Well, That’s It, With LadBaby in the Running, The Pubs Are Fucked!

When LadBaby said earlier in the year they weren’t really sure about releasing a THIRD Christmas song, but then when they did their Walkers crisps deal, I KNEW they were going for a Hat trick! And now they’ve officially released it. That’s it, our effort to try and help the pubs is now sunk! We were making good ground with the resources we had, but we are now OFFICIALLY out of the running.

What can I say, we tried. Not bitter and twisted, but when NONE of the pub & hospitality trade charities would touch us, and hardly any pubs supported our campaign to help them, it’s no wonder we were dead in the water. Sadly, after 15 charity events, this is me saying goodbye to helping unfortunates, I’m suffering just as much, if not MORE than you – go fucking help yourselves for a change! That’s what I had to do when nobody was helping me out. Charity begins with realising you CAN actually get off your fat lazy arse are help yourself!

Merry, bloody Christmas!

Three Poofs For Christmas!

“Obviously darling nobody will play your song, ‘cos you’re a poof!”

How does being gay STOP my song being played on the radio? If I was BLACK they’d play it! FUCK you! I DARE you to play it…! It’s not about sexuality, it was supposed to be about helping #SAVETHEPUBS… I give up!!!

Pubs ARE An Essential Service!

I lost faith in the UK government a long, long time ago, not least of all because of what THEY have done to our country this year due to their total incompetence, and inability to man-up and confess that their handling of this situation was WRONG! Rather than their actions and policies SAVING LIVES, I believe they have been directly responsible for the death of thousands of my kinsmen with illnesses far more deadly than this flu-virus. Never in recorded history has a UK government stepped in and deliberately stopped hard working business people from earning a living, and especially hard hit have been those in the pub and hospitality industries, who were already struggling to survive before this nonsense!

What THEY deem to have been ‘essential’ businesses and services have been allowed to stay open and trade, but I strongly believe PUBS ARE ESSENTIAL SERVICES! Here’s why:

1. Top of the list are the jobs they provide: many tens of thousands of people with limited skills and limited other possibilities can earn a decent living working in pubs – one of my first ever jobs was as a barman! Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are created by the service industries that depend upon them: the maintenance people, suppliers, etc.
2. I’m surprised the Treasury isn’t screaming at the loss of taxes from the heavy duties that are levied on the pub trade! How much tax are they losing? I mean, we’re going to have to pay for this incompetence somehow. right?
3. Pubs, especially the smaller, local ones, are the hub and heart of communities.
4. They are places to meet, socialise, keep up with community news, and a great safe haven for the lonely, and elderly.
5. Pubs help raise money and support for good causes: approximately £100m per year!
6. They are often the first to support local sports teams, and other under-funded local causes.
7. Those that offer live music give opportunities to emerging artists, you’d be surprised the number of now famous musicians got their first break doing a pub gig!

I’m sure you can add to that list! It’s certainly a more substantial list than the government’s reasoning for closing tens of thousands of pubs!

“I Got P*$$ed with Santa Claus” by Tone Def Tony – the ONLY charity song raising money to help those suffering in the pub and hospitality trade this year.

BUY OUR SONG AND SUPPORT OUR GREAT PUBS!

TripAdvisor: Time To Check Out…

If the world was a hotel, I’d have checked out long ago.

When it’s mentally a challenge to find reasons to stay alive every day, you know you have a problem. That’s been my life for over four decades. I’ve tried to distract myself between attempts to check out, always focusing on helping other people less fortunate than myself – like this current attempt to raise money and awareness to help the plight of our great British pubs with my ridiculous Christmas song, “I Got P*$$ed with Santa Claus”. Sometimes it helps, often times it just creates more anguish and frustration. I don’t especially like Christmas, even though I love Christmas songs and sing them all year round, the closer it gets to Christmas, the more depressed I become.

I thought this year, having the song to focus on, would be different, but it isn’t. In fact, I feel more suicidal than ever before, not because of the season, but because I feel my life has already been taken away from me by the nonsensical actions of the government. The reason we are all suffering this year is not because of a new coronavirus strain like the Flu, we are all suffering, have lost our jobs, our livelihoods, our freedoms, our independence, our rights, is a direct result of what we have allowed a handful of politicians to do to us. It sickens me!

I used to look to our government as leadership. I thought what they said and did was true. This year has changed all of that. Now I question everything they say and do, because I know most of it is not true, not based on fact, not based on science, based merely upon whatever they can spin! It disgusts me. I came back to the UK hoping to find something better than I had been experiencing abroad, but was shocked to find we were worse!

Hence my TripAdvisor Rating for anybody thinking of coming to the planet Earth is zero. Don’t come here unless you are planning to attack and destroy us to make way for an intergalactic highway!

Charity Rejections! You Just Can’t Give Money Away.

We’re probably not going to do ourselves any favours here by posting this, but I just wanted to highlight the extreme challenge for anybody else trying to undertake a similar charitable endeavour.

As if it wasn’t time consuming and hard enough to go through all the steps and hurdles to create, compose, master, release, register, distribute, and promote an original song – not to mention the personal financial outlay involved – trying to find a charity to partner with has proven just as time consuming, and even more frustrating.

For over two months now we have been trying to find a charity involved with the pub and hospitality industry (which is crying out for help!) to partner with. I think we’ve contacted every single one that we could find via the internet, and have yet to find one willing to work with us! Even though it’s tempting, I won’t embarrass the organisations that have already turned us down for various reasons (including the use of a very mild swear word in our song, all the way up to disagreeing that COVID-19 is like the Flu! To name just a few daft excuses!)

They are all very happy to accept our donation once we’ve done all the hard work, but none want to be associated with us. What does that say about their organisations? To me, it puts them in exactly the same league as our incompetent government that is more than happy to spend our taxpayer money on whims and whimsy, but aren’t prepared to put their own oars in the water and paddle! Likewise the uptake by the hospitality industry in general has been lacking. At this rate, I’m more inclined to give any money we actually will raise to race-nondescript, trans-gender, vegan, teetotaler, car-hating, eco-friendly, tofu-terrorists that look like cute kittens!

Just saying… it’s frustrating.

Buy The Song Here!

Christmas Number One Here We Come!

Great to be on BBC Radio Solent with Pat Sissons yesterday for his Make A Difference segment.  He said, “…we’re gonna have to beat this one, I think.” Encouraging support and the first DJ (that we know of so far) to actually give our song some airplay. It was great to hear him say, “Tone Def Tony… Def as in cool!”

Definitely added to the new hero list. Hear the interview below:

Happy Halloween Everybody!

What a year it’s been so far, but we’ve made it to the very witching hour once more! It’s great to see those pubs that have been allowed to stay open have managed to get in the ‘spooky’ mood to spread some joy during these really depressing times.

A big thank you to all the pubs that are downloading our Pub Poster to help promote our campaign to save our Great British Pubs. I think we’ve had over 50 downloads so far, so the momentum is building. We don’t really expect people to start getting behind our project properly until after Guy Fawke’s Night, as that’s when people start to get the Christmas bug, but it’s nice to have some early support.

If you’re getting into the Christmas spirit early, or simply want to hear the song that all the fuss is about, just click below:

Dead Cool Apps – A BIG Thank You!

Everybody loves our super-cool cover design for our track, “I Got P*$$ed With Santa Claus” by Tone Def Tony, but we can’t take any credit for that. All the credit goes to the amazing Simon Crack of DEAD COOL APPS, who very graciously let us use his artwork. We approached him two years ago when we found another of his drunken Santa graphics online (which you can probably see in older posts from that time) and wanted to do the right thing and ask permission. Unfortunately, when we started to get our track ready for distribution, we discovered the resolution of that image wasn’t high enough, so being the superstar that he is, he dug deep into his files and found the image we’ve now used as our official single cover, as shown below!

Many, many thanks!

Dead Cool Apps design and create amazing iPhone apps and other cool stuff, so if you’re looking for a great team to help you in that area, why not give them a call or check their website!

Happy Hallowe’en! It’s Scary Santa Poem Time!!!

It’s almost the witching hour of Hallowe’en, or Halloween as some of you might write it. The pubs are still in serious danger – not from ghosts, or ghouls, or witches, but from ridiculous, unfounded (i.e., not based on any scientific FACTS!) acts of stupidity from overpaid, under-worked bureaucrats that have probably never poured a pint in their lives before, let alone done a full days shift in a pub!

Our campaign to save the pubs with our silly Santa song, “I Got P*$$ed with Santa Claus” by Tone Def Tony is still gaining momentum – albeit very slowly! Thanks for all your help and support, here’s something a little different… a poem for Hallowe’en, but Christmas related… you be the judge!

POEM TITLE:

FATHER CHRISTMAS’S FIRST THOUGHTS AFTER DISCOVERING MRS. CLAUS HAD BEEN HAVING CONSECUTIVE AFFAIRS WITH ALL THE ELVES IN THE WORKSHOP, AND POTENTIALLY SOME OF THE REINDEER!

Ho, ho, ho…!

COVID-19: The Truth!

I’ve wanted to write this post since late March when my own personal alarmed bells went off at the insanity that was happening in the world. Right from the get-go things just didn’t make any sense. Unfortunately far too many people listened and reacted to the ‘opinions’ of a very few people who weren’t basing their statements upon any facts. Now don’t get me wrong, I 100% believe it is EVERYBODY’S right to have opinions, but opinions are just that person’s perspective on how they see and think things are, they are not facts! That said, I now want to offer up some FACTS about this year and this so-called ‘devastating’ epidemic:

FACT: Approximately 50,000 people die in the UK EVERY MONTH (according to ONS data)

FACT: This is the first time in history that our Nation, let alone the whole world has gone into such a lockdown based on an (alleged) pandemic

FACT: There has been no increase in the expected death rate in the UK (see also ONS data)

FACT: This is the first time in history that a ‘Death Clock Count’ has been publicised on public TV and in the media of all the ‘alleged’ deaths from this virus

FACT: People have been bombarded with pseudo-science about R-rates and scaremongering – the R-rate for COVID-19 is about the same, or slightly less than the Flu!

FACT: If you test more people, obviously the number of cases being recorded will increase (there’s not been much talk of percentages though!) You’d think more cases = more deaths, but that’s not the case!

FACT: Pubs were among the first to be forced to shut down – the first time in 300 years – with no scientific proof that it was even necessary

FACT: The Government has done far too good a job at terrifying the populace into believing we’re all going to die from this ‘new flu’, and they won’t admit they made a mistake and overreacted, because they’ve spent far too much tax-payer money on this fiasco, they have to keep up the farce

I could go on, but I think those that are reading this already know where I’m going and probably support my thoughts and feelings that this all has to STOP RIGHT NOW! There is absolutely NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that the lockdown restrictions, social distancing, or wearing masks has any positive influence on reducing the mortality rate of this virus. In fact, more people are dying of other things (mental health issues, heart-related illness, cancers, etc.) than are dying from this coronavirus.

Don’t take my word for it, do your own research, it’s all out there. Go to the ONS (although it took me a long time to get a direct answer from them earlier this year!) the data is all there.

THE BOTTOM LINE: In my ‘opinion’ (and it’s just that, MY opinion) the Government overreacted, based on very limited information from a handful of scientists that had no idea what was going on (probably provoked by press releases from the privately funded WHO) and once they’d fallen down the ‘rabbit hole’ and started writing blank (tax-payer) cheques left and right to appease the lockdown, they have no choice but to keep spouting the same rubbish! Somebody needs to act like a real leader and publicly say they, “F*cked up!” I’m sure nobody will really care, we just want to get on with our lives (those of us that can recover them!) and try and rebuild ‘normal’.

Thank you for reading. If it hit a chord, please share. Please also consider supporting our happy little knees-up we’ve released to help those devastated in the pub trade by these ridiculous restrictions:

https://tonedeftony.hearnow.com/