Ah Morgoth! you brought back some childhood memories with this one. My father was a Lancashire coal miner and there would be a Miners Gala every summer. Every pit had its own brass band, dance troupe and would gather and parade through one town and on to a field for the day; band and dance competitions, guest politicians giving speeches etc. They were wonderful times but, thinking over them is always tinged with sadness knowing, that just like childhood, it is gone and never coming back. However, I do try to take heart from what was because, if our forbears could produce the good society, then our future has to be worth fighting for. If they could do it, so can we.
Masterpiece, Sir. The trouble with nostalgia is it's crystal clear that something was lost and it left a hole inside us all. You found another thing I bet almost all of us identified with in some way. It's like we all know that we were "better" as people back then.
Your writing sometimes takes me back to my origins in Newcastle. I DO remember those marching bands, not the colliery bands but the ones of youngsters like you see in a scene in the brilliant Micheal Caine film "Get Carter". They were tacky and noisy but they were local people being involved in their community, something I don't think happens now. Multiculturalism and modern Britain seems so fragmented, I guess by design. We let it all slip away never realising at the time how we'd miss these things. The old adage about not knowing what you have till it's gone.
I mention a scene from a film because my own memories would just be mine, not something other people could visualise or would mean anything except to me.
This reminds me of the best piece you've ever done (for me anyway) when you talked about the scene from "Whatever happened to the likely lads" when the Fat Ox pub is being knocked down and the lads are given the dart board to remember it by. That little scene encapsulated the feelings people had in the 70s when the property developers moved in and the old tyneside disappeared to be replaced by estates and shopping centres that looked just like everywhere else in a thousand towns.
The film and TV series I've mentioned are visual records of what was: dirty and old but filled with character. Eventually replaced by soulless chain pubs like Wetherspoons and MacDonalds type places that were carbon copies of a million places all over the world. They homogenised our landscape and our culture, flat caps died with the old guys that wore them and American baseball caps became the thing. Nostalgia? Yeh, this is my nostalgia, yeh we're better off these days but what price do you put on a sense of community? On knowing the people you lived in amongst, on being proud to be a Geordie or English or British. Its normal to want to be with people that look like you, people who's forefathers for a thousand years lived here, people with a bond to the land. Every day now I see more African faces, these aren't my people, they don't belong here, it's not good for us or them.
Great comment. I remember seeing the first massive Morrisons opening in Killingworth and how it reminded me of something from Star Trek. I'd never seen proper pizzas or donuts before it was all new and flash.
Looking back now it's hard not to see as a Faustian bargain.
All so painfully true. Joni Mitchell (who is now insane) tried to warn us all those years ago about paving paradise over with parking lots (car parks) but the message itself got buried in her fine tune and the zeitgeist of the age. The sexual revolution was followed by the financial revolution and the headlong pursuit of self indulgence. I think, in a different age, Constable was trying to teach us to appreciate the Eden we inherited in his massive canvasses of Suffolk rural life but that didn't hold back the car parks either.
I like your point about " Its normal to want to be with people that look like you" is probably truer than we think. We can often be friendly with people that don't look like us but we can never really be friends. I witness this even within families, let alone communities. It is crucially tied to our sense of belonging. But of course the modern state tries to disrupt these natural attachments at every opportunity, with every policy, every war, every institution. All designed to separate us from ourselves, forever wandering in a human wasteland, as an outsider in a world of strangers. As the greeks used to say, qui bono?
I mentioned this book elsewhere and still recommend it; "The Diversity illusion" by Ed West. I've nearly finished it and it gives stats and facts that make it clear that diversity is not good for the host nation or the incomers.
I'm going to be really boring here but, I feed a huge load of wild birds, they're fascinating to watch, you know what though? The big Wood Pigeons are ok eating next to the other Wood Pigeons, the Rooks bring their young and they're OK together, the Jackdaws, the Collared Doves, the Rock Doves and all the others. The old adage about "birds of a feather flock (or in this case co-exist and feed) together" is true. Its natural law, there's nothing wrong in wanting to be with your own people, sure it's nice to have the odd exotic stranger around but the "multi-racial society" goes against human nature.
That book I mentioned explains how lack of homogeneity leads to high crime, the lack of the wish to contribute monetarily and socially to society. It fragments the culture. And of course that's what the architects of mass immigration intended. Didn't the man with a million souls on his conscience say he "wanted to rub the conservatives nose in diversity"?.
Anyway, thanks for replying, thanks even more for reading my initial post. I think some of us older guys really want people to know that not so long ago it wasn't like this, it was better, we have to tell people in the hope that it somehow can go back to something like that again.
Yes, Ed West's book is required reading for all who are concerned with our plight. Perhaps we need a definitive list of all the important books for our people. 'Morgoth's Bookshelf,' so to speak. A new project?
Not a bad idea mate. When you read the stats there's no doubt about whether mass immigration is a bad thing. (As I mentioned, who wouldn't agree if I said "Tibetan people deserve a tibetan homeland with a tibetan majority population"? ). Our culture and country is just as original and exotic in its own way and should be protected.
I for one would certainly be interested in others opinions on any decent books available. Dunno why Morgoth hasn't wrote a book, I'd buy it. Actually I'd vote for him to enter politics but that's not gonna happen, that's where we need to be going though.
Spent many a summer Sunday afternoon in Saltwell park listening to the brass band playing in the old stand with a smile on my face and a tear in my eye.
I love a bit of melancholic nostalgia and nothing gets it going like music.
I remember in the 80s my Dad telling me he had been watching the bands go by at the Big Meet with a visiting professor from Finland, they could see some of the men watching the bands were crying, and they knew why they were crying.
It'll be the Miners' Gala in Durham on the 9th of July, wish I could be there, if only to raise a glass to the memory.
Here's to all the good people of Europe, the young and old, those well known and those less so, as well as those long forgotten, and those we never knew. I love them all, those good people. May we all do your sacrifices and deeds justice, so the future generations get to be proud of their ancestry too.
Indeed, it makes me think of remembrance services when we used to honour those who sacrificed themselves in what we thought of as a great cause. I'm just glad they aren't here to witness the great collapse.
Ah Morgoth! you brought back some childhood memories with this one. My father was a Lancashire coal miner and there would be a Miners Gala every summer. Every pit had its own brass band, dance troupe and would gather and parade through one town and on to a field for the day; band and dance competitions, guest politicians giving speeches etc. They were wonderful times but, thinking over them is always tinged with sadness knowing, that just like childhood, it is gone and never coming back. However, I do try to take heart from what was because, if our forbears could produce the good society, then our future has to be worth fighting for. If they could do it, so can we.
Yes, we can.
I like your pluck!
Masterpiece, Sir. The trouble with nostalgia is it's crystal clear that something was lost and it left a hole inside us all. You found another thing I bet almost all of us identified with in some way. It's like we all know that we were "better" as people back then.
Hey Morgoth. The voice of my people.
Your writing sometimes takes me back to my origins in Newcastle. I DO remember those marching bands, not the colliery bands but the ones of youngsters like you see in a scene in the brilliant Micheal Caine film "Get Carter". They were tacky and noisy but they were local people being involved in their community, something I don't think happens now. Multiculturalism and modern Britain seems so fragmented, I guess by design. We let it all slip away never realising at the time how we'd miss these things. The old adage about not knowing what you have till it's gone.
I mention a scene from a film because my own memories would just be mine, not something other people could visualise or would mean anything except to me.
This reminds me of the best piece you've ever done (for me anyway) when you talked about the scene from "Whatever happened to the likely lads" when the Fat Ox pub is being knocked down and the lads are given the dart board to remember it by. That little scene encapsulated the feelings people had in the 70s when the property developers moved in and the old tyneside disappeared to be replaced by estates and shopping centres that looked just like everywhere else in a thousand towns.
The film and TV series I've mentioned are visual records of what was: dirty and old but filled with character. Eventually replaced by soulless chain pubs like Wetherspoons and MacDonalds type places that were carbon copies of a million places all over the world. They homogenised our landscape and our culture, flat caps died with the old guys that wore them and American baseball caps became the thing. Nostalgia? Yeh, this is my nostalgia, yeh we're better off these days but what price do you put on a sense of community? On knowing the people you lived in amongst, on being proud to be a Geordie or English or British. Its normal to want to be with people that look like you, people who's forefathers for a thousand years lived here, people with a bond to the land. Every day now I see more African faces, these aren't my people, they don't belong here, it's not good for us or them.
Great comment. I remember seeing the first massive Morrisons opening in Killingworth and how it reminded me of something from Star Trek. I'd never seen proper pizzas or donuts before it was all new and flash.
Looking back now it's hard not to see as a Faustian bargain.
Oh. And Morgoth, pizza isn't so great, a Stotty Cake with cheese and tomato sauce on it is the Geordie version and is just as good. 👍😊
All so painfully true. Joni Mitchell (who is now insane) tried to warn us all those years ago about paving paradise over with parking lots (car parks) but the message itself got buried in her fine tune and the zeitgeist of the age. The sexual revolution was followed by the financial revolution and the headlong pursuit of self indulgence. I think, in a different age, Constable was trying to teach us to appreciate the Eden we inherited in his massive canvasses of Suffolk rural life but that didn't hold back the car parks either.
I like your point about " Its normal to want to be with people that look like you" is probably truer than we think. We can often be friendly with people that don't look like us but we can never really be friends. I witness this even within families, let alone communities. It is crucially tied to our sense of belonging. But of course the modern state tries to disrupt these natural attachments at every opportunity, with every policy, every war, every institution. All designed to separate us from ourselves, forever wandering in a human wasteland, as an outsider in a world of strangers. As the greeks used to say, qui bono?
I mentioned this book elsewhere and still recommend it; "The Diversity illusion" by Ed West. I've nearly finished it and it gives stats and facts that make it clear that diversity is not good for the host nation or the incomers.
I'm going to be really boring here but, I feed a huge load of wild birds, they're fascinating to watch, you know what though? The big Wood Pigeons are ok eating next to the other Wood Pigeons, the Rooks bring their young and they're OK together, the Jackdaws, the Collared Doves, the Rock Doves and all the others. The old adage about "birds of a feather flock (or in this case co-exist and feed) together" is true. Its natural law, there's nothing wrong in wanting to be with your own people, sure it's nice to have the odd exotic stranger around but the "multi-racial society" goes against human nature.
That book I mentioned explains how lack of homogeneity leads to high crime, the lack of the wish to contribute monetarily and socially to society. It fragments the culture. And of course that's what the architects of mass immigration intended. Didn't the man with a million souls on his conscience say he "wanted to rub the conservatives nose in diversity"?.
Anyway, thanks for replying, thanks even more for reading my initial post. I think some of us older guys really want people to know that not so long ago it wasn't like this, it was better, we have to tell people in the hope that it somehow can go back to something like that again.
Yes, Ed West's book is required reading for all who are concerned with our plight. Perhaps we need a definitive list of all the important books for our people. 'Morgoth's Bookshelf,' so to speak. A new project?
Not a bad idea mate. When you read the stats there's no doubt about whether mass immigration is a bad thing. (As I mentioned, who wouldn't agree if I said "Tibetan people deserve a tibetan homeland with a tibetan majority population"? ). Our culture and country is just as original and exotic in its own way and should be protected.
I for one would certainly be interested in others opinions on any decent books available. Dunno why Morgoth hasn't wrote a book, I'd buy it. Actually I'd vote for him to enter politics but that's not gonna happen, that's where we need to be going though.
Hey, thanks for commenting and Best Wishes. 👌
Spent many a summer Sunday afternoon in Saltwell park listening to the brass band playing in the old stand with a smile on my face and a tear in my eye.
I love a bit of melancholic nostalgia and nothing gets it going like music.
Lovely piece Morgoth.
I'm not going to lie, Morgoth. I struggled hard to hold back my tears at that piece. But I failed.
I remember in the 80s my Dad telling me he had been watching the bands go by at the Big Meet with a visiting professor from Finland, they could see some of the men watching the bands were crying, and they knew why they were crying.
It'll be the Miners' Gala in Durham on the 9th of July, wish I could be there, if only to raise a glass to the memory.
Here's to all the good people of Europe, the young and old, those well known and those less so, as well as those long forgotten, and those we never knew. I love them all, those good people. May we all do your sacrifices and deeds justice, so the future generations get to be proud of their ancestry too.
Here's to them all.
Abide With Me brings me to tears.
Indeed, it makes me think of remembrance services when we used to honour those who sacrificed themselves in what we thought of as a great cause. I'm just glad they aren't here to witness the great collapse.
Thanks
Haha yes!