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He can’t even get songs right

Ian Drury would have been 81 today, quite extraordinarily.

And of course, his doing was not about waste. It was about choice. And that is what so many are now being denied, hence its relevance.

“What a Waste” is actually about opportunity cost. I can’t do all these other things if I do this thing.

24 thoughts on “He can’t even get songs right”

  1. Polio. I went to school with kids who had leg irons, and some who’d been in iron lungs. Wiped out with vaccines. Apparently only Afghanistan and Pakistan still have polio in the wild. Let’s hope that they don’t carry it over here, like their countrymen have reintroduced TB.

  2. Bloke in North Dorset

    There you go again using neoliberal tools to find out “facts” when the world needs more feelz.

  3. In fairness the lyric:

    ‘It’s nice to be a lunatic’

    (albeit from a different song)

    could have been written with Murphy in mind quite comfortably.

  4. I could be the driver an articulated lorry

    Not under Net Zero (which Murphy backs to the hilt) you couldn’t – no battery powered Artics exist as yet and Road transport will be banned by him

    I could be a poet I wouldn’t need to worry

    Again I imagine Murphy would characterise much poetry as largely obsolete, racist or sexist (or whatever other fashionable ‘ism’ he adheres to on any given day

    I could be a teacher in a classroom full of scholars

    Well I think he imagines himself in a classroom full of scholars. Substitute ‘morons’ for scholars and you probably have an accurate reflection of the current state of his courses

    I could be the sergeant in a squadron full of wallahs

    Murphy is an ardent backer of Caroline Lucas and the Greens whose defence policy is total unilateral disarmament so you couldn’t be a sergeant in his world.

    I could be a lawyer with strategems and ruses

    He does have ‘Soapy Joe’ on speed dial – at least prior to his being struck off for refusing to represent certain people

    I could be a doctor with poultices and bruises

    Most doctoral students seem keen to leave the NHS or not join it at all.

    I could be a writer with a growing reputation

    On this count he does have a reputation – whether he’s entirely aware of what it is in reality is open to question.

    I could be the ticket man at Fulham Broadway Station

    Haven’t been to Fulham Broadway station in decades – he could be the man on 56 days paid holiday a year slouching at the barrier rather than the ticket man. Would strike me as right up his alley

    I could be the catalyst that sparks the revolution

    Probably why he chose this song in particular

    I could be an inmate in a long-term institution

    Substitute ‘could’ for ‘should’ and you’d get the first unanimously supported statement on Tax Research Uk from every commentator on the Worstall blog

    I could dream to wide extremes, I could do or die

    he certainly does the first part of the sentence….

    I could yawn and be withdrawn and watch the world go by

    Wouldn’t chance be a fine thing…

  5. Just cos I ain’t never said, no, nothing worth saying
    Never ever, never ever, never ever

    Could be Ritchie’s theme tune.

  6. “Polio. … Wiped out with vaccines”: I’d always assumed that too; it’s the conventional wisdom. The Pandemic, however, revealed to me the extent to which public health officials, and almost all members of the medical trades, are prepared to tell blatant lies and suppress awkward truths.

    Was polio wiped out by vaccines? Maybe, maybe not; certainly a more complex and interesting story can be told. Here’s that hero of free speech, Ron Unz, mulling it over. Rather wordy, Mr Unz, but certainly brave.
    https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-vaccines-and-the-mystery-of-polio/

    Or, from our own fair land, there’s this – which is perhaps the better one to start with.
    https://wshoms.co.uk/the-history-of-polio/

    Naturally that great sceptic, Malcolm Kendrick, also expresses reservations about the cult of vaccinology (my name for it, not his). Here are some of his pre-Covid musings.
    https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2019/07/29/a-second-look-at-vaccination-answers-that-cannot-be-questioned/

    My own view? I don’t know enough to make any useful generalisations. I am deeply suspicious of the Covid jabs but then anyone sane ought to be. If I cut myself in the garden would I take a tetanus jab? Yes. Would that be wise? I don’t know but I hope so.

    But tell you what – I was flabbergasted to learn that no (human?) vaccine has ever been subjected to a useful RCT against a proper placebo. Can that possibly be true? It’s certainly dead easy to disprove if it’s wrong. But suppose it’s true. Who should we hang?

    P.S. The Covid jabs: I recommend that you read this paper, first avoiding noticing who the authors are. Once they’ve persuaded you that the Covid jabs were bound to be near-useless for profound but easily understood reasons, then look at the author list. My oh my.
    https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(22)00572-8

  7. Ian Dury was also responsible for the flip-side of Rhythm Stick, “There Aint Half Been Some Clever Bastards”. That does apply to Spud, either.

  8. Excavator Man @ 10.54:
    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/poliovirus-detected-in-sewage-from-north-and-east-london

    Danish researchers carried out a study on the Diptheria, Pertussis, Tetanus jab and oral Polio vaccines used in Africa (which apparently use a type of polio ‘vaccine’ which is banned in the West) during 1981.

    They found there was an increase in mortality:
    “Conclusion: Although having better nutritional status and being protected against three infections, 6–35 months old DTP-vaccinated children tended to have higher mortality than DTP-unvaccinated children. All studies of the introduction of DTP have found increased overall mortality.

  9. DM

    Thanks for the links/evening reading. And I still haven’t got my hands on Kendrick’s clot plot; useful reminder.

  10. By ‘eck there’s some Blockhead fans here. Good quotes.

    (I could be the sergeant in a squadron full of wallahs

    I was one of them, once.)

  11. Newcastle University 1977

    Live Stiffs tour:-
    Wreckless Eric
    Nick Lowe
    Larry Wallis
    Ian Dury
    Elvis Costello

    Finale – everyone on stage together.

    I believe Elvis and Ian took turns to play the closing set.

    Happy Days.

  12. @dearieme – “I was flabbergasted to learn that no (human?) vaccine has ever been subjected to a useful RCT against a proper placebo. Can that possibly be true? It’s certainly dead easy to disprove if it’s wrong.”

    Yes, it is easy. A very brief search brings up https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT04368728 which is a trial for the Pfizer Covid vaccine showing it is comparing against placebo. I suggest you try looking at https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=vaccine+placebo to see if you can find more, as it lists 2269 trials which mention both “vaccine” and “placebo”.

    And that Cell paper does not suggest that vaccines are near useless against Covid. It says that they may prevent serious and fatal illnesses, but fail to prevent transmission. We do not care much about preventing transmission as we already deal with a vast variety of minor viral illnesses and reducing Covid to that level is extremely useful.

  13. But they told us it prevented transmission, with afaik no evidence or as it turned out truth. That was the excuse for vaccine mandates.

  14. @John – we saw Wreckless Eric live at the Cheese & Grain in Frome a few weeks ago. Still great.

    Now, our host will be rude about Frome*, but Wreckless E did choose there and not That Bath to play now, did ‘e?

    *With some justification, tbf.

  15. ‘Appen nothin’ wrong with Frome, not really, as long as ‘ee be to Frome stays in Frome, see?

  16. The greatest song line ever is by ID:

    Sex and drugs and rock and roll are very good indeed

    In fact it was the closing number on the Live Stiffs Tour!

  17. Blimey, Tim. It’s just like being there. Spooky.

    All it needs now is the background braying from those Down-From-Londons who’ve not yet moved out to Bruton and Castle Cary.

  18. @Charles: my point was that it should be a useful RCT. The Pfizer trial wasn’t. Apart from the likelihood that parts were faked, it just didn’t have enough subjects to give the sort of information that would be useful. As RK said above, it revealed nothing about transmission. The number of deaths in the test group exceeded the number in the placebo group, and claiming that it reduced morbidity is hopeless: who is ill and how ill is far too much a readily biased judgement. It’s corpse-counting that you want, and even given Pfizer’s notoriously flexible standards of honesty they counted more corpses among the vaccinated.

    Then, just in case something useful could be salvaged from the trial, they gave the vaxx to most of the control group anyway.

    This wasn’t a useful RCT this was a bloody disgrace.

  19. No use replying to ‘Charles’, he’s just a rapid rebuttal numpty from some place like the 77th. Single first name is a dead giveaway, as is the response to subjects against ‘the narrative’ within minutes.

  20. I’m catching up and late to this thread, so nobody will see this comment, but why does he think it extraordinary that someone who died over 23 years ago would have been 81?

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