DUFF & NONSENSE!

Superbe - le Bard en France!

And, no, thank you kindly, I do not require French lessons - but you lot could do with some Shakespearean lessons and where better than in the idyllic setting of the French Pyrenees?  I have just been passed this link to two very experienced actors/writers/teachers who seem to have found a little piece of heaven in south west France where they run a 6-day course in Shakespearean studies.  If I wasn't building up my strength for the best of three falls with the heavyweight King Lear I'd be over like a shot!  Take a look, or better still, take a trip!

http://www.drama-workshop.co.uk/dramaprogramme.html

 

No, no, I'm the real father of Michael Jackson's children!

Honestly, the behaviour of some people just because there is the possibility of celebrity fame and shed-loads of dosh is quite appalling.  First, some 'quack' called 'Arnie' claimed that he was the father of Michael Jackson's children - as though anyone would pay any attention to a man with a soppy name like 'Arnie' - oh, er, except for you, of course, Mr. - I mean - Governor Schwartzenegger.  (Bit touchy, isn't he?  Lucky for him he didn't catch me in a bad mood, I'd have flattened him!)

Then that Mark Lester popped up to stake his claim!  Quite ridiculous, of course, because he's only 12 and I know that for a fact because it was only last week that I saw him in that boring Dickens film.  Now, another 'kiddie star' has tried to push in.  Macauley Culkin, or Hulkin, or something - unless it's Culkin Macauley because you can never tell with Americans and their strange forenames.  Anyway, they're all wasting their time because you only have to look at this . . .

and then this . . .

to see the amazing likeness.  So, I have told them all to form a queue, with me at its head, and I gather it's halfway round the block already.  Honestly, what some people will do for money!

No! Make that TWO stakes just to be sure!

I thought I had finally up-chucked everything I wanted to say concerning 'St. Ted of Chappaquiddick' but no, the infamies keep rolling in.  First, there is the ever-excellent Donald Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek who has compared the good Senator's compassionate sayings to his, er, less than compassionate givings:

Words are cheap.  Anyone can preach compassion, and even be free and generous with other people’s money.  The late Sen. Kennedy mastered these talents.  But surely what really matters is how generous Mr. Kennedy was with his own money.  Sadly, the answer is “not very.”

While he almost always kept his income-tax returns secret, Mr. Kennedy was obliged to release them during his run for the presidency in 1980.  These records reveal that Sen. Compassion – worth $8 million at the time (nearly $20 million in today’s dollars) and earning an annual income of close to $500,000 (almost $1.3 million in today’s dollars) – contributed a whopping one percent of his income to charity. [My emphasis] This percentage figure is a paltry one-fourth the size of the charitable contributions, made at the same time, of the less-wealthy Ronald Reagan.

Why am I totally un-surprised?

Then those rascals at 'I Hate the Media' (don't they ever sleep?) point to the distressing sight of the Kennedy grandchildren being hauled out into the spotlight to shill for 'Obamacare' at good ol' Granpappy's funeral.  I will take the liberty of quoting in full because then you will taste the full, rich flavour of the humbuggery:

The torch has been passed. Teddy may be dead, but shameless socialist hucksterism is still alive and well in the Kennedy family. They actually sent Teddy’s young grandsons out to push for ObamaCare at grandpa’s funeral.

“For what my grandpa called the cause of his life,” one grandson said, “as he said so often ‘In every part of this land that every American will have decent quality healthcare as a fundamental right and not a privilege,’ we pray to the Lord.”

“For my grandfather’s brave promise last summer that, ‘The work begins anew, the hope rises again, and the dream lives on,’ we pray to the Lord,” another grandson said.

And then, being good Kennedys, they downed a couple Chivas & sodas and peeked up their girl cousin’s dresses.

No one sticks the knife in so deftly as the lads at 'I Hate the Media' - put them on your 'Favourites' list - now!

Quick, dig up Ted Kennedy and drive a stake through his heart!

I confess that when I wrote my previous post on the late Ted Kennedy my detailed knowledge of his life was scant, but sometimes with public figures you really do not need too much information, just a few key pointers here and there, and thus it was with him.  In any case, along came Renee, a new commenter here at D&N, who eviscerated the fat phoney with effortless ease.

Anyway, after returning from a night away I was catching up with some of my favourite bloggers including the essential Alan Sullivan who pointed me to this article in Forbes.  In essence it claims that in 1991, Tim Sebastian, then a reporter with The Times serving in Moscow, took advantage of the opening of the Soviet records.  In them he found a memo from a senior Polit Bureau member to Andropov, a former head of the KGB and subsequently the General Secretary and leader of the Soviet Union.  It made clear that Sen. Kennedy was offering a deal in which he would visit Moscow and ensure that Andropov was given prime TV time with the American networks in which he could address the American people and thus throw a spanner in the policies of President Reagan, against whom he wished to stand.

Sebastian wrote the story for The Times in 1992 and later it was cited in a book.  The MSM studiously ignored it and no rebuttal was ever heard from the Kennedy camp.  In the post immediately below this I suggested that the Obama regime was close to committing treason.  Until last week Kennedy was a leading supporter and apparently already experienced in the practice!  Obama delivered the final eulogy at his funeral.  Read the Forbes article, but if you're American, not after a heavy lunch!

Did Glenn Beck make his case?

Well, I think so, but perhaps I should explain the question.  Glenn Beck is a TV presenter for the Fox News Service.  His style is melodramatic - he would make a very good stage actor, I suspect - and politically he is a 'Right-winger'.  I place inverted commas round that word because it is a shorthand description which bears amplification.  He is (rather like me) a modern equivalent of a 19th century Liberal in that he believes in small government, sound money, liberty of the individual within the law and is wary of foreign entanglements.  In the American style he is a patriot by which I mean he is unembarrassed to say it out loud.  During this week, on his daily programme, he has been attempting to lay a case that is perilously close to accusing the Obama regime of treason.  The very nature and scope and seriousness of that charge makes it worth examining, indeed, the fact that he makes it on a major TV network indicates the truth of one of his contentions, that is, that the normal bish-bash, huff 'n' puff of Republican versus Democrat that is the very stuff of congressional politics in a democracy is over, or to be exact, is very close to being over.  There is no more serious crime than treason.

The main thrust of his argument is the fact, which he demonstrates over and over and over again, that the Democrat party has been infiltrated by extreme Left-wing elements, including self-avowed communists, in much the same way that the Labour party of the 1980s very nearly succumbed to infiltration by anti-democratic forces and was only saved in the nick of time by mass expulsions.  That did not matter so much in Britain because Labour was not in power, but in the USA, a new president has swept into government with the added re-enforcement of majorities in both Houses.  If Beck's thesis is right, then we are in very serious trouble, and I say 'we' because what happens 'over there' matters enormously 'over here'.  The very thought of a totalitarian America with a foreign policy friendly only to the dictatorships of the world is the very stuff of nightmares.  (As a very small indication of the way the wind is blowing in Washington, witness the re-action of Obama's government to the absolutely legal and proper decision of the Honduran Supreme Court to order their army to expel their president who was seeking, Chavez-style, to subvert the constitution and illegally extend his time in office.  Washington has already exerted pressure against Honduras!)

Beck mounts his case by taking a detailed look at some of the so-called 'czars', what we would call, after clearing our throats and spitting, SpAds - Special Advisors.  I will not rehearse everything he laid out but you could do no better than check the history of Mr. Van Jones, who was arrested some years ago and from his jail-time experience said this:

"I met all these young radical people of color - I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of... I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary...I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th..By August, I was a communist."

When he came out he helped form a radical organisation called STORM (Standing Together to Form a Revolutionary Movement).  His entire history is one of radical, revolutionary fervour on behalf of extreme communist-front organisations.  This is the man Obama has chosen for a key job with access to zillions of federal funds.  Read more here.  It's not too surprising that Obama favoured him because the President, himself, admitted in his book, Dreams from my Father, that his youthful mentor was someone called 'Frank'.  Only much later did it transpire that 'Frank' was

Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis.  We confirmed that identification with a separate source and ran with the story last year, even obtaining the 600-page FBI file on Davis. It also came out that Davis was a sex pervert, doper, and pornographer.  The Obama campaign eventually confirmed Frank's identity but tried to play down his relationship with Obama. [Quote from here] [However, read the comments thread below for a rebuttal by his son of the influence Davis had with Obama.]

Van Jones is merely the tip of a huge iceberg, and as that metaphor suggests, there is an enormous amount of 'red ice' hidden beneath the waves.  The most sinister, perhaps, is the mass organisation known as 'ACORN' (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) which purports to be a community association whose aim is to register voters.  However, this is its record:

• Was implicated in numerous reports of fraudulent voter registration, vote-rigging, voter intimidation, and vote-for-pay scams during recent election cycles
• Pressured banks to lend money to underqualified minority borrowers
• Maintains close ties to organized labor
• Opposes capitalism
• Calls for more government control over citizens and the economy
• Favors a government monopoly in healthcare
• Advocates an open-door immigration policy.

With nearly half a million members in 110 US cities this has all the characteristics of a potentially militant and subversive organisation.  Also, following Rahm Emanuel's seizure of the Census Bureau, so that it now runs directly under his control, the job of 'estimating' populations in any given area has been passed to ACORN and their assessment will decide on political boundaries in the various districts which willbe duly altered to the advantage of the Dems.  But ACORN is not alone. By its side stands AmeriCorps with a federal budget of $500 million plus, which pays 'volunteers' to do various 'good works' virtually all of which are ideas proposed by the Democrat party.  These people are anything but 'volunteers', they are paid and they owe their allegiance to the Dems.  There is film of Obama making a speech in which he said that the military was not enough, and that a civilian national security service was required.  Step forward AmeriCorps!

During the election campaign I made a mistake - again!  I assumed that Obama was a straightforward soft 'Leftie' who would use the community power of the extremists and then smack them down when he was elected.  I was wrong.  He is building them up, funding them with federal money, encouraging his activists to get them organised and get them ready . . . but ready for what, exactly?  Like Beck, I do not know, but the classic revolutionary ploy (see Russia, Germany, passim) is to manufacture a crisis, usually a security crisis involving a major attack on the organs of the state, in general, and/or the leader of the state, in particular.  At that point, with panic in the air, excuses can be made for anti-freedom legislation and the mobilsation of forces friendly to the regime.  You may think this exaggerated and absurd but I will tell you now that there are people in high positions in the Obama regime who have spent their entire lives steeped in militant, radical activities.  They have read every essay, every pamphlet, every book, on the subject of how to spring a revolutionary situation so as to aid their purposes.  Whether or not they will act, I do not know. 

Time is of the essence.  Next November there will be Congressional elections and I suspect, I hope, I pray, that the American people, having been alerted by the efforts of people like Glenn Beck, will take to the polling booths in such numbers that they turf the rascals out and the Dems no longer control the Congress.  The way the Town Hall meetings are going, and the way in which the opinion polls are following them, I think there is a good chance it will happen, but if I think that, then so too will the extremists who surround Obama.  If they are going to act, they have the next 12 months to do it.  Watch this space!

At last, the global warming movement gives us all a laugh

For a moment I thought it was April 1st when I read a comment over at Deogolwulf's place where I learned that John Prescott had been appointed as a professor of climate change at Xiamen University in south China, but it is all true, honestly, even The Mirror confirms it.  Oh, well, there goes another good

joke but, of course, on second thoughts there is more to this story than meets the eye.  The Chinese are intending to be the great world threat of the 21st century and those devious plotters in MI6 have devised a deadly subtle plan to smuggle 'Prezza' into China in the hope that they will follow his advice which, as we have all found out here at home, will result in muddle, confusion and disaster.  Those Chinks might think they have cornered the market in devilish cunning but they've got nothing on us!  In the meantime the AGW mob are made to look even more ridiculous.

A stray thought.  You can see that 'Prezza' knows exactly how to deal with a steak pie but how will he manage with chopsticks?

!st photo courtesy of  www.britishblogs.co.uk/search/irish%20pay/

2nd photo courtesy of  www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/presco...

Everything you need to know about the USA!

As you all know, or perhaps I should rephrase that, as 'all y' all' know (see below for a translation) I frequently write about America because it is my favourite 'other country' and indeed I can only put it down to a slip of the memory that former President George Bush failed to award me the honourary citizenship which I so richly deserve given the steady stream of advice I have offered over the years.  Even so, I must confess to an uneasy feeling sometimes that I am not quite au fait with the finer points of American life as it is lived.  Perhaps sensing that himself, my e-pal 'JK', with typical American generosity, has stepped in and sent me a very useful guide to those imperceptible differences between the north and the south of that great continent.  It is, I feel, essential reading for scholars of all things American: 

The difference between the north and south
The difference between the North and the South - at last, clearly explained....

The North has Bloomingdale's , the South has Dollar General .

The North has coffee houses, the South has Waffle Houses .

The North has dating services, the South has family reunions.

The North has switchblade knives; the South has .45's

The North has double last names; the South has double first names.

The North has Indy car races; The South has stock car races .

North has Cream of Wheat , the South has grits.

The North has green salads, the South has collard greens .

The North has lobsters, the South has crawfish .

The North has the rust belt; the South has the Bible Belt .

FOR NORTHERNERS MOVING SOUTH . . .....

In the South : --If you run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.

Don't be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same store.... Do not buy food at this store.

Remember, 'Y'all' is singular, 'all y'all' is plural, and 'all y'all's' is plural possessive

Get used to hearing 'You ain't from round here, are ya?'

Save all manner of bacon grease. You will be instructed later on how to use it.

Don't be worried at not understanding what people are saying. They can't understand you either. The first Southern statement to creep into a transplanted Northerner's vocabulary is the adjective 'big'ol,' truck or 'big'ol' boy. Most Northerners begin their Southern-influenced dialect this way. All of them are in denial about it.

The proper pronunciation you learned in school is no longer proper .

Be advised that 'He needed killin..' is a valid defense here.

If you hear a Southerner exclaim, 'Hey, y'all watch this,' you should stay out of the way. These are likely to be the last words he'll ever say.

If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the smallest accumulation of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery store. It doesn't matter whether you need anything or not. You just have to go there.

Do not be surprised to find that 10-year olds own their own shotguns, they are proficient marksmen, and their mammas taught them how to aim.

In the South, we have found that the best way to grow a lush green lawn is to pour gravel on it and call it a driveway.

AND REMEMBER: If you do settle in the South and bear children, don't think we will accept them as Southerners.. After all, if the cat had kittens in the oven, we ain't gonna   call 'em biscuits.

The point of the advice concerning bacon fat escapes me for the moment but I have an uneasy feeling that I really don't want to know!

The Obama 'regime' dissected with a laser!

I am obliged to my e-pal, Malcolm Pollack, for pointing me towards this superb, cool, analytical dissection of the Obama phenomenon by Fouad Ajami.  Not only do I think he is exactly right, he also gives me hope that perhaps all is not lost in my favourite 'other country'.  Please, do read it, it is excellent.

SHOCK NEWS: GORDON BROWN DEAF AS WELL AS (HALF) BLIND

Paul Waugh increasingly takes after his father, and that is a compliment of the highest order from me.  Rummaging through an obscure BBC radio programme he picked up a piece of damning evidence that should, if there is any justice in this world, land Brown in the dock, Enron-style, for gross mal-administration.  Apparently, back in April 2007 there was a G7 meeting, attended by our very own Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon "no-more-boom-and-bust" Brown, at which the German finance minister wished to complain and agitate against the relative freedom of  hedge fund companies as compared to regulated Banks.  Two leading hedge fund managers were invited to speak to the assembled finance ministers and they both gave a 60-minute presentation in which they pointed out with analytical clarity that a festering cess-pit of bad, American, sub-prime debt was about to overflow its edges and would swamp the world finance system, and that most of this ultra-smelly debt was owned by the regulated Banks for which these self-same finance ministers were responsible.  They both made clear that triple-AAA security ratings on these Banks, and they named names, were not, in effect, worth a bucket of spit.  As Waugh reminds us:

The meeting was just five months before the run on Northern Rock and more than a year before Lehman Brothers collapsed.

One of the two hedge fund managers said:

“At that meeting I even disclosed that the entities [the big regulated Banks] I’m now putting up on the wall are leveraged 30 to one - you should worry about virtually all of them and you should be concerned, but I am betting with my clients’ money that there’s going to be a big problem here. So there was no doubt as to where I stood on the situation.”

So were there gasps of suprise, fearful intakes of breath, a quick intermission whilst everyone reached for their mobile 'phones? No!  Instead the German minister, along with everyone else present, including you-know-who, began questioning them on why they thought they should not be regulated like other Banks.  According to this manager, some time afterwards two of those present apologised to him for not having taken him seriously.  Neither apologist was G. Brown, MP.

Read the sickening detail here and just add it to the mountain of reasons why Labour must be stamped almost out of existence at the next election even if, as is probably true, the other lot are not much better.

Never speak ill of the dead - except in the case of Ted Kennedy!

The courtesies of polite society demand that one never speak ill of the dead which is alright, I suppose, but runs into some problems here at D&N where courtesy is not always observed, and in the case of the late, unlamented Ted Kennedy it is difficult to find anything good to say about him.  I notice that one TV station was forced, presumably by lack of volunteers, to rope in a former terrorist mass-murderer to find something to say on the plus side.  Well, I expect he was very grateful to 'good ol' Ted' because the Senator gave him and his organisation moral, and by default, material, succour in their murderous onslaught against my country.  So all I can say in retrospect is what a pity it was that he didn't suffer very much longer the agonies of his brain tumour, and profoundly hope that Mary Jo is waiting for him on the other side!

Additional:  Those wicked chaps at 'I Hate the Media'have found a photo of a demonstrator holding aloft a placard on which is written: "Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my guns".  They follow up with a list of 'Twitters' on the late Senator all of which are in the worst possible taste - and hilarious!

The quartet hit a high note

Sorry to bore on about Andrew Roberts' superb book, Masters and Commanders, but I am absolutely enthralled by it. It is history at its very best because whilst it explains the ins and outs of the grand strategy debates (arguments? rows? shouting matches?) that occurred between Brooke, Churchill, Marshall and Roosevelt during WWII, it never loses track of the personalities involved.  History is people!

The history of these particular four people could be dismissed as simply four egotists forever trying to out do each other but that would be a travesty.  In their own way, and at their own ultra high level, they were rather like a squad of infantry 'grunts' thrown together into a maelstrom of danger and extreme high pressure. (At times the danger was real given the thousands of miles they travelled either in relatively primitive planes or across oceans in which lurked U-boats.)  So it is no wonder that their disputes dominate the story but it should not be forgotten that whilst they were often at loggerheads over means their united aim never varied, the complete defeat of the Axis powers.

As an antidote to the many and frequently vitriolic disputations, here is an example of when all of that was blown away and the stark reality of interdependency was revealed along with an instantaneous example of American generosity of spirit as well as material:

Brooke was standing with Churchill next to Roosevelt's desk after lunch when the news of the fall of Tobruk was brought in.  Tobruk had long been a talisman for Churchill, a totem. [...]

The American response to the news about Tobruk was instinctive and was often later recalled with powerful nostalgia by all the Britons present. 'For a moment or two no one spoke,' recalled Ismay, but then the silence was broken by Roosevelt.  'In six monosyllables he epitomized his sympathy with Churchill, his determination to do his utmost to sustain him, and his recognition that we were all in the same boat: "What can we do to help?"'  Brooke also vividly remembered 'being impressed by the tact and real heartfelt sympathy that lay behind these words.  There was not one word too much or too little.'  Churchill agreed: 'Nothing could exceed the sympathy and chivalry of my two friends,' he wrote.  'There were no reproaches; not an unkind word was spoken.  "What can we do to help?" said Roosevelt.'  Marshall offered an American armoured division, to be shipped off to the Middle East immediately.

It was the worst of times and the best of times!

Still feeling rough? The Yanks should feel even rougher!

There are times, like most of my life, when I begin to believe that we have cornered the market in utterly useless, stupid politicians, but then along comes a Barack Obama and, hey-ho, my burden is slightly lifted, or at least, shared.  The latest wheeze from this political-economic genius is to lend the Brazilians $2 billion - for off-shore oil exploration, an activity which he has opposed in the USA!  The environmentalists, or 'mentalists', for short, won a court ruling against exploring off the Alaskan shore, and drilling off either eastern or western seaboards is forbidden.  However, they have managed to bring themselves to allow exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.  The price of oil has already shot up in the USA, as it has everywhere, and the nice, bright, shiny, 'Cap 'n' Trade' Bill will add even more.  And yet, the Obama mal-administration manages to find $2 billion for a Brazilian, state-owned oil conglomorate to dig holes in the ocean bed - so long as that bed is well away from the activists in the Democrat party.

Additional: If anyone has Sky TV I do urge you to try and watch Glenn Beck on Fox News (ch. 509) at 10.00 pm each day this week.  He is somewhat rhetorical and evangelical in style but he knows whereof he speaks.  What he says is beginning to get me worried about my favourite 'other country' and, be warned, I may have to post about it soon.  But do try and watch him.

Feeling rough? Read no further!

Oh, happy days!  Well, it is if you are based in Brussels because us Brits, being deeply grateful and ever generous in our support for all things European, will increase our budget contribution to £6.4 billion next year, that's an increase of almost 60% and works out at £260 per household.  Apparently our prime minister - anyone seen him recently, by the way? - said that it is right "to share the burden of membership with new accession countries", so that's OK then!  Anyway, not to worry, our national debt has almost reached £800 billion, so it's chicken feed, really.  To quote a phrase - 'sick-bags are available in the back of your seats'.

I am obliged to Deborah Hyde of City Wire.

The, er, Lorenz symmetry goes, um, pear-shaped . . . I think!

Us bloggers like to think we have the art of vicious invective cornered.  When it comes to calling a spade a bloody shovel, no one dishes it out more brutally than us practitioners of the keyboard.  I like to think, modestly, that I, too, have contributed to the cruel evisceration of those simpletons who stumble in here from time to time looking for a fight.  Well, sorry to disappoint you, boys and girls, we are but mere apprentices when it comes to getting down and dirty in a dispute.  For real heavyweight punching, and kicking, and gouging, you need to enter the revered and sanctified realms of high science.  Take this as an example:

Every competent high-energy physicist who knows ['John Doe', the name of an eminent physicist omitted for legal reasons] may confirm that [he] is the ultimate symbol of the complete absence of the scientific integrity and, indeed, the very basic human ethical values.

That was just Round #1, then came Round #2:

But what he's doing and saying after the Fermi collaborations have proved that all the "theories" he has ever invented about quantum gravity were rubbish simply exceeds all the limits that could be tolerable for a person who should be allowed to freely walk on the street.

Alas, in my state of 'shlock-horror' at such a breach of the normal courtesies exchanged between scientists engaged in the dis-interested pursuit of truth, I can only make use of an Australian exclamation - 'strewth'!  But he ain't finished yet, no, by God:

Everyone who tolerates this disgraceful liar and demagogue as a part of the scientific community is an immoral bastard. Not only the internet crackpots - the likes of [names deleted for reasons not far from my cowardice in the face of m' legal friends!], and similar subjects from the moral dumping ground of science - but also the very institutions whose official goal should be to support science actively do lots of things to protect this stunning degree of scientific misconduct.

Pausing only to take breath, he continues:

Of course that what [Doe] says doesn't influence real science because every competent scientist has known that [John Doe] is a crank for years or decades. And it is damn easy to see and prove that similar discrete models of spacetime simply cannot preserve the Lorentz symmetry.

Damn!  I was depending on good old Lorenz and his symmetry - what next?

For example, the proper 2-areas in relativity may be both real and imaginary, so any theory that implies that they must be real is instantly falsified.

Absolutely, couldn't agree more, er, I think . . . anyway:

But what [John Doe] is doing is brutally influencing the laymen, including those who are behind various funding agencies and similar bodies. I urge everyone who has some responsibility for these matters to go after [Doe's] neck.

Pheeeew!  I always thought these academic hissy fits were confined to the Arts side of academe but this makes the vicious spat over Shakespeare's 'dark lady' between the late A.L.Rowse, a historian, and those he dismissively referred to as 'the Eng. Lit. lot', seem rather delicate in comparison.

I should make clear that I have no views whatsoever concerning the Lorenz symmetry, not least because I haven't the remotest idea what it is.  Nor do I have any knowledge of the personalities involved other than the fact that I do, from time to time, skim read the blog of one of them.  I am not going to provide a link because I have it somewhere in the dusty cupboard of my memory that it is slanderous to pass on someone else's slander - if indeed it be slander that I have quoted.  I only publish this to disabuse the infantile, or the stupid, amongst you (not many of either, here at D&N) that there is something out there in the real world that even approximates to 'disinterested science'.  I know it's hard to imagine but those egg-heads in white coats are actually human, you know!

This was a Town Hall meeting and a half!

My American e-pal, Hank, who makes regular appearances here, found a 'YouTube' clip of a (sort of) Town Hall meeting with a difference!  If I tell you that the difference is Marlon Brando I suspect some of you will guess what it is.  Anyway, pop over and take a look - brilliant, scintilating stuff but uncomfortable viewing, as looking in a mirror can sometimes be.

http://eclecticmeanderings.blogspot.com/2009/08/town-halls-winning-crowd.html

The most subtle game ever invented

Today I stand acused under the heading of "Oh, ye of little faith"!  In a recent exchange with my American e-pal, 'JK', a regular commenter here, I told him the embarrassing history of the Ashes Test Series between us and the Aussies and in an excess of gloom I forecast the usual drubbing that was likely to be dished out - again - by those blasted ex-cons!  But praise the Lord and pass the champagne, we actually won.

Now before I go any further let me admit immediately that I am a fairweather cricket lover - no, no, that won't do - I'm not even a fairweather cricket lover because on the odd occasions when I do watch it I do so via the good offices of that nice Mr. Murdoch (another Aussie, heh, heh, heh!) so the weather has no effect on me.  What I meant to say was that I only get interested on those very rare occasions when we might, just might, stand a small chance of winning.  My hopes were raised at the beginning of this series by an unexpected win, well, unexpected by me, but dashed thereafter by an Australian win in which our bowlers indicated that they might have difficulty hitting a barn - from the inside; and our batters would have been better occupied battering a piece of cod in the local fish and chip shop.

So this week we came to the final match in which (I specify this for the sake of my American readers) it was necessary for England to win outright because even a draw would have meant that the Aussies would have held on to the ashes.  (Actually, at the risk of confusing any of my American readers who have struggled thus far, they wouldn't have held on to them because we never give them to them even when they win, they remain locked in Lords, the home of cricket, and the Aussies are given a nice little scroll or something in lieu.)  Anyway, this final, crucial match began on Thursday and as usual was scheduled to last up to 5 days - yes, yes, my impatient American friends, that's how long it lasts!  Actually this one only made it to the fourth day, today, and what a match it was.  The Aussies were on the back foot having been forced to watch England notch up a formidable score which every 'expert' said was impossible for the Aussies to match . . . er, but, they added, they are Aussies, you know.  That sort of sentiment is the very greatest compliment to the Australian cricketers and their reputation for never, not ever, saying die.  Yesterday evening their opening batsmen were tested by the English bowlers for an hour and a half but gave absolutely nothing away.  Today the game recommenced and for once our bowlers did what they are supposed to do but frequently do not which is to bowl on a good line and at a good length.  Even so, the Australian batsmen pegged away gamely and as the runs totted up my confidence, never very great to begin with, began to ebb away.  However, one by one our bowlers took a wicket here, a wicket there, until finally with an hour to spare they got the last man out and the Ashes were ours.

Test Match cricket is the very greatest and subtlest of games.  There is Grand Strategy as the teams try to judge the characteristics of the wicket (the ground) upon which they will play and pick their side accordingly.  There is Strategy in deciding if your side wins the toss of the coin whether you will bat or bowl first.  There are Grand Tactics in the decisions taken by the fielding side as to where to place the fielders appropriately given the type of bowler and the habits of the batsmen - which have been rigorously examined on videos of past performances.  And finally there are the Tactical decisions as to which bowler to use at which time and from which end of the ground, or, if you are batting, whether you decide to play for a draw or a win, and so, and so on.  On top of all that, and believe me, I have only scratched the surface of the game's intricacies, there is that great unknown in England - the weather!

There may be some extraordinary game played by, say, yak herdsmen in Mongolia which is frightfully contrived and convoluted but I will take a lot of convincing that there is any game, anywhere in the world, so rich in subtleties as Test Match cricket.

Er, somebody buy that Aussie a pint of 'Four XXXX', he looks really upset - heh, heh, heh!

The quartet begins on the wrong note!

I mentioned down below that I was just beginning Andrew Roberts's book Masters and Commanders and whilst I have only just reached page 178 out of 600-odd I am already totally enthralled.  It tells the tale, and it is a tale in the very best and most exciting sense of the word, of the shifting, and shifty, relationships between the two soldiers and two politicians who led the free world to victory against the Germans and the Japanese.  I am already fairly familiar with the main arguments that took place between Brooke, Churchill, Marshall and Roosevelt over strategy but I have never read the intricate detail and background that Roberts lays out so clearly in this terrific book.

One thing that Roberts clears away is the lingering myth that the British never really wanted to invade France across the Channel, preferring to snipe away at the "soft under-belly of Europe".  In early 1942, Churchill gave explicit orders for the design and construction of what were to be called the Mulberry harbours which were essential for the invasion.  Part of the problem lay in the different approach to strategy held by Brooke and Marshall.  The latter preferred the direct Clausewitzean solution in which an enemy is brought to fight a 'battle of annihilation' at a crucial place.  Brooke was not against such a strategy but he was dead set against trying to do it in 1942 or 1943 as the Americans wished.  In the meantime, he preferred the Sun Tzu strategy of the indirect approach in which you 'killed your enemy with a thousand cuts'. A small part of the cause of Marshall's insistence for an early date was his awareness that Adm. King and the US Pacific navy and army, supported by American public opinion, were agitating to drop the 'Germany first' grand strategy agreed by Roosevelt and Churchill and divert more and more precious resources to their theatre of operations.

The British, particularly Brooke, knew full well that an invasion in 1942 was simply American pie in the sky, and that even 1943 was extremely unlikely for the simple reason that in speed and numbers the German capability to re-enforce against an invasion army far exceeded our abilities both then, in 1942, and in the near future.  Not the least of the problems were the lack of landing craft, a problem not helped by King and MacArthur's efforts to divert as many as possible to the Pacific for their island-hopping strategy.  However, the British, desperate to maintain the 'Germany first' approach which entailed the despatch of hundreds of thousands of American troops and material to Britain, went along with the plan, albeit, with slight caveats, which grew less and less slight as time went on and which were to prove a festering sore in Anglo-American relations.

And yet ... and yet ... despite it all, the arguments, the accusations, the bad feelings, 'The Magnificent Four', as Holywood might have called them, held together - just - and propelled our armies, navies and air forces to ultimate victory.  What men!  What a story!

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Those naughty fellows at 'I Hate the Media' have been at it again.  You see they have the irritating habit, well, irritating to politicians but highly amusing to me, of actually paying very close attention to what politicians say and then comparing it to what they do.  Thus, here is Obama, in full Oprah mode, defending the rank socialism contained in his health plans by appealing to Biblical scripture:

These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation: that is, that we look out for one another; that is, I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper. And in the wealthiest nation in the world right now we are neglecting to live up to that call.

Such a wonderful phrase "I am my brother's keeper", redolent as it is with Christian kindness and generosity.

Well, here's Obama's brother:

 

 

He lives on less than $20 a year in a Nairobi slum.  Please, do let me repeat that, $20 a year!  So presumably when Obama says he is his brother's keeper he didn't quite mean it that way, what he actually means is that all of you, the great American suckers, sorry, public should provide him and his government with shed loads of dosh so that they will look after your brothers - 'honestly we will, we promise, you can trust us'! 

As for his actual brother, well, I suppose I can only paraphrase that Biblical expression about the rich man passing by on the other side of the Atlantic, or some such.

A lying liar called Leipold coughs

Here comes the sort of all-encompasing generalisation that you expect from D&N:  always assume that any particular pressure group is full of lying liars.  Of course, you may be wrong from time to time, and I need hardly add that D&N assumes absolutely no responsibility for your subsequent loss but the fact is that it is in the very nature of pressure groups to lie - but always, naturally, of course, it goes without saying, from the very highest of motives and only as a necessary means of doing you good - so just swallow and say 'thank you'!

A prime example may be examined, downwind and at a safe distance, in the form of Greenpeace, an unmitigated collection of liars and fantasists in whose direction nothing should be aimed other than sundry fart noises, rotten veg and offal.  I have indicated this more than once here at D&N but could offer you nothing conclusive by way of proof other than my cynical nose for lying liars.  Today, however, I have confirmation - from the leader of Greenpeace, himself, no less.

He has admitted to the BBC that the Greenpeace claim last month that Arctic ice would have disappeared by 2030 was "a mistake" - and guess what, that was a lie, too.  He went on to admit that Greenpeace made a practice of “emotionalizing issues” with the specific aim of changing public opinion.  So you see, his apparently frank admission of a mistake having been made was indeed a lie because it is the way they operate, there was no mistake, just more of the same old, same old, untruthful agitprop.  You can, if you are possessed of a very strong stomach, watch this lying liar, here.

In the meantime, I must confess that I have lost count of the number of loony liars Greenpeace supporters who have insisted on paddling or sailing into Arctic waters to 'prove' that the ice is disappearing and then screech for rescue because they get stuck in the ice.  Anyway, Anthony Watts records the latest example of some truly  stupid lying liars who actually believe their own lies.  Here it is in their own monumentally pathetic words:

Last night, 16 Aug, we got hopelessly trapped by the ice. Despite a favorable ice report we encountered 8/10ths ice, with many old, i.e. large, bergs. We spent the night tied to one of them but had to leave this morning when another ‘berg collided with us and tipped Fiona over. We got away but the space around us is shrinking. I called the Canadian Coast Guard at noon and they are sending an icebreaker, due here tomorrow. We are NOT in immediate danger.

Well, in that case don't bother rescuing them, I say, after all, it will only add even more CO2 to the atmosphere! 

The lull before . . . the what?

Deadly quiet on the political front and it reminds me of those descriptions of the sea drawing back silently over the horizon as a prelude to an enormous tsunami smashing ashore.  All we've had this August is the childish play-acting of sundry superannuated Labour pols pretending to be important as they keep Brown's seat warm.  By and large 'Team Cameron' are behaving like a silent order of monks and when they do speak it is so elliptical as to be indecipherable.  They remain determined to be all things to all men which simply increases my uneasiness that part of their silence is due to a complete lack of ideas as to what needs to be done.  I hope I'm wrong because if they do, in fact, win with a smashing majority they could revolutionise the country.  Cameron would be hated, as per his former lady leader, but he would, like her, go down in history.  Can he do it?  Will he do it? I don't know but perhaps he will be stymied anyway because an increase in third party votes at the next election might deprive him of the majority he no doubt thinks is his by right.

Meanwhile over the pond, Obama is proving to be as stupid as he is inexperienced.  The massive fiscal stimulus Bills he rammed through are beginning to turn round and bite him and even the likes of Warren Buffett are doubting his economic policies.  The Cap and Trade Bill will cost American business a fortune just as more and more Americans realise what nonsense all this global warming  is.  Even worse, his piece de resistance, the Health Services proposal has now degenerated into five different versions all of which are being haggled over in Congress by American politicians like a bunch of bazaar Arabs.  It looks like Obama with a majority in both Houses will fail to get his prize legislation through.  If so he will end up, not so much a lame duck president like Bush in his second term, but a quadriplegic president in his first - and last? - term.  I note reports from last week that 'HilBilly' has held on to her campaign war-chest - can't imagine why!  (Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, Sarah!)

Meanwhile, like one of those grumbling volcanoes, there is steam, or smoke, rising from several hotspots around the world and perhaps they will die down of their own accord - or maybe they will erupt.  North Korea appears to be run by lunatics with the chief loony dying by inches and all the other loonies eager to take over.  For health reasons I have given up holding my breath waiting for the Israelis to do what needs to be done  in Iran but surely it cannot be delayed for much longer.

In the meantime, I can only whistle nervously to keep my spirits up and ask you all if you can detect that distant rumble over the horizon?

First a duo, now a quartet

In a post down below I gave you a taste of Richard Toye's superb book on the life-time relationship between Lloyd George and Churchill.  I have now moved to a quartet, arguably the most powerful quartet of men in the entire history of the world, in alphabetical order - Alan Brooke, Churchill, Marshall and Roosevelt.  I'm only on page 51 of Andrew Roberts' book Masters and Commanders but I am totally hooked already.  Apart from anything else, I am fascinated to learn more of Marshall, to me the very unknown quantity of the four of them.  Again, as in Toye's book, it is obvious that you either loved or hated Churchill which is par for the course, I suppose, with all great leaders, but he appears to have had the ability to produce both emotions simultaneously in people who worked closely with him.  Anyway, even on page 51 I can tell you that this is 'a must read'!

Could it be ... is it possible ... dare we hope ...?

I'm out for most of the day so I thought I would leave you with a daring, a dangerous, an exhilarating, thought which has wormed its subversive way into my subconscious.  Given the successive policy train wrecks - will Obama be a one-term president?

Dare we hope?  Yes we can!

More 'Goat' and 'Bulldog' - what a pair!

I have finished Richard Toye's superb book(*) charting the life-long 'friendship' between Lloyd George and Churchill.  You will need to read the book to understand why I place inverted commas round the word 'friendship'.  Two very great men who at different times during the 20th century dominated both British and world affairs.  I stress 'men' because, of course, at bottom that is what they were, just men, with all the faults and foibles to be found amongst men in all positions of life . . . and yet . . .  and yet . . . such was the power of their personalities and the luck of the political dice that these two were to lead our country through years of high peril.

Throughout their political lives these two circled each other like planets caught in a gravitational dance, each seeking at different times either to repel or pull the other closer.  Toye remains strictly neutral and permits all views, including those of the principles, to be aired.  Again and again I am reminded that what we think we know at any given moment may not serve well in attempting to predict the future.  Both these men who played 'heroic' roles in our history were deemed by their contemporaries to be beneath contempt.  Here is an example from the 1912 diary of Charles Hobhouse:

Ll. George has humour - great quickness of thought, and a wonderful power of managing men for a short time.  He knows no meaning in the words 'truth' or 'gratitude'.  Asquith is afraid of him, he knows, but likes and respects Asquith.  He is a little afraid of Grey - and of no one else, and treats Winston Churchill like he would a favourite and spoilt naughty boy.

Of Churchill, Hobhouse wrote:

Ill mannered, boastful, unprincipled, without any redeeming qualities except his amazing ability and industry.

Here is Ll. George as PM during WWI on the difficulties of getting Churchill back into the cabinet:

For days I discussed with one or other of my colleagues Churchill, his gifts, his shortcomings, his mistakes, especially the latter.  It was interesting to observe in a concentrated form every phase of the distrust and trepidation with which mediocrity views genius at close quarters.

In 1908 Edward Grey (my personal political 'hero' in the run up to WWI) was reported to have summarised the pair of them thus:

His view of Lloyd George is that he has not risen to the occasion; that he behaves in office as if he were in opposition; that he "has not grown" . . . Winston, on the other hand, he thinks is a genius.  His fault, that phrases master him, rather he them.  But his faults and mistakes will be forgotten in his achievments.

And how about this, as told by Ll. George to Margot Asquith, for an evocative picture of one of the most exruciatingly fraught and tense moments inside the walls of that bland residence in Downing Street when, just prior to 11.00 am on the 4th August 1914, he was summoned into Prime Minister Asquith's office to wait with other ministers:

Big Ben struck eleven, very slowly came the Boom - Boom - Boom - we sat in complete silence, I should say for 10 minutes after the last Boom.  Then the solemn atmosphere was shattered.  Winston dashed into the room radiant, his face bright, his manner keen and he told us - one word pouring out on the other - how he was going to send telegrams to the Mediterranean, the North Sea and God knows where!  You could see he was a really happy man.  I wondered if this was the state of mind to be in at the opening of such a fearful war as this.

In 1966 one observer, Lord Swinton, attempted to sum up the two men thus;

Lloyd George was the abler politician, Churchill the greater statesman.

But perhaps C. P. Snow, the scientist and writer, who knew both men offered a more comprehensive truth:

It would be perverse not to agree that Churchill had the more rigid and upright character; but I should have thought it equally perverse not to agree that L.G. had by far the deeper social insight.  A progressive-minded man will blind himself to some of L.G.'s faults: a romantic reactionary will do the same for Churchill.

This is history at its very best - buy the book!

(*) Lloyd George & Churchill:  Rivals for Greatness by Richard Toye

Yet more pulp fiction

My regular reader will know of my shameful addiction to pulp fiction which I buy not by the book but by weight!  It has been some time since, with the generosity of heart for which I am famed, I have provided you with some recommendations.  Michael Connelly needs no introduction, he's been round and round the block several times producing a string of winners but his latest two, The Brass Verdict and The Scarecrow, are exceptionally good even by his high standards.  Both books re-introduce 'heros' from previous yarns.

Linwood Barclay (such peculiar Christian names the 'cousins' invent!) is a relatively new kid on the block.  His first book, No Time To Say Goodbye, was published over here in 2007 and it was a corker, but his second, Too Close to Home, was even better.  Barclay has a very clever story-telling device in that he sets his tale right in the middle of middle America - ordinary families, Ma, Pa and the 2.5 kids territory.  These 'ordinary hard-working families' (to quote a phrase beloved of pols both sides of the Atlantic, are suddenly hit by catastrophic happenings which seem bad enough but which then unravel into even greater dangers and entanglements.  The unravelling also opens up the secret depths lurking behind the 'motherhood and apple pie' veneer of these families.

Another (relatively) golden oldie is Alan Furst, an American who, very unusually, sets his books in mittel Europ, circa 1937-ish up to 1944-ish.  His protaganists are mostly drawn from the European bourgeoisie, academics, junior military officers, businessmen and the like, all of whom in their different ways brush up against the nasty, subterranean fringes of espionage.  No James Bond stuff in Fursts's books, he tells it very much the way it was - and still is!  His latest tale, The Spies of Warsaw, is steeped in a very carefully researched milieu to the point where you can almost smell the boiled cabbage, the Gaulloise cigarettes and the brandy. 

 However, I do have one caveat.  Much of his plot line is taken up with the efforts of his French officer 'hero' during 1937 and '38 to obtain the plan of the German tank offensive through the Ardennes which took place with outstanding success in the Spring of 1940.  It is the right of the story-teller to bend history to suit his plot but, as I'm sure Mr. Furst knows as well as me, there was no German plan to attack through the Ardennes at that time.  Instead the German General Staff, being as conservative and stupid as their equivalents in France and Britain, had opted to repeat the 1906 Schlieffen plan through northern Belgium and Holland.  Unfortunately, in January 1940, a German officer carrying the plans hitched a lift in a plane from near the frontier back into central Germany but the pilot lost his way(*) and they crash landed in Belgium and the plans were seized by the allies.  As it turned out, what appeared to be a disaster for Hitler helped him to a magnificent triumph because he was forced to change his plans and by chance he had the greatest general of WWII, Eric von Manstein, to work it out for him.  Manstein understood armoured warfare and insisted against all the received opinion of the day that the Ardennes hills and forests were not a barrier to tanks.  The rest, as they say, is history, but that niggle apart, Furst's book is superb.

(*) In double-checking my memory against my library of history books, an essential requirement these days, I came across a hint in one of them that that fortuitous crash landing may not have been as accidental as it looked although no definitive proof has ever been offered in support.  However, it is odd when you think about it that both men in the plane survived!  How many survivors do you usually hear off when light planes crash?  Anyway, I know I have a very well-read and militaristic readership so if any of you have "further and better particulars", please let me know

Only in America - unfortunately!

A grimly humorous tale from New York which makes a startling comparison with our very own, dearly beloved 'septic' isle. A 72-year old store keeper was busy running his business with two employees when four young men burst in with guns and demanded money.  The owner of the busines, Mr. Augusto, spoke to them calmly and told them there was no money on the premises but one of the robbers in a frenzy of anger began pistol-whipping one of Mr. Augusto's employees, at which point he produced a 12-gauge pump action shotgun and blew away two of the robbers and wounded the other two who fled.  The gun was not registered, he had bought it 30 years ago following a previous robbery.  Mr. Augusto has been hailed as a hero and the police said no action would be taken over the unregistered shotgun.

I need not remind you, I 'm sure, that had this occurred in not-so-great Britain, he would have been arrested and eventually faced manslaughter charges in the Old Bailey and probably have received 10 years inside for his trouble.  The families of the robbers, of course, would have sued his pants off for the loss of their scumbag relatives.

Hat tip to The Daily Mail

High Flight

I paid a visit to JuliaM's place this morning and caught a poem she had posted which instantly reminded me of this one, so, without further ado . . .

High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long delirious, burning blue, I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew - And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untresspassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee No 412 squadron, RCAF Killed 11 December 1941

The 'Nu-Moonies' gain a recruit

I told you so!  In a brilliantly written post (sorry, didn't quite catch that) down below I warned you all that these weirdo sects and secret societies are everywhere and that they would aim their malignant plots and stratagems at the weakest members of our society.  In that context I actually mentioned British MPs, and indeed, for all I know they might have succeeded there but they are all keeping a bit 'shtum' following Alan Duncan's idiotic belch, but being a world-wide conspiracy the 'Nu-Moonies' have now targeted The Land of the Free - the swine!  Here are the very words of Senator Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.):

"Climate change is very real," she confessed as she embraced cap and trade's massive tax increase on Michigan industry - at the same time claiming, against all the evidence, that it would not lead to an increase in manufacturing costs or energy prices. "Global warming creates volatility. I feel it when I'm flying. The storms are more volatile. We are paying the price in more hurricanes and tornadoes."

She 'feels' it, see?  And as you all know feelings are sooo important, as the old song tells us:

Feelings, nothing more than feelings,
trying to forget my feelings ...

Feelings, wo-o-o feelings,
wo-o-o, feelings again in my arms

And presumably feelings elsewhere on her anatomy as she sits in First Class on American Airlines.  Still, the poor deluded woman must be comforted and slowly eased away from the tentacles of the 'Nu-Moonies'.  Someone must tell her gently that:

According to its August Atlantic hurricane season outlook, NOAA now expects a near- to below-normal Atlantic hurricane season, as the calming effects of El Niño continue to develop.

You see, the Prophet Duff knoweth where-of he speaketh (I think that's right!) and if you are going to join a whacky sect, join mine and I will show you the Truth as it is spoke, er, or something!

I am obliged to Henry Payne (via Drudge) and he may, or may not, be a member of the Duffotics Sect, I am not at liberty to say but when we rule the world - all will be revealed, well not quite all, you really wouldn't want to look at that, believe me.

Fox rocks!

Always a somewhat fraught exercise when an elderly British gent like me attempts the use of 'youf' argot.  I assume the word 'rocks' indicates exceptionally good but if it doesn't then I shall adopt the Humpty Dumpty defence by saying that when I use a word "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less".  Anyway, the Fox News Network (ch.509 on satellite) is excellent.  Of course, it has its irritations, what hasn't these days, such as the high-pitched nasal whine of the American lady presenters and their blindingly fright-white teeth, plus, advertising breaks long enough to grow a beard in, but even so, they make up for everything by broadcasting all the news that the other networks and the dead tree press resolutely refuse to report - namely, anything that might be construed as even a slight criticism of The One.

In particular, I like Glenn Beck which is surprising for a (small 'c') conservative English gent, like me, because he is hyperbolic, 'hammy' and fervent to the point of evangelism, but, he is right (and Right) more often than not.  His slot, 10.00 - 11.00 pm Brit time, is not very good for viewing figures in American time because so many people are coming home from work but even so, he comes third in the audience figures after two other Fox presenters who enjoy prime time slots.  I guess the Obama-ites just hate Fox News because according to those mischievous fellows who run 'I Hate the Media', Fox News reaches zillions more people than the MSM stations and of course, less and less people bother to buy the dead tree press whose so-called journalists worship at the shrine of The One, or at least, the ones who are not already working for him at the White House do.  These figures from Nielson Media Research:

Network	Program	Total Audience
Fox News	O’Reilly	3,814,000
Fox News	Hannity	3,118,000
Fox News	Beck	2,417,000
Fox News	Greta	2,388,000
Fox News	Baier	1,988,000
Fox News	Shep	1,833,000
MSNBC	Olbermann	1,243,000
MSNBC	Maddow	1,082,000
CNNHN	Grace	875,000
CNN	Griffin	810,000

The other extremely useful item on Fox News is the tickertape at the bottom which really does cover world news and keeps you up to date with what is going on.  Anyway, let me try and finish with another Americanism, ahem, "Go, Glenn, go!"  How was that?  Did I get the accent right?

 

 

 

New 'Moony' sect starts up In Korea

We must all be on guard against these strange and dangerous sects that crawl out of the woodwork every so often.  After all the weakest in our society, the ill-educated like our children, the mentally retarded like our MPs and almost anyone described as a "science reporter", are in grave danger of being seduced by these weird groups with their peculiar ideas.  As part of the service that you have all grown to expect (but never pay for!) here, at D&N, I must warn you of a new 'Moony' sect run by a copper-bottomed loony of the first water, called Ban Ki-moon.   He purports to be the secretary-general of something or other that controls the world and according to him:

We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.

This instantly raises a deeply serious question - will the world end before or after Christmas?  You may smirk but I really love my Christmas dinner and if the poor old globe is going to expire before the 25th December I will need to issue orders (that's a laugh!) to the little 'Memsahib' to bring culinary matters forward.  Anyway, old 'Moony the Loony' goes on:

Climate change, as all previous speakers have already stated, is the fundamental threat to humankind.

Yes, yes, but hang on, a while back it was "climate warming" which, whilst equally potty, was at least specific.  Now it's "climate change" which covers just about every eventuality because the climate has always been 'changing'.  In fact the global temperature has been going up and down like a whore's drawers ever since the earth formed.  There is living proof of constant climate change because it is a well-established fact, settled science, one might almost call it, that without climate change (oh, and the difficulties of circum-navigating the M25 on a Friday afternoon) an average Englishman is incapable of conversation.  I rest my case, but be warned, if you see a funny-looking chinky chappie telling you that the end of the world is nigh just cross the road sharpish!

(Alan) Duncan & (Dave) Macbeth

I'm going to repeat myself - again!  It's always the little things that give them away.  Take this delicious August story absolutely designed for the prints who are desperate for a tale to tell.  Some young chancer breaks into the private garden of Alan Duncan, one of 'Dave's' right-hand men, and carves a pound sign into the immaculate lawn as a protest against Duncan's 'troughing' with his expenses.  Normally I am against that sort of thing but seeing as how we, the tax-payers, paid for much of the upkeep of this lawn despite Duncan being a millionaire several times over I do feel we have proprietorial rights, as it were.  Apparently the ensuing pictures were a big hit on 'YouTube'.  Anyway, Duncan invites the young protester to the Commons to buy him a drink and give his side of the story concerning his parliamentary expenses.

I don't know what you think, but were I one of Mr. Duncan's 'SpAds' (God forbid!) I would have given him a sharp kick on the ankle and told him not to be so daft.  The meeting took place and, of course, the young chancer took along a secret camera and filmed the whole thing.  In the course of it, Duncan, to quote my old mother, opened his mouth and let his belly rumble, complaining bitterly at how badly treated MPs were and how they would have to live on rations.  Now, I have given this matter at least 10 seconds thought (and at my age 10 secs is, or may prove to be, a lot) and I have come to the inescapable conviction that Alan Duncan is not only a scheming 'trougher' who ripped off the tax-payers (or me ,as I like to think of it) but also a complete and utter dimwit, unfit for any purpose that I can think of except compiling outrageous expense claims.

We all know what happened to the other 'Duncan' in the play that dare not speak its name and in that case the poor chap really did not deserve his bloody ending.  However, in this case all eyes are on 'Dave' Macbeth, the 'main man' as I believe our American cousins put it, to see whether or not he has what it takes to stick the dagger in.  Duncan is a waste of oxygen and a gift to the Labour party - do it, 'Dave'!

 

Well I never, it's a miracle, really it is!

Who said God was dead?  The headline in The Mail proves it ain't so:

Ronnie Biggs has miraculous return to health just days after prison release

The infamous Great Train Robber’s improvement comes days after he was freed from custody on compassionate grounds because of medical evidence that he was unlikely to recover. 

Well, who'da thunk it?!

PS:  Can't wait to see if JuliaM picks up on this!

 

No supper for you, young 'Dave', 'til you've done your homework!

I am, as you will have gathered from former posts, a regular reader of The Coffee House, the in-house blog for The Spectator.  Apart from its other virtues, such as intelligent commentary, it is useful as a conduit into what passes for thinking in the Tory High Command.  Unfortunately, like Holmes's famous dog that failed to bark, there appears to be very little evidence of much thinking going on.  Yes, yes, sundry proto-ministers waffle on about their plans for their departments but over the next 5 - 7 years the only department that will really count (no pun intended) is the counting-house in H.M. Treasury.  Labour's growing dog-pile of debt is almost blocking out the little sun we have had this summer and the smell is rank.  Something will have to be done!

Of course, I understand that the political charade must be kept up, that the intricate choreography of party conferences and the agit-prop that goes with them must be observed, the 'narrative' (bloody word!) to be foisted on the media must be woven, but even so, I keep expecting to pick up at least a hint of what the 'Cameroons' are likely to propose.  I mean, we are not talking a penny on fags and beer and tax up 5% here.  The Tories will have to produce some startling, in all senses of the word, ideas to cope with the train crash economy they will inherit.  It will require an act of faith in capitalism, not the state, to get us back on the rails. 'That woman' would know what to do and had the political guts to do it - but has 'Dave'?  My answer to that is that I simply do not know.  Perhaps he and a select group of advisors are meeting secretly to develop fiscal and monetary policies and against all the odds nothing has leaked out to the hacks.  Perhaps Andy 'I know nothing' Coulson has mapped out a propaganda strategy that will move smoothly into action beginning with the party conference and end with a smashing victory in May.  Perhaps!  Or there again, are they all sitting seperately on their sun-loungers round the Med concentrating on who will get which job and how each can suck as much dosh as possible out of the Treasury.  I just do not know and, sorry, but here comes my favourite political quote - again!

Hence shall we see,

If power change purpose, what our seemers be.

Additional:  Paul Waugh has has some intelligence on the subject: http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/08/osbornes-soft-shoe-shuffle-on-tax.html

Please, Mummy, please, I want to torture some MPs!

What a bunch of lilly-livered, big girls' blouses they are in our suitably named 'mother of Parliaments'.  I dread to see the next James Bond film in which we can expect to see him insist that the villain of the piece and his henchmen sign official HMG declaration forms that no undue force was used before he whips out his Walther PPK and reads them their rights under the UN Charter!  For God's sake, we have a secret service and a security service precisely to safeguard our national interests and the safety of Her Maj's subjects, or, me, as I like to think of it.  Whilst I am prepared to see their activities somewhat controlled whilst operating in  this country, once they are abroad they can do whatever it takes to get the information we need.  If some swarthy, unshaven, wog policeman follows the habits of a lifetime, indeed, an almost cherished tradition in his lights, by crushing the testicles of a suspect, I don't care just so long as we get the info he eventually coughs up through his smashed teeth and broken jaw.  The difference between getting this info and not getting it might be sundry body parts scattered round a London street.  There is even a chance, quelle horreur, that some of those bits might be mine! 

Most of this current hoo-ha is at the instigation of a few MPs, a mixture of the dim, the dumb and the daft, who are taking seriously the word of a terrorist prisoner who says that MI5 officers were hanging around his jail cell in Pakistan when the local 'plods' whacked five bells out of him.  Why anyone would take the word of this murderer seriously I do not know but on the basis of his unproven allegations an MI5 officer is under police investigation.  We all know how totally wet the police force is these days so there is a good chance that this man may end up in court when he should end up in front of Her Maj to receive a medal!

It is an old saying that diplomats are gentlemen sent abroad to lie for their country.  Secret service agents are sent abroad to lie, cheat, steal, blackmail and, if necessary, kill for their country.  The quicker we turf out as many of these utterly useless MPs the better, so come the election, just vote for anyone other than the local incumbent. 

"Arcadia"

Stand by for more grumpy old man 'fings ain't wot they used to be' style moans and groans from me but the indisputable fact is that since Bernard Levin went up to that hallowed 'Critics Corner' in the sky it has become increasingly apparent that the theatrical pygmies he left behind are simply not up to the job.  I complained before at having parted with valuable money and even more valuable time in order to go and see two productions (Boeing Boeing and Cabaret) which were extravagantly praised by the London critics and which proved to be absolute turkeys, the pair of them.  Recently, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia has been revived to almost universal praise by the critics except for the performance of Jessie Cave as Thomasina at which they cavilled.  Well I went to see it on Saturday and the one thing that stood out in an otherwise mediocre production was the fact that I could hear Ms. Cove's young voice as clear as a bell, unlike some of her elders and (so-called) betters like Samantha Bond who rattled her lines like a machine-gunner and who thus remained mostly incomprehensible to the audience.  Nancy Carroll hooped, hollared and squawked like a Billingsgate fish wife all of which was against the grain of her role as Lady Croom, a cool, ironic, witty but waspish woman of impeccable breeding.  Young Dan Stevens playing the key role of the tutor, Septimus Hodge, allowed his voice to drop off in places to a low and private rumble the contents of which were inaudible to me in Row 'F'.  My hearing difficulties were shared by a middle-aged lady sitting next to me who asked during the interval whether I could hear the actors properly - need I say more!  Neil Pearson played the somewhat 'spivvy' TV don with terrific verve and, like the others, at terrific speed but at least his enunciation was clear enough to be heard and understood.  Most of the critics praised the set which was fine except the colour of the back of the stage, a nondescript light beige, seen through the windows and which was virtually the same colour as the interior walls so that one had no sense of an outdoors and an indoors.  The movement of the actors was sloppy in that I was sitting toward the audience right extremity of the stalls and on several occasions an actor was on stage but out of sight.  Even us 'ams' usually do better than that!

I have strong views concerning Arcadia having seen at least six different productions, both 'pro' and 'am', and having directed the play myself.  I rate it as a work of genius, one of the very greatest plays of the 20th century.  Stoppard's text is dense and profound but lightened by the sort of elegant wit not seen and heard on stage since the days of Oscar ('such a darling boy') Wilde.  Of course, one cannot linger too long over the lines but a director and his cast should have a care for their audience and use a judicious mix of accelerator and brake in the delivery of lines which contain a huge and complex mix of science, philosophy, art and love.  Still, "the play's the thing" and because I know it so well the irritations of this particular production (not a patch on Trevor Nunn's original) were set aside and I thrilled again to Stoppard's exposition of what Lear calls "the mystery of things".  And I do mean 'thrill'!  In a post somewhere down below I mentioned the intense excitement I feel when reading of the beginning of the universe and the start of life on earth.  In this play Stoppard reminds us of the inexorable end of things implied by the dread 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.  I have reproduced below the notes I composed for the programme to my production which aimed at giving the audience a little help in grasping all the themes with which Stoppard stuffed his play.  However, do not be put off with the thought that it is all complex science.  At its heart is an exquisite love story of immense poignancy and as the tragedy unfolds it is hard not to cry at the loss of it.

If you are in London, go and see it, for the play, if not for this particular production.  These notes, with the play's main themes highlighted, might help understanding if it is new to you:

Let me start with a bold claim - in time Arcadia will be considered one of the greatest half-dozen plays of the 20th century!  You expect a Stoppard play to be filled with fascinating but tricky ideas and I have done my best to explain some of them below.  What you might not expect is an exquisitely poignant and touching love story based on two of the most delightful and captivating characters created in British theatre since Beatrice and Benedict.

Love, as one of the characters says, "is the attraction Newton left out".  It is the unforseen element that causes chaos in our lives, our personal equivalent of the 'butterfly effect' whereby the flutter of wings in Brazil eventually results in a storm in England, or in this case, in our hearts.

Time is the central theme of the play. It is a deeply mysterious part of our existence as it marches inexorably on - but only in one direction.  Stoppard uses several metaphors to illustrate it, for example, the room at Sidley Park (the 13th character in the play?), unchanging, all-seeing, but saying nothing as the modern characters attempt to uncover the dramatic events of 1809.  Or the tortoise, famous for its longevity, and another dumb witness to what went on.  In the final scenes Stoppard plays with time in a brilliant coup de theatre.

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics expresses the idea of entropy which follows the arrow of time in one direction.  In essence the law states that in a closed system without an injection of new energy, entropy (or disorder) will increase until equilibrium is reached.  A walled garden makes a good metaphor since, without the injection of energy in the form of work, disorder will increase as flowers and weeds sprout until they reach equilibrium.  The implications are enormous and appalling (as Septimus realises to his horror in the play) because the biggest 'closed system' we know of is the universe and, since the 1st Law states that energy cannot be created (and therefore injected into the system), it is inescapable that entropy (disorder) will increase until equilibrium is reached at which point there will be no heat, no light, no movement, nothing!  And time will cease because there will be no events for it to measure.

Steam engines [a prototype of which plays a part in the action] provide an excellent example of thermodynamics since they convert heat into movement energy.  If all the heat could be retained in the cycle and re-used, we would have a perpetual motion machine but alas heat, like time, flows only in one direction, towards anything cooler, and thus some of it is always lost to the surroundings.

Fermat's last theorem arose from Pythagoras's famous theorem that in a right-angled triangle, the square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares on the other two sides, or x2 + y2 = z2.  However, it was quickly noted that if you increased x, y and z to the power of 3, 4, 5, etc, the proposition failed (eg, suppose you used a child's building bricks to build any two perfect but differently sized cubes and then combined the two of them to make one perfect cube you would be left with some bricks over).  So the question was, would this extension of Pythagoras's theorem fail for every whole number such as Xn + Yn = Zn is always untrue when n is greater than 2?  Mathematicians thought so but no-one could find the proof.  In c. 1637, Pierre de Fermat, a French maths genius, scribbled in the margin of a book that he had the proof but not the space to write it and thus sent mathematicians into a frenzy for the next 350 years trying to find his proof.  (An Englishman, Andrew Wiles, recently succeeded).

Newton's equations make it possible to forecast the exact position/velocity of bodies in a system (eg, the solar system) by measuring their initial condition and simply extrapolating the results into the future, however, chaos theory is a new application of mathematics needed because the classical maths of the sort used by Newton failed in two areas.  Firstly, they work in a linear way and cannot measure the irregularities which surround us.  As Thomasina says in the play, "If there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and why not a rose?"

Secondly, in complicated systems (eg, weather) it is not possible to measure exactly all the elements making up the initial conditions and the tiniest variation (a butterfly's wings?) when multiplied (iterated) millions of times results in huge variations, or chaos.  [There is more, very much more, to Chaos Theory than space allowed me to write in my theatrical programme.]

Classical v. Romantic is a long-running battle that began at the turn of the 18th/19th centuries.  In the classical mode reason prevailed over emotion and this was reflected in paintings, music, architecture and, apropos this play, in landscape gardening. In science it reached its pinnacle with Newton's universe moving majestically like a well-oiled machine.  However, in politics it went badly off the rails with the French revolution during which logic and reason went to extremes and slaughtered thousands in pursuit of doctrine.  The romantic movement rebelled and insisted on the primacy of feeling over reason.  The great German composers swept away the measured tempos of the baroque; Byron, Blake and Sir Walter Scott did the same for literature.  The industrial machine-age began to bury Georgian England and gardens were redesigned to bring myth and mystery to the landscape.  In science, the implications of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics were beginning to sink in (to the horror of the classically educated Septimus) whilst the crazy world of Chaos Theory was still to come, although of course, in this play, Thomasina's brilliant mind has already foreseen it.  However, despite everything, one idea has remained fixed in man's mind to this day . . .

Arcadia was an area in ancient Greece and their poets extolled its natural beauty and the virtue of the simple shepherds who lived there.  This theme was picked up by Virgil whose poetry was hugely influential in Europe up to the Renaissance.  Shakespeare introduced Arcadia into several of his plays (The Winter's Tale, As You Like It).  Poussin featured it in his famous painting showing three shepherds and a girl gazing at a tomb on which is enscribed the elliptical phrase "Et in Arcadia ego!" ('Even in Arcadia, there am I' - meaning Death).

Byron experts still cannot agree exactly why he fled England in such haste in 1809.  Some think it was debts, others, the fear of the gallows if his homosexual activities were made public.  He was, of course, the great romantic, as a man and a poet.  In the play, Thomasina is enthralled by the hero of Childe Harold whom she correctly identifies as Byron himself and this child prodigy is as ready to embrace the "wild and whirling words" of the romantic movement in poetry as she is their mathematical equivalent in physics.  Possibly, Stoppard modeled Thomasina on Byron's daughter, Ada, a considerable mathematician in her own right who helped Babbage design the first 'computer'.  Even today she is honoured by the US Pentagon whose computer software is written in a language called 'ADA'.

Dahlias were named after the Swedish botanist Andreas Dahl.  They are native to Mexico and Central America and were introduced into Europe in 1789.

Tortoises, like Plautus/Lightning in the play, enjoy a huge life-span. A recent newspaper report told the story of Timothy, a tortoise found on a Portuguese ship in 1854, who has lived at Powderham Castle, the seat of the Earls of Devon, ever since.  He has outlived seven Earls! [Since that was written, poor Timothy finally died.]

The two great political questions of the era!

These questions, and indeed their answers, are of great importance to the political sophisticates who depend utterly on D&N for their world view.  The problem is how to phrase the first question with the delicacy that my readers expect.  Try this: has 'Vlad the Impaler' crossed the street?  You know, is there 

 

just a hint of pink about him?  Does he . . . oh, come on, you know what I mean . . . is he just a teensy-weensy bit gay?  Well, I admit his wrist is as straight as an arrow in the picture above  but is that a posey of flowers stuck in his ever-so-macho trousers?

And let's be honest about this, after all, there is nothing to be ashamed of; for a man of his age to regularly pose in the semi-nude whilst flexing his pecs does remind one of the pictures in those rather odd mags one accidentally knocked off the top shelf in the newsagent whilst trying to reach the last copy of Penthouse.

Also, there is the rather queer fetish he has for appearing in military garb trying (too hard, perhaps?) to appear ever so, ever so, manly.

The second question is really two questions in one and the answer is devilish difficult to choose:

 

Is 'Harry Harperson' thicker than a sack of spanners, or is she just mad?

The red-eyed Piper you would not wish to follow!

Councillor 'Bob' Piper is a national treasure. It is true that he does not possess those unique (thank the Intelligent Designer) qualities possessed by the only other Councillor I know of in Blogdom, but to be fair, it would take several generations of inter-breeding to produce another specimen anything like Councillor Terry Kelly from 'Jockland', a man who even makes it possible to feel a twinge of sympathy for that smirky, smiley, clever but devious Alex Salmond and his rotten ScotNats.  No, no, Councillor Piper is a proper English twit and in his political role he busybodies himself around some ghastly suburb of 'Burmingam', and 'Brummies' being congenitally stupid are probably rather grateful to him!

Even so, I do feel that Councillor Piper deserves a monument, not only to commemorate an utterly futile political life, but also to act as a lesson to little, toddling 'Brummies' that whilst it is permissable to hold silly beliefs in your youth, to continue with them into middle-age is to invite ridicule and the equivalent of Auberon Waugh's precept that when such a person climbs on a platform and expounds these views one should simply shout, "Show us your willy!"

Councillor Piper, you see, is somewhere over the horizon of Left-wing politics.  He believes, despite all the evidence of the 20th century, that state socialism is the answer to everyone's problems.  In particular, he regularly holidays in Cuba which he supposes to be an example to the world on the benificence of communism.  Somehow, and I truly do not know how, he manages to sit on his hotel veranda sipping his rum cocktail and by positioning his sun-lounger at the correct angle avoids the sight of the security police HQ, and presumably by plugging in his i-pod earphones he blocks out the screams of the inmates whilst he writes fierce denunciations of 'Gitmo' and the Americans. 

Nothing new in all of that; ever since the Webbs and Bernard Shaw extolled the virtues of the Soviet Union and 'good old Uncle Joe', communism has never lacked for "useful idiots" but they had some excuse because the 'dictatoship of the proletariat' was in its infancy.  Today, by contrast we have seen it in operation in several countries and without a single exception it has been a disaster.  So one is entitled to ask - what is Bob Piper's excuse?

The following is a copy of a comment I have just left over at his site:

Completely off topic, Councillor, but I know your heart remains in Havanna so I bring you news, via the Associated Press, of last Sunday's 'Revolution Day'. Alas, not good news.

"Cuba's economy has been hammered by the global credit crisis, U.S. relations have not improved much under President Barack Obama and economic reforms that were supposed to ease life on the island have been slow to come."

Well, give the man a chance, he's only been in charge for 50 years.

"Castro already has implored Cubans for more time as he implements "structural changes" to a struggling economy controlled more than 90 percent by the state. He also has said he'd be willing to meet with U.S. leaders over any issue — including the country's political prisoners and human rights record."

Political prisoners? Heavens to Betsy, what next?

"More recently, the government has ordered lights and air conditioners turned off at banks, stores and other government institutions and closed state-run businesses and factories early to conserve oil — even though Venezuela sends the island about 100,000 barrels of crude a day at favorable prices."

Still, as you keep telling us, Councillor, Cubans do have free medical cover!

"Cuba's free health care and subsidized food and housing don't make belt-tightening any easier in a country where nearly everyone works for the state, and the average wage is less than $20 per month.

Oh dear, perhaps if they de-nationalised everything people would earn enough to buy their own medical cover - and a few other things as well.

"Bicycles and horse-drawn wooden carts are a more common means of transport than cars in Holguin, a city famous for its well-manicured parks. The highway leading to Havana, 480 miles (760 kilometers) to the northwest, is cluttered with freshly painted billboards featuring Raul Castro extolling hard work and socialism.

Well, at least they're doing their best to comply with anti-global warming measures by doing away with motor cars!

Perhaps, Councillor, you could write another post extolling the virtues of the Castro brothers whilst explaining to us how beneficial it would be if only we would follow Cuba's example into communism.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gXlJtC-8X0Mm5YxGEzhCRmSC47nQD99M03700

I leave you to visit his site and read his reply, he always worries about the size of his visitor stats so it will cheer him up if you do.  My only reply to the response he made to my comment is simply this: why would anyone who claims to have high ideals concerning liberty and freedom wish to visit a prison island like Cuba?