Ian Anderson on the old hippies who used punk to get on in musicEmbed from Getty ImagesIan Anderson of Jethro Tull has given Louder a guided tour of the band's many albums. When it gets to 1978 and Heavy Horses, he says: You have to remember, this was at the time punk's final embers were burning out and you had bands like The Police and The Stranglers, who were, collectively speaking, a bunch of old hippies. The brave new world of punk rock had perhaps become commercialised at that point. But bands like those two used punk as a means to get their foot in the door, just as I did with the ... (more) |
Lawrence Hogben, Pressure and the meteorologists of D-DayLawrence Hogben (1916-2015) was of the meteorologists who produced the vital weather forecasts before the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944. This, of course, is the process dramatised in this year's film Pressure. In 1994, Hogben wrote about those days for the London Review of Books: "Everything on the Normandy beachhead will hang on your weather," said the D-Day planners, assuming that we meteorologists had total control of the elements. "Just name us five fine, calm days and we'll go." A hundred years of weather records suggested there was no hope of their getting this. They limited their demand to ... (more) |
Labour's new vape tax is disastrous policymakingOn Thursday, Labour's new vape tax came into effect. Vaping Products Duty charges £2.20 per 10ml of vape liquid. Because VAT is charged on top of the duty, the real cost at the till is £2.64. In practice, an average £3.00 bottle of 10ml liquid will now cost £5.64, an 88% price hike. VPZ, the UK's largest vape retailer, surveyed 2,640 of its customers ahead of the tax coming into force and found that 63% say it will be harder for them to stay off cigarettes and tobacco, 21% say they may return to smoking, and 34% say they will ... (more) |
Welcome to my day: 5 October 2026 - it's beginning to feel a lot like AGM season...For those of us who have been officers of Local Parties, Associated Organisations or any of the other myriad bodies across the Party who hold elections, this is the time of year when things change, and the cycle of persuading people to hold the positions that keep the show on the road begins anew. But as someone who hasn't been perhaps as active as in years past, I can now be a bit more relaxed. People don't necessarily ask me to be things, they ask me to run their elections instead. And that reminds me that the Party relies on ... (more) |
Greens split over 'Zionism is racism' policyHas the Green Party's bubble burst? The Mirror reports that things are not looking so rosy for Zach Polanski and the Green Party after their favourable bump in the polls has largely subsided, and Polanski's own ratings are not where he'd like them to be. They add that the Holborn and St Pancras by-election on Thursday, triggered by Keir Starmer's unexpected resignation as an MP, could well prove to be reckning for the Green Party leader if he doesn't perform as well as expected. And now a vote at their party conference looks like it has added to their troubles. ... (more) |