Showing posts with label Francis Wheen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Francis Wheen. Show all posts

Saturday 22 July 2023

The Great Gatsby

 



I have finished "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen and it is worrying that charlatans have their hands on the power in the world. It is a book that everyone should read.

I don't know about you but there are so many books in my house that I haven't read and I wanted some fiction and didn't realise that we had "The Great Gatsby" by F Scott Fitzgerald.

I wrote a Vocal story called "The Great Catsby" that you can read below.



Also Leslie West of Mountain was a great guitarist and a very big man and I think he had an album or nickname called "The Great Fatsby"


If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Theme From An Imaginary Western" by Mountain.

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Monday 17 July 2023

The Million


Seven Days In now has had its millionth visit. These are the latest figures. That was sort of unexpected but two hundred thousand visits have occurred in the last two months, and the blog has been going fifteen years.




Continuing with "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen and expect to finish this soon. It is worrying that charlatans have their hands on the power in the world.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is, Spacehog's "To Be A Millionaire". 

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Wednesday 12 July 2023

Monopoly


Continuing with "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen and it has remarked on how "The Market" and Money are the new religion. Global companies and money eulogise the "Free Market" and then use their power to become monopolies or cartels to manipulate prices and push the consumer into penury.

Any government that does not facilitate this are attacked to attempt to bring them into line. The UK and USA have certainly been brought into line.

In the book the USA continually attacks countries like France, Finland and Sweden for not being in thrall to big money like the "land of the free".


This book is nearly twenty years old and things have got much worse. Lying and cheating are the norms the further up the money chain you go.

Seven Days In is still getting a good number of reads so I expect it to hit 100K visits this month (it is standing at 41K today) and a million since my first post (It is standing at 980K today) and when that happens I will share it with you.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is, appropriately "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" by the Pet Shop Boys, 

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Saturday 8 July 2023

Highway To Hell


"How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen is worrying more as I read it. The evil of Thatcher and Reagan's legacy is destroying our world. The only thing that matters is profit. Everything is designed to line the pockets of financial institutions, corporations and the rich. In the UK Labour is almost indistinguishable from the Conservatives.

There are good people still here but it is getting harder every day for them to have an effect.

This book is nearly twenty years old and things have got much worse. Lying and cheating are the norms the further up the money chain you go.

Seven Days In is still getting a good number of reads so I expect it to hit 100K visits this month and a million since my first post and when that happens I will share it with you.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is, appropriately Rick Astley's take on "Highway To Hell" by AC/DC for a bit of fun.

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Monday 3 July 2023

Send Out The Clowns


"How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen worries me more as I read it. Don't get me wrong it is an excellent book, but the remarks on the front say it is hilarious and funny, to the point you expect comedy, but it is genuinely frightening, just going over the fatwa issued on Salman Rushdie and how western governments and religion seemed virtually OK with it.

I feel Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Rishi Sunak are treated as jokes and figures of fun when the reality is that the clowns are very dangerous. They are bullies who think they are above the law when they should be behind bars. People defend them, saying what they do is legal, but it is their mates who make the laws and if they don't like them they just ignore them because they are allowed to get away with breaking the law.

This is my first post in July and I am hitting three thousand visits a day, so if that keeps up, in theory, I could hit a hundred thousand this month, but we shall see. Last year I did twenty posts, this year I am already up to twenty-six.

Recent posts were usually lucky to get twenty visits but recently they are hitting fifty and the last one is up to seventy-four, so I don't know what is happening.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "They Murdered The Clown" by Graham Parker, just an amazing song.

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Thursday 29 June 2023

A Near Miss (Isn't That A Hit?)


I thought that I might hit a 100K visit by midnight tomorrow, but it looks unlikely. I had over 5K visits yesterday, but today it's just 3K at the moment meaning I would need 6K tomorrow. It might happen but I can see it stalling at 99,999 but that is still an unexpectedly decent achievement.



 "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen is still on Creationism vs Darwinism argument. Essentially Creatism is for people who cannot understand scientific concepts. Science always questions itself, religion doesn't. The Bible may have started out with some moral tenets and some of them are still worth following today, but also condones horrible things like slavery, misogyny and murder.



If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music "Rings Around The World" by the Super Furry Animals

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer


Tuesday 27 June 2023

Oh My God


 "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen is still on politics but is now on the Creationism vs Darwinism argument. Essentially Creatism is for people who cannot understand scientific concepts. Science always questions itself, religion doesn't. The Bible may have started out with some moral tenets and some of them are still worth following today, but also condones horrible things like slavery, misogyny and murder.

This blog is still getting over three thousand hits a day and this month is now the most visits I have had in a single month, over 80K.  I am now starting to get greedy and need 18K reads before midnight on the 30th to hit 100K in a month. That would need 5K visits a day, and yesterday hit what was probably a high for a day at 3975.



If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "The Four Horsemen" by Aphrodite's Child featuring Demis Roussos and Vangelis from the album "666"

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Saturday 24 June 2023

Up In The Air


"How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen started with political and philosophical observations and showed me just how idiotic and evil Thatcher and Reagan's policies were and laid the foundation for the disgusting states of the UK and US economies today. The book has now settled into how Mumbo Jumbo now means far more than solid evidence.

This blog is still getting over three thousand hits a day and this month is now the most visits I have had in a single month, over 71K. While I thought one or two posts a month on my writing were OK to keep it ticking over, this month I will hit double figures. If I don't post then figures drop off. I am not sure how this will benefit me although advertising revenue has started to pick up, I was hoping I could cause some traffic to go to my Vocal site though I have not seen any evidence of that happening yet.

Grammarly is still being annoying.

If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is Kites by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound with a slideshow I made at the Washington Kite Festival in 2010.

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Tuesday 20 June 2023

The Wicked Witch Of Westminster


I am reading "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen which has started with political and philosophical observations.I know it is thought-provoking and but this may take a little longer than my lost book. The shocking thing is that while I disliked Margaret Thatcher intensely I did not realise how absolutely awful the woman was. She must be so proud of that Wannabe Idi Amin Rishi Sunak.

She wanted to destroy the welfare state and quoted the bible to justify her aims.

"if A Man Does Not Work He Should Not Eat"

She planned the miners' strike, militarizing the police to destroy them, caused rampant inflation by idiot trickle-down policies and sent unemployment through the roof. Her pal was Reagan and they pursued the same policies. The USA had not been in deficit til Reagan got in and it is still suffering from the policies that he implemented.

This blog is still getting over three thousand hits a day and this month is now the most visits I have had in a single month. It has just passed 900K visits.






If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is Pete Wylie's "The Day That Margaret Thatcher Dies" which is the only song that I could use though I'm not sure it ever got an official release

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book

Sunday 18 June 2023

The End Of Entropy


I finished "The Entropy Tango" by Michael Moorcockwhich was only 152 pages long and it was different to say the least, jumping physically as well as paradoxically through time.

I am getting a little annoyed with Grammarly which is now indicating things that it thinks might be wrong but are only available in the professional version. I will still keep using it though, but it is annoying.

My next book is a reread of "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World" by Francis Wheen which has started with political and philosophical observations and I know it is thought-provoking and but this may take a little longer than my lost book.

THis blog is still getting over three thousand hist a day and this month is now the most visits I have had in a single month.



If you want to buy a book my dark poetry is on the link below.

The music is "Sombre Reptiles" by Brian Eno with some video I took at the Mouth Of Tyne Festival in 2011

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer