Something very significant happened this week.

School pupils received their exam results. At the Michaela School in north west London, pupils are celebrating success. What’s significant is that it’s not private but a free school, i.e. it’s state funded but free of local authority interference. It was set up five years ago by Katherine Birbalsingh. She’s a teacher who, in her own words, “became a conservative after working in the state sector”.

She took on the bureaucracy and the education establishment to set up the school, which takes in poorer pupils, those the state comprehensive system would inevitably fail and leave unemployable. Five years later, her poorer pupils are doing well.

Britain’s strictest school’s first GCSE results are four times better than national average

Britain’s strictest school has received its first ever GCSE results after opening five years ago – and they are four times better than the national average […]

Headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh has come under criticism in the past for her “strict” methods at the free school, which aim to instill private school-esque order in state school children.

The school has a number of unusual rules, including silence in the corridor and it has a strict “no excuses” policy where pupils are given detention for coming to school one minute late.

They are also penalised for not completing homework or if the work is scruffy, for not having the correct stationery , or for tutting, rolling eyes, or “persistently turning around in class” […]

“If a school is too permissive, allowing too many exceptions, it risks creating helplessness, selfishness or dependence in its pupils rather than responsibility, consideration and agency. If a school reduces its standards for poorer pupils because of their poverty or difficult home life, it does them a disservice; frankly, it doesn’t believe in them enough. “

Do read it all. Her ways, traditional, conservative teaching methods, have again been proved effective. The moral relativism, victim culture and indulgence of bad behaviour so rife in the state sector have no place in her school. She expects the best from her pupils and that’s what she’s getting. She knows that background should not be an indicator of what a pupil can do.

The Guardian, that disgusting nest of far-left vipers, described the Michaela School as “controversial” two days ago. There’s nothing controversial about youngsters actually getting an education, something very rare now in this country. What’s controversial to the left is that a woman called Birbalsingh walked off the plantation to expose how generations of children have been failed by a left wing education establishment pushing failed methods.

Awkward

The politico/media/eco-industry nexus is on Defcon 1 over a below average number of Amazon wildfires (h/t Allan@Aberdeen) in the Amazon. Yet there’s hardly a peep about the far more numerous wildfires in Angola and the Congo.

Blazes burning in the Amazon have put heat on the environmental policies of President Jair Bolsonaro, but Brazil is actually third in the world in wildfires over the last 48 hours, according to MODIS satellite data analyzed by Weather Source […]

Weather Source has recorded 6,902 fires in Angola over the past 48 hours, compared to 3,395 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 2,127 in Brazil.

The BBC has been leading with the Amazon for a couple of days. These Angolan and Congolese fires, five times as many as in the Amazon, in a similar-sized area, don’t even make it to the Africa page. So what’s the difference?

Maybe Angola and the Congo aren’t governed by anti-globalists.

Classic Rock

“No Eternal reward will forgive us for wasting the dawn”

** My comment below written on August 23. See comments below for discussion of Elizabeth Scalia, the author of the referenced article on Paul McCartney**

I didn’t write this. I wish I had. Someone wrote it on the occasion of his birthday this past June.

I’d be interested in any comments on the piece. If anyone knows who did write it, I’ll be surprised.

In less than a day, I’ll reveal who wrote it in the original post.

Well, Happy Birthday to James Paul McCartney, who was born this day in 1942 and grew up to be one half of what became arguably the greatest songwriting partnerships in popular music.

What a gift he had, to seemingly exhale melodies. What a remarkable, innovative bass player, to boot. What unforgettable harmonies — so tightly wound, so perfectly matched — he and John Lennon and George Harrison brought to us out of their scrappy Liverpudlian backgrounds, all grounded by Ringo’s perfectly-honed fills and metronomic backbeats.

But the thing about Paul McCartney in his youth is this: he was a much tougher dude (and a better lyricist) than we remember. He was very much a driving backbeat himself — an original “lead from behind” sort — who acted like he was giddy to be along for a ride when in fact, he often had control of the wheel.

He was the one who taught Lennon how to tune a guitar, how to play actual guitar chords, not banjo chords, how to find chords on a piano and grow from there, and even how to write a song. He was the one who brought George Harrison in as lead guitarist. He was the one who argued vociferously against Stu Sutcliff — a talented artist but no bass player — remaining in the early band, to the point of physically brawling with him in the middle of one of their roustabout, amphetamine-fueled all-nighters in Hamburg, while the band played on. He’s the one who made bold to replace Pete Best with Ringo. He was the one, ultimately, who decided the Beatles would tour no more.

If Lennon wore the Beatles crown, McCartney was the diplomatic force behind it — the guy who would get his way while making everyone else think an idea was theirs. He maneuvered quietly in background, with a sometimes Machiavellian determination to satisfy his own ambition, to get precisely what he wanted. And all the time he had that strangely beautiful look — big sloping eyes, full lips, Roman nose — all packed into a smallish face that, along with the moptop cut, made him look a bit like a human anime cartoon, one that people responded to because…well, that’s what babies look like, right? And who can resist a baby?

Lennon didn’t have the advantage of an innocent appearance from which to launch a march, nor did he possess guile. Every thought John Lennon had was all over his face and out of his mouth before he could stop himself, and it was constantly getting him in trouble, particularly during the Beatles’ last (utterly miserable) tour of the USA in 1966, during which the band — already weary of playing before fans more interested in experiencing a psycho-sexual catharsis than in actually listening to their music, endured death threats, demonstrations and more thanks to a series of interviews (“How Does a Beatle Live?”) given in March of 1966, and which had caused narry a ripple in the UK when published.

In the United States, particularly in the American South, Lennon’s quite true observation that the band was “more popular” with the youth than Jesus was interpreted as “We’re bigger than Jesus” and the press happily fanned the sensational flames, because that’s what the press does, and what they did from tour stop to tour stop. “Do you really think you’re bigger/more important than Jesus?”

As you can read in the interview, Lennon never meant that.

Experience has sown few seeds of doubt in him: not that his mind is closed, but it’s closed round whatever he believes at the time. “Christianity will go,” he said. “It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.” He is reading extensively about religion.

As a Christian, and a music fan, I may not like reading any of that, but from his perspective, sitting on the edge of Europe at that time, Lennon’s words seem prophetic. And then, of course, the Americans more or less made his point for him about Jesus’ disciples being “thick and ordinary.”

Still, the Beatle making the harshest remarks about religion in 1966 was not Lennon, who really seems like he was just letting his mouth run at Maureen Cleave, but Paul McCartney, who wasn’t simply releasing words into the ether; he was enshrining a complete idea into a piece of lasting art, and the idea was rather stunning for both the time, and the medium: The Church is failing in its mission to save; it is becoming irrelevant to people’s lives because it is too self-concerned, too insular, too busy protecting its own interests — darning its socks — while the world spins and the pews empty, and humanity grows ever more lonely, more isolated, and social interaction becomes more fleeting, more guarded and inauthentic (wearing faces kept handy by the door…or the twitter Facebook feed) until it disappears completely, and no one is saved.**

McCartney, baptized a Catholic but raised in faith haphazardly even before his mother died thanks to his parents “mixed” marriage, nevertheless read the sign of the times from his reluctant seat near the exit, but no one seemed to catch it (or to mind it), because it all sounded so pretty, just like him.

All of McCartney’s melodies from that early Beatle era, right through Rubber Soul and Revolver, sounded like we’d always known them — they flowed so effortlessly and instinctively into us that they seemed instantly familiar — but the songs themselves often contained much rougher lyrics than people really grasped. “Yesterday” is not a pretty love song; it’s an expression of searing regret for words and actions that cannot be taken back and so must be lived with. “I’m Looking Through You” and “You Won’t See Me” sound like happy, jangly pop fluff but describe a serious relationship in descent, about to crash-and-burn. “For No One” is simply brutal, like “Yesterday” it is melodically and instrumentally innovative to the point of fascination while its lyrics are an unflinching admission that a relationship is utterly dead, that the players are going through the motions and likely have been for a long time, and yet the idea of that ‘love’ still has a lingering hold on the mind. Devastating.

Young Paul McCartney was a sharper customer than we appreciate, the razor in the bright and shiny apple. Read his turn being interviewed by Maureen Cleave, where he is whip-smart, observant and ready to argue or charm as need be. Look at his statements — about race, gender, conventionality, and morals. They should have come up during the American tour, but never did:

[America is] a lousy country where anyone who is black is made to seem a dirty n*gger. There is a statue of a ‘good Negro’ doffing his hat and being polite in the gutter. I saw a picture of it. […] “There they were in America, all getting house-trained for adulthood with their indisputable principle of life: short hair equals men, long hair equals women. Well, we got rid of that small convention for them. You can’t kid me the last generation were any more moral than we are. They hid it better. If you wheedle it out of people they were just as bad as we are, only they grew out of it.”

“Perhaps,” he said, with the air of one hitting on the truth, “perhaps they grew too tired for it.”

Lennon’s remarks may have been put forward for examination specifically because he had willingly played cipher before, and it was so easy to get a rise out of him, but — as with the fisticuffs in Hamburg — McCartney was the one dealing real blows to the social fabric, fast jabs that left interior bleeds no one could accurately trace, while the band played on.

**NOTE: Interesting aside about “Eleanor Rigby.” At first McCartney resisted the idea of a string accompaniment. When George Martin finally convinced him it would work McCartney agreed on one condition, “No vibrato, as much as possible, no vibrato. I want it to bite.” Yeah, he did

In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the British colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. o aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed. n the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.

The 1619 Project

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are. 

Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.

That’s how the New York Times announced it’s goal to lie about the history of the United States.  To propagandize the notion that nothing in America was achieved except through the sin of slavery.

Slavery is a horrible stain on our species, it has been practiced for all of human history and still goes on today. Young girls and boys are held in slavery in every country in the world as sex slaves. When these poor 20 Africans arrived in Virginia they were far from the first slaves on the continent the Native Americans always kept slaves.

Except truth is not what the 1619 project is about. The project’s goal is to discredit the Nations Founding and the men who founded it.

They have started with a series of articles that totally twist history to match this narrative that they are choosing to spin. It has already spread to other rags such as the Washington Post and USA Today plus raves of joy from CNN and MSNBC. All at the same time the NYTs editor was caught on tape saying We failed with Russian Collusion, now we’ll go with Racism.  here is part of the transcript from a leaked meeting with his “Reporters”.

Dean Baquet: If we’re really going to be a transparent newsroom that debates these issues among ourselves and not on Twitter, I figured I should talk to the whole newsroom, and hear from the whole newsroom. We had a couple of significant missteps, and I know you’re concerned about them, and I am, too. But there’s something larger at play here. This is a really hard story, newsrooms haven’t confronted one like this since the 1960s. It got trickier after [inaudible] … went from being a story about whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia and obstruction of justice to being a more head-on story about the president’s character. We built our newsroom to cover one story, and we did it truly well. Now we have to regroup, and shift resources and emphasis to take on a different story. I’d love your help with that. As Audra Burch said when I talked to her this weekend, this one is a story about what it means to be an American in 2019. It is a story that requires deep investigation into people who peddle hatred, but it is also a story that requires imaginative use of all our muscles to write about race and class in a deeper way than we have in years. In the coming weeks, we’ll be assigning some new people to politics who can offer different ways of looking at the world. We’ll also ask reporters to write more deeply about the country, race, and other divisions. I really want your help in navigating this story.

This is the Paper of Record ?  What record, whose record ? Not America’s record, it hasn’t been an honest dealer of the Truth or Facts for decades. It has been a rag of propaganda and a tool to promote an ideology that is not American yet heads full of mush all over the world read it like it’s gospel from on high.

Even after making this public announcement that they intend to change the “narrative” of the United States founding. Fools will still view this rag as something more than the Leftists Pravda.

Those that believe the NYTs is an honest broker of facts if they had a brain or at least an objective bone in their body would laugh and never bother to read it again, except they won’t. No instead they’ll continue to parrot the lies they are fed.

What this does for the rest of us is present just another obstacle to discussing the nation and the world honestly. Something that gets harder and harder everyday as this rag leads the rest of the media and all the sheep down their rabbit whole of lies.

Because Friday night is Music Night

Another long weekend looms, yet further evidence that the influence of workshy communists is everywhere. The weather will be nice at least. I pray that we can get through one warm and sunny weekend without being hectored by the climate loons about how it’s evidence of impending environmental end times. Have yourselves a good one then, whatever you’re up to, except Irish rugby fans.

If you thought that Duane Allman and Aretha Franklin covering a great number by The Band would be good, you’d be right. Allman was just 20 years old when he cut this cracker.

As always, feel free to share your top sounds down below –

Rina Shnerb, a 17 year old Israeli girl, was murdered today by Palestinian terrorists. The IDF is hunting them. Remember, if the terrorists make it home they’ll be welcomed as heroes. If the IDF kills or catches them, their families will receive a cash reward. Don’t be like Palestinians.

Six EU countries have agreed to take in 356 African migrants aboard the rescue ship Ocean Viking, which has not been allowed to dock in Italy or Malta.

The migrants, mostly from Sudan, cheered and danced on hearing the news. Malta’s navy will ferry them ashore, but Malta will not let them stay.

France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Romania will host them.

SOS Méditerranée, one of the French charities involved, had urged a resolution after two weeks at sea.

I can help SOS Méditerranée with a better resolution – turn around and kick them off in Tunisia. I know, but the people traffickers are paid to get them to Europe. So women and anyone within stabbing distance in France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Romania are about to be put in a bit more danger.

And when this cargo has been unloaded, back the ship will go to pick up more African merchandise.

Today the commies are shrieking about Amazonian fires. Let me be the voice of reason. There are always fires in the Amazon. Every year, thousands of fires. A century ago, last year, next year and way into the future – thousands of fires each year. Wood burns, you see, and there’s a lot of wood in the Amazon.

Forests and jungles also renew themselves. They burn, the fires go out, the forest renews and the locals have plenty of charcoal to grill the fish. That’s nature in balance. So calm down, commies.

How many?!

About 12,400 police officers will be on duty for Notting Hill Carnival, with knife arches deployed at key points to deter violence …

Police will respond to incidents and conduct stop and searches amid fears surrounding London’s violent crime epidemic.

Some carnival this is. Ten per cent of the UK’s entire police roster will have to patrol a few dozen London streets this weekend, because blacks can’t stop stabbing each other.

If this was a British thing, a white thing, a football fan thing, a working class thing, it would have been banned years ago.