Latest news with #RuleBritannia
Glasgow Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Glasgow Times
Hundreds gather in Glasgow to oppose 'mass deportation' rally
The party's latest leader Nick Tenconi has organised what has been called a "mass deportation tour" in cities across the UK. Ukip previously gave notice that it intended to hold a march and rally in Glasgow city centre today (July 26). READ NEXT: March in Glasgow this month set to be met with counter protest Ukip 'mass deportation' rally on George Street (Image: Newsquest) Ahead of the event, Tenconi posted on X: "Patriots stand with us on Saturday at 1.30pm in Glasgow - join us on our crusade to liberate Scotland." A crowd of around 150 people taking part gathered outside the AC Hotel and City Chambers on George Street on Saturday afternoon. They sang Rule Britannia and chanted "send them home" while holding signs with slogans including "secure our borders" and "being white is not a hate crime". (Image: Newsquest) The section of George Street where the crowd was gathered was closed by police, with pedestrians trying to pass the crowd told to use a detour. This was met with frustration by some who wanted to join the rally. Meanwhile, hundreds of anti-racism protestors gathered on Buchanan Street from around 12pm to protest the demo. READ NEXT: Calls made to ban 'dangerous' march in Glasgow city centre this week Ukip protest on George Street (Image: Newsquest) The Glasgow Times previously reported Stand Up To Racism had organised a counter-demonstration to halt the march. The large crowd was heard chanting: "Say it loud and say it clear, refugees are welcome here." The crowd held signs up statements such as "we're no 'island of strangers'", "stop racist Reform UK" and "migrants make our NHS." Stand Up to Racism counter-protest on Buchanan Street (Image: Newsquest) The Ukip march initially intended to travel along Montrose Street, Cochrane Street, George Square (South), St. Vincent Place, St. Vincent Street, up West Nile Street, round Nelson Mandela Place, and back into West George Street, George Square (North), George Street, High Street, Castle Street before ending at Glasgow Cathedral. However it's understood they were rerouted along quieter streets as the two groups were kept separate. We previously reported Dan Hutchison, Green councillor for Govan, had written to Glasgow City Council's chief executive, Susanne Millar and director of legal and administration Mairi Millar to ask that an order is made to 'prohibit the dangerous march on the grounds of protecting public safety and public order'. Counter protest on Buchanan Street (Image: Newsquest) He said: "I believe the actions and words of the organisers are an incitement to violence and a risk to public safety and order on our streets. "UKIP use phrases like 'these streets are our streets' and 'we will protect ourselves'. "Well, they aren't their streets, they belong to the people of Glasgow. And we don't want fascists calling for our friends and neighbours to be deported." UKIP has never had any elected representatives in Glasgow and at the General Election last year, it did not stand any candidates in the city. Counter protest on Buchanan Street (Image: Newsquest) Police on Buchanan Street (Image: Newsquest)
The National
22-07-2025
- Politics
- The National
Scotland's people do not endorse these war crimes by Israel
Let us not forget that this bloodshed is being directed by an Israeli regime led by a wanted alleged war criminal, Netanyahu, backed by a cabal of radical right-wing ministers and generals. Yet Sir Keir Starmer's government continues the long-standing [[Westminster]] tradition: turning a blind eye, parroting platitudes, and doing absolutely nothing meaningful to halt the carnage – let alone uphold international law. READ MORE: Banning Palestine Action an 'abuse of power', High Court told This is not just shameful; it is intolerable. Scotland's people do not endorse these crimes. We are not willing participants in this grotesque complicity. But as long as we remain shackled to a Ruritanian state run by blustering buffoons in London, our voices – and our values – are overridden on the world stage. Scotland's future is harmed by being shackled to a backward-looking, imperialist-days-of-yore set of dreamers with no hope and no aspiration of rising from the decay of Rule Britannia long gone! How long will Scots put up with this? There comes a point when silence makes us complicit too. If Westminster's foreign policy is to be conducted in the service of imperial nostalgia and military-industrial partnerships, then it's past time Scotland cut its ties. Even now we see frantic efforts to silence dissent by the arrest of citizens wearing T-shirts with slogans unacceptable to the misguided foreign policy of the Gilbert and Sullivan characters who grace the stage of Westminster. Independence is not only about economic potential or democratic renewal – it is also a moral necessity. Peter Macari Aberdeen THOUSANDS turned out in the rain for the pro-Palestine demonstration on Saturday in Edinburgh. It was organised by the [[Gaza]] Genocide Emergency Committee in response to a Declassified UK report on the RAF's 518 spy flights over [[Gaza]] since October 2023. The protest followed the Starmer regime's banning of the peaceful protest group [[Palestine]] Action on July 2. Protesters held defiant signs: 'Genocide in [[Palestine]] – Time to Take Action.' Starting from St Giles, the crowd marched to Queen Elizabeth House to hear speakers including Tommy Sheppard and Lesley Riddoch. READ MORE: Protesters gather outside court for Palestine activists hearing Then it was on to John Swinney's official residence at Bute House. Speakers included a Dundee firefighter whose Fire Brigade Union (FBU) members sourced and refitted a fire engine with medical and firefighting equipment for Palestinian firefighters in the West Bank town of Nablus in July 2024. The engine, which had all necessary paperwork, was driven from Dundee to Southampton and shipped to the port of Ashdod, where on July 21 2024 it arrived and was immediately seized by the Zionist entity. Four months later, the FBU sent a letter to the entity's UK ambassador demanding its release. The engine remains impounded as the Zionist entity's violence against and murder of Palestinians in the West Bank intensifies and its genocide of Gazans grinds on. What says the UK Government? Nothing. READ MORE: Who is on the Freedom Flotilla Handala ship to Gaza? Last Tuesday three women were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 because they allegedly drove a van into a perimeter fence around the Leonardo weapons facility in Edinburgh. The Scottish administration provides public funding to the company which manufactures laser targeting components for F-35 jets used by the Zionist entity to bomb Gaza. I couldn't help but wonder how different things could be if Scotland were an independent nation, able to project its people's voices and values onto the world stage, rather than a vassal of a disunited and venal state that is actively supporting the annihilation of an entire people. Leah Gunn Barrett Edinburgh EVERY time I think that I have grappled sufficiently with my emotions so that I am not in a permanent state of outrage and an all-consuming sadness, the soldiers of the world's 'most moral army' do something that rips through that facade and exposes yet another act of utter depravity and barbarism. I have seen footage of a British surgeon, Nick Maynard, practically in tears as he says children are being targeted 'as if it's a game' where one day they are shot in the head, another day the neck, and yet another day the testicles. READ MORE: IDF soldiers 'arrested at Tomorrowland festival over war crimes' Can you imagine how our politicians would denounce this if Russians were doing it to Ukrainians? The UN is impotent; South Africa, Ireland, Norway and Spain have taken action, along with countries from the Global South. Yet we, along with the US and Germany, continue to aid and abet this, and if we protest we can be charged with supporting terrorism. This is sick sick sick and we will never let our craven 'leaders' – 'critical friends' all – forget it. Marjorie Ellis Thompson Edinburgh
Times
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Proms star Gerald Finley: Why playing psychopaths suits me
In 2018, when the Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley was the star soloist at the Last Night of the Proms, he unfurled a Canadian flag and a Union Jack while singing Rule, Britannia! Parading a Canadian flag at the Proms this year might be seen as a touch controversial — a riposte to President Trump's designs on Finley's homeland. So perhaps it's just as well that Finley is back for the First Night of the Proms — when no flags are displayed. Which is not to say that the concert won't carry a strong social, even political message. Finley will be the soloist in a rarely performed choral epic — Vaughan Williams's Sancta Civitas, written in the aftermath of the First World War. 'It's based on the Book of Revelation,' he says, 'yet it's a piece reflecting the destruction and slaughter that Vaughan Williams's generation had been through. And it's full of hope. People had lost so much. They must have felt that it meant something, that there must be a way of rebuilding a better world.' One imagines that many people hearing the work in 2025 will be hoping for the same thing. Finley, 65, looks the epitome of elegant charm as he sips a morning coffee in a central London watering hole — although we spend most of our conversation talking about his life of violence, cruelty, lust and malice. A catalogue of crime confined to the stage, I hasten to add. It's just a few months since he was at the Royal Opera House playing the abusive patriarch Helge in Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera Festen. In September he is back on the same stage as the monstrous police chief Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca. Add to that his celebrated portrayals of Iago in Verdi's Otello, Don Giovanni and various manifestations of Satan and he has a weighty track record of operatic evil. How does such a pleasant bloke play such horrible characters? 'When I first performed Scarpia I asked myself: 'OK, is he a psychopath?'' Finley says. 'So I looked up Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test. It has a great line on its first page: 'Don't worry, the fact that you've picked up this book usually means you aren't'.' But did it offer useful tips? 'Yes. The whole idea is that psychopaths behave as they observe normal people behaving, even though they have these incredibly brutal, narcissistic, literally unfeeling tendencies. That's extremely useful knowledge.' Does Finley enjoy transforming himself into a thoroughly bad character? 'I was once chastised by an audience member who said my voice was much more suited to benevolent roles, such as Hans Sachs [the noble cobbler in Wagner's Die Meistersinger ]. But that's why I think it works.' In September he will perform in Tosca opposite Anna Netrebko , the soprano initially barred from many opera houses (she is still banned at the Metropolitan in New York) after she gave an ambivalent response to the invasion of Ukraine. What is Finley's attitude to working with Russian musicians who are perceived as sympathetic to Putin? 'That's more a question for the Royal Opera's casting team,' he says. 'I'm a working singer, I go where the job takes me.' After singing as a boy treble in a church in Ottawa, Finley was encouraged by his great uncle — the Westminster Abbey organist William McKie, who conducted the choir at the 1953 Coronation — to take up a choral scholarship at King's College Cambridge, where he read modern languages and then theology. 'I loved theology,' Finley says, 'because Don Cupitt [the radical Christian philosopher] was around then and he was inspirational.' • Those lectures must have come flooding back when he sang the role of the tormented Robert Oppenheimer in John Adams's 2005 opera Doctor Atomic. 'Absolutely,' Finley says. 'When Adams gets Oppenheimer to sing John Donne's sonnet [ Batter my heart, three person'd God ] he really is asking all those fundamental questions. What is the universe doing? Am I finding the answers or not? Am I about to destroy everything?' Would it be fair to say that singing in the King's choir was less formative? 'Well, David Willcocks [the King's choirmaster in the 1960s] famously said that if you make an ugly sound in King's chapel it lasts eight seconds. So there was definitely an emphasis on gentleness and blend, which isn't perhaps the best preparation for opera. It took me until I was 30 to give strength and direction to my sound and unlock the true voice within me. I had to go to the US to find a teacher — Armen Boyajian, who's a legend in New York.' The coaching must have been good because Finley excels in just about every serious vocal field. He's the go-to bass-baritone for composers writing new operas, whether it's Turnage (he was also in the premieres of The Silver Tassie and Anna Nicole), or John Adams (he has just played Antony in his Antony and Cleopatra at the New York Met) or Tobias Picker (The Fantastic Mr Fox). And he's one of a diminishing band regularly giving song recitals, most recently on an international tour with the young pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason. Is he proud of such a breadth of repertoire? He laughs. 'Some might call that indecisive. You know, Mr Variety's the Spice. But you only discover great music by trying it out.'
Times
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Opera star Gerald Finley: Why playing psychopaths suits me
In 2018, when the Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley was the star soloist at the Last Night of the Proms, he unfurled a Canadian flag and a Union Jack while singing Rule, Britannia! Parading a Canadian flag at the Proms this year might be seen as a touch controversial — a riposte to President Trump's designs on Finley's homeland. So perhaps it's just as well that Finley is back for the First Night of the Proms — when no flags are displayed. Which is not to say that the concert won't carry a strong social, even political message. Finley will be the soloist in a rarely performed choral epic — Vaughan Williams's Sancta Civitas, written in the aftermath of the First World War. 'It's based on the Book of Revelation,' he says, 'yet it's a piece reflecting the destruction and slaughter that Vaughan Williams's generation had been through. And it's full of hope. People had lost so much. They must have felt that it meant something, that there must be a way of rebuilding a better world.' One imagines that many people hearing the work in 2025 will be hoping for the same thing. Finley, 65, looks the epitome of elegant charm as he sips a morning coffee in a central London watering hole — although we spend most of our conversation talking about his life of violence, cruelty, lust and malice. A catalogue of crime confined to the stage, I hasten to add. It's just a few months since he was at the Royal Opera House playing the abusive patriarch Helge in Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera Festen. In September he is back on the same stage as the monstrous police chief Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca. Add to that his celebrated portrayals of Iago in Verdi's Otello, Don Giovanni and various manifestations of Satan and he has a weighty track record of operatic evil. How does such a pleasant bloke play such horrible characters? 'When I first performed Scarpia I asked myself: 'OK, is he a psychopath?'' Finley says. 'So I looked up Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test. It has a great line on its first page: 'Don't worry, the fact that you've picked up this book usually means you aren't'.' • The best classical concerts and opera: our reviews But did it offer useful tips? 'Yes. The whole idea is that psychopaths behave as they observe normal people behaving, even though they have these incredibly brutal, narcissistic, literally unfeeling tendencies. That's extremely useful knowledge.' Does Finley enjoy transforming himself into a thoroughly bad character? 'I was once chastised by an audience member who said my voice was much more suited to benevolent roles, such as Hans Sachs [the noble cobbler in Wagner's Die Meistersinger]. But that's why I think it works.' In September he will perform in Tosca opposite Anna Netrebko , the soprano initially barred from many opera houses (she is still banned at the Metropolitan in New York) after she gave an ambivalent response to the invasion of Ukraine. What is Finley's attitude to working with Russian musicians who are perceived as sympathetic to Putin? 'That's more a question for the Royal Opera's casting team,' he says. 'I'm a working singer, I go where the job takes me.' After singing as a boy treble in a church in Ottawa, Finley was encouraged by his great uncle — the Westminster Abbey organist William McKie, who conducted the choir at the 1953 Coronation — to take up a choral scholarship at King's College Cambridge, where he read modern languages and then theology. 'I loved theology,' Finley says, 'because Don Cupitt [the radical Christian philosopher] was around then and he was inspirational.' • Read more opera reviews, guides and interviews Those lectures must have come flooding back when he sang the role of the tormented Robert Oppenheimer in John Adams's 2005 opera Doctor Atomic. 'Absolutely,' Finley says. 'When Adams gets Oppenheimer to sing John Donne's sonnet [Batter my heart, three person'd God] he really is asking all those fundamental questions. What is the universe doing? Am I finding the answers or not? Am I about to destroy everything?' Would it be fair to say that singing in the King's choir was less formative? 'Well, David Willcocks [the King's choirmaster in the 1960s] famously said that if you make an ugly sound in King's chapel it lasts eight seconds. So there was definitely an emphasis on gentleness and blend, which isn't perhaps the best preparation for opera. It took me until I was 30 to give strength and direction to my sound and unlock the true voice within me. I had to go to the US to find a teacher — Armen Boyajian, who's a legend in New York.' The coaching must have been good because Finley excels in just about every serious vocal field. He's the go-to bass-baritone for composers writing new operas, whether it's Turnage (he was also in the premieres of The Silver Tassie and Anna Nicole), or John Adams (he has just played Antony in his Antony and Cleopatra at the New York Met) or Tobias Picker (The Fantastic Mr Fox). And he's one of a diminishing band regularly giving song recitals, most recently on an international tour with the young pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason. Is he proud of such a breadth of repertoire? He laughs. 'Some might call that indecisive. You know, Mr Variety's the Spice. But you only discover great music by trying it out.' The First Night of the Proms is live on BBC TV and Radio 3 on Jul 18, Tosca is at the Royal Opera House, London, Sep 11-Oct 7, Which of the Proms are you most looking forward to watching or attending? Let us know in the comments below
Daily Record
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Antiques Roadshow guest stunned at jaw-dropping value of 'patriotic potty' with Hitler's face
An Antiques Roadshow guest was left stunned at the price of "very rare" chamber pot with Hitler's face on it. An Antiques Roadshow guest was left stunned when she found out the jaw-dropping price tag of her late friend's Hitler themed chamber pot. The hit BBC antique series set up shop at The Royal Ballet School in Richmond to film another episode with the experts excited to get their hands on some unusual and quirky items. Among the experts was host Fiona Bruce who was presented with a comedy chamber pot that left her absolutely stunned. Admiring the strange item, she said: "Hitler's face at the bottom of a patriotic potty. How did you come by this fine, fine piece of China?" The guest replied: "It belonged to a very old friend of mine who died a couple of years ago and I had to clear out his house and I was given the pot by the executors because I requested it. And it sits in our bathroom at home." Clearly interested in the item, Fiona continued examining it, saying: "It's a marvellous thing isn't it? We've got a Swastika here [then the text] 'Have this on 'old nasty'. Clearly depositing on Hitler's face here." "'Another violation of Poland', so obviously [referencing] moving into Poland and it plays a tune as well, doesn't it?" The owner revealed she thought the pot played two pieces of music but soon realised the pot only played Rule Britannia, the BBC reports. Holding the item up, Fiona expressed: "So when you lift it up and have had a tinkle, followed by another tinkle " - as Rule Britannia started to play. 'Recognise that? Very patriotic. How brilliant,' she laughed. When it got to the crucial question, if the owner knew anything of the pots value, she said: "No, nothing at all. I do know that the gentleman who it belonged to, his father was a music hall entertainer in the 1930s." "But other than that -" Fiona stated, before the guest clarified: "Other than that, it was just in the house and I loved it." Fiona then had some excellent information to give the guest about her comedy chamber pot, saying: "Now the thing about this, it's clearly quite a comedy item and you could just think it's another fancy that." "But actually, I've spoken to our experts about it, and it's very rare." The guest looked shocked as she said: "Really?" Fiona replied: 'It's very rare, because of its date, the Second World War, this particular period, when Hitler's soldiers rode into Poland. And it has quite a significant value.' The antique expert then shared that it was worth £300, but the guest wasn't impressed with the sum saying: "And it'll still sit in our bathroom." Fiona then paused before revealing its real value: "It's actually £3,000.' Clearly shocked by the price, the guest's shouted: 'Oh it's not! No it isn't, is it?" "Wow. Well it'll still sit in our bathroom! But I will tell my daughter who will inherit everything that she's got to keep it rather than throw it in the tip," she joked. 'And not to use it!' Fiona reminded her with a laugh. 'No, no my husband doesn't use it, I promise he doesn't do that," the guest replied reassuring Fiona.
