“Cut Scotland loose – then we’ll have a fair voting system.”

‘Wow,’ said a wide-eyed young Liberal Democrat voter babe, staring over my shoulder on Friday at a coloured election map of Britain. ‘England is, like, totally blue.’ How true. Huge swathes of England are Conservative. And, she noticed in the next instant, Scotland is, like, totally red and yellowish gold. Only one single constituency north of the border is blue.

As Alex Salmond of the Scottish National party said in the wee hours of Friday, it is ‘overwhelmingly clear’ that Scotland does not want a Tory government: ‘I don’t believe they’ve got a mandate to run Scotland from fourth place.’ Again, how obviously true. Yet, equally obviously, the Tories have got a genuine mandate to run England.

Sadly, the Tories don’t have a mandate to run England, because voters in a secessionist region outside of England threw a spanner in the works of a neighbouring country they don’t even want to be a part of.
Sounds kinda familiar.

Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) SDA Late Nite Radio.
The recent resurgence of interest in period instruments in the classical music world is at least partially driven by an awareness that the composers of the day had the sound of those instruments, and not the modern ones, in mind when they wrote their music. The instruments of the Baroque and Renaissance eras were differently shaped and constructed than modern ones, and the strings were made of gut rather than the metal and metal composites. Gut strings have an intrinsically different sound, but they also have a different effect on the instrument, by virtue of the fact that they require less tension to bring them to pitch, and therefore exert less pressure onto the soundboard via the bridge. The result is a quieter, subjectively warmer sound.
Tonight, to give you a taste of the sound of period instruments, we feature Barcelona’s Jordi Savall, a highly-respected interpreter of ancient music, and the leading exponent of the Renaissance era precursor of modern violins and cellos, the Viola Da Gamba:

The most common sizes of viols are the treble, which is about the size of a violin, the bass, which is about the size of a cello, and the tenor which is between the two. There are also larger and smaller viols. Some have a shape which resembles a violin, others have plainer corners or a much fancier outline. They are always held on the knees or between the legs and are usually played with a bow (which is held underhand). Most viols have C-shaped soundholes and a flat back. Strings are usually made of gut, like the frets which are tied around the neck and are partly responsible for viols’ sound quality. The rich, clear sound of viols means they blend well with each other and with other instruments or voices. Most viols have six strings, but some have more and others fewer.

Here is Jordi Savall (playing the treble viol) and Hesperion XXI performing Baroque era composer Samuel Scheidt’s Le Nuove Musiche.
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Progressives …

The overabundance of support agencies for poor and homeless people concentrated in Riversdale needs to be addressed in what the city councillor for the area is calling “solution by dilution.”
“The simple fact is that the status quo is not working,” Coun. Pat Lorje said in an interview. “We need to think about alternative models.”
Many of the city’s social supports for homeless people are concentrated in the area, trapping people in negative lifestyles, Lorje said. The result is the creation of a society unto itself, from which it is harder to pull people out because they are exposed to more intense levels of the forces that cause, and keep, people homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol, Lorje said.

The courageous generation: