IMAMZADEH YAHYA MAUSOLEUM TILES at the BURRELL COLLECTION

There is said by some sources to be only about 155 Tiles from the Mausoleum of Imamzadeh Yayha in Veramin on various private collections and Museums in existence today.Out of this lot there is some in the Hermitage Museum ( The Russians stole them when Occupying Iran in their very own Elgin Marbles moment) and some in the Victoria & Albert Museum acquired ( our very own euphemism for stolen ) by us Brits.

 "This 14th century mausoleum had once one of the most magnificent tile works of Persian Architecture and even the world. Few of these tiles still remain there and most of them are stolen or purchased from local authorities during the 19th and 20th century and now are in various foreign museums and private collections." says a local Iranian tourist website.

The Curator of Islamic Civilisations for Glasgow , i , and about 7 other People know of the existence of 5 more tiles , they are not usually on public display and are not registered among the 155 known to exist.

Imamzadeh is a title given by Shias to direct descendants to the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) bloodline.Imamzadeh Yahya was around at the time Iran was asserting itself from Sunni rulers occupied by events in other spheres.A process that was further cemented under his authority.

According to the Scottish National Museums website the Tile featured above

is a " ceramic wall tile was made in Kashan, Iran between 1261 and 1263. It comes from Veramin in north-western Iran, where it originally formed part of the tile decoration in the mausoleum of Yahya, a local Muslim holy man. The tile would have been combined with other star-and cross-tiles.
The tile is made of a paste composed of a little quantity of white clay, ground quartz and ground clear glass. The tile was fired with a colourless glaze before the decoration was applied in the form of metal pigments. The tile was then fired again at a lower temperature and in a reducing atmosphere. This process resulted in the metallic lustre sheen of the decoration. The tile is decorated with floral ornamentation in the centre and a border of Koranic inscriptions, including Sura 1 Al-Fatiha and Sura 112 al-Ikhlas.
This tile was made in Kashan, which had been a centre famed for its high-quality, ceramic wares since the early 12th century. Tiles were used throughout the Muslim world to decorate buildings. In a religious context, their decoration would be mainly floral or geometric, but in secular buildings figural imagery can sometimes be found."

THE PROCLAIMERS live at CARLING GLASGOW

It is hard to believe a quarter of a century has passed since the Proclaimers hit the charts with a Letter From America.Since then they have built of a steadily increasing and ever-loyal base of fans of all ages.

The secret is how good they are live , whether performing a rock set ( as this time) or an acoustic one.

They still have a lot to say and will be around for a very long time yet.

The songs that really got me this time around were Born Innocent:



And a very poignant version of Sunshine On Leith:

CHRISTY MOORE at the ROYAL CONCERT HALL GLASGOW

After the bristling energy of the Barrowlands we can to the sedate understated pace of the Royal Concert hall.From the rowdy passions of the Ballroom we see an older more Family set of fans.

Christy started with this great song about the universal immigrant missing the home of their birth.



A favourite of mine is the song Allende , about the democratically elected leader of Chile who was killed in his Presidential Palace and the great musical poet Victor Jara who was tortured to death in the National Football Stadium in Santiago.The irony is both died with bombs and bullets made in the USA , as this brilliant tribute song explains:





The crowd , to their credit , was as emotionally involved and immersed in the mood of the evening as any orchestral music audience could be.

The night was perfectly rounded of by this brilliant version of a song any person who have suffered even an iota of unjust treatment can relate to:

 
 

CHRISTY MOORE at the BARROWLANDS

A representative of the oppressed , a champion of the downtrodden and , quite simply , the best folk singer in the world perfroming at his favourite all time venue.A magical night was a given.

This has been a great week for the Celtic People , and was rounded of in the best possible way one could wish for.

Every song is an immersion in a narrative that seems to capture a whole life experience which translates to all present with an emotional depth only music can bring. 

Ordinary Man is a classic example , a story of a worker getting laid-off whilst the owners get richer.



Missing You is a story of love and longing.



Beeswing is a Richard Thompson song about "the price you pay for the chains you refuse"




Sacco and Vanzetti is a Woody Guthrie song about two Italian immigrants to the US who devoted their lives to the Labour Union Cause , paying with theyre lives after being sentenced to death on trumped up charges , the introduction tells the tragic  story that was only partiallly rectified fifty years after their death.

I TOMMY , THE RISE AND FALL OF TOMMY SHERIDAN at the KINGS THEATRE GLASGOW

Hell hath no fury than a socialist scorned.This is a play about Socialism , Sex and Erjurypi , as they say in Pollok.

This play came to stage not to Praise Sheridan , but rip the pish out of him.

When i first heard Tommy Sheridan he gave a soapbox speech at a protest against the JNF about his most detested aspect of politicians - Hypocrisy.

I once sat behind him and his Mother at a comedy fundraiser evening at the Pavilion Theatre , an evening i saw Mark Thomas and Mark Steel for the first time.The event was also attended by Trade Union leaders Bob Crow and Mark Serwotka , who enthused an inspirational rare achievement  of an unified Left was , and how they would marvel if it could be replicated in England.It is odd that nearly a decade later there was no unification of the Left block down South and the very Unions still give political levies to New Labour despite the horrendous unnecessary Wars , not one of Thatchers Trade union Laws being repealed and new Leader Milibrand publicly disowning calls for Trade union strikes over cuts.

In the subsequent elections for the Scottish Parliament the SSP had a lot of goodwill from the mainstream public for their anti-war stance and concern for social welfare issues such as providing a costed , attainable programme to provide a free nutritious meal for every child in Scotland.A fairly unambitious programme that was to be ultimately scuppered by an alliance of the ruling Labour party ( who could support the war but drew the line to feeding Scotland Children) and the opposition Conservative party.

In the space of one parliament the SSP went from an astonishing 6 members to a more manageable  None.This play is sourced from the material of the party election co-ordinator Alan McCombes which yielded the Book Downfall as to why that very Left style implosion happened.According to the Book a prime reason being the court cases and the resultant divisiveness caused within the party from Sheridan suing for libel , a case won then lost on the basis that either several members of the SSP committed perjury , or Sheridan did in the testimony in the earlier trial.Calling his colleagues scabs after winning the initial case , then forming a separate party called Solidarity , nice name for a breakaway group did not help matters , leaving absolutely no room for compromise.

The denouement was the Golden Goose of the socialism turned to rust giving birth to a still born dead duck that killed the parents.And Thats Socialism.

The play stars comedian Des Mclean , a man with a face that makes you howl with laughter before he even says a word. 

The rest of the cast background details can be found in this website  blog entry.

You can get more background of the play and the story behind it from its dedicated website.

And below you can see the BBC documentary by Investigative Journalist Mark Daly which exposed filmed evidence that led to a second trial which went against Sheridan and the quite horrendous treatment of his Wife who was found to be innocent of all charges and at no point violated her rights which should have been respected.