Before the name became synonymous with an earnest rock band whose ideological offspring have emasculated the genre beyond saving, U2 equated with a US spy plane of the original Cold War era. U2 went from being a mundane military term to a global buzzword in 1960 when the aircraft flown by American pilot Gary Powers was shot down in Soviet airspace during a clandestine surveillance mission. The plane was downed by a surface-to-air missile and the American authorities initially insisted the plane wasn’t a plane but was actually a weather research aircraft – perhaps a bit like those Chinese balloons spotted over the US a month or so ago. However, in one of the great propaganda coups of the period, the Russians paraded Powers (who had parachuted to safety) before the cameras and produced the aerial photographs of military bases the pilot had been dispatched to snap. An embarrassed America was forced to come clean just weeks before President Eisenhower was scheduled to meet Soviet Premier Khrushchev (a summit meeting which was cancelled as a consequence), despite rightly pointing out their tactics were hardly unique at the time – and indeed proved priceless when it came to Cuba a couple of years later; Powers was tried, found guilty of espionage and received a characteristically harsh seven-year sentence before returning home via a prisoner exchange in 1962.
Over half-a-century later, manned missions are no longer necessary for that kind of work, but even their automated successors can run into trouble. Aided by the conflict in Ukraine, relations between the US and Russia are arguably at their lowest level since the days when Gary Powers took his ill-fated flight, and yesterday an American MQ-9 Reaper drone – a small surveillance aircraft – had a too-close encounter with a Russian fighter jet and was last seen plunging into the Black Sea. As is traditional, both sides offer different explanations for the incident and both see the collision as an act of provocation by the other party. A statement from the Pentagon said ‘Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and a complete loss of the MQ-9’, before adding the alleged Russian actions could lead to ‘miscalculation and unintended escalation’. Well, that’s something else to help you sleep better at night innit.
The Black Sea itself has been what one might call ‘a hot spot’ since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, but the invasion of Ukraine last year has seen an increase in surveillance jaunts over the area; whilst US and UK aircraft hovering around the region have officially remained in international airspace, there’s always the understandable suspicion the odd plane sneaks ‘behind enemy lines’. Russian aircraft are hardly noted for scrupulously observing the rules when it comes to the airspace of a sovereign nation, so it wouldn’t be a great stretch of the imagination to envisage Western aircraft doing likewise. The incident that occurred yesterday was clearly viewed by Washington as deliberate rather than an accident, which implies that if the drone remained in international airspace at the time of the collision, this was indeed the Russians overstepping the mark. This perspective certainly holds sway in the US, resulting in the Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov being summoned to provide an explanation; back home in Moscow, however, the state media regarded the presence of the drone as ‘a provocation’. Tit for tat, then.
The Pentagon claims the ‘unsafe, unprofessional’ actions on the part of the Russian aircraft consisted of dumping fuel in the flight path of the drone in a ‘reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner’, followed by a collision with it that eventually caused it to fall to earth. According to the National Security Council, this incident wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it was the most significant to date in terms of damage done. The US didn’t reveal the precise location where the drone landed or if the Russian Navy had embarked on a search for it, but the notion of such sensitive equipment falling into enemy hands is naturally undesirable; it would seem the US used remote pilots to ensure the drone splashed down somewhere in the Black Sea following the collision, which was probably the safest option given the delicate situation, though that doesn’t necessarily mean its secrets are secure on the sea bed. The support being given to Ukraine by the West isn’t limited to providing military hardware, but military intelligence; Kyiv has become dependent on the findings of Western surveillance drones revealing everything from the launching of missiles to the movement of Russian vessels in the Black Sea. It goes without saying that this information going astray wouldn’t help the Ukrainian cause.
Russia, on its part, has demanded the US cease what it refers to as ‘hostile flights’ into Russian airspace; the same Ambassador who was called to provide an explanation for his nation’s actions yesterday, Anatoly Antonov, was prompted to say, ‘We presume the United States will refrain from further speculation in the media space and will stop flying near Russian borders’. There have certainly been some fairly unambiguous indications via Russian state media that the remains of the drone are being actively sought by Russian authorities, though the White House’s spokesman John Kirby has insisted the likelihood of it being recovered – by either side – seems fairly slim. ‘I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to recover it,’ he said. ‘Where it fell into the Black Sea – very, very deep water; so we’re still assessing whether there can be any kind of recovery effort. There may not be.’ Mr Kirby then did his best to affirm that any information the drone contained wouldn’t be much use to Moscow anyway – ‘We did the best we could to minimise any intelligence value that might come from somebody else getting their hands on that drone,’ he added. Two lines from the old Megadeth song, ‘Hanger 18’ now spring to mind – ‘Military intelligence/two words combined that don’t make sense’; Thrash Metal, not known for its profound observations, occasionally delivers the goods.
This incident is clearly not on the same propaganda level as the U2 affair of 1960; for one thing, there is no all-American boy to present as evidence and (as yet) no drone to produce as the next best thing. But it does perhaps highlight yet again the tensions along an international fault-line between East and West that appears as wobbly today as it was 60 years ago. Events in Ukraine and Putin’s persecution complex have combined to create a climate of suspicion and mutual mistrust that has a distinctly chilly whiff of Cold War air about it, with the Kremlin declaring that relations with the US are in a ‘lamentable state’ on the same day that RAF and German fighter jets intercepted a Russian aircraft drifting into Estonian airspace on behalf of NATO. Indeed, sometimes it feels like the Berlin Wall never fell after all.
I suppose a key difference re the West on our rebooted Cold War front is the notable lack of pro-Russian sympathies on this side of the divide. First time round, there were strong Soviet leanings on the Left that ran all the way from university campuses to the grubby backrooms of Trades Union branches; the same attitudes that had turned a blind eye to Stalin’s purges in the 1930s and were strengthened by our alliance with the USSR against Nazi Germany during WWII held firm that Communism was the only alternative to capitalism’s iniquities; even events in Hungary and Czechoslovakia couldn’t shake that conviction. Today, the sole Russians the West courts are exiled oligarchs whilst Putin’s regime is viewed as akin to Hitler’s by all but a few scattered apologists; the popular cause is Ukraine, and Russia is regarded very much as the evil aggressor. A superior state of affairs to those in the past, perhaps; but still very black and white, still very Us and Them – which rarely bodes well for future international relations.
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For those not in the know, the BBC Singers are the UK’s sole professional chamber choir; perhaps lack of competition has enabled this ensemble to remain a revered fixture of the country’s Classical furniture for the best part of a century, but it also means people take notice when such unique BBC employees feel the brunt of their employer’s diminishing commitment to the highbrow. A couple of years ago, it was announced that the BBC Concert Orchestra would be dispatched to the wilds of the provinces as yet another token gesture in the ongoing (and increasingly tedious) operation to make the Beeb less ‘London-centric’; but this week an even more dispiriting sign of these BBC times came with the announcement that the BBC Singers are to be disbanded before the start of this year’s Proms, just a year before reaching their landmark 100th birthday; another penny-pinching body blow to the declining morale of these unsung old retainers was the announcement that salaries for members of the English BBC orchestras will be slashed by 20%.
In a way, it would’ve been a breath of fresh air to have been proven wrong, to have had all suspicions and scepticism exposed as ill-founded and to realise our elected leaders were acting out of genuine concern for the people after all. Alas, so engrained now is mistrust of the political class – and not without good reason, lest we forget – that it seems we were destined to have our worst fears confirmed once the private exchanges between those who implemented pandemic policies began seeping out into a mainstream media that slavishly toed the party line at the time. Two or three years later, the MSM has changed direction with the wind and is belatedly engaged in a sequence of double-takes, as though any of these so-called revelations are remotely surprising. In a way, it’s an amusing measure of just how remarkably dim Matt Hancock really is that he entrusted his WhatsApp messages to a Fleet Street snake like Isabel Oakeshott when she was co-authoring his pandemic diaries; true to her nature, Ms Oakeshott proceeded to pass them on to the Daily Telegraph, and now the former Health Secretary’s true thoughts during the period in which he and the Government adopted an approach to civil liberties that Oliver Cromwell would have regarded as a bit extreme are laid bare for all to see. And what an unedifying example of the contempt in which Hancock and his cohorts hold the proles they truly are. And we all thought they cared, didn’t we.
Although a phrase that has become more commonplace in recent years where desperate Z-list celebrities and even the living rooms of plebs on the telly are concerned, ‘makeover’ has nonetheless been a routine PR tool in showbiz circles ever since the dawn of mass media. Hollywood effectively wrote the manual, formulating a familiar device to extend careers as Tinsel Town’s leading ladies received makeovers via the magic of the lighting men on set, keeping the ageing process at bay before excessive cosmetic surgery found a way to do it for them. In the 21st century, most post-Madonna female pop stars seem to ‘get sexy’ when seeking to re-launch their fading stock, and squeaky-clean members of clean-cut boy-bands usually embark on solo careers by forgetting to shave whilst suddenly acquiring a Maori-like range of tattoos, supposedly to signify ‘street cred’ – all examples of the makeover in action. Turd-polishers have never had it so good these days, though I would imagine even the most experienced would have faced an unusually tough challenge when entrusted with transforming a Jihadi bride into a sexy R&B siren.
Where Scots are concerned, it seems that for every Bannockburn, there’s a Darien Venture; or a Culloden; or Scotland Vs Peru 1978; or Scotland Vs Iran 1978; or Scotland Vs Costa Rica 1990; or the Gender Recognition Bill 2023. Continuous electoral success that was only momentarily derailed by the brief Tory resurgence spearheaded by Ruth Davidson in 2017 suggested Nicola Sturgeon’s lengthy tenure as SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland was destined to climax with her being crowned queen of an independent Scotland come the next ‘once in a generation’ referendum. And now it’s all over. Wee Nicola has announced she will be bringing the curtain down on her stellar political career without having seen through the fanatical obsession of every committed Scottish Nationalist to its ultimate conclusion, one that appears to take precedence over every other issue that elected leaders of countries are supposed to devote their time and energy to.
Back in the days when a man could get away with observations of a lady’s physical assets by uttering such statements as ‘You don’t get many of them to the pound’, the name of Raquel Welch routinely cropped-up as an example of a female public figure renowned for being…erm…well-endowed. Yes, Dolly Parton may have eventually superseded Ms Welch as the most prominent example, but for the latter half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, Raquel Welch was celebrated as the prime copyright-holder of the attributes many men value in the opposite sex. I suppose her memorable appearance in Hammer’s ‘One Million Years B.C.’, the historically-inaccurate yet undeniably enjoyable 1966 outing for Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion dinosaurs, sealed her reputation. The fur ‘bikini’ she wore for the duration of the movie as a prehistoric pin-up girl became one of the decade’s most iconic sartorial statements and a pop cultural snapshot that opened doors for the actress whilst simultaneously leading her down some fairly limiting and narrow alleyways.
I’ve often noticed a list of around 20 incidents that may or may not form part of the life experience routinely appears on Twitter, whereby the user is encouraged to count the number of said incidents they themselves have encountered. They usually consist of things like ‘Have you ever been arrested/ridden in a stolen car/had a tattoo/had a one-night stand/taken illegal substances’ and so on. One item absent from this list is ‘Have you ever travelled in a hot-air balloon’, to which I would sadly answer in the negative, for I’ve always fancied it. I guess my fondness for this uniquely serene form of air travel was piqued by childhood exposure to a memorable episode of ‘Mr Benn’, whereby the gentlemanly hero’s latest adventure via the costume shop is to take part in a Victorian balloon race; naturally, one of his opponents is a moustache-twirling villain who cheats, though the bad guy obviously gets his comeuppance in order to prevent him from stealing the race – and Mr Benn ends up winning it. As was characteristic of this perennially charming series, the depictions of the balloon race itself are exquisitely sketched, and seductive enough to provoke a craving in the viewer to follow suit. Despite their somewhat archaic qualities – and lack of speed when compared to the flying machines that came after them – balloons retain an appeal that reflects the need for life to occasionally slow down a little, something that was brilliantly captured in the Jimmy Webb song that gives this post its title; this has not always been the case, however.
I guess one overlooked consequence of 13 years of Tory misrule is that being exposed to such a rich barrel of rotten apples means all corruption in public office is inevitably painted blue. How easy it is to forget the Labour MPs that have fallen foul of the law, not least those who were named and shamed (and, in one or two cases, imprisoned) following the expenses’ scandal. So, considering the supposedly ‘nobler’ alternative to the Tories could well end up in government a year or two from now, it’s rather timely to be reminded that some of their own are just as capable of crookedness as those on the other side of the House. Take Jared O’Mara – you remember him, of course; he’s the one-time ginger geezer who caused one of the biggest upsets of the 2017 General Election by ousting Nick Clegg. Well, yesterday he was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to four years in the clink. Convicted on six counts that the judge described as ‘cynical, deliberate and dishonest’, the former MP for Sheffield Hallam had stooped to play the mental health card as a defence for his actions, but it didn’t wash. Said Judge Tom Bayliss in his summing-up: ‘I have concluded that, although Jared O’Mara was without doubt suffering from autism at the time of the offences, that does not reduce culpability.’
The emergence of the self-contained pop music artist in the early 60s undeniably dealt a body blow to the dominance of Tin Pan Alley; but the best of the professional songwriters were a resilient bunch and found there were still outlets for their talents. Not all of the bands at the forefront of the Beat boom and British Invasion contained in-house hit machines, and there were also what used to be called ‘girl singers’ in abundance – young, spunky sirens for whom the elegant standards of the 50s were old hat; the likes of Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw, Petula Clark and others were in need of their own standards, ones that reflected the changing mood of the 60s; and few songwriters delivered what was required better than Burt Bacharach, whose death at the grand old age of 94 was announced yesterday.
A TV interview Paul McCartney gave to Russell Harty in the early 80s contains an anecdote from Macca that underlines how the parent/teacher relationship has often been a strained one. In it, he recalled how the young George Harrison had been caned at school in a manner that appeared extreme to his father once he saw the wound, even in an era wherein most dads regarded corporal punishment as not only a necessity but a good thing. Apparently, Mr Harrison turned up at school the following day, entered the classroom, asked the teacher if he was the man who’d scarred his son, requested the teacher step outside for a quiet word, and then laid him out with a single punch. As McCartney remembered, little George’s old man was unsurprisingly an instant hero to the kids who were witness to this incident, and I’ve a feeling no police or lawyers were dragged onto the scene thereafter; this was simply how men resolved disagreements back then. Mr Harrison had made his point and that was the end of the matter. In theory, parents and teachers work in consort to ensure a child receives the best education and is eased back onto the right path should they stray; in practice, the two parties can sometimes vary in their beliefs as to how much influence the other should exert over the child, and as Paul McCartney’s colourful recollection proves, this is no new development.
The MSM response to the so-called ‘Twitter Files’ that were unveiled during the final few months of 2022 exemplified the way in which new and old news outlets reside in parallel universes that rarely crossover. The BBC and Fleet Street focus on each (admittedly plentiful) example of Elon Musk’s somewhat eccentric behaviour ever since taking over the single biggest influence on public discourse over the past decade, upholding the accepted narrative portraying the bonkers billionaire as a right-wing threat to all we cherish rather than highlighting his stated intent to make Twitter an open forum for opinions of all persuasion by both restoring dubiously-deleted accounts and uncovering the truth of the site’s previous moderators in keeping a lid on storylines potentially damaging to those on ‘the right side of history’. The fact that the FBI and Big Tech conspired to suppress the Hunter Biden story and sought to discredit the lone New York Post from reporting it during the run-up to the 2020 Presidential Election in order that it wouldn’t damage Sleepy Joe’s campaign is a revelation arguably on a par with Watergate, yet the pitiful coverage it received in the MSM is testament to how our fat controllers filter the output we are delivered on a daily basis and decide which particular viewpoint will best preserve their hegemony.
Although forming part of the Dystopian future narrative so commonplace in pre-‘Star Wars’ sci-fi films of the 1970s, ‘Logan’s Run’, the 1976 movie starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter, contains an element in its storyline that is both telling of the era in which it was produced and prescient to where we are now. The citizens of the sealed society housed within a self-contained dome to keep them safe from the polluted air outdoors receive an implant in the palm of their left hands as babies; this implant changes colour as they age and when it begins to blink as they approach 30, they are forced to undergo voluntary euthanasia in an elaborate ceremony attended by crowds in a manner recalling a sporting occasion. At the time the film was made, 30 was viewed as a key cut-off point in a pop culture still trading on the Bright Young Things of the 60s, all of whom were remarkably creative individuals whilst in their 20s – and many of whom died before they made it to 30; 30 being the age at which citizens are deemed over-the-hill and therefore need to be ‘renewed’ seems logical for the era.
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