DUFF & NONSENSE!

That damned Dane, again!

Yesterday I watched the filmed version of the RSC's recent production of Hamlet.   It starred, and I use the appropriate word because the actor concerned, David Tennant, has achieved fame and fortune 'over here' playing the lead in a TV series called Dr. Who, a 'sci-fi' show aimed mostly at children and thus guaranteed to attract grown-ups who should know better!  Whenever one approaches Shakespeare's great tragic heroes, it is important to realise that these complex characters are what I describe as being 'incoherently coherent' - and no, I haven't been on the sherry - what I mean is that WS understood that human beings are made up of frequently contradictory imperatives which makes them, say, cruel and kind, good and bad, happy and sad, and so on, in other words, it is their very incoherence that makes them coherently human and thus recognisable as such to an audience.

However, it is this very incoherence which causes so many difficulties to both actor and director.  Faced with a bewildering set of contradictions there is a tendency to pick and choose, indeed, to paraphrase a well-known political saying, 'to act is to choose', and of course, in that act of choosing lies the danger of either over-emphasising one characteristic to the detriment of others, or even worse, leaving out those with which one is antipathetic.  Personally, I try to present Shakespeare's characters in the round, warts and all, and leave it to the audience to make up their minds - but pointing out that whatever conclusions they come to concerning the characters they see on stage will say much more about them than the characters!

When I studied Hamlet in some detail before directing it, I came to one firm conclusion, which had more to do with the text as a play rather than a piece of literature, and that was the crucial importance of the audience building up a rapport with the hero.  To my mind it was essential that the audience liked Hamlet and thereby cared about him.  If Hamlet is played, as David Tennant played him, as an angst-filled, rebellious teen-ager with attitude, then virtually every middle-aged parent in the audience will groan in recognition of their own pain-in-the-arse off-spring and quietly give Laertes a cheer when he bumps the hero off.  This film version did Tennant no favours because close-ups of his clenched face, his lips drawn back over his teeth and his bulbous, starey eyes, dried up the wells of sympathy for this suffering young man.

The other factor I considered to be hugely important in playing Hamlet is to show him thinking!  Hamlet is Shakespeare's Renaissance hero, in other words, a 'new man' who thinks before he acts, who requires reason to justify whatever it is he does; that, in my opinion, is what the Renaissance was all about and it stands in direct contrast to the Medieval period which preceded it in which men acted instinctively in passion, be it revenge, love, lust, or whatever.  This distinction, I believe, is what WS wished to demonstrate through the actions of his hero.  The tragedy for young Hamlet is, that once he has the reasoned proof he needs, he then loses control and reverts to Medieval man and in a state of un-thinking ferocity murders Polonius and thus ruins his chances of taking a considered revenge on Claudius.  (To digress briefly, I am struck by the recent, unthinking, instinctive and Medieval re-actions of a Muslim man and his brother who chased an intruder up the road and left him brain-damaged after beating him with a cricket bat.  The Renaissance never touched the Muslim world until now when they cannot escape it and which has produced their violent antipathy to it.)

None of this was apparent to me because Tennant began in a state of frenzy and worked up from there!  Thus, I rapidly tired of him.  Needless to say, he, and many of the other actors, ignored the fact that their parts are written, mainly, in verse and if you ignore line endings and read it as prose you lose the subconscious magic and it all becomes tedious.  Patrick Stewart was a villain who could "smile and smile and be a villain", as well as playing the ghost of his dead brother.  Unfortunately, the director, Gregory Doran, made the huge mistake of playing one of Shakespeare's spirit plays in modern dress.  Shakespeare's audiences had no difficulties believing in the reality of ghosts, indeed, they would have picked up what most modernists miss which is the doubt in Hamlet's mind as to whether this is a true ghost of his father or an impostor sent by the devil to trick him.  This is an important point because again it demonstrates Hamlet as a thinking, reasoning, Renaissance man.  But if your setting is resolutely 20th century then the whole notion of ghosts is an absurdity for which no audience will be inclined to suspend their disbelief.  Virtually no effort was made by the director to indicate the spirit-like nature of the ghost who moved in close to the action between Hamlet and his mother.

Far and away the best actor of the lot was Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius.  I was once privileged to attend an afternoon talk by this stage veteran on the subject of Shakespearean acting and I learned so much from him that has stood me in good stead ever since.  Running him close was John Woodvine as the Player King - what a voice - I would kill for it!  The inherently comic nature of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, later picked up to terrific effect by Tom Stoppard, was ignored by all concerned in this production and that was a mistake in my view because the Tragedies do need that vein of humour to be highlighted as a contrast to the bleak, black, impending doom.

So, to sum up, an interesting production but not an engaging one.

He may not learn but 'Huffpo' can - and has!

As this year has moved to its close I have been wryly amused at the increasing howls of disappointment emanating from various impeccably Leftist blogs as they contemplate the real Obama who is slowly emerging from the MSM-induced fog of invention.  Even, and I can hardly believe it, The Huffington Post, hitherto the 'Cringers-in-Chief to The One', have finally tripped over his enormous, clay feet and sitting up, shaking their heads to clear what passes for their brains, they can now discern the awful truth that this man is as phony as a 9-dollar bill.  It may have taken them this long but how long, do you suppose, did it take the hard-eyed men who rule China, Russia, Iran, and so on?  Anyway, here, courtesy of those Stakhanovites at 'IHTM' is the unpretty sight and sound of an impeccably Left-wing,  'Huffpo' writer seeing the truth:

Consider the president’s leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there’s a conflict, because if there’s a conflict, he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it…

Like most Americans I talk to, when I see the president on television, I now change the channel the same way I did with Bush. With Bush, I couldn’t stand his speeches because I knew he meant what he said. I knew he was going to follow through with one ignorant, dangerous, or misguided policy after another. With Obama, I can’t stand them because I realize he doesn’t mean what he says — or if he does, he just doesn’t have the fire in his belly to follow through. He can’t seem to muster the passion to fight for any of what he believes in, whatever that is. He’d make a great queen — his ceremonial addresses are magnificent — but he prefers to fly Air Force One at 60,000 feet and ’stay above the fray.’…

http://www.ihatethemedia.com/the-latest-obama-haters-the-huffington-post

Will he learn, can he learn?

Setting aside, for the moment, the looming disaster that is Obama's domestic policy, I would like to end the year by dwelling on the train wreck that is his foreign policy.  This whole policy, if it deserves such a title, may be summed up in a short phrase: anything but Bush!  I suppose because Obama was part of the shrill choir who spent most of this decade shrieking their anger and abuse at Bush and seizing on anything and everything to deride and insult him, he actually began to mistake agit-prop for reality which has led him, in the end, to actually believe his own propaganda.  The fact is that Bush was not at all a bad president in foreign affairs and history, I believe, will judge him much higher than the Left-wing agitators in the Democrat party and their glove-puppets in the MSM.  Be that as it may, Obama wanted change, he never, and still has not, stopped telling us that over and over again.  Thus, his foreign policy in his first year in office has been, with one partial exception, the exact opposite of George Bush's.  So, one year on, has it worked?

Hardly!  Like a lame carthorse in a selling plate it not only failed to clear the first hurdle it never even made it that far, becoming entangled in the starting-stall, the saddle having slipped round and when eventually the horse stepped out hesitantly, the jockey was hanging upside down from its neck to stop himself falling off, it was the equivalent of the Marx brothers having a day at the races!  It was no surprise because Obama's entire approach to foreigners, or to be precise, foreign politicians, was based on the sort of total silliness that may be summed up in that favourite phrase of Lefties everywhere - the International Brotherhood of Man.  Obama truly believed that if he left his gun at home and went out into the world with arms upraised to show his peaceful intentions, all the difficulties and unpleasantness would fade away because the world would say, hallelujah, he was not George Bush.  Thus, he demonstrated his ignorance of that very wise man, Machiavelli who asked, and I paraphrase, 'should a president be loved or feared?' and then went on to answer his own question by firmly choosing the latter and explaining why in impeccable logic.  Whatever hesitations Bush might have harboured as to the answer, were answered for him on 9/11.  However, even without that, I always judged Bush to be, in that splendid American phrase, 'one mean s.o.b.'  But Obama wanted to be loved, in fact, I suspect more than that, he wanted to be adored in the way that America, by and large, adored him last year.  What he failed to realise is that the enemies of America hate her, not for what she does but because of what she is.

Thus ensued a year of diplomatic failure followed by strategic debacle leading to confusion and culminating in Copenhagen to a hideously embarrassing travesty in which the President of the United States of America was humiliated in front of his enemies by his Bank Manager, the prime minister of China!  Now all this is regrettable but, using one of my favourite lines from a play I was once in, "it's all blood under the bridge"(*) and now Obama must face his second year in office.  The huge question now looms, and I for one cannot over-stress the critical importance of the answer, has he learned anything?  Great leaders are never perfect, they all make mistakes, but the wise ones learn from those mistakes.  I was reminded just today in a book I am reading of the words of the famous Duke of Wellington who went to India as a very young subaltern and, in his own words, "Learned how not to do things!"  Has Obama learned?  And even if he has learned, does he have sufficient room for manouvre given that he is surrounded on all sides by self-picked Marxist ideologues of the worst kind?

I have written this before and make no apologies for repeating myself, all those European and British bien pensants who have spent their silly lives decrying America may have to come to terms with a world in which America simply ceases to matter, a world in which the increasingly powerful Chinese need fear no counter-force from the USA, in which the Russian bear, fattened on its energy sources, feels emboldened once again to ramble further afield, in which the Iranian mullahs can murder their own dissidents without a squeak from the White House, in which 'The Glorious Leader' can extort money from the American tax-payer by shaking his puny nuclear fist, and in which 'kleptocrats' like Hugo Chavez can strut their stuff upon the world stage and insult the president of the USA without even hesitation - because America has become an irrelevance.

"Beware of what you wish for", some old Chinese sage is supposed to have said - and how right he was!

(*) Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf by Edward Albee

 

It's that time again!

Yes, it's Christmas time again which is always a soft target for cheap, cynical jibes and sneers - but not from me!  I like Christmas enormously.  I like the act of giving and receiving gifts, I like the reformation of family even for just a day or two, I like the cheerful, commercial razzmatazz in the shops, and above all I like the slight softening of human nature that occurs.  In a way it epitomises the essence of Christianity - and I am not a Christian - which I believe acts as a (very slight) brake on the worst excesses of humanity.   Christianity is fast disappearing and I wonder if the world will truly be a better place without it? 

Anyway, I would like to pass on my Christmas good wishes to all my readers, and especially my commenters.  Different bloggers treat their 'Comments' differently.  For me, it has always been a place for strangers to converse and I enjoy it immensely. So, I wish you all, e-friends and e-foes alike, an excellent and contented Christmas and a Very Happy New Year.

'Cornies' look suspiciously like each other!

That old one-liner used to be reserved for the inhabitants of Norfolk but the feelings behind it seem now to have shifted to Cornwall.  According to The Daily Mail several incidents of such disgraceful 'Cornishist' sentiments have been expressed resulting - natch! - in a complaint to the Commission for Racial Equality:

Last year, a campaigner wrote to the Commission for Racial Equality on behalf of a bus driver who heard someone calling the Cornish 'a bunch of pi**ed-off, straw-sucking, inbred wurzels'.

Naturally, here at Duff & Nonsense, we will not support such 'Cornish-ist' intolerence which offends our sense of fair play to our much loved scrumpy-addled, pastie-filled fellow countrymen. 

Happily, such considerations need not hold us back when it comes to our cousins 'over there' who produce(?) their own version of 'Cornies' known as 'Rednecks', although my e-pal 'JK' who sent them to me insists that properly these remarks should be addressed to the inhabitants of his own state, a.k.a. 'Arkies':

A Redneck passed away and left his entire estate to his beloved widow . . . but she can't touch it 'till she's 14.

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

How do you know when you're staying in a Redneck motel?

When you call the front desk and say, " I gotta leak in my sink, and the clerk replies ......."Go ahead."

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

Two reasons why it's so hard to solve a Redneck murder:

1) The DNA is all the same

2) There are no dental records

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

A new Redneck law was just recently passed

When a couple gets divorced, they are STILL cousins.

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

A State Trooper pulls over a pickup on Highway 16

and says to the driver, 'Got any I.D. ? ' . .

and the driver replies 'Bout wut?'

 

If none of those made you laugh you have just passed your entrance exam into the Commission for Racial Equality! 

 

Judge Deed rules OK!

I am fairly picky when it comes to watching TV and so it has come as a bit of a surprise to find myself rather hooked on the Judge John Deed series which is being repeated on one of those obscure satellite channels which invariably seem to have much better programmes than the dross on the main channels.  I must have missed the originals because the story lines are all new to me.  I was predisposed in its favour when I discovered that its progenitor was the writer, G. F. Newman.  I can still remember vividly the shock I received in the late '70s when I read his books Sir, you Bastard and You Nice Bastard which, for good or ill, drove a stake through the kindly heart of 'PC George Dixon' with his earlier, kindly, "Evenin' all" evocation of the friendly neighborhood bobby on the beat.  Alas, Newman told it the way it was, particularly in the East End where it was entirely a matter of chance whether young men would end up as villains or coppers.  Either way, according to Newman, they inhabited an almost cosy, symbiotic relationship in which both lived off the other, and indeed, both lived of the ill-gotten gains of gangsterism.  The ancillary partners in crime, such as the lawyers, the prison officers, the social services, all received equally rough treatment from Newman's pen.  Incidentally, and it has only just occurred to me, his four TV plays based on those books, A Detective's Tale, A Villain's Tale, A Brief's Tale and A Prisoner's Tale, did everything that the highly and rightly praised American Series The Wire did but did it 30 years ago.  Depressingly, the BBC bowed to pressure and they have never been repeated since although I do remember seeing one of them recently but I assume it must have been on one of the obscure satellite channels.

Of course, the Judge John Deed series is highly contrived but you could say exactly the same thing about Measure for Measure, after all, that is what good writers do, set up false premises in order to show great truths.  As a judge, Deed is the best of men and the worst of men.  His main problem is in "thinking too precisely on the event" rather than simply following the rules and regs like other judges, in other words, he cares deeply about the rights and wrongs of his and others' actions but as Hamlet remarks, presciently or cynically, "There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so"!  I am quoting Shakespeare but, as Newman, I'm sure would be the first to admit, he is no Shakespeare, but he does remind me of that school of English playwrights from the Edwardian age up to WWII who created such terrific theatre by inventing characters who cared, characters who thought and felt, and through whose sensitivities and weaknesses, showed audiences complex moral dilemmas - the likes of Granville Barker, Pinero, Maugham, Rattigan come to mind.

Newman, himself, from the little I know of him, sounds like a total pain.  He is a magnificent contrarian, stuffed full of daft ideas (the definition of which is, of course, ideas with which I disagree!) but I suspect he is incapable of ever being boring.  Also, and this is important when it comes to writing, he does provide all sides of an argument, a practice frequently ignored by modern polemical writers which is what makes them so utterly tedious.  The Judge John Deed series is flawed in parts and can easily be criticised, particularly by people with partisan views (like me?), but on the whole it is excellent and I highly recommend it.  It's on 'Alibi' Sky Channel 132.

Duff's a muppet!

Yes, yes, you knew that already, I know!  Anyway, nothing gets me cackling so heartily from the depths of my armchair than the sight and sound of people daft enough to travel in mid-Winter.  Muppets, I chuckle to myself, anyone with more than 3 brain cells knows that the Met Office haven't changed their piece of seaweed since 1946 and the only consistency they exhibit is being wrong about the weather when it's really important to be right.  Also, of course, the travelling muppets should know that at this time of the year local authorities in the UK spend all their energies ensuring that the Christmas decorations in their offices are tasteful and not in contravention of the unwritten laws laid down by the PC commissars. Grit the roads?  Clear the snow? Leave our nice warm offices?  Muppet!

Yesterday, I repeated what has become an annual custon by having lunch with a dear friend in Sonning, just outside Reading.  Unforecast snow began to fall and so I left at 3.00 pm, cancelling my other arrangements and deciding instead to make for home, normally a journey of some 2 hours.  Suffice to say that I stumbled in through my front door 12 hours later at 3.00 am!  Around midnight, as the snow came down thick and fast and wet, I hit something buried in the snow, my front tyre punctured and I had to change a wheel.

I hereby issue the following warning, if anyone wishes me a Merry Christmas I shall smack them with my wheel brace!

PS: If anyone wishes to know how the Germans managed to lose, not one, but two world wars, merely glance at the instruction manual for an A-class Mercedes - muppets!

And yes, I'm a muppet, too, and I shall never leave my house again unless the temperature is 72 degrees and rising!

In his own inimitable words

Poor 'Little Willy', I really shouldn't tease him, what with him being "pretty ugly" and only having, well, a little willy as well as being unable to grow a beard at the age of 28 - his description - but on the other hand, he's such a knuckle-dragging mouth-breather that it's further than my good nature can reach to stop.  However, as the spirit of goodwill is about at this time of year, I will simply re-print his last post, in full - and without comment.  I feel, in a very profound way, that it says all you need to know about 'Little Willy' and does so in his very own badly spelt, ungrammatical, grunt-speak, writing style:

humans are not rational . . .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

". . . and we should recognise that fact and maybe try to use that fact to work out ways of communicating and convincing people because this is real. This is the most serious threat we have ever faced in all of history."

This video is incredible and there are several more fantastic quotes in there. Eg:

"Imagine you read in the newspaper tomorrow that we find out that all the excess CO2 in the world was being released by Al Qaeda. Think about that. Would we react? Of course we would. We would spend any amount of money to fight that. We would spend a trillion dollars (which we just did)."

"We need to support global family planning. There's too many people on earth right now. This is typically a taboo subject in climate change but its going to be controlled one way or another and I just think we should do it the humane way."

I'm also struck, as I imagine most sentient observers would be, by the irony of having a Chevron add at the beginning. Such observers may also be struck by my positive opinion of a film which contains a sweeping endorsement of geoengineering; a topic I have previously condemned as "fucking stupid". However, Miller's endorsement is nuanced and heavily conditional upon being part of a multi-fronted strategy to simultaneously slash emissions and address social inequality.

Be honest, would you give this man a GCSE, let alone a Ph.D.?

 

Boxing Day - sorted!

Good grief, I must be getting even older and more doddery than I realised.  I went through The Daily Mail TV guide (the very best there is!) for the film listings over the Christmas hols - it ran to two double pages!  I found one worth watching!  That's about par for the course these days given the deluge of crap which pours forth from Hollywood.  Still, this one is a cracker, simply superb, right up there alongside An Education, than which I can praise no higher!  It is The Painted Veil, based on the story by Somerset Maugham, which tells the painful story of a middle-class couple who slip and slide into emotional turmoil and trouble, suffer for their sins but pass through catharsis into a new and stronger relationship.  Just terrific acting of the very highest quality, superb cinemaphotography with scenes set in China which quite lierally took my breath away in amazement.  It's on BBC2 at 9.00pm New Year's Eve - set your recorders!

Anyway, so thrilled was I with discovering that nugget of pure gold that I tossed the paper away satisfied.  Fortunately, in browsing the net for a totally different purpose I nearly fell off my chair this morning when I discovered that the RSC production of Hamlet with David (Dr. Who) Tennant and Patrick Stewart which took London by storm earlier this year, has been filmed - you can read about it here.  I confess that I have never seen David Tennant except in briefly caught segments of Dr. Who and I was rather off put by his peculiar facial expressions - he seemed to have a tendency to leave his mouth open and was possessed of the biggest bulging eyes since I last saw Ed Balls on TV!  Without the guiding hand of the late Bernard Levin I don't trust London theatre critics as far as I can pee into a gale, and I suspect that the huge rush for the stage version was much more to do with Tennant's popularity with the young as anything to do with a sudden upsurge of interest in Shakespeare.  Still, it is not to be missed, so again, set those recorders - but remember it lasts 3 hours!

Of course, I do realise how immensely grateful you all are for the way in which I guide your cinematic and TV watching, and how concerned you all are to repay my efforts but please, no cheques, that 'One-eyed' Brown and his minions have me under surveillance, so cash only or cases of decent claret to the usual lock-up in Stepney!

When East meets East

This made me choke a bit on my Weetabix this morning!  The indefatigable Trevor Loudon, owner of the excellent New Zeal blog which I highly recommend, avoided the distractions of the circus in Copenhagen and kept his eyes on other much more important matters which you will not see reported in your MSM. He spotted what might prove to be an exceedingly ominous meeting on December 10th between the ruling political parties of China and Japan in which both sides pledged ever closer political and strategic ties.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I expected, and indeed, would favour an American concentration on Pacific affairs even to the detriment of European matters.  It is never easy to know what is going on behind closed diplomatic doors but from the outside looking in, it seems to me that 'infant Obama' and his wicked 'step-mother Hillbilly' have taken their eyes off the ball.  If Japan were to move from the American orbit into a Chinese one then the whole order of things in the Pacific will change.  Smaller nations will follow the new bully on the block into a larger and larger anti-American bloc!

Is it any wonder that the Chinese prime minister treated Obama with barely disguised contempt at Copenhagen?

The rank smell of cant

Steve McIntyre can spot humbuggery at a hundrd paces so he was hardly tested with this prize example from The Washington Post written by one of the world's greatest humbugs, Michael Mann, he of 'hockey-stick' fame, or should that be infamy?  In it, Mann sort of defends the scandal of the leaked e-mails from East Anglia University.  I say 'sort of' because he casually tosses his erstwhile friend and colleague, Phil Jones, to the dogs, thus:

I cannot condone some things that colleagues of mine wrote or requested in the e-mails recently stolen from a climate research unit at a British university.

Roughly translated that means, 'cheers, Phil, nice knowin' ya, pity about the e-mails but ya know the first rule of climate science - don't get caught!'  The comments to his 'WaPo' article are worth a quick skim because they are overwhelmingly critical of both Mann and the editorial policy of the 'WaPo'.  Also, they are quick to spot Mann's blatant hypocrisy given that when Jones e-mailed him with this:

Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI

Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

… [unrelated]..
Cheers
Phil

Instead of a stern sermon on the sanctity of open scientific practice, he wrote this:

Hi Phil,

[... unrelated]

I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is: generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

talk to you later,

mike

Well, he's now under investigation by his university.  Neither Mann nor Jones are elderly so they have plenty of time in the future to join the likes of Bernie Madoff and Tiger Woods in contemplating their own utterly ruined reputations.

Ah, shame . . . !

More twinkle-toes stuff

I'm begining to get seriously hooked on this twinkle-toes, ballet stuff.  Last night I watched Riot at the Rite on BBC4 - I did tell you about it, so if you missed it consider yourself bollocked but watch the BBC2 schedules in the New Year because it will almost certainly be repeated (see Late News, below)- it is not to be missed!  It is true that I slightly misled you because I assumed that it was going to be a documentary followed by a performance but it turned out to be a drama based on the events.  Normally that sort of thing has me reaching for the 'do-flicker-thingie' (sorry if you techophobes don't understand my specialist jargon!) to switch over, or off.  Thank God I didn't!

Alex Jennings plays Diaghilev and he is superb, catching exactly what a monstrous, bullying, charming ego he possessed.  Thanks to one of my visitor/readers, the distinguished Canadian ballet critic, Leland Windreich, I have been advised to try Serge Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes by Lyn Gavafola as an authoritative biography of this incredible man and I shall be buying that in the New Year.  He, himself, appears to have achieved nothing in any art form whatsoever and yet ... and yet ... he gathered these dancers about him and bullied or bought the very best talent in every field and with a mixture of bullshit and bravado virtually created the modernist movement.  Aidan McArdle plays Stravinsky and captures the intensity of the man who just knew, in his musical bones, that The Rite would change the world of music and ballet for ever.  Adam Garcia plays Nijinsky and, rightly given his impending mental problems, it is an introverted portrayal.

But it is the scenes in the rehearsal room where the action is electrifying.  When I directed plays I always told my actors that if there wasn't some metaphorical blood on the floor, the walls and even the ceiling of the rehearsal room, then we weren't trying hard enough.  In this film we can see that the blood is almost real as the dancers try and try and try again to master the stuttering, stammering rhythms of Stravinsky's ultra-complex score and the demands of Nijinsky's revolutionary choreography which, as one of the despairing dancers tells him, goes against everything they have ever been taught or trained to do.  My admiration for ballet dancers, always high in respect of their skill, is now sky high for their courage and stamina.  In addition the film gets across the courage of the original dancers who, whilst trying to perform their hideously complicated steps were having trouble hearing the beat from the orchestra pit because of the hoots and the howls from the rioting audience.

Please, do yourselves a favour and keep an eye open for the BBC2 schedules (I assume it will be BBC2 and not 1) in coming weeks because they will have to repeat it to justify the huge expense in making it.  It really is a magnificent piece of filmed drama.

Late News Special:

I have just read, courtesy of The Independent that it is to be shown at 9.00 pm on the 11th of March.  Their article on the subject is worth reading.

 

Raise a glass to Gaston Rochar

Who he, you ask? He, and his eldest son, Serge, are two very remarkable men. They live in the Lebanon and I first heard of them via the late, great and exceedingly bibulous, Auberon Waugh, who in the '80s used to write the wine page in The Spectator.  During the war, Gaston was influenced by the British viticulturist, Ronald Barton, who was stationed there.  Later, Serge, went to France to obtain all the necessary experience and qualifications.  Later his younger brother, Ronald, so named after the man who inspired his father, moved into the family business.  What inspired me about them at the time Waugh wrote them up, apart from the excellence of their wine, was the fact that the Lebanese civil war was at its bloodiest and each year at some considerable danger the family had to negotiate their way down the Bekaa Valley paying off all the local brigands on the way in order to get their precious wines to the docks. 

At the time I had a few bob and I used to indulge myself in exploring different wines and in my snobbish foolishness would never have considered a Lebanese wine as worthy of my palate, but if Auberon Waugh recommended a pint of piss I would have drunk it, and so I tried Chateaux Musar.  It is an excellent wine, not it must be said in all honesty, a truly great wine, but it has one immense feature - it is consistent, year after year after year.  You don't, as I used to do over my beloved clarets, need to fret over which year to buy, Chateaux Musar is more or less the same every year.  It won't knock your socks off but it is always smooth, with a good body, pungent on the nose - and not very expensive! Available in Waitrose, I believe.

Cheers  . . .

Why couldn't Schubert have dipped his pen and not his 'wick'!

Someone, I forget who, once wrote that Schubert wrote all the great tunes.  How true and how cruel of the 'not-so-Intelligent Designer' (in this instance) to allow him to die of the pox in 1828 at the age of 31.  I cannot pretend, and wouldn't dare before this knowledgeable readership, that I am expert in his works but I do have a CD collection of his symphonies and what always amuses me when I listen to them is that no matter how hard he tries to be solemn and portentious, dammit, the good humour just bubbles through.  One is constantly reminded of apple-cheeked Austrian lovelies dressed in dierndls performing jolly little dances.  I think it's fair to say that Schubert's symphonies leave you feeling happier at the end rather than sadder.  If for no other reason, that makes him unique as a classical composer.

Sweet Charity!

Interesting article in The Spectator this week by Ed Howker on the subject of charities - no link available so go and buy a copy, you miserable cheapskates!  Not being a wealthy man I have to carefully pick and choose where to give such donations as I can afford.  I have two basic rules of thumb which guide my giving.  First, I never give to what I call the mega-charities, Oxfam, Christian Aid and their ilk.  I just know from personal experience that when any organisation grows beyond a certain size and lacks any profit and loss discipline, the waste grows exponentially.  Howker confirms my suspicions, pointing out that Christian Aid has a budget of £82 million but only spends £54 million doing what it says on the tin.  It conducts no charity work here yet employs 453 staff on an average salary of £37k a year.  It only employs 306 people abroad where its main work is supposed to be done.  To add insult to injury, it spends £12 million a year on "campaigning, advocacy and education", and we all know what that entails!  In case you live in a parallel universe and do not know, read what Martin Drewry, then their head of campaigning, wrote in the Socialist Worker magazine:

The development movement is coming of age politically . . . most of all it's about fighting the forces of neo-liberalism that are forcing poor countries to privatise their services and open their markets to the rich countries' businesses.

My second golden rule was never to give to overseas charities.  Not that I have anything against foreigners, you understand, but I just think there is more than enough hardship requiring alleviation here before I consider them.  Being, as you may have discerned, something of a contrarian, I have now deliberately broken my second golden rule - well, hell, that's what rules are for!  As you know once a year at Christmas I give something to Mercy Ships:

This ship carries teams of surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses, radiographers, physiotherapists and, well, just about every medical practitioner you can think of - and they all work for nothing, giving up their holidays, or sometimes taking unpaid leave and spending long sabbaticals aboard ship.  But, of course, these people need a host of non-medical people to keep the whole thing going so there are a multitude of what I might call 'cooks and bottle-washers' working away - for nothing - to keep the ship going.  Apparently, they, too, are eager to offer practical help in the countries they visit.  Unable to apply medical skills, they give up their free time on board to go inland and visit and help and advise on projects in the main city or the countryside.  I have added a Mercy Ships article on the subject below.

Please, this Christmas, spare a few quid for Mercy Ships.  Every pound (or dollar!) sent in before 31st December will be matched by a wealthy donor up to £150,ooo.  Just click here, fill in the form with your name and address and card details and if you pay tax in the UK tick the box because that gets them more money from the government.  Just a fiver or a tenner will do, and some poor kid with a cleft palate, or a woman whose insides have been torn to shreds by rape during a civil war, or an old man going blind with cataracts, will be grateful beyond measure or means to thank you for what you give.

Mercy Ministries

Many crew members of the Africa Mercy hold positions that involve little or no interaction with the local community.  Thus, in every field service, Mercy Ministries provides opportunities for crew members to work within the local community through partnerships with longstanding, land-based ministry projects.

"Many of the crew work eight-hour, very routine jobs onboard the Africa Mercy," said Mercy Ministries Coordinator, Ines Kronester.  "I think they appreciate the opportunity to get a feel for what is going on outside in the local community.  It's important to see how other ministries are working in Africa."  

Before the Africa Mercy enters a country, a small team is sent in advance to begin forming relationships with local ministries.  Upon arrival, Ines identifies approximately ten ministry sites crew members can partner with throughout the field service.  

"Ideally we find team leaders for each site.  Crew members can then sign up to go out and attend at theses sites during their spare time.  Ideally, most opportunities occur in evenings and the weekends," said Kronester.  "It's very low-key at the beginning.  We start by doing visitations, playing with kids, and supporting long-term ministries in practical ways like painting and cleaning."

During the 2009 Field Service in Benin, ministry opportunities have included working at a home for trafficked and abused boys, alongside the Missionaries of Charity, and supporting Soeurs Salisiennes, a skills training programme for market girls run by the female branch of Don Bosco.

The skills training programme has been one of Kronester's favourite ministry sites.  "It's an amazing programme," she said.  Participating girls come from the harsh market, where they have a rough and stressful daily routine. 

Each is given the opportunity to complete two of the six-month courses on baking, pastry-making, cooking, or soap-making.  Girls are taken in overnight for a small fee and complete the skills training in the mornings, returning to sell in the market in the afternoons.  The programme is designed to enable girls to sell better items in the market or leave the harsh environment altogether.   

On average, eighty crew members visit various Mercy Ministry sites every week.  Often, crew members discover serious needs of land-based partners.  Many times, crew members have offered further assistance through financial offerings and special projects. 

"It often becomes much bigger than visitations.  Crew members feel like they've left something behind, something very purposeful," said Kronester.  "We try to offer a broad range of ministry opportunities so everyone can find their place.  We've gotten a lot of feedback from exiting crew members saying these are often the most valuable times for them.  It's been well-received."

 

The ship of fools sails on - to the rocks!

Sometimes even grizzled old observers of the political scene like me are almost (but not quite, you will be pleased to know) struck dumb at the idiocy verging on madness that besets our leaders from time to time.  I truly do not remember seeing anything as bizarre and lunatic as the Copenhagen meeting.  Apart from the sort of delicious irony which has me drooling and purring with pleasure as I watch thousands of delegates and MSM types freezing their collective arses off in the snow and ice whilst they try to convince us that the end of the world is nigh because of global warming, there is the sight and sound of 'One-eyed' Brown attempting to wrench the steering into his hands with a show of bravado and cant which should be richly comical but leaves you near tears.  Meanwhile 'The One' hovers discreetly off-stage in the wings waiting to see if there any worthwhile photo-ops (see below) but dithering lest the whole circus proves to be a disaster in which case you will barely catch a glimpse of him.

Andrew Bolt at The Herald Sun provides some highlights from the support acts.

These maniacs in Copenhagen are voting on your future:

President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ - “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell....let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation.

Then another speaker rose who turned out to be as phoney as CRU climate statistics:

Nothing is real in Copenhagen - not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the “solution”. In fact, here’s how fake it all is:

The lead negotiator for the small island nation of Tuvalu, the bow-tie wearing Ian Fry, broke down as he begged delegates to take tough action.

“I woke up this morning crying,” and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit,” Mr Fry said on Saturday, as his eyes welled with tears.

”The fate of my country rests in your hands,” he concluded, as the audience exploded with wild applause.

My dears, not a dry eye in the place, nor Tuvalu one would suppose!  Alas, the emotional Mr. Fry does not actually live in Tuvalu, oh dear me, no, he has a very nice house in New South Wales about 200 kms from the sea - so that's alright, then!  According to his neighbour "he’s lived in Queanbeyan for more than a decade, while he has worked his way up to being “very high up in climate change”." Yeah, I bet he has!

I will not sicken you by quoting anything from that world-renowned thief and mass murderer, Mr. Mugabe, but he, too, received a standing ovation.  'Pass the sick bag, Alice!'

Every picture tells a story

As Paul A. Rahe points out, in effect, whilst vainly trying to hide his smirk, yesterday's great photo-op can sometimes return to haunt you.  He recalls Bill Clinton's famous picture of himself sucking on a cigar, a picture that came in very useful for the tabloids when the Monica Lewinsky scandal hit the headlines.  I bet the White House was delighted with this chance for 'The One' to be photographed in close, very close, proximity to 'The Other One'.  Alas the day, 'The Other One' turns out to be a marketing man's invention, a product of image creation, about as real as a CGI-enhanced film, an apparently blameless, family man who adored his wife and children who, when you blow away the froth and feathers, stands before us as a persistent customer of whores and tarts who has to pay for his sex.

But now let us consider 'The One' who presented himself as a moderate Left-wing Democrat - even I gave him the benefit of the doubt prior to his election.  Now we see, through another cloud of froth and feathers, that the man, of his own free will, consorts with a mixture of Marxists and revolutionaries combined with old-style, corrupt, Chicago-machine politicians.  In the background, keeping a discreet distance, the very worst elements of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs and the main man, George Soros, latch on to the dying body-politic of America and leech off it for as long as they can.  There is now no doubt, no hesitation, no reservations, Obama is an extreme revolutionary Marxist.  He and his dreadful wife made that quite clear before the election but we - alright then, I - failed to take it seriously.

Thank the 'Intelligent Designer', the American people are gradually realising the full horror of what they have inflicted on themselves.  Obama's poll numbers have fallen faster than any president's of the last 50 years.  Not yet a year in office and his popularity has sunk well below the 50% mark.  One little remarked upon event is due next summer and could provide some hideously embarrassing publicity for the White House.  Rod Blagojevich, the former Governor of Illinois, is due to stand trial for corruption and is accused of offering Obama's vacant seat for sale to the highest bidder.  According to Yahoo News:

Blagojevich attorneys have asked U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel to give them an early look at the government's evidence, including records of interviews with Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett and two labor backers of Obama, Thomas Balanoff and Andy Stern.

In addition they they have indicated that they might wish to interview Obama, himself!  Whatever, Blogojevich has made it absolutely clear that he will fight like a cornered rat to defend himself and if anyone knows under which carpets the political shit has been swept in the past, he does, and he intends to lift those carpets high and wide!  The political stench from Chicago needs a good airing and if that occurs shortly before the Autumn elections, so much the better.  If it leaves political thugs like Rahm Emanual, Valerie Jowett and Andy Stern (the communist boss of the all-powerful SEIU) exposed for the nasty little apparatchiks they are, then I hope Blagojevich really tells it the way it was - and still is.

Black bitch!

I refer, admittedly in a less than gentlemanly way, to the lady who masquerades as the Zambian Minister for the Environment.  I have just watched her on TV being interviewed in Copenhagen with kid gloves by that great softie, Leftie, Jon Snow.  The lady, and I use the term loosely, spent most of her time berating everyone and their uncle for failing to hand over a Hercules full of dosh to her poor country so that they could cope with shopping in Paris, Milan and New York dealing with climate change.  Out of idle curiosity, and also because the sight and sound of this international tart was making Tiger Woods's girlfriends look positively respectable, I came upstairs to check on the Zambian defence forces and their budget.

You will be comforted to know, because I realise how much you care for all things Zambian, that their army is the proud owner, amongst other pieces of hardware, of 60 tanks, 70 smaller armoured fighting vehicles, 33 armoured personnel carriers, 68 pieces of fairly heavy artillery and 30 multiple rocket launchers.  Their airforce boasts 24 Migs and 35 2-seater trainer/attack aircraft.  The Zambian defence forces represent about 8% of Zambia's total budget.  This compares with Britain's spend on defence which works out at 0.55% of total government spending.

Before I really lose my temper and invade Zambia myself, perhaps someone should shake the Zambian Minister for the Environment warmly by the throat and tell her that if she doesn't stop rattling her begging bowl under my impoverished nose I'll stick it up her Zambesi!

Good God, is he still alive?

I know you lot will find this hard to believe but for the first two years of my working life I actually attended, part-time, an art school as part of my training to become an architect.  Difficult to think of me as an art student, isn't it?  Anyway, one of my 'heroes' of that time was Oscar Niemeyer, a man who was a major creator of Brasilia.  At the time I was stunned by the daring and elegance of his creations which seemed to me be the very greatest expressions of beauty through architecture.  If today I am less certain, just put it down to my age - and talking of which, the reason I have raised the subject at all is that I read that Niemeyer was 102 yesterday, an occasion which he greeted with the following words "Turning 102 is crap!"  I rather warm to the old boy, even if he is still the ardent communist he used to be.  Here are some of his creations, the first three from Brasilia and the last the 2003 (I think) pavillion at the Serpentine Gallery in London

 

 

 

 

Another vagina chronicle!

I can't say that I am following the Chilcott enquiry with either diligence, enthusiasm or even that much interest.  The chances of it producing anything that is both new and/or important is minimal.  I have been depressed, but not surprised, at the supine attitude of the likes of Sir Jeremy Greenstock toward that rabble of thieves, murderers and tyrants a.k.a the United Nations. The fuss and furore over Blair's remarks to an interviewer over the weekend says much more about the febrile atmosphere in the MSM and amongst those desperate for a smoking gun with which to prove Blair a war criminal and then to use it to execute him!  This is neatly and wittily summed up by David Aaranovich in The Times:

But up until now the Chilcot inquiry has more or less progressed as I thought it would, with much interesting testimony overlooked as time-poor scribblers scan the transcripts for anything that will incriminate Mr Blair, in much the same way as teenagers used to speed-read library books looking for “vagina”.

Today, Sir Jeremy is bemoaning the fact that when he was sent to Iraq after the war he had virtually no influence over the Americans.  Given that he did just about everything he could to stymie the whole operation prior to invasion by constant bowing and scraping to the UN, is it any wonder the Yanks thought him a total 'wuss'?  There is no doubt that the Yanks made a complete cock-up of the occupation - to begin with - but from what I have heard and read, we didn't have much of a clue, either.  At least the Yanks learned from their mistakes but judging by the British humiliation - it can be called nothing else - at Basra, our leadership, military and civilian, learned nothing.  So no change there, then!

Measure for measure!

The Daily Mail reports on the case in which a man, his wife, daughter and two sons returned home to find three intruders, one armed with a knife, inside their house.  They were threatened, forced to lie on the floor and be tied up.  Fortunately one of the sons made his escape and roused his uncle from a nearby house.  The intruders fled but one was chased and caught by the victim and his brother who then, to quote a phrase I remember vividly from an Indian friend of mine, "Gave the scallawag a jolly good walloping!"  This 'walloping' was aided by the use of a cricket bat and resulted in the 'scallawag' suffering brain damage.  He had a record of 54 previous convictions.  The victim and his brother were jailed for 30 and 39 months yesterday by Judge John Reddihough who thereby wins the coveted 'Cocklecarrot of the Year' award.  The judge's main point was that whilst the victim was entitled to use force to defend his family and home and force the intruders out, he was not entitled to chase them up the road and inflict punishment on them.  The judge said all this because he is useless, stupid, complacent, ignorant and intellectually corrupt. 

Let me begin by mentioning one of his previous cases.  On November 30th he sentenced a career burglar to 3 years in jail.  This villain had already received a previous jail term of 6 years but, as part of the criminal 'justice' racket of which Judge Reddihough is part, he had been released early and, as everyone in the real world (so that lets out Judge Reddihough) would have fully expected, he instantly returned to breaking and entering.  Within months he committed several offences.  Now, I don't know about you people, but if this recreant had come before me having already been sentenced to 6 years (albeit shortened by early release) I would have given him 12 years for the next series of offences - with no remission.  Judge Reddihough gave the man 3 years in the full and certain knowledge that he would be out in probably less than 18 months and back to his old 'trade'.  And I would remind you that the all-too-real result of this scum returning to his 'trade' is fear, mental trauma, loss of precious possessions, insecurity amongst dozens, perhaps hundreds, of totally innocent and law-abiding people.

Yesterday, His dis-Honour, the Judge, handed down an even longer sentence on one of the two law-abiding men and his justification was that he was duty bound to stop people taking the law into their own hands.  And this is where his intellectual corruption shows itself.  There is an unwritten contract between the state and the subject that it is the state alone which will take into its hands the power of punishment.  My question is quite simple, is the state defaulting on the contract? I, and I suspect (for I cannot know for sure) most law-abiding people in the land, are certain that the state, through its police and judicial system, has indeed reneged on the deal.  They are not inflicting punishment and when they do it is derisory - ask any of the scum who stroll out of courts with a caution or out of prisons having served less than half their sentences.  Put simply they are not protecting and defending us.  Consequently, I think people have the right in certain circumstances to inflict their own punishment, and whilst they should answer in a court for their actions, a defence of fear and anger at the implicit threat to yourself or your family as a result of armed intruders in your home should be a sufficient.

Of course, there is another aspect to this which shows the moral degeneration of the likes of Judge Reddihough, and that is their closed shop, trade union mentality.  Remember, all this system of so-called justice is the way they earn their living.  Their fat fees as barristers, their social advancement as judges, their eventual hope of enoblement, all depend on them running and controlling the courts.  Hence their fear and loathing of the great unwashed having any part of so called 'law and order'. 

I wish I knew where Judge Reddihough lived, I'd publish his home address in an instant and hope that some drugged-up, sub-human mouth-breather broke into his house and threatened his wife and children.

'Tis the season to be merry

Well, perhaps that overstating it a bit, so let me just say that there is a tiny chink of light in the stormy sky and you can see it right here, from the Rasmussen Daily Poll as of a couple of days ago, courtesy of those 'rogues and peasants' at 'IHTM':

 

 

Rassmussen compare strong approval against strong dis-approval. 

Gallup shows just approval against dis-approval.  At the beginning of Obama's term the former outweighed the latter 69 to 13. Today, just under a year later, it is down to 48 to 43!

The importance of this will be felt, I hope, in next year's Congressional elections.  I read somewhere that for the Republicans to stand a chance of sweeping the board and capturing both Houses, Obama's popularity ratings would need to sink to the low 40s.  That seemed impossible a few months ago but now . . .?  To lose both houses of Congress would leave Obama as a futile, feeble president and I suspect that such an outcome would lead to nuclear fission in the Democrat party.  In the meantime, that feline, feminine moose-hunter from Alaska whose book has shot to the top of the best sellers list and who has received rapturous applause from huge turnouts at all her book signings which, surely a co-incidence, seemed to take place in suitably sensitive political States, must be oiling up her gun and calibrating the sights ready for big game.

Go git 'im, gal!

Additional:  Perhaps that chink of light just widened a fraction.  This, courtesy of Drudge, from The Washington Times:

President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. won't be on the midterm ballot next year, but their former Senate seats will be, and both races are now either tossups or leaning Republican in high-visibility contests.

Mr. Obama, who was a freshman senator from Illinois when he was elected president, and Mr. Biden, who was in his sixth term as a senator from Delaware, come from states that have been running strongly Democratic in past elections. No one doubts that Mr. Obama would have been a re-election shoo-in had he remained in the Senate and that Mr. Biden had his seat for the foreseeable future.

But in another sign of political winds that appear to be blowing against the Democrats in the 2010 cycle, Republicans and independent political analysts say the chances are at least even that their seats could be taken over by two strong Republican candidates next November, when the GOP is expected to make gains in Congress and in the state governorships.

The swollen maggots wriggling around in our suppurating wound

I can think of no other analogy than swollen maggots to describe this present government.  Our economy is suffering a grievous, possibly fatal, wound and these malignant maggots are feasting on the gangrene.  Brown, Darling, Balls and Whelan should be arrested for high treason because they have, with malice aforethought, decided to decimate the British economy and hand the Tories a waste land in which, they hope, they will perish allowing a Labour return in 5 years time - if not sooner.  I warned of this months ago and being right on this occasion gives me no pleasure.  Consider the following from The Spectator:

To understand the scale of the damage that Mr Brown is doing, consider this. Already the national debt is £830 billion — the Pre-Budget Report said it will hit a staggering £1.5 trillion by 2014/15. After that point the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the closest we have to a post-Budget lie detector, takes up the story. It estimates that even with an aggressive attempt to cut spending the debt will hit £1.8 trillion in 2032 and then decline slowly hitting £1.6 trillion in 2040/41.

My emphasis because, of course, the Labour maggots have no intention of cutting seriously, they will leave that to the Tories having run up as much debt as they possibly can in the meantime:

And if these figures sound abstract, like a fiscal fantasy, let us put it into perspective.

This year, and every year for at least the next decade, Britain will pay more in debt interest than on educating our children or defending the realm. Every penny servicing this debt, this toxic legacy of this incompetent Prime Minister, is a penny that could be otherwise put to use creating jobs in the economy. On the Budget’s figures, a child born today in Britain will already owe £13,500 — and will have salary confiscated through the tax system to pay this debt. [My emphasis again.]

It is true that this recession is global, but the British public have been hit the hardest. All nations are running deficits — and most will do so next year and the year after. Over this period, according to the European Commission’s forecasts, the people of Italy will have to shoulder a national debt which will increase by £1,400 per person. In Germany, it will be £2,200. In France, £3,300 per person. All of this is deplorable. But in Britain the increase in debt will be £5,500 per person. No other European government intends to impose a greater burden on their people.  [My emphasis again.]

Most of my readers here are pretty intelligent people (well, not 'Little Willy', of course, but then he comes under the heading of 'The Freak Show') and they will probably share my shrinking faith in the ability of the Tory leadership to do anything very much about healing our wound, not least because the cure is a long and deeply painful financial cauterisation.  Everything I read concerning 'Call me Dave' and his creepy little side-kick, Osborne, tells me that they are just another pair of electoral hucksters whose only aim is to keep themselves in power for as long as possible.  Inflicting real pain and hardship on their electors for the greater longterm good of the country is simply off their radar.

For whom can we look for succour?  Well, if you're broke you need someone with money and that takes us to the international money men and their organisations.  Irwin Stelzer in The Spectator offers an intriguing possibility:

[T]he government might call in its old friend, the International Monetary Fund, to do its dirty work. A new Tory government, having reacted with mock horror to what it finds on the Treasury’s books, could ask for help in cleaning up the mess that the Brown government left in its wake. But this is hardly at the top of David Cameron’s wish list.

You can say that again!  But the loss of face and credibility would be enormous even if the Tories could put the blame on Labour.  Far more likely, in my opinion, and a possibility in Steltzer's, is to rely on inflation:

Or it [the government] can rely on inflation to allow it to repay its creditors with mounds of depreciated pounds. The Treasury is issuing massive amounts of new debt, and the Bank of England is obligingly printing money with which to buy up that debt. Not quite on the scale of the Weimar Republic, but enough to drive prices up and the value of the pound down.

However, the 'money mafia' do not appreciate getting their 'vig' in devalued pounds and are likely to bring in their heavies as well as cutting off lines of credit.  A key indicator into how the money men value the worth of a debt is to be found in the cost of insuring that debt against default.  Alas, I cannot reproduce the comparison list from The Spectator but suffice to say that the cost of insuring a British government debt of, say, $10m over 5 years is $72k pa.  Here are some comparisons:

Britain  $72k

Macdonald's:  $57k

BP: $40k

Gap    $37k

France: $24k

Germany: $22k

There you have it, as a nation we don't rate better than even the likes of MacDonald's or Gap!

The part of it all that makes me almost want to weep, or shriek, is that contained in this dire situation is a dynamic solution which would have superb longterm benefits for this country if only the Tories in general, and 'Call me Dave' in particular, could stiffen their sinews and summon up their blood - so no chance of that then!  It would involve slashing government expenditure in all areas, no exceptions, and I do mean paring everything down to the bone including the NHS, education, welfare, overseas aid, payments to Europe, defence - everything.  It would also need tax cuts to business guaranteed for a long time to entice foreign business back to the UK and encourage new entrepreneurs to start up.

Dream on!  Well, a man can dream, can't he?

'Umbled, I am, 'umbled!

Whilst I'm in this rare state of humility I suppose I had better perform another 'mea culpa, mea maxima culpa' by confessing to yet another humiliation inflicted upon my monstrous ego last night.  As you will have gathered from my earlier post on the subject of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, I am in a bit of a ballet mode at the moment.  Thus, last night I watched BBC4 and a history of the Ballet Russes and the truly incredible man who invented it, ran it, inspired it and drove it onwards to revolutionise the whole of the 20th century arts world - Serge Diaghilev.  It is being repeated on this Sunday 13th at 11.00 pm (Sky Ch. 116).  My ignorance on this subject was almost total.  It was amazing to me to discover how hugely influential the Ballets Russe was over so many different, disparate parts of artistic endevour - dance, music, choreography, production/set design, costume design, painting - it goes on.  Some very slight mitigation was derived by me from the fact that at least I did know about the 'riot' in Paris in 1913 when Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring was premiered.

Of course, there are not really any 'tipping points' in the history of art, or the history of anything, it all seems to just move inexorably along in a somewhat hit and miss manner and somehow, in some way, it keeps changing, but undoubtedly there are certain incidents, particular creations, which stand out as critical points in the development of art.  No-one, I suggest, can listen to, or view, The Rite of Spring and not fail to have their musical view altered.  It has wider implications, too, because whilst I rail against the absurdities of modernism I secretly wonder if that puts me amongst the booing, jeering audience in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées that night in 1913.  On Friday 18th, BBC4 (Sky 116) are telling the story of the 'riot' and I think it is followed by a filmed performance - not to be missed - that's an order!

Oddly enough, I watched a filmed performance of The Firebird by Stravinsky immediately afterwards and remained utterly unmoved!  Only one good 'tune' (I can hear the classical music fiends shuddering at the word) and that comes right at the end.  Fairy tales seem to loom large in the Russian soul but, alas, not in mine.  That is why I think that Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, choreographed by MacMillan, is the very greatest because it fuses together an all too real, human tragedy with rich, subtle and moving music, and choreography which expresses the range of human emotions.

Right, that's enough humility!  Back to snapping, snarling normality now!

Correction:  Thanks to a commenter I have corrected my first reference to BBC4's Sky Channel which is 116.

Telling tales

For such a bumptious fellow I constantly surprise myself by my cringing admiration for those I come across who are so obviously better than me.  Not 'better' in every respect, I can only cringe so far, but in certain aspects of life.  For example, tale tellers - yarn spinners - story tellers.  How do they do it?  How do they think them up?

I am provoked to these grumbling thoughts (well, dammit, I just wish I had their talent) because I have just finished reading Stoppard's play text, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.  How on earth did he begin to think of looking at the monumental story of Hamlet from the point of view of those two minor characters?  It's as though he has picked the world up and put it back down the wrong way up.  In doing so, of course, he raises profundities to equal those in Shakespeare's masterpiece but even so, would I ever dare to consider Lear as seen through the eyes of put-upon Oswald?  In fact, and this is even more depressing, would it even occur to me?  No, is the glum reply.

Returning to the more mundane world of 'crash-bang-wallops' (or pulp fiction, if you prefer) to which I am addicted, even here I am constantly humiliated by writers whose ability to invent plots of such seeming simplicity but which, when you think about it, are diabolically clever, is beyond mere admiration.  I worship their talent and thank the 'Intelligent Designer' for it, and for my good fortune in being able to enjoy the end results!

Take for example a book I have just started - Turbulence by Giles Foden.  I have a sort of invested interest in this because back in May last year I wrote a post on the real man who Foden has fictionalised for the purposes of his ingenious yarn.  To save you looking it up, here is what I wrote:

I stumbled over the second of my unknown English 'heroes' only yesterday whilst, as the little 'Memsahib' puts it, "Wasting your time on that blasted computer when you should be doing ............... " (fill in any number of jobs around the house and garden).  Anyway, his name is Lewis Fry Richardson (1881-1953) and I bet you haven't heard of him either, unless you're a meteorologist, a psychologist, a fluid dynamicist, a student of war and its causes or a student of Chaos Theory, because he was an important contributor to all of those fields.  So, just like Lanchester, he was one of those amazing Victorian polymaths the like of which we no longer seem to produce, instead all we get from our universities these days are teeth-grindingly tedious mono-subject specialists who then mature into fully-fledged fanatical experts determined to boss everyone around.

I instantly warmed to Richardson when I read this quote which ought to be hung above the desks of every scientists in the world:

"Mathematical expressions have, however, their special tendencies to pervert thought: the definiteness may be spurious, existing in the equations but not in the phenomena to be described; and the brevity may be due to the omission of the more important things, simply because they cannot be mathematized : : : . Against these faults we must constantly be on our guard : : : . It will probably be impossible to avoid them entirely, and so they ought to be realized and admitted : : : .”

He was, and remained, a Quaker all of his life but during WWI he volunteered for the Friend's Ambulance Service in which he served with distinction as a driver. After the war he worked for the meteorological office but when Churchill insisted that it be subsumed under RAF control he resigned because throughout his life he would never work on any project with links to the military.  Blessed with a gentle humour he is remembered by his fellow fluid dynamicists for this paraphrase of Swift's doggerel: "Big whirls have little whirls to feed on their velocity, and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity - in the molecular sense."  The writer of the appreciation to which I have linked, Prof. J.C.R. Hunt of the Dept. of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics  at Cambridge, was a family friend and he relates a charming story of Richardson on holiday with his wife the year the Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg.  Richardson instantly hit on the idea that perhaps a sonar echo-measuring device might avoid similar tragedies.  Without further ado he had his wife row him up and down in a dinghy in Seagrove Bay whilst he piped notes on a penny whistle aimed at the nearby pier, and using his umbrella as an amplifier, he measured the time taken for the echo to return.  In my view, that's proper science, that is!

In his book, Foden cleverly weaves reality and fiction by inventing a brilliant young scientist who, in 1944, is despatched to Scotland under the pretext of setting up a meteorological station very close to where the reclusive - and pacifist - scientist Wallace Ryman lives.  His secret mission is to winkle out of the old boy the secret of the 'Ryman number' which is crucial in the theory of turbulence, and therefore weather, and which the allies need to ensure the safe landing of millions of men on the Normandy beaches.

As we all know, the weather was atrocious in early June 1944 and, in arguably the greatest decision of his life, Eisenhower put off D-day by 24 hours having been assured by his weathermen that there would then follow a brief window of opportunity in the weather that was due.  Foden has taken all this and much more to build an intriguing story of fact and fiction which is both well-written and erudite, human and scientific, moving and thrilling.  Treat yourselves to a copy for Christmas.

But, dammit, why didn't I think of that?!

I have NOT slept with Tiger Woods

Normally, of course, I do like to be part of a select 'in crowd' but the mob of people trying to get into Tiger Woods's bank account is so huge that it has become rather common to be part of it and thus I am withdrawing.  Mind you, the crowd of women that Tiger tried to get into appears to be equally large and equally common.  Anyway, as a well-known contrarian, I always avoid crowds so I wish to make it quite clear that I have not slept with Tiger Woods, so there!  It is with great regret that I must announce that the 17th, 28th, 47th - oh hell I've lost count - woman to claim to have slept with Tiger is my very good bad e-pal, Sister Wolf, who has turned me down repeatedly for the last 3 years! Women! Heh!

So, alas, I am unable to offer you any juicy titbits concerning Tigers swinging, but courtesy of those golf fanatics at 'IHTM', I am able to pass on the top 10 of Tiger's golf tips which he offered to the president of the United States, no less:

10. If you’ve played the wrong hole, just take the penalty and move on.

9. Never let a stranger touch your putter.

8. Never switch holes in the middle of a round.

7. If it’s out-of-bounds, even if it looks like you could hit it, it’s out-of-bounds.

6. Remember that playing the wrong hole is loss of hole in match play.

5. A stiff shaft and a big head are no guarantee your balls will go straight.

4. In fact, the bigger the head, the greater the odds your balls will go astray.

3. The grass is always greener over there on that other course you’ve always wanted to play.

2. Trading your old bag for a new bag can really mess up your game.

1. Hey, Michelle is hot. What’s she doing Saturday morning at, say, 7:18?

- Written by Scott Montgomery

Thought for the day

Were I a banker,which thank the Lord I'm not, sir, and if those unpatriotic, snivelling, snarling hyenas who run the country do indeed decide to make a one-off raid on banker's earnings, I would consider consulting m' learned friends to take a case to the highest court available on the grounds that it amounts to a Bill of Attainder, that is, punishing someone for a crime without benefit of a trial.

If any of my readers have legal knowledge in excess of mine, which must include all of you, please let me know if it's a runner.

Tiger Obama and Barack Woods

I am obliged to my regular visitor, 'JK', for pointing me towards this excellent essay by Lisa Schiffren in The American Thinker. I can add little to Ms. Schiffren's analysis except to re-iterate that old saying: "If it's too good to be true, it's almost certainly false!"

The clincher - in case you doubted!

The main defence put up by the HAFs is to the effect that whilst some of the hitherto private language in the e-mails might be subject to various (malicious) interpretations the underlying data, and therefore the science based upon them, remains rock solid.  Willis Eschenbach over at WUWT has taken at random one particular climate station in Darwin, Australia and subjected it to rigorous analysis.  His essay is detailed but very readable and easily understood not only by laymen but even dimwits like me.  I do urge you all to give it a read because there, in a nutshell, is the "trick" of the climate warmers' trade.  Eschenback calls it "the smoking gun", I prefer an example from my favourite headline writers at The Sun - "GOTCHA!"

Ifs, buts and maybes!

To give you fair warning so that you can rapidly switch away before falling into a state of terminal tedium, I am currently engaged in a 'what if' conversation with Bryan of 'Why Now?'.  He's a shocking old Lefty and normally we end up in great hissy-fights rather like the collection of cats with which he surrounds himself.  Happily this conversation is more civilised.

The question arises as to what might have happened if the American carriers had been sunk at Pearl Harbour alongside all the battleships and crusiers?  It would have left America with only 4 other carriers which were then in the Atlantic.  Assuming that 2 of them would have been transferred east, it seems reasonable to assume that the Battle of the Coral Sea (the first naval battle in history which was fought without either side's ships exchanging shots) would have turned out the same, that is, with one US carrier sunk and the other badly damaged.  This damaged survivor would have been America's sole carrier force in the Pacific.

In such circumstances it is surely reasonable to assume that Midway would have been lost thus providing the Japs with a central Pacific base from which they could dominate shipping movements in all directions across the ocean.  And Midway was, if you like, the gateway to Hawaii.  However, even more important than those critical strategic considerations would have been the fact that in a Battle of Midway in which the only American carrier force would have been the badly damaged Yorktown, the Japs would not have had the heart of their own carrier force ripped out by losing 4 of their carriers which included hundreds of precious because irreplaceable, trained and experienced pilots.  I doubt that Hawaii could have been re-enforced if Midway had been lost and the Jap carriers had been free to roam the Pacific, and in that circumstance one has to consider the very real possibility that Hawaii, too, would have fallen, leaving the west coast of America open to ravage by Japanese air power.

This, of course, would have scuppered the grand strategic agreement between Roosevelt and Churchill to make 'Germany first' their operational priority.  Faced with such a threat in the Pacific, American naval resources would, of necessity, have been switched to the east just at the time when we, the British, needed all the help we could get to fight our desperately needed convoys across the Atlantic.

Truly can it be said that "For the want of a nail the shoe was lost  . . . " and all that followed there-on.

Twinkle toes and tears

I know nothing of ballet and care even less.  The modern stuff is frequently ugly to look at as the dancers adopt ridiculously strained poses, and the traditional I find tedious as the story stops dead every few minutes whilst certain 'routines' are danced in time-honoured fashion.  Like I said, I know nothing of ballet.

However, there is one outstanding, tremendous, riveting, emotionally over-powering ballet that never ceases to move me almost to tears.  I first saw it, by accident I think, on the 'telly' during the mid-eighties and I have watched it over and over through the years and even gone so far as to visit the Royal Opera House to see it live.  I refer to MacMillan's version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet - which I actually prefer to the play!  I am reminded of all this by a TV programme last week on the life of the late Dame Margot Fonteyn, followed by a recorded performance of the ballet with her and Nureyev dancing the lead roles.  Oddly enough, and despite the fact that I have nil knowledge of dancing techniques, I found them disappointing.  It wasn't helped by a 1960's style filming technique in which the cuts from camera to camera were rather abrupt, but also, I was disappointed in the performances.  Fonteyn was too old for the role and an unforgiving camera in close up only rubbed in the fact. But there was more than that to my disappointment, she failed I think to get across the girlishness of Juliet which is so important prior to her giant and tragic leap into adulthood.  Similarly, I was disappointed with Nureyev.  He remained expressionless throughout and I thought I detected some slight wobbling in places where he was on one foot. - it's always a sign that I am less than satisfied when I start to pick nits!

Anyway, all of that made me dig out a video tape (yes, I know, old-fashioned codger that I am) of the original version I saw some 20-odd years ago featuring Wayne Eagling as a terrific Romeo who, and I can ony put it his way, really 'yearned' for his love in a way that Nureyev failed to do.  And then there was the delicious, delightful Alessandri Ferri as Juliet, so exquisite, so playfully girlish to begin with, and then dreadfully crushed by the tragedy at the end.  Of course, MacMillan's choreography remains the same, in essence, but in that performance it was danced with such drive and energy, particularly the famous sword fights which leave you breathless - to say nothing of the dancers!  Through it, and over it, flows the supreme music of Prokofiev, at times witty and light-hearted, sometimes bombastic, sometimes profound, tragic and deeply moving.

If you are, rightly, doubtful of my skills as a ballet critic, then go here and read Clive James, a proper critic, and watch some clips from the production. Then, and this is my Christmas present to you all, pop over to Amazon and treat yourself to a DVD of the whole thing.  No, no, I'm not going to pay for the bloody thing,  it's enough that I constantly cast these pearls before you all!  However, it does come with this Duff promise, there is absolutely and definitely no better way to spend a lazy Christmas Day afternoon than slumped on the settee watching this whilst quietly weeping into a mince pie!

"Call me Dave" calls it wrong

The dimwits and spivs at the top of the Tory party are losing the plot.  They have allowed Brown to divert attention to the old-fashioned class war so beloved of ex-university students, third-rate intellectuals, sundry scribblers for the MSM and the like.  They should not have allowed him a chink of daylight, instead, even at the risk of boring us all to death, they should have mounted a non-stop rolling barrage of constantly re-iterated truth that the current crisis in Britain is entirely and absolutely the fault of the Labour government, in general, and the man who was Chancellor for 10 of the last 12 years, in particular.  They should keep shouting this from the roof-tops, over and over and over again, so that the Great Unwashed, oops, the Great British Public never forgets who to blame.  They should keep on quoting the infamous "no more boom and bust" and the incredibly stupid means of Bank regulation introduce by G. Brown.  Nor should they let that nice(?) little Darling off the hook by constantly quoting back at him his ludicrous forecasts issued at the last two pre-Budget reports.  This campaign should be co-ordinated by Central Office so that every weekend a picked bevy of shadow ministers are there making speeches and appearing on TV to keep the pot bubbling with a malicious brew of Labour's past crimes - lest we forget!

Headline of the year

Naturally this eagerly sought after prize goes to The Sun ("We love it!") who are masters of the art.  In this case it refers to the apparently never-ending story of Tiger Woods's sex life - I describe it as a "sex life" rather than a love life for obvious reasons.  Anyway, the latest little tartlet has come out of the woodwork, she being the sixth in line, and thus, The Sun comes out with this headline:

    Now it's six under for Tiger

Cue non-stop sniggers and giggles from me who, if you haven't already guessed, prefers his humour to be utterly peurile!

The latest smash hit movie!

Those rascals at 'IHTM' are at it again with their up to the minute reporting from Hollywood;

It’s IHateTheMedia.com’s Saturday Morning Obama Movie Matinee, bringing you some of the greatest films of all time. This week’s feature film is Liar, Liar starring Barack Hussein Obama in the title role.

Sit back, grab a bag of popcorn, and enjoy.

I particularly enjoyed seeing who was the 'Understudy' and 'Military Consultant'!

Do me a favour - PLEASE!

OK, OK, I know, so I'm acting like those people who hang around outside the supermarket muffled in coats and scarves rattling their charity tins, except, of course, that unlike them I am doing my rattling from the comfort of my study.  Even so, please, please, please, do me a favour and go here and watch the short film on Mercy Ships.  Remember that virtually everyone involved is unpaid and they do it on a voluntary basis in their own time.  Also, please be aware that you can double your and their money because one wealthy donor has promised to match all contributions received up to the 31st December to a total of £150,000.

So please, just click here and all you have to do is type in your name and address  and card details and if you are a UK tax-payer, tick the box.  If a fiver is all you can afford, then send it, every little helps and in this case it will turn into a tenner because of one man's generosity.  This little fella', and others like him, will be very grateful - and you will feel good about yourself!

Justice - Italian style

I have nothing to say on the details of the Meredith Kercher murder for the simple reason that the sum total of my knowledge is limited to the headlines which I skim read and the reports on Sky News.  However, two things strike me as worth a comment, indeed, they deserve to be headlines in their own right but I doubt they will be.  First, what a surprise to see a judge hand down a sentence there and then, immediately following the guilty verdict.  That never seems to happen in Britain where the judge invariably calls for reports - on what or why we are never told - and sentencing comes several weeks later.  The second admirable example of Italian justice was the sentences of 25 and 26 years respectively for the two found guilty.  You would need to kill the Queen to draw that sort of sentence from the delicate little creatures who sit on our High Court benches.  So, viva Italia! - er, and all that sort of thing!

I have a shameful confession to make

Tiger Woods has shown me the light and the way!  It is time, dear reader, for me to come out of the closet, well, not the closet exactly, but my study, actually, and 'fess up to the secret, one might almost call it 'Top Secret', activity in which I indulge.  You see, I play with soldiers!  No, no, no, not real soldiers, I mean toy soldiers.  I blame 'SoD' because when he was about 10 years old he started taking an interest and so we joined a small wargamers club in which we operated as a team, that is, I gave the orders and he did all the fiddly-diddly painting of tiny model soldiers so that we had an 'army' of Napoleonic figures with which to play.  This continued for some years until the time when I found it increasingly difficult to lean across a 10' table to reach my troops, it being an invariable law of wargaming that one's troops end up in the middle of the table and never on the edge where you can reach them.  'SoD', despite being well into middle-age by now, continues with his table-top gaming but I have retired to the much easier world of computer wargames which I can play dedicate my life to in the comfort of my study.  I hasten to add, in mitigation, that I have no interest in those 'shoot 'em up' games, preferring to waste my time tax my military brain with what are called 'strategic' or 'operational' games'.

One of my favourites is Combat Mission 2, admittedly a little dated now, which is set in the eastern front during WWII.  The graphics are simply amazing in that you can view the entire battlefield as though at high altitude in a 'plane, or you can zoom down lower and lower until you have a realistic man's eye view of the terrain as seen by the soldiers.  However, since the expiration of King Lear, I now have a gaping hole in my life which, if I don't fill it quickly, will be re-allocated by she-who-must-be-obeyed to decorating the bedroom, changing the garden layout, or whatever!  Seeking a new game for the first time in years, I came across War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition.  This covers the entire far eastern campaign in WWII - and I do mean entire!  From Burma to New Zealand, from Ceylon to Los Angeles.  It includes armies, fleets, transports, aircraft - everything.  It will almost certainly take me weeks to master the rules and years to actually win the war - even if I play the American side with a nuke or two!  I may have to go to night school, or perhaps Staff College might be better.

Anyway, that's me taken care of for the next few years.  Don't be too quick to sneer, all men's hobbies are inexplicable to other men.  For example, several of my friends go off several times a week to walk in a beautiful country park but instead of enjoying the walk they take some peculiar looking sticks with them and insist on hitting a little white ball ahead of them as they stroll.  Then they get in a fearful strop when the ball goes missing or fails to go where it should.  I know, ridiculous isn't it, but that's men's hobbies for you.  Anyway, I can't hang around here wasting my time, I've got a war to win!

So Jan Moir was right after all

Do you emember all the outrage when Jan Moir of The Daily Mail pointed out the all too obviously disgusting background to the death of the homosexual pop-singer, Stephen Gately?  A transparently whipped-up tide of protest from the homosexual lobby and their acolytes duly arose and Ms. Moir was lucky not to be burnt at the stake for heresy against homosexuals in general, and nice, pure little, pop-singing lads in particular.

Now, according to Steven Glover, also of The Daily Mail, virtually everything she surmised was true, indeed, the actualite was even worse.  Apparently, The Sunday Mirror got their 'Grub Street' hands on Georgi Dochev, the Albanian waiter/male model (you choose), and induced him to tell it the way it was which was, of course, the way most people possessed of more than three brain cells guessed it was.  So that excludes Stephen Fry, then!  Why am I not suprised?

At last, the fat lady and the black crooner have sung!

Well, we waited, and waited, and then we waited some more, and at long last 'The One' gave us 'The Word' and the fat lady, Miss Susan Boyle, sang her way to the top of the American charts.  Given that the three options facing the president were get out, go half in and then get out, or stay in and win, could be categorised as hard, easy and hard, respectively, there were no prizes for guessing which one he would choose.  The first was particularly hard for him because he had backed the Afghanistan war up to the hilt whilst seeking the presidency and to suddenly withdraw would display his hypocrisy for all to see.  The third option of going in with the intention of staying in and winning was altogether too reminiscent of Vietnam and a steady stream of body bags do not garner votes.  There is also the tricky question of what, exactly and precisely, constitutes a win in a place like Afghanistan.  It was only ever going to be the middle course of surging in thousands of troops and then equally quickly surging them back out again in time for the next presidential election.  Of course that means during the interim thousands of men, some of them British, will either be killed or have their arms and legs blown off for abslutely no good strategic reason other than helping Obama back into the White House for a second term.  Can you imagine the thoughts of the average 'Grunt' or 'Tom' about to be shipped out to the 'killing fields' knowing that there is no chance of actually achieving anything except the political ambitions of a shifty, shady machine-pol from the most corrupt city in America?  If Obama is bad, Brown is worse - and the high command of the British armed forces are despicable.  They know as well as anyone that this whole 'surge' comes under the heading of 'a futile gesture', always a favourite amongst politicians of no worth, and put up with by generals and admirals eager not lose their chances of a Lordship.

It was that great military genius, von Moltke the Elder, who stated that no plan evers survives contact with the enemy.  If the Taliban were clever, they would hold fire and wait for the invaders to leave, at which point they would probably have little problem collapsing the Karzai regime and taking over - although some of the provincial warlords might give them trouble.  However, my guess is that their fanaticism will drive them to mount a ferocious campaign against the infidels so that the inevitable withdrawal, which Obama was stupid enough to forecast, will look entirely like what it is - a major rout and defeat.

To be fair to Obama, which I am not very inclined to be, it is George Bush and the neo-cons with their absurd notions of nation-building who bear much of the blame for this imbroglio.  It confirms me in my belief that in future we should adopt a strategy of 'trash 'n' dash', in other words, go in with pin-point missiles, and troops if necessary, to attack governments and their organs of power, not the people, and then having achieved their annihilation, get out.  Even if years later you have to do the whole thing again, it is still cheaper in blood and treasure than hanging around.

War is hell but a truly stupid and pointless war is beyond description.

Little Willy shrinks (even more!) from the challenge

You remember 'Little Willy', the "punk scientist" with the titchy little you-know-what, but an enormous, and foul, mouth to compensate.  I was banned from his site months ago but I still pay the occasional visit, mainly it must be confessed, to re-enforce my conviction that many university graduates are pig-ignorant, particularly if they are students of the soft sciences, like 'Little Willy'.  However, I was also interested to see, given that he is a fanatical (I use the word advisedly) 'warmer', how he would re-act to the CRU scandal.  I am happy to report that despite two encouraging comments from me (since wiped) urging him to stand up and be counted in defence of Dr. Phil Jones 'et al', he has issued forth not a single word, not even one with 4 letters which is about as much as he can manage on a good day.  I am relieved that he has so completely lived down to my expectations.

"Oh, Vanity of vanities!"

Poor lady, she was sitting on her brains all this time!

A 38-year-old former Miss Argentina has died from complications after undergoing cosmetic surgery on her buttocks.

Solange Magnano, a mother of twins who won the crown in 1994, died of a pulmonary embolism Sunday after three days in critical condition following a gluteoplasty in Buenos Aires.

Being a strict, orthodox coward of many years trembling, I could never undergo any medical procedure which contained the word "gluteoplasty" - my dear, simply too, too, 'sticky-fatty'!

Close friend Roberto Piazza said the procedure involved injections and the liquid "went to her lungs and brain."  [My emphasis]

Via Drudge and . . .

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/11/30/international/i171127S34.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0YRNZxNUv

 

Has Obama sent the troops to the wrong place?

It has been some time since I last wrote on the thrills and spills - er, spilled blood, that is - of "my kind of town, Chicago is" but during my absence I am happy to report, via the 'cbs2chicago' site, that the old town, enjoying as it does several decades of Democrat rule under the likes of former Congressmant Obama, is keeping the old traditions going: 

It was a violent and deadly holiday weekend in the Chicago area, with nine people reported slain between Wednesday and Sunday nights.

 

The violence began around 5 p.m. Thanksgiving eve, when Shannon Moore, 18, was found lying on the ground with gunshot wounds ...

 

In the early morning hours of Thanksgiving Day, a shooting at an Englewood gas station left one man dead.

 

On Friday, two separate incidents of murder-suicide were reported, including a newlywed couple on the city's West Side and a Markham man who shot himself after shooting his ex-girlfriend and another man in south suburban Sauk Village.

Earlier that day, a woman was found murdered in an East Garfield Park neighborhood apartment, possibly shot to death by her husband—who then took his own life.

 

During an armed robbery on the West Side, Anthony Bryant, 40, was fatally shot ...

 

Nearby, an Austin man was also fatally shot in his home on the West Side.

 

On Saturday, 29-year-old Roy Williams died after being shot multiple times by two men ...

 

In the same night, at about 2:30 a.m., police found a Dolton man fatally shot ...

 

In south suburban Summit, a man also died early Sunday after he was fatally shot less than one mile from his home.

I wonder if any of the victims made their exit singing the old song:

Now this could only happen to a guy like me
And only happen in a town like this

This is my kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of people, too
People who shoot at you!

One thing's for sure, you are unlikely to die of boredom in Chicago!