For those unfamiliar with the radio show, DID is a radio institution which has been running for 70 years and each week the invited "castaway" is asked to nominate the 8 pieces of music, a book and luxury which they would choose to accompany them to a desert island. You also get the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.

So, I wondered if we might extend this venerable institution to ET. Whenever anyone feels the urge they can nominate the tracks of their years, put together a blurb on why they matter and so on. The only thing I can suggest is in comments can we try to stay on the subject of the author's choices and put their own in their own diary

So, here's mine. The narrative could have been very messy, so many choices, so many options. I wrote down a few dozen tracks I could have chosen, and even then I was leaving out so many others. Yet, once I decided I'd just mark the ones that had to be in, I found that the selection of eight had made itself.

This essay appeared today in the Guardian

This economic collapse is a 'crisis of bigness' by Paul Kingsnorth

Living through a collapse is a curious experience. Perhaps the most curious part is that nobody wants to admit it's a collapse. The results of half a century of debt-fuelled "growth" are becoming impossible to convincingly deny, but even as economies and certainties crumble, our appointed leaders bravely hold the line. No one wants to be the first to say the dam is cracked beyond repair.

To listen to a political leader at this moment in history is like sitting through a sermon by a priest who has lost his faith but is desperately trying not to admit it, even to himself. Watch Nick Clegg, David Cameron or Ed Miliband mouthing tough-guy platitudes to the party faithful. Listen to Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy or George Papandreou pretending that all will be well in the eurozone. Study the expressions on the faces of Barack Obama or Ben Bernanke talking about "growth" as if it were a heathen god to be appeased by tipping another cauldron's worth of fictional money into the mouth of a volcano.

In times like these, people look elsewhere for answers. A time of crisis is also a time of opening-up, when thinking that was consigned to the fringes moves to centre stage. When things fall apart, the appetite for new ways of seeing is palpable, and there are always plenty of people willing to feed it by coming forward with their pet big ideas.

But here's a thought: what if big ideas are part of the problem? What if, in fact, the problem is bigness itself?

AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY - A History of Modern US belly dance (1)

Early Days, Golden Years

Middle Eastern dance has probably been enjoyed in the USA for as long as widespread immigration has existed, indeed we have documented evidence of public performances since at least the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876 as well as at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 (where, incidentally, no dancer called Little Egypt was recorded as having performed (2) ). However, despite several flurries of interest brought about by the activities of Orientalists such as Ruth St Denis and La Meri (3), for most of the first half of the Twentieth  century the dance has been largely confined to those ethnic groups to which it was indigenous.

There were large Greek & Turkish groups in most major cities of the USA and their cafes and clubs naturally featured singing and dancing amongst the entertainments. Marliza Pons, the doyenne of Las Vegas dancers from the mid 60s through to the late 90s, wrote of learning her first moves as a young girl through the windows of such an establishment in Chicago in 1948 (4).

Whilst some of them would be locals, there was also a long tradition of hiring singers and dancers directly from Turkey. The singers would be the stars and would be the best-paid entertainers. Such was the pecking order that they would try to deny being able to dance to avoid the "shame" of being just a dancer (5).

Following on from a story posted in Salon today, I felt obliged to write a few comments that have grown into a diary (as requested by ceebs)

Indpendent - Britain to become a nation of renters

A generation of young British adults is close to giving up hope of ever owning their own place to live. A startling new survey reveals that while the great majority of young Britons from "Generation Rent" would like to become homeowners, most believe they will be unable to raise the mortgage they require to get on to the property ladder.

A combination of continually rising house prices and pessimism about the future is threatening to send into reverse the explosion in home ownership stimulated by Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago, making Britain more like Europe, where living in rented property is the norm.

Since last year's rejection at the polls, the British Labour Party have been in a gradual (glacially slow) process of re-invention and re-evalution. They have a new leader and now every policy stance is up for discussion, after all, with the coalition in popularity-freefall the future of the country is theirs to grab. Labour has broken its traditional habit of responding to defeat with introspection and division. Partly spurred on by the common purpose of its coalition opponents, a sort of unity has broken out in the party.

Paradoxically, while contributing to the party's current poll lead, this sense of unity may also be related to the perception of many voters that they don't quite know what Labour stands for. Although this carries obvious risks, in the short term party unity creates the space for constructive argument through which political definition can be forged. So now in furious bursts of activity various groups are coalescing around differeing themes for this argument, all neatly colour coded; there's Maurice Glasman's Blue Labour, there's Compass's Purple Book Labour and..  and.. well err, that's it.

Yes, one year on and there's only two significant groups discussing where Labour goes next and both seem to be, well a little bit backward looking.

front-paged by afew

Well, Ed Miliband has created the Labour Shadow Cabinet and viewpoints are still all over the shop.

Don Paskini has a good point to make;

When he is elected leader, Ed Miliband will come under the most terrific pressure from the opposition, media and Blairites over his supposedly radical and left-wing policies. If David were elected leader, the main pressure which he would face would be to win over and enthuse the people who supported his brother or Ed Balls. To unite the Labour Party, Ed Miliband would need to appeal to the Right, David to the Left

Which kind of makes the case for Alan Johnston. He is definitely of the Blairite Right. Both Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper are of of the left and both are perhaps too steeped in the minutiae of economics to really tell the wood of Opposition from the trees of individual policies.

Plus there appears to be a widespread (ie all journalists agree anyway) that Ed Balls would be too bombastic facing Osborne, which probably says less about Balls than it does the trite cw of the media. and Cooper isn't trusted to be independent of her husband.

Politics is an expensive business and nowhere is it more expensive than in the USA. Indeed, so expensive that the methods of raising money are legion and accepted. To some extent, it is similar to putting on a play in a major theatre; so many of your costs are upfront and have to be paid far in advance of any possible income. Most plays lose money, but the hope of striking it rich drives people on. As Clive James once wrote, "there are two types of money in pop music, less than you'd think and more than you can believe".

However, there is another way of making money. As was the premise of the film "The Producers"; over-sell shares so that the play was massively over-capitalised, but for a production that will close on Opening Night. No one audits the books of a play presumed to have lost money, thus avoiding a pay-out and leaving the crooks free to walk away with all the seed money.

Last night, in the OT, I linked to some pithy criticisms of the perceived lack of achievement by the Obama administration. This led to an interesting discussion and Izzy kept coming back to a single question, "What good does it do to keep criticising Obama personally ?". It's a fair question and deserves a considered answer.

Of course, I have form here dating back to 2007 where I warned;-

But it's different for Obama, they believe in him: And he can't deliver on those expectations; nobody really could, but he won't even try. Items already announced, such as a bigger military really will make things worse. And where do progressives go then ? It isn't despair that hurts; you can live without expectations. It's hope that will break you, every time.

Fran noted at the Paris meeting that ET-ers are mostly all of "an age", not necessarily how many growth rings are in our heads, but a seen-it-all-before, won't-get-fooled-again attitude that looks at politicians with a hard-eyed reality. It was her observation that, conversely, Obama supporters, those who truly bought "the audacity of hope", are the ones who are most fired with enthusiasm and are consequently the ones must susceptible to disillusion.

Maybe I'll be wrong and Obama will confound our Old-Europe cynicism, but if he doesn't then it may be the progressives, the one real hope for America, who disintegrate under the burden of disappointment. And that, not another failed Presidency, will be the real disaster for America

Not so long ago I wrote about the London Drinker beer festival to give some idea of what goes on at a regional festival. So it was inevitable that I document something of the big one, the Great British beer festival. To give you an idea of the scale, the American bar had 100 different US beers on draught (that's draft in American) from the cask. With the exception of the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, that makes it the largest selection of American beer anywhere. And that's just one of the bars.

Okay, seems it's time to create a mothership blog to contain our ravings and predictions.

Everything kicks off with the hosts, south Africa playing Mexico on Friday June 11th and the hysteria continues until July 10th.

So usual procedure. Your predictions of who wins the groups and who makes semis and final. FIFA rankings in brackets

Following my diary about those beers we have loved and lost, it seemed only sensible to carry on and discuss my favourite beers I can rush out to enjoy today.

With two exceptions these are British beers; this is not due to nationalistic chauvinism but, however much I appreciate Czech, German and Belgian beers, I simply prefer the beer style which I first learnt to love. Also, I must note and I hope it's not bias, but four of the beers are from my own county of Essex.

And I know it's supposed to be a top 10, but ... I'm greedy

The local Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) magazine in London has an occasional feature called "Desert Island Beers", named in honour of the radio programme, Desert Island Discs, where celebs are invited to discuss the music they would wish to have with them if they were marooned on a Desert Island. Thus, in the mag, we have the beers the writer would choose to have available if they were cast away.

I was talking with a senior CAMRA person about beers that are no longer available and he suggested I put together a list of beers we have loved and lost. So here they are. Obviously this will not mean much to anyone else here, but I thought I'd write about why these beers mean so much to me  and hopefully that will be a bit more interesting.

So here's 10 Beers I wish were still around

This was the title of a tv programme on BBC just recently. I assumed from the title and the presenter that it was framed to present a stance hostile to secularism and, in this I wasn't wrong. The President of the British Humanist Association (Polly Toynbee, billed by BBC fact-checkers as head of the National Secular Association) was afforded just a 3 - 4 minutes on screen, the rest of the time was given over to various religious leaders and commentators to give their views on the issue.

So we were treated to what is now becoming the familiar parade of isolated anecdotes being trotted as proof of systematic oppression, a nurse and a teacher sacked for praying for their charges, (re-instated at local tribunal) the British Airways woman sacked for wearing a cross (re-instated at industrial tribunal, supported by human rights group, Liberty) and the Marriage Registrar, a non-religious position, who was sacked (and deservedly remains so) for refusing to officiate at Civil Parnerships for gays, apparently, because her god hates fags.

Additionally we saw the usual subjects complaining about the conflict in Law of differing rights, where Christianity is painted as always coming off worst. Dissent within Christian ranks was minor, suggesting an implausibly consistent outrage across the religious sphere, while non-religious voices were kept carefully at arms length. There was an obviously dodgy use of statistics where a questionaire showed 44% of people felt x-tianity was being persecuted, failing to notice that 56% disagreed with that proposition. Even in my ignorance of religious affairs, I couldn't help but feel the programme was working to an agenda and that another, more useful discussion of the issues was being kept off-screen.

Seems I was right.

Front-paged by afew

Given that I'm always going on about beer, I realised that most of you have probably got no idea of what a British Beer festival is.

So, this is a photo diary of the recent London Drinker festival I helped at. A couple of pictures from the balcony

Sometime between now and May Gordon Brown will announce the next General election. Most people assume that the date will be May 6th but, depending on which polls you choose to believe, the date could even be brought forward to March 25th. The advantage of the earlier date is that it avoids what will probably be an embarrassing set of budget announcements.

Confusingly, the polls are going in different directions. Two released this weekend show the problem;-

One in the Times shows the tory lead over Labour reducing to 9%

Today's YouGov poll for the Sunday Times puts Labour on 31%, just nine points behind the Tories, who are on 40%. The Liberal Democrats have fallen two points to 16%. Only last weekend the Conservatives were still enjoying a comfortable 13-point lead.

while another, in the Independent shows the lead increasing to 17%.

David Cameron's party is up two points on last month, on 41 per cent, while Labour has slipped one point to 24 per cent. The Liberal Democrats are up four points on 21.

The ComRes survey for The Independent on Sunday also exposes how Gordon Brown's strategy of attacking Mr Cameron's Etonian background has fallen flat with voters.

frontpaged - Nomad

Over the wekeend during a quiet moment, Sven suggested the following;-

Helen, why don't you just start that beer and beef website, attract a huge audience and get 40K a year from the ads and reviews ;-)

After he'd managed to reassure me it wasn't a complicated leg pulling maneuver he continued;-

I really believe that with the right kind of site, marketed smartly, you could create a large audience. I am not sure how big, but you'd be amazed what people are earning by blogging. All the skills required for this are right here in this room. All you need is an LLP and.... Bob's your uncle. Which, come think about it is one possible name for the site.

So, we always knew Rahm Emmanuel wasn't exactly the most progressive person on the plant. After all, the trashing of the blogosphere's favourite, Howard Dean, had RE's grubby fingers all over it. Kos has time and again detailed the perfidy of this man, especially during his time at the DCCC. He supports the wrong people; the republican-lite people, the Liebermans and the Blue Dogs.  

And god forbid he ever be seen to be defending something that's popular with the voters but regarded by the media as suspiciously liberal. In Washington he is an Operator, one of a small and very elite group of people who make things happen, that's why Obama chose him for his Chief of Staff. However there is a price to be paid for having a creature of the Beltway as you Cof C, he measures his effectiveness not in what is good for america, but in impressing his peers by getting something onto first base. But is a man who'd prefer a bunt over a home run ultimately good for Democratic voters.

This government is dead,
it has ceased to be,
It's pushing up the daisies...

this is an ex-government

In the last few days, the Labour administration has gone beyond the previous damning phrase of "in office, but not in power" with several significant resignations, and now seems to be "in government but no longer in office". One has visions of Brown commanding illusory Ministers to come up with policies with which to attack his opponents; his advisers hovering around him, too afraid to point out they've all resigned. There is no saving them, no thought now of what could right the ship. What might have been done to prevent this is moot; the expenses saga was not the first blow, but it was surely the fatal one.

Independent - Simon Carr - Brown is in his bunker, with a final, inevitable crisis to come

Boris Johnson was asked last week whether he thought power corrupts. He replied: "Power reveals." Power has indeed revealed Gordon Brown. It has undone him and exposed his workings, his mechanisms, his motivations, his modus operandi, his character, his destiny.

He has marched with an unerring tread from his Downing Street launch two years ago to his final bunker. He was always headed here. The essence of bunker life is that you are divorced from reality. You can no longer see for yourself. Reports come through but they are tailored to what you want to hear, or what your courtiers want to tell you. Historians are press-ganged in to provide examples of sudden, amazing victories. Astrologers or economists provide good news, encouraging news. But time is only going one way, and usually there's only one way out of the bunker

Guardian - Jenni Russel - Shorn of the rituals of old, death maroons us in grief

My father died just before Christmas. He was nearly 80; he had been ill. Intellectually and rationally there should have been nothing startling about his death. It is part of the pattern of things. Yet I have been as stunned by his death, and the utter absence of him, as if I never knew that human beings had a lifespan

At some point in our lives most of us will have a similar event occur to us. Yet few, if any of us, will be able to easily deal with the emotions we must deal with, often with little support.