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Soweto Gospel Choir UK Tour
April 30 London Cadogan Hall 0207 730 4500 www.cadoganhall.com
May 2 Nottingham Royal Concert Hall 0115 989 5555 www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk
May 4 Cambridge Corn Exchange 01223 357851 www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk
May 5&6 Malvern Forum Theatre 0168 489 2277 www.malvern-theatres.co.uk
May 8 Aberdeen Music Hall 01224 641122 www.malvern-theatres.co.uk
May 9 Glasgow Royal Concert Hall 0141 353 8000 www.grch.com
May 11 Leeds Town Hall 0113 224 3801
May 12 Northampton The Deco 01604 602787 www.thedeco.co.uk
May 13 Newbury Newbury Spring Festival 01635 522733 www.newburyspringfestival.org.uk
May 14 Coventry Warwick Arts Centre 024 7652 4524 www.warwickartscentre.co.uk
May 15 Darlington Darlington Civic Theatre 01325 486555 www.darlingtonarts.co.uk
May 16 Derby The Assembly Rooms 01332 255 800 www.assemblyrooms-derby.co.uk
May 17 Crawley The Hawth 01293 553636 www.hawth.co.uk
May 18 Croydon Fairfields Halls 0208 688 9291 www.fairfield.co.uk
May 20 St Albans Alban Arena 01727 844488 www.alban-arena.co.uk
May 21 Cheltenham Everyman Theatre 01242 572573 www.everymantheatre.org.uk
May 22 Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre 0870 111 3000 www.bic.co.uk
May 23 Tunbridge Wells Assembly Hall Theatre 01892 530613 / 532072 www.assemblyhalltheatre.co.uk
May 24 Torquay Princess Theatre 08702 4141 20 www.getlive.co.uk/torquay
May 25 Stoke on Trent Victoria Hall 0870 060 6649 www.victoria-hall.info
May 27 Cardiff St. David’s Hall 029 20878444 www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk
May 28 Salford The Lowry 0870 787 5790 www.thelowry.com
May 30 Swansea Grand Theatre 01792 475715 www.swanseagrandtheatre.co.uk
May 31 Liecester De Montfort Hall 0116 233 3111 www.demontforthall.co.uk
June 1 Plymouth Plymouth Pavilions 01752 229922 www.plymouthpavilions.com
June 2 Salisbury Salisbury International Arts Festival 01722 320 333 www.salisburyfestival.co.uk
By Peter Biles
BBC News, Johannesburg
A white South African farmer whose land had been earmarked for the first commercial expropriation has reached a sales agreement with the government.
The authorities want to transfer 30% of commercial farmland to black ownership by 2014, but progress has been slow.
The case of Hannes Visser’s farm has been seen as a test of the government’s determination to speed up the delicate process of land reform.
More details here
Technobilge Part II v2.45a
What does this mean?:
Deep, opulent orange hue. A nose of caramel, pastry, spiced oranges and apples. There is certainly some botrytis here, both colour and nose confirming this. The palate has quite a savoury structure to it, with firm acidity cutting through the mouthfeel. But there is plenty of flavour too, of burnt toast, stewed apples, caramel and honey. Takes on a greater sweet intensity with time in the glass, and has a good length. More reminiscent of Tokaji than anything else. Just scrapes very good
Where do these okies come from? It describes how savoury a palate is. Sis! Who wants to eat a palate? Ag puke man! In which country are palates considered a delicacy? This is a wine being described for crissakes. Check, it’s nogal got a ‘mouthfeel’ en jislaaik it ’scrapes very good’!
So is it me or is there a disconnect somewhere that I seem to have missed or is there a special school where you are taught to write viticultural technobilge like the above?
Dear World.
What is going on at your place? I hear that UK has the highest incidence of child asthmatics globally since records on asthma began. This is absurd. Why is it so?
I can tell why I think it is so but you must promise me that if you think I am right, you will convince Mr Blair and his devout Trotskiest accolyte Mr Brown, to buy rowing boats (sculls, fours and eights) for schools. If you think I am wrong, you will not dissuade them to abandon my request. Deal?
MY DUO THEORIED THEORY ON WHY UK HAS AN UNESSESSARILY HIGH CHILD ASTHMATIC RATE:
1. The Sun newspaper.
It should be banned, outlawed, burnt, dispatched to Neptune and stopped. It does not create the requirement nor cause any reader to use his or her imagination or other parts of their brain. Men will disagree with this but I must remind them that the topless beauty on page 3 of The Sun does not, I repeat, does not cause your brain to fuction unless your brain is located in your cock. OK, so it is and this goes for all us males so less of this and let’s move swiftly on. Thus it dumbs down its readership and as it claims to be read on a daily basis by the highest number of UK citizens you can imagine the collective impact of the dumbingdown on parents. They become collective idiots. What do collective idiots do? They believe Politically Correct idiots who say that sport is bad for their children.
2. Political Correctness as a way of life.
PC must be immediately banned. World, we cannot continue this way. How can we live our lives in constant fear of upsetting someone? Back in the good old Neanderthal days they did not have any PC Councils monitoring which caveman did not comply. Or should that be ‘male grottodweller’? They just got on with life and hey presto they survived and evolved into dumbdowned Sun reading idiots.
In those days life was called survival of the fittest. Nowadays life is called:
a) watching Big Bruvver on telly all day
b) hero worshipping ‘Posh n Becks’
c) ’scrounging social benefits off the state’
d) ‘football fucking football’
e) innit
f) wotevva
g) skiving off work to go do benefit fraud
h) and criminally, ZERO CONTACT SPORT AT SCHOOL (excludes knifing, steelpipe clubbing, pistol whipping and gang rape behind the cycle shed)
There you have it. My two theories on why the children of today in UK could be the world’s largest group of child asthmatics. And if you think the list above is all emcompassing, you will be wrong. The list is a lot, lot, lot, lot, ever such a lot, lot longer
In short I do believe that not having any contact sport or ’sport ‘ per se at school during the formative years when their bodies and muscles are in a rapid growth phase, is a considerable contributing factor to such high asthmatic incidence. You will all probably cry - it’s not lack of sport or exercise mate, it all ‘cos of them allergies innit, you jerk. Well yes being allergic to stuff is an increasing contributor to being asthamtic and to the statistics but why? Lack of exercise is why - you sofa hugging pillocks.
Sofas collect dust, cat and dog hairs, biscuit crumbs, £1 and 5p pieces that have been in someone’s hands who has flu or the bubonic plague, bits of half chewed Burger King hamburger meat, lost used condoms, dried spittle, stale fart chemicals and any other assortment of bits n pieces that carry mites and can pass on allergic reactions.
So switch off the TV, get your wide flabby butt up off the sofa where you are collecting contaminents that’ll make you sick and go do something useful to society like get a job, or do something constructive to improve your health and global outlook like a 5 mile walk in the countryside and see wildlife like birds or cows in realtime action. Or better still, go for a run around your town without stopping off at the pub for a few beers paid for out of the dole money me and others are paying for from the tax out of our hard earned money.
I was a chronic asthmatic and was lucky to be at a school that believed in sport for their students. Apart from the resultant benefit of fitness, it increased our self-esteem and confidence levels and most importantly sport taught us to be competative and to a degree self-reliant. All this prepared us better for the big world that awaited us after A levels or University.
While there are many schools who do encourage (here I go being PC again), sod it, force their students to do sports, there are in my opinion more schools who actively discourage sports at school. Selling off the school’s sportsfields does count as active discouragement of all sporting activity doesn’t it? Yes I think it does. Very bloody much so. Can you believe it? Schools in UK sell off their sportsfields to housing developers!!! How criminal and insane is that?!
In fact there are also thousands of mums and dads who can’t be arsed to ensure their children attend school! This speaks volumes to me about the teachers and governing bodies at these schools. Weak, feeble indecisive wimps with phsycological problems. Maybe they have not yet got over being bullied at school, having their plaits pulled by female 4th formers or from being crushed in a rugby scrum. If you are one these types - sod off and go read The Sun and do a soduko for sport!
Anyway - back to me and my asthma. Luckily for me I was ‘volunteered’ to join an ‘experimental’ rowing squad. I protested and declared myself incapable of succeeding at such a demanding sport.
“Oh what a load of rowlocks!”, came the answer from the understanding & empathetic rowing coach, “I’ll cure your asthma in 3 months”.
“What has Frank Zappa gotta do with curing my azzma?”, I thought to myself.
“Guaranteed?” I demanded
“Absolutely” replied the rowing coach
And so that is how the next Wednesday afternoon during our PE lesson I walked to the rowing club and became a learner sculler. I learned fast and seemed rather adept at the sport. IMPORTANT: I kept my Ventolin spray under my seat and if an asthma attack came while I was rowing bow in a four, I’d carry on rowing one-handed, (can’t let the rest of the crew down or cause them to crab), then time the stroke to reach under my seat with my other arm at the appropriate outreach, grab the spray, have a toke on it, drop it and then pick up the stroke again.
It was difficult. It was challenging. I prevailed and stuck to the objective of becoming a good rower and also to beat the asthma. I was focussed. I won because I wanted to win. There was a lot of fun and pain on the way but overall, there was plenty more fun. Thus did I become an adequate rower and I and others from the squad went on rowing after school and college. Our collective competative results were somewhat spectacular.
And as the coach predicted, and I wanted, I have never had an asthma attack again to date. I last used my Ventolin spray nearly 3 months to the day I first very nervously and gingerly climbed into a scull on that drab and damp Wednesday afternoon.
So you can now see why I want Mr Blair and that other one taking up space and stealing my air at Number 11 Downing St to buy rowing boats for schools. While they are at it, they can create artificial lakes like at Eton for the children who do not have rivers closeby to go train on. I also urge all parents with asthmatic children to get that kid rowing ASAP. Swimming is an excellent exercise for asthmatics too
The cure for asthma is in the exercise and most importantly, the desire and determination to be cured must prevail always.
OK World, I must sign off now. Pass on my regards to the schools genius governing bodies who sold off the sporting fields and so prevent UK from developing future Olympians. They have really done asthmatic kids and the future of British sport such a wonderful favour.
Regards
Rob
Technobilge Part II v2.43
We all need to enter conversations everyday and we will all have our own reasons to want to do so. But we can only all comprehend what each other is saying if we do not confuse the listener by introducing our keen razor sharp on the button latest tekkiespeak into the conversation.
What I mean is - does ‘VHSDR’, DSL’ ‘Web 2.0′ or ‘Media 2.0′ translate into Xhosa, Zulu, Venda or Latin?
I recall being completely paralysed by a conversation with a telcoms engineer back in the 90’s. I did not understand a word he was saying (OK, I got the ‘it’s’, ‘the’, ‘and’ bits), but I was too petrified and shellshocked by the bombardment of the PHD Masters Buck Rogers Rocket Science with Einstein theory chucked in for extra added flavour spiel, to ask for an explanation!
I just ummed and aahhed and nodded my head in agreement (that I should not have nodded did not occur to me but his facial expression did impart I should have shook my head to mean ‘no’) and let him vent for 10 minutes. Hey, he was on a roll and who was I to prevent him spewing forth? Imagine Billy Crystal on speed hosting the Oscars ceremony and reciting the Dummies Guide How to Build a Saturn IV rocket without pause. Would the assembled audience of actors and actresses know what he was saying?
Before I forget, is there an Inner Chamber of the planet’s top scientists, engineers and marketers sitting in session each day to invent new acronyms? If not, then the world’s industries are populated with seriously disfunctional tekkies! Who comes up with this stuff? Do product designers and inventors spend their day inventing things just so they can come up with and win the Cool Acronym of the Month Award?
Please don’t spoil my allusion ;0)
