DUFF & NONSENSE!

Sorry, sorry, and sorry again!

I do realise that many of you are kind enough to check inhere regularly for the latest bit of Duff & Nonsense which is why I try to warn you of possible absences by me.  I returned from Cornwall on Saturday but, honestly, I haven't stopped since then!  I really don't know why God, in His wisdom, saw fit to allow weeds to grow - particularly in my miniscule garden - but they do and they are, or at least, they were because now I have got rid of most of them.  In addition, of course, and under strict supervision from 'you know who' there have been sundry garden centre visits to choose bedding plants - with the customary dogfights over which ones to choose - why I, as a man whose knowledge of flowers is limited to daffodils and daisies whilst not always being totally certain as to which is which, should even have an opinion, I do not know - at least, that was roughly what the 'Memsahib' said!  They then have to be planted and as usual in these irritating times the bloody garden centres provide all the information on planting distances and likely growth size in Euro-babble metric nonsense which I cannot understand.

On top of all that, because we went away again quite quickly after our France trip, and because Last week I had to carry out the equivalent of cutting down an entire savannah of grassland in my neighborouring churchyard, I never actually managed to do any of the ironing.  In this house, I do the ironing on account of the fact that it was the only thing the army ever taught me to do quite well - apart, that is, from killing people!  Anyway, even as I slave away in this blistering sunshine - come back April, I never meant it! -  I am aware of huge piles of clean laundery requiring my attention.

So, sorry again for the lack of proper posts which irritates me as much as you because I have much to tell you . . .  hang on . . . really, I've saved up some fascinating opinion pieces . . . where are you going . . .  you'll love them, honestly . . .  come back  . . .

 Oh well. later on today, I hope!

 

STOP PRESS: The former 'todger-dodger' goes down for a 1/4 of a mil!

This distinguished blog is, of course, a repository for all the really important news of the day, as opposed to the sort of lightweight chitter-chatter you will read on other blogs.  Thus, despite the imminent departure of the proprietor (see below) we have opened up again especially to bring you this deeply significant story courtesy of the BBC News site:

MP Chris Huhne's partner Carina Trimingham has lost her privacy and harassment case at the High Court against Associated Newspapers.

The PR adviser sued for compensation over Daily Mail articles she described as "highly unpleasant and hurtful".

But the judge said Ms Trimingham, 44, was "not the purely private figure she had claimed to be" and ordered her to pay £250,000 costs.

The 'Lesbian-Straightener', Mr. Chris Huhne, famed throughout every public bar in Britian for his er, upright efforts to cure Ms. Trimingham of her former 'muff-diving' proclivities, will need every bit of his tender, loving care to sooth Ms. Trimingham's shattered feelings as she watches her hitherto dearly beloved £2.5 mil abondon her and go off in the sunset to The Daily Mail.  Oh, the horror, the horror!

She's appealing!  No, no, I didn't mean it that way, she's a hideous old boot, I meant that she was appealing the court decision.  Anyway, here they all are, with the former 'todger-dodger' on the left and the first Mrs. Huhne on the right looking, one has to say, exceedingly happy for a lady who was supplanted by another lady.

Actually, the more I look at them, frankly, the more attractive smuggy-smirky Huhne becomes!  Oh God, get me out of here - quick!  I'm off to Cornwall for some clean sea air!

 

Enjoy your well-deserved R&R

I'm away - yes, again - but this time only as far as the River Tamar area to visit the 'Memsahib's cousin and family.  Only two nights, so back on Saturday afternoon.

PLEASE NOTE:  During my absence I have re-instated the 'CAPCHA' code words  to cut down on the unsolicited spam.

A Great America Hero - but do I love him or hate him?

Ladies and Gentlemen, please bow your heads to the memory of a truly great American  - I give you the late Mr. Eugene Polley.

Who?  Eugene Polly?  Never 'eard of 'im, I hear you mumble.  Such ignorance and only this blog, with a little help from its friends, in this case I Hate The Media, can drag you blinking into the sunlight of knowledge.

Eugene Polly was the inventor of the 'do-flicker-thingie'!

Need I say more?  Waddya mean, you don't know what a 'do-flicker-thingie' is?  It's that bloody 'thing' with buttons which always, but always, goes missing when you are desperate to switch channels on your 'telly' because the big match is about to start!  You end up with the wife screeching at you to hurry up as sofa cushions are thrown into the centre of the room in  your desperate search.  Time is ticking away as you strain your back lifting the furniture to find the wretched thing.  Finally the wife huffs off to the kitchen to make tea because she can't stand your filfthy language and then shouts through that it was in the kitchen where you inadvertantly left it on your last visit!

But even then your troubles have not ended.  Rushing back from the kitchen with the 'do-flicker-thingie' firmly in hand you hurl yourself into your armchair and - start pressing buttons!  Because you see, you never ever quite got the hang of the 'do-flicker-thingie', did you?  Despite insisting to the wife that you were to be in charge of it lest she flicked over to one of those soppy soaps.  Anyway with increasing desperation you keep pressing buttons which takes you through children's programmes, Indian radio stations and - natch! - inadvertantly landing you on a porn site just as the wife returns from the kitchen - and, equally natch! - it's a homosexual one!

Well, there is a tendency always to remember when the 'do-flicker-thingie' went missing or failed to behave and so we forget the zillion times it was there on the arm of your chair and no doubt some 14-year-old nerd is already working out exactly how many manhours were saved by this excellent device.

So here's to you, Eugene Polly, and I just hope no-one misplaces your urn the way I constantly do your 'do-flicker-thingie' .

 

Globalisation has even taken over the scam industry

I'm not sure if our experiences here are mirrored elsewhere in the English-speaking world but it became a standing joke during the '80s/'90s to receive letters from various Nigerian 'princes' promising huge winnings on (non-existing) lotteries, or, a massive commission if you would allow 'His Highness' to use your bank account so that he could repatriate his savings from Nigeria.  In both cases, of course, it was necessary to entrust all your bank details to the 'prince' who had a string of titles nearly as long as Her Maj.  Gradually these scams have faded as their criminality became clear.

However, today I have been assured by e-mail from the Rev. Joe Watkins that I have just won $1 million on the 'Yahoo-Thailand On-line Lottery', no less!  They point out with scrupulous legality that:

Remember, all prize money must be claimed not later than 30 days of receiving this notification. Any claim not made by this date will be returned to HIS MAJESTY DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY.

Apparently, no-one has told them that these days we have a queen not a king!  They request a host of personal details but not, surprisingly, any bank details.  My guess is that that will follow should I be daft or drunk enough to reply.  Incidentally, I googled 'Rev. Joe Watkins' whose name, I suspect has been taken in vain because he is a respectable commentator on MSNBC and also a pastor.

Anyway, I'm sorry to tell you that the million dollars not being forthcoming, such that I might tell you all to get stuffed as I head for Monte Carlo, you will just have to continue putting up with this blog for a bit longer!

 

This, that and the other

It's 8.45 as I write this and I am grimly aware of a long list of outstanding jobs to be done - beginning with my strip of grass in the Churchyard which, because of all that 'global warming' coming down as solid rain, I have not cut for over a month!  It is now "as high as an elephant's eye" and I just know it's going to be a long and tiring job .  Then there is the post-holiday car to be cleaned, followed by the garage to be cleared out and rubbish taken to the tip, and the garden, titchy though it be, has produced some of the most exotic weeds I have ever seen.  I may never go away again!

In my preceding post I moaned about the murder of language at the hands of politicians who say 'black' when they mean 'white' and vice versa.  This morning I heard extracts from various pols at the NATO meeting explaining how and why they had achieved absolute agreement on future planning for Afghanistan, no doubt about it, not a single dissenting voice, honestly, cross my heart and wish to die, no, really  . . . !  It was ever thus but how one longs for, say, the 18th century where you didn't have to watch and listen to the lying liars.  I found myself muttering , "Peace in our time, then, is it?"

My Spanish e-pal, Ortega, responded to the poke in the ribs I gave him during my piece on white asparagus.  He came up with a novel suggestion for cooking the stuff.  You peel it and then seal it in a bag which you place in  boiling water.  Apparently, that conserves the flavour but the drawback is that the water is of no use for making soup afterwards.  I have spoken to the 'Memsahib' about cooking details.  Apparently you must peel from about an inch down from the base of the 'flower' to the end of the stalk.  Boil the water and add some salt, then chuck the peeled asparagus in for about ten minutes.  I could not pin her down to an exact time, she just said, in that irritating way that women have, 'until it's cooked'!  My favourite way to eat it is with new potatoes and pork schnitzels plus, of course, a large dollop of hollandaise sauce.

Sometimes sport reaches the parts other entertainments cannot.  I am not a dedicated 'footie' fan, in fact, I am the very worst sort of fan, the dilletante type who only bothers to watch if it is, so to speak, a 'celebrity' match.  Thus, I did watch Chelsea play Bayern Munich on Saturday and like all the very best sporting events the team that 'deserved' to win - lost!  I write 'deserved' because Bayern had far more chances during their almost non-stop attacks than Chelsea but the aim of the game, so to speak, is to put the ball in the net and that they failed to do despite several opportunities, so it went to the lottery of penalties.  Mind you, there was some delicious Schadenfreude to be enjoyed at the expense of the German goalkeeper who had the sort of tall, blonde, arrogant look of the sort of German one normally expects to see sticking out of the turret of a Mk. III Panzer demanding to know the way to Warsaw! 

Very unfair, I know, because he's probably a very nice chap.  Still, it was good to see him picking the ball out of the back of his own net, particularly as it was situated at the Bayern end of the stadium right in front of the massed ranks of their fans.  Shame!

Well, I can't put it off any longer - the Churchyard calls!

 

I bring you glad tidings of great joy!

Some time ago a German friend introduced me to white asparagus.  Of course, in England, the green variety has been around for years and, by and large, I find it to be pretty boring.  However, the white variety is altogether different!  I gather from the 'Memsahib' that it is very necessary to peel it before cooking it.  Also, the water you boil it in makes the basis of an excellent soup so it should not be thrown away!  The 'Memsahib' is rather busy at the moment because 'SoD' is descending on us for the weekend with his 'Bouncing Czech' but next week I will get her to explain exactly how you cook the stuff - my job, as you all know, is strictly confined to the eating, chewing and swallowing end of the business.

Well, that was all very boring even by my standards so you may be wondering why I gave it such an exciting title.  The reason is simple.  Hitherto, we have relied totally on our German friend to supply the white asparagus but now she lives in England - disaster!  Well, it would have been but for our timely visit to France and the chance to ransack Boulogne market and relieve it of several kilos of white asparagus.  We returned triumphant, handing out bundles of the delicious things and modestly accepting the grateful thanks of our friends. Imagine, then, the mixture of irritation and joy when we entered our local Morrisons Supermarket yesterday to see ... yes, you guessed ... bundles of white asparagus!  And now, I gather, M&S are offering it.  Anyway, HURRY - HURRY - HURRY while stocks last because it is a very short growing season.

Incidentally, a lot of it is grown in Spain, the home of my e-pal, Ortega, who has been strangely absent from these columns for some time.  I hope all is well and if so perhaps he can give us a Spanish recipe.

I have returned!

I have returned from La Belle France safe and well despite the efforts of sundry sous-chefs to break my British spirit with an onslaught of every conceivable type of fish craftily disguised in creamy sauces guaranteed to stop an average heart at 20 paces, and, entrecôte steaks, bleeding from every pore and smothered - smothered, I tell you! - in rich sauce béarnaise.  Then, as a final effort to break my determined resistance, they offered me tarts - no, no, not that sort, do behave! - I mean apple tarts, peach tarts, chocolate tarts and, I confess, for a moment my British pluck wavered, but then, I remembered, this year is Her Majesty's 60th anniversary and surely now my knighthood will be announced, and so, instantly I fixed bayonets, er, forks and spoons and set to with a will!

My doctor assures me that I will be out of intensive care tomorrow in time to write some more of my drivel, er, my shrewd insights into the ways of this wicked world.

Hurrah - it's 'seau et bêche' time again!

For the benefit of all you ignoramuses with no knowledge of French - or no access to Google Translate! - let me tell you that seau et bêche time means bucket and spade time because the Duffs are off on a short - alas, very short - break holiday to La Belle France.  We have to visit friends in East Sussex tomorrow and checking the map I was reminded that Dover is only a couple of hours further and so being the man of action and instant decision-making that I pretend to be, I booked a ferry and a hotel just outside Boulogne for three nights.  I asked the 'Memsahib' if she had any objections and needless to say there were none!  I might even have earned a Brownie point.  Of course, I have no intention of going anywhere near a beach and so the bucket is only required for holding the several litres of wine I intend to drink and the spade will help me in shovelling down the mass of food that the hotel's Michelin star restaurant is already preparing for me!

Anyway, this blog will be taking a rest for a few days - sorry, didn't quite catch that  - but I return home late Thursday - my birthday as it happens - and if I'm in a fit state I will continue to Bore for Britain on Friday.  In the meantime, here is a list of some of the blogs I usually visit which might appeal to you.  Needless to say, I do not always, or even ever, agree with some of them:

http://artcontrarian.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.bobpiper.co.uk/

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

http://newgatenews.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.godammit.com/

http://cafehayek.com/

They'll keep you going until I return!

 

Only in America?

There now follows two examples of total lunacy emanating from the United States but please note the question mark at the end of my title because such idiocy is universal!

First, let me introduce Heap Big Sqwaw, Elizabeth Warren, of the 'Loadahokey' tribe, oops, sorry, the Cherokee tribe:

No, alright, I know, she doesn't look too Indian but slap a bit of warpaint on her and a feather in her hair and she might just about . . . oh, alright then, she still wouldn't look any more Indian than Barack Obama.  But according to this delusionist who is standing for the Democrat Senate seat in Massachusetts (natch!) her "high cheekbones" prove her claim, and also, that via the good orifices of her great-great-great-grandmother who was once listed on an application for a marriage licence as being Cherokee in 1896, she is definitely 1/32nd Cherokee, assuming that the copy of this ancient piece of paper is accurate.  I think red-skin speak with forked tongue!  Mark Steyn, in a superb example of his most acidic wit, calls her "Fauxcahontas".  I can't compete with Steyn, even at his worst let alone his best, so pay him a visit and enjoy a quite chuckle.

ADDITIONAL:  MDA (My Darling Ann) has just scalped poor 'HiaWathaLie' Warren which at least emphasises her high 'Indian' cheekbones!  Worth a read.

Then cast your eyes upon this little lovely:

He just took 41% of the vote in the North Carolina Democratic presidential primary - the other contestant being, of course, good ol' 'hope 'n' change' Barack Obama.  (Perhaps that should be 'anyone got any change' Obama!)  Anyway, this cheeky chappie won 10 counties in the contest and thus gave 'The One' a bit of a headache.

His name, by the way, is Keith Judd and his number, er, that's his prison number, I mean, is 11593-051 because, you see, Mr. Judd is serving a 210-month sentence in a Texas jail, according to the Christian Science Monitor:

Mr. Judd is incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, where he is serving a 210-month sentence for extortion, according to The Charleston Gazette. Judd had paid the $2,500 filing fee and submitted a notarized “certificate of announcement” to appear on the ballot.

He is even qualified to have a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, because he won at least 15 percent of vote.

I wonder how much Mr. Judd might be able to extort from the Obama re-election team to stop him offering himself in other primaries? 

Like I say, only in America?

Keeping you abreast of the latest news!

I am very grateful to my regular commenter, JK, for providing me with a link to a book review on tits lady's breasts.  It was a very well-rounded and pointed essay (Enough with the tit jokes, already, get on with it - Ed!) written by a lady who begins by widening my lexicon on the subject:

Fun bags - boobsters - chumawumbas (eh?) -  dingle bobbers - dairy pillows (I bet that comes from Arkansas) - jellybonkers - nim nums (eh, again?)

Somehow I can't visualise the 'Memsahib' reacting too well were I to ask if I might give her 'jellybonkers' a quick squeeze?  Mind you, I can't see her reacting too well however I phrased it!  The author of the book, Ms. Florence Williams, in typical female fashion, begins by getting me rather excited, or at least, what passes for excitement these days, before turning on the metaphorical cold shower.  Apparently, she describes breasts enticingly as being able "to feed us, nurture us and excite us" - yes, yes, YES! - but then adds "they can also kill us" because "they are made up of fat and estrogen receptors (no, me neither!) so they soak up pollution like a pair of soft sponges".  Oh God, don't tell me they cause global warming, too!  Still, there's good news, as well.  According to Ms. Williams's research - oh, how I could have helped her if only she had asked! - breasts are getting bigger and today the average breast weighs just over a pound!  I'm sorry but at this point I must go and lie down - just click on the link and read it for yourself.  Thanks JK.

 

Oh, no, dinosaur farts caused global warming!

And there was me blaming cows, and the 'Memsahib' blaming me, but all the time the real culprits who caused global warming were 'Dan and Doris', the dinosaurs!  I kid you not, it says so in The Daily Telegraph:

Scientists believe that, just as in cows, methane-producing bacteria aided the digestion of sauropods by fermenting their plant food.

''A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate,'' said study leader Dr Dave Wilkinson, from Liverpool John Moores University.

Yes, yes, I know it's from Liverpool polyversity but please show some respect:

''Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources - both natural and man-made - put together.''

I'm not going to ask her but I just know that the 'Memsahib' might give the good Doctor an argument over that one!  Moving on quickly:

The key factor is the total mass of the animal.

Medium-sized sauropods weighed about 20 tonnes and lived in herds of up to a few tens of individuals per square kilometre.

Global methane emissions from the animals would have amounted to around 472 million tonnes per year, the scientists calculated.

The figure is comparable to total natural and man-made methane emissions today. Before the start of the industrial age, about 150 years ago, methane emissions were around 181 million tonnes per year.

Only 472 million tons of methane!  Just give me six pints of Butcombe bitter and a really good, oily fish and chip supper and I could blow those dinosaurs back to the stone age!

My thanks to 'SoD' (Son of Duff) for pointing me to this, er, important story.

 

One picture worth a thousand raindrops!

On this occasion, need I say more except thanks to Watts Up With That via I Hate The Media.

 

Photo by Delemere Lafferty

 

What would you give?

I'm not sure if this is the version that sold at Sotheby's yesterday for - wait for it  - $120 million!  Edvard Munch painted four versions of it.  Assuming a $100 million was neither here nor there to you, would you pay that much to own it?

 

Well, I would!  Irrespective of any other consideration I think it is a great image, one that I could look at for the rest of my life.  There is a tendency with such iconic images  to overload them with meaning that was almost certainly not in the artist's mind at the time.  For Munch, according to his own words quoted on the BBC News site, it was an entirely personal experience that he captured:

"I was walking along a path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city.

"My friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."

With one very brief exception I am unfamiliar with psychotic feelings.  Even so, that one event which lasted no more than a few minutes is vividly etched in my memory so that I can still remember when and where it happened and what I was doing when suddenly, with no warning and for no reason that I could think of, I plunged into a deep, deep depression almost like a physical blow and I felt myself sag under the pressure.  I can remember telling 'it' to fuck off and leave me alone and fortunately it did. But the experience really shook me.  That is why I read the blog of my e-pal, Louise, with enormous sympathy which is only exceeded by my admiration for her guts.

Returning to Munch and his painting, it might only have been a deep and visceral inward feeling that he captured in that image but we, in retrospect, can set it in a time and place and 'see' it as a harbinger of things to come.  And nor does it stand alone.  The deeply subversive plays of Ibsen were already begining to eat like acid into the public consciousness of the late Victorian age.  In music, the stately 'oom-pah-pahs' of Elgar's tribute to empire were about to be blown away by Stravinsky's score for Rite of Spring.  Thus art preceded politics but eventually the guns of the western front blew away the remnants of the British empire, the world would never be the same and this tired, battered old globe of ours took yet another new turn.

So, yes, I would pay zillions, if I had them, to own that picture.  It would hang alongside another anxiety-inducing painting, a reproduction of which is in my sitting room, to the constant irritation of the 'Memsahib' who, along with all of our visitors, cannot abide it!  Needless to say, the more they bridle at it, the more it confirms my opinion that the artist, Paul Klee, succeeded beyond his hopes:

Who said art was supposed to be comfortortable?

 

"The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd"

Well that's it!  I had about 18 lines and I delivered, I think, about 10 of 'em.  God, I had forgotten what a nerve-wracking business the acting lark can be!  Mind you, it must be nearly 20 years since I last performed so the whole thing was a trip down memory lane.  I wonder if there will be any other calls for me to return to past horrors.  Perhaps my school inviting me to re-sit my maths exam which must have been the cause of huge hilarity amongst the examiners of the day.  Or the Parachute Regiment inviting me back for a memorial flight and then suddenly, at a 1,000 feet, opening the door at the back and beckoning me forth.  Or one of my previous customers driving up in an old Cortina to discuss the fact that the front of the car no longer quite matches the rear.  Never go back!  That's my motto and from now on I'm sticking to it.

I'm a bit busy today because the 'Memsahib' has built up a long list of 'to do or else' jobs, plus, tonight we are entertaining an old pal and one of my best 'Sino-sources' who has just flown in from Singapore.  Thus, my next post on Chinese affairs might have a veneer of expertise.

 

Tonight's the night!

Keep well out of the Twickenham area tonight, darlings, the crowds, the fans, the 'slebs', the media - it must be the All Blacks vs. England, you will think but you will be wrong.  C'est moi!  Tonight I give the definitive performance as Abhorson the executioner.  As the direcor said to me after the dress rehearsal, "Jesus!  I've never seen it played like that before", at least, that's what I think he said because he had his head in his hands at the time, obviously overcome with the emotional power of my performance.

Anyway, as I shall be away all day I thought it overdue for me to pick a few of my favourite blogs for you to go and visit.  If you are made of stern stuff, start with Julia's Ambush Predator.  She does 'Sardonic' in italics with a capital 'S' and how she maintains her good humour as she trawls through stories of such utter stupidity by those who rule over us is amazing to me.  If a cool, intelligent and judicious look at the global warming scam is of interest to you then you could do no better than visit m' Lord Bishop Hill.  And talking of cool intelligence, then John Redwood applies it in bucketfuls on his daily diary.  But not everyone wants yet more politics so for a much wider scope try my e-pal A. K. Haart.  He's a bit like me, poor chap, in that he meanders over anything that catches his fancy, except that he does it with some knowledge and learning, where-as I rely on bullshit baffles brains!

Enjoy!  And don't forget to switch those taps off - there's a drought on, you know!

 

The Sunday Rumble 29:4:12

Jock prelate spouts BLX:  I'm feeling a tad grumpy this morning.  First of all my swimming pool is closed for the day so I missed my morning swim, and second, I awoke to the keening whine of some Jock prelate spouting 'A1 blx' as he accused Cameron of "immorality" because he wasn't stealing enough from the rich to give to the 'poor'.  Have matters deteriorated to such an extent that even Cardinals nowadays sound like spotty 'stoodents' in a demo?  Why do we not hear them thundering from their pulpits on the subject of real immorality of the simple, straightforward type that Jesus Christ would have understood?  Truly, the Pharisees have taken over the temples of the Lord!

Gutless Cameron missed his chance:  You may enjoy all sort of vices as a political leader but the one you must avoid at all costs is cowardice.  Cameron lost his nerve before the election and failed to go for a strong, unambivalent Right-wing set of policies which, in my opinion, would have given the Tory party an over-all majority.  Instead he has the dreadful 'il-Lib-non-Dems' hung round his neck like a dead albatross.  I suspect that to begin with he was fairly happy because it shielded him from, using what I suspect to be his words, ' those dreadful Right-wing oiks' in his own party.  At the end of last year Europe was a total shambles and there were more than enough disagreements of real substance between 'us and them', and between Tories and Lib-Dems, for him to have backed Clegg into a corner forcing him to break the coalition and thus engender an election earlier this year.  Now his chance has gone and all the sins of omission and commission have caught up with him and his useless gaggle of ministers.  For the past week the MSM, of all colours, have been writing his political obituary.  The quicker he goes the better but God only knows who will take his place. 

"Oh what a tangled web we weave ...":  When first we practice picking and choosing which nice, cuddly, furry or feathered things to preserve!  Thus, the State of Oregon is in a bugger's muddle because some-one talked the Government into protecting sea lions who promptly grunted something in 'Sea-Lionese' to the effect of, "Thanks, buddy, now where're all those salmon?" before they lumbered off to kill and eat zillions of them.  This forced the authorities to rescind the Federal protection law and the sea lions learned the hard way never to trust what governments say because thousands of them were shot!  Now it is the turn of the double-breasted cormorants.  They, apparently, have grown so fat on baby salmon trying desperately to reach the ocean that they can barely fly!  Hitherto a protected species they are now set for one last dive!  My thanks to Drudge.

Total incompetence knows no barriers:  It is a sort of relief to know that the Chinese, who we all credit with being "damned clever little devils, don'cha know" are, in reality, as clod-hoppingly useless as us!  Apparently, a blind - repeat blind - political dissident who was under house arrest and 24-hour surveillance which included dozens of not-so-secret policemen and the use of searchlights on his house at night, managed to escape with his immediate family and reach sanctuary at the American consulate.  This raises a fascinating question - do Chinese blush?  Aha, I bet you never thought of that one before!

Now I know the real reason:  The old friend and fellow thesp who pleaded an absolute and unbreakable prior appointment which prevented him from playing Abhorson the executioner on Monday night, and which resulted in me being dragged reluctantly, darlings, back onto the stage for (yet another) final farewell performance, has been found out!  On Monday night United are playing City to decide who wins the Premier League.  I have just spoken to him and hoped that his conscience pricks him as he sits in his armchair watching the match whilst  I suffer for his art!  He denies it all, of course.

"Oh, the horror, the horror!":  I just went downstairs to make a cup of tea and as ususal Sky News was running on the 'telly'.  It was a newspaper round-up programme and I took one look, and then another to be certain, and seeing that I was right - the panelists were the "fat, black clown" and Max 'spank me quick' Mosley - I fled upstairs unable to face it.  Where do they find these people?  And even more pertinent, why don't they ever ask me?

Are Europeans imitating Lear?  According to Roger Kimball at PJMedia they are beginning to sound like him:

“No, no, no, no!”  Thus quoth Lear to Cordelia near the end of the grimmest play Shakespeare wrote.

As my friend John Allison observes,  Europe is acting a lot like Lear on his way to prison.

“No” said the Italians on November 12, 2011. They sent away Silvio Berlusconi who served on and off for a cumulative 10 years from 1994 through 2011 and was Italy’s longest-serving Prime Minister ever.

“No” said the Spanish on November 20, 2011 to the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, two-term Prime Minister from 2004-2011, replacing him with the conservative People’s Party led by Mariano Rajoy.

“No” said Geert Wilders, Party for Freedom leader on April 21, 2012 to his coalition partner, Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Liberal Party, sending Holland to a likely caretaker government and election on September 12.

Ditto the French and the Greeks. And this procession of negatives means —what? [My emphasis]

Our rulers would answer with another Shakespearean quote: "A question not to be asked"!

Must I go to night school to order a coffee?  This is a late addition but I need to go and make a coffee and it reminded me of my increasing irritation - oh, alright then, grumpiness - over the problem of ordering a coffee these days.  "Black coffee, please", I say to the Polish/Latvian/Czech/Estonian girl behind the counter.  She then reels off a list of names - in perfect English, I should make clear - none of which mean a thing to me.  My polite good humour vanishes and I lean across the counter placing my nose a few inches from hers (poor thing) and snarl, "Just give me a strong, black coffee!"  Well-trained and inherently courteous she smiles and asks, "Large, medium or small?" Cue: snapping, snarling, grumpy, old sod jumping up and down with mouth opening and closing, fists clenching and unclenching and  . . . a highly intellectual and philosophical discussion on the essential Platonic meaning of 'large' and 'small' does not ensue!

 

Sorry, darlings, it's my dress tonight . . .

No, no, I'm not wearing a dress, I mean it's my dress rehearsal!  I think I have my 18 lines firmly remembered, it's just getting them in the right order is the problem.  Also, remembering my cues - so awkward when silence falls and one becomes aware of every actor on stage staring at you with bulging eyes and gritted teeth.  Anyway, I am contributing to my costume and will be taking with me a rather fetching pair of army green Long Johns to wear under my manly leather jerkin to give it the real executioner look.  Already I can hear the sharp intakes of breath amongst the ladies when I appear for my performance on Monday night!  (I trust no panties will be thrown on stage - too, too, embarrassing!)  However, today is the dress and as I will be out all day there will be blissful silence from me until Saturday.  Make the most of it!

 

I want 'Rupe' for prime minster!

I have been watching, off and on, the Leveson enquiry grilling my mate 'Rupe'.  (He's my mate because he sent me a brand new 'do-flicker-thingie' that allows me to record things on the 'telly' with the eae of a child's toy - which is about my level!)  My loathing for Leveson and the oleaginous little creep who is conducting the interrogation has now reached record heights.  The 'little creep' has just spent about 10 minutes giving a free puff to The Graun, of all things, as though it were Holy writ!  Then he and Leveson became frightfully haughty because, without saying so, 'Rupe' indicated slightly less than full-hearted agreement with some Cocklecarrot called Eady who had been 'shocked, I tell you, shocked' that a 'Screws of the World' reporter had suggested to one of the 'Nazi tarts' cavorting with Max Mosley that her face could be pixillated out in return for the inside story.  Quite right, that man, give him a Pulitzer prize for doing what any indecent but proper hack should do, that is, get the story and tell us what these shits are up to!

I fear for our press freedom from the judgment of Whig 'Cocklecarrots' like Leveson who appears to inhabit a dream world somewhere between The Guardian and Enid Blyton!  In the meantime, let us all agitate for my mate 'Rupe' to renounce his American citizenship and revert to being a subject of Her Maj.  Then we can all get behind him and make him prime minister because he is obviously shrewd, clever and successful - and he's nearly lost his Aussie twang, so that's alright!  No doubt when he enters No. 10 he will be calling on my services although I am not sure in what capacity.  Foreign Secretary, perhaps?  The Home Office, possibly?  You tell me where best my talents might be employed.  Sorry, didn't quite catch that  . . .

That dangerous Dane

Amongst all the 'Shakespeareanna' the other week was an article by David Sillito in the BBC News Magazine on the subject of Hamlet.  It was a 'puff piece' based on a forthcoming production from Lithuania at The Globe as part of their 'Shakespeare in other languages' programme.  Sillito reminds us that in the dark days of Stalin's rule over the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Shakespeare's plays were a useful tool for subversion.  You need only quote this passage from Hamlet to realise how it must have struck nerves in an audience living under that tyranny:

Hamlet: What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?

Guildenstern: Prison, my lord!

Hamlet: Denmark's a prison.

Rosencrantz: Then is the world one.

Hamlet: A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one of the worst.

On Sky Arts (and it will almost certainly be repeated) there was an hour-long compilation of the views of various actors and directors on the true nature of Hamlet, the play and the man.  The most interesting opinion, in that it was a new one to me, came from Det. Insp. Barnaby who solves all those murders in the rural village of Midsomer whose body count now exceeds Chicago by quite a wide margin!  I mean, of course, John Nettles, who was in his day a distinguished actor at the RSC.  He suggested that the entire play was an allegory for the plight of Catholics living in Elizabethan and Protestant times and that it contained a subtle and secret message: Catholics must "take arms against a sea of troubles" and stand up for what they believe in.

This chimes with the strand of opinion that holds that Shakespeare was himself a Catholic, or at least, had Catholic sympathies.  I remain unconvinced.  It is clear from the play that young Hamlet had been educated at Wittenberg which, being the place where Luther preached his 'heresy', was a Protestant university.  Alan Howard describes how he and Trevor Nunn discussed the myriad mysteries buried in the Hamlet text - or I should say, texts because Shakespeare kept cutting chunks out and adding chunks in thus producing several texts - bloody writers, heh!

Howard explained that Trevor Nunn had attached great importance to Hamlet's university education at Wittenberg. It was the Lutheran university and Hamlet would have returned to the Catholic society of Elsinore impregnated by the 'new philosophy', claimed Howard. 'Hamlet refers to himself as a "scourge and minister" of heaven - he has returned from Wittenberg with the protestant idea of individual responsibility in his mind. Claudius is the other side of the Catholic culture - eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we confess. When, in the prayer scene, he tries to come to terms with himself, outside the confession box in the protestant way, he can't succeed.

'The strongest influence on Hamlet is, perhaps, his dead father. Obviously he had been a stern, austere Catholic king. In other words, Hamlet had a very unsatisfactory relationship with his father which predates the play. He has a mum problem, but it's the dad problem that fascinated me. Why had Old Hamlet sent his son to Wittenberg - not only the university of Lutheran ideas, but also of political dissent - the revolution? Did the Old Hamlet suspect Claudius and send Hamlet away to hide what was going on from him? We never resolved this.

I still cling to my opinion that the main thrust of this play was Shakespeare's desire to point up the differences between the old Medievil age of superstition and the new Rennaisance times of reason.  Laertes, in his anguish and fury at the deaths of his sister and his father never pauses to think first in his determined desire to kill Hamlet and gain his revenge.  Hamlet, by contrast, cannot bring himself to murder his uncle until he has proof that Claudius did it.  I wonder if he had read his famous contemporary and arch-Rennaisance man, Francis Bacon:

REVENGE is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law; but the revenge of that wrong putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince’s part to pardon.

 

Rain, rain and more rain!

This is, I think, truly the most sodden Official Drought ever announced by HMG.  To cheer you up, I thought you might like a bit of Ogden Nash.  The first is especially for my e-pal ‘DM’:

No MacTavish

Was ever lavish.

And here are some oriental reflections by Mr. Nash but this is time on The Japanese:

 How courteous is the Japanese,

He always say, “Excuse it, please.”

And climbs into his neighbour’s garden

And smiles, and say, “I beg your pardon”;

And bows and grins a friendly grin,

And calls his hungry family in;

He grins and bows a friendly bow,

And says, “Sorry, this my garden now.”

And finally some philosophy of life in Reflections of the Fallibility of Nemesis:

 He who is ridden by a conscience

Worries about a load of nonsciense;

He without benefit of scruples

His fun and income soon quadruples. 

There you are!  Feeling better already, aren’t you?  No, no, there’s no charge but please leave your galoshes, raincoat and umbrella by the door and do turn that tap off, there is a drought on, you know!

 

Bringing home the Bacon #1

Sorry about the corny headline, it's a weakness and I throw myself on the mercy of the court!  However, I have rediscovered one of my old 'Favourites'  - Sir Francis Bacon.  What a wise, shrewd , old cove he was.  You can read him for yourself at the excellent Bartleby Books which might be a good idea because in paraphrasing him I am more than likely to set the old boy spinning in his grave with my misunderstandings.  Even so, for those of you 'working stiffs' without too much time on your hands, perhaps my occasional synopsizes will intrigue you enough to encourage you to look him up later.

In Essay VI, Of Simulation and Dissimulation, Bacon considers these behaviours particularly as they appear in the conduct of politicians:

There be three degrees of this hiding and veiling of a man’s self. The first, closeness, reservation, and secrecy; when a man leaveth himself without observation, or without hold to be taken, what he is. The second, dissimulation, in the negative; when a man lets fall signs and arguments, that he is not that he is. And the third, simulation in the affirmative; when a man industriously and expressly feigns and pretends to be that he is not.

Oh yes, several contemporary names instantly spring to mind in all those three categories!  He investigates each of them in greater depth:

For the first of these, secrecy; it is indeed the virtue of a confessor. And assuredly the secret man heareth many confessions. For who will open himself to a blab or a babbler? But if a man be thought secret, it inviteth discovery; as the more close air sucketh in the more open; and as in confession the revealing is not for worldly use, but for the ease of a man’s heart, so secret men come to the knowledge of many things in that kind; while men rather discharge their minds than impart their minds. In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy.

Next, he moves onto dissimulation:

For the second, which is dissimulation; it followeth many times upon secrecy by a necessity; so that he that will be secret must be a dissembler in some degree. For men are too cunning to suffer a man to keep an indifferent carriage between both, and to be secret, without swaying the balance on either side. They will so beset a man with questions, and draw him on, and pick it out of him, that, without an absurd silence, he must show an inclination one way; or if he do not, they will gather as much by his silence as by his speech.

Finally, simulation:

But for the third degree, which is simulation and false profession; that I hold more culpable, and less politic; except it be in great and rare matters. And therefore a general custom of simulation (which is this last degree) is a vice, rising either of a natural falseness of fearfulness, or of a mind that hath some main faults, which because a man must needs disguise, it maketh him practise simulation in other things, lest his hand should be out of [practise].

In his final paragraph he sums up the pros and cons of these essential political and social 'arts and crafts':

The best composition and [temperament] is to have openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit; dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to feign, if there be no remedy.

There you have it - Politics 101!  

 

     Lord Edmund Blackadder                        Sir Francis Bacon

 

A few more straight words from the royal mouthpiece

Some more bons mots from that straightest of straight speakers, His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, God bless him!

29  After Dunblane massacre [in which a madman went on the rampage with a gun], 1996: “If a cricketer suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, are you going to ban cricket bats?”

33   To the Scottish Womens Institute in 1961: “British women can’t cook.”  (God, the man's got guts!)

41   To a fashion writer in 1993: “You’re not wearing mink knickers,are you?”

44  “I’d like to go to Russia very much – although the bastards murdered half my family.” 1967.

48  At a Bangladeshi youth club in 2002:“So who’s on drugs here?... HE looks as if he’s on drugs.”

51  On how difficult it is in Britain to get rich: “What about Tom Jones? He’s made a million and he’s a bloody awful singer.”

Duke of Edinburgh - Prince Phillip at a film premiere (Pic: Rex Features)

65  “People think there’s a rigid class system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.” 2000.

68  On Princess Anne, 1970: “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested.”

All and more courtesy of The Mirror.

 

What do Brussels and Pyongyang have in common?

Answer: Neither of them could get a helium balloon off the ground!

I say that because the North Koreans under the inspired leadership of their new, young Dear Leader, Bil-lee Bun-ta,

attempted to launch the ballistic missile equivalent of a Morris Marina with predictable results.  According to Wiki, "the Marina was one of the worst cars of all time"!

 

In the meantime, you may remember that the 'Euro-Bats' threw a hissy-fit when the American ratings agencies began downgrading sundry financial basket-cases in the euro-currency group including La not-so-Belle France.  Cue an enormous pile of 'merdes' and 'zut alors' to say nothing of several 'schweinehunds' and with all the predictability of German tanks heading for Warsaw some dimwit suggested that Europe must have its own ratings agency in order to ensure that European nations, and companies, had a fair assessment.

With a chorus of 'superbes' and 'wunderbars' a German financial wizard was given the task of setting it up - roughly the equivalent of getting a Morris Marina to win the British Grand Prix!  Needless to say, as Der Spiegel reports:

The newspaper reported that Roland Berger no longer expects to be able to raise the €300 million ($390 million) in start-up capital required for the project. Berger had pinned its hope on support mainly from big German and French banks but has met with little interest so far. Many potential investors doubted whether the investment model could work.

Apparently, potential investors thought "the close relationship of the planned agency with European governments was regarded as a problem right from the outset". No! Non! Nein! It wouldn't be bent like that, would it? 

Well, who'da thunk it?!

 

The Monday competition!

See if you can spot the slightest difference between these two men:

CHE BREIVIK:

 Photo courtesy of The Daily Telegraph

ANDERS GUEVARA:

No, me neither!  Except, of course, that one is reviled and despised and the other is an iconic hero to every brain-dead university student and soppy Leftie in the world!

 

Beauty and death

I promised a beauty competition when my e-pal, DM, suggested that the wartime Mosquito aircraft ran the Spitfire very close in terms of pure beauty.  So here are some pics of them both, plus, another contender, in my opinion, the P-38 Lightening.  You choose:

This photo shows the proportions perfectly, and also the way in which the wings sweep forward in contrast to the tail.  I'm not sure if it is so but it always looks as though the distance from wing tip to wing tip is slightly longer than the length of the fuselage which adds to its elegance.  Here's a similar picture of a Hurricane which was, I believe, generally reckoned to be a better fighting platform but when it comes to beauty it just lacks the deadly elegance of the Spitfire:

And here is DM's Mosquito bomber.  Very fast, very accurate and only a crew of two.  Some people say that if Bomber Command had used them instead of the huge, lumbering and vulnerable Lancaster the bombing campaign would have been much more effective and the casualty rates, in the air and on the ground in Germany, would have been considerably less:

Here's another contender, the menacing P-38 Lightening.  I simply do not know how effective it was as a fighter but it looks beautiful:

 

Anyway you choose and if you have any other beauty contestants let me know and I will try and dig up some photos - but remember, they must be WWII aircraft.

I'm off to cut the grass in the Churchyard so I will look in later.

 

The Sunday Rumble 15:4:12

I haven't indulged in a Sunday rumble for some time.  For newcomers, what happens is that instead of droning on and on, and then on for a bit more, on one subject, I sit here scratching myself and emitting short burps in different directions on different subjects.

Titanic RIP:  And, boy oh boy, do I mean REST in peace!  I don't know about you but I am sick to death of all this Titanic stuff, there seems to be no end to it.  Of course, there are no really decent wars or famines going on at the moment and so the MSM, bless their smelly socks, have nothing else to waste their ink or their running time on.  Of course, it's worth a pause and a quick thought or three but not his constant ghoulish obsession.

Darlings, I was wonderful!  I know you have all been on tenterhooks wanting to know how my rehearsals went for the important, nay, critical, role of Abhorson in Shakespeare's wonderful play Ye Olde Mysterie of Abhorson, ooops, Measure for Measure.  I think I can say with all modesty that I was a tremendous success.  The rest of the cast, including my understudy, who have been rehearsing the play for some time now were left in stunned silence at the end of my two scenes and one was heard to mutter, "Darling, wonderful isn't the word!"  Of course, it remains a mystery to me as to why the Bard in all his wisdom chose to give quite so many scenes to that bloody nun and Duke but that's the problem with writers, they never listen to actors!

China again - but no politics:  I missed the first half of the Chinese Grand Prix because I was swimming - oh, by the way, have I mentioned that I - oh, right - I have - fine, move on then, shall I? - anyway, I caught the last half and it was the best F1 race I hace seen for some time.  Many moons ago, in part of my rickety-rackety life, I was involved with one of the F1 teams and spent some time following 'the circus' round Europe.  As a man whose interest in cars has always rested somewhere on the minus scale I was surprised to find myself rather hooked on it.  However, like a lot of sports, you really do need to be there.  The sheer brute power of those machines can only be appreciated up close and personal, as it were.  Even so, today's race was terrific.  I think only one driver fell out and the remainder were really racing - at one stage there were three cars side by side hurtling towards a corner - exciting stuff and the fact that no-one was shunted off is a magnificent tribute to the skill of the drivers.  If you can catch a late recording of the race, watch it!  One oddity, I noticed, was the very low turnout of spectators.  I can't believe the Chinese are not interested.  Perhaps the organisers priced it too high, or perhaps times are beginning to get hard in China.

Prize-winning humbuggery:  I am grateful to my e-pal, Dom, who responded to my post on just one of the reasons why Obama and his wrecking crew need to go.  I reported, with glee, the tale of that intrepid investigator, James O'Keefe, who managed to waltz in to a voting office and obtain Attorney-General John Holder's voting ballot because, in line with government policy, no ID was required. All American Left-wing opinion and organisations are resolutely opposed to making voter ID a requirement and you do not need to be Brain of America to guess why.  Anyway, Dom sent me a film from the admirable PJTV who despatched reporters to various bastions of liberal organisations including, of course, John Holder's department and none were permitted to enter without proof of identity.  Watch the film - but have a sick-bucket to hand!

Will 'Dim Dave' make it to the next election?  All prime ministers go through a period of squalls and showers but usually they are confined to the perceived differences between them and their electorate.  The difference today is that Cameron is losing, at an accelerating rate, the support of his own backbenchers and his party workers.  They are catching up with what this erudite blog has been telling them for the last two years, that Cameron simply isn't very bright.  He's an Old Etonian twit with absolutely no political philosophy - and not only do I doubt he would understand what that meant, I doubt he could even spell it!  According to various reports, which began as whispers but are now being spoken out loud, he disdains the so-called 'worker bees' who keep the Tory party running in the country and surrounds himself with ex-public schoolboys of his own ilk.  He has never run anything in his life - and it's beginning to show.  So I ask, will he make it to the next election?  And if he's knifed in the back, who will play Brutus? 

A deadly beauty:  In the history of warfare was there ever a more beautiful but deadly weapon designed than the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire?  Even to today it still looks lethal. 

I am thrilled that we have cut a deal with the Burmese government to extract the twenty Spitfires which were buried there at the end of WWII.  If they can be restored they will be worth a fortune and what I hope is that the government will sell off some of them to provide a trust fund to keep, say, three of them in Britain as a heritage project.  If 'Dim Dave' does that I will forgive him his many sins!

 

Theatre's great gain, your sad loss!

Darlings, farewell!  I am away today and tomorrow in order to rehearse my star role of Abhorson the executioner in Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure Ye Olde Mysterie of Abhorson - to give it its proper title.  I shall return on Saturday.  Until then, play amongst yourselves but leave the place tidy!

Rendition - Elizabethan style!

Of course, I refer to the first Elizabeth not the kind, grandmotherly lady who adorns our throne today.  This from Ian Mortimer's 'must-read' book The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England which will tell you in engrossing detail how life was lived - and lost - in those more robust times:

Consider the case of Dr. John Story, a Catholic lawyer and MP, who is locked up in 1563 after speaking some poorly chosen words against the queen.  Escaping by night and reaching the Spanish ambassador's residence, he manages to slip the country and flee to the Netherlands.   There the duke of Alba appoints him to search all vessels coming from England, and Story assiduously combs every English ship for Protestant letters, books and messages.  The zeal with which he conducts his work leads him to becoming the leader of a group of  émigré Catholic activists, and more than just a minor irritant  to the English merchants trading with the Low Countries.  [Sir William] Cecil therefore decides to take action.  In 1570 he sends agents to Dr. Story who win his trust.  They join him in searching English boats, until one day they lead him onto a boat whose captain has been primed.  Dr Story is seized, taken to England and handed over to the privy council for interrogation and trial.  Found guilty of high treason, he is drawn, hanged and quartered.  'Black operations' such as this, in which government agents seize residents in a foreign country and subject them to rendition, torture and eath, have a long pedigree.

Tut, tut, who'da thunk it?!  Not that 'good Queen Bess' didn't sometimes live up to her image:

On July 1579 a young man named Thomas Appletree is fooling about with some friends in a boat on the Thames near Greenwich.  He has a loaded gun, which to the great amusement of the party he fires three or four times at random.  Unknown to him, the glass-sided royal barge is slowly floating towards them.  The queen is aboard, discussing with the French ambassador the possibility of her marrying the duke of Anjou, when one of Appletree's bullets strikes the helmsman six feet from her and leaves him lying on his back bleeding profusely.  The queen tosses the injured man her scarf and tells him to be of good cheer: the bullet was surely meant for her and the fact that it struck him is good news, for the assassin had failed.  Later, there is a thorough investigation, and Appletree is soon found.  He confesses and is duly condemned to death for endangering the queen's life.  A gallows is set up on the bank of the river so that he may be hanged close to the scene of his crime.  Before his execution, Appletree makes a speech to the assembled crowds.  He is no traitor, he says, but admits that through his carelessness he had endangered the life of the sovereign and therefore deserves to diw.  When he has said goodbye to his friends, the hangman places the noose over his head.  Just then, when he is on the very brink of death, a man in the crowd steps forward with a pardon from the queen.  She knows Appletree is just a silly young man, but he had to be taught a lesson. 

So, not only were the dark arts of the security services in operation 450-odd years ago but so were the ones of the public relations industry, too!

 

Oh, buggeration!

I can only repeat the immortal words that made Victor Meldrew the hero of the elderly classes - "I don't belieeeeeve it!"  Every morning I totter up the stairs and trawl through the long list of blogs I read regularly.  I do this on semi-automatic with thumb up bum and mind in neutral.  Today I was reminded by Richard North at EU Referendum that he had changed his domain and so I set about removing his old link from my 'Blogs General' list and replacing it with the new.  Result?  I have wiped the entire list of blogs that I have carefully built up over the years.  Now I have to start all over again and try to remember their names which can be a bit of a 'prob' for an old boy who can't even reecall the name of the bloke in the shaving mirror every morning!  Oh, buggeration!

Never go back!

This has been a firm belief of mine ever since I made the mistake 40-odd years ago of paying a return visit to my old school.  Quite the most unsettling, disturbing action I ever took.  Perhaps I should make clear that I mean returning after a long interval is bad, regular returns are easier.

I am reminded of this by reading Ian Mortimer's superb book The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England.  As something of a Shakespeare fan I have often wondered (or perhaps wondered 'many a time and oft''!) what life was like in Stratford and London in those times?  Well, based on Mortimer's description the only words that spring to mind are 'bloody awful'!  Life, compared to today, was lived at snail's pace.  For everyone, bar the wealthy, if you wanted to go anywhere you walked - and walking in those days was definitely not a pleasure!  Water was scarce and had to be queued for and then carried.  You dare not drink it!  In the cities and towns the stench was abominable.  Personal hygiene was minimal to nil the further down the social scale you went and it wasn't too brilliant amongst the upper classes. 

If today you are worried about HMG storing your e-mails, then Elizabethan England is not for you.  Attendence at Church every Sunday and Holy Days was compulsory and absence was always reported by vigilant priests or nosey neighbours and the result, at best, was a hefty fine.  If your were Catholic - God help you!  And if the government didn't get you then the plague or general starvation during bad harvest times would.  If you were tempted to get away from it all by running off to sea, forget it! A sailor's life was such that I suspect the near certainty of an early and unpleasant death was actually a comfort! 

No, I think I'll stick to the 21st century and if Mortimer's descriptions are accurate - and I am certain they are - then I promise never to complain about anything ever again.  (Well, up until my next blog post, I suppose!)  One thing's for sure, you can stick 'Merrie Olde England' where the sun don't shine!

Treat yourself to Mortimer's book, it is truly fascinating.

 

The view from the dugout

As you all know, this blog spares no effort to keep you bang up to date with all the news even, or especially, 'footie' news.  Hence, I can report today from the dugout at Manchester United, which I am sharing with a rather bad-tempered old Scotch git, that there is tremendously bad news for fans of the 'reds'.  As I reported some time ago, Mr. Wayne Rooney, the star of the team, spent several zillion pounds in a vain effort (pun intended!) to hide his premature baldness.  However, today, as I sit here at the edge of the pitch - oh alright then, on the edge of my favourite armchair in my living room - I can report that there are new signs of further baldness appearing.  Emergency applications of 'Growmore' are obviously required.  This sad development could have traumatic effects on both the team as well as Mr. Rooney - and the gum-chewing old Scotsman looks even more ferociously bad-tempered than usual!

What was that?  What about the match, did you ask?  I don't know!  After 20 minutes the ref gave someone a red card so the whole thing was ruined.  And anyway, I'm off out for a late lunch at my favourite pub restaurant which serves the best beef - ever!  And, no, I am not prepared to disclose the name of it even under water-boarding - although a few crisp 'readies' in the usual brown envelope might change my mind.

Schrödinger's pussy!

Well, I knew Schrödinger was pussy-mad because he kept banging on about that poor old pussy that he insisted be locked up in a box until some particle - or was it a wave? - anyway, something happened down at the really, really titchy level of existence and either poor old Tibby was dead or she was alive and no-one would know until they opened the box.  He won a Nobel prize for that but frankly I would have thought it was dead obvious - no pun intended!

However, according to a review by Nicholas Blincoe(*) of John Gribbin's latest book, "Erwin Schrödinger and the Quantum Revolution", the rascal kept forgetting High Science and instead went looking for Low Pussy!  Very low, in fact, because at one stage he fancied his neighbour's 14-year-old daughter, he impregnated a famous actress of the day and had to be warned off the 12-year-old niece of a friend!

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked - but suddenly quantum physics has become just that bit more interesting!

(*) Blincoe's review is in today's Daily Telegraph but there does not appear to be a link at the moment.

(**) Via the comments below, Nicholas Blincoe has kindly sent the link to his review: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9188438/Erwin-Schrodinger-and-the-Quantum-Revolution-by-John-Gribbin-review.html

 

To my Commenters

I gather some of you have had difficulty posting your comments.  This is a message I have sent to TypePad:

AGAIN - my commenters are complaining that their comments are not going through!

Also, those bloody, bloody, bloody Google CAPTCHA words are indecipherable and the sound is inaudible.  To be frank, I would rather put up with the occasional bit of spam than spend half an hour tilting my head this way and that trying to work out what they are!

This, needless to say, will have exactly nil effect!  However, if it occurs again - and it will - please e-mail your comments to me and I will publish them myself.  I have posted successfully two 'test' comments and it seems to be OK now.

 

Beat the bureaucrats!

Apparently, the pecksniffs and pox-doctors' clerks who man our so-called Civil Service are fed up with having their tea breaks and extended lunches interfered with by members of the public asking them what they're doing.  No doubt with the encouragement of their political 'masters' (heh, heh, who believes it's really that way round?) there are moves afoot to charge us if we have the temerity to ask questions under The Freedom of Information Act.  Happily, an e-petition has been raised to urge the government not to go down this path to the neutering sheds!  It is worth recording the words of our, admittedly less than great, prime minister, “We want to be the most open and transparent government in the world.”  So give him a nudge and sign the petition, here.  Also, a quick letter or e-mail to your MP would not go amiss.  If you have a blog then please spread the word.

Thanks top 'Bishop Hill'.

 

"Seek and ye shall find!"

Well, two posts down I asked and, lo, Russ Roberts of Cafe Hayek answered!  For those with short memories (and who wants a long memory for the sort of rubbish you find here?) the question I posed was "Why do they keep changing things- sod it?"  And here is the answer:

Mind you, I have no idea what that little 'gizmo' is that he's holding in the second picture and as for actually making it work - well, my dears, simply too, too embarrassing!

 

WHY DO THEY KEEP CHANGING THINGS? - SOD IT!

I was in quite a good mood this morning until bloody, bloody TypePad changed the comments procedures.  They say it is to stop spams from getting through but I am prepared to bet the deeds of the house that it will not!  And they have changed the CAPTCHA letters to fall in-line with Google.  All of you worried about 'Dim Dave' finding out who you are e-mailing and which sites you are looking at should relax - Google already knows!  Needless to say, the CAPTCHA letters are even more incomprehensible than the old ones, but, they now offer you an audio aid to help you.  Try it!  It's totally useless, you can't hear a thing.  Bloody, bloody, TypePad and bloody, bloody so-called progress.  Grrrrrrr!

Special request

My regular commenter and, er, poetry lover, DM, asked that following my last post I reproduce this famous wartime 'poem' which is, I think, an RAF lament given that their airfields tended to be somewhat isolated.  You cannot get much more isolated than the Orkneys!

 BLOODY ORKNEY by, possibly, 'Aircraftsman Plonk', circa 1941'

This bloody town's a bloody cuss
No bloody trains, no bloody bus,
And no one cares for bloody us
In bloody Orkney.

The bloody roads are bloody bad,
The bloody folks are bloody mad,
They'd make the brightest bloody sad,
In bloody Orkney.

All bloody clouds, and bloody rains,
No bloody kerbs, no bloody drains,
The Council's got no bloody brains,
In bloody Orkney.

Everything's so bloody dear,
A bloody bob, for bloody beer,
And is it good? - no bloody fear,
In bloody Orkney.

The bloody 'flicks' are bloody old,
The bloody seats are bloody cold,
You can't get in for bloody gold
In bloody Orkney.

In its way, a masterpiece!

Is intelligence like pornography?

You remember the old adage that it is impossible to define pornography but you know it when you see it!  Well, I am wondering whether intelligence is the same.  This whole concept of 'intelligence', as in the IQ assessments I touched upon in the preceding post, has been going round and round in my brain.  What is it, exactly?  How do you define it?  How do you measure it?  Does it only exist in one part of your persona or does it permeate your whole being?  Needless to say, my own fairly moderate intelligence only took me so far in seeking answers!

Most people, if asked, would equate intelligence to 'book-learning' or success in academic fields.  Alas, it only requires a nano second of thought to start listing the really stupid 'stoopids' who are weighed down with 'book-learning'.  One instantly thinks of Gordon Brown, one of the few men in the country who actually understands "endogenous growth theory" but who demonstrated without doubt his total inability to run a whelk-stall!  Even so, as I understand it, he has now gone on, in a very 'intelligent' way, to build a new career in which he will earn considerable amounts of money and enjoy a very exciting, international life-style.  So not totally unintelligent then!

Perhaps we should infer that intelligence is partial, that it can appear in one part of your life and be missing in other areas.  Well, that's pretty obvious from everyday life where one observes otherwise educated and 'intelligent' friends with good careers who then enter into disasterous marriages which are blindingly obvious to all the witnesses but not to the participants.  So, if that is the case, what is the point of measuring 'intelligence' unless you can pinpoint where it is working inside a person?

And how do you meaure it?  I have never taken an 'intelligence' test so I am not qualified to judge their efficacy.  I assume they are a series of increasingly difficult 'problems' which people are asked to solve.  The problem here is contamination.  The tests are 'designed' by people who may or may not be very intelligent themselves, and they are marked by those very same people!  Whilst some of the tests might be of a mathematical nature with a right or wrong answer, I suspect many of them are really matters of judgment and, I would remind you, the judgment of the testers is on the line as much as that of the testee, so to speak.  Is my lifetime's refusal to take any sort of intelligence test a sign of my intelligence?  Or lack of it?

Perhaps - no, almost definitely - I have the wrong end of the stick.  Perhaps it is not the ability find a right answer which these IQ testers are after but the evidence that the 'testee' is actually attempting to think of a way through to a conclusion whether it is 'right' or 'wrong'.  I suppose there are many (most?) people in this world who fail to think on a medium or long term basis and merely act on short term considerations.  We saw a few thousand of them doing so during the recent riots.  Were they unintelligent?  Not necessarilly, I would suggest.  If you are greedy for fashionable electronic goods which you cannot afford and you see a shop being ransacked, it is not unintelligent to help yourself.  Fleetingly you might do the intelligent thing and think of the consequences but were you to do so you would assume that the powers of the authorities to find each and everyone of the perps is limited and even if caught you know from experience that it will be an easy doss in jail - and you will still have the goods you nicked stashed away for when you come out.  So quite bright, really!

Now let us examine the long-term thinkers.  Are they more intelligent?  Take a young man who has set his sights on a career as an officer in the Royal Navy.  He knows that certain exam results will be required and that he will have to dedicate his life to this chosen path which has little equivalence in 'civvy street'.  Part-way through his career the government cuts the Royal Navy to shreds and he is out on his ear, middle-aged and with none of the right qualifications to gain employment at the sort of remuneration level he has been used to.  How intelligent was that?  Perhaps that example teaches us (the obvious) that being intelligent does not guarantee success.  In which case, why set such store by it?

In considering this subject of intelligence I am reminded of Mr. Cruddas, the unfortunate 'Get Rich Quick Merchant' who was the subject of a Sunday Times investigation into Tory donors.  He is a man with absolutely nil academic qualifications who, by circumstance, found himself in the right place at the right time.  He quickly turned his ability to understand and use the latest communications wheeze - at the time it was teletype or some such - and had the imagination to realise its wider applications.  He set up what was, in effect, a 'bookie's shop' in which foreign currency dealers could quickly and easily bet on price fluctuations.  He made a million, or to be precise, several hundreds of millions!  Was he intelligent or was he - and I deliberately used the word earlier - simply imaginative?

At this point I turn without shame to my Thesaurus because, the English language being such a tremendous tool for the expression of thought that I wanted to lay before you some other words for 'intelligence': wisdom, thinking power, intellectualism, wit, common sense, understanding, cleverness, gumption, sagacity, discernment, acuteness, shrewdness, foresight, craftiness . . .  and so on and on.  Again I ask, in this ocean of words and subtle differences of meaning, where-in lies 'intelligence'?  What is it?  How do we test for it?

And that, of course, brings us full circle!

 

Aren't coincidences creepy?

Just two days ago I was telling you about the mysterious death of an Englishman in China.  I mentioned that he worked on a part-time basis for a British outfit called Hakluyt & Co which had been set up by some ex(?)-MI6 officers.  I remember pausing for a milisecond over the rather odd name but then shrugged and assumed it was an amalgam of two names, probably the two main directors.

Today, exhausted after finishing the first cut of the year on my patch of the churchyard, I was relaxing and reading my latest book The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer (a 'Five Corker' read!)  Mortimer tells of the incredible voyagers of the late 16th century starting, quite rightly, with Francis Drake, the first man to captain a circumnavigation of the globe.  As these fantastic travels and explorations took place people began to write about them (my emphasis):

By far the most influential of these is Richard Hakluyt, who publishes "Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America in 1582" and the first edition of his greatest work, "The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation", in 1589.

So there you have it!  Two mentions of that odd name in two days.  Creepy or what?

 

 

'If this be global warming, give me excess of it'!

Yes, yes, I know!  It's been thin pickings round here for the last few days but don't blame me, blame this incredible weather.  Last year we had summer in April and this year it seems to have started in March.  Anyway, long and mostly bitter experience has taught me that if you get a warm snap early in the year it is best to take advantage of it and get stuck into the garden.  If you leave it you can guarantee the next two months will be solid rain at the end of which your garden will only be good for hiring out to the army for jungle warfare training.  Also, there is something about these occasional early sunshine breaks we have completely out of season.  They really do give you the zest for a hop, skip and a jump of energy after the gloom of winter and so, for once, gardening doesn't seem that much of a chore.

Anyway, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Also, to be honest, after the bliss of that Romeo and Juliet production (see below) I really haven't had much to say for myself.  The news of the day is stultifying in its tedious, trivial, 'itty-bitty' unimportance.  I am aware, of course, of the dangers of living in exciting times so I am not entirely averse to boring political affairs.  However, there is one subject which I cannot dislodge from the back of my mind - China!  No doubt your eagle eyes have spotted a slight change to the list of categories in my side-bar - er, you did notice didn't you? - because I have inserted a new one under the heading of 'China'.  I do so for the blindingly obvious fact that China is going to dominate the 21st century by which I do not mean that they will impose world domination, they might but they probably will not!  What I mean is that everything they do will have ramifications around the globe and I suspect I am going be writing quite a lot on the subject. There is a big piece in The Spectator this week which I must get round to reading.  Needless to say, my ignorance on China is immense but I hope gradually to rectify that.

Anyway, back to the garden for now but I shall return later today.

 

I just don't know what London's coming to!

What in hell's name is going on in our capital city?  I ask because of this report of an incident near the churchyard of St. Paul's:

"Suddenly there is a great commotion near the market.  'Repent, England!' yells a man at the top of his voice.  He is dressed in black, handingout printed leaflets as he stridea along. 'Repent!' he shouts again and again, 'Christ Jesus is come with his fan in his hand to judge the earth!'  This man is no mean fool; he is a prosperous London citizen, Mr. Edmund Coppinger.  Another gentleman, also dressed in black, is following him, striding down the alley called Old Chamge in Cheapside.  He too calls out, declaring that 'Judgment Day has come upon us all!  Men will rise up and kill each other as butchers do swine, for the Lord Jesus has risen'.  The printed bills they hand out declare that they are intent on a complete reformation of the Church of England."

Well, I know the Archbishop of Canterbury has just handed in his notice and that there is likely to be a fierce competition for the job but this is going too far:

"For the illiterate majority in the crowd, they call out their message: 'The bishops must be put down!  All clergymen should be equal!  Queen Elizabeth has forfeited her crown and is worthy to be deprived of her kingdom.  Jesus Christ has come again.  The reborn Messiah is even now in London in the form of William Hacket.  Every man and woman should acknowledge him as a divine being and lord of all Christendom.'"

Of course, the whole thing is a con trick in the worst possible taste and everyone knows where these tricksters live so even the London 'plod' can find them and they are soon arrested.  From now on you will realise, in the unlikely event that you have not already guessed, that this is the London of yesteryear.  So you will not be surprised to discover that, instead of being given as is the process today, the services of a barrister free of charge, the ministrations of a psychiatrist, the tender care of a trauma counsellor and the possibility (at the most) of four weeks community service, they are charged with high treason and sentenced to death.  On 28th July [1591], Hacket is:

 "dragged on a hurdle to the gallows, hanged whilst he spits abuse at the hangman, then cut down and beheaded and butchered in the traditional manner, his headless body being cut into four parts, each with a limb attached.  Mr. Coppinger dies in prison: the authorities claim he starved himself to death. ['Yeah, yeah, sort of like, well, he fell down the prison stairs trying to escape, know wot I mean, m' Lud?']  Mr. Arthington enlists the support of powerful friends on the privy council and thereby saves his life, publishing his renunciation of all the things he has said as part of his penance."

All of this is to be found on the first two pages of the Introduction to Ian Mortimer's absolutely marvellous book, The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England.  Er, actually, I have only read the first two pages before I rushed upstairs to tell you lot all about it so I really have no solid grounds for telling you that it is a terrific book - but it is - so there!  Go buy it - now!

 

The Foxconn con: ever been had?

Remember the Foxconn/Apple factory SHLOCK-HORROR! story of yesterday, or was it the day before, or perhaps a week ago - well, a week is a long time in the news cycle as well as politics?  Anyway, it was all about some Chinese factory crammed to its bursting seams with poor, il-nourished, sick, under-aged, old-aged, single black one parent lesbian cripples oh, no, not them, but the rest and there were simply zillions of them, and were all being treated despicably by their employers as they sweated for pennies, 15 hours a day with only 30-second toilet breaks once a day as they assembled I-Pods or Pads or whatever and other techie thingies for those ghastly Yankee capitalists.

 Good story, well, good if you like SHLOCK-HORROR! headlines but not so good if it all turns out to be total BLX.  The main sucker news organisation who reported the story have now been forced to recant the whole thing.  The original fantasy came from some Leftie actor/polemicist called Mike Daisey who had used it as part of his performance.

Picture courtesy of The Guardian

It all goes to show, yet again, that you must not ever believe anything reported by the MSM unless and until it is verified by Duff & Nonsense, High Class Purveyors of Beauty and Truth to the Gentry since 2007!  I am obliged to 'M' Lord Bishop Hill' for once again pointing me to the Way of Truth.

 

Talking of cinema, don't forget the ballet!

I was waxing enthusiastic down there somewhere on the subject of the latest film at my Cineworld and it reminds me to remind you that next Thursday 27th there is a 'cinecast' (I think they call it), anyway, a live filmed performance of Romeo and Juliet with music by Prokofiev and choreography by Kenneth MacMillan.  Do not miss it!  I am not a particular fan of ballet although my admiration for the skill, stamina and artistry of the dancers is second to none.  For me, however, first and foremost, the music has to be superb and in this case, Prokofiev is at his very best.  Second, it has to tell a story and the dancing must be part of the story telling, just in the way that actors as they move in and on and around a stage help, by their movements, to underline the movement of the plot.  I am always intensely irritated by traditional ballet in which the action stops every so often so that the principal dancers can then do their 'showpiece' routine.  MacMillan's choreography always illuminates the story and the spirit of each scene.  I will go this far - given a choice I would rather watch this version of R&J than a stage version by the RSC.

These 'cinecasts' are absolutely superb.  You really do feel as though you are in the theatre with the performers.  If you check the schedule for Cineworld you will have a choice of the very best of theatre, opera or ballet productions, and even if I hate Cineworld with a passion, I am minded to forgive them for these 'cinecasts'.

 ADDITIONAL:  Yet more cinema!  Thanks to those rascals at I Hate The Media, I am reminded that yesterday was the 40th anniversary of one of the very best films ever made - The Godfather.  Pop over to their place and you can watch a short clip.  (Note to self: must buy the DVD!)

A Panetta panic

My headline is a dreadful slur on Mr. Panetta, the Americana Sec. of Defence, who almost certainly knew nothing of the decision taken, so to speak, in his name.  He has just visited his troops in Afghanistan and was due to address two hundred US marines.  However, according to World News, some-one gave the order that the marines should be disarmed.  Of course, a spokesman bluffed and blustered that it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that a US marine had recently run amok and slaughtered several Afghani families:

"You've got one of the most important people in the world in the room," Maj. Gen. Mark Gurganus told reporters at Camp Leatherneck, dismissing concerns related to the shooting. "This is not a big deal."

He said he had given the order because the two dozen Afghan soldiers also there were unarmed and he did not want to treat them differently.

Not too bright, Gen. Gurganus, who could have detailed two senior marines to watch the Afghanis and be prepared to shoot them if they made a move.  I couldn't help thinking of the grumpy face Her Maj might have pulled if some general ordered the Guards to leave their rifles back in barracks.  And Prince Phil's comments would have been unprintable!

My thanks to IHTM.

 

It's always the little things that tell you so much

The NYT had an article last week on a tiny 'incident' which occurred in Israel.  Their Supreme Court was bidding farewell to a retiring judge and at the end of proceedings the Israeli national anthem was sung.  However, one judge, a Christian Israeli Arab by birth, stood respectfully still but failed to sing the words.  I gather that, like most national anthems, it goes somewhat overboard, in this case, on the ardent dream of Jews to return to 'The Homeland'.

Anyway, cue the usual hoo-ha-ha from the usual quarters.  The 'Rightists demanded that he be removed and that a new law should be passed making past service in the Israeli Defence Force a requirement for any new judge on the Supreme Court.  The Leftists, needless to say, took the line that the man himself, as an Arab, was simply a fig-leaf designed to cover the real lack of democracy in Israel.  (Why is it, I ask myself yet again, that the Left always believe utterly and completely that they, and only they, are the ones who can see the real truth of any situation?  For a group which seems to be eternally wrong about everything it is quite remarkable!)  According to the writer, most Israelis think that the Arab Justice, standing respectfully but not joining in with the words, was entirely right and proper and understandable.  One wonders how a reverse case in, say, Iran would have owrked out?

 

Bats in the belfry? No, the windfarm actually!

'M' Lord Bishop Hill' points to yet another problem facing the 'Greenie' madness that are wind-turbines which is their habit of slaughtering birds wholesale.  That problem, of course, is above and beyond the fact that they never work if the wind is too weak ,or too strong, and they all need good, old-fashioned power stations to kick in when they stand there, as they frequently do, utterly useless and unmoving.  Now, however, there is another problem.  It looks as though they will have to be switched off at night because it is reported from America and Europe that they are killing night-flying bats, as well.

'M' Lord Bishop' points out that even building a wind-turbine might be an offence:

According to this document:

...throughout Europe high-flying bat species are most frequently killed and most fatalaties are of the Nyctalus and Pipistrellus spp.

These two subspecies are both found here in the UK, where they are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, along with all other kinds of bat. The legislation makes it a crime to:

1. Deliberately capture, injure or kill a bat
2. Intentionally or recklessly disturb a bat in its roost or deliberately disturb a group of bats

It is interesting to wonder if building a windfarm, in the full knowledge that it will kill bats, counts as "deliberate". No doubt there are legal precedents here. If it does then no doubt windfarms across the UK will be closing down at dusk, at least during the warmer months of the year.

So, if the authorities fail to nail the Lesbian-straightener for perverting the course of justice, perhaps we can get him for murdering poor, little bats!

 

Nah, it's yer Jesus gene wot does it!

Some more 'idle thoughts of an idle fellow' on the subject of the previous post because it is one of those topics which is inherently fascinating, well, it is to me, at any rate.  First, I think poor Ms. Chiao deserves a slight apology because, of course, her hard work was being paraphrased for a national news-sheet and was then further paraphrased by an ignorant oik like me, so the chances of her being misreported are high, certainly higher than the notion that a particular gene makes one race act differently from another.  Should a learned geneticist stumble into these columns by mistake I'm sure he or she will correct me but as I understand it, no single gene causes something else.  It requires other elements (genetic or bi0-chemical) to act with it and that combination is not a 'given', it is only a possibility, maybe a probabality, or perhaps it is merely a tendency.  We need to keep reminding ourselves that actually God does appear to play with dice despite what 'our Albert' said!

Even so, given a range of possible behaviours from 'a' to 'z' there seems to be a tendency for one group, be it racial or national, to choose one set of possibilities rather than another.  I stress "there seems to be" because, as I indicated in my previous post, one must be constantly aware that some of this perception is in the eye of the beholder, or even worse, it is simply an oft-repeated piece of folk-law which does not bear scrutiny. 

Despite that I can give you one example to which I have alluded before on this blog because I do think it is very solidly founded in historical fact, and also because it is a subject which I have studied at some length.  I refer to the North German 'tendency' to aggression.  This goes way back to the primitive tribes whose ferocity was legend.  Even the mighty Roman Empire drew a line at the Rhine and the Danube and, by and large, refused to cross over into what they considered to be an ungovernable hell-hole - the Afghanistan of their day!  The best explanation for this trait lies in geo-politics rather than genetics.  The plains of North Germany are flat and possess very little in the way of natural defensive barriers.  Consequently, they early tribes learned the advantage of 'getting your retaliation in first'!  It would be simplistic (the sort of thing you expect here at D&N!) to suggest that this idea of attack being the best form of defence was always and forever an automatic response from the North Germans, however, there is a considerable historical record covering their development from tribes into a nation state (Prussia) to support the notion that they attacked aggressively more often than defended placidly.  Von Scharnhorst in the early 19th century expressed it exactly, “Prussia should never conduct a defensive war, her geographical position and her lack of natural and artificial means of defence do not allow that option.”  Of course, their behaviour might be induced by genetics but my bet is on geography!

However, even geography is not the final arbiter because over the lat 300 years our sense of geography has been altered radically and those changes in perception have speeded up dramatically in the past 50 years with satellite observation, intercontinental air services and all the paraphenalia of this modern age.  Today, we are all looking at ourselves in a totally different geographical context from that of our predecessors of even just 4 or 5 generations ago.  What happens in Iran really does matter to us here in Britain with an immediacy not felt before!  So as circumstances alter so too will behaviour, or at least, it ought to because failure to change usually results in destruction.

Returning (at long last) to the sorts of differences that obviously fascinated Ms.Chiao and her colleagues, I would offer up a different explanation.  I will call it, only slightly joking, the Jesus gene!  The pathetic little runts who constitute what they like to call 'the revolutionary class' of today and who defiled the grounds of St. Paul's cathedral in London recently, seem to have forgotten that Jesus Christ, whoever and whatever he might have been in the spiritual sense, was far and away the greatest revolutionary in history.  I am still amazed that in a mere 300 years his teachings had toppled the ancient religions from their primacy to the point where the Roman emperor himself converted.  I would suggest that not the least of his revolutionary teachings was that all men, from kings to commoners, were equal before the eyes of God.  Suddenly, kings were no longer to be worshiped, only God.  It was only necessary to 'render unto Caesar what is Caesar's', the remainder is God's.  The knights and barons at Runnymede took the revolution a step further by ensuring that henceforth the laws of the land governed kings as well as subjects - and that reallywas revolutionary.

The Chinese (to use one example) did not have the benefit of Christianity until the late 19th century.  Until  then all power rested with whatever emperor or war-lord ruled.  There was no private space for Chinese individuals as there was for practicing Christians in Europe and without that there was no chance of change.  Today in China, I would suggest, there is a new factor which will definitely alter things forever and that is private wealth based on capitalism.  Today, the Chinese have their 'private place', it is their homes which they have bought and paid for.  There is nothing like private property as a baulk against over-mighty government.  Hence, changes will occur in Chinese behaviour and I don't suppose they will be that different from western Europe.

 

It's all in yer serotonin transporter gene, innit!

I don't quite know what to make of Joan Chiao, from the department of psychology at Northwestern University.  As far as I am concerned anyone from a psychology department anywhere must have a beard and constantly play with a yo-yo as they babble mostly nonsense.  Ms. Chiao being a female of the species might find the beard bit tricky!  On the other hand, I am full of admiration for the lady in publishing in an American university a piece of research that is blatantly racist.  How she has escaped tarring and feathering by the ever-vigilant 'thought police' and 'language commissars' , I do not know.  Anyway, according to The Mail, she and her colleagues have been investigating cultural sterotypes (SHLOCK-HORROR - don't tell the 'Graun'!) and they have paid particular attention to the differences between "British individualism and Chinese conformity".  Actually, I suspect the "British" slant is emphasised by The Mail because, well, because it's The Mail, innit!  I think Ms. Chiao and her learn-ed colleagues were comparing western culture with the Chinese and other Asians.

Racial, or even national, traits are a very complex and slippery subject.  For a start, much belongs in the eye of the beholder.  Even so, it is Marxist nonsense to suggest that such traits do not exist at all.  In a way investigating such things is similar to the study of gases which are measured not by the individual actions of each and every molecule but by mathematical averaging.  The difference, of course, is that in gases the molecules never alter but people are forever changing to the intense irritation of politicians. 

Even so, Ms. Chiao maintains that the individuality she observes in western people should be compared with the conformity of the Chinese.  Oddly enough this chimes with some thoughts attributed to the late Mr. Jobs of Apple fame who maintained that the whole computer revolution of recent times could not have occurred anywhere else but the free-living, free-wheeling and free-dealing society of California in the last three decades.  By implication he was saying that the Chinese were only good for copying not inventing.  Ms. Chiao, in effect, confirms that opinion by telling us of their investigations into the genetic differences:

Chiao and her colleagues combined data from global genetic surveys, looking at variations in the prevalence of various genes. The findings were matched with other research which ranked nations by levels of individualism and collectivism.

 So which little genetic 'critter' was to blame, if indeed, blame is involved:

The team focused their attentions on the gene that controls levels of serotonin, a chemical in the brain which regulates mood and emotions.

Their studies found that one version of the gene was far more common in western populations which, they said, was associated with individualistic and free-thinking behaviour.

Another version of the same gene, which was prevalent in Asian populations, they said was associated with collectivism and a greater willingness to put the common good first.

Why is it, I wonder, when I read articles like that the one word which keeps drumming away at the back of mind is - bollocks!  I don't know but perhaps it's something to do with my serotonin level!

 

Excuses! Excuses!

Sorry for my unwarranted absence yesterday but I became involved in a gardening task that, like Tony Blair's wars, escalated!  My own garden (I am delighted to say) is the size of a postage stamp but our communal gardens are fairly large by comparison.  Yesterday I undertook to power-wash the flag-stones that form the path round the lawn.  I had forgotten that I had changed my machine since the last time I did it.  The old one weighed a ton because it had a hefty electric motor in it and produced a blast of water that would not only take the skin off your arm, it might easily take off your entire arm!  I replaced it with a much lighter machine (and cheaper!) and to be honest, give me a few pints and I could piss harder than it can blow water!  Consequently what should have been a 2 - 3 hour job lasted all day.  Staggering indoors I did suggest to the Memsahib that she might like to dust the cobwebs off the baby oil and give me an all-over massage.  I ducked just in time!

It's an ill wind and all that sort of thing so being away from the 'telly' for most of the day did at least spare me from seeing too much of chubby-cheeks Clegg and that pathetic, puffed-up bunch of middle-class semi-socialists 'strutting their hour upon the stage' at whatever God forsaken dump is hosting their exercise in oxygen wastage.  They truly are an example of the semi-educated en masse.  It takes one to know one but many of us who are, ourselves, semi-educated at least have the humility to acknowledge that we probably wouldn't be much good at running the country.  The Cleggites, on the other hand, are so swollen with the semi-education they received which has, just, raised them higher than dimwit status that they now believe they can run the world.  The most dispiriting thing of it all is that 'Dim Dave' and most of his ruling so-called-Tory claque are all 'Cleggites' at heart.

What an opportunity Cameron missed before the last election!  The country was so fearful of Brown & Balls, the Brokers Men (that is, the men who will make you go broke) that he could have won an outstanding victory based on a programme of Austrian school economics and carried out another, and even greater, Thatcherite revolution.  Of course, part of his problem is that he hardly knows what the Austrian school is and, given his recently revealed riding proclivities, he probably thinks it's that training school for white horses in Vienna!

In the immortal words of the late, great Terry Thomas, "What an absolute shower"!

 ADDITIONAL:  I have just read this at The Coffee House - says it all!

The motion passed by Liberal Democrat conference this morning means that the party is neither supporting nor opposing the Health Bill. The rebels having lost the vote on whether or not to debate their ‘Drop the Bill’ motion, but managed to amend the so-called Shirley Williams’ motion to remove the line calling on their peers to vote for it.