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England - A Country of Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Victims 

https://www.channel4.com/news/police-and-council-failed-child-victims-of-manchester-grooming-gangs-says-report

According to Jewish writer Raul Hilberg there are three types of people involved wherever evil flourishes - Perpetrators, Bystanders, and Victims. Only the victims are without blame. 

It is unbelievable that the lessons of Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford et al have not yet been learned. If so, the Bystanders of Manchester missed the reports. Surely this can't be what even the most avid the…

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How Victorian Collectors Plundered English Folk Heritage 

THE MIDSHIRE GAZETTE 

23rd December 2017 

STOP PRESS: How Victorian Collectors Plundered English Folk Heritage
English Heritage and English Ethnic Continuity LOST


We were wrong, and we apologise to Ethnic English folk everywhere. 

A hundred years on and the English folk-arts material that was collected by British Victorians has still NOT been fully and properly returned. 

For a hundred years the entire English people have been kept ignorant of its existence, and denied free access to it.

What is ours has…

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Victorian Collectors Promise To Save England's Folk Treasures (July 1886) 

THE MIDSHIRE GAZETTE 

23rd July 1886 

Victorian Collectors Promise To Save England's Folk Treasures, 
English Heritage and English Ethnic Continuity To Be Preserved Forever 

At first glance it appears that the well-heeled British Victorian collectors of "everything not nailed down" have found a new target for their cultural appropriation, and it is a darned sight closer to home than Egypt or Africa, and doesn't involve an extinct race or ethnic group. 
Down in the English countryside the local yokels have…

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Disingenuousness and Tuia 250 

As well as distancing herself and other NZ Governments from the past deeds of British (i.e. Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish) Colonialism yet again, perhaps it is also time for Prime Minister Ardern to address Maori grievances that have arisen since New Zealand became independent in 1907.

Or perhaps even since the first NZ Parliament that has supposedly been representing all New Zealanders since 1854.

 

BREXIT - ANARCHY IN ACTION 

There can be no doubt that British Socialists have colluded with Eurocrat Socialists and European Socialist Governments to wreck Brexit, but they now see a bigger opportunity - to remove the British Conservative Government in the process. 

The British Labour party introduced openly underhand anti-democratic tactics in the 1997 General election, and conned British voters (particularly in England) into voting in mass immigration, multiculturalism and Celtic devolution. 
These are dirty politics of a very…

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Air New Zealand's Politically Unsafe Video  

As a long-standing Geenpeacer I'm struggling with Air New Zealand's current safety video, shot (almost entirely) in Antarctica. 

Watching what Air NZ refers to as "The world’s coolest safety video" on a recent flight to Bribane, it felt like I was watching a promotion for Air NZ, the Antarctic tourism industry, and New Zealand itself. For me the safety aspects were largely overwhelmed by the beauty of the scenery. 

Mixed messages appeared to undermine the spirit if not the main aim of the 1958 Antarctic…

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The New Zealand Herald and Anglophobic Sports Reporting 

Goalmouth Scramble: Why football fans around the world would relish seeing Colombia eliminate England

The article linked below appeared in The New Zealand Herald Online recently and if you are English, it will give you an insight as to why, in a supposed non-racist 21st century world, Anglophobia is so widespread. 
The author, Damien Venuto ( a NZ Herald Business Reporter) claims to speak for all football fans around the world and uses the football World Cup as a vehicle to peddle an anti-English commentary…

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Is the BBC really a-political?  

Having just watched a YouTube video of an Andrew Neill interview on the BBC I have come to the conclusion that I dislike what the man represents, intensely.
I find his air of intellectual superiority, his smug self-righteousness and his ego insufferable.

Mostly I dislike his controlled aggression and that poorly-disguised, left-wing bias that the BBC prefers in its presenters.

I suspect that the BBC has had a policy of not employing any presenter 'of the Right' or even slightly left of Centre, much the…

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England In Flames - The Systemic Rape of the Innocents 

Anyone who has visited these pages know that although I choose to live in exile in New Zealand, my ethnicity and self-identity is thoroughly English and members of my family still live in England. This gives me the right to be enraged at this time and to demand answers to the following questions:- 

1. Why did the British Police, Local Authorities and the Child Welfare system desert our young vulnerable English children as long ago as 2003? That is 15 years ago! 
2. How and why were these English Authorities…

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Who stole our English folk-heritage? 

Several British private and academic institutions continue to hoard many thousands of folk songs, tunes and dances that rightly belong to the ethnic English people.
These cultural treasures were plundered by British Victorian collectors and hidden away more than a century ago, ostensibly to preserve them for posterity i.e. to prevent them being lost to future generations of the very same English people. However, more than a hundred years later much of this rich cultural folk-heritage has STILL not been…

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Freedom  

Freedom means having the right to expressing one's views without fear of intimidation; the right to politically influence the future of one's own country; the right to embrace and celebrate one's own ancestral & cultural heritage; the right to expect one's ethnic identity to be respected.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who have been made to falsely believe they are free.

The English have always been slaves.

All My Own Work 

For me there's nothing more rewarding than working for three months or so on creating a new album.
I love all the pre-production stuff like writing, arranging, learning and recording the music and lyrics - this is what takes most of the time.

Then again I am consumed by the process of engineering the tracks to make them the best I can with the facilities and funding I have.
The software I use, Band In A Box and Cakewalk, isn't top of the line but is reliable and allows me to experiment with my music.

This is…Read more

My Memory of Dave Swarbrick 

I played support for Dave Swarbrick & Kevin Dempsey at Cambridge Folk Club in 2012. I hadn't seen Swarbs for the best part of 40 years (the Why is a complete 'nother story) and when he turned up in a wheelchair I was shocked because he looked so small. I knew he'd been ill for a very long time and on death's door at least once but when he started fiddling he seemed to fill the stage never mind the wheelchair. I started the evening with a short set that finished with a Lancashire-Maori version of Pokarekare…Read more

All The Way To America 

Hi Phil,
Just bought two of your CDs and can't wait to hear them in full! I've been a folk music enthusiast for many years and found you courtesy of an American Drane who has been spreading word of your music via American genealogy sites!  I'm a descendant of James Anthony Drane who came from England to Maryland in the very early 1600s, so we're cousins many, many times removed!  Now I know where I got my long-time fervent interest in folk music!  It's genetic!  Also appreciate your thoughts on the "New…

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EFDSS and The Full English again 

I came across this article while Googling ‘English folk-heritage’.
http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/free-archive-reveals-englands-folk-heritage

According to the writer, English people (inter alia) should be grateful to the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) for "opening up traditional English music to an international audience" by uploading thousands of English manuscripts to the internet and a programme of events patronisingly-named 'The Full English'.
The headline reads “Free Archive…Read more

Neil Colquhoun RIP 

How sad to hear of Neil Colquhoun's passing.I first met Neil at Folk Routes in Wellington four years ago where I was performing as the main guest. Neil was there to launch the re-issue of his book "Song of a Young Country". We hit it off immediately and chatted for quite some time about what it was that motivated us both - the preservation of our respective folk-heritages.
He gifted me a copy of his book and very kindly signed it on the inside cover "To Phil - a fantastic English folk-heritage musician…Read more

Ethnic English Folk-Culture in New Zealand 

The National Library of New Zealand, Alexander Turnbull Library has added my albums Two Ravens, The English Lament, and The Best English Singalong Folksongs CDs to its online audio collection of ethnic immigrant folk-heritage music. They join my first album Full Circle  whch was adopted in 2010.
This is a clear indication that New Zealand (unike the Dis-United Kingdom) clearly recognises the contribution that immigrant ethnic English people and their folk-culture continue to make to New Zealand's evolving…Read more

What Is Folk Music? Well I don't know about you but I'm not in the least bit confused. 

What is folk music?
There are two types of what nowadays we call 'folk music'. Neither is a true, identifiable music genre, like blues or jazz or classical music.

The first type is what I call "Folk Heritage Music" and what Neil Colquhun (Kiwi author of "Song of a Young Country") calls simply "Heritage Music".
My feeling is that "folk-heritage' music better differentiates it as music of the common people as opposed to more highbrow forms of heritage music.
Neil attended a concert I did at Wellington Folk Club…Read more

English Accents and Dialects - The Anglo Files Radio Show - Final Episode (2007) 

Digging through my archives recently I found a recording of the final episode of “The Anglo Files” dated March 2007.
Now that Facebook enables access to the world, I thought it would be a fun to share it , since it features ordinary English people talking about themselves in some of the wonderful regional English accents and dialects that I have known all my life.
So I added a few vintage pics and made it into a video. The opening tune is The Hesleyside Reel played by Tim Van Eyken.
<<Click Here>> to play theRead more

Champions of 'Live' music - The Bent Horseshoe Cafe, Tokomaru, NZ 

Must make mention of The Bent Horseshoe Cafe in Tokomaru near Palmerston North, NZ where I performed last night and and the owners Steve and Robyn Tolley. Not only is it located in the most beautiful place (on a bend in the river known as Horseshoe Bend, hence the name) - this little gem of a venue has wonderful charm and atmpsphere. Steve and Robyn are true champions of 'live' music and their programme over the next few weeks is as eclectic and hectic as you're likely to find at much larger venues - the…Read more

About Pokarekare Ana 

This love song began life in the north of Auckland at the start of World War One. It then drifted to the East Cape, where it was modified into an action song telling of Paraire Tomoana's 1912 courtship of Kuini Raerena. I decided to return the song to its original 3/4 time, as befits the love song that it originally was. Most often these days only the first verse and the chorus seems to get sung, so I went a little further and included the second verse which has lots of alliteration, and is great to sing.
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