Whose Voice + Latter Day Blues + Hundreds Of Thousands (Photo)

Today Brent Advocacy Concerns, an organisation of disabled people facing imminent closure in Brent announced that The Advocacy Project has won a £630k funding award to speak for anyone. There are no other DDPO’s in Brent

The Guardian reports on Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin’s concerns that celebrities are having to speak up for Disabled People as, I presume, no one is listening when we speak up for ourselves.

I posted this on facebook on my timeline and in The Bunker:

Whose Voice
I don’t need no celebrity to speak for me
We don’t need no celebrity to speak for we
But when i put some time aside
And think on this tory genocide
I’ll let any one speak for me

Richard Downes
19th February 2021
(From 100 Meters)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/19/ian-rankin-covid-why-does-it-take-celebrity-voices-for-the-disabled-to-be-heard

Once again I was put in mind of Martin Niemoller’s ‘First They Came For The Socialists’
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists

I returned to The Great Margin’s 39^th Conversation today to see if anyone had commented on my Love Haikus and noted that the musical stimulant was Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond – which reputedly concerns Syd Barrrett’s mental health. Using this I explored the Pink Floyd canon before addressing a few Barrett songs. I’m left with my own words on the ongoing myth.

Latter Day Blues

He shone like the sun
Shot like a comet
Spent quiet days in retreat

Consider this Syd
With best yet to come
You burnt out but didn’t fade

Sat on the dark side
Waving your arms in the air
Should we still miss you?

Richard Downes
20^th February 2021