More clueless fairy tale nonsense...

Playlist

John Wetton & Geoff Downes - Icon

Pet Shop Boys - Battleship Potemkin

Grandaddy - Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla

OK Go - Oh No

Eels - Blinking Lights And Other Revelations

Coldplay - X&Y

City and Colour - Sometimes

Orrin Evans - Easy Now

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine

Various Artists - Satie – Fragments

UNKLE - The Road: Part II / Lost Highway

The Tubes - Genius Of America

Brian Eno - Making Space

Brian Eno - Generative Music

Brian Eno - Glitterbug

Brian Eno - More Music For Films

Brian Eno - Drums Between The Bells

Brian Eno - Music For Films

Brian Eno - Textures

Brian Eno - January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now

Brian Eno - Music For Films Volume 2 (LP)

Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water

Various Artists - The Wire Tapper 60

Rush - Clockwork Angels

Michael Garrick - A Lady in Waiting

The Orb - Auntie Aubrey's Excursions Beyond The Call Of Duty

Cloudland Blue Quartet - Sparklemusik (12 CD Box Set)

Concord String Quartet - American String Quartets 1950-1970

Various Artists - This is Trojan

Rylie Walker - Course in Fable

Return To Forever - Return to Forever

Tangerine Dream - The Sessions VI (Live at RBB Grosser Sendesaal, Berlin)

Various Artists - Superbad

Annette Unger, Rieko Yoshizumi - Aphroditische Tänze : Dresdner Moderne

Various Artists - Easy Rider OST

Robert Fripp - Pie Jesu

Lou Donaldson - The Scorpion: Live At The Cadillac Club

Soen - Imperial

Various Artists - Funk Food 2: Have It Your Way

Beethoven - Variations & Bagatelles

Various Artists - The Wire Tapper 38

Sonny Sharrock - Black Woman

Various Artists - Dub Chill Out

Herman Van Veen - Was Ich Dir Singen Wollte

Lunar Saxophone Quartet - Flux

Deadmau5 - Album Title Goes Here

Robert Glasper - Black Radio III

Brian Eno - Music For Installations

Up...

Updated this for the weekend, and listened, initially, to some music from 2005, taking out 25 of my initial 100 nominations...

No one reads this, so here is my route from 100 down to 30 (20, 10 and 5 still to come)...

100 LPs of 2005

75 LPs of 2005

 50 LPs of 2005

 30 LPs of 2005

Meanwhile, Anne was off out with her mum to do the latter's shopping...

A query on Twitter as to whether this Czars LP is from 2006 not 2005...

The CD says 2005...

However, I then remembered this is a compilation so it fell away post the Top 50...

A couple of new things added were given a spin - the Satie related record I spotted on Saturday in Fopp and an UNKLE LP, which was not as good as the 2005 release I span yesterday which caused me to download what I didn't already have of their back catalogue...

Then found some Tubes stuff on Youtube - demos recorded in their late 80's period without Fee Waybill - and the 1999 re-release of their 1996 LP "Genius of America", with two tracks I'd never before heard and with all the "GoA" tracks supposedly remixed...

Then, to ensuring I had all Brian Eno's original solo LPs on the phone for listening whenever - added as a big playlist, the shortest tracks from which were my next listening thing...

Meanwhile, Anne had returned for lunchtime and the fourth last episode of "Elementary"...

...before she exited again to take her mum for a doctor's check up appointment...

Meanwhile, the rocks on the shelf...

Anne returned and we watched an episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" which is better than "Star Trek: Discovery" is these days - the latter used to be very good indeed...

Anne's latest work seems to have gone awry re the instruction on which colour to use for certain parts of the tiger's face...

It looks brilliant in monochrome...

Today, while there was some stability brought to the UK position by Jeremy Hunt, in Scotchland, the SNP published yet another fairy story as to why Independence would work...

There are no real relevant figures in the paper...

Even the supporters of Independence are shredding it from the get go...

But surely only an idiot could believe that Scotland could function as an independent country without massive tax rises and/or massive spending cuts i.e. eye -watering (as they say) austerity - a fact never acknowledged by the SNP...

And so, rather than cherry picking quotes, I might as well put here, in full, for the record, the initial judgement of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which is always fairly balanced when it comes to Scottish Independence arguments...

An immediate response to the Scottish Government’s paper on independence and the Scottish economy

The Scottish Government has today published a blueprint for economic policy post-independence. 

This includes plans to move to a separate Scottish pound as soon as practical, to apply to re-join the EU, and to boost immigration to grow the workforce and tackle skills shortages.  

On the public finances, the Scottish Government says it would be committed to “sound public finances”, ensuring this through “fiscal rules informed by international best practice”, placing a limit on borrowing for day-to-day spending, and debt. 

However, the report does not discuss what achieving a sustainable fiscal position could mean for Scottish taxes or public spending, arguing that the economic and policy environment is too uncertain to do so.

It is true that the future path of the UK and Scotland’s public finances is currently even more uncertain than usual. 

But nevertheless, Scotland’s much higher levels of public spending and slightly lower levels of onshore tax revenues mean that it is highly likely an independent Scotland would need to make bigger cuts to public spending or bigger increases to taxes in the first decade following independence than the rest of the UK would need to. 

In the longer-term, the sustainability of Scotland’s public finances – and its potential to reverse some of the spending cuts or tax rises – would depend on whether aims for faster productivity and economic growth were delivered.

Boosting immigration would boost the size of the economy – although the impact on productivity and GDP per person would be substantially lower. 

And re-joining the EU, while reducing trade barriers and boosting trade with the EU, would mean additional trade barriers with the rest of the UK, negatively affecting what are currently much bigger trade flows between Scotland and the rest of the UK. 

It is therefore far from certain that re-joining the EU would boost growth.

The Scottish Government also suggests setting up a ‘New Scotland Fund’, providing up to £20 billion of capital investment over the first decade of an independence to help boost growth, and enable reductions in carbon emissions. 

It is suggested that this fund would “reinvest oil and gas revenues”. 

However, with an independent Scotland’s budget likely in substantial deficit during its first few years, even including oil and gas revenues, this fund would in reality be financed by additional borrowing. 

David Phillips, an Associate Director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies said:

“The Scottish Government’s new paper on post-independence economic plans makes all the right noises on how the public finances would be managed, emphasising achieving fiscal sustainability.

But, it skirts around what achieving sustainability would likely require in the first decade of an independent Scotland: bigger tax rises or spending cuts than the UK government will have to pursue.

This is because while high oil and gas prices means Scotland’s underlying budget deficit this year will be fairly close to that of the UK as a whole, this is likely to prove temporary: oil and gas prices are expected to fall back, and North Sea production is on a long-term downward trend. 

Scotland’s public finances are therefore expected to weaken relative to the rest of the UK again unless onshore economic growth could be boosted to grow revenues from income tax, VAT and the like.

That’s not impossible and the Scottish Government has rightly highlighted the UK’s poor productivity performance, including relative to many of the small northern European countries that it is suggested Scotland could emulate. 

However, boosting productivity and growth is far from certain and would be easier said than done. 

Experience from recent weeks suggests the markets may not look favourably on fiscal plans built on the uncertain hope of a substantial future boost to growth.”

Yep, the people who produced this paper are the idiots running Scotland and blaming everything they get wrong (which is almost everything) on Westminster...

This is the norm for the SNP.  This is Scotland in 2022...

Anyway, I looked to collate content for the weekend's podcast by choosing tracks at random, 30 or so at a time out of the 286,441 currently on the hard drives which are included in my iTunes...

I gradually filled the grid of required tracks (leaving the 7 LPs of the day to be added on Friday, "new music day")...-

CBQ

Rock

Jazz

LP of the Day

Ambient

Classical

Reggae

LP of the Day

Singer/Songwriter

Jazz

Electronic

LP of the Day

Funk

Classical

Pop

LP of the Day

Leftfield

Jazz

Prog Rock

LP of the Day

Soul

Classical

The Wire Tapper

LP of the Day

Jazz

Dub

Singer/Songwriter

LP of the Day

Classical

Experimental

Cover

Special

I got these...

I listened through and it was good...

Of course, the temptation will be to replace all or some of these with new into the collection (non LP of the day) music as the weekend approaches...

The deadmau5 track encouraged me to fill the gaps in the collection re his LP discography...

With Anne out at Pilates with Lynne, I was on unpictured Baked Potato duties...

We enjoyed a "All Creatures Great and Small" then scored another 145 on "University Challenge", coming third as Sheffield and UCL drew 170 to 170 with UCL winning the sudden death question...

"Rise of the Nazis: The Downfall" episode 2 (I forgot to mention that we watched the first last week in Cambridge) was also good...

We ended the day with the 3rd last episode of "Elementary"...

Things look bleak with two to go but we are hoping Sherlock, Watson, Marcus and the Captain can pull it out of the bag...

Highlight of the Day : The case for independence weakened yet again (even though there has never been one)...