{"id":80213,"date":"2025-02-16T07:42:34","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T07:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=80213"},"modified":"2025-02-16T07:42:34","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T07:42:34","slug":"f-a-s-an-autocratic-showtune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/02\/16\/f-a-s-an-autocratic-showtune\/","title":{"rendered":"F-A-S (an autocratic showtune)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Northfield is an old friend of this blog, and I have been happy to share his politically themed songs for some time.<\/p>\n<p>This is his latest. I offer a very mild language warning, although why I feel the need to do so, I now wonder:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"F - A - S  (an autocratic showtune)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1eniMVKCH2g?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As Mark noted in his mail to me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Not an esp cheery number, I'm afraid (even if it is using Do-Re-Mi from 'The Sound of Music'), because there's no way to sugarcoat this subject.<\/p>\n<p>Melodic additions in the central instrumental section are from Sousa ('The Stars and Stripes Forever' - the official national march of the USA), Britney Spears' song 'Toxic', and the theme tune from the chillingly prescient Gabriel Gatehouse BBC radio series 'The Coming Storm'.<\/p>\n<p>The only hope I have atm is that something worthwhile - like much greater cooperation in Europe with the UK an integral part - may eventually come of this terrible situation. Vance's vile speech in Munich really ought to have dispelled any illusions. How the US can still be treated as any kind of reliable security 'partner' while the Trump\/Musk regime hastily goes about dismantling their democracy, threatening invasions of neighbouring territory and giving Putin what he wants in Ukraine is beyond comprehension.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway... Grrrr. On we go. Giving up is not an option.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As I am apt to often inclined to say, much to agree with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Northfield is an old friend of this blog, and I have been happy to share his politically themed songs for some time. This is<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/02\/16\/f-a-s-an-autocratic-showtune\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fascism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80213"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80218,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80213\/revisions\/80218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}