Tears for Fears -

Tears for Fears -Musical Meditation in a Mad World

I first came across Tears for Fears, and the musical musings of Roland Olazabal and Curt Smith when I was about 10 years of age. 
I had found a mix tape of songs my sister had recorded off the radio, and bored with nothing to do, put it in the stereo and pressed play. 
Two songs in particular grabbed me "What's the Colour of Money" by 'Hollywood Beyond', and "EverybodyWants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears. 
While Hollywood beyond were really and truly a one hit wonder band, Tears for Fears were anything but.
A short while later I heard another Tears for Fears song on the radio, and from that point on I fell Head over heels in love with their music.

Image From: Smash Hits

When I was in my mid teens, with the freedom to spend money now I was getting pocket money, I was able to buy "Tears Roll Down" Tears for Fears Greatest Hits. 
After coming home and listening to the CD in my bedroom, I was left with plenty to Shout about to my school friends the next day.
 They were all into the newly emerging Green Day, Cranberries and the likes of Tu-Pac Shakur. 
I was astounded that they had never heard of Tears for Fears. Given the fact they had split around 1990,  in hindsight, I can see now why they may not have heard of them. 
I think my friends got a bit browned off at me, given how they would quickly Change the subject when I talked about Tears for Fears, trying to give them another encyclopedic rundown of a particular song.

But these two lads from Bath in England were musical geniuses. 
Roland was very into the works of Sigmund Fried and the Primal Scream therapy of Arthur Janov. 
Hence the reason for naming their most successful album of all "Songs from the Big Chair", and the deep dark lyrics of a number of their songs.
I'm the type of music fan where the lyrics and melody appeal to me far more than the actual music. 
To my mind a good song is top notch poetry put to music. 
Tears for Fears ticked all my boxes, and a big fan I duly became.

Image from: Tears for Fears

Curt Smith was driven mad by the perfectionist way his fellow band mate wanted songs to be recorded and produced. 
Indeed the "Sowing the seeds" album took over a year longer than planned to make, and ran way over budget, due to countless re-recordings and re-dubbings of the tracks for the album. 
Allied with the fact Smith was getting tired of the jet set celebrity scene he had been thrust onto against his will, so to speak, he decided to call it a day. 
In an interview given in the last 90's, Smith spoke about his love of New York where he now lived, and the joy playing the intimate solo gigs in a local coffee shop every week gave him. 

So Tears for Fears had faded from most people's consciousness, apart from tapping the steering wheel as the 80's show on the radio played another of their hits.
And it had faded from mine too.
By this stage, I had discovered Van Morrison, and it was a major case of playing catch up, as I devoured the back catalogue of the man from Hyndford Street, East Belfast.

Image from: Radio.com

Then in 2003, an article appeared online which knocked me for six. 
No I said, this cannot be real, surely they is a hoax?  The article claimed Tears for Fears had made up and were currently recording a new studio album, due for release soon. 
I suppose Memories fade, and with the passing of time, people remember the good times a lot clearer than the bad, and they got back together. 
So here I sit, in front of my computer, typing away as I listen to more of their songs. 
Roland Olazabal gave an interview to Phil Williams on BBC 5 Live a good while ago.
He said Tears for Fears were planning to embark on another tour soon. 
I've just found out they are currently touring North America.
Fingers crossed they announce a tour of Europe too, and a certain venue on North Wall Quay is added at a later date!

ALL VIDEO CLIPS (C) YOUTUBE

Letter from moi that appeared in todays Tallaght Echo (7th October 2016)

To whom it may concern,

Two things caught my eye this week.

One was the EU ruling that Apple was negligent in  fulfilling it's tax obligations, and deemed it liable to pay the Irish Government €13Billion in back taxes. it accrued on products it sold; The other was the story of a  elderly man in his 80's who needed a CT scan in hospital due to an injury, but was forced to spend hours sitting in a chair, due to a lack of beds. 
One paid less than 1% tax on billions and billions of profits, the other paid more than 50% tax on his wages for most of his working life. 
Yet the Government stresses everything must be done to defend the Multinational conglomerate, whilst the old man, like many others, are an afterthought (if a thought at all).

Some commentators have told us "Sure we wouldn't get €13BN, most of it would go to the US, France etc. .  Also we'll frighten all these foreign companies away and thousands would lose their jobs if we accepted the EU ruling.
  But even €4BN is a massive sum that would help this country enormously. We could refurbish many decrepit schools, make our colleges state of the art and build many badly needed social houses for a small chunk of the money.

But there is something else we could do with the money too, which would have massive benefits to this country. 
There are many people  who were forced to leave this country to find work, and over the years have become leading players in industry, playing key senior roles in some of the world's biggest companies. Our graduates are also highly prized the world over due to the renowned education system we have.  Now imagine the Government brought these people home and got them to oversee the development of new state run companies that, with many Irish people taken off the dole to work with them, and produce products BETTER than the ones their current companies are producing.  Imagine the many jobs this would create, and the massive tax revenues that would accrue, to enable to further develop our social infrastructure, improve our colleges and hospitals etc. 

Gas isn't it,  the government has thundered that we had no choice but to accept Water charges, property taxes, and the bank bailouts that bankrupted this country, because it's EU law, and you can't dismiss an EU directive.  But yet when it comes to the €13BN that would massively improve this country for the better, challenging the EU's the decision (and handing the €13BN back to Apple) is suddenly allowable!

Seán Heffernan,
Dominic's Parish,
Tallaght,

The night David Bowie came to Courtown

I swear to ya on the bible this story is true -
This happened in 1997, when David Bowie was playing in the Point Depot.

Dennis and Gene, husband and wife who lived in the North Strand (Sadly both now deceased) who were friends of my parents used to stay in the Ounavara Hotel in Courtown on the August bank holiday week.
We'd be down in nearbye Ballygarrett residing in a Mobile Home, and my parents would catch up with them in Courtown whilst we were taken to the Carnival there.

Anyways one evening in the Auhust Bank Holiday week, Denis was being volunteer MC in the bar of the hotel for a sing song he had got going.
Half way through this sing song, a big fancy car pulls up outside the hotel, and walked in only David Bowie (And to the best of my knowledge it was Denis Desmond of MCD who was with him).

Bowie sat listening to the people singing in the bar. Dennis MC'ing didn't have a clue who David Bowie was would you believe.
At one stage a lad had finished singing, and when Dennis was turning to the lad who agreed to be next, to tell him it was his turn, David began to sing a song. Dennis turned round to him in a flash scolded him., told him it was someone else's turn to sing, and that he should wait his turn like everyone else.
The lad beside tugged at his trousers and said to him "What the hell are ya doing, that's Bowie! " Dennis replied "Who??" 'It's David Bowie the famous singer' To which Dennis replied "I don't care who or what he is, it wasn't his turn, and he has to wait in line!"

I seem to a short time after a piece in The Evening Herald that said Bowie had gone to Wexford for the night, and as far as I recall stayed in Marfield House that night. So I finally believed the story featuring Bowie Gene had told my Mother and us the afternoon after the night before!!!

Calculators on overdrive.

This Thursday the voters of The United Kingdom will go to the polls to elect their next Government.

The current Conservative Liberal Democrat Coalition is spinning for it's life trying to portray the economy zooming along in 6th gear, but the reality is it's still by and large a banjaxed car with a reconditioned engine that is going great guns for now, but may splutter to a halt in the near future.

The Labour Party, as Right Wing as ever, is engaged in a game of taking very small scale initiatives, and trying to make them out to be huge groundbreaking promises.  This is in order to try and deflect attention from the real issues affecting the Working Class in the UK, so they will not be forced to make any promises that will come back to haunt them, as it has the Labour Party here.  It really is sickening to see their electoral machine in full flow. Labour are merely saying we'll cut as much financially as the Tories will, but we will do it in other areas.  If you look at the backgrounds of many Candidates standing for Labour, they are near identical to their Tory counterparts.  there are very few miners sons standing for Labour this time around. Dennis Skinner is one, but is he the only one? Thankfully, a lot of people are not being fooled by the Labour rhetoric that the country would be a far worse place if the Tories remained in power instead of Labour taking over.  Voters in Scotland now understand (Which they would have not say 20 years ago) that a majority Labour Government, would be as bad as a Tory Government, with more fillups to the rich, be it via tax cuts or privatisations. This is a big part of the reason quite a number of people who voted NO in the Scottish Referendum intend on voting SNP on Thursday.

UKIP's Current Aggregate Poll number has them on 14%.  This is a figure that wildly fluctuates. For example there will be areas in the South East if England were UKIP could get over 20%, but there are many areas in the North of England were they would only get 5-7%. Talking anecdotally to some people from England, there is a sense the media are purposely understating the level of support in the South East of England for UKIP  as they try to push the Tories at all costs, in the forlorn hope Cameron would gain an overall majority. 

The last time around (2010) The Conservatives got 36.1% of the vote and 307 seats. The Labour Party got 258 seats on a vote of 29%, and the Liberal Democrats got 57 seats on a vote of 23%. There were a number of constituencies were Lib Dem Candidates came second, just behind the Labour or Tory candidate. Thus they could have easily ended up with over 70 seats, but it was not to be.   The poll of polls, an amalgam of all the different opinion polls, extracted and crunched to get a cumulative average result, have the Conservatives on 34%, and The Labour Party on 33%, UKIP on 14% and The Liberal Democrats on 8%.  Despite the low result of 8%, commentators say the Lib Dem vote is quite compact, with certain areas were it does really well, and others were it barely registers. Thus some commentators say the Lib Dems could get 20-25 seats.  Yet at the same time some have said UKIP will only get 3 or 4 seats, despite being 14% on the latest poll.  I just don't know how they could make such a disparity between Lib Dem and UKIP chances, unless it was a concerted effort to give  the Conservatives every jockey back it can. I fear that UKIP will get higher than 14%, and could even end up with over 10 MP's.  The last time around the Tories ended up 19 short of a Majority.  Doing the deal with the Liberal Democrats gave them a majority of 38.  Lib Dems and Labour would have still been 11 short of a majority back then. 

The predictions are that the Conservatives would be extremely lucky, when all is factored in, to get over 300 seats. Most say they could and would end up around the 390 mark.  They would badly need to get at the very least the 392 mark to make a Conservative-Lib Dem-DUP coalition reach the magic 326 number - 392 Tory seats, 25 Lib Dem Seats, and DUP retaking East Belfast and getting 9.  It is highly likely the end result will see this triumvirate between them failing to get 326 or more.

Labour got 258 the last time.  If the predictions are right, and the SNP get 50 seats in Scotland (Could be even more) and , assuming the Liberal Democrats hold onto the 2 strongest of the 11 seats it got in 2010, that would put Labour on 17 seats in Scotland, leaving Labour with 234 seats if they got the exact same result as 2010 in England and Wales.  Add the 50 SNP seats to that number, it leaves us with a total of 284. A whopping 42 seats short of a majority.  Thus it looks highly likely, based on the opinion polls, the next government is set to be a minority one. 

How does this affect us in the Republic of Ireland?  The biggest affect will be in the rate that Sterling may go to. It was recently at 70p to €1, and the lower the pence goes vs the cent, the better it is for Irish businesses as it makes our goods more cheaper to UK consumers, and thus they are more likely to buy Irish.  But Sterling has already gone up to almost 74p, and if the result on Thursday is as fractious as the polls and analysts expect, it could push Sterling up even more, and be bad news for our economy, from an export and tourism point of view.  Also if the Markets took a really bad view of the overall situation in the UK, and Sterling climbed up to say 86/87p to €1, we could once more see large tailbacks on the M1 into Newry.

Another outcome, should the numbers stack up as some are predicting, is that proposals for an in/out Referendum on the UK's membership of the EU would not see the light of day, as a Majority of Liberal Democrat, Labour and SNP reject this idea.  So if the Conservatives managed to cobble together a minority Government, and put a bill to Parliament calling on the In/out Referendum to be held, it would be defeated, and the Tories would happily put the issue well and truly to bed.

The third and final issue that concerns us is the DUP. Should they be in a position to be dealmakers, and the Conservatives come on bended knee to them looking for their support, a demand to be allowed reduce Corporation Tax rates in the North would undoubtedly be very high on, if not top of their list. This angers me, as the DUP should instead be calling on the Conservatives agreeing to allow the Stormont Assembly significantly increase the minimum wage, and other state supports, instead of seeking to make profitable foreign companies even more profitable, as many people in Northern Ireland struggle to make ends meet.

I of course hope that a good number of people in the UK vote TUSC or Left Unity, and that we see many councillors elected from both, which could lead to some of those councillors begin elected to Westminster the next time around.

Plenty of Popcorn at the ready for Thursday night!

Where now for Greece?

Where now for Greece?

So the left in Europe is rightly celebrating, with many predicting the first caricature on a radically changed Political Drawing Board has been drawn.  With other Anti Austerity Parties riding high in the polls, you can be sure there was many a double brandy was downed in Davos last week. A lot of hopes have been pinned on Syriza's back, but can they live up to them?

An immediate hurdle is approaching at galloping speed. Two Big instalments are due on Greece's debt in March and June. Will Syriza have the time & wriggle room to try and change this in anyway? If they do not, and the 2 payments went ahead as planned, could this piss off a good chunk of the people who supported Syriza, or will these people take the position of this was the previous governments doing, and give Syriza the full benefit of the doubt? 

A lot of Syriza's programme, from what I've seen of it, is in many areas essentially headlines and no article. This has left us in the dark as to what exactly the new Government will do with regards some of the key issues facing the Greek economy and the working class. Will the bulk of the Greek working class actively engage in moving to ensure Syriza are left no wriggle room, and ensure they fulfiil as many of it's election promises as is feasibly possible, or will they be able to do an Obama and roll back on promises, trying to make out it's not their fault, but due to the EU/IMF, despite their best efforts, they were unable to do X.Y and Z as they had promised.  There was a period in Ireland after Fine Gael and Labour took power, were they got away with a certain amount of things, as a good number of people believed them when they claimed "That wasn't our doing it was Fianna Fails". 

But then there came a time when people had  enough f that excuse, and began to realise there were a number of Austerity measures that had nothing to do with the previous government, but were wholly the creation of the new government. Thus their poll ratings plummeted, as was evidence in the differences between the results of the first Dublin West Bye Election and the second one.  So if a rollback is started by Syriza, how much of a "honeymoon period" would they have before things started to go sour for them? I await the Programme for Government when it's published, and I like many others will no doubt pore over it with hope, that it will indeed be genuinely radical.

Personally I am disappointed with the KKE. They had a chance to try and ensure Syriza was held to account as much as is feasibly possible.  They didn;t have to go into an explicit coalition arrangement with Syriza. They could have agreed a memorandum of understanding that if certain conditions were met and maintained, the KKE would vote with Syriza in Parliament. to me this would be doing it's duty to best represent the Greek working class.  Instead we have Syriza going into bed with an avowedly Right wing party, and pondering what sort of Devillish deal they may have concocted to get their support.  My heart is hoping that Independent Greeks will do a reverse Labour Party, and will capitulate, agreeing to everything Syriza wants, as the whiff of Ministerial office proves too strong an elixir for them.  My head says otherwise. 

There are many Economists/ economic commentators, (even those shrilling and feverishly banging the Pro Austerity drum) who accept the current situation facing Greece is unsustainable and must be changed.  Even with the big writedown Greece got at the last round of negotiations leaves Greece at a wholly unsustainable debt level of 170%.  Putting it in comparison, I remember in 2009-2010 Economic commentators on RTE Radio predicting armageddon if Ireland's Debt rose to 140%.  Thus it is inevitable that a bullet will be bitten and there will be various powerful figures sitting around a table with the Greek Government in either Frankfurt or Brussels, intent on hammering out a deal.  Will what Syriza brings to the table be seismic and final, as the left across Europe is hoping (And some, though most not) praying for? The other tack Syriza might take, which is a concern of Leftists is that what it initially brings to the table would be merely setting a out of a stall, and then watering their offering down quite a bit by the conclusion of negotiations. 

So there will be very interesting times in Greece over the next period. It really has the potential to give another powerful shot in the arm to the Anti Austerity agenda across Europe, with voters across many countries declaring "I'll have what the Greeks are having", and we could see Podemos in Spain, The Left Bloc in Portugal etc taking power either on their own, or as the bigger party in a coalition.  Some have expressed concerns that Syriza could break a lot of it's promises and severely dash the hopes and expectations of many across Europe.  I am really and truly keeping my fingers crossed the latter will not happen, but only time will tell...