Ed Vaizey calls for minimum wage for ‘gig economy’ self-employed | Business | The Guardian

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The call came from Ed Vaizey, who until July was the minister for digital industries, and if heeded would require a major change in business models for fast-growing firms relying on self-employed contractors paid on a piecework basis.

They include companies such as the taxi app firm Uber, which has 40,000 drivers enrolled on its system in the UK, and delivery giant Hermes, which relies on 10,500 self-employed couriers to deliver parcels for retailers including John Lewis and Next. Neither currently guarantees workers the minimum wage.

Uber last week said it would appeal against an employment tribunal ruling that its drivers should not be classed as self-employed and so should receive the minimum wage. HM Revenue and Customs is also investigating whether Hermes couriers are wrongly classed as self-employed following an investigation by the Guardian that uncovered concerns some were earning below the £7.20 national living wage that is statutory for employees and workers aged 25 and over, but not the self-employed.

READ FULL STORY at Source: Ed Vaizey calls for minimum wage for ‘gig economy’ self-employed | Business | The Guardian

Steve Coogan’s Caroline Aherne tribute

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Last night’s comedy telethon Stand Up to Cancer was full of touching and heartbreaking clips of real people who’ve struggled with or lost loved ones to the disease, but one moment stood out as particularly poignant.

During the broadcast actor and comedian Steve Coogan paid tribute to Caroline Aherne, the creator and star of series including The Mrs Merton Show and The Royle Family (with co-writer Craig Cash) and narrator of Gogglebox, who died of lung cancer aged 52 just three months ago.
“30 years ago, when I started out in comedy, I met a girl who worked as a secretary for the BBC,” Coogan said in the tribute. “She was sassy, sexy, earthy, kind, smart, sometimes daft.
“She mercilessly took the piss and she made me and our small gang of Manchester friends laugh until they cried. Her name was Caroline Aherne.”

READ FULL STORY at Source: Stand Up to Cancer: Watch Steve Coogan’s Caroline Aherne tribute

Caroline Aherne in character as Mrs. Merton with Martin Clunes 1997

Shirley Collins: “I’m a conduit… I understand this music better than anybody else” 

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“English folk music says everything I need to say and in the most glorious way. I don’t listen to newly written stuff. There are people who call themselves folk singers and they write half their own stuff, and I think, why? When you’ve got thousands of songs from hundreds of years behind you which is real folk music, why are you writing something yourself?”

READ FULL STORY at Source: Shirley Collins: “I’m a conduit… I understand this music better than anybody else” – Uncut

The Goon Show “The Ying Tong Song “

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by Johnny Foreigner

Here are The Goon Show’s Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, and Spike Milligan performing “The Ying Tong Song.” You will either forever love me or hate me for delivering you this precious British earworm.

The Goon Show was an extremely influential British radio comedy program, broadcast by the BBC throughout of the 1950s. John Lennon once said, “I could go on all day about the Goons and their influence on a generation” – high praise from a jealous guy.

Wrote NY Times in 1972 : “Goon comedy was in equal parts the harmless violence of Warner Brothers cartoons, the wordplay of James Joyce and the lowbrow japes of the English music hall.”

Monty Python’s Terry Jones has called The Goon’s Spike Milligan ”the father of Monty Python.” John Cleese called him the ”great god of us all.”