Danny Bryant at the Cathouse

Just to let our fans (Sid and Doris) know, Harmonica Lewinsky will not now be supporting Danny Bryant’s Redeye Band at the Cathouse in Glasgow next Friday 27th June. Unfortunately our drummer Martin has been in hospital and is under doctors orders not to beat any animal skins with bits of wood. It looks like my old friends Ian and Johhny who I played with for many years will stand in for us with their new band “Used Blues” who I saw play at Brechin’s in Govan last night. Lead singer/harp player, Cameron plays a mean Sonny Terry.

Tickets are £7.50 and the gig starts at 7:30 the Cathouse next Friday. There will be tickets on the door.

Martin, I know you’ll be looking in here. Get well soon auld yin!

It’s Time For Your M.O.Tree!

Yes folks it is yet another example of health and safety gone fucking mental. The latest danger is, we are told, trees. That’s right those things which cover around 12% of the whole country which you may think are just standing there harmlessly enriching the landscape. Au contraire, they are a menace and one could fall on you any minute. Just think of the deceased people you have known who would be here today had a tree or branch not hit them. Not one? – me neither.

BSI British Standards, an official setter of benchmarks, is drafting guidelines on safety inspections for trees that hilight the hidden dangers of “branch shedding” (falling branches, to the layman) and even “whole-tree failure” that they pose. It suggests they should all be scrutinised once a year by their owners. Trained inspectors should beat them with mallets and prod them with probes every two years or so and still more expert folk assess the risk they pose to ambling, snoozing or tree-hugging passers-by every five years.

The hidden killer menace we need protected from by law (aka a tree)

Sir Harry Studholme of the Forestry Commission frets that the tiny risk of harm trees pose are not being properly weighed against their many benefits, not least in ameliorating climate change. Landowners, local councils and ordinary folk with back gardens may choose to chop down their trees rather than pay for onerous regular inspections, he says. This would exacerbate an existing trend: some public bodies are already cutting down trees rather than risk getting sued if one causes harm. Exeter Cathedral last year removed a beautiful old stand of healthy trees on its green after they were declared to be of a dangerous variety.

Rick Haythornthwaite, the chairman of the Risk and Regulation Advisory Council, which gives independent guidance to the government, reckons the attempt to over-regulate trees reveals two trends. The first is the tendency for small risks to become magnified in the public mind and provoke disproportionate responses. The second is the growing involvement of special-interest groups in campaigning for tougher regulation. It is surely no coincidence, he points out, that among the most active proponents of the new standard are the tree professionals who stand to gain most from a more burdensome inspection regime.

The Economist Article

Times Online

Robert Service- The Shooting of Dan McGrew

Here is the first verse of the original poem which provided the inspiration for Matt McGinn’s “Two Heided Man”

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a rag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger’s face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The rest of the poem can be found HERE

Where Do The Readers of TBLFP Come From?

Because this is posted as a link to the sitemeter page the graph will change from hour to hour.