Early English chamber music

 We're giving politics a break this week, like you I've had my fill this week, for a bit of light relief.

Chamber music is something that has always interested me and I have a number of recordings by this group of musicians.

Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque shed light on this underappreciated era on The Muses Restor'd, a journey of captivating violin-led chamber music from Jacobean to Early Georgian England, ranging from the gentle intimacy of consort idioms to the full-blown instrumental virtuosity of the evolving baroque period.

In this recording Rachel and Brecon Baroque performs works by Handel, Lawes, Blow, Locke, Purcell, Schop, Jenkins, Baltzar and Jones.

This beautifully refined and intimately chiselled chamber music celebrates a rich tradition where the violin joins a plethora of keyboards, lutes, viol and continuo cello reinstating these sonatas, fantasies, suites, grounds and popular tunes to the mainstream of English cultural life of the time. Together with four musicians of Brecon Baroque, Rachel Podger 

The beginning of the end - just over two weeks to go?

Remember the betting on the Election Day story?

Well it appears two candidates and a police officer serving in a protection role are to be investigated into it as lines get thicker between the leaders responses both Conservative and of course, Labour and to be honest I feel Keir Starmer's remark to the effect they'd be through the door, out if they were his matches more how I feel as they'd have some inside knowledge and just whatever possesses someone to bet on that, something that with Mp's pay you certainly don't need.

What I might ask was any money gained through this going to be spent on and why?

That one rather like the question of what in practise is each party really going to achieve by way of immigration policy remains lacking an clear answer.

Immigration does place pressure on housing and public services that most acknowledge is real and affects the least well off the most even if the UK does have some skills shortages from its own population and so may benefit from something more like a points system immigration system prioritizing those sills we need the most.

Few of us take issue when people do work that is necessary and contribute in the wider sense to the host community.

How we deal with people who wish to claim Asylum, facing a "well founded fear of persecution or death" but insist that it's "The UK or nothing" is difficult.

Many have been through countries that could of offered asylum and they could of sought it in but a policy of rigid denial leads to tense situations, stand offs and even threats to take their own lives.

Understandably many of us feel very uncomfortable holding a rigid line but how do you prevent people just deciding where they wish to be and plowing on toward it? 

Is that fair even when all you are saying is "I cannot follow my faith, sexuality or engage in politics in my own country but there's only one I will accept to go to" when other countries can offer you that very thing?

Still there's time as I have received my Postal Vote pack and can either complete and return to the Councils Elections office or hand in, sealed on the day at the polling station.

I'd be very surprised if we didn't see a change of Government unless things really change.

This weeks election round up

 Three weeks to go so a bit of round up this week after last weeks break from the election but was it?

Well D-Day became an issue even if the event should never be party politicized because the Day had began so well, attending events, meeting veterans, other invitees such as towns people where the liberation happened and obviously other international politicians such as Prime ministers and Presidents.

Then extraordinary having done all of that to the book, even helping to push veterans in their wheelchairs he shoots back to England in the late afternoon to a prebooked interview with ITV just as other events that involved those senior politicians were to take place leaving the Foreign Secretary to fill in.

This day was a fixed event before he called the election, often having attended remembrance events personally can run later and often have get together just happening that you seriously can't plan on shoe horning anything else in.

Given he alone made that decision to call the election when he did, he needed to reschedule the interview as this thing was and is far more important.

He says it was a mistake - well, yes it was, a major one that give the impression an interview was more important than this extremely important event - and one that angered people even in the upper levels of his party.

He needed to be there for US, the British people as Prime Minister.

Major self inflicted wound.

Then Labour are still struggling with both how to increase spending on areas that are NOT protected when it comes to government spending while ruling out tax raises like dealing with immigration issues when that department may well be facing funding cuts.

Nobody would say things are not difficult - that's painfully apparent - but given a chunk of your appeal is about reversing 14+ years of austerity like how?

Calculating what you may claw through tax loopholes is an inexact science and often the very well monied know how to move it around out of your path.

Don't start me on the morality of making Private Education taxable when everything else in education is not just cos you want the money.

That comes over as just class based warfare even if it's more likely to hit aspirational working people or those with a  child with disability who need the extra support and low pupil teacher rations (never more than 14 children to one class) which few secondary schools and a fair number of Junior schools in state sector just don't provide and are often failing.

Then his explanations on Wednesdays for why he enthusiastically backed Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 in a Sky News  public discussion just aren't so convincing and there are still issues with activists over Gaza, Just Stop Oil and co.

The mood music may well be "something better change" but the question remains by what?

80th Anniversary of D-Day

We'll take a bit of a break from domestic politics and the election campaign as much as that has been rumbling on with the first televised debate on ITV 1 from Salford, Lancashire for something that also matters and to which is a one off.

June 6, 1944 is one of most important dates of the last century, the day in which Operation Overlord came into affect and the most audacious attempt to land on a beach from beyond deploying sea, air and land based transportation both implemented and won

This country, our Country had by a hairsbreadth and very much against all odds had survived the Battle of Britain and major bombing not least in our ports and industrial centres becoming a hub in the battle against Nazism that had France to the then U.S.S.R. taken so much of Europe over with the appalling, inhumane even, treatment of millions.

You can argue and I would that by having taken much of western Europe, being caught up in campaign in the U.S.S.R and North Africa German forces had been spread thin and by 1943 with the move from statement in the U.S.S.R to being forced back and being driven back in North Africa, the tide was turning.

The 1,000 year Reich would of imploded at some point or other from the pressures but just imagine what damage might of been done had it of taken a decade to fizzle out.

Whole races would of been eliminated, many more just killed for standing for freedom and your own countries independence. It had to be sped up.

What Operation Overlord was a attempt to push back from the Normandy coast, France and onwards to liberate Europe including Germany where there was increasing opposition to how things were going not that those who tried to change things met anything but death themselves.

It was not easy, thousands died on the beaches of Normandy on that and other days apart from those who having made their way had to  make their way to Cherbourg and  Caen very much under fire and we ought not to forget those French people who lost their lives  both in assisting them and in the bombing raids needed to drive the German forces to the point of surrender.

It was achieved - but at  a high price.

War is traumatic. Many did and are still living with scars of seeing comrades killed in front of them and having to crawl past the dead and injured as there was no time to do anything else lest you be the next dead man.

Eventually they moved on to Paris and on the Low Countries as the U.S.S.R forces moved from the east culminating in May 1945 with War being over in Europe and Nazism defeated.

Freedom was restored but that freedom was paid for in blood. The freedom they sacrificed their lives for is what gives you that freedom today.

And remember to be vigilant from those who either cheapen or threaten to remove it today.