contemporary music. I think music right now is really great. I’m not an expert, because I’m not a kid buying it, but I always check out people who are said to be good. I’ll see somebody getting a Grammy and I don’t know them, so I’ll check that out.

For instance, I’d heard Eminem on the radio and I thought, “Clever. Good lyrics, good ideas.” So I just went to see 8 Mile and it’s a great little rock ’n’ roll film, like an Elvis film. I enjoyed it and I came out like when I was a kid, that feelgood thing coming out of a movie like you’re walking a bit taller.

What are the eternal verities of a great song?

It’s an indefinable magic chemistry which can come many, many ways. Starting at the top… it’s often a great title. It’s often great words, or great melodies, or great chords or a great sound… but the best ones have got them all.

And there’s always a magic moment. Send In The Clowns, for example, has that line about, “Isn’t it queer… oh, they’re here.” Or in The Drugs Don’t Work. I remember hearing that record, the acoustic coming on, but when he hits that line, it’s like, “Fucking hell, that has to be said.” It hadn’t been said before.

If I had to plump for one single element, it would be melody, because not all songs have got words. I can be moved by a great melody on its own.

Many artists adopt personas. Is that what happened with The Beatles?

We didn’t think that was what we were about. We felt more like a little group of students. It was more an art thing we thought we were doing. We were just (adopts exaggerated Liverpool accent) John, Paul, George and Ringo, you know? I think one of the great things about The Beatles, apart from the fact that we were damn good, was that we were very honest – that could be one of the things that has lasted. Also, we were artists. Our artistic development found a home in people’s hearts and they were able to follow it. Yellow Submarine is a kid’s thing; A Day In The Life is more grown up, so it was an interesting body of work.

It’s also a body of work that has haunted him ever since. Despite multi-platinum hits and a wealth of superlative tracks in his post-Beatles output, Lennon-McCartney remains the standard by which all contemporary songwriters, including him, are judged. John’s untimely death put him on a pedestal, moving him effectively beyond criticism, while McCartney got on with the job of living in the shadow of their unwieldy legacy. It must have been galling, for example, to release his acclaimed solo album Flaming Pie in 1997, while knowing full well that it would never match the sales of, or reap the critical plaudits heaped on The Beatles’ Anthology, a compilation of outtakes, backing tracks and rarities, which had been released two years earlier.

Nor did his renaissance man dabblings in classical composition, poetry and painting do much to revive public interest. But then, on June 11, 2002, Sir Paul McCartney married his ex-model girlfriend Heather Mills, in St Salvator’s Church, Castle Leslie, Glaslough, Ireland. Since then, although things haven’t gone exactly smoothly, it seems as if his life is more firmly back on track.

This is a man who obviously likes to be married, enjoys stability and finds pleasure in domesticity’s little routines, presumably to balance the whirlwind of activity that follows every move he makes outside of his front door. Watching him deliever the line, “Oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go” on the stage at Docklands, it suddenly seemed to rank among his most heartfelt.

Following the muted response from critics and public alike to his Driving Rain album of 2001, he makes no attempt to hide the fact that he’s revelling in the acclaim for and success of this tour in America, which has outstripped all expectations. For this 60-year-old knight of the realm to be the biggest-grossing US live act of 2002 – seeing off not just arch-rivals The Rolling Stones but also the young bucks – is clearly a source of immense personal satisfaction.

But who is he really? Bastion of the establishment? Rock idol? Contented hubby? Multi-talented renaissance man? Avant-garde pop genius? All of the aforementioned and more? Or just an old dopehead with a good head for a nice tune?

Over the years, you’ve been busted for marijuana in Scotland, England, Barbados, Japan, Scandinavia… you could probably get in the Guinness Book Of Records for being busted in most countries. Did anybody mention this in the process of making you a Sir?

No, nobody comes and says anything like that. You can be a terrible person and still be a Sir. It must be that way, because they gave it to me. The worst thing about being busted is that you go on computer records. So every time I go to America, they see my name on the database and they know I’ve been busted a lot, but I think they’ve sort of forgiven me. It’s like, “That was his wild youth but he’s all right now.” So they always let me through, but the drug busts, I have had to go and sit with the aliens in Customs, once or twice. It’s a bit embarrasing. That stuff never comes off your records.

What’s the most useful thing about being a Sir?

I can’t think of many useful things about it. George Martin says it gets you a good table in a restaurant, but I get a good table anyway. I ring up and ask for a table for 8.30 and if they say, “Sorry, there’s no tables left,” I will say, “This is Paul McCartney here.” Then you hear a bit of scuffling and suddenly a table becomes free. I don’t actually like doing that, but I will if I’m desperate. But I never say, “This is Sir Paul McCartney.” I never call myself that. I see it as being like a school prize. You don’t really go for it, but get it because of what you are. Like the art prize or the maths prize. It’s nice to get it because it’s an honour, a recognition of what you’ve done, but it doesn’t do you much good. For me, the best thing about getting it was that it was popular. A lot of people said, “Oh yes, he deserved that.” That was important to me.

How about Sir Mick Jagger?

Who cares? I think it’s cool. I don’t think it makes you anything. I think you are ‘it’ already and it’s a prize for being that thing. And Mick is Mick so that’s fine. I can think of people who should get them… like Eric Clapton. He’s a prime candidate. Sir Eric Clapton has a ring to it.

At your level of success, you’re effectively a company. How many people do you employ all told?

Normally, we carry about 140. When you’re in school or college, you’re a scruffy little bastard writing essays all the time, hoping one day that you’ll be a lawyer, a judge, a journalist, rocker, head of a company, your dreams are all there and I’ve actually got my visualisation. I feel very lucjy. I’m really aware that it’s not just me… I’ve had a phenomenal amount of luck.

Heather said, a few months back, that marrying you had brought her a lot of unhappiness. How do you, as a couple, cope with that?

I’d like to help her with it, and I hate to say this, but it’s more how does she deal with it, you know? I think the shock for Heather was that she’d been “Great model who overcomes accident and now she does a lot of work for charity and disabled people.” The minute she married me, it was, “Who does she think she is?” It’s really quite unfair, but she’s a sitting target. I think it did give her a lot of grief. The most grief, the worst thing about it, was that it actually affected the charities she was working for. People actually stopped donating because of what they read in the newspapers, which was largely untrue. They did a lot of silly things. There was a photo of Heather and I at Stella’s fashion show, and it looked like Heather was doing two peace signs with her fingers and some journalist said, “Oh, she’s copying Linda.” And actually, on closer inspection, it was my hands. But who cares? They’re just having a go. I mean, who gives a shit who gives a V sign?

They also claimed she was doing a cookbook when she wasn’t. We get asked to give a recipe to an Amnesty cookbook or a vegetarian society cookbook, so you do that and it comes out as she’s doing a cookbook. It’s changed a bit since the Parky show. A lot of people like that show, and she changed a lot of people’s minds. In fact, we were walking the dog in Regent’s Park this morning and somebody came up and said, “That was really good on the Parky show!” The main point she made that people appreciated was that with this sort of arbitrary press sniping, it doesn’t affect her so much as it affects the charity, and the disabled people who might have got a leg if there’d been the money raised.

Somebody in one of the papers even said she was under investigation for her charity work, and that completely undermines what she’s trying to achieve. It turned out not to be true but, as you know, the apology appears on page 10 where no one sees it three weeks after all the damage has been done. The same thing happened in the early days with Linda but, as Parky said on the show, it comes with the territory – marrying this guy. It’s not so much me, though, it’s just fame. The same thing happens if you marry Tom Cruise, or Michael Douglas. You get a load of shit. You may have married him because you love him, but now you’re a sitting target.

I noticed that George’s death elicited a very different reaction among my friends than John’s did. John’s was horrible because it was sudden and unexpected and he was young. But I think George’s death reminded my entire generation of our own mortality. It’s as if we measure our own lives alongside the lives of artists we loved. Did you get any sense of that?

To me, of course, it was more of a personal thing. Privately, I felt the same way about both of them. I had lost a dear friend who I would never see again. But when John died, because of the shock, during that day I was asked what I felt about John’s death and all I could stumble across was, “It’s a drag.” I couldn’t gather my thoughts. We were just in shock. I was just shouting stuff about the guy who’d shot John.

I was very lucky that my relationship with John had been healed. It had been vicious, but were phoning each other, talking about kids, baking bread, cats, being a husband – all the simple shit that really means a lot to me. That was the consolation before the terrible shock.

With George’s death, because we knew it was happening, I was able to be more considered in my reaction. I was able to go and hold his hand… but the bottom line is that I will see that man no more, and that’s a little bit horrific for me. When you lose someone dear you just wish someone could magic it all back again. And maybe there is some way, who knows, in the great beyond.

After all he’s been through, McCartney seems more at peace with himself than at any time since John’s death. He is keenly aware that, in the public perception, such actions as seeking to change the credits on Lennon-McCartney songs have tarnished his image, but he also knows that one of the greatest tricks of surviving immense fame is learning to recognise that you have an image, realising that your image isn’t you, and stepping away from it in order to get on with real life.

The punchline of that old song, A Satisfied Mind, is that, “It’s so hard to find one rich man in 10 with a satisfied mind.” There’s no telling how long it might last but it would seem that, for the moment, Paul McCartney is that one rich man.

Coming Up

While suffering a near-nervous breakdown during the Fabs’ prolonged disintegration, McCartney quietly worked on an ill-fated side-project that many now agree ranks among his best solo work. Chris Ingham basks in the understated glory of 1970’s McCartney.

Autumn of 1969, Paul McCartney was in a strange place. Feeling redundant following John Lennon’s announcement in an August meeting at Apple that he was leaving The Beatles, McCartney retreated to his farm in Scotland to drink, stay up, lie in and suffer what he would call “almost a nervous breakdown”.

At the same time, in the company of Linda, his bride of six months, step-daughter Heather and brand new baby daughter Mary, he also began to enjoy the ‘glow’ of being in a new family. By the time they returned to his St John’s Wood house for the winter, McCartney was sufficiently energised to do a little work from home. Plugging one microphone directly into a Studer multitrack with no VU monitoring or mixing desk, he overdubbed himself on drums, guitar, bass and keyboards, polishing his DIY recordings at Abbey Road (where he booked in as Billy Martin) and Morgan Studios, Willesden.

The resulting album McCartney – released in April 1970 simultaneously as The Beatles’ split became public knowledge – was almost universally received as a bit of a non-event. Modest, rough-hewn, semi-improvised, it was the unshaven opposite of The Beatles’ pristine work on Abbey Road which had appeared only eight months before.

Yet, over 30 years on, it holds up as a funky home-brew of a record, groovily lo-fi in a way that wouldn’t be fashionable for a couple of decades. The primitive experimentalism and bluesy jams that were for years dismissed as semi-distracted indulgence now sound, well, rather cool. The drumming is rudimentary but deep, the guitar playing bluesy and distinctive (and much admired by Paul Weller for one), the sound is warm and present, “very analogue” as McCartney recognises now.

And as an expression of where he was at – ‘home, family, love’ – it is as vivid as anything he ever did. The informal paeans to his new wife – The Lovely Linda, Oo You – are respectively radiant with natural affection and earthy passion while the majestic Maybe I’m Amazed confirmed that, when he felt like it, his ability to shape inspiration with unmatched pop craft was secure.

Elsewhere, if lovers of McCartney’s straightforward pop are short-changed – the delightful Every Night and Junk notwithstanding – it’s because he just felt like recording other things; the ethereal sound made by wine glasses (Glasses), a dusted-off Silver Beatles instrumental (Hot As Sun), or a rather compelling chant-and-percussion sound painting of an African tribe (Kreen-Akrore). It’s the very wilfulness of McCartney – the organic sound of an artist learning how to express himself in whatever way he pleases – that gives the album a “realness” that somehow appeals more with the passage of time.

As Paul wrote in 1970 to journalist Penny Valentine, who had spoken for many by expressing her disappointment with the record, “even at this moment it is growing on you.” It still is.

Timeless melody

A purveyor of silly songs? No, a compositional genius…

Peter Buck, R.E.M.: Ram is an amazing record. Ram On? That’s like something off Pet Sounds. The Back Seat Of My Car is amazing. Wings’ Wild Life is really cool. It just sounds like he was in the biggest band of all time, he goes, “Hey we just got a drummer, let’s make a record this week, without any songs!” Dear Friend is one of my favourite songs he ever wrote, which is probably about John. I love that song. I actually recorded it with the Minus 5. Needless to say, the stuff he did with The Beatles was pretty decent too. The thing that boggles my mind is that when they broke up, nobody was 30, and George was 26. He was 26?! Jeez.

Brendan Benson: It’s his genuine fascination for music and music theory, him as a composer, explorer and experimenter, especially his post-Beatles work. He’s a great arranger, the way he puts his songs together. Band On The Run is his masterpiece. It works on so many different level: it’s a simple pop record, yet the way he ties in the melodies throughout makes it something more. It’s a work of genius, so huge and epic yet never outstaying its welcome. He tears at the heartstrings with his mix of mellow, dark and pleasing sounds. There’s never anything harsh or abrasive, just super moody songs, full of melancholic nostalgia.

Andy Partridge, XTC: He’s so fab because he’s so ludicrously melodic and he’s not afraid to be soppy. It takes a lot of guts to do that. My favourite song? It’s Getting Better is so fantastically optimistic, with this great convoluted construction, twisting around. And that bass playing –it’s actually just like his singing, piping and flute-like. And Hello/Goodbye, those opening chords reach in like a ray of sunshine. Again, it’s ferociously optimistic. You know you’re going to have a good experience. It’s not this fake seriousness you get now. He’s never had a problem restricting himself to one thing – he can rock out, be avant-garde, do children’s music, pop for the teens… it’s preposterous that he’s seen as the second-best Beatle – I think the whole thing was an equally jewelled tug of love between them. Although I do wonder why you never see McCartney and Angela Lansbury in the same room.

Gladys Knight: For me it was when Paul took control of the group that The Beatles were at their best. He’s so gifted at writing words and I always choose songs for their lyrical content. I must have worn the grooves off Let It Be. I’d get up in the morning playing it, go to bed playing it, cook to it, clean up to it. The title track was just a song that touched my spirit and that’s why I decided to cover it, because it touched my soul.

Tom McRae: The man is a genius for melody. The second side of Abbey Road – particularly Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight is one of the greatest Beatles’ moments and Paul’s shining moment. It goes from this brilliant beautiful ballad, his voice so lush and romantic, to turning, in a split second, into a raucous rock number; the best of both sides of his art all in the space of one song. It’s so emotive and there’s a challenging simplicity in his melody and lyrics.

Ben Kweller: The first album I ever fell in love with was Let It Be. I was eight and listened to it non-stop. Paul’s lyrics are so focused on the subject matter and the emotion he brings to the songs is so sincere and honest. Those massive piano ballads like The Long And Winding Road just make me swell up inside. His voice is so pure and beautiful and his musicianship is often overlooked. He reinvented bass playing and excelled at the guitar, piano and drums.

#2003 #interviewed: paul #interviewer: johnny black #paul mccartney #full article placeholder tag

[deniscollins]

Passengers Are Stranded as Another European Airline Collapses

On Monday night, after 14 years of operations, Primera Air, a low-cost airline, failed to get an agreement for a short-term loan from its bank and was unable to fund operations, which consists of 15 airplanes, any more. If you were an Primera executive, what would you do regarding the hundreds of ticket holders who show up at various airports on Tuesday morning: (1) inform passengers but not staff airline desks and let them rearrange their trips; (2) staff the desk and help them rearrange their trips? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

Primera Air, a small low-cost airline that spent the last year expanding its reach from northern Europe to hubs in North America, filed for bankruptcy and ceased flying on Monday night, leaving passengers stranded at airports on both sides of the Atlantic.

The airline had been jostling for a toehold in the crowded European market, where consolidation and the fierce battle for customers have led to the collapse of several airlines in recent years, including Air Berlin, Alitalia and Monarch in Britain.

But Primera’s finances started to erode as it continued to offer new routes while contending with higher fuel costs, delayed airplane deliveries and issues like corrosion on its aircraft.

On Monday night, after 14 years of operations, the company said it had failed to get an agreement for a short-term loan from its bank.

“Without additional financing, we do not see any possibility to continue our operations,” Primera’s board said in a statement.

The abrupt end left many hundreds of passengers stranded at airports. At Dulles International Airport outside Washington, Pavithra Selvakumar, a 24-year-old student, was stuck trying to get back to Britain after her Primera flight was canceled.

There was no staff at the airline’s desk, she said Tuesday, and she was among 30 to 40 people trying to sort out their journeys. Some of them canceled their vacations.

“I could see a girl crying here, there were old people, people with kids,” Ms. Selvakumar said. She was waiting to see if her family and friends might be able to transfer her some money for another flight.

At Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, flights for about 370 Primera passengers were canceled, officials said. One of them, Eric Jetner, a 33-year-old singer and actor who had a ticket for a Monday night flight to Newark, said what was going on was unclear to even the staff at the desks.

“The front desk attendants said they were trying to call the president of the company and nobody was answering the call,” Mr. Jetner said. Later, a letter was handed out explaining that the company had ceased operations, but there were not enough copies for everyone.

“We had to take a picture of it,” he added.

At London’s Stansted Airport, 400 travelers were affected.

Primera had been growing at a furious pace. Over the last year, it regularly announced new flights from different airports in Europe, like Stansted, to airports in the United States and Canada. It tried to attract customers with trans-Atlantic fares as low as 149 pounds, or about $193, and flew narrow-body planes, like Boeing 737s. These aircraft were also used for shorter flights in Europe, keeping costs low.

Still, the fleet was small. The company, based in Latvia and Denmark, had only 15 aircraft, according to its website, and one of the planes had problems with corrosion. One tangled with a Ryanair aircraft on a runway in May. And a delay in the delivery of planes from Airbus this year forced the company to cancel routes from Birmingham, England, to New York and Toronto.

Despite low prices and new trans-Atlantic routes, the company could not grow fast enough to outpace rising oil prices, said Andrew Charlton, managing director of Aviation Advocacy, a consultancy. All low-cost airlines “have to live on the edge of their cash flow to get big enough to get the scale to be successful,” Mr. Charlton said.

As the summer holiday period came to a close and bills started to pile up, the company decided to fold.

Other European airlines have done the same in recent weeks. The Swiss airline Skyworks filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of September, while VLM, a Belgian airline, went into liquidation in August. Small Planet Airlines Germany, which tried to take the part of the market once occupied by Air Berlin before it went bankrupt last year, started restructuring in September.

And other low-cost airlines could follow as they also struggle with the narrow margins, Mr. Charlton said. “Even if you take two or three routes from them, that will tip the balance,” he explained.

#Airlines

[wfdwqfw]

Hollered yeah so much is so much you can do and you know

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[newyorkroleplay-archive]

ALESSANDRA  LACROIX --

Birthdate: September 1st, 1989 ( 28 ) Gender and Pronouns: Female, she/her Hometown: New York, New York Neighborhood: Upper West Side, Manhattan Occupation: Owner of Soirée Faceclaim: Phoebe Tonkin Trigger Warnings: Amnesia, Car Crash, Coma, Death of a Sibling.

BIOGRAPHY --

As a little girl Alessandra Renee Lacroix was the type of daughter that parents bragged about. With big hazel eyes, manners that only a proper politicians daughter could be equipped with, and a contagious smile she was not only the apple of her parents’ eyes but anyone who was lucky enough to cross her path. The only Lacroix daughter had a way of wrapping people around her tiny pinky finger. Not that she ever noticed or cared for that fact much. No the only thing that mattered to young Alessia was making friends. Even at a young age her biggest hobby came in the form of collecting people the way one would collect coins.  And with two siblings who were often preoccupied with things Alessia held no interest for, people were often the way she chose to entertain herself because unfortunately barbie dolls and princess puzzles could only interest the little girl for so long before she went wandering around the manor. From the time she could understand others and talk Scar was making friends. First it was the workers that worked within her family’ home. Constantly chattering with the maids and other help. Then it was her father’s visitors, charming them in the parlor with her cute stories before she gradually moved up towards her mother’s far more sophisticated friends.    

But often times Alessia just watched people. Their mannerisms, the things that made them laugh or made them angry, and most importantly their secrets. Because as she learned early on, it was easier to make people like you when you knew exactly what strings to pull. Everyone she met, from maid to politician to socialite was as interesting as the other. And when she was eventually brought back into her room to play with her dollies she’d pull inspiration from the stolen interactions or glances at the people in her very own home. A talent that Isabelle Lacroix found far from charming as she watched her daughter perform “plays” with exact quotes from things she hadn’t even realized the little girl had been around for. Worried that her daughter’s knack for sticking her nose in places it didn’t belong would get her in trouble the woman enrolled the then four and a half year old into her first ballet class. Immediately it became apparent to both Alessia’s teacher and her parents that the young girl had a natural talent for the dance, a trait she likely had inherited from her world renowned retired prima ballerina grandmother Josephine Lacroix. Prancing around in tutus with some of her best friends in the world had been fun at first. She found joy and excitement in being able to master a new piece of choreography and perform it for not only her instructor and parents but her friends at school. Somewhere along the way however the fun hobby stopped being seen as a hobby to the adults in her life. The moment Josephine Lacroix had taken over for Alessia’s dance lessons everything changed. Suddenly the eight year old was being signed up for competitions and recitals. When she won or performed well, she’d be praised for weeks. When she lost or performed poorly, she’d be reprimanded for months.    

Her grandmother was determined to make a prodigy out of her granddaughter and the more the woman pushed the harder out of love Alessia fell for dancing. She no longer had fun learning new moves or performing them but despite her admitting as such to her parents, she was pushed onward because in the Lacroix family talent of any kind wasn’t meant to be wasted. By the time Alessia reached middle school she’d built up too many years of resentment not to rebel. As graceful with her words as she was with her legs she quickly climbed her way to the top of her food chain at her prep school. Happily accepting the attention and limelight while her siblings took a far more humble road. Yet even then, with her unnecessary need to be doted on, Alessia had been kind, giving back the attention given to her tenfold because if anything still remained true about her, it was her genuine love for people. By sophomore year she was already friends with every soul in the class with intentions to quickly work her way through the faculty and staff. Anyone was worthy of her friendship and like the true daughter of a politician, she did everything possible to keep from having any enemies. And it was something that reigned true about the girl until about halfway through her junior year when her beloved older brother Jasper Lacroix died at the age of twenty-one after being involved in a fatal car crash.    

Out of all mentor figures in her life Jasper was the one Alessia felt the closest to; seeing as her eldest brother was the shield that protected the rest of the Lacroix children from the brute of their family’s unobtainable expectations. He’d also taken it upon himself to integrate into the life of his siblings. Finding ways to not only watch over them but bond with them as well. With parents who were often too busy to take her to every dance practice, it quickly became a number one task for Jasper and every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 4 o’clock sharp he’d be at the door waiting to do the thirty-minute drive to and from her lessons. Even going above and beyond by staying through the whole practice to watch and cheer her own through the glass doors. Alessia hadn’t simply lost a sibling but an ally and her closest friend. A sentiment her grandmother clearly hadn’t understood because as sixteen year old Alessia openly wept for her brother at his funeral, she was met with an angry matriarch pulling her aside and telling her to man up, “Your brother, god bless his soul, babied you and made you soft but Alessandra Renee Lacroix, I will do no such thing. You will stop crying and you will stop it right now. Strong women do not cry, they do and when there is nothing to do, they accept. He is gone, accept it and move on.”    

In hindsight, her grandmother likely hadn’t meant to be so harsh. It was very possibly that she herself was trying to appear strong and put together for her family and having to hear her granddaughter wailing was doing very little to help her keep it together and she just cracked. There are a lot of possibilities, but the results were the same nonetheless and Alessia was never the same again after that discussion. Strong women do not cry. Your brother made you soft. Words that haunted the girl amidst her grief until she decided to take her grandmother’s advice. Strong women didn’t cry, they do. And she did. For the next year and half Alessia Lacroix transformed herself into the model of a horrible daughter and granddaughter. Doubling down on her partying, plumbing her grade point average, she even started skipping her ballet practices and recitals. Josephine Lacroix couldn’t have been more livid that she had seemingly lost all control of her prodigy. The more Alessia rebelled, the more of a lost cast Josephine regarded her as. And in some ways that’d been true, but not entirely.    

Alessia’s madness came with a method. Breaking all the rules her family had ever set for her had been the only way she saw fit to get what she truly wanted, freedom. By the end of senior year her father and grandmother had given up entirely on the idea of reigning her in and Scarlett was left to do as she pleased as long as she kept the family name out of the tabloids for unbecoming reasons. A promise Scarlett had no problem keeping as she boarded a flight to her first out of many European countries. It wasn’t long before Europe wasn’t enough for her and Scarlett began to travel the rest of the world. South Africa. Japan. Bali. Mumba. Morocco. South Korea. Moscow. Stockholm. Amsterdam. And so much more. The decision to start an Instagram account two years after she began travelling had been one made on a whim but it didn’t take New York native long to gain a following. Her account caught the eye of some scouts as well which started her very short lived modeling career. Six months after signing with her first agency Alessia quickly realized that despite her mother having been able to make a career out of it, the world of modeling wasn’t for her. Though that hardly meant her popular Instagram account was done opening doors for her. The first time Alessia planned an event it had been a birthday vacation with her friends. She booked the tickets, tracked down the best hotel, and mapped out their entire Italian summer adventure without so much as batting an eyelash. That soon led to her planning things other than fabulous vacations. Birthday parties. Networking events. Bridal showers. Engagement parties. Etc.

Before Alessia knew it she’d become the go-to girl for Instagramable events of all kinds. Pretty soon the demand surpassed the supply and she found herself flying back to Manhattan to think about turning her accidental hobby into a business. Having forgone college and generally hating anything that meant dealing with numbers Alessia found herself a business partner who could handle the paperwork aspect of starting a business while she focused on the creative end. Within a span of a few months Soirée was a reality and in just five years it became one of the most successful and highly sought after event planning companies in New York. With Alessia’s clientele spanning from close friends to those who found the company though one of their many social media accounts. With her career skyrocketing the last thing Alessia expected was for her love life to fall into place as well, after all woman couldn’t have it all. That’s what she’d always been told but Steve Vicari was everything she hadn’t know she was looking for. 

He wasn’t like the egotistical spoiled rich boys of her past. He didn’t play games. And everything about him dripped in a genuineness that was rare in the world she came from. Cupid’s arrow had hit and Alessia was in love. Three years after meeting they were engaged and happily ever after seemed to be just around the corner when their wedding day approached. The last thing on her mind that day had been running away but after her father entered her dressing room only moments before she was due to walk down the aisle to proclaim his disapproval of who she was choosing to marry, things went downhill. When Alessia refused to allow her father’s negative words about her “lower-class lover” to effect her, he threatened to expose something dark from her fiancee’s past if she decided to ignore his wishes and marry the man anyway. Feeling as if she had no choice Alessia barely made it five steps down the aisle before turning in the option direction and running to the car ironically married just married to make her get away. She pulled away from the hotel and then was met with utter blackness after a truck collided with the sports car. Two months later Alessia Lacroix awoke from a coma with no memory beyond her sixteenth birthday. 

PERSONALITY --

( + ) ambitious, charismatic, loyal. ( - ) neurotic, rebellious, stubborn.

#all #female #phoebe tonkin #alessandra lacroix #manhattan

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Global surveillance (Washington Post) Military-grade spyware licensed by an Israeli firm to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners. The phones appeared on a list of more than 50,000 numbers that are concentrated in countries known to surveil their citizens and to have been clients of the Israeli firm, NSO Group, a worldwide leader in the growing and largely unregulated private spyware industry, the investigation found. The list does not identify who put the numbers on it or how many of the phones were targeted or surveilled. Reporters were able to identify more than 1,000 people on the list spanning more than 50 countries: several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials. The software, called Pegasus, is marketed as a counterterrorism tool, but appears to have abused by some governments—those in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates in particular.

Huge Oregon blaze grows (AP) The largest wildfire in the U.S. torched more dry forest landscape in Oregon on Sunday, one of dozens of major blazes burning across the West as critically dangerous fire weather loomed in the coming days. The destructive Bootleg Fire just north of the California border grew to more than 476 square miles (1,210 square kilometers), an area about the size of Los Angeles. Erratic winds fed the blaze, creating dangerous conditions for firefighters, said John Flannigan, an operations section chief on the 2,000-person force battling the flames. Authorities expanded evacuations that now affect some 2,000 residents of a largely rural area of lakes and wildlife refuges. The blaze, which was 22% contained, has burned at least 67 homes and 100 outbuildings while threatening thousands more.

Haiti’s acting prime minister says he will step down (Washington Post) Claude Joseph, who has nominally led Haiti as acting prime minister since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, has agreed to step down and hand over power to challenger Ariel Henry, who has been backed by the international community. The agreement ends a power struggle between two men appointed by Moïse who had been courting support internationally and domestically for their rival claims as Haiti’s interim leader. It’s aimed at defusing a political crisis that has left the troubled Caribbean nation rudderless since the July 7 assassination. Civil society leaders, meanwhile, decried what they say has been U.S. and other foreign interference in propping up an interim leader whom none of them support. Critics say both men were too closely associated with Moïse, who they say was linked to violent street gangs and growing increasingly authoritarian.

Pingdemic in England (Washington Post) Employers in Britain are raising fears that a “pingdemic” could cause a major economic disruption this summer, after more than half a million people in a single week were pinged by the government’s contact-tracing app, alerting them they may have been exposed to the coronavirus and should stay home for up to 10 days. Already, factories, pubs, restaurants and schools are reporting staff shortages resulting from quarantine guidance, which in England and Wales, for at least another month, still applies to people who are fully vaccinated. At a Nissan factory in northern England, the largest car factory in the country, up to 900 employees—15 percent of the workforce—are quarantining after exposure or isolating after a positive test, according to the BBC. Rolls-Royce has said it won’t rule out having to shut down production. In the hospitality sector, which was already struggling with vacancies, 1 in 5 workers are reportedly quarantining or isolating. There were scenes of chaos this week at Heathrow Airport, as long queues of passengers overwhelmed the sparser-than-usual security staff. The Guardian newspaper reported that garbage collections have been disrupted because of staff shortages in several English cities “amid a warning that services are unsustainable due to rising infections and a high ‘ping’ rate.”

Death toll in European floods climbs above 180 (NYT/Washington Post) More than 180 people have been confirmed dead, with hundreds still missing, as rescue crews worked through the aftermath of deadly flooding in Western Europe. The waters were preceded by historic rainfall in eastern Belgium, the Netherlands, and western Germany (see map), with the city of Cologne measuring more than 6 inches of precipitation in a 24-hour period. Meteorologists said the amount of rain equaled a full month’s worth in a single day in many locations. In a region that rarely sees such heavy rains, the situation was exacerbated by general unpreparedness. The European Flood Awareness System issued a warning early last week, but officials were reportedly slow to respond. Visiting the village of Schuld on Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the devastation “terrifying” and stressed the need for the world to “be faster in the battle against climate change.”

Indonesia’s pandemic suffering (Washington Post) In Indonesia, the delta variant has overwhelmed hospitals and depleted oxygen supplies. The highly transmissible strain is fueling a wave of suffering across the region, including in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. In Indonesia, health workers are among the hardest hit, despite being prioritized for vaccinations. Some 1,311 have died of covid-19 since March last year, according to the Indonesian Medical Association’s risk mitigation team. Total cases stand at 2.8 million, according to the Health Ministry, with 72,000 fatalities. The country on Saturday reported 51,952 new infections and 1,092 deaths, having overtaken India in daily cases to become the epicenter of the pandemic in Asia.

Japan girds for a surreal Olympics (AP) After a yearlong delay and months of hand-wringing that rippled across a pandemic-inflected world, a Summer Games unlike any other is at hand. No foreign fans. No local attendance in Tokyo-area venues. A reluctant populace navigating a surge of virus cases amid a still-limited vaccination campaign. Athletes and their entourages confined to a quasi-bubble, under threat of deportation. Government minders and monitoring apps trying—in theory, at least—to track visitors’ every move. Alcohol curtailed or banned. Cultural exchanges, the kind that power the on-the-ground energy of most Games, completely absent. All signs point to an utterly surreal and atomized Games, one that will divide Japan into two worlds during the month of Olympics and Paralympics competition. On one side, most of Japan’s largely unvaccinated, increasingly resentful populace will continue soldiering on through the worst pandemic to hit the globe in a century, almost entirely separated from the spectacle of the Tokyo Games aside from what they see on TV. Illness and recovery, work and play, both curtailed by strict virus restrictions: Life, such as it is, will go on here. Meanwhile, in massive (and massively expensive) locked-down stadiums, vaccinated super-athletes, and the legions of reporters, IOC officials, volunteers and handlers that make the Games go, will do their best to concentrate on sports served up to a rapt and remote audience of billions.

Diplomatic repercussions for undiplomatic remarks (Reuters) South Korean President Moon Jae-in will not visit Tokyo for the Olympics, scrapping plans for what would have been his first summit with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. The announcement came after Seoul lodged a protest over a news report that a senior diplomat at Japan's embassy in Seoul had said Moon was "masturbating" when describing his efforts to improve relations between the two countries.

North Korean trade problems (Nikkei Asia) North Korea’s trade with China, its only major trading partner, fell to $65.72 million over the first half of 2021, a decline of 84 percent, and down 95 percent from the same period of 2019. In June, North Korean trade with China amounted to just $14.13 million, which was a far cry from the over $200 million notched in every single month of 2019. China is responsible for over 90 percent of North Korea’s trade.

Australia prolongs COVID-19 lockdown in Victoria amid Delta outbreak (Reuters) Australian authorities said Victoria state would extend a COVID-19 lockdown beyond Tuesday to slow the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, despite a slight drop in new infections in the state and nationwide. Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews said lockdown rules would not be lifted as cases were still being detected in the community. Victoria, the country’s second most populous state, on Monday reported 13 locally acquired cases, down from 16 a day earlier. Nearly half of Australia’s 25 million people are living under lockdowns imposed to quell an outbreak fuelled by the highly transmissable Delta variant, which has become the worst this year.

Biden hosts Jordan’s king (AP) President Joe Biden is set to host King Abdullah II of Jordan during one of the most difficult moments of the Jordanian leader’s 22-year rule and at a pivotal time in the Middle East for Biden. Abdullah arrives Monday afternoon at the White House. Last week a Jordanian state security court sentenced two former officials to serve 15 years in prison over an alleged plot against the king uncovered earlier this year that involved Abdullah’s half-brother. Meanwhile, Biden is dealing with stepped-up attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militias at the same moment that his administration is trying to nudge Iran back to the negotiating table to revive the nuclear agreement that Donald Trump abandoned during his presidency. The two leaders are expected to discuss the situation in Syria—more than 1 million Syrian refugees have fled the war-ravaged nation for Jordan—and a wobbly security situation in Iraq, the official said. At least eight drone attacks have targeted the U.S. military presence in Iraq since Biden took office in January, as well as 17 rocket attacks. Abdullah is the first Arab world leader to meet face-to-face with Biden.

#headlines #news

[xtruss]

Mural In Soccer Star’s Hometown Became Anti-Racism Symbol

BY DANICA KIRKA

July 13, 2021

LONDON (AP) — Through the pens and pencils of children, England is fighting back against racism.

After Marcus Rashford and two other Black players missed penalty kicks in the final moments of the national soccer team’s European Championship loss to Italy, bigots defaced a mural of the Manchester United star and hurled racist abuse at the three on social media. Children in Manchester rose to Rashford’s defense, filling spaces on the wall with messages of support, encouragement and consolation.

“I hope you won’t be sad for to (sic) long because you are such a good person,” 9-year-old Dexter Rosier wrote. “I’m proud of you. You will always be a hero.”

The mural, which occupies a brick wall not far from where Rashford grew up, has become a symbol of England’s fight against the bigotry that has blighted the sport loved by people of all backgrounds. The struggle is playing out across the country as politicians and pundits, athletes and activists, react to the racist comments that surfaced post-defeat and undermined the sense of national unity created by England’s uplifting run to its first major soccer championship final since 1966.

The online abuse of the Black players underscores the problems created by one vision of what it means to be English, which is rooted in visions of the past glories of empire and colonialism and often surfaces during international sporting events, said Professor Bridget Byrne, director of the Center on the Dynamics of Ethnicity at Manchester University.

“The work of achieving racial justice in the U.K. is far from over, and that’s what this has revealed,” she said. “Whilst racism has become less socially acceptable to express openly, it is still very much a strand in British culture.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was quick to condemn racism and blamed social media companies for not doing enough to stop the spread of hate on their platforms. He said he would use a meeting with company leaders Tuesday to reiterate the urgent need for action.

Critics said that Johnson and his government failed to tackle the issue at the start of the Euro 2020 tournament, when some fans booed the England team for kneeling symbolically at the start of games to highlight the problem of racism.

Home Secretary Priti Patel, whose department oversees police and domestic affairs, has come under particular scrutiny after she opposed what she called “gesture politics” and said fans had the right to boo. In an interview last month, Patel also criticized protests last summer by the U.K.‘s Black Lives Matter movement, including one where a statue of a 17th century slave trader was toppled, as efforts to rewrite history.

On Monday, England player Tyrone Mings chastised Patel for playing politics after she called on the police to take action against those who subjected the soccer players to “vile racist abuse.”

“You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘Gesture Politics’ & then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against, happens,” Mings wrote on Twitter.

Marvin Sordell, a former professional soccer player who advises England’s Football Association on diversity, said the outpouring of disgust from politicians and pundits was depressingly familiar.

“We always see condemnation,” Sordell told the BBC. “It’s the same for a few days, then we kind of get back to normal and then another incident happens.…We kind of live in this cycle that continuously goes on. At some point, we have to break the cycle. At some point, it isn’t enough to just be outraged. We have to do something.”

Rashford, who grew up a few miles from Manchester United’s historic Old Trafford stadium, joined England’s national team at the age of 18 after scoring a barrage of goals for his hometown club. The son of a single mother who sometimes skipped meals to ensure her five children didn’t have to, he became a national icon last year when he led a campaign that forced the government to feed children who were missing out on free school meals while the pandemic closed schools.

In response to the abuse he received Sunday night and the outpouring of support from fans, Rashford, now 23, spoke of his teammates and the “brotherhood” created by their successes and failures this summer.

“I can take critique of my performance all day long, my penalty was not good enough, it should have gone in,” he wrote in a Twitter message that has been liked almost 1 million times. “But I will never apologise for who I am and where I came from.”

That is Manchester’s Withington neighborhood, where local artists painted a two-story, black-and-white mural of Rashford after the success of his school meals campaign.

Abi Lee, assistant head teacher of the nearby St. Paul’s Church of England Primary School, said students were upset by the way Rashford and his teammates were treated, so she took them to the mural to show them how people are fighting racism.

“We wanted them to see that nothing can knock you if you keep fighting,″ Lee said.

Nicola Wellard said her children went to bed crying after England’s loss dashed hopes of a European championship this year. But they were more upset when they found out that racists had targeted local hero Rashford.

On Tuesday afternoon her son, 11-year-old Dougie, proudly pasted his own message on the mural.

“He only missed a penalty,” Dougie wrote. “He doesn’t deserve this.”

[expatimes]

Moderna requests vaccine go ahead after 'highly efficacious' data

American firm Moderna said it would apply to US and European regulators to grant emergency use of its COVID-19 vaccine, after further evidence confirmed the efficacy of its jab, strengthening hopes a solution to the coronavirus pandemic might be in sight.

The filing on Monday sets Moderna's product up to be the second vaccine likely to receive US emergency use authorisation this year following a shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, which had a 95 percent efficacy rate.

“We believe that we have a vaccine that is very highly efficacious. We now have the data to prove it, ”Moderna's Chief Medical Officer Tal Zaks said. "We expect to be playing a major part in turning around this pandemic."

The news came as US hospitals have been stretched to the limit with more than 160,000 new cases per day and more than 1,400 daily deaths. Since first emerging nearly a year ago in China, the virus has killed more than 1.4 million people worldwide.

Moderna created its vaccine with the US National Institutes of Health. Findings showed on November 16 the jabs were 94.5 percent effective. The company, however, said it got the final needed results over the weekend, which indicated the vaccine was 94.1 percent effective.

Moderna also reported its vaccine's efficacy rate was consistent across age, race, ethnicity and gender demographics as well as having a 100 percent success rate in preventing severe cases of a disease

Zaks said when he learned the results, “I allowed myself to cry for the first time”.

“We have already, just in the trial, saved lives. Just imagine the impact then multiplied to the people who can get this vaccine, ”said Zaks.

Moderna is just behind Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech - which applied for emergency approval on November 20 - in seeking to begin vaccinations in the US in December.

Moderna shares were up 6.7 percent in US pre-market trade, a record high and a rise of more than 600 percent this year.

What happens next?

Moderna said the shots' effectiveness and a good safety record so far - with only temporary, flu-like side effects - mean they meet requirements set by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use before the final-stage testing is complete .

Zaks said the flu-like symptoms in some participants “goes hand-in-hand with having such a potent vaccine”, but it has not caused any significant safety concerns so far.

“As the numbers of cases reported grows, confidence grows that this amazing protection will be maintained in a product that can be rolled out to protect the public,” Alexander Edwards, associate professor in biomedical technology at Britain's University of Reading, said.

In addition to filing its US application, Moderna said it would seek conditional approval from the European Medicines Agency, which is already reviewing its data, and would continue to talk with other regulators doing similar rolling reviews.

The European Medicines Agency, Europe's version of FDA, has signaled it also is open to faster, emergency clearance.

FDA scientific advisers will now hold a public debate to assess whether there is enough evidence behind each candidate. On December 10, Pfizer-BioNTech will present its data, while Moderna's findings are expected to be discussed a week later, on December 17.

“Pending the outcomes of these hearings… The vaccines could be quickly rushed into production and in the market as early as this year,” said Al Jazeera's Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington DC.

“This is something [President] Trump has repeatedly said would happen and something he has been trying to take credit for given the fact that much of these have been developed using funds from what he calls' Operation Warp Speed, ”she added.

Moderna said if it can get regulators' approval, certain categories of people could get the jabs as early as December 21.

In mid September, the biotechnology company said it was producing 20 million doses by the end of the year, while its final goal was to make up to one billion doses for 2021.

Pfizer said it can produce as many as 50 million doses in 2020. Both vaccines require a double shot per person.

On Tuesday, experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet to discuss the vaccines' allocation of initial supplies.

The highest risk groups such as the elderly, medical professionals, and healthcare workers are expected to be prioritized.

Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines proved more effective than anticipated and were far superior to the 50 percent benchmark set by the FDA.

The past few weeks of positive vaccine results have ignited hopes for an end to a pandemic that has battered economies and come as new infections and COVID-19 across hospitalizations are at record levels the US.

Azra Ghani, chair in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London, said Monday's details confirmed the vaccine was highly effective.

“Whilst this does not exclude some risk of severe disease after vaccination given the relatively small number of severe cases, these results suggest very high efficacy,” she said.

. #world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=14999&feed_id=20895

#Coronaviruspandemic #Economy #Europe #News #UnitedStates #USampCanada

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Digital mapping of coronavirus contacts will have key role in lifting Europe’s lockdown, says Commission

The European Commission has set out a plan for co-ordinating the lifting of regional coronavirus restrictions that includes a role for digital tools — in what the EU executive couches as “a robust system of reporting and contact tracing”. However it has reiterated that such tools must “fully respect data privacy”.

Last week the Commission made a similar call for a common approach to data and apps for fighting the coronavirus, emphasizing the need for technical measures to be taken to ensure that citizens’ rights and freedoms aren’t torched in the scramble for a tech fix.

Today’s toolbox of measures and principles is the next step in its push to coordinate a pan-EU response.

“Responsible planning on the ground, wisely balancing the interests of protection of public health with those of the functioning of our societies, needs a solid foundation. That’s why the Commission has drawn up a catalogue of guidelines, criteria and measures that provide a basis for thoughtful action,” said EC president Ursula von der Leyen, commenting on the full roadmap in a statement.

“The strength of Europe lies in its social and economic balance. Together we learn from each other and help our European Union out of this crisis,” she added.

Harmonized data gathering and sharing by public health authorities — “on the spread of the virus, the characteristics of infected and recovered persons and their potential direct contacts” — is another key plank of the plan for lifting coronavirus restrictions on citizens within the 27 Member State bloc.

While ‘anonymized and aggregated’ data from commercial sources — such as telcos and social media platforms — is seen as a potential aid to pandemic modelling and forecasting efforts, per the plan.

“Social media and mobile network operators can offer a wealth of data on mobility, social interactions, as well as voluntary reports of mild disease cases (e.g. via participatory surveillance) and/or indirect early signals of disease spread (e.g. searches/posts on unusual symptoms),” it writes. “Such data, if pooled and used in anonymised, aggregated format in compliance with EU data protection and privacy rules, could contribute to improve the quality of modelling and forecasting for the pandemic at EU level.”

The Commission has been leaning on telcos to hand over fuzzy metadata for coronavirus modelling which it wants done by the EU’s Joint Research Centre. It wrote to 19 mobile operators last week to formalize its request, per Euractiv, which reported yesterday that its aim is to have the data exchange system operational ‘as soon as possible’ — with the hope being it will cover all the EU’s member states.

Other measures included in the wider roadmap are the need for states to expand their coronavirus testing capacity and harmonize tesing methodologies — with the Commission today issuing guidelines to support the development of “safe and reliable testing”.

Steps to support the reopening of internal and external EU borders is another area of focus, with the executive generally urging a gradual and phased lifting of coronavirus restrictions.

On contacts tracing apps specifically, the Commission writes:

“Mobile applications that warn citizens of an increased risk due to contact with a person tested positive for COVID-19 are particularly relevant in the phase of lifting containment measures, when the infection risk grows as more and more people get in contact with each other. As experienced by other countries dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, these applications can help interrupt infection chains and reduce the risk of further virus transmission. They should thus be an important element in the strategies put in place by Member States, complementing other measures like increased testing capacities.

“The use of such mobile applications should be voluntary for individuals, based on users’ consent and fully respecting European privacy and personal data protection rules. When using tracing apps, users should remain in control of their data. National health authorities should be involved in the design of the system. Tracing close proximity between mobile devices should be allowed only on an anonymous and aggregated basis, without any tracking of citizens, and names of possibly infected persons should not be disclosed to other users. Mobile tracing and warning applications should be subject to demanding transparency requirements, be deactivated as soon as the COVID-19 crisis is over and any remaining data erased.”

“Confidence in these applications and their respect of privacy and data protection are paramount to their success and effectiveness,” it adds.

Earlier this week Apple and Google announced a collaboration around coronavirus contracts tracing — throwing their weight behind a privacy-sensitive decentralized approach to proximity tracking that would see ephemeral IDs processed locally on devices, rather than being continually uploaded and held on a central server.

A similar decentralized infrastructure for Bluetooth-based COVID-19 contacts tracing had already been suggested by a European coalition of privacy and security experts, as we reported last week.

While a separate coalition of European technologists and researchers has been pushing a standardization effort for COVID-19 contacts tracing that they’ve said will support either centralized or decentralized approaches — in the hopes of garnering the broadest possible international backing.

For its part the Commission has urged the use of technologies such as decentralization for COVID-19 contacts tracing to ensure tools align with core EU principles for handling personal data and safeguarding individual privacy, such as data minimization.

However governments in the region are working on a variety of apps and approaches for coronavirus contacts tracing that don’t all look as if they will check a ‘rights respecting’ box…

Poland advertised a new product to enforce #coronavirus #COVID19 quarantaine? Electronic bracelet equipped with geolocation sensor (and a microphone, apparently), for "constant monitoring instead of random checks". https://t.co/WipDJDnLK8 pic.twitter.com/ormYjM1EyJ

— Lukasz Olejnik (@lukOlejnik) April 14, 2020

In a video address last week, Europe’s lead privacy regulator, the EDPS, intervened to call for a “panEuropean model ‘COVID-19 mobile application’, coordinated at EU level” — in light of varied tech efforts by Member States which involve the processing of personal data for a claimed public health purpose.

“The use of temporary broadcast identifiers and bluetooth technology for contact tracing seems to be a useful path to achieve privacy and personal data protection effectively,” said Wojciech Wiewiórowski on Monday week. “Given these divergences, the European Data Protection Supervisor calls for a panEuropean model “COVID-19 mobile application”, coordinated at EU level. Ideally, coordination with the World Health Organisation should also take place, to ensure data protection by design globally from the start.”

The Commission has not gone so far in today’s plan — calling instead for Member States to ensure their own efforts align with the EU’s existing data protection framework.

Though its roadmap is also heavy on talk of the need for “coordination between Member States, to avoid negative effects” — dubbing it “a matter of common European interest”. But, for now, the Commission has issued a list of recommendations; it’s up to Member States to choose to fall in behind them or not.

With the caveat that EU regulators are watching very carefully how states’ handle citizens’ data.

“Legality, transparency and proportionality are essential for me,” warned Wiewiórowski, ending last week’s intervention on the EU digital response to the coronavirus with a call for “digital solidarity, which should make data working for all people in Europe and especially for the most vulnerable” — and a cry against “the now tarnished and discredited business models of constant surveillance and targeting that have so damaged trust in the digital society”.

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