The Year of the Dragon was celebrated in fine style in Newcastle's Chinatown. Despite the rain, vast crowds gathered in and around Stowell Street to enjoy the procession, the Lion and Dragon dances, Kung Fu demonstration, Ap Chow rowing and the ear-splitting firecrackers. The displays seem to improve every year.
Congratulations to Jimmy Tsang and the North East Chinese Association, Edmond Ng and his Choy Lee Fut Kung Fu Club and everyone else involved.
Oppenheimer 8 Barbie 0 – not the score of an American Football game, but the respective successes in the BAFTAs. The major winner was Oppenheimer winning awards for best film, best actor and best director. Reassuring that cinematic achievement was recognised over the highest grossing flimflam and also BAFTA avoided wokeish gesture-voting on the alter of inclusion.
The haunting Jonathan Glazer film The Zone of Interest was also rewarded, being the first to win both best British film and best film not in the English language. In German and based on a novel by Martin Amis, it depicts the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig creating an idyllic family mansion, garden and swimming pool just outside the walls of the extermination camp.
Hedwig with banality enjoys the spoils from murdered victims. The film avoids showing what is happening in the camp but this is depicted by horrific sounds from over the wall, largely ignored in the Höss household. It creates a chilling atmosphere and demonstrates the way mass murderers can totally ignore the magnitude of their inhumanity.
The death of Alexei Navalny shows the horrors of modern totalitarian regimes which self-perpetuate and prevent opposition or criticism. Navalny became internationally well known for his attempts to challenge the evils and corruption of Putin’s regime.
The documentary about him revealed his optimism and courage. Having survived nerve agent poisoning, he chose to return to Russia to continue campaigning. Inevitably he was imprisoned and consigned to a Gulag in the Arctic where he died aged 47 in mysterious circumstances, his body not being released to his family. Hundreds of Russians have been detained for laying flowers for Navalny at a monument to victims of Soviet era oppression.
Where are the UN resolutions about Russia’s onslaught against Ukraine and the millions displaced and killed?
When did Gaza become a British domestic political issue? A by-election in Rochdale has been turned into an election about Gaza. Some voters in the constituency, including Muslims, are asking why no one is talking about Rochdale.
What is clear is that Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party are being held to ransom by Muslim groups coordinating pressure on election candidates and more worryingly on MPs and councillors with large Muslim populations who are pressing for a particular stance to be taken about a foreign conflict.
Keir Starmer displayed initial sympathy and compassion for Israel after the barbaric massacre by Hamas on 7th October, and continued to accept that Israel has a right to defend itself against the further threats of repeated terror and also to recover the hostages still held in Gaza.
Starmer has been pressurised to call for a ceasefire and, like those pushing him, to ignore the reality that Hamas does not want peace with Israel and is intent on continuing its policy of destroying Israel and murdering all Jews there, and elsewhere.
The immediate result may be the election of the demagogic and violently anti-Israel George Galloway as MP for Rochdale. His invective will be even worse that Azhar Ali.
The Two-Act play, Seconds Away, scripted by Ian La Frenais with music and lyrics by Jimmy Nail, provided a stimulating and hilarious night at the Live Theatre. It relates the story of Fighting Frankie Tanner, a former heavy-weight boxing champion and his tragic fall from grace and the impact on his fractured family.
It is set in Newcastle but is not all doom and gloom. There is much humour and pathos as well as excellent new music, backed by musical director Peter Tickell, with Lindisfarne’s Ray Laidlaw on percussion and Micky Crystal and Mary Macmaster.
A joint project with Bill Kenwright Productions it deserves a wide audience – The West End or Broadway? -with sub-titles.
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