I think I’m a collector. Jill says I’m a hoarder.

​We’re both right. And Jill is certainly right when she asserts for the umpteenth time that we have too many books, that 99% will never be read again or even taken down from the shelves, and that they are merely dust-gatherers.
 
So I am, reluctantly, embarking on a cull. The shelves in England and France are being emptied. It is a gradual and time-consuming process, because a couple of pages of each of the couple of thousand books need to be at least scanned before being dispatched to friends, charity shops and in some cases such as the old green-backed Penguin detective novels which are falling apart – the tip or déchetterie.
 
It is, of course, true that, as Bagshaw famously remarks through the pen of Anthony Powell, “books do furnish a room”. But mine offer me more than this.
 
To read my ownership signature dated sometime in the early ‘60s in an old paperback is to bring back a flood of memories. In this sense, a book can be as evocative as a Dylan album. It locates me precisely in a time and a place and with an attitude which I remember with affection and nostalgia, guilt and embarrassment.
 
In 1964, for example, I seem to have acquired A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, One Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse, Nova Express by William Burroughs, CP Snow’s Strangers and Brothers sequence, The Italian Girl by Iris Murdoch, Ernst Fischer’s The Necessity of Art and a plethora of thrillers by the likes of Ian Fleming, Rex Stout and Len Deighton.

Sounds to me like a fifteen year old trying to find his way. It was.
 
From my shelves, I can also date my discovery of particular author: Patrick O’Brian, for example. His work starts in paperback, and ends in hardback as new novels in the sequence were released.

And here I can see that moment when I discovered the joy of owning a first edition of a particular novel – I have relished a copy of Simon Raven’s first published novel, The Feathers of Death, with a hand-written dedication by Raven to EM Forster on the fly-leaf, and a first US edition of Advertisements for Myself, with Norman Mailer’s own suggestions in pencil for changes to the first UK edition (which I also have).
 
At about the same time, I got into the habit of buying two copies of some ‘literary fiction’- Paul Auster, McEwan, DeLillo, William Boyd et al: one to read, and thus to risk a broken spine and damaged dust-jacket; and one to … well, just put on the shelves for posterity. And yes, okay, to gather dust.
 
But many of these first editions appear to have a market still, so I can justify those purchases on the grounds that they were investments. My book-dealer friends will be benefitting from them in due course.

As, I hope, will I. I’m going to need the cash to download these works onto my Kindle. For re-reading one day, you understand. Nothing to do with completism.
 
Next stop? Vinyl, CDs and some paintings. Watch this ever-growing space on shelves and walls.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Railroad Earth revisited, with special emphasis on shows from the mid-nineties.

The English voice from the adjacent table was unmistakable as it soared over the terrace of TEN, the new and fashionable fusion restaurant in Uzès*. “And, of course” said the voice, “I’ve now missed the deadline for paying the £25 each to buy the right for my daughters a vote in the election. It’s disgraceful.”
 
I admit that this eavesdropping, which referred to the Court of Appeal judgement, has overtones of overheard-in-Waitrose about it, but even in this – usually idyllic - part of the world, there is no escaping the machinations of the proponents of the attempted coup. After a 10 day sojourn in the UK, which coincided with our Constituency Labour Party nomination meeting (93 – 25 in favour of Corbyn since you ask) and included a dozen or more impromptu and pessimistic discussions about the future of the country and the party, I had expected to return to a few day’s grace and welcome respite from the day-to-day debate.
 
But it was not to be. As the British Left move south, they bring with them their concerns and commitments. And they find a ready audience here in Uzès where the ex-pat community tends to eschew the stereotypical Englishman abroad and embrace a more cosmopolitan worldview. Equally, the Uzètiens, not solely through self-interest, are as anxious about the impact of Brexit and the turmoil in le parti travailliste as are we all.
 
In fact, the French struggle to understand much of what is going on. Trotskyism in France, for example, is not a gratuitous term of abuse but a description of a particular and legitimate ideology which was forged in opposition to Stalinism. And where does Trotsky advocate “entryism”? (He doesn’t anywhere, as a French friend pointed out forcibly to me the other day. Exactement!)
 
But the requirement for precision and accuracy – dare we call it truth? – in political discourse is pretty much de rigeur in France. And you don’t need me to point out that this is very different from the standards of our British politicians and journalists, where a recent academic study has found that precisely 0% of Corbyn’s speeches have been accurately and comprehensively reported in ‘newspapers’ such as The Mail and The Express and barely at all at the BBC and The Guardian.
 
I suspect that the French tradition is the result of its respect for les philosophes and a well-established tradition of rigorous and challenging intellectual contribution to political thought. In Britain, this is despised; in France, it is welcomed, embraced. In Britain, we dismiss people as “too clever by half” or “Two-Brains”; in France, we read them, listen to them, learn from them.
 
It is this tradition which prompts the support which Corbyn commands amongst our French friends and the shock and amazement provoked by the abuse heaped upon him by his opponents inside the party: on the one hand, a man whose contributions are reasoned, thoughtful, and quietly spoken; on the other, snide sound-bites, shouted.
 
But, as Voltaire famously put it, “The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.”
 
Let’s hope so.

* I commend this place to you, particularly as they bring down from Brittany, really good, cool water oysters and the multi-national staff are exceptional.

Today from the everysmith vaults: The Cowboy Junkies and a live show at the Newport Folk Festival in August 2008. Plus a rendition of Dirty Water, part of my own small and solo celebration of the Sox winning the make-up game in Cleveland last night, which I didn't see live because of a dinner date.

Jill and I decided to take a break from what was becoming an obsession with endless news updates to enjoy some of the things that Europe has to offer. We needed an away day without wi-fi and iphone notifications pinging into our consciousness. So we drove south.

We started with Chagall and the presentation of his works in a multimedia exhibition held underground in an ancient (since Roman times) cave-like quarry. This is Les Carrières des Lumières at Les Beaux, near St Rémy de Provence.
 
Chagall: Midsummer Night’s Dreams is a spectacular creation. All the famous masterpieces have been digitized and projected onto the columns, walls and the floor of the quarry. Initially, the experience is disorientating, even disturbing; within moments, however, one eyes and ears adjust: one is inundated with colour, close-ups and creativity.

Every phase of Chagall's life and work is here in one form or another: 100 projectors showing his works from the love paintings and landscapes to the stained glass windows which brought Jill to tears when seeing them for the first time a decade or so ago.

Accompanying the imagery is an eclectic but sympa soundtrack, put together by a friend of Chagall, Mikhaïl Rudy. Through 27 speakers, it moves from circus music to grand opera to Janis Joplin and back again.
 
We were entranced and enchanted; in awe and in thrall. We were tempted to remain for a second run. But we had to return to St Quentin-la-Poterie because, that evening, Stéphane Reynaud was opening his new restaurant, La Cuisine de Boucher, in St Quentin and we had coveted tickets to the launch party.

​Stéphane’s new venture is in a large and imposing building overlooking the market square. It has been empty and à vendre for many years, and as each summer passed without a new owner, we speculated that its refurbishment would become even more difficult and even more expensive. I suspect it was both. But miracles have been achieved and the party did it justice, with the great and the good of St Quentinoise society – including the Mayor and the council – turning out for fine wine and delicious canapés.
 
It was a great day, a day during which we almost forgot the strife back in the UK and our own concerns and misgivings over the implications for us and our business, and for the future of our children and grandchildren.
 
Almost, but not quite.
 
Turning one’s back on Europe is not something for which we voted and not something that should be done frivolously, although that is what has happened. let's be clear: it should not have been done at all. But it has and somehow we must live with it.

How? No idea. But when I've worked it out, I will let you know ...
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I am continuing my exploration of Indie Pop with the carefully nuanced and tuneful work of Ultimate Painting, a UK band which owes much to the Velvets, and to which I was introduced by a show in New York recorded by the exemplary nyctaper.

It is about class. It usually is.
 
Jill and I voted by proxy and with our feet, so we spent the day of the referendum firmly in Europe. During the day, we exchanged our estimates of the majority for Remain with fellow ex-pats and with French friends. That night, having watched the Red Sox beat the White Sox 8-7 in extra innings, I reflected that the referendum result might be equally tight. 52-48 Remain seemed to be the consensus.
 
At no point had it crossed my mind that the Leave campaign would win. In England, only one friend had confided that he was going to vote that way. In France, I know no-one of any nationality who thinks that the the UK would be better off out, nor that Europe would be better off without the UK.
 
It started slowly. Gibraltar voted Remain with an unanimity which would have put Stalin’s Soviet Union to shame followed by Newcastle – tight but pro-Remain. The egregious Farage appeared with inside information from his ‘mates in the City’ who had told him Remain had edged it.
 
Then came Sunderland. Then Sheffield. And we all knew we had lost it.
 
We had lost it because, despite the evidence of the General Election, we had failed to understand that the austerity imposed by the Tories had left the working class throughout the north and Midlands without hope. “How can it get any worse?” asked a woman in Hartlepool to a bemused BBC journalist, who was patronizingly attempting to explain the economic case for Remain and the Osborne-briefed consequences of Leave.
 
As we have noted many times before, the present government has imposed an economic policy which owes nothing to economics and everything to political ideology.

To ensure and reinforce the hegemony of a privileged and super-rich elite, Osborne has bought the middle-class. Literally.
 
People like me have colluded with them. And while we may embrace the EU in the same way as we embrace our multi-cultural and multi-racial lifestyle, we need to remember that for many years the Tories have made the EU their whipping-boy. Boris Johnson, in a previous life as a Brussels correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, a newspaper, famously invented and exaggerated scare stories. But despite his best efforts to appear so, he is not daft. He knew the way the wind was blowing.
 
Cameron did not. A shallow chancer, he has no idea of the world beyond his circle. And every time that I saw the leaflets and social media posts listing those who were pro Remain and those pro Leave, I knew it was losing us votes. Lined up to encourage us to stay were the great, the good and the loaded of the establishment - all powerful individuals, almost all millionaires or more. They were the leaders of political parties, governors of banks, CEOs of multi-national companies who paid less corporation tax than I do, non-doms and tax exiles who nonetheless control vast swathes of our economy.
 
Even I, a passionate European, was occasionally tempted to register my protest against this overwhelming show of force from the haves against the have-nots. I didn't. Remain and reform was my position.

I regret the Leave vote, but I do not blame the Leave voters.

Most are not racist, nor are they bigots. They are certainly not fascists, nor are they unthinking. They are people who have experienced a simple truth of the class society.
 
“When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Some variété Française - Cabrel, Greco, Debussy.

The Orlando shootings are the latest and in one, particularly disturbing, way most sickening of the current wave of terrorist outrages: its impulse was not only political, nor solely religious. It was homophobic.
 
This is not, as Owen Jones discovered the other night on Sky News, a generally accepted view. But it is true.
 
I won’t dwell on what happened on Sky News (except to enquire politely of Owen why he continues to dignify the show with his presence). And, as he has said, the same refusal to accept the homophobic impulse of the attack was not unique to Sky. Even the New York Times apparently did not initially mention the LGBT target, and of course our own Daily Mail divided its front page between xenophobia and a pearl earrings offer.
 
When the news came through on Sunday afternoon, the BBC news channel decided to continue showing fatuous pictures of a street party. I had to go to Al Jazeera to find out what was happening. It took me away not from football but from this Youtube video of a speech made at the memorial service for Muhammed Ali by Michael Lerner, which I subsequently shared on Facebook.
 
Rabbi Michael Lerner was a hero of mine in 1966 or so. The chair of the SDS chapter at Berkeley and subsequently imprisoned as one of the Seattle Seven, his voice was one of the most eloquent in opposition to the Weather Underground and was primarily responsible at the time for my rational rejection of (although, I confess, a romantic adherence to) the path of Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Mark Rudd.
 
On my shelves, I have still a copy of his book The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility in an Age of Cynicism.  And although I was sceptical of his insistence on ‘spirituality’, flicking through it again after all these years, I am impressed by his mitigation of our materialist arguments by the incorporation of cultural and yes, ‘spiritual’ values. Self-interest is not the be-all and end-all: humanity is better than that. As Muhammad Ali showed us.
 
And as Michael Lerner told us, "the way to honour the memory of Muhammad Ali is to be Muhammad Ali today in our own lives”.
 
You can watch his remarkable, passionate and moving speech above. If you haven’t seen it, you should.

When events in Orlando and around the world prompt despair, here is hope. 

In recent weeks, I have been preoccupied with births, marriages and deaths.
 
Cleo Donfrancesco and Leo Voce have been born. Phoebe and Mark have married. And the joyous celebration of the life of my old mate Bill Keningale was overshadowed for me by the death, two days earlier, of Claudia Bevan, a woman whom I last saw at the Short Walk for Health and whose half century of life was a triumph of determination over the adversity since birth of hydrocephalus and spina bifida. My heart goes out to her husband Nick, her daughter Rhiannon and her parents Neil and Janet.
 
When I hear pundits and politicians telling us that the vote on our membership of the EU is the most important thing in our lives right now, I disagree. What really matters are events like these: the beautiful babies, the happiness of two good friends, the devastating news of untimely deaths.
 
Even for me, a political animal from way back, the priorities are clear. And the trivialities of the EU debate are made even more banal, clichéd and self-serving.
 
It is, however, an important vote, about important issues. As I focus on our family and friends, the vote becomes very close to home indeed.

The debate between the politicians and reporting of the journalists on that debate may not be doing justice to this, but that does not mean that the rest of us should not. In fact, we need to raise the level above the vapid platitudes of Cameron and Johnson, the name-calling, the lies, damn lies and statistics.
 
We cannot do so, of course because the journalists inside the Westminster bubble are concerned only with their own agenda. Thus, when Jeremy Corbyn makes a reasoned and thoughtful speech on the EU (which I commend to you), the speech itself is not reported. Instead, we have the headline news that (half a dozen in) the audience hissed (not booed) the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. Followed, the next day, by the inevitable comments in the opinion pages that Corbyn is not contributing to the debate.
 
In a Leamington pub a couple of days ago, I watched a video of a speech given by John McDonnell at the LSE. Referring to Osborne’s success in transferring the blame for the recession to Labour, he observed: “Narrative beats competence”.
 
True. It’s not the reality; it’s the perception. And the public’s perception is filtered through the lens of the media establishment, 71% of which is owned by just seven corporations. And you can be sure that those corporations are not looking to publicize any anti-austerity argument.
 
Despite this, there is a growing awareness that austerity is less an economic policy and more a political ideology. And if the EU debate has achieved anything, it has shown us that the likes of Cameron and Osborne, Johnson and Farage are of a kind. It is impossible to tell which of the cardplayers are pigs and which are humans.
 
This will not stop me voting to remain within the EU and to embrace our European-ness.

It may be more a vote against the ‘Brexit’ campaigners whose rhetoric is beginning to sound like that of a government in waiting. It may be a tentative and apprehensive vote.
 
But I am convinced that only within the EU can we put a stop to the continuing and strengthening commitment to austerity and insularity. And then, with the help of the next generations, we will be able to create a structure which will welcome diversity.
 
As no-one else is, I will quote Jeremy Corbyn: “There is an overwhelming case to remain and reform so that we build on the best that Europe has achieved … we have a distinct agenda: a vision to make Britain better and fairer for everyone, by engaging with our neighbours.”
 
To which I would add: And our friends. And our families.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Fallen Angels has palled, but have been listening with rapture to some April shows from Japan. As so often in Japan, Bob is on top form. Looking forward to his arrival in (a reformed and integrated) Europe.

In many ways, the junior doctors are the miners of today.
 
Like the miners, they are fighting not for more money but against closures, against an ideology which would destroy the very fundamentals of their service and industry, which would, in fact, destroy the industry itself.
 
In the same way as a victory over the miners was a prerequisite for the privatization of our energy, so a victory over the junior doctors is the forerunner of a fundamental change in the provision of our health services. It is the start of a programme which will end in a free market in health, an American style of provision in which the first question a hospital will ask of a sick patient is ‘Are you insured?’.
 
In the US, President Obama has finally got through Congress the beginnings of a federal healthcare programme. Obamacare is not the answer to all the issues, but it’s a start. And the irony of our respective situations is not lost on US citizens: as they make their tentative first steps towards some form of national health service, they look across at us attempting to dismantle the famous original. On a recent trip to Boston, this was what my American friends wanted to discuss. (Well, after the Sox pitching.)
 
Our American friends see and hear senior Tories such as Lord Prior and Stephen Dorrell disparaging the NHS. At a recent ‘private healthcare breakfast’, Dorrell argued that the NHS was not a ‘national religion’ but a ‘service sector’ which had a massive potential for profit. And Jeremy Hunt himself has co-authored a policy pamphlet, entitled Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party, which argued that the NHS should be replaced by a privatised insurance market system. Similar arguments are made regularly by more obscure Tory MPs when the visit the States and appear – usually - on Fox News.
 
There is, clearly, an agenda. And, if one looks and listens closely enough, it is not even hidden. Between the lines in the ‘safe-in-our-hands’ election rhetoric is a clearly thought-out strategy to starve the NHS of resources, claim it isn’t working, and dismantle it.
 
The ‘imposition’ of the Junior Doctors’ contract is one, and only one, element in this strategy. But it is the key element. Lose this, and we lose our NHS. Perhaps not in the next couple of years, but soon. It will happen gradually but inexorably: one issue at a time. And then we will wake up to find that our National Health Service is in fact the Etihad Health Service or something similar.
 
That is why I shall be taking a short walk for the good of my health and our health service on Sunday, marching down the Parade in Leamington Spa. I shall be joined by other senior citizens for junior doctors, by doctors and nurses, by councillors and academics, and by grandchildren who were born in the NHS.
 
A quarter of a century ago, the NHS saved my life. Now, I want to save the NHS.

​See you in Top Park at 2pm.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Still Chris Forsyth, a great deal of acoustic blues, and - of course - Bob.

​Two postponements and two games in and we are .500 - won one, lost one.  Game one was excellent in every respect. Price pitched well. Papi hit a homer. Mookie hit a homer and pulled off a great defensive play. Game two was marred by the starting pitching: Buckholtz blew it. But that’s Buckholtz being Buckholtz.
 
The important thing is that we are underway. This is real. So what follows is not my belated season projections. I’ve done those for the last ten years and, to be honest, they have been more an expression of hopes and aspirations than detailed statistical analysis. There are guys who can do that sort of thing a great deal better than I can, and their projections are as wrong as often as my dreams.
 
Watching the first two games here in Europe was exhilarating and, despite the loss, my dream of the play-offs is intact. It may be all about the pitching, but these guys can hit. We out-hit Cleveland in both games and, in each game, scored six runs against good pitching. The Sox are hitting .288 with an .896 OPS. And that’s without any contribution from Xander who is 0 for 9 as I write.
 
I predict that he will get his first hit tonight, backing up the power sinkers of Joe Kelly who had a great spring training. It’s a midnight start for those of us over here but, if the games against Toronto in Montreal are anything to go by, it will be worth the sleep deficit. One of my favourite non-Sox players, Josh Donaldson, will be back to add a frisson to the occasion and anyway the next two games are scheduled for lunchtime. Which is 6pm in the UK and 7pm in France. I’ll be watching the NESN feed on mlb.tv and despite my total admiration for Don Orsillo, I am beginning to warm to OB, even if he hasn’t yet learned that on television rather than radio, sometimes you don’t have to say anything.
 
But all this will pale into insignificance next week when I land at Logan, dump my bag at the Parker House and head up to Fenway Park. I’ve schlepped across the Common and down Commonwealth Ave many times, but 'fanatics have their dreams' and arriving at Fenway is still a dream come true for someone isolated in the baseball desert that is Europe.
 
In my dream, the Sox win their fourth Series this century; Papi has a 30+ HR year (he’s already ahead of schedule!); Price performs consistently like the ace we know he is and is backed up the rest of the rotation; Hanley settles into competence at first and hits for power; Mookie continues to demonstrate that he is potentially one of the greats; Xander comes good; JBJ shows on a daily basis that he is one of the great defensive outfielders in the game today; and the bullpen does its job – don’t think my heart could manage another season like 2015.
 
As for Sandoval, well - sorry Pablo. I really want to be wrong about you, but you don’t figure in my dream at all right now.
 
Realistically? I think we will make the play-offs and then who knows?
 
Not me. I just dream.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Some Merle Haggard, Melancholy Mood from the forthcoming Fallen Angels, but primarily Peter Green and the 1970 manifestation of Fleetwood Mac. Whatever happened to that band? They were good ...

My morning ritual seldom varies: espresso, a vape or three, the delivery of Jill’s hot lemon to her bedside. And then, in season, the baseball box scores, Bob’s set lists from the previous night, and finally a perusal of the Dylan Daily and Expecting Rain.
 
Expecting Rain is the website that, each day, provides links to the huge number of Bob references, news items and reviews that are published daily throughout the world. Its founder, Karl Erik Andersen, runs this massive project from somewhere in north Norway. It is a source of endless delight, fascination and information: a series of running updates to Michael Gray’s masterly Dylan Encyclopœdia.
 
A couple of days ago, it flagged up a short piece by Andrew Muir, the exemplary chronicler of the Never Ending Tour, who expressed his surprise at the recent “negativity in fandom”: “I am a little taken aback at the amount and strength of the gripes over the as yet unheard Fallen Angels” he wrote, pointing out that much of this negativity “seems to come especially from guys in their 60s who saw Bob in the ‘60s and are forever complaining that Bob isn’t doing what they want him to do”.
 
We are, of course, talkin’ about my generation. I am one of those guys. I am well into my 60s and first saw Bob in 1964. I have embraced (almost) every musical and cultural move that he has made, defying the party line in ’65 to welcome – even relish - the thin wild Mercury music, and then to learn to love the country pie, the rolling thunder, the Christianity, and on and on until we reach today and the ‘Sinatra period’.
 
Sinatra is pretty important to us baby-boomers. Sinatra was what was playing on our parents’ gramophones when we were small. We absorbed the songs and the style through osmosis. We know them just as we know Bob’s lyrics because, to borrow George Steiner’s distinction, we did not learn them by rote, but by heart.
 
Is this why so many of my contemporaries have such a problem with Bob doing Frank? Or is it because ‘covers’ are not regarded as ‘creative’? But Bob has always done ‘covers’ – one of the highlights, for me, of the Never Ending Tour was his London Calling at Brixton Academy in 2005. And of course, he ‘covers’ his own songs constantly, reinventing and recreating them. That’s what those of us who love ‘the song and dance man’ as well as the recording artist love. That’s what makes us schlep hundreds of miles to see and hear him.
 
I haven’t attended as many shows as Andy Muir, but I’ve been hittin’ some hard travellin’ too. Only once have I been profoundly disappointed, at Birmingham in 1987. Which means Bob has an approval rating from me on a par with Don Bradman’s test average. And I am confident that, when I see him this year, the vibe will be positive and passionate. I for one want to hear him sing Melancholy Mood and That Old Black Magic. I want to hear his take on them.
 
Of course, talkin’ about my generation, there is a broader point to be made about Bob and us.  Andy makes it succinctly: it is “a resentment at once being so in thrall”.
 
We are, in so many ways, a failed generation. And there is a temptation to project our sense of failure on those who epitomized and articulated our hopes and ambitions, our sense of ourselves in the days “when we were thin” (thanks CP Lee!). I suspect this is where many of my friends and contemporaries sit today.
 
But one thing I know: When your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through, don’t put on any airs. Wherever you are.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Bob at Earl's Court in 1978, one of five nights as part of the Alimony Tour. Brilliant.

This may not be the most cogent reason to support our continuing membership of the European Union, but it is as good as the reasons being offered by Cameron whose shallow pandering to the right has reduced the focus of the debate to immigration and welfare. UKIP wants it to be solely about this. And so do the likes of Iain Duncan Smith and Grayling.
 
Of course, it is not really about these issues at all. And nor is it about the security of our borders or our access to a free market or the protection of the City. It is about, as Cameron himself has said (I suspect without understanding what he was saying) “the kind of country we want Britain to be”.
 
I want Britain to be a country that cares; that is not merely tolerant of diversity but embraces it; that recognises its responsibilities to its citizens and to all humanity. I want a country that is democratic, that rejects austerity, that fights against the increasing privatisation of our public services.
 
I do not want a country which turns in on itself; which equates the success of the City with the success of the country as a whole; that mistakes corporate profit for the public good.
 
I believe that what I want and what I don’t want can be better achieved within the European Union.
 
Not because the European Union is without fault; far from it. I have more issues with a Europe which is reformed according to Cameron than with its previous structure. The British (Tory) position at the negotiations  and the associated posturing was selfish in the extreme, manifesting a total lack of statesmanship and great deal of nationalist ideology. Fortunately, the vote at the referendum will not be about Cameron’s deal. It will not be about the ridiculous rants of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. It will be about us and our sense of ourselves, about “the kind of country we want Britain to be”.
 
There are frightening indications that some of us want our country to be a one (Tory) party state, which will be able to deny us the rights that have taken centuries to achieve. Public services and social justice are already under serious threat and such developments will only be accelerated by Brexit.
 
It’s an ugly word. But it’s an even uglier concept.

Today from the everysmith vaults: According to Twitter, some people have managed to get hold of the new Chris Forsyth album, The Rarity of Experience already. Over here, it's not scheduled until 4th March. So I'm just playing some recent shows thanks to NYC Taper. Oh, and Michael Chapman too. Remember him? Brilliant guitarist.