A turd world country?

Example

- there are 200,000 dogs in Paris

- each day they leave ten tons of excrement behind them

- each year six hundred Parisians break a limb slipping on dog turds

- the city of Paris uses sixty green motorcrottes that streak through the streets trying to vacuum up the turds. The cost of these to the tax payer is £5million a year

From Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong by Jean-Benoit Nadeau & Julie Barlow

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Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

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That photo of Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream appears on the late composer's website . Ten years ago I was literally very close to Sir Malcolm's music. He spent his final years being tended by his carer Anthony Day in Attleborough just a few miles from where I live in Norfolk. I managed Sir Malcolm's website and one of my first posts  about his music dates from that time. Following Sir Malcolm's death in 2006 I never lost my appreciation of his music, but it featured less frequently in my listening. However, recently I have returned to his symphonies, and listening to them again has raised some important questions. His nine symphonies are the product of a master craftsman. They move forward from Mahler and Shostakovich, yet should be immediately accessible to contemporary audiences saturated in the music of those two composers. But, despite this, Sir Malcolm Arnold's symphonies remain unknown outside a small circle of admirers. Why? Let me make it clear ...
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