Tour Snippets:
After arriving at the Isle of Man, a few hours sleep a our hotel is the priority, after which we make our way to the town of Peel for our first Manx engagement.

Peel is an incredibly beautiful place, windless (thankfully. After the crossing we’ve seen enough wind for now!) and oozing charm. The venue is right on the front by the water and it’s a great night with the local crowd. We played two sets, the first of which was fairly tame but the second became an epic indie-rock party – they had to drag us from the stage at closing time! Read More...

Part1:

Its 3pm and we are soon to leave for the Isle of Man leg of our tour. The radio is warning us that a force 9 gale is heading in to the Irish sea and that the morning’s crossings have been cancelled. Nevertheless the advice is the storm will blow itself out, so we head north to catch our boat.
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How best to describe Kaleidophone? Perhaps; a mixture of ingredients that shouldn’t go yet still work in an odd way, a kind of ‘breakfast club’ of talent and activity, a world of surprising components. Read More...

As an avid football fan, I’m as excited as the next person about the new football season getting under way.  However, seeing the millions and millions of £’s being splashed around for players and the non-existent transfer activity of my cash stricken club, I find myself asking the question ‘Is our Beautiful Game loosing its beauty?’ Is it becoming all about money? It appears that the wealth of certain clubs gives them a disproportionate competitive advantage when it comes to transfer fees and players wages.

If I’m honest, I struggle to see how spending £50m or £80m on one player can really be justified. Especially when you’ve got smaller clubs scratching around to find the money to pay their players each month.  Conversely if they are the best players in the world and they help you win the Premiership of Champions League, does it become value for money?

Then there is the debate about player’s wages with some players reportedly earning £200,000 a week! It sounds ludicrous and perhaps immoral, but if you compare that to the best F1 drivers in the world or the best Hollywood actors/actresses in the world it doesn’t seem too extravagant.
My concern is that disparity between the worlds elite clubs and everyone else will continue to grow alarmingly wider. 

I was intrigued to read up on FIFA’s financial fair play Regulations.  The aim of these regulations is to curb the excessive spending and inflated transfer fees and wages that are endangering the ‘beautiful game’. They have been brought in to protect clubs long-term health, which surely must be a good thing, but is the damage already done?

Let me know your thoughts on this!

Mark Thompson

Kaleidophone

We are releasing an acoustic version and video of a song called ‘English Estate’ today. It is from the same batch of lyrics as ‘An Assualt’, a track we released on ‘What’s your Tonic?’

View the video @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDA0Be84IYI   Read More...