God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Hay and I were discussing Christmas songs last night. Here’s our top 10:

1. Motorhead’s superb “Twinke Twinke Little Flame Thrower”,
2. The Prodigy’s memorable “Light a Christmas Tube Train”,
3. Led Zep’s immortal “Battle of Palestine”,
4. Deep Purple’s poignant “Silent Black Night”,
5. The Sex Pistos’ jokey “Chestnuts Roasting By The Open Pyre”,
6. The Jackson 5’s ironic “White Christmas”,
7. Toto’s vibrant “Hold The Pine”,
8. The Pogues’ allegorical “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”,
9. Leonard Cohen’s apposite “In The Bleak Midwinter”,
10. Velvet Underground’s mystical “Good King Wenceslaus”.

If anyone gets the connection for No 10, then please respond. Perhaps I’m not the only one who thinks tangentially. Actually, if any fox you then get back to me. There is a logic to all of them.

A few posts ago I said that the best ever invention would be something that converted the thoughts of severely disabled people, such as those with locked-in-syndrome, into words, allowing them to communicate with the outside world. Seems scientists are nearly there.

British Airways cabin crew, the best paid in the UK airline business, are about to go on strike. BA stock has negative value and the company hasn’t paid a dividend in umpteen years. BA has been described as a pension deficit (£3.7bn) with an airline attached. BA posted a pre-tax loss of £401m last year and is on course to lose around £600m this year. Should BA go belly-up, as it undoubtedly will if this strike goes ahead, what becomes of the pensioners and the pension contributions of the staff who are about to walk out? Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas – this is simply suicide.