Blantyre Explosion

I heard the Christy Moore version of this old scottish song about the Blantyre Mining Disaster which took place on October 22, 1877 where 207 miners died and 92 widows made, and 250 fatherless children. I had never heard of this explosion yet, this town is just next to my home city Glasgow till i heard this song. Tears came down my face first time i heard this..

Dunno there is something about this song that really touches me, makes me think of all us ordinary people that get fucked over by a system that reduces us to a means of production or reproduction, or a wastage underclass and how precarious our existances are within that set up…

It is songs like this that gives us an insight into the real lifes and emotions of such events that can alas only be generally put into statistics for us to recount such is the magnitude of the problems of this world….

I came across the chords for it and have been practicing it, i like to sing real songs about real people, and the real struggles that we all have to endure that rarely get noticed.

Anyway heres a great version by Luke Kelly and below are the lyrics..

By Clyde’s bonnie banks
as I sadly did wander
among the pit heaps
as evening grew high.
I spied a young maiden
all dressed in deep mourning
a weeping and wailing
with many a sigh.
I stepped up beside her
and this I adressed her
“Pray, tell me fair maid
of your trouble and pain.”

Sobbing and sighing
at last she did answer
“Johnny Murphy, kind sir,
was my true lover’s name
twenty-one years of age
full of youth and good looking
to work down the mine
of high Blantyre he came.
The wedding was fixed
all guests were invited
that calm summer’s evening
my Johnny was slain.
The explosion was heard
all the women and children
with pale anxious faces
made haste to the mine.

When the truth was made known
the hills rang with their mourning.
Three hundred and ten
young miners were slain.
Now husbands and wives
and sweethearts and brothers
that Blantyre explosion
they’ll never forget.
And all you young miners
who hear my sad story
shed a tear for the victims
who were laid to their rest.”

 

Most realisitic prediction of Glasgow in 2020?

Read about this controversial  study undertook by thinktank demos on my bus journey to uni today in the Herald Newspaper. Predicting how Glasgow could be in 2020 if certain measures were taken. There was a diversity of visions, to me this one below stood out, based on my experiences as a Glaswegian. Indeed, i would say that most of this stuff has come to pass already here. I experience it every day living in a poverty striken scheme and then travelling to the bourgouise west end. The amount of people that go to Glasgow University who have never gone beyond the west end is astounding. The west end really is a horrible bourgiouse bubble but i wont go into rant mode today…

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1417677.0.0.php

Hard Glasgow is a quiet place. “Apart from the constant growl from police helicopters swirling overhead,” said Mr Hassan. It might, however, appeal to some more than Two-Speed Glasgow. Another caricature, this time of Glasgow’s notorious social divide.

“By 2020 economic and social divisions are so entrenched that Glasgow has become two cities living side by side in blissful ignorance of one another,” Mr Hassan wrote. “One half believes that everyone is middle class now’ while the other half is bedded down in social housing estates, existing in temporary jobs or on benefits. Both halves believe that they represent the majority experience of living in the city.

“With social mobility at an all time low, people are born in the same side as they die. There are little to no movements between the two cities and the politics of Glasgow are entirely conducted around the values of the richer half. The excluded have by-and-large opted out of voting, politics and notions of citizenship.

 Something that made me laugh out loud on the bus had to be this quote:

 Football is no longer so important – one sport among many. Glasgow has lost the chip on its shoulder, making up with Edinburgh and reaching peace with the wider world. It has even taken the step of apologising for its role in the British Empire, and brought an elderly but still lively Bill Clinton to the city to chair a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to mend sectarian disputes.”

and then this quality statement lol:

 There isn’t much room for sectarianism in another imagined city of 2020. That’s Kaleidescope Glasgow, where so many newcomers, even the English are welcome, have arrived that Old Firm rivalries are long gone – Partick Thistle is the top team.

lol I wish!

apparently this report cost £200k lol funded by Glasgow City Council and it pokes fun out of them.

You’ve gotta love the old academic fraternity with the audicity they have with how they justify thier careers! Still id rather give them money to come up with funny reports rather than Glasgow City Council who squander money on zilch…