DUFF & NONSENSE!

Better watch out, Donald, 'the Deval' is coming!

Having just received my promotion from 'Chief Cook and Bottler-Washer' to 24-hour Ward Nurse, I do not have a lot of time for blogging but I thought this news was worth reporting.  For lo, 'The Great O' has spoken and from his mountain eyrie in Hawaii, his almighty finger pointeth, and it pointeth at Deval Patrick!  Eh?  Who?  Well, yes, that was my instant re-action which merely serves to demonstrate - again - my ignorance of American politics.

 

Deval Laurdine Patrick is the former Governor of Massachusetts and sundry reports indicate that Obama favours him as the best to run for the Presidency in 2020.  An ultra fast skim-read of his Wiki page produced one or two good points from his history.  Alas, a news report indicates that Valerie Jarrett has said that a President Patrick is what “my heart desires.”  Oh no, say it ain't so - come back Donald, all is forgiven!

 

Oh no, say it ain't so, er, mate!

Did you catch my Aussie accent in the title?  Well, you should have because this is a shocking Aussie story.  You see, and I know you will find this hard to believe, but some Aussie climatologists have been caught out telling 'porkies'!  Sorry, for the benefit of my American readers "porkies" is short for 'porky pies' which in London slang means 'lies'.

Now normally, I would trust an Aussie, well, apart from cricket or who bought the last round and that sort of thing but these particular Aussies were climatologists working for the Bureau of Meteorology and, 'as any fule do no', meteorology is no longer a science but a world-wide religion in which temperatures are only ever permitted to rise and rise and rise again!

Happily, this new religion has a few stool-pigeons, er, actually in this case a meteorologist called Lance Pidgeon who spotted that some low temperature recordings suddenly disappeared but then re-appeared somewhat higher:

"Meteorologist Lance Pidgeon watched the 13 degrees Fahrenheit Goulburn recording from July 2 disappear from the bureau’s website. The temperature readings fluctuated briefly and then disappeared from the government’s website."
“The temperature dropped to minus 10 (13 degrees Fahrenheit), stayed there for some time and then it changed to minus 10.4 (14 degrees Fahrenheit) and then it disappeared,” Pidgeon said, adding that he notified scientist Jennifer Marohasy about the problem, who then brought the readings to the attention of the bureau."

This was reported to the one-eyed boss of the Australian Bureau who, after removing his glass eye and polishing it, insisted that it was all a mistake, a bit of kit had temporarily gone wrong, nothing to see here, move along!  However, it is by now a well known fact that under the First Commandment of the Church of Meteorology, all temperatures everywhere must show a steady rise!

I am obliged to The Daily Caller.

 

 

Dunkirk - another view

Prompted by an article by Steve Feinstein in the American Thinker(AT) the other day, I posted on the subject of Dunkirk and reminded myself, as well as you, that Air Marshall Dowding took an exceedingly brave decision not to commit too many Spitfires to the campaign in northern France because he realised that they would be essential for the defence of Britain.  Today, the AT publishes another article by a pseudonymous writer who appears to have been heavily influenced by the books of John Mosier.  He declines to accept the post-war version that it was a combination of armour and air power that was decisive in WWII battles.  In doing so, of course, he puts himself up against the likes of J.F.C. Fuller, Guderian, von Manstein (the greatest general of the war), Montgomery, Patton, et al.  Anyway, that means my ineffectual plans to thin out the contents of my book shelves has just gone the wrong way because I will have to buy Mosier's book.  Well, I tried, dammit, I tried!

ADDITIONAL:   Oh hell, maybe not!  I have just read a crit of Mosier's book which has given me pause:  https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=10278

 

Your Mondy (afternoon) Funnies: 31.7.17

Yes, I know, the wheels of industry ground to a halt this morning because my 'Funnies' were missing but I had to spit out that post on Kevin Myers and then I had to take the 'Memsahib' to the 'quack' to check her sprained ankle and then ... well, domestic this 'n' that.  Anyway relax, here they come and you will be glad to know that they are all in the worst possible taste!

Two women friends had gone for a girls' night out.  Both were very faithful and loving wives, however they had got over-enthusiastic on the Bacardi Breezers.

Incredibly drunk and walking home they needed to wee, so they stopped in the cemetery.  One of them had nothing to wipe with so she thought she would take off her panties and use them.

Her friend however was wearing a rather expensive pair of panties and did not want to ruin them.  She was lucky enough to squat down next to a grave that had a wreath with a ribbon on it, so she
proceeded to wipe with that.  When the girls had finished their tasks, they went home.

The next day, the husband of one of the women was concerned that his normally sweet and innocent wife was still in bed hung over, so he phoned the other husband and said, "These girl nights out have got to stop! I'm starting to suspect the worst. My wife came home with no panties on!"

"That's nothing," said the other husband, "Mine came back with a card stuck to her arse that read..... 'From all of us at the Fire Station.
We'll never forget you.'

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A guy was playing golf one day and he got lost. He saw a lady up ahead of him and went to her and said "Can you please help me, I don't know what hole I'm on."

She told him "You are one hole behind me. I'm on 7; you're on 6."He thanked her and continued playing golf. 
 
On the back nine he got lost again.  He saw the same lady and went to her again kind of embarrassed. "I'm sorry to bother you again but I'm lost again, can you please tell me what hole I'm on."

She told him "You are one hole behind me. I'm on 14; you are on 13."
Again he thanked her and continued playing golf. 
 
When he finished he saw her in the clubhouse. He went up to her and asked if he could buy her a drink for helping him out. She accepted. As they were drinking and talking he asked her what she did for a living.

"I'm in sales."

He replied "No kidding so am I. What do you sell?"

She said “It's too embarrassing to tell”. But after he kept pleading to know what she sold she said she'd tell him if he promised not to laugh. He promised. She said, "I sell tampons".

He immediately fell to the floor laughing hysterically.

She said, "You promised you wouldn't laugh".

He replied "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it. I sell toilet paper. I'm
still one hole behind you."

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Once upon a time there was a king who wanted to go fishing. He called the royal weather forecaster and inquired as to the weather forecast for the next few hours. The weatherman assured him that there was no chance of rain in the coming days.  So the king went fishing with his wife, the queen. 
 
On the way he met a farmer on his donkey. Upon seeing the king the farmer said, "Your Majesty, you should return to the palace at once because in just a short time I expect a huge amount of rain to fall in this area".
 
The king was polite and considerate, he replied: "I hold the palace meteorologist in high regard. He is an extensively educated and experienced professional, and I pay him very high wages. He gave me a very different forecast. I trust him and I will continue on my way." So they did.
 
However, a short time later a torrential rain fell from the sky. The King and Queen were totally soaked and their entourage chuckled upon seeing them in such a shameful condition.
 
Furious, the king returned to the palace and gave the order to fire the weatherman at once! Then he summoned the farmer and offered him the prestigious and high paying role of royal forecaster.
 
The farmer said, "Your Majesty, I do not know anything about forecasting.   I obtain my information from my donkey. If I see my donkey's ears drooping, it means with certainty that it will rain." 

So instead, the King hired the donkey on the spot.
 

And thus began the ancient-old practice of hiring asses to work in the government and occupy its highest and most influential positions...

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Q: What happened after the blonde ran to meet her long lost twin sister?
A: She got 7 years of bad luck for breaking her nose on the mirror.

.....................................................

How can you tell when a man is well hung?
When you can just barely slip your finger in between his neck and the noose.

......................................................

How can you tell if your girlfriend is geting fat?
When she can wear your wife's clothes...

That's your lot - and don't try that last one on the Missus!

 

 

Dammit, I missed it!

Yes, yes, I do realise that you, my regular readers, utterly rely on me to keep you up to date with the very latest news and views but, have a heart, I can't cover everything!  Anyway, mea culpa and all that sort of thing, I totally missed the Kevin Myers brouhaha until I noticed this morning that he has been sacked as a commentator at The Times.  If you can be arsed to check this blog 'way back when' you will find paeans of praise from me for Mr. Myers who was one of the very best commentators on all those 'Oirish' shenanigans a few years back.  Alas, he changed newspapers and I lost track of him but now he is back in the headlines but not, perhaps, for the best of reasons.

He has been sacked by The Times for an opinion piece he wrote on the subject of the huge pay disparities between men and women presenters at the BBC.  I have not been able to find the original article, it has been well and truly 'disappeared' by the 'PC Brigade' who were shocked, I tell you, shocked, by Mr. Myers' acute observation that the two top exceptions amongst female presenters who were paid massive amounts virtually equal to their male counterparts, were - wait for it! - Jewish!  What he actually wrote was this:

Two of the best paid women presenters in the BBC with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted - are Jewish.

Good for them.  Jews are not generally known for insisting on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity.

Cue: total 'SHLOCK-HORROR' all round with the 'PC Brigade' fainting all over the place.  Of course, stereotyping is a very rough and ready measure of reality but usually there is a grain of truth in it.  Thus, as we all do know, Jocks are penny-pinching misers, Italians are excitable, 'rezzidents of Summerzet' are a bit dim, Germans are over-fond of militarism (whodathunkit?) and so on and on.  Jews earned their reputation over the past thousand years by taking over the money-lending business in a Europe that used every trick in the book to stop them from entering most other professions - and nobody loves their bank manager!

But Mr. Myers' main point is totally missed amongst the mass hysteria that has broken out.  What he is saying is that Jews, on the whole, are more intelligent than non-Jews.  Alas, despite the very many attempts to measure intelligence (or even to define it!) I remain doubtful as to their exactitude.  However, I am totally unsurprised that Jews invariably come out on top.  That is not to say that they never make mistakes or occasionally plumb the depths of dumbness like other people, it's just that on the whole, taken in the round, they are, on average, slightly brighter than the rest of us.  Which is why I am totally unsurprised that the two highest paid ladies in the BBC are Jewish.  Jolly well done, gals!

 

The Sunday Rumble: 30.7.17

I funked it!   And yes, I did spell that correctly.  I am referring to my somewhat rash promise to myself the other day that I would have a massive cull of my book shelves.  I did make a start but most of what I tossed out were old play scripts which are now, alas, surplus to requirements.  However, since then I have been picking out one or two of my history books and re-reading them.  I have just started Andrew Roberts' biography of Lord Salisbury.  It weighs a ton so picking it up also counts as my daily exercise.  If I come up with any more daft ideas, do feel free to tell me I'm a prat!

 

More from A Shropshire Lad:

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

 

Dan Hodges throws a mean punch:   Well, he is a bit of a bruiser having lost an eye in a pub fight defending a lady.  Today, however, he rather sensibly lays into a weedy, old geezer called Jeremy Corbyn!  His opening paragraph sets the scene: 

If you were one of the 12 million people who turned out to support Labour in the Election, I have some bad news for you. There’s no gentle way to break this, so I’m just going to come out with it. Jeremy Corbyn thinks you’re a mug.

Well, if you're one of those teeny-weeny millennials who actually believed 'Jezza' would vanish your student debt you have just had your first lesson in Politics 101!

 

I told you he was a gent:   I refer, of course to the 'Right Honourable Sir' Lewis Hamilton, chauffeur supreme!  Listening to the Hungarian Grand Prix, because my ex-Best Friend, 'Rupe', makes it too expensive to watch, I hear that he requested his team mate to move over so he could get past to have a go at those damned Ferraris.  Alas, despite his heroics they held him off and so that damned Hun won the race.  However, on the last lap 'Sir' Lewis moved over as promised and allowed his team mate to finish third.  What a pukka gent!

 

Could they run a piss-up in a brewery?   I refer, of course, to our less than distinguished government.  They are making a total 'Horlicks' of Brexit mainly due to that "straight-backed chinless wonder" who, rumour has it, runs the Treasury.  Then there is that mouthy bird in charge of the Home Office who seems to be in favour of a Merkel policy on immigration.  Then there is that lesbian minister who has announced that from now on anyone can be any sex they feel like without anyone being allowed to ask questions.  The next time I find myself in a ladies' dress shop I must wander into the changing rooms and assure them I am really and truly female.

 

And then there is Gove!   There was a time when I rather approved of Michael Gove MP but then he had a mental fit when 'Dim Dave' finally did the decent thing and retired by suddenly launching an attack on Boris (his ex-Best Friend) in a futile attempt to seize the leadership for himself.  Daft as a brush, I thought, but that didn't stop 'St. Theresa of May' bringing him back into the cabinet.  Now he has blithely announced that all petrol and diesel cars will be run off the roads by 2040 and replaced with electric cars. I read somewhere that we would need at least five more Hinckley Point nuclear stations to provide enough energy power.  Nor, so far, has Mr. Gove explained how car owners who live in blocks of flats are supposed to recharge their batteries.  Also, I gather, that the size of lorries will need be reduced by around 60% in order for them to drive much more than 25 miles!  Get a grip, Gove, you clot!

 

I have no wish to travel anywhere:   Hitherto, I have always enjoyed travelling but not anymore.  A friend invited me to join him and his family in the heart of bucolic France this Summer.  Without thinking I instantly accepted - but then I thought about it!  Driving through Calais is a bit like driving through Syria these days.  Crossing to another Channel port means a longer crossing and then hours and hours of driving.  Flying, of course, means coping with crowded airports and utterly crap airlines.  Today's headline in The Telegraph merely confirms my grumpy fears:

EasyJet passenger holding a baby 'punched by Nice airport worker during flight delay'

 

Glengarry Glen Trump:   The National Review is beginning to rival The Spectator in detached, humorous assessments of 'our less-than-glorious' leaders.  An article in today's edition by the always shrewd Kevin D. Wilson slices Trump and his administration - if you can call it an 'administration' - straight down the middle.  Read it and weep - with either tears or laughter! 

 

No more rumbles today

 

Sorry, more 'Americana', but it's so boring 'over here'

Well, it's the Summer recess and all the big(?) British cats are on holiday leaving the kittens to play around so there is not much real news here.  However, there is an excellent review by Andrew Bacevich in The London Review of Books of a book entitled "The General v. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War" by H.W. Brands.  It tells the story of that grotesque egomaniac, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and his clash with the former haberdasher, Harry Truman, during the war in Korea.

Most of that is pretty well known.  MacArthur behaved like the gigantic egotist that he was but, it must be admitted even if through gritted teeth, he pulled off a master-stroke with the Inchon landings way up behind the advancing North Koreans.  Alas, after that and now even more swollen with pride he went on to make a colossal mistake in keeping with his colossal hubris by advancing allied armies up to the Chinese border at which point, even an ex-Corporal like me could have told him, the Chinese counter-attacked trashing the allied armies and extending the war by years.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Truman sacked him and MacArthur went on a nationwide tour to tout himself as the next President in waiting.  Fortunately, the 'cousins' seeing, and hearing him, up close were not impressed.

All good stuff and I suspect the book is worth reading.  However, Mr. Bacevich reminds us that this abiding tension between civilian and military rule over matters of war and peace has not abated.  FDR, as I mentioned a few days ago, rarely interfered in tactical matters but he absolutely gripped the strategic decision making to a point where there was a real danger of mutiny by the Chiefs of Staff.  Since then, however, it seems to me that what I might loosely call 'the American generals' have exerted ever more power over the civilian leadership.  Vietnam was a classic example.  Mr. Bacevich puts it this way:

The Vietnam War was a study in civil-military dysfunction, chronicled in an important book called Dereliction of Duty (1997) by a young army officer named H.R. McMaster. The story McMaster tells is one of mistrust, calculated dishonesty and mutual manipulation ending in a mindless debacle. Since then the civil-military balance in Washington has shifted according to which party is in power and the political savvy or lack thereof displayed by senior officers. Given the right circumstances, a particular general may wield clout approaching MacArthur’s before he self-destructed. This was the case with Colin Powell in the wake of Operation Desert Storm, and with David Petraeus when the Iraq Surge of 2007-08 seemed, briefly, to represent a historic triumph. At other times, imperious civilians keep generals on a short leash, preferring compliance to professional advice. This was the case on both occasions when Donald Rumsfeld ruled the Pentagon.

In his final paragraph, Mr. Bacevich produces a fine film of sweat across my brow when he points to the Trump administration in which more and yet more Generals have been appointed to some of the top jobs in the government, and this at a time when the lunatic 'Fat Boy Kim' develops nuclear warheads and rockets big enough to carry them to the USA.  What can one say, except, prepare for incoming!

 

 

I'm sorry to say but you Yankees have become very 'uppity'!

I am grateful to Ms. Janet Levy at The American Thinker for educating me - well, like your rolling plains 'over there', I have plenty of open spaces! - into the history of the first slave trade in America.  This, needless to say, was initiated by us English and did not involve black people.  Instead, during the 17th century, we enslaved our very own by rounding up impoverished children, women and men from the big city slums, nearly 300,000 of them, and sending them over to toil, and usually to die, working the then English-owned plantations on the eastern coast.

Apparently, the white slaves were preferred and the blacks were mostly sent to Bermuda: 

These white slaves in the New World consisted of street children plucked from London's back alleys, prostitutes, and impoverished migrants searching for a brighter future and willing to sign up for indentured servitude. Convicts were also persuaded to avoid lengthy sentences and executions on their home soil by enslavement in the British colonies. The much maligned Irish, viewed as savages worthy of ethnic cleansing and despised for their rejection of Protestantism, also made up a portion of America's first slave population, as did Quakers, Cavaliers, Puritans, Jesuits, and others.

The Irish were a prime target because the English gentry were keen to clear them off the Irish land and rid the country of Catholics.  Similarly, the 'Jocks' were rounded up not only for their land but also because of their peculiar versions of Protestant beliefs.  The Archbishop of Canterbury was not amused by these sects which were enemies of Anglicanism!  Later on, the white slaves were mainly the inhabitants of British jails exported 'over there' with a sigh of relief from 'over here'.

Oh dear, not a pretty history but then, whose is?

 

An 'arty-farty' Friday

I gather there has been a poll of some sort to find out which are the favourite paintings of the 'Great British Public' (GBP).  Why am I not surprised that the image of the little girl and her balloon by 'Banksy' came close to the top?

It is a very clever image and I can see why it appeals to the 'GBP' not least because it is so simple.  It produces an instant 'aaaaah' re-action.  Even so, in my humble (who coughed?) opinion it does not qualify as art.  Beyond the 'aaaaah' factor, it fails to involve you.

I understand that Jack Vettriano's painting entitled "The Singing Butler" came third and I think it deserves it.

Now this painting instantly involves you!  Who are these eccentric people?  What on earth is the back story that brought about this magical moment?  All that, of course, is left to your imagination.  However, it's worth noting the supreme skill of the artist in creating that puddled beach, the thin line of the sea in the distance and the dark, lowering clouds.  Above all, see how cleverly he 'paints the wind'!  You can almost feel it and with supreme skill he re-enforces the image by painting in the white, fluttering cloth in the butler's hand.

Not too surprising that Constable's "The Hay Wain" came second, although I must confess that whilst I recognise the supreme skill, it moves me not at all.

In fourth place, totally unsurprisingly given this was a British poll, came "The Fighting Temeraire" by Turner which has been featured on this blog before.  Now if this fails to engage your imagination then you had better stick with 'Banksy'!

That's your 'arty-farty' Friday and I hope you enjoyed it.

 

Dunkirk? Ah yes, I almost remember it well!

By and large, with the exception of the first 20 minutes of "The Longest Day", I avoid war films.  So it is with some reluctance that I have agreed to go and see "Dunkirk" with some friends.  My title suggests that somehow I was there but of course I wasn't.  However, quite a few years ago I did read a few books describing the brilliant German attack that swung round behind the French Maginot Line, yet another prize example of utterly useless government defence spending, and reduced the French army to a surrendering rabble, and forcing the equally useless Brits onto the beach at Dunkirk.  How von Clausewitz must have cheered in his grave!

There is, however, one enduring mystery with that campaign.  With the German army triumphant and poised to sweep the British army into either the sea or surrender - they paused!  There have been various theories as to why this occurred.  Some say it was because the German armoured formations which had scythed through Anglo-French defences were exhausted and in need of repair and replenishment, hence the three day pause.  Another theory is that it was Hitler himself who, whilst failing to issue a direct order on the subject, let it be known that he was not in favour of utterly destroying the British army.  Alas, I shall have to return to my history books to re-read their explanations.

However, I am grateful to Steve Feinstein in The American Thinker, for reminding me of another momentous - and I do mean momentous! - decisions taken during the battle for France.  That came from Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, then in command of British Air Defences.  He refused, despite immense pressure from his government, to commit Spitfires, far and away the best fighter aircraft anywhere, to the battle on the grounds that we were almost certainly going to lose in France, and that the next fight would be to the death above the skies of Britain.  That was an immensely brave decision, and although, right at the end, he released a tiny handful over the beaches at Dunkirk, he mainly stuck to it with the result that we had the finest fighter force available when they were really needed at the battle of Britain.

His steadfastness did him no good because shortly after the battle of Britain he was quietly shunted upstairs.  Well, it's the sort of thing we do so awfully well in Britain, don'cha know!

 

Roll up, roll up, the greatest show on earth is about to begin!

No, no, I don't mean the 'boring-snoring' Brexit negotiations which will drag on for years despite everyone knowing the result because Berlin-Brussels wouldn't give us the pickings of their nose so in the end we will just walk.  And nor do I mean the even greater 'snore-fest' that is the Trump-Russia ballyhoo which despite several zillion man-hours has still failed to produce a single verifiable fact.  So, none of all that nonsense, instead I am bringing you glad tidings of great joy to be had in the forthcoming heavyweight bout between, in the blue corner, the New York Times, and in the red corner, 'MDS', aka: My Darling Sarah (Palin).  She is, to use a rather, quaint, old-fashioned Anglo-legal expression, about to sue their arse off!

According to Kaja Whitehouse in the New York Post:

Palin is suing the Gray Lady over a June editorial linking one of her political action committee ads to a 2011 mass shooting that severely wounded Arizona Democrat Gabby Giffords and killed six people, including a 9-year-old girl.

The Times has claimed that Palin has no case because she cannot prove malice, the legal standard for claiming defamation.

Palin’s lawyers claim the Times knew the statements in the editorial were false, but “fabricated the link anyway” in order to drive web traffic.

MDS reckons that the NYT printed their offending editorial because they bore her malice.  Surely not!  The distinguished, 'Old Gray Lady'  bearing malice against a Republican politician?  Anyway she has slapped 23 subpoenas on various reporters and editors of the NYT, both past and present, demanding that they hand over e-mails, memos, letters at al because the lady suspects - only suspects, mind you! - that they will show deep and abiding malice.

Oh, I can't wait for this one to open, it will run and run!

Hat-tip to Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker.

 

House Notice

Calm down, dears, all is well again here at D&N!  I am not prepared to discuss the highly complex actions required to put my computer-thingie to rights, suffice to say, that it required me to click on one particular symbol which, because I am as you all do know a really, highly-skilled 'brainiac', I managed with just one finger!  The owner of Milborne Port Computers who managed to give me that advice without giggling is hereby nominated for a Nobel Prize!

More posts later on.

Just gimme the facts!

Rumour has it that Jack Webb (aka: Sgt. Joe Friday) used to badger his lady witnesses with the phrase "Just gimme the facts, Ma'am" but, of course, in actual fact he never did say that, it was just a rumour that captured the space and in effect became 'true' simply because so many simple people believed it.  You could say much the same thing about Trump and the Russian connection.  I am reminded today by the distinguished proprietor of The American Spectator, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr, who points out that all this Russian/Trump 'brouhaha' has been going on and on and on for month after month after month with a thousand and one 'investigators' snuffling through mountains of paperwork, inundated with leaks and alleged transcripts and e-mails, many if not all of them provided by so-called 'intelligence' agencies - who sniggered? - and all of that is to say nothing of the dreaded 'tweets'!

So where's the body?

Where's the blood?

Where's the weapon?

Oh alright, not 'the body' but something, anything, that is a cast-iron fact, apart, that is, from the indisputable fact that 'The Donald's' hair spray is aerated cement!  For God's sake, America, or to be precise, Democrat America, get over yourselves and grow up!

 

Wanda Gutowska-Lesisz, we salute your memory

I stumbled upon this in the obituary column of The Telegraph today and I simply could not resist republishing it in its entirety.  Sometimes, just sometimes, you come across people who restore a little confidence in the human race.

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Wanda Gutowska as a young girl

Wanda Gutowska-Lesisz, who has died aged 92, was among some 5,000 Polish female fighters of the Warsaw Uprising, a horrific yet largely forgotten episode of the Second World War.

It began at 17:00 hours on August 1 1944 (“W-hour”) when, encouraged by the sound of Red Army artillery in the east, the youthful, ill-equipped Polish underground Home Army, the Armia Krajowa or AK, launched coordinated attacks on German occupying forces.

Wanda Gutowska was 19 when the uprising began and greeted W-hour with relief. “ I wasn’t afraid because, frankly, one had little to lose. The occupation was awful. Anyway, we expected the Bolsheviks to help and the British to drop supplies, and we thought the Rising would end quickly.”

The uprising was intended to last a few days until Soviet forces arrived. This never happened and the Polish forces had to fight with virtually no outside assistance. Code-named “Kite”, Wanda Gutowkska was posted as a nurse in Platoon 202 in part of the Żoliborz sub-district of north-west Warsaw. She survived several military confrontations, including an assault on Gdansk Railway Station, between Żoliborz and the Old Town, where German units had gathered.

The Polish fighters aimed to break through to the old quarter but met fierce resistance, and scores died. Wanda loaded guns, heaved ammunition and held dying boys. “The things I saw and did astonish me now. Was that really me? Youth and stupidity saved me from madness. Nowadays, I jump at the sound of a car alarm,” she told a Telegraph interviewer in 2004.

The rising failed and Hitler exacted a brutal revenge. Special SS divisions proceeded through the capital, blowing up buildings and killing insurgents and civilians with appalling savagery. “What went on was monstrous,” Wanda recalled. “The SS seized the director of a printing firm and his pregnant wife. They raped her in front of her husband, ripped out the unborn child with a bayonet, held it up for the father to see and finally killed him.” The stench of burning bodies lingered for days. Wanda’s sweetheart, Andrzej, bled to death on the last day of the rising.

The partisans resisted for 63 days, deploying everything from captured German tanks to scythes and old socks stuffed with nails and explosives. The Red Army, meanwhile, watched Warsaw burn from the other side of the River Vistula. On October 2 1944, fearing annihilation, the AK capitulated. Their once great city lay in ruins and a quarter of a million people, mainly civilians, lay dead. In January 1945 Soviet troops would walk unchallenged into a ghost city.

In late August 1944 London and Washington had granted the AK combatant rights, which the Germans honoured – albeit reluctantly. Wanda joined 3,000 other women PoWs in Wehrmacht custody. “Throwing down our arms was so sad,” she recalled. “I’ll never forget the clash of metal piercing the strange silence of the city.”

She was imprisoned first at Stalag XI-A in Gross Lubars, then transferred to Stalag VI-C at Oberlangen, 10 kilometres from the Dutch border. There, 1,721 Polish women endured four months of freezing temperatures, dilapidated barracks, brutal guards, hunger, rats and lice until, on April 12 1945, the sound of gunfire heralded the arrival of troops sporting white-and-red “Poland” insignia.

Men of the 1st (Polish) Armoured Division, who had fought under British command, ran to embrace the women soldiers of the Warsaw Uprising. And in 1947 Wanda came to Britain with the Free Polish Forces.

Wanda Gutowska was born on July 15 1925 and joined the AK in 1940 while still a schoolgirl, completing a course as a medical orderly and in liaison duties. Her father, an army officer, had been captured by the Red Army after the fall of Poland in September 1939 and was executed at Katyń along with 22,000 other Polish prisoners of war.

During the German occupation, and despite having a German officer and his orderly billeted on them, Wanda, her mother Leonia and her sister Janina risked their lives by sheltering Irena Palenker, the Jewish fiancée of a Polish army officer; Piotr Teichner, a seven-year-old Jewish orphan who hid in the attic of their house for three years, and – briefly – an RAF pilot. The house was also used as a weapons store and venue for conspiratorial meetings.

Wanda delivered clandestine leaflets, and in the run-up to the Warsaw Uprising was engaged in moving weapons from her house to AK units across the north of Warsaw.

In 1947 Wanda Gutowska arrived in Britain where she was supported by the Polish Resettlement Corps. Her first year was spent in hospital in Penley. In 1956 she married Tadeusz Lesisz, an architect and former naval officer, settling in Cheadle, Cheshire, and went on to become involved in the Polish community in Manchester.

She was chairman of the Manchester branch of the Home Army Association, secretary of the Polish Aid Committee, and raised funds for the Polish Sikorski Institute in London.

While Wanda was being held as a PoW, her mother, forced from her home after the rising, smuggled her “son” Piotr Teichner out of danger, swathed in bandages to hide his Semitic features, using her remaining jewellery to buy food and silence. Piotr survived and eventually joined relatives in Israel. Years later he traced Wanda to her home in England, and in 1988 the two embraced on Israeli soil where Wanda, her late mother and her sister were honoured as Righteous Among the Nations.

Wanda Gutowska-Lesisz published many articles in the émigré Polish press. She was involved in initiatives aimed at strengthening ties between the British and Poles living in Britain and deepening the knowledge of Poles’ participation in the Second World War. In 1989 she published a memoir, Oberlangen Stalag VI-C, 1944-45: Diary of a Female AK Soldier.

During the war she had been awarded the Cross of Valour and the Bronze Cross of Merit with Swords by the Polish Government-in-Exile. After the war, she received the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, the Golden Cross of Merit, the Cross of the Home Army, the Medal of the Polish Army, the Memorial Cross of the 1st Armoured Division and the War Medal.

Her husband Tadeusz died in 2009. She is survived by their two daughters.

Wanda Gutowska-Lesisz, born July 15 1925, died July 16 2017

 

So what does it take to direct Shakespeare?

First, study the text.  Second, study the text some more.  Third, then restudy the text again!  You get the idea, the text's the thing, or, to paraphrase some clever Dick, or Bill, 'the text's the thing in which we'll catch the consciousness of the crowd', or something like that!  The problem is that so often with Shakespeare's plays there is more than one text which means that you must dive into the works of the textual scholars, a grim fate because they usually disagree with each other so you have to choose.  Even so, gradually, by a sort of osmosis effect, you begin to pick up the ebbs and flows of his mind, or, to change the image, you begin to discern the warp and woof of his design.

Then, having spent weeks studying his text - you then have to cut it - 'oh the horror, the horror'!  There you are, facing the words of the very greatest playwright in the history of the world - and you, ignorant little you, have to cut his lines.  There are several good but different reasons to do so, for example, many of your audience need to be out of the theatre in time to catch the last bus home, or, the fact that many of the words put in the mouths of his characters are totally incomprehensible today, or, and I write this with my fingers crossed behind my back, the fact is that on occasions dear old Bill was prone to being more than somewhat repetitive!  So, "the unkindest cut of all" must be made, but made carefully and kindly.

Some directors will deliberately switch scenes or even cut them entirely but I disagree with that.  There are scenes in his plays which have very little to do with the main plot line but if you dispense with them entirely you may find that some major character who has just exited must immediately re-enter, perhaps in a different 'location', which will strike an audience as odd.  So beware too much enthusiasm with the red pencil!

Another frequent problem is the period chosen to play it in.  I, for example, will do almost anything to avoid staging one of his Greco-Roman plays in that setting.  Not for artistic reasons but simply because the little, skinny, white legs often possessed by English actors, particularly amateurs, projecting from skirted tunics reduce me to giggles!  Consequently, my production of Troilus & Cressida was staged in the Napoleonic period which I think worked well.  Alas, my silly decision to stage Measure for Measure in modern dress was a big mistake - well, I was younger then!  The intense religiosity of that play went for nothing when set in the 20th century.  Equally, I consider it always to be a huge mistake to stage King Lear in anything other than a pre-Christian era.  The absence of Christianity in the play where the word 'god' is nearly always spoken in the plural form was quite deliberate on Bill's part to avoid any crack down from the Church authorities.  Plus, of course, King Lear is timeless.

Then you have the problem of where to set the play.  Bill set his plays all over the place - Denmark, Vienna, Italy and even an imaginary island in the middle of an ocean.  But of course, they were always and forever about England which, as far as we know, he never left.  Or to be precise, they were about here and there and everywhere because he knew that human nature was universal.  There has just been a recent production in London of Much Ado About Nothing set, for reasons quite beyond me, in revolutionary Mexico!  The company were  mostly British not Mexican so what the director thought he was doing is beyond me.  Obviously he had forgotten that his first duty as a director is to serve the writer.  That does not mean that every single production of a Shakespeare play has to be the same, in fact, it would be extremely difficult to do that.  But to over-load a production with the 21st century fixations of a director is just wrong.

Here endeth the first - and last - lesson.  Oh dear, what an 'A1 crasher' I am becoming!

 

Poor old Bill

I think, on the whole and by and large, the governing board of The Globe theatre should be taken out one at a time to centre stage - and executed!  Two years ago they appointed some utter dipstick woman as 'artistic' director despite the fact that she had never directed a play by Shakespeare.  She resigned after a few months because most of the productions were well and truly rubbished.  However, not content with that disaster, this collection of uber-prats have now appointed a successor, another woman who has not only never directed Shakespeare but has never directed a play before!  Well, good luck with that one and my condolences to the late and very great Sam Wannamaker, the man who created The Globe Mk. II, as he revolves at high speed in his grave!  Perhaps he was unavailable but the obvious choice should have been Christopher Luscombe whose linked productions of Love's Labours Lost and Much Ado About Nothing were simply superb.

 

Me no likee chop suey

An excellent article at The American Spectator by J. T. Young - and no, me neither!  However, Mr. Young (I assume he's a 'Mr') takes a long, cool look at the China problem - and boy, do they have a problem!  It must have seemed like a brilliant, 'get out of jail free' move when the post-Mao Chinese government decided to embrace capitalism and free themselves from the stultifying grip of the State.  Not so much 'let my people be free' as 'let some of my really greedy people be free' so that they can make 'ga-zillions' from which we, the government, will scoop off the cream.  What could go wrong?

There is, of course, always a stress frontier between governments and business but at least in a democracy the governments change regularly shifting from the economic Right to the Left and then back again.  Similarly, a (fairly) independent judiciary, so to speak, holds the ring.  Not perfect but what is in this messy world?  Alas, in China the game is well and truly fixed and the result, at the end, will be tumultuous.

I have been forecasting troubles for China for years on this blog but still their grand 'Ponzi scheme' keeps forging ahead but, as Mr. Young indicates, it cannot go on for ever.  Sooner or later, either capitalism must prevail or, more likely, government will, at which point China will revert to being the biggest prison camp in the world.  Needless to say the dim, dumb and blind partisans of the Left will blame capitalism for the failure despite the self-evident fact that the Chinese government pulls every string in their so-called 'market economy'.

Given their recent history I have a very real sympathy for the ordinary Chinese who have, after centuries of repression and poverty, at last begun to see and taste the fruits, and what a disaster if they are snatched away.

 

 

Your Monday (afternoon) Funnies: 24.7.17

It woz the cats wot dunnit!  Any of you who have ever owned cats will understand that.  Even so, here I am, again, trying to explain my tardiness in posting your Monday Funnies but you see, we promised to go and feed a friend's cats and that took up part of the morning and then there was ... well, you know the way ladies think of a hundred other things to do once they are in the car ... and so it went on.  Anyway, to put you out of your misery, here is an Australian cat story:

The Story of Adam & Eve's Dog:

Adam and Eve said, 'Lord, when we were in the garden, you walked with us every day. Now we do not see you anymore. We are lonesome here, and it is difficult for us to remember how much you love us'

And God said, 'I will create a companion for you that will be with you and who will be a reflection of my love for you, so that you will love me even when you cannot see me. Regardless of how selfish or childish or unlovable you may be, this new companion will accept you as you are and will love you as I do, in  spite of yourselves.'

And God created a new animal to be a companion for Adam and Eve.

And it was a good animal and God was pleased.

And the new animal was pleased to be with Adam and Eve and he wagged his tail.

And Adam said, 'Lord, I have already named all the animals in the Kingdom and I cannot think of a name for this new animal.'

And God said, 'I have created this new animal to be a reflection of my love for you, his name will be a reflection of my own name, and you will call him DOG.'

And Dog lived with Adam and Eve and was a companion to them and loved them.  

And they were comforted.

And God was pleased.

And Dog was content and wagged his tail.

After a while, it came to pass that an angel came to the Lord and said,
'Lord, Adam and Eve have become filled with pride. They strut and preen like peacocks and they believe they are worthy of adoration. Dog has indeed taught them that they are loved, but perhaps too well.'

And God said, 'I will create for them a companion who will be with them and who will see them as they are. The companion will remind them of their limitations, so they will know that they are not always worthy of adoration.'

And God created CAT to be a companion to Adam and Eve.

And Cat would not obey them. And when Adam and Eve gazed into Cat's eyes, they were reminded that they were not the supreme beings.

And Adam and Eve learned humility.

And they were greatly improved.

And God was pleased..

And Dog was happy.

And Cat . . . didn't give a shit one way or the other.

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Just read that 4,153,237 people got married last year -- not to cause
any trouble, but shouldn't that be an even number?

Today a man knocked on my door and asked for a small donation towards the local swimming pool. I gave him a glass of water.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

If I had a dollar for every girl that found me unattractive, they would
eventually find me attractive.

Relationships are a lot like algebra. Have you ever looked at your X and wondered Y?

You know that tingly little feeling you get when you like someone?
That's your common sense leaving your body

Did you know that dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of
captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool
and throw them fish?

My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance. We'll see about that.

I think my neighbour is stalking me as she's been googling my name on her computer. I saw it through my telescope last night.

Money talks ...but all mine ever says is good-by!

If you think nobody cares whether you're alive, try missing a couple of
payments.

My therapist said that my narcissism causes me to misread social
situations. I’m pretty sure she was hitting on me.

The pharmacist asked me my birth date again today. I’m pretty sure she’s going to get me something.

The location of your mailbox shows you how far away from your house you can be in a robe before you start looking like a mental patient.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it keeps the kids in touch!

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Wedding - Modern Marriage

THE E-MAIL:

Dearest Dad,

I'm coming home to get married soon, so get your check book out. I'm in love with a man who is far away from me.  As you know, I'm in Australia and he lives in Scotland. We met on a dating website, became friends on Facebook  and had long chats on Whatsapp. He
proposed to me on Skype, and now we've had two months of a relationship through Viber.

My beloved Dad, I'd like your blessing, good wishes, and a really big
wedding.

Lots of love and thanks.

Your daughter,
Lilly

THE RESPONSE:

My Dear Lilly,
Like wow! Like cool!
I suggest that you two get married on Twitter, have fun on Tango, buy your kids on Amazon, and pay for it all through PayPal.

And when you get fed up with your new husband, sell him on eBay.

Love,
Your Dad

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

I called an old school friend and asked what was he doing.

He replied that he was working on "Aqua-thermal treatment of ceramics, aluminium and steel under a constrained environment."

I was impressed.

On further inquiring, I learned that he was washing dishes with hot
water ... under his wife's supervision.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

Yesterday I was at my local CO-OP store buying a large bag of 'My Dog' dog food for my loyal pet and was in the checkout queue when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog.
 
What did she think I had, an elephant?  So, on impulse I told her that no, I didn't have a dog, I was starting the Dog Diet again. I added that I probably shouldn’t, because I ended up in hospital last time, but I'd lost 10 kilograms before I woke up in intensive care with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.  I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pockets with 'My Dog' nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in queue was now enthralled with my story.)
 
Horrified, she asked me if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me.
 
I told her no, I stepped off the kerb to sniff an Irish Setter's arse and a car hit me.

 

That's your lot - well worth waiting for, don't you think?
 

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 23.7.17

That creepy coincidence thingie - again:   'Shropshire on my mind', well, it has to be because it keeps cropping up everywhere.  In this week's 'Speccie' the very last article was "Notes on Shropshire" by Julian Glover and it is as fine a description of that lovely county as you could read.

 

Up and at 'em:   Yes indeed, I am up and about at the crack of dawn this Sunday morning, er, well, it's nine o'clock and that's dawn as far as I'm concerned!  Anyway, it is a sign of the improvement in my condition following my surgery, so that's good news - sorry, did you say something?

 

Is there anyone sillier than a silly 'luvvie'?   I ask because Mr. Gregory Doran, the artistic director of the RSC and the partner of Sir Antony Sher, has insisted that Shakespeare was probably homosexual because, you see, some of his characters indicate homosexual traits.  On that basis Shakespeare was probably a murderer, a boozing womaniser, a cruel money-lender, a rapist and, well, whatever you care to think given that his characters cover the gamut of human possibility.  The fact that he put his wife-to-be in the family way before he was 18 and then went on to enable her to produce twins, and that it is generally reckoned that he left London for Stratford at every possible opportunity, and that rather than buy a home in London which would have been infested with homosexuals, he invested much of his money in the second biggest house in Stratford where any sort of untoward behaviour would instantly have been the subject of gossip, is neither here nor there!

 

When in doubt, plead the fifth!   This is the story, or fairy tale, that keeps on giving!  The man who first leaked a dossier claiming that Trump and the Russians were working together to fix the election, supported by another man who was an ex-MI6 operator (yeeeeeees, quite!), has been ordered to appear before a Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions.  His lawyer has warned that he will 'plead the fifth'!  Why am I not surprised and how long before the film comes out?

 

Put your trust in 'Jezza':   Look, anyone can make a mistake, even a paltry £100 billion mistake, as 'Jezza' did when he promised to cancel all student debt.  You see, he didn't actually know how much student debt there was when, entirely by coincidence during an election campaign, he promised that to all those little 'kiddiewinkies' who then rushed to vote for him - some of them several times over, apparently.  Anyway, the promise is off until such time as he can find it down the back of his settee!

 

'Archbishop' Dawkins banned!   Oh no, say it ain't so!  Alas, it is because dear old 'Dawk' has just made a 'yuuuuuge' mistake.  I suppose because he has enjoyed the fame of being constantly rude to Christians because of their, in his view, nonsensical belief in God, he slipped up and berated Muslims for their similar folly.  Unfortunately, he was due to give a public speech to the University of California Berkeley where the grip on non-free speech is tighter than the Kremlin ever achieved.  Anyway, when the news leaked, the meeting was instantly cancelled.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer fella'!

 

Not one but two 'good doctors':   I refer, of course, to the man generally referred to as 'the good doctor', that is, the late Samuel Johnson.  The other is a real doctor although he hides behind a pseudonym, 'Theodore Dalrymple', who happily is still very much alive and writes regularly for Taki's Mag.  Today he has a terrific essay on Samuel Johnson which provoked two instant reactions in me.  First, gratitude for reminding me of my ignorance and idleness in failing to read more of Johnson, and second, determination on my part to rectify my fault.  You only have to read a small excerpt from his writing to know that you are in the presence of a wise and thoughtful man:

Credulity, or confidence of opinion too great from the evidence from which the opinion is derived, we find to be a general weakness imputed by every sect and party to all others, and indeed by every man to every other man.

 

 

No more rumbles today

 

Donald stamps his big feet - on the edge of a cliff

Like most people I knew next to nothing of Donald Trump when he first appeared on the political scene.  All I remember is one of his visits to his Scottish golf course where I was struck by the fact that he could stand in a Force 8 gale - a light breeze in that part of the world - and not a hair on his head moved!  Then he became President of the United States - whodathunkit?

By and large I like a touch of eccentricity in a politician, after all, most of them are 'AI crashers of the first order' so if they raise a giggle from time to time then that is "A Good Thing" because no-one should ever take a politician too seriously.  Mind you, eccentricity is best served in small doses as anyone will tell you if they have studied the likes of Winston Churchill - a truly great man in some respects and a total looney in others!

Anyway, when 'The Donald' hove to on the political horizon, like most other people (including, I suspect, many Americans) I simply didn't know what to make of him.  All I knew for sure was that 'HillBilly' was lazy, corrupt and utterly useless and so I adopted what I call my 'ABHB' attitude - 'Anyone But HillBilly!'  But the problem remained - what to make of 'The Donald'.  Happily, in amongst the Left-soaked swamp of the American media there are still one or two voices of sanity, amongst them the National Review (NR) which is Right-wing, of course, but unlike its Left-wing alternatives it does not foam at the mouth!  From time to time, on matters of importance, they publish an article that represents the views of their entire editorial board, not just a single writer.  On the matter of the suitability of 'The Donald' for the top job in America they were unanimous in proffering a thumbs down! 

Even a quick glance at the shambles that is today's White House confirms their good sense.  Quite how long it can continue is anybody's guess but I fear the worst.  And my fear turns to dread when I consider the alternative.  Today's Democratic party is a collection of shrieking hysterics united only in their detestation of each other!  As they shift ever Leftwards and leaderless they are in danger of making Jeremy Corbyn's Labour loonies look mild and sensible!

"There Will Be Blood!"

 

 

If 'The Kraut' did not exist it would be neccesary to invent him

I made one, very tentative, intrusion into the moral/medical quagmire in which 11-month old Charlie Guard is trapped.  It is a hideously difficult situation but my gut feeling - my brain couldn't cope with the ramifications - is that by and large, on the whole and taken in the round - and yes, I know I'm waffling - that Charlie's parents should have the final say on his treatment.  I have an inherent suspicion of institutional decision-making, be it massive medical institutions like Ormond Street Hospital manned by a profession that instinctively thinks it know best what is good for you even if it means you will die!  Even worse, is the sight and sound of the massed ranks of the 'Cocklecarrot Brigade' handing down their imperatives from on high.

Today, the lady barrister acting for Ormond Street broke the news in public court that the very latest tests on Charlie's condition were grim.  The fact that she had not bothered to break this news to the parents indicates to what depths of scum lawyers may descend.  In any case, the sight and sound of the State, in this case the NHS and the judiciary handing down decisions on life and death is deeply disturbing.  And in this case, for God's sake, the parents have raised the money needed for one last chance treatment in America so why should they not be free to act?

As usual, 'The Kraut' weighs up all the arguments for and against but in the end comes down on the rights of the parents as against the rights of the State.  Please read it.

 

 

Is Brian Truitt a total tit?

Yes, yes, alright, like me I suppose, you have never heard of Brian Truitt before now but in various links that I investigated he is described, perhaps by himself, as "A shameless geek, Brian Truitt covers all things nerd".  Well, 'maybe, baby', but I think I will stick with "total tit"!

Anyway, Master Truitt, 141/2, has just written a critique of the latest blockbuster film - well, they're all 'blockbusters'! - called "Dunkirk".  The subject matter is, of course, held in reverence in Britain because nobody loves and clings to a story of total, incompetent, military disaster involving the British army more than the British!  Dunkirk is right up there with the charge of the Light Brigade!

Anyway, Master Truitt praises the film, as have others, but at the very end of his critique he slips in a deadly dagger of an accusation which, I fear, will drive audiences away in shock and disgust - "the fact that there are only a couple of women and no lead actors of color may rub some the wrong way."  I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!  No 'wimmin' and no blacks, how could the film-makers have been so discriminating?  

Mr. John Nolte of The Daily Wire sums it up best:

The real question, though, is just how clueless about history, about the biggest world event of the 20th century are you when you find it "jarring" that Wesley Snipes doesn't show up to save the day or that Sandra Bullock is not driving a tank that will explode if it goes under 50 miles per hour?

As so often I am obliged to Mr. Rick Moran of The American Thinker for tipping me the wink!

 

 

I am delighted, not ashamed, to steal this article

As you all know, kleptocracy runs rife on this site but on this occasion I am positively proud to nick this from The Coffee House in its entirety.  It is - and don't yawn and fidget! - an edited version of a maiden speech by a new Member of Parliament, Ms. Kemi Badenoch, member for Saffron Walden.  It speaks for itself, or perhaps for herself, and in its way it is as inspiring as anything dear old 'Winnie' ever produced:

I am often inexplicably mistaken for a member of the Labour Party. I can’t think why. I’m a Conservative – to all intents and purposes a first-generation immigrant. Born in Wimbledon, yes, but I grew up in Nigeria. I chose to make the United Kingdom my home. Growing up in Nigeria I saw real poverty and experienced it. Going without electricity, doing my homework by candlelight because the state electricity board could not provide power. Fetching water a mile away in heavy, rusty buckets because the nationalised water could not get water to flow from the taps. Unlike many colleagues born after 1980, I was unlucky enough to live under socialist policies. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone, and that’s just one of the reasons that I am a Conservative.

As a woman of African origin, I also believe there is a lot Africa can teach us. Sound money is not just a catchy phrase: the lesson of Zimbabwe is salient for us today. Money cannot be printed and redistribution cannot be successful without first creating wealth. Edmund Burke said that society is a contract between the dead, the living and those yet to be born. I say to colleagues who are wavering on tackling the debt and the deficit: hold your nerve. This is part of the contract that we owe our descendants. To leave our children carrying the burdens of our debt and excesses is morally wrong.

There are few countries in the world where you can go, in one generation, from immigrant to parliamentarian. Michael Howard spoke of the “British dream”: people choosing this country because of its tolerance and opportunity. It is a land where Nigerian girl can move here, aged 16, be accepted as British and have the great honour of representing Saffron Walden.

Yet there are some in this country, and even in this chamber, who seek to denigrate the traditions of this parliament – portraying this house as a bastion of privilege of class that “reeks of the establishment”. It is no coincidence that those who seek to undermine the institutions of this island – parliament, monarchy, church and family – also propagate the worldview that sees Britain and the values that we hold dear as a force for bad in the world.

Growing up in Nigeria, my view was rather different. The UK was a beacon, a shining light, a promise of a better life. Often, we hear the radical reformer John Bright misquoted to the effect that the House of Commons is the mother of all parliaments. What he actually said was that this country is the mother of all parliaments. Our political institutions may not always be held in high esteem, but I believe that politics is a mirror held up to society. Yes, it can sometimes be unedifying. Yes, we see human weakness on display – but it also embodies much that is great in our country. When I walk down these corridors and stand in this chamber, once graced by my heroes Winston Churchill, Airey Neave and Margaret Thatcher – I am filled by nothing but awe, respect and pride for all that it stands for.

As Woody Allen said about sex: if it’s not messy, you’re not doing it right. Madame Deputy Speaker, the same is true for democracy. It’s not always predictable, its results are not always elegant, it can throw up results that no one expected. But we adjust. The British parliament always has adjusted and that is why it’s the oldest in the world: it takes its lead from the British people.

We face historic challenges. People are rightly concerned about what Brexit will mean for this country, their jobs and their families. But I do not believe that winter is coming.

I believe that the vote for Brexit is the greatest-ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom. That vision of a ‘global Britain’ that the minister referred to is a project that, as a young African girl, I dreamed of becoming part of. As a British woman I now have the great honour of delivering that project for my constituents in the greatest parliament on earth.

Of course, as I have laid down elsewhere, 'The Moggman' must be the next leader of the Conservative party but after him, bring on Ms. Badenoch!

 

 

More Housman plus a good book recommendation

Honestly, ladies and gentlemen, this truly is the blog that keeps on giving and I trust you are all duly grateful, er, the usual 'readies' in the usual plain brown envelopes will be much appreciated.  Mind you, I must confess to feeling uneasy with that creepy coincidence-thingie yet again.  You see, I was looking forward to providing you all with another of Housman's apparently simple but actually complex poems but before doing so I decided to check in at the superb Arts & Letters Daily site where I found the original article that set off my Housman enthusiasm again.  Blow me down, there was another article, this time from the 'WaPo' by Michael Dirda on a recently published book on Housman and his poetry.

 

I think it is fair to say that Mr. Dirda gives the author, Peter Parker, a rave revue.  As does Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in a revue written for The Spectator a year ago - how the hell did I miss that one?!

I was intending to place a 'yuuuuuge', bold, nudge-nudge  in capitals in the direction of 'SoD' to help guide him in choosing a suitable Xmas gift for his dear old Dad but, bugger it, I can't wait that long, I'll buy the book today on my Kindle.  In the meantime, here is another, somewhat ghoulish example, of Housman's work and yes, you're right, he's not strong on humour!

On moonlit heath and lonesome bank
The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
Fast by the four cross ways.

A careless shepherd once would keep
The flocks by moonlight there, (1)
And high amongst the glimmering sheep
The dead man stood on air.

They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:
The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
To men that die at morn.

There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night,
Or wakes, as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right,
Than most that sleep outside.

And naked to the hangman's noose
The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
Than strangling in a string.

And sharp the link of life will snap,
And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a chap
As treads upon the land.

So here I'll watch the night and wait
To see the morning shine,
When he will hear the stroke of eight
And not the stroke of nine;

And wish my friend as sound a sleep
As lads' I did not know,
That shepherded the moonlit sheep
A hundred years ago.

(1) Hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight.

 

Can anyone tell me who I am?

Now before you all bombard me with rude replies, please read the title carefully.  It is, in effect, 'who am I?', not 'what am I?'  I raise the question because only last week we all went quite soppy over that 'frightfully decent British gal', er, Johanna Konta, who did so well at Wimbledon.  She assures us that she is British and sort of confirmed it by doing what we Brits do so awfully well - losing gracefully!  However, the fact is that Ms. Konta is the daughter of Hungarian parents and was born in Australia.  However, in today's Telegraph she insists that she has lived in Britain for nearly half of her life and that she has taken British citizenship and as far as she is concerned she's British and, er, Ez így van, as they say in Budapest!

I wonder about myself (but not very often!) because as I may have mentioned before I am a true born bastard and therefor I echo the words of 'Edmund', "Now gods, stand up for bastards!"  My mother was as Scottish as porridge oats but rumour - I was never vouchsafed the details - had it that my father was Canadian.  Even so, I was born in London and have lived my life in England and so, whilst the Union staggers on, I shall claim to be British and if it sunders then I will claim to be English.

However, in this confusing era of global mass movements of population the whole notion of which particular sub-group one belongs to, or at least, lay claims to, is increasingly complicated.  I suppose in melting pots like America or Australia nobody cares too much, although having said that, according to the Telegraph article there have been some unfortunate collateral damage recently to various politicians in Australia who have turned out not to be exactly 'sixteen annas to the rupee' when it comes to citizenship.

Anyway, I welcome Ms. Konti as a true blue Brit not least because she is gorgeous - even if she has, so far, failed to respond to my letters!

 

If some of them were dumb, many of us were dumber!

The other day I irritated some of my American friends by suggesting that in certain respects their WWII Military High Command was less than brilliant.  I should have emphasised that many of ours were equally dumb!  Beginning with 'our glorious leader', Winston Churchill, who was a drunken, erratic genius in some respects - and a drunken, erratic fool in other respects.  It is a miracle beyond explanation that he did not tear the Anglo-American partnership to shreds.  My feeling is that one man deserves the credit for preserving it - President Roosevelt.

I am slowly but steadily ploughing my way through Nigel Hamilton's superb second volume entitled Commander in Chief: FDR's Battle with Churchill, 1943.  A great deal of it is concerned with the internecine 'warfare' between the American High Command (but not FDR!) who were pushing and straining to invade northern France in 1942(!) or at the latest in 1943.  Churchill, and his CIGS, Alan Brooke, insisted that once North Africa was taken the next major operation must be aimed at Sicily.  So far, so sensible because it would provide further experience in mass sea-borne invasions and provide the American forces with direct experience of fighting the German army.

The fact is that the German way of war was far superior to anything the allies could muster.  To remind myself I found my copy of a truly excellent and scholarly book by Col. T. N. Dupuy, an American officer who after the war investigated the history of the German way of war from Frederick the Great to WWII.  The uncomfortable fact is that the Germans took war seriously, they studied it, analysed it, tested it, altered it when weaponry changed - and we did not!  Perhaps the daftest example of the ridiculous amateur way of war pursued by the British is that, having invented the tank during WWI, several of the older, snootier cavalry regiments insisted on returning to horses when the war was over!  Perhaps a key finding that Col. Dupuy deploys is that during WWII:

On the average, a force of 100 Germans was the combat equivalent of 120 American or British troops.  Further refinements in the model began to reveal that in terms of casualties the differential was even greater, with German soldiers on the average inflicting three casualties on the Allies for every two they incurred.

That differential continued up until December 1944.  The fact is that we were amateurs taking on pros!  To be fair to Churchill, I think he realised this, perhaps not least because as a front-line commander he had experienced it at first-hand during WWI.  It is hardly surprising, therefore, that he strove mightily to avoid any direct invasion of northern France, and the fact that he had a dim view of the abilities of many of his senior generals only re-enforced his reluctance.  The Americans, on the other hand, full of gung-ho enthusiasm had little idea of what they were about to face.

Even so, Churchill's deliberate prevarication, almost amounting to mutiny,  as he tried by hook or by crook to avoid a cross-Channel invasion and instead 'mess about in the Mediterranean' came exceedingly close to causing a major rift with America.  It is to FDR's steadfast and patient forbearance that Churchill was eventually - albeit reluctantly - forced to accept the inevitable.  Churchill was a great man but a deeply flawed one as well!

https://www.amazon.com/Genius-War-German-General-1807-1945/dp/0963869213

Alanbrooke by David Fraser

 

The train now rusting in Manchester will never turn a wheel

Am I right to believe that the term 'HS2' stands for 'Horse Shit Second Class'?  Of course, I will surprise no-one by admitting immediately that I know nothing - zilch, nada, nul - about high-speed railway construction, dammit, I couldn't even put together a toy train-set for 'SoD' when he was a nipper!  However, at my ripe old age I do have nightmares that wake me up sweating in the night about other grandiloquent schemes that politicians insisted on inflicting on us over the years.  This one, however, is of an altogether different order of magnitude.

Just the fact that a considerable length of it will plough through hitherto solidly Tory-voting constituencies causing havoc and anxiety amongst the voters concerned is enough to make you wonder at the average brain-cell count amongst the Tory cabinet.  Do they truly believe that the end result, that people from London can get to Manchester half an hour earlier (assuming the unions are not on strike!) will make the slightest difference?  In any case, who in their right mind would want to go to Manchester in the first place when they can sit at home and open one of those neat little computer-thingies with an attached camera and loud-speaker and chat away for a few bob?

Also, the fact that two of the main contractors to the project are already suffering with severe financial woes does not fill one with confidence!  If, when the Tories lose power, any former cabinet minister gets a fat job with an even fatter salary on the board of any business linked to this farce, it might actually provoke me to calling for bonfires to be lit and ex-ministers placed on top of them!

 

Cometh the hour, cometh 'The Mogg'!

The British political scene is chaotic.  It is impossible to foresee, or even guess, what will occur over the next five years, or the next five months, or even tomorrow!  To quote the old saying, "Someone is to blame" and we do not have to look any further than that silly woman in No. 10.  To be fair, not something I usually go in for, there were, on the face of it, some very good reasons to support her decision to go to the country.  I can't remember what my opinion was at the time but no doubt my Chief Archivist, 'JK', will quote me in due course but then, if I was supportive at the time my excuse is simple - I am not a professional politician but Mrs. May is!  And it is no good her blaming those two power-mad dip-sticks she had as PAs, she was the Prime Minister and the final decision was hers.

Needless to say, the so-called 'conservative' party has been riven from top to bottom and have reverted to behaving like rats in a sinking ship. True to form, the very worst behaviour is to be seen at the very top, amongst the ministerial ranks who should be setting an example.  However, in the panic-stricken ranks there gleams one small but steady light, that which emanates from the Honourable Member for North East Somerset, Mr. Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Here he is, if not quite in his glory then at least in his slightly old-fashioned, tailored, double-breasted, dark blue suit.  He is, of course, the Eton-educated son of the former editor of The London Times - before my ex-best friend 'Rupe' stomped in, bought it and more or less ruined it!  He is a practicing catholic and had the guts to vote against same-sex marriage.  His wife has just given birth to their sixth child, a boy they have named - wait for it! -Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher!  

For the benefit of my American readers, the NRO has published a profile of the man who has moved slowly but steadily up the rankings as a possible future leader of the Tory party.  What can one say, except 'bring it on'!  A proper, old-fashioned Tory leading the Tory party - whatever next?

 

 

 

Your Monday Funnies (Better late than never!): 17.7.17

Sorry, sorry, sorry but I enjoyed a bit of a lay-in this morning.  Anyway, before national productivity levels fall off the cliff because you plebs haven't begun the working week with a laugh, here are some excellent 'funnies' - no, really ...

An old Marine Pilot sat down at the Starbucks, still wearing his old USMC flight jacket and ordered a cup of coffee.
As he sat sipping his coffee, a young woman sat down next to him. She turned to the pilot and asked, "Are you a real pilot?"

He replied, 'Well, I've spent my whole life flying planes, first Stearmans, then the early Grummans... flew a Wildcat and Corsair in WWII, and later in the Korean conflict, Banshees and Cougars. I've taught more than 260 people to fly and given rides to hundreds, so I guess I am a pilot, and you, what are you? "

She said, 'I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about naked women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about naked women. When I shower, I think about naked women. When I watch TV, I think about naked women. It seems everything makes me think of naked women.'

The two sat sipping in silence.

A little while later, a young man sat down on the other side of the old pilot and asked: "Are you a real pilot?"

He replied, 'I always thought I was, but I just found out I'm a lesbian.'

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Three doctors are talking about death.
 
The first, a dentist, says, "When I die, I think I'd like my tombstone to
be shaped like a tooth made of white marble."
 
"Hey," adds the cardiologist, "that's not a bad idea, I'd love my tombstone to be shaped as a heart."
 
The gynaecologist is silent for a bit, then says, "I think scattering of the
ashes is my option."

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The Presbyterian church called a meeting to decide what to do about their squirrels. After much prayer and consideration, they concluded the squirrels were predestined to be there and they shouldn't interfere with God's divine will.    

At the Baptist church the squirrels had taken an interest in the baptistery. The deacons met and decided to put a water slide on the baptistery and let the squirrels drown themselves. The squirrels liked the slide and, unfortunately, knew instinctively how to swim so twice as many squirrels showed up the following week.

The Methodist church decided that they were not in a position to harm any of God's creatures.  So, they humanely trapped their squirrels and set them free near the Baptist Church . Two weeks later the squirrels were back when the Baptists took down the water slide.

But the Catholic Church came up with a very creative strategy. They baptized all the squirrels and consecrated them as members of the church.  Now they only see them on Christmas and Easter.

Not much was heard from the Jewish synagogue; they took the first squirrel and circumcised him. They haven't seen a squirrel since.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

I make no claim as to the veracity of the sources for these 'quotes':

 
1) In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man  is a shame, two is a law firm  and three or more is a congress!  
-- John Adams

 
2) If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do  read the newspaper you are  misinformed!
-- Mark Twain

 
3) Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of   Congress.
But then I repeat   myself!
-- Mark Twain

 
4) I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle!
--Winston Churchill

 
5) A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on  the support of Paul!
-- George Bernard Shaw

 
6) A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man,
which debt he proposes to pay off with your money!
-- G. Gordon Liddy

 
7) Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey  
and car keys to teenage boys!  
-- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

 

 
8) Government's view of the economy could be summed up  
in a few short phrases:
If it moves, tax it!
If it keeps moving, regulate it!
And if it stops moving, subsidize it!  
--Ronald Reagan (1986)

 
9) I don't make jokes!  I just watch the government and report the   facts!
-- Will Rogers

 
10) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!  
-- P. J. O'Rourke
                      

 
11) No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session!  
-- Mark Twain (1866)

 
12) Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it! -- Anonymous

 
13) The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings!   The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery!
--  Winston Churchill

 
14) The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that  
the taxidermist leaves the skin! 
--     Mark Twain

 
15) There is no distinctly Native   American criminal class, save   Congress!
-- Mark Twain

 
16) What this country needs are more unemployed politicians!  
--Edward Langley,
Artist (1928-1995)

 
17) A government big enough to give you everything you want,
is   strong enough to take everything   you have!
-- Thomas Jefferson

 

The Sunday Rumble: 16.7.17

Oh God, my social life is soooo hectic!   Apologies - again - for my absence but I had to leave early to catch my helicopter up to Silverstone - dammit, a man may dream, may he not? - to watch that tip-top, British gent, the Right Honourable Sir' Lewis Hamilton cruise home to victory in the British Grand Prix leaving that damned Hun, Vettel, way down in seventh place and reducing his lead in the Championship to just a single point!  Er, go, Lewis, go - is that the 'with it' thing to say?

 

Then it's off to Wimbledon!   (Thank heaven for helicopters!)  Where that very proper British gent, Roger Federer, is thrashing some vulgar Bulgar.  Oh alright, he's Croatian but you know what I mean, and as for Federer, he might claim to be Swiss for tax reasons but it's quite obvious from his gentlemanly behaviour that he's a true-blue Brit at heart!  Gosh, how do I cope with this manic social life of mine?

 

The curse of interesting times:   I have almost given up following political news because everything is so depressing.  'Over here', I am still in shock at the election result and becoming increasingly fearful at the prospect of a Marxist Labour party actually winning power.  Meanwhile, 'over there' they all seem to have gone utterly bonkers and the rage temperature is going off the scale.  At the same time the Euro fanatics 'just over there' are licking their lips and sharpening their knives ready to slice up 'les rosbifs' for their impertinence in voting for Brexit.  I might have to emigrate to Syria for a quiet life!

 

Dr. Who-ette?!   Bah!  Humbug!  It's a disgrace!  Is there no part of our masculine world that these 'wimmin' will leave alone for us chaps?  As I told that bloke, Bill Shakespeare, you might try and keep female roles played by men but it will not last and once they're in there will be no stopping them!  Now I hear that the next 'Dr. Who' is to be played by a woman - is nothing sacred?  It's a total disgrace and, er, no actually, since you ask, I have never watched 'Dr. Who' even though it has been playing since 1963.

 

No more ravings rumbles 

 

 

"A Shropshire Lad" by A. E. Housman

As I remarked last Sunday, I came across an article on A. E. Housman in The New Yorker and, so to speak, it kicked me in the shins and reminded me how, as a young schoolboy, I had been rather taken with his poetry.  Alas, adolescence and all that sort of thing filled my mind with lower thoughts although, about 20 odd years ago, I did go to see Stoppard's brilliant play 'The Invention of Love' based on Housman's life and even wrote about it here in 2011.  Anyway, as I am feeling a bit 'crook' today I thought I would give you all a bit of a taster of his poetry and from time to time I will drop a few more before you.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

This next poem was written well before WWI but for those who lived through it the resonance is palpable.  For the benefit of my foreign readers Ludlow is the ancient county town of Shropshire.

THE RECRUIT

Leave your home behind, lad,
And reach your friends your hand,
And go, and luck go with you
While Ludlow tower shall stand.

Oh, come you home of Sunday
When Ludlow streets are still
And Ludlow bells are calling
To farm and lane and mill,

Or come you home of Monday
When Ludlow market hums
And Ludlow chimes are playing
"The conquering hero comes,"

Come you home a hero,
Or come not home at all,
The lads you leave will mind you
Till Ludlow tower shall fall.

And you will list the bugle
That blows in lands of morn,
And make the foes of England
Be sorry you were born.

And you till trump of doomsday
On lands of morn may lie,
And make the hearts of comrades
Be heavy where you die.

Leave your home behind you,
Your friends by field and town
Oh, town and field will mind you
Till Ludlow tower is down.

 

FDR and the UN

I am still engrossed in Nigel Hamilton's first two books (thanks, 'SoD'!) which concentrate on FDR's military leadership in WWII.  The contrast between him and Churchill could not have been greater.  By and large, FDR was a shrewd strategic thinker, far in advance of the majority of his somewhat dim-witted military commanders.  With Churchill, it was rather different in that he was mostly full of mad-cap strategic ideas which his military resolutely opposed which was probably just as well since we struggled for years to find field commanders capable of actually fighting a modern war.

However, in the opening chapters of Hamilton's second volume, he has emphasised FDR's political support for a United Nations organisation to help run the world when the war ended.  This is somewhat surprising given the mostly useless nature of its predecessor, the League of Nations.  It made me wonder if anyone has tried to put together a history of the UN and thus attempt to weigh up its pros and cons.  My overall but ill-informed opinion is that it is mostly a complete waste of space which costs a fortune and only really succeeds in providing well-paid sinecures for sundry out of work politicians.

Am I wrong or am I missing something?

 

All's well that ends well

And it's even better when I tottered up the stairs to my attic to read all your good wishes - for which I am very, very grateful.  It's an odd thing this internet friendship lark but it has been very cheering to hear from you all.  Anyway, it all went very well and I am particularly grateful to the Polish surgeon who decided not to emulate what his ancestors in the Polish Lancers did to poor old The Honourable Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby at Waterloo!  It was sufficient for him only to stick his knife into me once and as far as I can tell it was as neat a job as you could wish for.

So now it only remains for me to rest up and test the tea delivery service here in Chateau Duff!  'SoD', of course, is a sod but, dammit, he did rock up here first thing in the morning to help me and the 'Memsahib' get to and from the hospital, so a big 'thank you' to him.  The one single thought that I cannot shake off is what in hell's name it must have been like to live (and probably die) in times before modern medical practices.  A hernia is fairly common but hardly life threatening but I can tell you that it is exceedingly painful and if you were a working man the consequences for you would be enormous.  So, message to self: do try to stop complaining all the time.  Well, I'll try but it won't last!

 

Awfully decent peasantry down 'ere in 'Zumerzet'

As I think I mentioned before, I made it very clear to the 'quacks' that I would be happy, nay, delighted, if anyone dropped off their operation list and that I would, to quote a phrase, 'be in like Flynn' if a vacancy occurred.  Well, obviously the word went out that Lord Duff of Milborne Port was in need of an urgent op and I assume that one of the 'Zumerzet' peasants did his duty, dammit, and fell off the perch thus freeing up a space for me tomorrow morning.  Quite right and proper, in my view!

So tomorrow, biting hard on the leather strap that our wonderful National Health Service - 'the envy of the world' - provide in lieu of anaesthetic I will think of the late Lord Uxbridge at Waterloo whose leg was shattered by a shell and which produced the following interchange: "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!", to which Wellington replied, "By God, sir, so you have!"  Actually, of course, in the exceedingly unlikely event of there being no anaesthetic I shall do what most British chaps do - burst into tears and cry for Mummy!

The truth is that I can't wait for the op to take place because this stabbing pain in the groin is tiresome.  Apparently, they fit a sort of mini-hair net inside to, as it were, 'lift and separate' whatever it is that is pressing against whatever hurts.  Fortunately, as I may have mentioned before, I have absolutely no fear of operations, I remain entirely phlegmatic.  It's not that I totally trust the 'quacks' but there is no way, ahead of the event, to know how competent he is so there is no point in worrying.

Anyway, roll on 10.00am tomorrow!

 

Enter this dispute at your peril

Mind you, the peril you suffer may be nothing compared to that of young Charlie Gard, the 11-month old 'nipper' who is the life or death subject of the legal-medical dispute between the 'quacks' at Great Ormond Street Hospital and his parents.  I don't think I need to rehearse the details which are the subject of global media attention.  Suffice to say that the 'quacks', on the basis of their medical expertise, insist that Charlie be put to death as soon as possible.  His parents, on the basis of their love for their son, are desperate for him to be sent to America for what they admit is very experimental treatment even if the chance of success is 10% or less.

Despite my off-hand description of the medical establishment at Great Ormond Street Hospital, I do not denigrate their medical expertise but my general knowledge of what might be called 'establishment group think' raises questions in my mind.  In particular, I can imagine their 'shock 'n' horror' at the prospect of non-expert parents daring to resist their decisions.  Now, however, there appears to be another set of medical experts who support the parents.  Obviously, there is no way that I, or a collection of Grand Legal Poobahs sitting in sundry courts can decide between these mutually contradictory opinions - although that will not stop them!

The crux of the matter is that Charlie's parents have raised the money to pay for his experimental treatment in the USA so who could possibly object to the effort being made?  In the meantime, why am I worried that a bunch of 'quacks', supported by another bunch of 'Cocklecarrots', should have the power to execute an 11-month old baby before the full gamut of treatments have been tried?

 

Your Monday Funnies: 10.7.17

Always ready, willing and sort of able to do my duty and cheer you all up on this Monday morning, I slump here, clutching my hernia and attempt to tap out these hysterical 'jokes' - God I'm good!

A little old lady was walking down the street dragging two large plastic garbage bags behind her. One of the bags was ripped and every once in a while a $20 bill fell out onto the side walk.

Noticing this, a policeman  stopped her, and said, "Ma'am, there are $20 bills falling out of that  bag."

"Oh, really? Darn it!" said the little old lady. "I'd better go back and see if I can find them.  Thanks for telling me,  Officer."

"Well, now, not so fast," said the cop." Where did you get all that money?  You didn't steal it, did you?"

"Oh,  no, no", said the old lady. "You see, my back yard is right next to  a golf course.  A lot of golfers come and pee through a knot hole in my fence, right into my flower garden.  It used to really tick me off.
Kills the flowers, you know. Then I thought, 'why not make the best of it?'   So, now, I stand behind the fence by the knot hole, real quiet, with my hedge clippers.  Every time some guy sticks his thing through my fence, I surprise him, grab hold of it and say, 'O.K. Buddy! Give me $20 or off it comes!'

"Well, that  seems only fair," said the cop, laughing. "OK. Good luck!
Oh, by the way, what's in the other bag?"

"Not everybody pays”.

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A fifteen-year-old came home with a Porsche, and his parents began
to yell and scream, "Where did you get that car?"

He calmly told them, "I bought it today."

"With what money!?" demanded his parents. "We know what a Porsche  costs."

"Well," said the boy, "this one cost me fifteen dollars."

 The parents began to yell even louder.  "Who would sell a car like that for $15.00?" they asked.

"It was the lady up the street," said the boy, "I don't know her name they just moved in. She saw me ride past on my bike and asked me if I wanted to buy a Porsche for $15.00."

"Oh my goodness!" moaned the mother, "she must be a child abuser.
Who knows what she will do next? John, you go right up there and see
what's going on."

So the boy's father walked up the street to the house where the lady lived and found her out in the yard calmly tending to the flowers.
He introduced himself as the father of the boy to whom she had sold a
Porsche for fifteen dollars and demanded to know why she did it.

"Well," she said, "this morning I got a phone call from my husband. I thought he was on a business trip, but I learned from a friend he has  run off to Hawaii with his secretary.  Then apparently she stole all his money and stranded him there! Well he called me, without a dollar to his name, and asked me to sell his Porsche and send him the money.

So that's exactly what I did."

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

Ray and Bob, two Government maintenance guys, were standing at the base of a flagpole, looking up.

A woman walked by and asked what they were doing.

"We're supposed to find the height of the flagpole”, said Bob, "But we don't have a ladder."

The woman said, "Hand me that wrench out of your Toolbox."

She loosened a few bolts, then lay the pole down.

She then took a tape measure from their toolbox, took a measurement and announced, "Eighteen feet, six inches" and walked away.

Ray shook his head and laughed. "Well, ain't that just like a 'Miss-know-it-all' woman?" he said. "We need the height and she gives us the length!"

Ray and Bob are still working for the Government.

 

Right, that's your lot, my groin is twinging and twanging and, yes, I know that comes under the heading of 'Too Much Information'!

 

The Sunday Rumble: 9.7.17

Sometimes there are simply no words:   The media are reporting on an incident involving a Muslim woman, presumably a mother, carrying a small child in one arm - and a bomb in the other - which she detonated.  Beyond belief!

 

Can't wait to read this one:   Via the good - nay, excellent! - offices of Arts & Letters Daily, I have come across an article by Arnold Kling (no, me neither) at the National Affairs site.  The heading reads: How Effective Is Economic Theory?  Good question, can't wait to read the answer!

 

Oh God! Another week of plink-plonk:   Yes, it's the Wimbledon season again and, my God, tennis is a total bore!  And it's so slow!  There has been talk of speeding things up a bit by, for example, only letting them bounce the ball twice instead of 23 times, making it a one shot serve not two, or doing away with net calls.  I would insist that they go back to "the good old days" and do away with all those chairs and umbrellas these 'athletes' laze about on between games. Either let them stand for a minute or better still just make them change ends and get on with it!  Oh, and topless tennis for the ladies - natch!

 

Nor am I that keen on all those 'rugger-buggers':   Alas, even after 78 years I still haven't got the hang of rugby.  I became mildly interested in the All Blacks vs. the Lions but, alas, I couldn't watch it because my ex-best friend, 'Rupe', had snaffled it onto his eye-wateringly expensive TV channel.  Thus, I had to listen to the radio commentary provided by TalkSport but it might just as well have been in Mandarin because I couldn't understand a word of what they were describing.  Just one bunch of testosteronic hearties bashing into another bunch - such fun!

 

Should she go or should she stay?   That is the question facing Mrs. May and her Conservative party.  Instinctively, one feels that after such a monumental balls up, she should go and go quickly.  However, that would free up the Tory party to indulge in extremes of stupidity as they all fight like cats in a sack to produce a new leader.  That, of course, would play right into the hands of 'Jezza' and his Comintern - please note that I have not placed inverted commas round the word Comintern because that is exactly what the leadership of the 'Labour' party has become!

 

A proper pukka gent of the first order:   I give you, Major Nana Kofi Twumasi-Ankrah of the Household Cavalry who has just been appointed as an equerry to 'Her Maj'!

 

According to The Telegraph, he moved here from Ghana with his family in 1982 and attended Queen Mary University and then the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.  Even if only armed with a furled umbrella, I think I would rather have him on my side than in opposition.  Well done, Major!

 

AN ABSOLUTE DEFINITE MUST WATCH TONIGHT:   This is another of the 48-odd films which are in my Top Ten!  It stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney and if that makes you think it's another light as a feather comedy not worth ten minutes of your time - then think again!  It's called 'Gravity' and it is absolutely terrific.  It's on ITV2 at 7.00pm.  Set your recorders - that's an order!

 

A Shropshire lad? Well, maybe!   Good old 'Arts & Letters Daily' does it again!  This time they have nudged me into memories of A. E. Housman and his curious collection of poems known as "A Shropshire Lad".  I still remember my instant attraction to them as a young schoolboy so I was delighted to follow their link to an excellent article in The New Yorker which attempts to get to grips with this strange, prickly scholar whose poems  have become synonymous with 'Englishness' even if he hardly ever set foot in Shropshire!  Well worth a read - and then give the poems a try as well!

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

As usual, 'The Kraut' does my thinking for me

There are some problems in this world which do not give me a moment's pause - the square root of -1, for example.  Absolutely no problem with that because even a nano-second's worth of thought tells me that if live to be 200 I will still fail to even understand the question, let alone the answer!  The same applies to the current question bedevilling geo-strategists around the world - what do we do about 'Fat Boy Kim' and his pestilential country?

Happily, all I have to do is turn to my guru, Charles Krauthammer, and he provides the answer - honestly, everyone should have a Krauthammer in their cupboard!  As he points out there is absolutely no chance - that's nil, never, no chance! -  of China (let alone Russia) doing anything to thwart Fat Boy's nuclear ambitions.  Anyone who still believes that fairy-tale is still living in Obamaland!

So the question remains, what are we, or to be precise, the Americans, going to do?  'The Kraut' suggests that returning the tactical nuclear missiles removed from South Korea in 1991 would concentrate minds in Beijing.  Also, given their mutual past history, encouraging the Japanese to develop their own nuclear missile system would cause considerable buttock-clenching in China.  Would they think it worthwhile to let North Korea have its own missile system if the result was a Japanese counterpart?

Who knows?  As I have said before 'pity the poor statesmen'!

 

 

Mark Steyn can breathe easy

The legal duel between Mark Steyn and Michael 'Hockey Stick' Mann seems to have lasted longer than the Hundred Years War!  This is mainly due to Mann's prevarication encouraged by an utterly useless American judicial system.  However, help is at hand from, of all places, the Canadian judicial system.  It was in the Columbia Supreme Court, Vancouver, that a Canadian scientist, Dr. Tim Ball, who was even more sceptical of Mann's so-called 'science' than Steyn, defended himself against an exceedingly cunning legal manoeuvre known as a 'SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation)' libel suit.  However, the Court decided that if Michael Mann was to defend his infamous 'hockey stick' graph then he would have to hand over ALL of his background research - and they made that an order, not a polite request!

As Dr. Ball explains, “Michael Mann moved for an adjournment of the trial scheduled for February 20, 2017. We had little choice because Canadian courts always grant adjournments before a trial in their belief that an out of court settlement is preferable. We agreed to an adjournment with conditions. The major one was that he [Mann] produce all documents including computer codes by February 20th, 2017. He failed to meet the deadline.”

According to the report at 'Newscats.org' : "Mann’s now proven contempt of court means Ball is entitled to have the court serve upon Mann the fullest punishment. Contempt sanctions could reasonably include the judge ruling that Dr. Ball’s statement that Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn. State’ is a precise and true statement of fact. This is because under Canada’s unique ‘Truth Defense’, Mann is now proven to have wilfully hidden his data, so the court may rule he hid it because it is fake. As such, the court must then dismiss Mann’s entire libel suit with costs awarded to Ball and his team."

That popping sound you can hear in the distance is from the flying champagne corks near Mark Steyn's residence!

 

We have Scottish terriers and they have Cats!

That's just the sort of sophisticated, witty heading you all expect here at D&N, er, you do expect it, don't you?  Anyway, don't blame me, blame that 'smart Alec', Matthew Parris in this week's 'Speccie' who, apart from one snide aside, manages to avoid Brexit as he brings us up to date on the Catalonian independence movement in Spain.  According to Mr. Parris, the Madrid government could take a few lesson from London and the way it has handled 'Mrs. McWhinge' and her ScotsNats.  Madrid, somewhat stuffed full of Spanish testosterone, has threatened a hard line if the Catalonian government in Barcelona goes ahead in October with  its self-declared referendum on independence, even threatening to send in the tanks!

The stand-off follows years of wrangling. The history of Catalonia, once a principality and older than Spain itself, is impossible to summarise in a short column, but its claim to nationhood is strong and the oppression of its language and culture over the centuries is undeniable. Almost all Catalans speak Catalan, and for many it is their first language.

They have their own language?!  No wonder that bloody barman in Barcelona failed to understand my impeccable Spanish - "Una grandee cold beer, por favor."  I nearly died of thirst waiting!

But the most serious Catalan misconception is that whatever EU countries with their own secessionist problems may tell them now, they will in the end welcome Catalonia as a new member. For secessionists the EU is the solution to every question about their future need for armed forces, a worldwide network of embassies, trade agreements and all the rest of the paraphernalia of statehood. Blind Catalan trust in the EU as final arbiter, protector and provider is touchingly naive.

My emphasis above, just in case 'SoD' and any other Euro-worshippers should read it!

 

Me white Indian, you, er, brown Indian!

There is a God, or rather, a Goddess, of Laughter and, lo, her name is 'Fauxcahontas'!  Of course, when she walks amongst us she goes by the name of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat senator from Massachusetts, and as she proceeds she leaves behind a mass of reeling bodies all doubled up with helpless laughter because, you see, she claims to be of Red Indian ancestry and just by coincidence - no, really! - her career at Harvard Law School was enormously enhanced because of their affirmative action privileges for minorities. Here is her photo:

Well, you can see the Red Indian in her - oh, come on try!  Alas, Auberon Waugh's advice on what to shout should you see a politician on a soapbox, "Show us your willy!", is obviously inappropriate for this squaw so I suggest to my American friends that if they see her they should shout, "Show us your tomahawk!"

However, the truly hilarious news, according to The American Thinker, is that 'Fauxcahontas' will be facing a real Indian at the next election in the form of Mr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai.  Alas, he is of the brown variety rather than the red but even so the Indian war could prove to be highly amusing.  It has started already by Mr. Ayyadurai challenging 'Fauxcahontas' to undergo a DNA blood test.  She refused - why am I not surprised?

 

 

Yet more education for Peter- God! I'm generous!

Further extracts from Chapter 26 'A Failed Mutiny' from Nigel Hamilton's book "The Mantle of Command" provided entirely free of charge in order to assist Peter in coming to terms with his colossal ego from which he insists that he knows absolutely everything better than anyone else!

.......................................................

'Far from being rested by his vacation, Stimson began to panic.

[...]

Turning seventy-five that fall, Henry Stimson, despite being a first class lawyer, had not the flexibility and energy of a younger man.  Once again, in his diary, he recounted for his own edification the sorry story of [OP] Torch, the "President's great secret baby" - charting yet again the way the President had "hankered and hunkered" to revive the "evil" plan each time General Marshall and the War Department had knocked it down.  "Today the whole thing came into my conversations with [Generals] Marshall, Lovett and Handy and all of them feel strongly against [OP. Torch]," Stimson noted with a sort of perverse satisfaction on August 7.[9]

Given that Averell Harriman, the President's personal emissary, was already on his way with Prime Minister Churchill to brief Joseph Stalin personally on the impending 'Torch' operation, Stimson's efforts to find a way to stop the operation were becoming seriously dysfunctional.  And detrimental to America's war effort.

[...]

On his return from the cabinet meeting in the White House Stimson thus began, in the quiet of his office on Constitution Avenue, to mull over yet another official letter of protest to Roosevelt: one that would either stop the President in his tracks, or at least prove to the world, later, that the President had refused to take his chief military advisors' advice.

If the war secretary was to come out and openly oppose the President, he wanted "to be sure I am on solid ground."  Taking the army chief of staff aside, Stimson had a "careful talk with Marshall over the strategic situation, getting our teeth right into it and into each other - a very frank talk and a rather useful one," the secretary confided to his diary that night.  As Churchill prepared to fly on from Cairo to Moscow to tell Stalin in confidence about [OP] Torch, Stimson thus asked General Marshall point blank if he, Marshall, "was President or Dictator" of America, "whether he would he would go on with [OP. Torch] and he told me frankly no."[10]

Marshall as president or dictator?  Such language, exchanged between the country's  most senior military officials on August 9, 1942, was sailing close to sedition. - as even Marshall began to recognise  the following day, when the secretary showed him exactly what he had in mind.'

.....................................................................

What Stimson did was to write a draft letter to the President which he showed to the American High Command, including Secretary Knox of the Navy but all of them, despite their own misgivings declined to sign it and the draft was placed in Stimson's private papers.

In my view, this entire imbroglio shows the American system at its very best.  The officers opposed their president to the limit of constitutional propriety - and then backed down.  As it happens, the North African landings were, on the whole, a success and it is generally acknowledged that any attempt at a cross-channel invasion in 1942 would have been an unmitigated disaster.

Clever fella', that Roosevelt, well, most of the time!

 

Part of Peter's education!

For Peter's benefit although why I bother I do not know!

Extracts from Hamilton's book, chapter 26: 'A Failed Mutiny':

................................................................

[Op] Torch "Was one of the very few major military decisions of the war that Roosevelt made entirely on his own and over the protests of his highest ranking advisors," the president's speechwriter, Robert Sherwood, later wrote. The president "insisted that the decision had been made and must be carried through with expedition and vigor".[1]  Sadly, it was not - for though the Commander in Chief might insist, the War Department could resist.

"On no other issue of the war, "reflected Forrest Progue, the doyen of America WWII historians, "did the Secretary of State and the Chief of Staff so completely differ with the Commander in Chief. Their distrust of his military judgment, their doubts about the Prime Minister's advice, and their deep conviction that the TORCH operation was fundamentally unsound", Dr. Pogue admitted candidly, "throughout August of 1942."[2]

Harry Hopkin's biographer noted the same. "It is evident", Sherwood chronicled after the war, "that even after Hopkins, Marshall and King returned from London on July 27, there were even further attempts to change the president's mind about the North African operation."

That Secretary Henry Stimson, General George Marshall, and so many of the 'top brass' in Washington would continue to press for the potential fiasco of a cross-channel venture in 1942, while at the same time exaggerating the danger of a failure in terms of the President's French North West Africa project, did not say a great deal for their military judgment at this stage of the war. Instead of knuckling down to the Commander-in-Chief's "full steam ahead" order at the end of July, Secretary Stimson and General Marshall continued, as Marshall's biographer recorded, "by a fine splitting of hairs to insist that the final decision has yet to be made and that preparations for 'SLEDGEHAMMER', an immediate cross channel attack "must be continued".[4]
[...]
At a cabinet meeting in the White House the President attempted to convey a sense of unity in the administration. The United States had taken over direction of the war and was preparing to deliver a first great blow upon the enemy.[...] "During the meeting", however, "the President said that he was much troubled by charges which had appeared in some of the papers that he and Churchill were running the war plans of the war without regard to the advice of their military advisors."[6]

This was not far short of the truth- but the President was not going to admit to such an assertion in front of his full cabinet. Rather he intended his next remark to be a shot across Stimson's - and Knox's bows. "It was a matter evidently on his mind and he put it before [Navy Secretary] Knox and myself apparently to silence us", Stimson recorded in his diary that night - the President claiming, as Stimson recorded, that he was in complete accord with his war and navy people, and that he never, ever intruded as commander in chief, except to arbitrate "when the Army and Navy differed and it was necessary for someone to decide between them."[7]

There was little the Secretary could do about such lies - amazed at the President's ability to say such things with a straight face. Yet it worked, the President able to manipulate the members of his administration into doing what he wanted, even against their will or better judgment, and then sweep everyone along on a tide of goodwill and common purpose. Frabkin D. Roosevelt had, in Stimson's thoughtful account that night "the happy faculty of feeling [at one with] himself and this was one of the most extreme cases of it that I have ever seen because he must know that we are all against him on [OP.] Gymnast," the Secretary sighed, "and yet now that is going to be the first thing probably which is done, and we are all very blue about it."[8]

NOTES:

1: Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History. p615

2: Forrest Progue, George C. Marshall, vol 2, Ordeal and Hope

3: Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 612

4. Progue, Ordeal and Hope, 349

6: Entry, Stimson's diary

7: ibid

8: ibid

 

There is more, much more, but that should suffice to convince anyone that FDR faced a near mutiny by his High Command  over the North Africa landings. The fact that he was right and they were wrong, to quote a phrase, simply 'adds lustre to his cluster'!

 

'Storm on the 4th of July'

Actually, there was no storm and nor did it take place on the 4th July, it's just me taking a bit of 'artistic' licence, given that today is the 4th of July, a date of some importance to my American friends, so I gather!  And anyway, it is the July and August of 1942 to which I am referring and you can blame SoD because it was him that gave me Volume I of a truly fascinating history of FDR as a war leader.

As a Brit myself, I make no apology for admitting that my views of WWII are more than somewhat tinged with the historical view from this, 'our septic Isle', under the somewhat erratic leadership of Winston Churchill, a man who dominated his stage.  Even so, I am more than willing to concede, in effect, that 'it woz the Yanks wot dunnit'! Yes, the Russians had their part to play in Europe but it was America that had to fight a global world war.

Thus, it came as something of a shock to me to learn that during July and August 1942 FDR faced what was a near mutiny in Washington as the political leaders of the Army and the Navy, Stimson and Knox, supported by the majority of their senior Generals and Admirals, threatened to disobey the orders of their Commander-in-Chief.  It arose from disagreement between the Brits (natch!) and the Americans over where the allies should strike next.  Despite a large feeling amongst many of the American military that America should concentrate in the Pacific, eventually they coalesced around the idea that Hitler must be the main target and that the best way to strike a serious blow against him would be a direct invasion from Britain into France which, apart from any other considerations, would provide the Russians with relief from the inexorable advance of the Nazi armies.

Unfortunately, those pesky Brits, led by Churchill and Sir Alan Brooke, the CIGS, were dead set against it.  They believed that it was far too early to attempt such an ambitious manoeuvre and to try it would be to invite disaster.  Instead, they argued for an invasion of French North Africa where the immediate opposition would be weaker and success along the southern coasts of the Mediterranean would open up possibilities to attack "the soft underbelly of Nazi-dominated Europe.  Fortunately, FDR, a shrewd thinker and operator, agreed.

It was at that point that the American Generals and Admirals, led by Sec. of War Stimson, supported by Sec. of the Navy Knox, came within a whisker of mutiny by considering seriously the possibility of disobeying the President's orders.  Happily, FDR kept his cool and faced them down.  With all the advantages of the 20/20 vision provided by hindsight, FDR was absolutely right.

Pheeeeew, as the dear old 'Duke of Boot' put it in 1815, "It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life".

God bless America on this auspicious day!

 

The Mantle of Command: FDR at War: 1941-1942 by Nigel Hamilton

 

 

 

Divided we, er, well. fall over in different directions!

The truth is we are a shambles, divided down several middles and I don't just mean the political parties.  It is we, the people (dread word!), who are just as hopeless and hapless as our political (so-called) 'leaders'.  We scurry hither and thither shouting that something must be done but gather together, say, three of Her Maj's subjects and you will hear seven different solutions.

The Labour party is already in the trenches having declared unrestricted warfare on, er, well, the Labour party actually.  Thus, the 'Corbynistas' thrash around trying to find a shadow cabinet that will remain united for more than a fortnight whilst they attempt to execute, politically - for the moment! - anyone who dares to oppose their polit-bureau.  The moderates, frozen in the glare of the watchtower searchlights, desperately seek a way to escape the gulag.

Meanwhile, the Conservative and Unionist party are living up - or do I mean down? - to 'that woman's' accurate sneer of being "frit"!  Some of them seem determined to spend money like a drunken 'Corbynista' in order to outdo the Commissars but none of them seem able to bring themselves to slash the outrageously corrupt and eye-wateringly expensive Foreign Aid budget which at least might go someway towards keeping nurses and policemen in the style to which they aspire.  Meanwhile, the national debt continues to rocket up, up and away.

The only good news is that if any of these plonkers actually summon up the courage to walk away from the Berlin-Brussels racket we will have a few spare 'squillions' to spend on ourselves!