New blog

Been to a meeting of Creative Coast in Scarborough this evening and was late after getting lost. Why can’t people put the post code on meeting notifications so one can get map easily.

Missed most of meeting about the use of Facebook and how good it is for forming groups of people with mental health problems. Just made me think of Chumbawumba’s song ‘Add Me’ and my song ‘A Place to be’.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

Tuesday, what a day. To York in connection with new album I am working on. The to Rural Arts North Yorkshire at Thirsk for a workshop on making Musical Instruments from Junk with the excellent Chris Bartram. The back to York to deliver Chris to the University of York St. John. Then back to Whitby to join the folk and acoustic music session at the First In Last Out (FILO), another quality musical evening with the regulars and visitors from County Durham and some guys who had popped in on their way back from Edinburgh to Harrogate.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

The Government, by now a Labour Government had to do something so they increased taxes and created jobs for the unemployed in what was called ‘The Public Sector’. This was funded by the taxes of the people who worked in it and by the new so-called ‘Service Industries’ that produced nothing tangible.  

 

By now everything was funded by credit from books of fiction called ‘Account Books’ only no one realised they were fiction and thought they were true stories. Then someone did realise.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

Of course, to pay the workers more the bosses put up the prices so the workers had to borrow more to buy the goods they produced till the prices were so high that goods produced in foreign countries where this system did not apply flooded in to supply the demands of the workers at prices that were lower than the goods they produced.

 

So, the demand for the goods they produced fell and the factories closed and the workers were without work but still in debt to the bankers.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

TO BE CONTINUED

So, the workers had to work overtime to pay their credit bills. No problem as production was increasing to meet the demand of the workers to buy the goods they produced. Eventually money from overtime would not cover their debts and they demanded higher wages and wives and mothers went out to work to pay for it all.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

Spent much of yesterday working on my new album(s), editing the music which is played on my Native American Style Flutes. As most of the pieces are quite long,about ten minutes, I intend, at the moment to put them on two separate but complementary CDs (not a double album). In the spirit of ‘Fluting and Floating’, themes are associated with sprites of water and sprites of land. More on this later.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com  

I said in the last blog I’d tell you a story of the ghost of Harold Macmillan, here it is, in installments, like re-paying credit:

Harold Macmillan’s Conservative Government got into trouble in the ‘60s, so, initially cheap credit was made available to the ordinary general public which was encouraged to borrow to buy. Before the pattern had been save to buy. The goods the citizen was encouraged to buy were those that the citizen, working in a factory, produced. So, not only did the bosses make a profit on the work done by others in their factories from those very factory workers but so did the bankers from the interest on the money the workers borrowed to buy the goods they produced.

TO BE CONTINUED.
Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

I am reading Pete Wood’s first class book ‘The Elliotts of Birtley’. Imagine my surprise having spent part of the day with Keith Armstrong to turn a page of the Book and see his name leap off the page. It was on a picture of a poster from the time of the 1984 Miners’ Strike when the Elliotts and Keith Armstrong were on the same bill in Liverpool raising funds for the striking miners and their families.

I haven’t forgotten the ghost stories but I may deal with the current financial situation and its antecedents before then as it concerns the ghosts of the policies of Harold Macmillan’s Tory Government.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

Spent lunchtime at the Bridge Hotel, Newcastle with poet Keith Armstrong, the jingling geordie, putting together our show for 21 October at the Joachim Room at the College of St. Hild and St.Bede, Durham University. I am doing interpretive improvised music on lyre, bowed psaltery and native american style flutes. Keith is reading poems about four Durham characters, the Little Count, Jamie Allen, the northumbrian piper,the poet,Christopher Smart, and the lead mine poet, Richard Watson. Keith Armstrong will also read extracts from contmporary accounts of their lives. The show starts at 7 pm or 19.00hrs if you prefer it. 

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

Another Tuesday evening and another load of music, folk and country mostly last night, apart from my songs which were locally based and some pieces I did on the Native American Style Flutes.

Jim McLaughlin came and sang a few songs, taking a no doubt welcome break from organising Musicport which is this year at the Spa at Bridlington. He was telling me about the fantastic line-up of guest that Musicport has this year.

May be more on this later. And I haven’t forgotten the ghost stories. Watch this space.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com