Many of my fan(s) will know, or remember, that I was once a fan of Newcastle United F.C., hereinafter referred to as NUFC to make it easier to type.

Many of those fan(s) will also have found it difficult to understand why it was that I terminated my relationship with the club, and made a big hoo-ha about it at the time.

It has come as no surprise to me at all that, as of today, current manager Rafael Benitez is no longer Manager of NUFC.  Having been manager of that club for some three and a half years, it turns out that even someone who holds a Champions’ League winners’ medal could not rescue a squad that is stuck in football’s U-bend, and waiting for someone with that metaphorical bog brush to come along, unclog the blockage and flush the club down towards the sport’s considerably-sized sewer.  If Benitez couldn’t do it, it is difficult to come up in one’s head with a manager that can.

Let me assure you, dear reader(s), that it was not easy to sever my relationship with my club, which had been very dear to my heart for the previous three decades.  And, quite naturally, it is not a decision that makes any difference to the club, since I am not in any position there, do not own a season ticket, and furthermore, I am still writing and thinking about it (the club).

In July 2013, it was reported in The Guardian newspaper in the UK that 90% of the workforce of the sports retail firm Sports Direct were on what is called ‘zero-hour’ contracts.  Sports Direct is a company founded and owned by British businessman Mike Ashley, who also happens to own NUFC.

In the same Guardian article, it was reported that, of Sports Direct’s 20,000 part-time staff, a full 100% of them were on these zero-hour contracts; these contracts give the employee certain obligations to the company, but very few in return.  For example, a zero-hour contract does not guarantee you any number of hours a week, no statutory sick or holiday pay, or indeed any benefits that could be awarded to full-time staff.  You can be sacked with less than one day’s notice.

At the same time, reported The Guardian, the company’s 2,000 or so full-time staff were about to share in a bonus totalling £100,000, which averages out at £50 per employee.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to seethe and rant about the unfairness of such contracts which favoured the big company far more than it did the little employee.  And, despite pressure from sources as high as the UK Parliament, Ashley and his company did not budge.  Indeed, further reporting in 2016 noted that employees on zero-hour contracts at the company were earning, on average, £1,000 less than their full-time counterparts doing exactly the same job.

This was enough for me.  On August 7, 2013, I took to Facebook, my usual ranting emporium, and wrote:

Today’s rant concerns a very difficult personal decision for me. No-one else will care about it, certainly not the subject of the rant, but there we are. It concerns the situation at SPORTS DIRECT, the retail company that has 23,000 staff, 90% of whom are ‘part-time’ and have just been handed what are known as ‘zero hour’ contracts – i.e., those that do not guarantee any form of employment from one day to the next, and also remove the right to sick pay, holiday pay, and so forth. Other companies anxious to squeeze every last penny of profit out of its staff and customers include Burger King, McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza. (The Guardian) Perhaps you can see a pattern here regarding the kinds of companies that thrive on zero-hour contracts. The online petition site 38 DEGREES is appealing for help regarding a former member of Sport’s Direct’s staff who is taking them to court over these contracts. You can read more here: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/contribute/Stand-with-Zahera#petition Please donate if you can. It is important that the ‘little guy’ sends a message to these big corporations that they can’t just expect to win because they have loads of money and the claimant doesn’t. Now, why is this so difficult for me? Because Sports Direct is owned by MIKE ASHLEY, who is, as many of you footie fans will be aware, also owner of NEWCASTLE UNITED, a team I have followed since the late 80s. Ashley has made a number of daft decisions as club owner, most of which can be put down to ‘hey, that’s football,’ but the sponsorship deal with WONGA.COM is a step too far. This company, whose investors have included the Wellcome Trust (though they recently put their stake up for sale), and the Church of England for goodness’ sake, are the subject of much controversy due to their colossal interest rates, database collection and loan provision methods. I can no longer follow a club which has Mike Ashley as its owner. This man, currently worth over £1.5 billion, is prepared to squeeze the life out of even the lowliest part-time employee by refusing to guarantee them work. This man has entered into a sponsorship deal with a company that happily admits to charging a whopping 5853% Representative APR. This man has treated successive managers appallingly, and his treatment of Alan Pardew is unbelievable. As I said at the beginning, nobody will care, certainly not anyone associated with the club. But that’s not the point. Today I shall be writing to the club, and to the online fan site nufc.com, simply to highlight the issue in the only way that I can. xx

As promised, I wrote to the club via email and, as predicted, never heard a word back from them.

Just as he does in retail, it appears that Mr Ashley’s sole purpose as owner of NUFC is to run it into the ground.  I am not a businessman, and so I fail to see the logic of this.  Most people in business buy a struggling company in order to turn it around, raise its price and sell it again at a massive profit.  That bit I get.  But, time and again, despite billionaires achieving great things at clubs such as Chelsea and Manchester City, Ashley has said repeatedly that there is no money to buy top-quality players, he takes the purchasing of players decisions out of the manager’s hands, and generally casts an air of depression across a club which has always prided itself on the passion the fans have for the team on the pitch, as well as the club off it.

Mr Ashley has owned the club for about ten years, and, according to his own claims, has had it on sale for around half of that time, claiming also that no serious buyer has ever approached him or the club.  Initially, Mr Ashley was a popular feature at the club; he became famous for sitting in the stands, NUFC scarf around his neck, with and among the fans, rather than in the director’s box with all the other top brass.

His first move as club owner was to bring NUFC legend Kevin Keegan back to the club for his second spell as manager.  From the fans’ perspective, Mr Ashley could not have done anything better.  However, fans were soon to discover that he could not have done anything worse.

Keegan’s second spell at NUFC lasted all of eight months.  The manager quickly realised he could not work with Mr Ashley, managing director Derek Llambas and, most importantly of all, the club’s Executive Director of Football, a bizarre choice in former Chelsea hard man Dennis Wise, who was appointed at more or less the same time as Keegan, and who continually interfered in team matters that should have been left to Keegan, such as team selection, tactics and the purchase of players.  Wise’s role should have been to advise the board on footballing matters, not to make decisions in place of Keegan and on the board’s behalf.  Keegan immediately began publicly addressing his displeasure at the whole concept of Director of Football; he felt that the club didn’t need one.  And indeed they didn’t.  Keegan could have advised the board on footballing matters himself, made all the transfer decisions, etc., just as he had done during his first tenure at the club, between 1992 and 1997.

Keegan resigned for the second time on September 4, 2008.  Fans turned on Mike Ashley instantly.  Ten days later, he put the club up for sale, and his relationship with the fans has not been right since.  Ashley told fans: “I have listened to you. You want me out. That is what I am now trying to do.” 

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/newcastle_united/7615618.stm]

Since Kevin Keegan walked in September 2008, there have been nine managers at NUFC, all of them bringing hope, but none of them delivering promise.  The truth is that they have all been hamstrung by an owner whose business practices are shady, and who believes in prudent to punish a football club he regrets buying and now cannot sell.

Those are the reasons why, in 2013, I withdrew my support for a club that I previously held, and still do if I’m honest, a great deal of affection for.  When I was a child, I supported Liverpool, though I never went to see them play, ironically, until 1987, by which time I had already moved to the North-East and was an NUFC fan.  It was Keegan, ironically, who drew me to Liverpool as a child; I saw Keegan’s last match as a player on television, which was for NUFC (I was already living in Whitley Bay by then), after which he made an emotional speech to the fans in the ground, and I saw for myself the love that this man who I had hero-worshipped for 18 years by that time, had for NUFC, and they had for him in return.  Keegan had drawn me to NUFC as well.

I saw first-hand, on many occasions, the huge affection felt by the city of Newcastle and its surrounding environs towards its football club… Saturday afternoons, the city centre would be awash with black & white; the club’s colours adorning flags, banners, shirts and shop windows as many thousands made their way to the ground to cheer the club on, win, lose or draw.

And I wish I could do that again; but my principles as a human being must come first.  Corporate dominance over its low-paid and badly mistreated work force must be punished wherever possible, and in whatever large or small way possible.

The day Mike Ashley manages to sell the club and walks away from it, I will be back supporting them like a shot.  But I cannot now.  Many people protest corporate mistreatment in all walks of life.  Many give up things they hold dear to protest, why shouldn’t I?  I am not a fairweather supporter as I have been called in the past.  My heart is with Newcastle, but I am afraid, that, for the time being at least, my soul cannot join it. x

Sad – nay, tragic – news that singer Sheryl Crow lost all of the master tapes from her albums, including her major seller Tuesday Night Music Club, (1993) outtakes and everything, in a fire at Universal’s Archive in Los Angeles in 2008. The fire was covered in the media at the time, but the extent of the devastation only became known after an investigation by The New York Times earlier this year.

Universal told the media at the time that the fire did indeed take place at their famed Universal Backlot facility on June 1, 2008.  How fortunate for us that my dear wife Jane, and dear brother and sister-in-law Julian and Mandy had visited that facility the year before.  Even more fortunate was the fact that nobody was killed or badly injured in the fire, which started when a construction worker was using a blowtorch on some asphalt during what was already turning out to be a very hot spring season.  My dear wife and I were there that year, 2008, and later in June, in the San Fernando Valley (where Universal is situated), temperatures reached 125°F (51°C).  I have the proof of that!  It was hot, even by California’s standards.

I would love to know how that construction worker feels today, having read the New York Times report.

The fire destroyed a number of tourist attractions that I had visited the previous year: The King Kong attraction, the New England Street backlot, the New York Street backlot, and other sets and buildings.  Those sets, while of interest to nerdy film historians like myself, could be replaced.  Not the end of the world, so to speak.

Far worse, and something that Universal, for whatever reason, decided to keep quiet at the time, was the complete destruction by the fire of an adjoining building, a warehouse called Building 6197, which was a video library containing some 50,000 archived copies of films made by Universal (the oldest of the ‘major’ studios, having been opened as a studio in 1915, and studio head Carl Laemmle began offering tours to the public almost immediately), and of the many smaller companies that Universal had acquired over the decades.  In 2008, then studio president Ron Meyer told the media that ‘nothing irreplaceable was lost.’  All of these videos were duplicate copies of titles held elsewhere, apparently.

However, in the same building were master recordings of many albums and singles by music artists from all of the record labels that had been bought by Universal Music Group across the decades.  The exact numbers of master tapes is unknown; the estimates range from anywhere between 118,000 and 175,000 analog tapes (i.e., on reels of tape as opposed to digitally held on a computer or a hard drive) of albums and singles of artists recording for Chess,  Decca, MCA, Geffen, Interscope, A&M and their many subsidiary labels.

Investigative music journalist Jody Rosen published his article on June 11, 2019 – just two weeks ago, and I read it and wept.  All of these master recordings – recordings which are used to create the singles, albums and downloads that you buy today – were totally destroyed in the fire.  If you buy a remaster or a remix, they were taken from these tapes.  Any outtakes – alternative attempts at songs that were not originally used – as well as dialogue and other musical meanderings, were all gone.

The list of artists – major and some not-so-major – affected is indeed heartbreaking: Aerosmith, Al Green, Al Jolson, Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, Beck, Benny Goodman, Bill Haley & His Comets, Bing Crosby, Bo Diddley, Bobby Brown, Bryan Adams, Buddy Holly, Captain Beefheart, Cat Stevens, Chuck Berry, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Elton John, Eminem, Eric Clapton, Fats Domino, Guns N’ Roses, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Judy Garland, Les Paul, Lionel Hampton, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Muddy Waters, Neil Diamond, Nine Inch Nails, Ornette Coleman, Queen Latifah, R.E.M., Ray Charles, Sammy Davis Jr., Sheryl Crow, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Snoop Dogg, Steely Dan, Sting, The Andrews Sisters, The Carpenters, The Eagles, The Four Tops, The Ink Spots, The Police, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Tupac Shakur, Willie Dixon, Yoko Ono…this is just a small sample of the range of artists whose master tapes were all burned to destruction in this fire.

These tapes were priceless.  Even since the New York Times article was published two weeks ago, Universal themselves were still being extremely cagey to the media about the extent of the damage.  Although we do not know the official reason why the studio decided to cover up the extent of the fire, my own suspicion is that they had made some stupid policy decisions that made the losses even worse.

For example, asked Rosen, why was it that there were no backup copies of these priceless recordings?  There were, Universal replied, it’s just that they were all in the same building as the originals!  Oh, no!  What stupid arrogance from a studio that had already suffered half a dozen previous fires on its backlots: in 1932, 1949, 1957, 1967, 1987, and 1997.  Many of their street sets at those times had been destroyed and rebuilt.

But this fire was worse, much worse.  Universal Music had placed original master tapes, and their backups, in the same building, no doubt thinking that it’s not going to happen to them, they will deal with it later.  Furthermore, many of the artists whose recordings have been destroyed have spoken out in the media about another policy of Universal’s: keeping these mastertapes away from the artists who recorded them.  Sheryl Crow is merely the latest in a long line – the fallout from this fire is going to continue for many months or years to come.

Musician Richard Carpenter, one half of the legendary duo The Carpenters (the other half, Karen Carpenter, died in 1983), described how he contacted Universal, wanting to know the whereabouts of his master recordings for A&M Records.  Having been fudged by the Universal Music bosses, Carpenter made ‘multiple, persistent’ inquiries as to the whereabouts of these tapes, because he wanted to make remastered editions of his albums and include bonus tracks such as outtakes, or songs that were not used on the original albums.  In the end, and only after countless such inquiries, he was told of the fire by a ‘lowly’ studio employee.

Rapper Eminem told the media that he had digitized his master tapes just months prior to the fire, but it sounds like he was very fortunate to be able to have got hold of the tapes at all.  Krist Novoselic, bassist for the band Nirvana, said mastertapes for the massive-selling album Nevermind (1991) were ‘gone forever’; while Bryan Adams reported that he, like Richard Carpenter, had asked Universal Music for access to his tapes, only to be informed that the music giant had ‘lost’ and ‘could not locate’ them.

It is the artists that have departed this Earth, those ‘gone forever’, the loss of whose tapes is felt the most, I think. Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Al Jolson, Buddy Holly, and many others who died decades ago; great jazz artists and singers, some of the greatest voices and instrumentalists of all time, all of those master recordings, gone.  It doesn’t bear thinking about.  But it is true, despite what still-fudging Universal Music are trying to cover up.

A number of key artists, Steve Earle, bands such as Hole and Soundgarden, and representatives of the estates of artists such as Tom Petty, Tupac Shakur have begun a Class Action lawsuit against Universal for its actions pertaining to and subsequent to the fire.  A class action suit, for those not so informed legally, means that a number of plaintiffs can bring a suit against corporations such as Universal to claim widespread harm, and I believe these plaintiffs can be joined by any number of others at any time, so long as it is agreed by the judge.  Another advantage is that, because there are any number of plaintiffs, costs of litigation can be significantly lowered among the parties concerned.

This fire, taken within the context of the entertainment industry, was one of the most significant and dangerous of such fires in all of music history.  It is the musical equivalent of The Great Fire of London of 1666.  One estimate showed that the master tapes for almost 500,000 songs were gone forever.  All of that artistic endeavour, including singers, instrumentalists, other session musicians, writers and producers, all wiped out for eternity.  Yes, we have most of the masters on CD, but nothing can be done with those recordings; the recordings themselves cannot be improved, remixed or remastered in any way.  No outtakes or unreleased songs, or dialogue featuring these great artists, can ever be released.

And those reasons – combined with the utter corporate shame felt by Universal (which they would never admit, of course) – are why UMG will never come clean about the extent of the losses of their tapes, or indeed their actions that caused the loss to be so great, why they would not let surviving artists touch their own masters before the fire (except Eminem!), or their actions in the coverup itself.  Of course, the world understands that this event is not a coverup of the significance of, say, the Iraq War of 2003 or the Kennedy assassination of 1963, but for musicians this is a heartbreaking tragedy.

For their part, after the New York Times article appeared on June 11 this year, UMG issued a statement saying that the article contained ‘numerous inaccuracies’ and misrepresented the scale of the damage.  The corporate archivist, Patrick Kraus, told Billboard that the collections of labels such as Chess, Impulse! (John Coltrane and Muddy Waters), and others were not lost; they had, apparently, survived the fire and were still in the archive.  However, aerial shots taken in the fire’s aftermath show a building completely razed to the ground.  The below image gives you, dear reader, a sense of the scale of the damage.  The archive building is to the bottom right of the area covered in red:

That’s all I have for you, folks; be assured that I will continue to update you as events unfold in the coming months and years – this is an ongoing story.  Sheryl Crow has discovered that all of her mastertapes of the first decade or so of her career are all gone; doubtless other artists have discovered or will discover similar or worse losses of their own back catalog.  Disastrous, disgraceful, dishonest, disreputable – these and many other adjectives can be applied to the fire of June 1, 2008 at the Los Angeles lot of Universal Studios and its corporate archive, held onsite and all in the same building, and their corporate actions subsequent to the fire.  At the moment, it is believed that all is lost, in respect of the life’s work of many of the greatest singers, instrumentalists and rappers the world has ever known; there may be some miracle down the line in the future, but at the moment, it doesn’t look good. x

So, the visit of US President Donald J. Trump was a bit of a wet weekend…

…or was it?

I was astounded to read a Facebook post the other day from a young woman who said she was among 250,000 protesting in London against Mr Trump and his visit, when I had seen nothing about it on the news.  True, I hadn’t exactly searched every page of every news outlet in the UK to try and find anything, but a protest on that scale ought to have been a pretty major story, I would have thought.

Especially after Mr Trump had told Mrs May that any post-Brexit trade deal with the US will have to include… the NHS???!!!!

That alone should have sent millions of British citizens straight onto their streets in protest against Mr Trump and against the UK government even for agreeing to such an outrage.  What does Trump want with the NHS?  He reminds me of a certain British businessman who buys up retail companies that are failing, sacks most of the frontline staff and then rebrands them; his name is Mike Ashley.  Yes, Mike Ashley is our very own Donald Trump.  Thank God our political system prevents him from launching a bid to become the next UK Prime Minister.  Our political system does have its faults, yes indeed, but that is a lifesaver.

Besides which, Trump can’t have the NHS.  It belongs to the people of Britain.  To sell it would require a referendum; quite appropriate really, a referendum on the NHS, since most people are sick of referendums.

***

Last night, the UK city of Peterborough held a by-election to try and find a new MP, less than two years after a General Election at which Fiona Onasanya was elected for the Labour Party, taking the seat from the Conservatives with a slim majority of around 600 votes.  But, two years is a long time in politics, and not only have we had the rise of the Brexit Party in the last few weeks, but we have also had the destruction of Ms. Onasanya’s political career (not to mention that of her party, but that’s for another rant).

Ms. Onasanya, it turned out, tried to abuse her political position when she and her brother were charged with not one but several counts of perverting the course of justice, after they were both charged with speeding offences.  She denied all charges, she was a committed Christian, she said, how could she do such things?  A trial jury failed to reach a verdict, but when she was retried, she was sent to jail for, I think, three months.

If 10% of the electorate of her constituency wanted her out, they could trigger a by-election; in the end, 27% signed the petition and Lisa Forbes, who had stood for Labour (and lost) in 2015, finally won for her party with another slim majority, 683.  In second place was not the Conservatives but the Brexit Party, pushing the Tories into third.

What of this?  Well, it appears that the party of our government, the Conservatives, are essentially coming third in our elections at this point.  And though the Brexit Party did well, ironically, in the EU elections last month, are they doomed to come second in elections across the country?  Time will, of course, tell.  I hope they do; I hope they never get elected anywhere.

***

Ergo, ego.  George Galloway, former maverick MP and, more recently, former talkRADIO host, got the boot from that particular radio station after he sent an anti-Semitic tweet concerning Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, presumably after they played Liverpool in the Champions League Final (and lost).  Mr Galloway has an ego that could take in most of Manchester and still have room for large lengths of Liverpool, besides.

Mr Galloway likes everyone to know that he says what he thinks.  Unfortunately, what he thinks is a load of anti-Semitic shite and nonsense.  Indeed, he will find a way to blame Israel or Israelis for just about anything.  If there is a hike in the price of garden furniture, somehow it will be Israel’s fault.

With his permanent tan and tendency to wear Fedora hats indoors, not to mention his very… slow… speech… with… long… pauses, he was a frequent guest on the UK political institution Question Time.  It’s about time Mr Galloway was brought down to size.  And this sacking may do the job; it may not.  Have a read of this article concerning Mr Galloway’s Fedora Fascination; it really is an informative and entertaining read, although not if you are a fan of Mr Galloway’s, of which I suspect there are not many.

***

Speaking of the Champions League Final, Liverpool F.C. won their sixth European title after defeating Tottenham 2-0 in an all-English final in Madrid, Spain.  Curiously, the 2019 UEFA Cup final, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, was also an all-English affair, and a much better game, too, with Chelsea knocking the stuffing out of Arsenal 4-1.

But Liverpool’s Champions League win came after a relatively dull final; perhaps any final would have been dull compared to their semi-final turnaround against Barcelona, when, trailing 3-0 after their first leg in Spain, they came back to Anfield to smash the opposition 4-0 and go through to the final.

***

Today is the day UK Prime Minister Mrs Theresa May resigns her job, officially, as Leader of the Conservative Party and therefore as Prime Minister.  Since we have an amazing thirteen candidates to replace her, there is no replacement as yet lined up, so Mrs May will still be PM in effect until that replacement is found, which could be two months or more yet.

The problem here is ‘better the devil you know,’ because her resignation has led the way for a large number of pro-Brexiteers to stand to take her place.  Of course, professional idiot Boris Johnson is among them; but even he has said in recent days it’s going to be difficult to get Brexit through by October 31, the new deadline.  My view is that Johnson will somehow get himself elected the top job, and that will be disastrous for the UK, even worse than Brexit itself, in my opinion.  Any pro-Brexit candidate will not be good for Britain, but Johnson likes to be a buffoon at every opportunity.

Like his fellow ginger maniac, Donald J. Trump, Johnson is a former television host, as he served as guest host on a number of occasions for the UK satirical news programme Have I Got News For You.

Did you notice that even Johnson, along with his rival Michael Gove, Brexiteers both, said that they could not meet the EU’s deadline of October 31?  How weird is that?  Have they just blown their chances of success in the race for the top job?  x

So, the UK authorities have allowed U.S. President Donald J. Trump into the country, as he arrives for what I believe to be his second state visit since he took the top job for himself.

I might as well point it out up-front: I am not a fan of Trump.  He is one of those sanctimonious smart-arses who thinks they have the solution for everything, but once you get down to it, he has the solution for nothing.

You take his wall, for example.  It’s to keep illegal immigrants pouring in from Mexico.  Two problems with this: 1) It’s incredibly racist and populist; 2) It does nothing to stop terrorists from flying planes into their tall buildings, does it? 3) Thirdly, human beings are incredibly resourceful, especially those who have a desperation to get into the U.S.A. over a wall.

Oh, but Trump has a plan for the Muslim thing.  Ban them from entering the country.  The U.S.A.!  Land of the free, home of the brave, remember that?  Of course, the writers of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ could not have possibly foreseen to what levels the American population would grow, or that there would come a day when a president would be elected who spent his entire time telling tourists, traders and televangelists to f*** off.

In other words, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ and the U.S. Constitution, was not future-proof.  That’s why, over the years, they kept adding amendments to it.  The first was in December, 1791, while the most recent was in May, 1992.  But, of course, the fact that the Constitution was and is hopelessly out of date regarding the use of weapons, not to mention misunderstood, is ignored by Mr Trump and many of his followers.  Apparently, it is OK to carry assault rifles that can fire 300 rounds a minute in full view in order to protect yourself against those who wish to harm you or steal your cattle.  Here’s an idea; if no-one was allowed to carry weapons, unless in the military, what would you be protecting yourself against?  The only possible option would be civil war.

Oh, I hear you argue, what about weapons procured illegally, off the internet and stuff?  I agree that to remove all weaponry from use would require one hell of a lot of policing, but I live in hope that it could be done.  No point in believing in anything if you don’t think positively.

But, I am against all use of arms and all acts of violence.  Trump likes to act tough but that is only because he has people around him who would take any assailant down on his behalf – once, during his election campaign, an assassination attempt was thought to be taking place, and Trump was held down, led very quickly to his car and driven off.  Yeah, Mr Trump, very tough.

I am against all use of arms, even against Mr Trump.  He has as much right to live on this Earth as anybody, and while I hope there will be protests aplenty during his visit, I would expect none of them to turn violent, with or without the use of weapons.  Stand against Mr Trump, people of Britain, but also stand against violence.

x