Alison Goldfrapp - 6 Music Festive Takeover
3 minutes ago
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Sacked UK government drug adviser says Gordon Brown is from another universe
The scientist who was sacked as the government’s chief adviser on drugs has mocked Gordon Brown as someone whose views come from “some other universe”.
An unrepentant Professor David Nutt reiterated his controversial position that horse riding was more lethal than Ecstasy and suggested that smoking cannabis during pregnancy was less dangerous than drinking alcohol.
At a conference of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, an organisation which calls for the legalisation of many drugs, Prof Nutt accused the Government of failing to protect people against the dangers of drugs.
“We have a Prime Minister whose view (on drugs) is formed in some other universe,” he said.
He was sacked this month as head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary who accused him of ”crossing a line into politics” after he criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis as a Class B drug.
“When I was sacked Alan Johnson said he was ‘big enough, bold enough, strong enough’ to make the decision. I’d say he’s not big enough, bold enough or strong enough to tell the truth about drugs,” he said at the conference at Leeds University on Sunday.
He also attacked Mr Johnson’s predecessor, Jacqui Smith or “Jackboot” as he called her, saying that she phoned him 30 minutes before she was due to answer questions about her expenses. He added: “When Charles Clarke was Home Secretary he didn’t like my advice, but at least he had the courage to accept it.”
During his 10 years on the advisory council he said he found talking with politicians very difficult and that fewer people were now voting in elections because the House of Commons is nothing more than a “pantomime”. He said: “I never realised how unintellectual politicians are.”
In answer to a woman’s question about the harm of cannabis, after she admitted smoking it while she was pregnant, he suggested its use while pregnant was less harmful than drinking alcohol – because the cost to the public of dealing with alcohol abuse is far higher than any illegal drug.
He said: “Alcohol costs £1,000 pounds per year in excess health care costs and about three times that of other costs.”
Since he was dismissed the professor said he said he had received hundreds of emails from people, of which 95 per cent have been supportive.
After his dismissal five members of the advisory board handed in their notice from the unpaid posts leaving the entire committee’s place within Government in some doubt. Prof Nutt said: “The Government will find it very difficult to appoint a new chairman.”
He said he will continue to offer advice to the Government and is planning on setting up a parallel committee to work side by side with the committee he was removed from.
He said: “Hopefully, this new independent board will be the first port of call on drugs policy in the UK.” In the future he said he wants to look into the possibility of creating a new, legal drug which could be a safer alternative to alcohol.
Mark Bradley – Absolution [basses frequences, 2009]
Tracklist:
01. Evolving
02. Harmonium
03. In Unison
04. Absolute
——————————————-
Mark Bradley is a solo performer, portraying emotional states of being through his audio. Once you immerse yourself in this claustrophobic and atmospheric ambient world, you become oblivious to your surroundings. High level deep listening. A man of few words and full of mystery Smoke and mirrors. Brainwave entertainment. Moonlight ambient. (Basses Frequences)
Mark Bradley is a solo performer, portraying emotional states of being through his audio. Once you immerse yourself in this claustrophobic and atmospheric ambient world, you become oblivious to your surroundings. High level deep listening. A man of few words and full of mystery Smoke and mirrors. Brainwave entertainment. Moonlight ambient. (Basses Frequences)
Get it
HERE
A weird slice of synchronicity as just yeasterday I was chatting to a friend who had been offered a deal with a record label and was asking for some (general) advice...
As I am opposed to the ways of most of the record companies I was pointing out that these days there are other ways to get your music out there and I mentioned that one of the ways is thru the use of blogs, and I did mention bolachas.org.
Anyway when I came home I had an e/mail from Mark Bradley asking where was the review of the record above on 'Exile'?
Now Mark maybe you would like to get back to me and explain why you choose this route to get yr music out?
Do grab the album while you are here, it certainly ticks all the boxes if you are into ambient/drone/noise.
Ghost Inna Dub (Adrian Sherwood Mix) - Screaming Soul
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
The Death of Uncool by Brian Eno
"It’s odd to think back on the time—not so long ago—when there were distinct stylistic trends, such as “this season’s colour” or “abstract expressionism” or “psychedelic music.” It seems we don’t think like that any more. There are just too many styles around, and they keep mutating too fast to assume that kind of dominance.
As an example, go into a record shop and look at the dividers used to separate music into different categories. There used to be about a dozen: rock, jazz, ethnic, and so on. Now there are almost as many dividers as there are records, and they keep proliferating. The category I had a hand in starting—ambient music—has split into a host of subcategories called things like “black ambient,” “ambient dub,” “ambient industrial,” “organic ambient” and 20 others last time I looked. A similar bifurcation has been happening in every other living musical genre (except for “classical” which remains, so far, simply “classical”), and it’s going on in painting, sculpture, cinema and dance.
We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.
I think this is good news. As people become increasingly comfortable with drawing their culture from a rich range of sources—cherry-picking whatever makes sense to them—it becomes more natural to do the same thing with their social, political and other cultural ideas. The sharing of art is a precursor to the sharing of other human experiences, for what is pleasurable in art becomes thinkable in life."
Strokes Announce Return to the Stage
Well, it looks like things have shored up a bit since then. The group has just announced their first live gig since October 2006, headlining this summer's Isle of Wight fest off England's southern coast, according to the event's official site. Jay-Z, Blondie, and Orbital are some of the other early names attached to the mega gig, set to go down June 11-13.
In other Strokes news, bassist Nikolai Fraiture recently offered fans some more hope of a new album in 2010 via a Twitter post. "While the guys are in LA, I went to scout some studios in NYC with [manager] Ryan [Gentles] today for what looks like Jan recording!!! mood = f***ing excited!" (Via NME.) Seems promising.
Pub 'fined £8k' for Wi-Fi copyright infringement
A pub owner has been fined £8,000 because someone unlawfully downloaded copyrighted material over their open Wi-Fi hotspot, according to the managing director of hotspot provider The Cloud.
Graham Cove told ZDNet UK on Friday he believes the case to be the first of its kind in the UK. However, he would not identify the pub concerned, because its owner — a pubco that is a client of The Cloud's — had not yet given their permission for the case to be publicised.
Cove would say only that the fine had been levied in a civil case, brought about by a rights holder, "sometime this summer". The Cloud's pubco clients include Fullers, Greene King, Marsdens, Scottish & Newcastle, Mitchell & Butlers and Punch Taverns.
The law surrounding open Wi-Fi networks and the liability of those running them is a grey area.
According to internet law professor Lilian Edwards, of Sheffield Law School, where a business operates an open Wi-Fi spot to give customers or visitors internet access, they would be "not be responsible in theory" for users' unlawful downloads, under "existing substantive copyright law".
She also said the measures that would be brought in under the Digital Economy Bill — measures that could include disconnection of the account holder — would not apply because the business could be classified as a public communications service provider, which would make it exempt. According to the terms of the bill, only "subscribers" can be targeted with sanctions.
According to legal advice sent to The Cloud by the law firm Faegre & Benson on 17 August, "Wi-Fi hotspots in public and enterprise environments providing access to the internet to members of the public, free or paid, are public communications services".
A public communications service provider must, under the terms of the Data Retention Regulations that came into force in the UK in April of this year, retain records for 12 months on communications that have taken place over their network. This data includes user IDs, the times and dates of access, and the online destinations that were being accessed. The content of the communications cannot be retained without the user's permission, due to data-protection laws.
However, there is a get-out clause in the Data Retention Regulations, in that no public communications service provider has to keep such records unless they are notified by the government that they are required to do so.
According to Edwards, this is because "only the big six ISPs have the facilities to comply, and because the government agreed [in its legislation] to repay some of the costs [of retaining such records]". She noted that this clause might itself be non-compliant with the EU data-retention laws that were transposed into UK law in April.
Edwards pointed out that, even if the sanctions proposed in the Digital Economy Bill come into force, "no-one will know who [the downloader] was, because the IP address that will show up [upon investigation] will be of the hotspot". She added that the rights holder seeking infringers of their copyright would probably not know that the IP address in question was not that of a subscriber.
It would then be up to the hotspot operator to point out that they were not the end user downloading copyrighted material. "But when would they get to say that? Maybe straightaway, maybe not until after disconnection — it's not currently clear," Edwards said.
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06.26.09 at 10:39 am
06.26.09 at 11:40 am
06.26.09 at 12:21 pm
06.26.09 at 12:25 pm
06.26.09 at 4:36 pm
Der schwarz-weiß bemalte Sting, einer DER Stars von World Championship Wrestling ist tot.
translation: the black and white painted Sting, a famous wrestler, is dead.
the “real” Sting is alive ;)
06.28.09 at 7:56 am
ahum grra hum….gr grr gr gr gr
uh uh
aaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhhhaaa……………………………..
me 2 ohh i’am dead….
06.30.09 at 1:14 pm
07.02.09 at 4:48 am
Where is your source
07.09.09 at 6:51 am
07.09.09 at 7:30 am
There is not!
07.10.09 at 12:32 am
07.11.09 at 4:55 pm
07.12.09 at 2:29 pm
The director of the movie “Sting” died in 2002. As for Sting the wrestler, he became a born-again christian, but that’s brain-dead; not the same thing.
Looks like your carreer as an investigative blogger is off to a nad start. Well, back to comedy.
07.16.09 at 8:57 pm
07.17.09 at 10:35 am
regards/
Mona
07.17.09 at 11:00 am
08.06.09 at 8:11 am
Well, I wish he was.
09.08.09 at 8:52 am
10.17.09 at 4:07 pm
@The Cleverest'