DUFF & NONSENSE!

A remarkable village to live in!

Some time ago I mentioned the incredible, well, incredible to me, news that the St. Petersburg String Quartet had played a recital in an organ museum 300 yards from where I live.  Amongst other things they played the Shostakovitch 8th Quartet which for me is one of the very great pieces of music ever written.  I was once able to use excerpts in a production of Troilus and Cressida which, given that both are evocative of the glory and the misery of war, was entirely appropriate.  Then on Tuesday night, another huge surprise.  My next-door church, for whom I cut the grass on the basis of a strict understanding between me and the Intelligent Designer concerning this summer's weather, advertised a concert by the Hermitage Ensemble, a Russian male voice quartet.  They sang a programme of Russian church and folk music.  According to Orthodox Church rules, singers are never accompanied by musical instruments because they are considered to be irreligious.  Each time they sang, the leader used a tuning fork for the other three to reach the correct pitch, before starting the song.  It was sublime!  I have never heard pure, unaccompanied male voices before and it was like listening to an immensely mellow but infinitely variable musical instrument.  The leader was a counter-tenor and he was joined by a tenor and two bass/baritones. How odd to hear this 'alien' music in the setting of a Dorset country church but how right and natural it seemed.  Just one of those unexpectedly perfect evenings!

Another brave man

Additional 1st June:  We won!

I am grateful to 'Notsaussure' for raising the subject of Mr Tul Bahadur Pun VC (Gurkha Rifles).  His particular source for the story, which has been reported in the press, comes from 'Mr.Eugenides' who reprinted the following letter.  Personally, I am exceedingly cautious about joining public campaigns but this one gets my full support and I hope fellow bloggers who read this will spread the word:

"Dear All

My firm is acting for Mr Tul Bahadur Pun VC (Gurkha Rifles).

We are pulling out all the stops to correct the outrage directed toward this 84 year-old man. However, we could not do this without you all. I am personally trying to read several forums at once, but it is impossible to post on them all. I have asked my friends at ARRSERs (The Army Rumour Service), who are already signed up on your forums, to kindly post this and to thank you for all for what you are doing for my client.

The British public are personally, individually, and collectively, repaying the debt this man (one of the "Bravest of the Brave") is owed by our country.

This is coming from the bottom up. You, the public are leading the politicians and civil servants, and you are the ones righting the wrong which is being done in our name.

My client is fully aware of all the support you have given him. I soon hope you will soon see a photo from him, which he wanted us to send back to the UK, to say that he knows you, the British public, are on his side (even though he is very ill, he got out of bed to make sure that you good people knew that he felt you all "had his back").

Please support our campaign. Petition and email us at: www.vchero.co.uk. All email will go in front of the Immigration Judge considering this case. However, you must bombard your MP and the Government (particularly the Asylum & Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne) about the continuing snub to the Gurkhas who have fought and spilt blood for our country. Rejecting a VC is, sadly, only the icing on their very ugly cake!

Many, many thanks.

Kind regards

Kieran O'Rourke
Howe & Co Solicitors
Ealing, London

www.vchero.co.uk"

A brave man

I would probably be totally opposed to almost everything that Peter Tatchell believes in.  Even so, I can recognise a brave man when I see one, and I saw one the other night on my TV, as he stood with a few other equally courageous supporters in a Moscow square surrounded by Fascist thugs who proceeded to punch him and the others whilst the police looked on benignly - before arresting Tatchell! I would like to indulge my urge to berate Putin's National Socialist state, but I am reminded that Tatchell's life in this country is not without peril.  I just hope the Met are keeping an eye on him for his own safety.  He is a brave man and I raise my hat to him, not least because I recognise, deep down, that I would probably not have the courage to do what he has done.

Liberati lynch mob!

If I may quote the admirable Mr. Richard Littlejohn, "You couldn't make it up." Rachel of North London, of whom I have written far too much and would not wish to add to the pile but that I want to share the laughter, is now frantic with fear and loathing over the activities of "fjl", a blogger who is obviously mentally ill and who has taken a dislike to 'our Rachel' (can't think why!) and bombarded her and her friends and associates with a thousand and one e-mails of varying degrees of hysteria.  Rachel's response is nearly as hysterical with long posts in which key phrases are printed in colour (green ink?) and with a font size of 24+!  Rachel reported 'fjl' to the police, er, the same police she castigates for failing to stop the London bombings, and eventually 'fjl' was convicted in her absence but has now done a 'runner' and is on the 'Wanted List'.  Rachel, of course, is the lady who elbowed her way forcibly to the front of the public, and publicity seeking, platform of those who are agitating for an enquiry into the supposed failings of our security services.  She is, therefor, in much the same predicament as Col. H. Jones of Falklands fame who personally led his men into a charge against enemy machine-guns but who was not, I suspect, much surprised by the resulting hail of bullets that came his way!  But our Rachel is not made of such stern stuff.  She  is more like Violet Elizabeth Bott who "squeemed and squeemed until she was sick" whilst carefully pointing us all in the direction of her increasing media exposure complete with attractive photographs of, well, Rachel - natch!

Now, a whole posse of liberal bloggers, consisting of the dim, the dumb and the downright dotty, have been formed to maintain a 24-hour watch on all Internet cafes, plus the district of North Oxford, in the hope of catching the fleet-footed 'fjl'.  They have even issued 'Wanted' posters with the unfortunate woman's photo plastered on it!  Warning: If you are female, blond, middle-aged and overweight don't go anywhere near those locations lest a lynch gang of the liberati pounce on you and beat you with rolled up copies of The Guardian!  If you are under the misapprehension that this wretched woman has committed attempted murder or something equally serious, let me assure you that her only crime is to bombard Rachel and friends with slanderous e-mails.  A crime, definitely, but not perhaps on a par with those social workers who treated the police as the enemy and refused to inform them of their suspicions concerning sundry child-minders who then went on to slaughter the children in their 'care'.  A suggestion by the government that it should be a duty of state employees to tell the police of any suspicions they might have concerning the violent potential of people they come across in their work has met with howls of outrage from the very same liberati who are now organising a nation-wide woman-hunt for 'fjl'.

I leave you with this thought: supposing a Tory politician complained about the fact that he was being 'e-stalked' and 'e-harrassed' by some Left-wing nutter, how many of those who have rushed to Rachel's 'fink-a-rat' lynch mob would support him?  Quite so!

"A damn fine thing ..."

It is a commonplace thought, I know, but what a mystery it is that governs the tiniest moments of our lives in which one slight change in either direction can change, or end, lives in an instant.  The week before last, a sneak thief came to the back door of our house, during the day, and finding the patio door open or unlocked, stepped quickly and quietly across the kitchen to the shelf where we tend to drop the paraphernalia of everyday life.  He snatched my wife's key ring and accidentally snagged mine as well which, by a fluke, failed to hit the floor with a crash but landed instead on a cushioned chair.  There-in lies one of those tiny elements of fate because, whilst I was upstairs and would have been unlikely to hear it, my wife was in the next room! Had she heard it, she would certainly have gone to investigate and thus confronted the thief. What would he have done?  I try not to think about it too long, and nor do I dwell on the harsh irony of inserting my wife as a statistic on my murder count!

As it was, potential tragedy turned to farce because unbeknownst to me, the scalawag had used my wife's key to steal my car - in broad daylight - and we were totally unaware of it until the 'phone went at 00.30 in the morning and a police officer asked if I still had my car.  Unable to see where I park it from the house, I then had to pad out into the chilly night air in my 'Jim-jams' to confirm that it was, indeed, missing.  Now, of course, our life has been changed because we are now both security conscious and worried about things that hitherto we had ignored.  This is, of course, only a very slight change, but still, my life has been infringed.  Had I confronted the thief with my trusty 'ornamental' dagger and infringed his rib-cage, no doubt the liberals would be up in arms in defence of his human rights.  I wonder if were to write to the Guardian and complain about my human rights I would get a very sympathetic hearing?  Probably not because 'Polly the parrot' would no doubt tell me that I had been cruel to this thief by leaving my door unlocked and thus putting temptation in his way. Perhaps I would be better off using the 'ornamental' dagger on her!

Size does matter!

Further to my harmless pipe dream below on the advantages of breaking up the United Kingdom there is actually a serious point to be made in its favour.  The number of national projects that have been launched with acclaim by politicians suffering delusions of grandeur, only to crash in flames, grows exponentially.  Because education standards have slumped over the last 40 years, particularly in our so-called universities, the intellectual abilities of our top civil servants are so second-rate that they can offer little effective resistance to the psychotic impulses of the very peculiar people who inhabit our parliament.  One thinks of House Information Packs, identity cards, the NHS computer system, teaching Arabs democracy, out-of-hours medical cover, the Dome, the Home Office and, of course, the one we are looking forward to as perhaps our biggest fiasco since Dunkirk, the Olympics.  None of these things worked because the calibre of both the people proposing them and the people who implement them is sub-standard.  We have fallen to the level of a third world country and these huge, complex schemes are quite beyond us.  Business can still manage them, just about, because they pay top money and attract the top people but even they display alarming signs of incompetence from time to time.

So, if we reduce the size of our country, such grandiloquent schemes will be equally reduced and might then stand a chance of succeeding.  Also, by reducing the size of the House of Commons to, say, a hundred MPs we would put our politicians in very much closer contact with the real world (or you and me, as I like to think of it) as opposed to the Mitty-like land of Never-Never they inhabit today.  In such reduced circumstances I would insist on a law that parliament only sits for two days per week, and that no-one can be an MP who does not hold a job - their employers would be paid to cover their absences.

So far I have approached this idea from an entirely southern viewpoint, but my north country e-friend, Deogolwulf, points out the possible advantages for the 'Yorkies' in a comment below.  He suggests, rightly in my view, that such a split as I envisage would force North Britain into a re-assessment of its statist economy and society, particularly in contrast to the rapid wealth-creation they would see in the south, led by the  City and encouraged by Thatcherite principles of privatisation and free enterprise. 

The solution to our problems is simple: Think small!

Court crap!

I apologise for the coarseness of my title but my patience is anything but saintly!  Here is a report of a court case in which two men and a woman imprisoned another man in a garden shed for four months during which they regularly beat him.  The man was an epileptic and despite the fact that an epilepsy expert said that it was unlikely that his illness was the cause of his death, the prosecution decided that because it could not be absolutely ruled out, they would drop the murder charges.

I am considering an action for damages against some one, the BBC news reporter, the Crown Prosecution Service, for the injury to my jaw as it hit my desk!  Even if it was epilepsy, the fact that he was imprisoned means he was unable to summon aid or his medicines.  That's murder!

Little England

As I pointed out in a post below, 'Jockland' is fast becoming a luxury we can ill afford.  Frankly, the same goes for 'Oop North' populated as it is by millions who hang from the government teat.  I would like to suggest a radical idea, if only to prove that even an unreconstructed old re-actionary like me can come up with some lateral thinking.

I suggest that we should break up the United Kingdom.  Let the Jocks and the Taffs go their separate ways, but also, we should allow the same privilege to the 'Yorkies', my generic title for anyone who lives North of the M42.  They could become the People's Republic of ... er, well, no doubt they would fall into a frenzy of discord over the name, to say nothing of deciding which city should be the capital.  Birmingham? Manchester?  Leeds? What fun we should all have watching them squabble.

In the meantime, the Kingdom of South Britain would be established and the crown offered to her Majesty.  Parliament would consist of approximately 80 members.  All existing local authorities would be scrapped and the area divided into the SW, NW, NE, SE, Home counties and London itself.  Everything possible would be privatised including, indeed, especially, health and education.  Incidentally, privatised education would receive government subsidies for every child who passes independent exams in the modern equivalent of the three 'Rs', that is, any skills that would be useful in a 21st century economy. All unnecessary regulations governing the City of London would be abolished and a single tax rate would be imposed.   The area surrounding the Thames estuary would be turned into a Free Port prior to the eventual development of the whole country into one huge low-tax area.

The wealth creation would be incredible as South Britain became a European Hong Kong.  Of course, and whilst stifling our cheers out of politeness, we would leave the EU.  We would also have to relinquish our useless seat on the (non) security council of that gang of thieves known misleadingly as the United Nations - so no loss there, then!  Our armed forces would change radically.  There would be no attempt made to train them for invasion, or so-called 'peace-keeping' duties.  Instead, the army would become a small and purely defence force.  The navy and air force would be armed with ICBMs and the very latest in defence systems to protect us against any incoming missiles aimed at us.  Our foreign policy would be to snuggle as closely as we can to Uncle Sam whilst pointing out that in our new circumstances we would not be able to provide anything except moral support.

Then, we should be able to ... eh? What? Oh, thank you, nurse, is it teatime already? I must have dozed off.

Not another tall tale from the barrackroom!

My e-friend, Clairwill, has seemed a little out of sorts recently and to cheer her up, here is another story from my less than illustrious military career because I know she enjoys them.

One day our platoon sergeant used, yet again, the age-old army version of volunteering, "You, you and you!" and I was one of the 'yous'.  We were told to take a landrover and be in position from dawn onwards at Teddington lock on the Thames ready to set up a radio link for the Army's annual 'Head of the River' race in which sundry lunatics paddled their canoes the length of the river - don't ask!  Anyway, there we were, sitting in the vehicle bored silly and when it got to lunchtime I said I would go off and find somewhere to buy some rolls or sandwiches.  Dressed in my camouflage smock and red beret I wandered up the road and found a pub.  Pushing open the door I thought for a moment I had gone mad - the place was packed full of Robin Hood's merry men plus sundry men-at-arms belonging, presumably, to the Sheriff of Nottingham!  Then the penny dropped and I remembered that Teddington was the site of the TV and film studios.  Anyway, pushing my way through the 'medieval' crowd I had to squeeze by three nuns in full wimples and robes whose authenticity was only slightly marred by the fags and the large gin and tonics they clutched so fervently.  Waiting for my order I was half conscious of the fact that I was the subject of some discussion between these three nuns and eventually one of them leaned towards me and said, "Darling, are you a real paratrooper or an actor?"  Smiling modestly and thinking I might have scored big time, I told her that I was, indeed, for real.  "I thought so, darling", she replied, glancing triumphantly at her companions, "You've got dirty finger nails!"

They Died in Vain #2

This is my amateur effort to keep track of the men, women and children murdered in the UK during the 12 months from May 17th 2007.  I will update it regularly until it is about to 'drop off' the bottom of the page when I will re-post it.  For my purposes, adults are 17 yrs or more, children are 16 yrs or less:

Men: 8    Women: 3   Children: 1      updated on Wed 30th May

In response to a question from a commenter, my source is the BBC news site.  I exclude all deaths due to what would normally be called an accident even if the eventual charge might be manslaughter.  I only report those deaths in which the police are looking for perpetrators, that is, the death arose directly because of deliberate actions by third parties.  Again, some might end up being charged with manslaughter but, as I once heard an old-style copper say, "Never mind the legal jargon, just count the bodies!"

They Died in Vain #1

This will be my amateur effort to keep track of the men, women and children murdered in the UK during the 12 months from May 17th 2007.  For my purposes, adults are 17 yrs or more, children are 16 yrs or less:

Men: 3    Women: 1    Children: 0

NB: That's just in 4 days!  Three of the above were stabbed

Will o' the wisp!

My literary sensibility is rather like a hoover, I trundle across carpets of printed words sucking up the dross and the detritus along with the occasional diamond stud without the discernment to tell one from t' other.  Perhaps I am too hard on myself because in the one genre with which I am all too familiar, pulp fiction, I can say truthfully that I got no further than p75 in "The Da Vinci Code" and just the other night I tossed away a thriller by Michael Crichton when I came across the phrase "Her eyes shone"! 

However, when it comes to the more serious stuff I do rely on the best of literary critics to provide me with an insight or three.  It doesn't come much more serious than Shakespeare and there are very few critics as learn-ed, as shrewd and as enthusiastic as Peter Ackroyd and his recent book Shakespeare: The Biography is everything one could wish for in the way of a guide to this mysterious man and his works.  I have used this neat aphorism before but it bears repetition, that 'Shakespeare is a man about whom we know very little but who seems to know everything about us'.  Like every other Shakespearean scholar, Ackroyd points up the tiny fragments of hard, historical facts and then uses his considerable learning and literary skills to sketch in the vague outlines of the man himself.  There was a time when I used to become very cross at a malign fate that had wiped away so much of the detail of Shakespeare, the man.  Now, I am rather glad because I suspect, and no one can do otherwise, that he would have been rather pleased at the outcome.  He was a very gregarious and well-liked fellow, except by some of the Oxbridge toffs who sneered at his lack of university education, but I imagine that in company he was a watcher and a listener rather than a total participant.  It is enormously difficult to discern his voice in the chorus of voices that he created in his plays, not least because, as Ackroyd points out, he was a contrarian.  That is, whenever he created a line of thought, or even a character of a particular type, he couldn't seem able to stop himself offering an opposite.  There is a prime example in Troilus and Cressida where the arch Tory, Ulysses, is given a huge speech in praise of hierarchy and obedience, which some have taken to be the authentic voice of the middle-class, property-owning playwright, only for him to spend the rest of the play rubbishing it and leaving Ulysses looking like a fool.

So I think Shakespeare would have been happy with his personal fade-out to a sort of historical miasma whilst contenting himself with the knowledge, of which he already possessed an inkling in his lifetime, that his works would last "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this and this gives life to thee."

All of that brings me back with a bump to my second-rate literary discernment because the other pleasure to be had from Ackroyd's terrific book is the light he throws upon Shakespeare's language and poetry, and his insight into the likely processes of how the man thought and created, whilst setting it all in the historical reality of Elizabethan London and its playhouses.  I have already urged you to buy Shapiro's "1599", another marvelous book that concentrates on a crucial year in Shakespeare's development, so now I insist that you all rush out and buy Ackroyd's superb biography.

Just do it!

The Bayeaux Tapestry

Damn!  My memory in everything other than who owes me a drink is appalling.  Surfing my 'Favourites' list I just hit again on my e-pal Hank's site and - duh! - remembered that I had meant to point you all in his direction to view a wonderful moving depiction of the Bayeaux Tapestry. Beautifully done - not to be missed!

Shaking with schadenfreude!

The best laugh is a cheap laugh, and the cheapest laugh of the lot is at some one else's expense.  Therefor, dear reader, whilst this blog is normally as cheerful as a wet Wednesday in Huddersfield, today, I am delighted to point a shaking (with laughter) finger in the direction of sundry 'Trot-lot' sites who are dimly and dismally coming to a conclusion the rest of us reached in c. 1949 when they lifted rationing on sweets; to wit, that Karl Marx was another Hunnish madman with a very poor taste in barbers, and that Trotsky had a head (and heart) made of frozen ice and so the ice-pick he received through the top of it was obviously a poetic metaphor from those sensitive literary types who ran Soviet State Security.  Finally, of course, the notion of a workers' revolution was the equivalent of the dream held by most decent Englishman that it was only right, fitting and proper that Accrington Stanley should win the F.A. cup again, preferably wearing shorts that reached slightly below the knee.

Anyway, today the 'Trot-lot' are weeping in their beer because their man, the despicable John McDonnell MP, who told us 'we should be proud of the IRA and praise their bombs and bullets', was snubbed, crushed and humiliated by his own party.  But not just the man, wretched though he be, but also his puerile, pathetic and giggle-inducing political theories.  I tell you, the 'Trot-lot' Left are reeling at the magnitude of the defeat.  Some of those with more than three brain cells are even beginning to question their own beliefs, like so many tattered remnants of the 'Barmy Army' returning from their winter re-education into the realities of world cricket.  Honestly, it does your heart good to read their misery, go on, take a look, you know you'll enjoy it:

http://grimmerupnorth.blogspot.com/index.html

http://stroppyblog.blogspot.com/

http://4glengate.net/

http://www.davidosler.com/

No more nausea!

Just at the moment I am immersed in literary criticism,  of which I intend to write more later, and consequently I am a touch sensitive concerning the nature of analogies, images and metaphors in written English.  Re-reading some of the old guff I have spewed forth below (dammit, I've done it again!) I can't help noticing a plethora, and a tedious one at that, of references to vomiting, sickness, nausea and poo!  This has to stop lest the amateur phycho-analysts amongst you infer that my junior potty-training was not all it should have been and that there-in lies the cause of my adult misanthropy.  So, now you will understand why I have sternly refused to even contemplate writing a single word concerning the MPs who have just voted to exclude themselves from the Freedom of Information Act in order to hide their expenses because the only words that spring to mind are ... SICK-MAKING SHITS!

Oh, sorry, nurse, yes I will take my pill now and go for a lie down.

Cess-Poole!

My vituperative attack on the slimy Steven Poole might have left some of you feeling sympathy for the man.  If so - sucker!

Of course, those of my frequent commenters here who have an instinctive sympathy for a 'Guardianista' and New Statesman hack have leaped to his defence and blamed poor, little me because, according to them, my style is obnoxious.  Well, if they want a really foul, disgusting, hand-to-the-mouth, vomit-inducing example of what 'Cess-Poole' thinks is witty and smart they should hold their noses and go here and read "Comment #31" and then scroll down to 'Cess-Poole's' avuncular and indulgent reply in "Comment #32".  This is the sort of comment 'Cess-Poole" approves of, where-as my simple but pointed questions are wiped!

Like I said: watch what they do - it tells you everything!

Kamm's Klincher!

Oliver Kamm provides yet another public service, in addition to writing one of the most intelligent and literate blogs on the net (even if I disagree with some of it), by educating those of us who have somehow staggered through life without ever knowing of John McDonnell MP, the Gordon Brown punch-bag in the forthcoming election for leader of Nearly-Nu Labour. Apparently McDonnell said, or rather burped his foul breath to the effect, that we should "honour" members of the IRA and the "bravery" of their "bombs and bullets".  On another site I have asked one of his keenest supporters to define exactly the amount of 'bravery' required to sneak a bomb into a crowded place and then do a runner. If I'm not too ill, I will give you her answer, if and when it comes.

That'll show 'em!

In the final sentence of my post below, I made mention of 'murderous yobs' which reminded me that one of the two particular 'murderous yobs' who slaughtered the young family-man and lawyer, Tom Ap Rhys, has had his sentence increased from the vomit-inducing 17 years to - wait for it and have your sick-bag handy - 20 years.  That means he will be out when he's 37 and able to enjoy another, say, 35 years of living.  The young thugs who infest our sub-culture must be quaking in their shoes!

Incidentally, virtually every week the media report an addition to the seemingly never-ending list of slaughtered innocents. Starting from Thursday I intend to keep a running tally.  I thought I would start last week when two murders took place, a young girl and her unborn child, but Thursday is my birthday and it will help my doddering old memory to make the final tally in a year's time.  Of course, my memorial to the innocent victims of the liberal society will not be statistically accurate because I don't follow current events too closely, but I will do my best.

Their inscription will read: They did die in vain!

Kill bill!

I am obliged, as m' learned friends put it, to A. N. Wilson for reporting yet another piece of outrageous legislation about to be sneaked through parliament.  However, those of a pink and delicate political complexion should be warned that the link takes you to, horror of horrors, the Daily Mail.

In his article Wilson informs us that in October British hospitals will be able to start killing us.  Not by their usual method of infecting patients with germs propagated in their filthy wards and passed on by the lazy slummocks who pretend to be nurses, no, from October they will be permitted, legally, to bump us off!  I have a fair number of people visiting this blog but I bet hardly any of you knew this was about to happen.  Apparently, this legislation will go through on the nod unless an MP insists on a debate.  Well, I suppose some of you are thinking, if you're old and in pain and incurable, a nice quick jab in the arm and it's all over. 

If, indeed, that is what you are thinking then you sadly underestimate the unfeeling cruelty of our beloved NHS ('The Envy of the World' - except no-one copies it!) What they will do under this new law is starve you of all food and water so that you die of thirst.  As Wilson presciently points out, after a few years, and as complaints concerning this particular method of murder build up, the killers in the Euthanasia Movement will tut-tut and tell us that it would be very much better if people were given lethal injections.  Thus, they will have achieved their objective.

So, if the abortionists don't get you at one end of your existence, the euthanasionists will get you at the other end, provided some murderous yob doesn't get you in the middle!

Blogging! What's it for?

I am provoked into this speculation by the incident described below in which a blogger censored a comment of mine.  I suppose the strict answer is that if there are 'x' number of bloggers there will be 'x' number of reasons for blogging but I think, for the purposes of conversation, we can generalise a little.  Most of the blogs I read offer the same mixture of personal anecdotes mixed with social and political commentary as this one does.  Speaking personally, I enjoy the practice of writing and find that it helps to clarify my usually confused thoughts.  Equally, I am delighted if anyone with an opposite opinion visits here to test my views even if they express themselves with hyperbolic passion - provided they do so in a way that is both legal and conducive to further conversation.  For example, libel and the tedious repetition of expletives would be contrary to both those aims.  You will note that I have twice used the word 'conversation' and that, surely, is the key to it.  To converse is to be civilised, even if it takes the form of a fierce argument.  What I cannot understand is why anyone would ban a visitor from their site simply because they do not agree with that person's opinion! If, as the host, you find your visitor's opinions disagreeable, all you have to do is ignore them which is a way of indicating your desire not to continue the conversation.  Banning them and wiping their remarks from your site is surely just a way of saying that I only wish to speak with people who agree with my opinion.  I'm not suggesting that a blogger is not entitled to do this, but I am saying, very clearly, I hope, that such behaviour tells you all you need to know concerning the narrowness of their minds and therefor, their incipient stupidity.

Steven Poole is a stool!

The Poole I refer to in my title is Steven Poole, the host of a website named after his book Unspeak.  I cannot speak of Unspeak because I haven't read it but the following will provide a flavour, I guess, because it is the author's description of his own Blog:

"This blog follows on from the book Unspeak, which analyses state-of-the-art rhetorical weaponry, from community through sound science and ethnic cleansing to the war on terror."

And, no, I don't know what "state-of-the-art rhetorical weaponry, from community" means, either, although it is enough to put me off buying his book.

However, I have, on a very occasional basis, visited his site and did so again in the last few days.  He had written a post entitled "An Agenda" in which he went in for some fairly standard Melanie Phillips bashing because she had had the temerity to bash Lord Browne, the now well known homosexual customer of rent-boys and the previously much admired leader of BP.  Or, to be precise, she had bashed those like Matthew Parris, another well-known homosexual (but not, as far as I know, a purchaser of rent-boys) who had implied that Lord Browne's misfortune was the result of his being outed as a homosexual.  If he did so, I think Parris allowed his sexual sympathies to distort his normally shrewd judgement.  My guess is that most of the people who knew Lord Browne well had already guessed or knew that he was homosexual and like most people these days they simply shrugged and forgot about it.  As I pointed out in a comment on Poole's site, it was not his purchase of sex that undid him but his action in stomping, metaphorically, on the prostitute.

Ms. Phillip's 'sin' in the eyes of Poole and his commenters was to hint that a homosexual lobby was behind the sustained commentary claiming that Lord Browne had been victimised.  (You will notice, dear reader, as did I, that the homosexual community leaped to the defence of Lord Browne, who is rich and famous, but couldn't spare a word of sympathy for his rent boy, another homosexual but not, alas, one with any money or influence or celebrity.  You will also note that most of those who were moved almost to tears at the plight of poor Lord Browne are normally to be found ranting and raving at the iniquities of multi-national companies in general, and oil companies in particular, but most especially, at their 'fat cat' bosses!  But I digress ...)  Apparently, Poole and his friends believe that there is no such thing as a metropolitan homosexual lobby operating in and around the Westminster 'village' propagating legislation sympathetic to anyone with their sexual preferences (an activity which I would defend on libertarian grounds whilst opposing it on social and political grounds).  Poole must go around with his head in a carrier bag if he pretends that it does not exist.  But, of course, it is all a 'pretend'.  He simply pretends that it doesn't exist in order to attack Melanie Phillips.

In a post entitled Insincere, Poole takes a retaliatory swipe at some one who had the temerity to pass some derogatory remarks concerning his book.  In the post, Poole admits, indeed, almost boasts, that he had indulged in some "honest, forthright abuse" of Ms. Phillips.  Admiringly, I asked Poole, in a comment, if, in view of this boast, I could indulge in giving him some "honest, forthright abuse" or was he one of those who only likes dishing it out, not taking it.  You will not be surprised to know that I never did receive a reply to that one!

Still, dear reader, you will be proud of me when I tell you that I conducted myself with exemplary good manners whilst splashing around Poole's shallow puddle despite being called "a malicious dimwit" by one of his commenters.  Apparently that phrase does not constitute 'abuse', which is listed in Poole's policy on comments as an offence - go figure, as our American cousins put it! However, my ironical apology to the commenter concerned was scrambled to gibberish by Poole in what I described as "interfering with my text in order to make censorship amusing".  I asked Poole exactly what the rules were on his site so that I could avoid future mistakes because, apart from his interference with my written words he had proudly told me that I was utterly mistaken by "appear[ing] to be under the impression that this site is a “democracy” with some sort of commitment to “free speech”".  Well, he was dead right there because my next polite comment was banned!

Incidentally, and just to put the finishing touches to my portrait of Steven Poole as a prize, gutless wimp only comfortable in the company of his admiring sycophants (including the suitably-named 'Ratty' who visits these shores from time to time), he asserted that Melanie Phillips was "scientifically illiterate" because "she claimed that global warming was a 'totalitarian fiction' " I asked Poole what his scientific qualifications were that allowed him to believe that global warming was fact and not fiction.  Answer came there none!

My original title for this post was "The Shallow Poole" but then, in a moment of carelessness, I inadvertently trod in the sort of scatological imagery so beloved of 'Teabag' and 'Bananas' and renamed it "Steven Poole is a stool!".  It is difficult to sum up the character of a man who has smugness the way some people have bad breath.  That he is even more stupid and incapable of consistent thought than a very average New Labour cabinet minister is obvious from reading any of his posts. That his ego is as delicate, refined and protected as a prize orchid can be deduced from his violent re-action to anything other than the sycophancy of his usual commenters. Oh, don't let's beat about the bush, the man's a gutless shit! Er, that was "honest, forthright abuse", by the way.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

As I have mentioned before, my life has been something of an odyssey.  I choose the word deliberately because it sounds rather more romantic than, say, a ramble, or even, a shamble.  You see, I never planned my life, it just sort of happened.  From some people's point of view my life has been a failure in that I never directed myself towards ambitions and goals which is true but there again at least I saved my self from any disappointments and discontents over failing to reach them.  Anyway, as some of you know, having drifted along doing this and that I ended up in that magnificent brotherhood of second sons and rascals - the used car trade.  The great thing about the car trade is that, like the French Foreign Legion, no questions are asked and no qualifications are needed.  However, the down-side is that in every opinion poll ever taken on the subject of which profession is the most untrustworthy, second-hand car dealers always end up at the bottom of a heap of the most appalling spivs, crooks and con artists by being rated the most slippery of the lot. Well, that was, until today! According to the little 'Memsahib's' paper of record, The Mail, we have now been voted off the bottom of the heap to be replaced as The Most Untrustworthy Profession by .... the politicians!

Rejoice! Rejoice! 

(Oh dear! A thought occurs. It's nothing to do with the fact that I've left the car trade, is it?)

'Edukashun' standards start to rise at York Uni!

I was feeling a bit grumpy this morning, don't know why, but as I cruised the Blogosphere becoming increasingly desperate for something to laugh about, or even smile at, I clicked on to the site of Ed the Dim of York.  He, you may recall, recently banned me from his site so you can imagine the cackles, of equal parts joy and malice, that issued forth from my wheezy chest when I read that a tutor was threatening to throw his PhD thesis into the bin.  I can only judge Ed's work by what he writes on his blog and on that basis I'm surprised he even made it to a university - until I reminded myself that most universities are now just a sort of 'Youf' Opportunities racket invented by this government to disguise the true unemployment rate.  However, I gather that this was not Ed's usual tutor and after he burst into tears his 'thesis' was re-instated by his normal one.  Still, nice to know that there are some university teachers with standards lurking in the shadows of our hallowed halls of academe.

I feel better already!

Rachel's bosoms heave and so does my stomach!

Rachel from Planet Zog is at it again.  This time delivering an emotional load of tripe in the Sunday Times.  I suppose I must forgive her wallowing in the sentimentality of her wedding day about which she goes on and on at length but, dammit, she's a grown woman not a teen-age girl and I do wish she would behave like one.  Also, her wedding day is of total irrelevance to the political axe-sharpening in which she engages with such relish. 'Rachel from North London' is a rape victim and also a survivor from the 7/7 tube bombings. Hitherto I have borne that in mind and been rather kind to her, well, kind by my standards.  Not that it did me any good, I was banned from her site but her peculiar logic didn't stop her from following me over here and giving me a good kicking.  Anyway, from now on, no more 'Mr. Nice Guy'!

'Rachel from North London' is what I call a 'Security Services groupie'.  Her involvement in the tube attacks and her consequent agitation for an enquiry into the activities of MI5 has brought her into contact with all sorts of fringe characters who inhabit the grey area surrounding their activities, from the Home Secretary down, or up, if you prefer!  She has caught the dread disease secretisis, a well-known syndrome affecting those who come into proximity with the intelligence services which manifests itself by the infected person going around nodding and winking and tapping the side of their nose convinced that they know something you don't but they can't divulge a word - yet! Alas, these poor people know nothing, or at least, nothing of any importance, but once they have smelt a rat they convince themselves they have seen an elephant.

Consider Rachel's case.  She knew before the rest of us that the Security Services had come across two of the 7/7 bombers whilst they were concentrating on another gang who were well on their way to producing an even bigger atrocity.  There were, I gather, around 55 other 'possibles' who crossed their path in this investigation.  I am not sure how many operatives it takes to follow one man for 24 hours but my guess is at least 24 and probably more. Not counting all the other operations then in progress, that would have taken another 1,300 personnel.  Given that most of these terrorists (Rachel prefers to call them "criminals") move and live in Muslim populated areas, frankly, I'm amazed that MI5/Special Branch, most of whose members are white, managed to do the terrific job they did.  (This raises another point.  Obviously the Security Services are now recruiting Asian officers for this sort of work, as well as training them, in turn, to recruit and run their own informants.  The delicacy and difficulty of this work cannot be over-estimated, particularly bearing in mind the danger that militant Muslims will be attempting to infiltrate their own people into MI5/SB.) Nevertheless, and despite all the ongoing pressures and dangers, 'Rachel from North London' insists, no, she demands, that these officers leave what they are doing; so that their superiors who are planning tactics, and the agents who are on the ground as part of intricately choreographed surveillance operations, cease their activities in order to go to an enquiry and answer questions to keep 'Rachel from North London' happy because 'Rachel from North London' reckons that a few years ago they made a mistake. 

Well, my message to 'Rachel from North London' is that she is a stupid, egotistical woman of limited intelligence but unlimited emotional difficulties combined with a driving ambition.  She claims that her motivation is to ensure that the public is properly protected but in my opinion it is her own fragile ego that she seeks to boost, to say nothing of her career in the media.  Should you doubt, read her essay and her breathless list of all the media who were seeking her opinions!  A minor motif running through her campaign is her political views on the war in Iraq and her sustained agitation should be seen as a prop for that particular agit-prop.  She is entirely free to hold those views but not at the expense of diverting the attention of Security Service agents from protecting the rest of us.  Like any war, and it is a war not a criminal conspiracy, we will make mistakes.  I happen to believe that the people in the agencies concerned will, like every other war they have fought, learn from their mistakes because in the final analysis they are on our side.  'Rachel from North London' is not!

On a razor's edge - or edges!

I am in my usual condition of bemusement, not to say, befuddlement, without, I might add, the aid of so much as a single sip of one of the three best things to come out of Scotland.  (What are the other two? Soldiers and the Scottish enlightenment, of course!)  Anyway, perhaps you, my readers, might be able to clear up my confusion which can be stated as a question: why do modern razors require five blades?  I have been shaving for 50+ years and have managed on one blade per razor without ever being arrested on suspicion of vagrancy.  True, about twenty years ago I suffered an attack of alopecia, although 'suffered' is hardly the word for a condition which neither hurts nor kills you, and ever since my beard has not been particularly strong, but even so, given the exorbitant cost of, not only those fancy-dancy new razors sets, but also the replacement blades which began with two blades per holder and now contain five, I switched to the cheapest possible alternative - Bic plastic throw-aways which cost a fraction of the price of the new Beckham-backed, post-modernist creations.  The other question that occurs, is where will it all end? Next Christmas will we see The New Seven Blader to be called, of course, The Magnificent Seven, or perhaps Seven Blades for Seven Misters?  Will this escalate into a trade war in which hairy westerners compete with the booming Chinese economy for steel supplies?  And how long will it be, when we have the twenty blader, before 'Elf & Safety' warn of the dangers of dislocating one's shoulder trying to lift the bloody things?

This post is close to Whimsy Factor 10 and getting out of hand, I'm off to watch the footie on the telly!

Jock Strapped for Cash!

According to The Business, and whilst you might not like its politics its statistics are usually impeccable, government spending on Jocks (and Jockettes) is 25% higher than on decent, upright, English John Bulls!  To be precise, the government dishes out £6,154 per person in Jockland. The SNP leader, Alex Salmond, strikes me as rather a clever fellow.  Certainly well ahead of most of the cretins who make up his party, and definitely several steps ahead of the dummies in the Scottish Labout Party and I doubt that if you added up the brain cells of most of the current British cabinet they would exceed Mr. Salmond's.  So it will be an interesting experience to watch him wriggle his way through the enormous financial problem that faces him should his dream of an independent Scotland ever be realised.

According to Treasury figures for 2004/5, the Jock subsidy (if I might call it that - for honesty's sake) amounted to "£11.3bn - equivalent to 12% of Scotland's GDP".  At this point any Scots Nat will start making a noise like a pipe-band warming up and in a nasal whine that could shatter steel, will demand his oil money!  When you tell him that the total earnings from North Sea oil are now only £5.3bn of which Scotland's share would be unlikely to exceed £3bn, leaving him with a national hole in his budget of £8.3bn, he will make a noise like a punctured bagpipe and, true to form, will probably try and nut you. 

Mr. Salmond, being of an altogether different and higher species of Jock, knows this pefectly well and so one is left to wonder exactly how he would proceed.  Indeed, one wonders if he would proceed at all because his only hope of making up the missing dosh would be to go bonnet in hand to Brussels much as the Paddies did years ago.  But times, they is a changin'!  These days there is a queue of nations already formed-up waiting for hand-outs and as they are situated between us and the Russkies there are some good geo-political reasons to make sure they stay on side.  But Scotland? "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!" is likely to be the response.  Of course, they would love to see the UK disunited if only to poke the English in the eye with a sharp stick, but by then, I suspect, the English will be so sick of the Jocks they will be begging the Euros to take them off our hands. Well, we'd be £8.3bn a year better off, for starters; plus, for a bonus, 'ur wee Gordie Broon' would be out of a job - oh, the joy!

So, I suspect that sly Mr. Salmond will take it very, very slowly in pushing for independence.  He will threaten, and cajole, and bluff and wriggle and as so many teases do, he will end up saying 'no'.  However, time isn't on his side. After a few years of SNP rule, which I can promise you will not be jot or a tittle better than the Lab-lot provided, the insatiable appetites of millions of Jocks and Jockettes addicted to a life of hanging from the government teat, will demand more and more and yet more. Still, by the time the keening becomes unbearable, clever old Salmond will have retired, possibly to a nice tax-haven recommended to him by that SNP-stalwart, Scottish patriot and tax-exile, Sir(?) Sean Connery.

As the greatest Scottish warrior of all time put it, in immortal lines that have echoed down the ages, and provided inspiration to tartan hearts everywhere, "We're all doomed, I tell ye!"

Additonal: I heard an interesting point on the 'telly' concerning the EU's re-action to the possibility of Scottish independence.  The speaker reckoned they would not be at all keen on it because if successful there would be a queue of Catalonians, Bretons, Basques, Corsicans and goodness knows how many other 'minority races' formed immediately.

Ropes - you want 'em, we got 'em!

I'm thinking of going into the rope business.  Well, I think it could be a nice peaceful hobby for me in my retirement, sitting outside in the sunshine on my new patio, gently weaving the strands in and out as I pleat together long lengths of good, strong rope.  And I think it will be a 'nice little earner', know what I mean? After all, just today two adults have been arrested following the discovery of a couple of dead children and yesterday a man was sentenced to 21 years for murder having been released from jail after only 14 years for the kidnap and rape of two young girls, and then last week a 16-year-old shot his sister in the head with a gun he owned and before that a toddler was killed in a drive-by shooting ... and so, week in, week out, the bodies of the innocent pile up ever higher and higher and I reckon when the stench is so strong that not even the purblind Dr. 'Teabag' can ignore it no longer, they'll bring back hanging and I'll make, er, a killing!

Postman Pratt!

I am still awaiting the howls of outrage and the "rapid rattle" of gunfire from the execution squad in response to that 'thicko' former postman who currently masquerades as, and please don't vomit, our 'Edukashun' minister who has instructed schools to play tendentious political propoganda to children in the form of Al Gore's polemical film on the subject of global warming.  This, I would remind you, is the man who urged our little darlings to use Wikipedia as a source of learning! However, it isn't the forced inculcation of egregiously bad science into the heads of our dear little tots that I object to, after all, most of them are too thick to understand anything containing words of more than one syllable; no, it is the infliction on the little innocents of what can only be described as 'cruel and unusual punishement' in the form of having to sit and listen to Al 'Bore' droning on and on and on and on ...

I say, bring back the cane, it would be kinder!

Irritating books!

Actually, that title is not very grammatical because what I mean to say is that there are two things I find exceedingly irritating about books.  First, and least important, is the habit shops have of putting stickers on the covers of paper backs indicating some special deal.  Of course, it is not the deal I find irritating but the fact that as you read the damn thing you can feel that slight ridge as your fingers slide over the shiny covers and, try as I might, I cannot resist the need to peel them off.  Some come off easily but others are enormously 'pick-resistant' and require many minutes of concentrated effort to lift a corner.  Mind you, the satisfaction when my finger-tips tease out that first edge and then the whole thing comes off in one smooth lift. (Well, as my 68th birthday approaches this month one is forced to take one's pleasure's where one can - and don't sneer, your turn will come!)

I was reminded of the second irritation in the last few days when a genius who understands drills, rawl plugs, screw-drivers and the like, came to put up some shelves for me thus necessitating a complete reorganisation of my 'library'.  Now here, dear reader, I must ask you a very personal question which will, of course, remain strictly confidential - are you 'a left tilter' or 'a right tilter'?  By which I mean, do you, when faced with the shelf of books, tilt your head to the left or right in order to scan the row of books.  I don't know why I ask this useless question because it doesn't matter a fig which way you tilt, the bloody publishers always vary which way up they put the title, God rot their souls!  As it happens, I am a 'left-tilter' (and you would not have bet on that, I suspect!) and consequently half my books are upside down so that I can run my eyes quickly along the titles without risk of ricking my neck with a to and fro movement.

This may seem to a be a matter of supreme unimportance to you, but let me tell you that it looms very large in my universe.  But there again, as 'Teabag', 'NIB', 'Ratty' and 'Bananas' will quickly inform you, my social life is not, perhaps, the most exciting!