14 years ago the Tories introduced Austerity. An experiment with the UK economy. Nobody knew how it would turn out, nobody knew how cutting public services to the bone would change our society. They did know that deliberately underfunding Labour councils would make the electorate turn against Labour, they knew that using their right wing propagandist media to drive hatred and lies would rile up the public. Giving tax breaks to the rich, allowing low wage low moral jobs to become the norm, making working people dependent on food banks to get by,

1/ I am a bit of a grumpy bugger at times, to be fair I have plenty to be grumpy about, but today I thought I’d share some positive things about music touring and the career I’ve had in the industry. 2/ The Travel - I’ve been around the planet many times on many tours, from Japan in the far east, to Santiago in Chile, Vancouver to Sydney, pretty much all over including a two week stint in the Seychelles working on Miss World. Often a tour finishes in some far flung place & I

1/ It’s Saturday, let’s recap how terrible the Tories are at running things or letting their privatised industries run roughshod over us! 2/ NHS - longest ever waits for GP access, biggest ever waiting lists for treatment, lowest ever Staff morale, worst ever staff pay, Buildings in decay, people dying in ambulances outside A&E because there’s no space inside A&E. NHS dental care almost impossible to access.

1/ The music industry is dying! There was a time when record sales provided the main income for artists and labels, then CDs became the norm, but like records they produced the same level of income. Then along came media players like IPod and Archaos, (which was better). 2/ With the media players came MP3 and the ability to “Rip” CDs, then Napster, limewire, etc. people could still buy records, CDs and iTunes, but with the file sharing sites the rot set in. Gone were the days of paying £12-15 for an album, you could download an entire artist back

My other half is a deputy head teacher at a primary school. She starts work around 7.00 most days, she has to deal with teacher and TA absences, Monday night she had to attend a governor meeting, last night was school disco. Both nights she didn’t leave till after 9pm. She usually doesn’t get time for lunch as she has to deal with naughty boys tearing chunks out of each other.
She’s also the SENDco, dealing with a LEA that has no money and no staff.
She’s had enough, can’t say I blame her.
But it’s not just teaching that is putting so much

1/ What’s happened to the civil service, you know the guys and gals that used to work at the DVLA, at HMRC, at the local authority planning offices, at the Local Education Authority? 2/ Context on how the shortage of people doing these jobs and how that directly affects people’s quality of life.
DVLA & driving text examiners, waiting times to get a driving test are ridiculous, and if you fail, back to the end of the queue.

1/ Today I turned 58years old. 36 of those years have been under the Tory government. 62% of the time I’ve been on the planet, the UK has been being slowly dismantled by fucking idiots. Thatcher destroyed the miners, the print, and set us on the road to privatisation of the very 2/ Utilities that we already publicly owned. BT was once a leader in telecoms, renowned worldwide for innovation, now look at it, every interaction I or friends have with them is a disaster. Railways, you cannot rely on a train to actually get you somewhere on a deadline.

1/ 3 years ago today, a friend sent me a link to a petition he’d seen, saying “have you seen this?”, it was a link to a parliamentary petition I wrote about the devastating affect Brexit was going to have on music touring. At the time of my friend’s email, the petition stood at 2/ a little over 5000 signatures. Over the following few days it went viral, reaching over 286,000 signatures within about 10days. Of course the govt responded, as they have to, with what would turn out to be the broken record response that we’ve had ever

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/5632…

1/.Tory Austerity - A social engineering project the purpose of which was to take a once great country and turn it into the sick man of Europe.
Depriving local authorities of cash to point that they go bankrupt, shutting down social schemes like SureStart, a scheme aimed at 2/ helping young families get going in the right direction.
My partner is a deputy head teacher in a deprived area, a rural village with no reliable bus service. 30% of the families whose children attend the school have had cause to use social services, either drug or alcohol

1/ The Tory govt has lost all control of the country & are no longer fit to govern.
We see striking NHS staff, because they have been put under so much pressure by lack of funding and complete mismanagement under the Tories.
Schools have just been told that someone made a mistake 2 in the budgetary sums, so essentially the schools budgets will be cut by the cost of a teacher. These schools are massively underfunded, but not only that, the services they rely on like SEN service at the local authorities are practically non existent, community paediatricians

1 / 25 As the Tories are about to start their conference, I thought I’d give a little account from the coalface of what’s happening in music touring since Brexit.
Read this thread or you can read it here: on our blog.bit.ly/CoT-RedTape 2/25 I recently did an EU tour with a band as an LED tech building the big screen backdrop, and the two side screens for camera relay.
The tour played 5 EU cities in arenas, and used 7 Articulated trucks full of lighting, sound and video equipment. All the equipment was rented in

1/ @RishiSunak just wanted to let you know, I’ve just finished a music tour in the EU, today I went to the video equipment company to de-prep the video kit we used on the tour, however 1 of our trucks ( the LED truck) was not there as it was stuck in customs.
Now as luck would 2/ have it, that LED on the truck was not needed today.
But because the logistics of music touring are ultra tight deadlines, imagine if that truck had been stuck in customs going into the EU, we would have had to cancel the first show in the EU and possibly the 2nd.

1/ An interesting perspective arose at the dinner table last night, my youngest son (24) said that he had never known anything other than a Tory government & more importantly that he had never known a time when there wasn’t either Tory austerity or a cost-of-living crisis! 2/ My wife and I pointed out that he had but may not have noticed what he had until it was gone. We said that the Tories had been in power only 13 years, his answer that as an 11-year-old, he wasn’t aware of politics as much as many 11-year-olds these days.
More importantly,

1/ I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing artists from all over the world, and I’ve traveled with them to far flung places. Sometimes I’ve had the good fortune to finish a tour in one of those far flung places like New Zealand or Chile, and I’ve stayed for a couple of 2/ weeks to explore them, after all I would not normally be able to afford holidays like that.
I say that I was lucky to be able to do this, especially now that the conservative govt have absolutely destroyed any chances of being able to do so again.
At 57, I suppose I’ve had

1/ So I’m going to commence holiday Tory bashing, let’s examine the underhand tactics used by our lovely govt to desperately cling to power so that they can pocket as much of our money for their nefarious purposes as possible. Feel free to add any examples I’ve missed out. 2/ first up Voter ID. They brought in voter ID as a way to curtail the younger vote, think allowing bus passes for the elderly, but not student ID and young persons railcards.
Is that because young people are more unlikely to vote Tory?

bigissue.com/news/politics/…

1/ This week the schools break up for the summer holidays, a lot of families will head to the channel ports and off into the EU for a well deserved holiday, others will fly to EU destinations for the same well deserved break.
Freelancers like me may not be able to, why? 2/ Because of the 90/180 day rule for accessing the Schengen area, we have to be careful about the amount of time we spend inside Schengen, and wasting two weeks of that precious time on a frivolous holiday could mean we lose out on a music tour or other freelance contract.

1/ When I first started working in Europe, it was the early 90s, a mate and I had to drive to Germany and pick up a couple of van loads on Monitors for a job, then take them back a few weeks later. We had to go through the Carnet process, but it was fine, the border guards were 2/ used to dealing with them so the process was fairly painless. As time went on we had the gradual emergence of relaxations of those regulations, then we had the Euro, what a godsend that was, not having to carry loads of different currencies when you were on tour, then mobile

1/ Tweeted on behalf of Ian Smith @Frusion
"Sorry long but necessary: follow up to the sickening situation facing non UK creatives entering the UK for work and trying hard to follow UK Govt guidance and still tragically getting refused entry. 2/ Why PPE ( permitted paid engagement ) is a risky route to come into the UK for creatives who are non visa nationals.
And just to be clear this route has been used for years including by major organisations eg BBC.. its NOT just the DIY bands etc ..

1/ I’m not going to mince my words anymore, I’m sick of seeing this once great country heading down the pan! I don’t care if I upset you, you can unfollow me if you don’t like what I’m about to say. 2/ unless @UKLabour and @Keir_Starmer get their bloody act together we will be stuck with these fuckwit Tories for another 10 years of shit. We need someone to tell us what the hell they will do to restore this country, it’s NHS, it’s schools, it’s public services.

1/ An interesting perspective arose at the dinner table last night, my youngest son (24) said that he had never known anything other than a Tory govt & more importantly that he had never known a time when there wasn’t either Tory Austerity or a cost of living crisis! We pointed 2/ out that he had, we said that the Tories had been in power only 13 years, but his answer that as an 11 year old he wasn’t aware of politics as much as many 11 year olds these days, or more importantly that under the last labour govt things were actually quite good & therefore

1/ Where are the Brexit Benefits?
Where is the 60% cut to council tax?
Where is the replacement of the EU infrastructure funding the Tories promised?
Where are the farm subsidies?
Where are the fishing subsidies?
Where are the shorter waiting lists in the NHS? 2/ Where are the thousands of new homes?
Where are all the farm workers?
Where are the hospitality workers?
Where are the Doctors and nurses?
Where is the ability to breeze through an airport, a ferry port?
Where are the fruit and vegetables?
Where is the inward investment?