DUFF & NONSENSE!

Pure unadulterated filth, it shouldn't be allowed, really it shouldn't!

Entirely by accident I found myself sitting in my armchair reading a copy of 'The History of Ancient Assyrian Culture', or, it could have been 'The Mathematical Structure of the Higgs Boson', it's not easy for me to tell the difference, when I happened to shift in my chair, as you do, and again, entirely by accident I sat on my mate Rupe's do-flicker-thingie which put the telly on automatically and guess what - it went straight to the channel showing the ladies' 'pat-a-ball-in-a-sand-pit' game.  I was shocked, I tell you, shocked!  They wear nothing but knickers and bras - and very, very brief ones, too!   Even worse, every time they do something, I'm not quite clear what, they enter into a passionate embrace.  I struggled to get out of my chair to switch it off but at my age it's not easy . . . at least, that's what I told the Memsahib when, with her usual mastery of timing, came in and caught me salivating watching.  Naturally, I have written letters to the vicar and the Chairman of the BBC.

 

She collected rubbish - and babies!

This blog is, of course, an avid collector and distributor of moans, groans, grumps and whinges.  All the unconsidered peccadilloes, sins, stupidites and downrigth crimes of humanity are faithfully recorded here  - well, not all of them but a goodly, or badly, selection of them!  However, I would not wish you to suppose that this blog is writtten by a miserable old misanthrope, on the contrary, I am always ready, willing and able (that's enough with the lists, already! Ed.) to bring to your attention the good deeds of humanity.  And being serious for a moment, good deeds do not come much better than those of Lou Xiaoying of Jinhua, in the eastern Zhejiang province of China, as reported by The Daily Mail.

This lady, now 88 years of age has, along with her late husband, managed to keep body and soul together by collecting discarded rubbish and then recycling any of the useful bits and pieces.  As a result of China's 'One Child' policy combined with a natural urge to have male children, unwanted and discarded babies are a common phenomenon in China.  This lady has been finding them regularly: 

Lou Xiaoying, now 88 and suffering from kidney failure, found and raised more than 30 abandoned Chinese babies from the streets of Jinhua, in the eastern Zhejiang province where she managed to make a living by recycling rubbish.

She and her late husband Li Zin, who died 17 years ago, kept four of the children and passed the others onto friends and family to start new lives.

Her youngest son Zhang Qilin - now aged just seven - was found in a dustbin by Lou when she was 82.

 

Lou is now dying from kidney failure. She is pictured here with two of the children she helped rescued. 

Lou, left, caring her the babies with her husband Li Zin. She would give them to friends and family after she rescued them.

The compound word 'heartwarming' is a cliché but sometimes only a cliché expresses exactly what is called for.  For what it's worth, I salute you Lou Xiaoying.

Thursday is 'Der Tag'!

According to Ambrose E-P in The Telegraph, on Thursday the band will stop playing and the European leaders will be forced to quit dancing around and around and instead sit down and take a final decision for good or ill.  The markets have had enough shilly-shallying and the experts are now convinced that both Spain and Italy will require emergency rescues either in weeks or certainly by the end of the year.  Their minimum requirements will amount to at least e1.2 trillion over three years and if they try to raise that sort of dosh in the markets they will be laughed out of town.

There was, there is and there will forever be, only two possible solutions to the problem.  Either the euro zone breaks up into Northern and Southern groupings (using those terms elastically), or, the Germans agree to allow the European Central Bank (ECB) to stand full square behind the national debts of the member countries - but with Germany, in turn, agreeing to stand full square behind it!  One senses that the markets have reached what is known colloquially as their 'fuck 'em threshold'.  Any more attempts by European leaders to pile words on the table instead of German financial pledges will simply bring on the deluge.

Mind you, there is a political price to pay whatever they do.  According to Ambrose E-P, there is already a fierce, not to say threatening, dispute between Catalonia and Madrid arising from the peculiarities of the internal arrangements within Spain.  He refers, in a particularly apt phrase to "political revulsion", and that is likely to rear its ugly head all over Europe if this imbroglio continues.

Thursday is Der Tag!

 

Land of the (not so) Free: part II

Look, America is a huge country with, I think, about 350 million people living in it and a gigantic government with tentacles everywhere, so, it is a bit unfair of me to keep digging up stories (see post below) about how appalling they are in some respects.  Anyway, I can write these knocking stories because, as you regulars do know, I just love the place - or at least, the idea of the place!  And anyway, I blame that Anna Raccoon for leading me into this particular bit of naughtiness.

The full story is to be found at rt.com and it concerns an Oregon farmer called Gary Harrington.  (I envy him already because I would love to live in Oregon - er, after Arkansas, of course, he added quickly lest his 'Arkie' pals read this!)  However, Mr. Harrington is, in the words of Monty Python, "A very, very naughty boy!"  Apparently this wicked villain has been allowing rain water to fill his ponds instead of allowing it to flow into some nearby creek for the benefit of the Medford Water Commission which is part of the local government - natch!

"Thirty days in jail for catching rainwater?" Harrington tells the Mail Tribune. "We live in an extreme wildfire area and here the government is going to open the valves and really waste all the water right now, at the start of peak fire season.”

"When it comes to the point where a rural landowner can't catch rainwater that falls on his land to protect his property, it's gone too far," he adds to the Associated Press. "This should serve as a dire warning to all pond owners."

Yes indeed, Mr. Harrington is going to be banged up for 30 days and made to pay a fine of $1,500 - for collecting rainwater!  And this in an area which is always at high risk of forest fires:

“The government is bullying. They’ve just gotten to be big bullies and if you just lay over and die and give up, that just makes them bigger bullies. So, we as Americans, we need to stand on our constitutional rights, on our rights as citizens and hang tough,”

You're damn right, Gary, go git 'em, boy!   (Er, how was my accent, darlings?)

 

"Land of the Free"? You're 'avin' a laugh!

I am deeply obliged to my regular commenter, Dom, for linking me to this story - actually, more like a nightmare tale thought up by Bram Stoker - on what happens when the mighty Federal Government of the United States of America decides to crack a nut, even the tiniest of little peanuts.  It all concerns a 50-year old lady and a hump-backed whale and, no, this is not the start of one of those sorts of stories!  She is Ms. Nancy Black, a marine biologist and the owner of a whale-watching boat, and no again, I don't know why anyone in their right mind would want to look at hump-back whales either but they do and Ms. Black, with considerable expertise, I imagine, helps them to do so.

It was in this capacity seven years ago that she committed one of the most foul, odious and disgusting offences possible by a human against an innocent animal - she whistled at it!  I know, I know, shockin', shockin'.  Apparently whistling at a whale is a crime in 'The Land of the Free' although I do not understand why given that they tend to whistle at us, at least, spurting all that air and water out of the tops of their heads, as they do, I have always assumed was whale-whistling.  But this was worse than just any old crime, like shooting people dead in Chicago on a regular basis, dear me, this was an environmental crime, no less, because it amounted to harrassment of a marine animal. 

You are probably sniggering at all of this but let me assure you Ms. Black is not.  Over the last seven years this has already cost her $100k , has led to a raid on her house by a dozen agents and the impounding of all her scientific photos, business files and computers, according to the story by George Will in the WaPo.  And which particular agency of the United States of America has been leading this gallant assault against a harmless, middle-aged lady?  Why, none other than our old friends-not, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), those infamous lying liars who featured so wretchedly in my previous post.

God Save America - from itself!

 

Timing, as in sex and drumming, is everything!

Thus it was that some swot called Prof. Richard Muller announced that whilst hitherto he had been a global warming sceptic now - hallelujah - he was converted!  It was getting warmer and it was all our fault, according to this 'Great Man of Science', and that means me and you!  And this is where timing comes into it because coincidentally at almost the same time Anthony Watts and colleagues published their paper on the reliability of temperature readings at weather recording sites in the USA.  I must confess to a liking for Watts because when, years ago, I began looking into the AGW controversy, his was one of the sites I visited.  Not being of a swot-like tendency myself, it seemed to me that Watts was doing proper science by going round himself, or getting volunteers to go round, and physically check exactly where these supposed warm readings were coming from.  It wasn't glamorous or exciting or in need of a $3 zillion computer, it was just old-fashioned looking, measuring and photographing to provide an accurate physical description of  American weather stations.

Of course, his results then were anecdotal but they were enough for me to decide that the whole global warming kerfuffle was based on the dodgiest of dodgy foundations.  He found that site after site had been 'corrupted' over the last few decades by urbanisation.  What had hitherto been fairly rural sites clear of interference were now surrounded by asphalt, concrete, reflecting windows, air-conditioning extractors and so forth.  Of course, that is just America you might say, but if you can't rely on their figures then how much weight are you going to put into the historical record of, say, Russia or China?

Over the weekend, Watts and his colleagues have published their paper which provides a stringent analytical summary of all the data he and his volunteers gathered together over the last few years.  The result will only come as a surprise to the HAFs (Hot Air Fantics)!  They compared the American weather station sites to a recently compiled ideal template, the World Meteorological Organisation-approved Siting Classification System.  The result is summarised by Watts et al:

The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data.

So that's it, folks, all that yadda-yadda about global warming and the fact is that it amounts to an increase of around 0.155C per decade!  Unless, of course, you rely on poorly sited recording stations, or, better still if you are a HAF swot, you fiddle the figures as naughty NOAA does (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration).  Those disrespectful rascals at IHTM sum it up thus:

• Compliant Thermometers (ones in the right places) show a + .155 degrees centigrade per decade temperature rise.
• Non-Compliant Thermometers (like ones next to airport runways, air conditioner exhausts, chimneys or the 90% Watt’s claims suffer from urban heat island effect) show a + .248 degrees centigrade per decade temperature rise.
• NOAA final adjusted (otherwise known as cheating) data show a +.309 degree per decade temperature rise.

So where does that leave poor old Professor Muller, the recent convert to HAFism?  Looking like a novice lover and a crap drummer, in my opinion!

 

The Sunday Rumble 29.7.12

What is it with American politicians? Mitt Romney, never high in my admittedly il-informed estimation, came to this country allegedly to cement 'the Special Relationship' but in fact to collect shed-loads of dosh from ex-patriate Americans for his election campaign.  All he had to do whilst here was to keep his mouth shut, nod, smile and if absolutely forced to answer questions 'just say nicely-nicely'.  Her Maj has been doing it for 60 years although I admit she doesn't smile all that often - who would with a job like hers?!  But no, 'Thick Mitt' opens his 'stoopid' mouth and criticises his hosts.  Meanwhile, 'over there' the President, no less, completely at a loss for words without his tele-prompter (he's a university intellectual, don'cha know!) tells zillions of small businessmen that they did not build up their little companies, Uncle Sam did!  I mean, politicians are at least supposed to be good at sucking up to voters but Obama can't even manage that.

Dodging the bullet of reality:  There has been, rightly, an uproar in America over the slaughter of 12 people in a cinema.  So great was the furore that the President felt it necessary to give up some golfing and schmoozing-for-donations time to visit the city of Aurora and commiserate with the families.  Meanwhile, back in Obama's political home town, Chicago, 28 people have already been slaughtered this month!  Did you see any headlines?  No, nor me!  As for a presidential visit - fagetabatit!

What are the odds on Boris?  In this country it usually helps a politician if he is thought to be a bit eccentric because we all have a soft spot for people, particularly toffs, prepared, in a not too serious way, to blithely disregard the usual norms.  It helps even more if somehow the politician can contrive to leave the impression that, actually, behind the apparent daftness there is a very good mind at work.  All of this Boris Johnson does with supreme ease.  He is obviously positioning himself for a return to parliament and a run at the top job when the Stupid Party Conservative Party realises that it has elected as its leader the dimmest light bulb ever to pass through Eton without ever once being switched on.  I have no idea if Boris has what it takes to run the country but I do suspect that it would, in parts, be rather amusing!

Who da thunkit?  Well, not that mighty intellectual colossus in The White House or any of the Democrat brain-boxes who surround him, apparently.  Obama and his polit-bureau have taken a consistently hostile line against the building of an oil/gas pipe-line from Canada down into central USA in order to take advantage of huge new oil and gas resources found in their northern neighbour's territory.  Instead they spent their time and their taxpayers' money shovelling zillions into corrupt, so called 'alternative energy' enterprises like Solyndra which have taken the money and promptly gone bust.  Needless to say, the Chinese have stepped in quickly and are about to sign a $15 bn deal with the Canadians which will mean that if the Americans want any they will have to buy it from the Chinese.  Sounds of "Duh! I never thoughta that one, Barney!" are to be heard in The White House.

The perfect holiday read?  We are all used to hotels offering us porn channels on the TVs in the rooms but, accordingto those rascals at IHTM, some enterprising hotel-keeper in the Lake District has replaced the copies of the Gideon Bible usually to be found in the bedside tables with copies of Fifty Shades of Grey, the latest block-busting, or perhaps, 'ball-breaking', piece of pornogrpahy that is top of all the big seller lists.  It, and the two other volumes that follow it, are written by a lady which at first makes them sound slightly alluring.  Alas, I caught a glimpse of a photograph of the lady concerned and instantly such interest as I had, er, shrivelled.  The Memsahib's best friend has loaned her a copy and she keeps telling me that it is absolute rubbish but, oddly, the house has been rather quiet over recent days with far fewer of the usual peremptory orders because she has her nose stuck inthis book!  I sneaked a look  (natch!) when she was out  but the first sentence I read was "His eyes burned into me with passion" at which point such 'passion' as I could muster fled.  What a dire, turgid sentence and I cannot believe the composer of it could excite me in the slightest.  Anyway, I gather a lot of it is concerned with S&M and as I have a pain threshold on the minus scale, I doubt whether it would interest me.

 

So, darlings, did the earth move for you last night?

No, no, not that; I mean the Olympic opening 'jamboree', for lack of a better word because 'ceremony', apart from the  absolute essentials insisted on by the megalomaniacs who rule Olympia and the world, was kicked into touch by this zany, irreverent, Left-leaning, 'flash-party'.  Danny Boyle, the creator and director, faced an immense problem given the decision he took to try and encapsulate all that has gone before and all that exists now in that great 'mess of pottage' we now call Great Britain.  That is clearly impossible and so it became an exercise in picking and choosing.  So out went the Romans who first civilised us; away went the medieval period and perhaps the most significant item in our entire history, Magna Carta;  no mention of the Rennaissance and the Reformation; dear old Will was given a few brief lines totally out of context; and so we really didn't get the story going until we were given a brief nod in the direction of rural England before the industrial revolution.  (It is worth recording that the agricultural revolution which ran alongside its better known 'cousin' was equally important but, dammit, this was show business not a history lesson.)

Anyway, with neat, if not entirely accurate symbolism, the country bumpkins and their rural idyll were literally and metaphorically torn up and swept away in an intricate dance spectacular by Isambard Brunel and his cohorts and great factory chimneys arose with alm0st viagra-inspired erectness in the middle of the arena  I'm not sure if the very Lefty Danny Boyle approved or disapproved but his next, er, 'Great Leap Forward' was to that demi-God of Socialism, the National Health Service.  This occasioned a telephone call from 'SoD' (Son of Duff) who is somewhere to the Right of Ghenghis Khan and who then went into a minor rant sounding like the personification of 'Disgusted from Tunbridge Wells'.  I had to remind him that as the old man of the family it was my job to be Mr. Grumpy!  I am tempted to delve further into the pros and cons of the NHS but that could take several hours which I do not have to spare.  Mr. Boyle then took us into a phantasia based on children's books but with his historical blindness he concentrated on J. K. Rowling's output and, unless I missed it, not a mention of poor little Alice and her Mad Hatter, or Ratty and Mole, or the Famous Five, because they, of course, were written before Mr. Boyle was born and therefor were not part of his, um 'world view'!  After that it all degenerated into an overlong paean of praise to sundry pop groups.  I tried - no, really I did - to remind myself that this may not resonate with old fossils like me but that it was possibly deeply moving to the younger generation - yeeeees, quite!

However, Mr. Boyle and his one-eyed view of the world was saved by one huge, incredible, unbelievable and utterly unexpected ingredient to his extravaganza - humour!  Truly, the very last thing I expected to do last night was - laugh!  But I did, several times.  The James Bond pastiche with the Queen was witty, sharp and sophisticated.  Even better was Mr. Bean attempting to play the keyboard in a performance by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle , no less, of the theme from Chariots of Fire.  The film and the music are almost Holy Writ for Olympians and for Boyle to have the nerve to poke gentle fun at it was delicious.  Both those elements were genuine examples of a trait, not celebrated often enough in this country, our sense of humour, the best of which always borders dangerously on the anarchic.  (I did wonder how Mr. Bean would appear to, say, millions of Chinese but this morning on Sky News a Chinese sportsman told us that he is huge in China and that his films are played constantly - who da thunk it?)  I must confess that when the entry of the gladiators the national teams began I went to bed.  As these no doubt splendid young men and women strolled in to the stadium smiling, smiling, smiling, it seemed like a short course in death before they even reached Azerbaijan, and the thought of waiting around to see Zambia was too much.

Anyway, Mr. Boyle was always going to be on a loser in trying to encapsulate all of Britain in one extravanganza, despite the eye-wateringly extravagant expense of it all.  At least he avoided  the ghastliness of the militarised manouvres of the Chinese parades four years ago in which human beings were reduced to disciplined, ant-like status in the finest traditions of totalitarian governments everywhere.  Boyle's production was free-flowing, humorous, iconoclastic, individualistic and, above all else - and here I must apologise for using an f-word that normally never passes my lips or keyboard - fun!

 

Crikey, I never knew it could kill you!

This comes - no pun intended - under the heading of 'Only in Nigeria'.  It is also a dire warning to all Muslim men that us 'Christian' chaps actually might have the right idea when it comes - seriously, no pun intended - to the number of wives we might, er, enjoy.  On the face of it, having six wives seems to have some advantages when it comes to, er, Saturday night playtime, so to speak, because you have the chance to pick and choose.  But that scenario also has its dangers, as poor old Uroko Onoja found out the hard way - no, I mean it, that really was no pun! - when, according to The Indian Express, he chose wife No. 6 for a Saturday night frolic.  You see, he had not allowed for female ferocity when they find themselves slighted:

Uroko Onoja, a wealthy businessman, was having sex with his youngest wife when the other five women attacked him with knives and sticks, demanding that he have sex with all of them at once.

Onoja, who resisted their attack, was overpowered by the women who ordered that the sex march begin with the youngest wife and to continue in that order to the top, Nigeria's Daily reported.

Onoja stopped breathing when the fifth woman was making her way to the bed.

One's feelings are mixed.  On the one hand a certain sympathy is called for in the light of his death, but on the other, considerable admiration is aroused by his plucky attempt to favour the other five.  And of course, one can only mutter reverentially, "What a way to go!"  I'm not sure if he will have qualified for the 76 virgins but one suspects that they are the very last thing poor old Uroko will want to see when he goes to heaven.  In the meantime I trust the authorities in Nigeria will erect - look, I'm telling you for the last time  - a suitable statue in his memory for truly he stands - oh, I give up - for the very best of Nigerian Manhood.

 

Should we throw rotten veg at the 'Zils'?

I am tempted to encourage it now that the 'Zil' lanes are open for the putrid circus that is the Olympics.  Back in the day, when I was a wage slave, my main entry into London was along the M4 and then onto the Cromwell Road.  I can remember spitting imprecations when they set aside one lane of the M4 for buses and taxis only.  Today however, we have the 'Zil' lanes reserved for the various international dope fiends pretending they are better athletes than the great Sir Roger Bannister than which etc, etc., and also the stinking rich, greasy-fingered 'Zillionaires' who believe themselves to be above mere mortals because they run this ridiculous, overblown charade we call the Olympics.  So, whilst we, the proles and the plebs, queue in the simmering heat, these charlatans sweep past us as though by divine right.  Well, I suggest we all take some rotten veg with us in our cars - tomatoes are very useful at this time of the year because they quickly go squidgy.  Then, as you see these poltroons cruising by let 'em have it with a constant bombardment of anything soft and preferably smelly!  Of course, I will not be taking part myself because I'm not an activist.  Indeed, the Memsahib will confirm that she has never met anyone less active than me - or so she keeps telling me.  Consider me an agent provocateur!

 

A surreptitious cheer for 14 Intelligence Company

I have offered the opinion before that John Major and Tony Blair surrendered far too early in the war against the IRA in Ulster.  Even I, a total outsider, began to realise towards the end of the campaign that virtually no ranking member of the IRA could even pass wind without the security forces learning of it.  They were riddled with informers from top to bottom and, one sensed, there were also some very sophisticated security intelligence operations being performed.  Well, now at least I have some more details.

I have just finished an extraordinary book called The Operators: Inside 14 Intelligence Company written by 'James Rennie'.  (The inverted commas indicate my doubt that it is his true name.)  Interestingly, I note that it was published by a German publishing house presumably avoiding stringent rules which cover memoires from ex-military personel.  It is not an easy read containing as it does far too much jargon which is almost incomprehensible to an outsider.  Even so, Mr. 'Rennie', who began his military career as an officer in an infantry regiment, is a good writer and tells his tale well.

14 Int Coy (to use the military abbreviation) recruited volunteers from all of the armed services using soldiers, sailors and airmen - and women!  All that the volunteers had to do was pass a selection course which makes hell sound not too bad after all!  It was not only a test of physical stamina and agility but also of the ability to absorb a hundred and one details and maintain the ability to think straight whilst under the most severe pressure.  Unsurprisingly, most, in fact the vast majority, failed.

So what did these 'supermen' and 'superwomen' actually do?  Well, they were quite literally the eyes and ears of MI5, the army and the police.  Amongst a plethora of other skills, they mastered the art (or craft) of following suspects through cities, towns, villages or wide open countryside and then maintaining covert surveillance on them.  Easy enough, you might think, but imagine trying to watch a house in the middle of a small village in which every local knows everyone else.  Also, try working out how you would surreptitiously enter into that house which would usually have double locks on every door and window when the owner was absent without disturbing his neighbours.  And then ensure that your 'buggers', so to speak, had the necessary undisturbed two hours needed to search and photograph, and plant tiny surveillance devices.  Remembering, of course, that it was critical that these devices were well hidden because if the IRA man concerned found them he would instantly make use of them to pass back to you false information, a case of the hacker hacked!  (Mind you, they were clever enough to frequently plant two devices which covered each other so that they knew instantly if one had been discovered.)

These men and women were in constant danger.  Dressed in civvies and driving a variety of (apparently) clapped out old cars they drove, or walked, or hung around, in the virulently Catholic areas of Belfast and Londonderry which were filled with gangs of suspiciously minded young men just looking for trouble and quickly able to spot strangers.  I would suggest that operating in such areas made going into East Berlin in the '60s look rather easy by comparison.

By its very nature, 14 Int Coy cannot be honoured although it deserves the very highest, and not just for the courage of its operators but also for their superb professionalism.  The immense detail they put into thinking through and executing their ops was extraordinary.  I don't know if it still exists.  Probably not because we are no longer fighting that war.  However, I do hope that the huge amount of expertise they built up was not allowed to simply go to waste.  They worked closely with MI5 and I trust that MI5 stepped in to pick up some of the operators and their skills when the Ulster campaign ended.  Judging by their successes in the security operations against Islamists I rather think they did!

Anyway, join me and raise a surreptitious glass in honour of the very brave and efficient ladies and gentlemen of 14 Int Coy.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Operators-Inside-Intelligence-Company/dp/0099728710

 

When you labour in the vineyards of the Lord ...

He takes jolly good care of you, or so I am assured by the vicar when I cut his Churchyard grass!  Hitherto I have treated his platitude with a certain scorn but maybe, just maybe, there's something to it.  Today, as I told you in the preceding post, the Memsahib and I went off to enjoy the global warming (why would anyone be against global warming assuming it ever happens?) at our favourite place, the Hive Cafe beach at Burton Bradstock.  This is along the coastal road that rightly deserves to be called the 'English Corniche'.  The Hive Cafe, incidentally, is just that - a cafe - no pretensions, no fancies, no sneery waiters, just the very best and very freshest fish, lobster and prawns from the fishermen up the coast. 

Anyway, we were sitting outside the Cafe in the sunshine.  I was stripped to the waist which caused some excitement amongst the younger females, well, they were all smiling and laughing, when suddenly an air ambulance helicopter appeared and hovered just around the huge cliff headland to the right of our beach.  It was quickly followed by two more and then sundry police and coastguard cars arrived.  Coming home in the car our suspicions were confirmed when they reported that part of the massive cliff had slid down and, desperately sadly, it looks as though someone - possibly a lady - had been buried.  As so often, I immediately recalled Gloucester's bitter words in King Lear:

As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods/ They kill us for their sport.

 

Sorry, wage slaves, I'm off to the beach!

I know, I know, it's quite intolerable when some retired old git lets you know that he's off for some sea, sun and sand whilst you remain cooped up in your coal mine or tractor factory.  Still, you can't blame me after enduring three solid months of rainfall.  Now, at last, we have some 'global warming' and I'm off to make the most of it at Chesil Beach which is otherwise known as the Jurassic Coast so it should suit an old dinasour like me!  The last time I went I tried to impress the ladies by striding manfully into the sea to demonstrate my superb swimming abilities.  The effect was somewhat marred about 0.7 secs after I had entered the water when the freezing cold hit every nerve-ending in my body sending me into severe trauma.  Whimpering with pain I staggered out onto dry land furious with our local authorities who failed in their duty to heat up the English Channel to the same luke-warm temperature as my local swimming pool!  I mean, what do we pay our taxes for?!  Anyway, as I fry gently on the beach I will try - no, really I will - to compose something half intelligent to write when I return home in the afternoon.  Perhaps the Euro will have collapsed by then.

C' est impossible, il va ruiner mes vacances!

That's the problem with crises, they always come at the wrong time of the year - take the outbreak of WWI and WWII for example.  I mean, how thoughtless, right in the middle of the holiday season.  So one can imagine, with not a little relish, the mutterings in Brussels amongst 'the colleagues' as they watch Spanish bond yields reaching 7.5% which, in laymen terms, I gather, is the equivalent of melting point.  According to the WSJ:

Spain needs to sell some €27 billion ($32.8 billion) more in bonds this year to cover its deficits and repay maturing debt. It has leaned on domestic banks to scoop them up, but those banks' purchases are waning. Earlier this month, Spain canceled a mid-August bond auction.

The Spanish stock market has dropped 2.5% - as has the London Footsie.  Italy is following suit!  Greece is all ready to surrender despite rattling their empty tin cup in the direction of Germany.  How long can this cruel, useless madness continue?  And all for the sake of a lunatic political idea even more manic than national socialism or communism.  Poor Europe, what did we do to deserve such moronic leadership.

 

Guns 'n' Loonies!

Not too much time today so here are a few random thoughts on a topic always popular first thing on a Monday morning - mass murder!  'Over there' the usual suspects are howling for more stringent gun laws, or to be precise, anti-gun laws.  The fact that Colorado already has fairly strict laws is, apparently, of no interest to those with a political/social axe to grind.  Nor does the possibility occur to them that if just one man had been carrying a concealed weapon in that audience several lives might have been saved.  Equally, if carrying weapons was commonplace even a nutter would think twice before trying to get his name into the record books given that he would be unlikely to live long enough to complete his task.  Going to the other extreme, I doubt there is a nation in the world with stricter gun laws than Norway but somehow, holding up or quoting the statute concerned failed to stop Anders Breivik murdering 69 people with a gun - not counting the 8 he killed with a bomb.

Given the circs this is not an irony I particularly enjoy but it is worth reminding everyone that over twice as many people have been murdered in Chicago this month than were killed in Aurora.  Funnily enough, or nauseating enough depending on your point of view, President Obama whose political home is Chicago did not feel the necessity of visiting the 'Windy City' to commisserate with those relatives, they were just left to ponder the truth of that old saying "same old same old".  Illinois and Chicago have very tough anti-gun laws but as anyone with half a brain would quickly work out, such laws only apply to the law-abiding who then become helpless victims in the face of gun-toting criminals.

 

The Sunday Rumble 22.7.12

Sorry for the short intermission yesterday:  Actually, it wasn't that short from where I was standing because finally, yesterday, the 'sun put his hat on and came out to play'.  Thus, there was no excuse available to stop me from cutting the grass in the Churchyard which had reached Borneo jungle proportions (That's enough exaggeration. Ed!)  The problem when it gets too lush is that the number of trips back and forth with the wheelbarrow increases according to a strict mathematical algorithm which is far too complex for me to explain to you ignoramuses.  On top of that, my slice of the Churchyard is on the boundary so I have an iron boundary fence with supporting bars jutting out to deal with.  This can only be tidied using a strimmer and if it wasn't the Church's property I would suspect that it had been nicked from an industrial museum.  It takes an inordinate amount of tugs to get the damn thing started.  The language, I regret to say, is most un-Churchlike - but don't tell the vicar!  After that, I had to deal with my own 'rolling acres', well, actually about 0.04 of an acre.  All my lovely flowers, of course, had drowned - no, I mean it, they had taken so much rain water they were literally rotting on their stems.  Needless to say, the bloody, sodding weeds were flourishing like never before.  God moves in mysterious ways - and I wish he wouldn't!

When it comes to fat, smug, mouthy bastards . . .

This one takes some beating.  He is Mr. Tom Watson MP and he was on the radio this morning crowing with delight that my mate 'Rupe' had been forced to relinquish his directorships in the London print media.  What 'Porky' Watson doesn't understand is that Murdoch's connection to The Times and, especially, The Sun, is almost entirely sentimental.  You see, 'Rupe' has the drive and determination and the vision to actually start and run businesses, something Watson couldn't manage in a month of Sundays.  Today, given the change in the whole media world, they cost him a fortune so no doubt he was delighted to have an excuse, finally and no doubt regretfully, to wash his hands of them and concentrate on making money.  Perhaps he'll send 'Porky' Watson a 'Thank You' card.  Incidentally, on the deeply unpleasant subject of the deeply unpleasant Mr. Watson, I wonder if he's still claiming the maximum food allowance of £4,800 pa that he was shown to be doing during the expenses scandal; and also if he and his flat-mate Ian Wright MP are still managing to claim £100k for their flat expenses?

JuliaM provides the best Sunday reading:  This being Sunday I had best start with a confession - I find it hard to read Julia's blog.  No, no, I don't mean that she is a poor writer, quite the contrary, her prose is so crisp it crackles, and she laces straighforward stories from the press with a caustic wit that never fails to crack me up.  But the fact is that her blog is a chronicle of pettifogging blunders and stupidities, usually by those set in power above us (especially the Cocklecarrots) that I frequently require a strong black coffee and an aspirin.  Or to put it another way, I never know whether to laugh or cry!   But of course I do read it regularly and this morning she offers a super link which will take you to 'the news behind the news'.  Definitely worth a visit.

Another Corker Award:  I am just so good to you people, tipping you off regularly on who is the latest talent on the block when it comes to 'pulp fiction'.  Alright, I admit it, sometimes I'm a little behind the times . . . yes, I know, sometimes years . . . alright, even decades . . . but I get there in the end.  Today, courtesy of my local Cancer Research/RSPCA/Heart Foundation/Local Hospice shop (heh, who needs bloody expensive libraries?) I came across John Katzenbach.  Actually it was a two books in one cover omnibus which appealed to the tightwad in me.  The stories were In the Heat of the Summer and The Shadow Man.  The copyright for the first goes back to 1982!  How have I missed him for so long?  Judged on these two tales he invents very original plotlines and then goes on to write them in a very clear literary style.  These are definitely not the usual blood 'n' guts tosh I recommend to you so regularly but seriously good stories seriously well told. 

This one should run and run:  I would actually pay big money for a ring-side seat to this forthcoming heavyweight bout.  No, not boxing but the Godfather of the HAFs, Michael Mann (he of 'hockey shtick' fame), versus, the wielder of the deadliest rapier in the world of journalism, Mark Steyn.  Apparantly, Mann has taken strong exception to an article by Steyn in The National Review which draws attention to, shall we say, the less than stringently ethical behaviour of those in charge of Penn State University over recent years.  In particular, as Steyn points out (as did I a few days ago), when it comes to conducting investigations into the behaviour of its college employees, the Sandusky case indicates that the University authorities worship the dollar a lot more than they do Veritas, the Goddess of Truth.  That leaves Steyn, and me, wondering what strength one can rely on in the investigation of Mr. Mann's scientific activities when he 'invented' the 'Hockey Shtick' which has been the subject of non-stop criticism.  Anyway, the writs are flying so watch this space!

 

And on the subject of money, that brings me to bankers

I have nothing original to say concerning bankers except that I wish my sister had married one!  Well, happily Ogden Nash does have something rather more witty to say on the subject:

BANKERS ARE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, EXCEPT RICHER

This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.
Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage withdrawals,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe
betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless
they don't need it.

I know you, you cautious conservative banks!
If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny
them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving
of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks;
Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must
look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the
jungle,
And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had
better go get the money from their wife's aunt or ungle.

But suppose people come in and they have a million and they
want another million to pile on top of it,
Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you
urge them to accept every drop of it,
And you lend them the million so then they have two million
and this gives them the idea that they would be better off
with four,
So they already have two million as security so you have no
hesitation in lending them two more,
And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm,
And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the
money sent or do they want to take it withm.

Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks,
the jackasses who go around saying that health and happi-
ness are everything and money isn't essential,
Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant
money to maintain their health and happiness they starve
to death so they can't go around any more sneering at good
old money, which is nothing short of providential.

Ogden Nash

Is the USA close to going 'tits up'?

I ask not just because their national debt is rapidly approaching $16 trillion and if Obama wins in November he will almost certainly rack it up even higher, perhaps taking them over $20 trillion, but because bankruptcy might sneak up on them from below.  The number of cities choosing this way out of their financial (and mostly self-inflicted, dilemmas is mounting almost at a daily rate.  At the beginning of this month Stockton in California declared itself broke.  Usually, of course, if a municipality goes broke it is the suppliers of goods and services who take the hit, but these days, such has been the all-pervading influence of the public service unions it is their members who are close to feeling extreme pain.  For a start, large numbers of policemen, firemen and teachers will be laid off.  There is even a chance that retirees enjoying their generous pensions could see these entitlements cut although Reuters suggests that such an outcome is fraught with legal difficulties:

One big step Stockton is not expected to take is to attempt to dodge its pension obligations to city employees.  If it did, the city would have to confront the powerful California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), which handles pension plans for many California cities and counties.  Calpers and unions around the country have made it clear they see a pension as an iron-clad right, one that's legally protected even in a bankruptcy.  Whether pensions are contract rights, which can be changed, or property rights, which are protected under the U.S. Constitution, has never been tested in court.

Where cities go today entire States might go tomorrow.  Rhode Island is considered to be hovering close to the edge.  According to Fitch as reported by Business Week in March this year,  Illinois, Connecticut and Hawaii are in deep trouble if you take into account their pension liabilities.  If the States begin to put up the shutters how long before Washington follows suit?

Jest askin'!

 

'Right, sir, move along, nuthin' to see!'

M' Lord Bishop Hill has been kind enough to publish the Q&A session with Norfolk Constabulary who conducted the investigation into the hacking of the e-mails in the computer belonging to the Climate Research Centre at East Anglia University.  It's not very long for the simple reason that the 'Plod' did not get very far with the investigation, and I don't say that as a criticism because unless you have the resources of the Government Communications Centre at Cheltenham (the spies with ears not eyes!) it is almost impossible to follow the trail of some hacker (or hackers) through the myriad mirrors provided by foreign servers.  And anyway, who cares?  Frankly, they did us all a favour by showing up those lying liars as, er, lying liars, or, even worse considering that they are supposed to be top-notch scientific swots, as hopeless, helpless dopes.  There was one key sentence in the report which is worth pondering upon:

We identified a significant quantity of data that was taken in this way, certainly in excess of that which was subsequently published in the two files in 2009 and 2011. (My emphasis)

So perhaps there is more to come!  Oh, yummy-yummy, can't wait.

 

If accidentally you bump into Anna Breslaw, hold your nose and move on!

Good manners insists that I thank the excellent John Podhoretz of the Commentary site for pointing me towards this particularly rancid pile of pavement droppings even if he did warn me to avoid stepping in it.  Alas, curiosity impelled me on and so I read the article in The Tablet sicked up by the afore-mentioned Anna Breslaw.  The opening paragraph gives you the, er, flavour: 

Since I was 12 I’ve had an unappealing, didactic distrust of people with the extreme will to live. My father’s parents were Holocaust survivors, and in grade school I received the de rigueur exposure to the horror—visiting geriatric men and women with numbers tattooed on their arms, completing assigned reading like The Diary of Anne Frank and Night. But the more information I received, the less sympathy the survivors elicited from me. Each time we clapped for the old Hungarian lady who spoke about Dachau, each time Elie Wiesel threw another anonymous anecdote of betrayal onto a page, I eyed it askance, thinking What did you do that you’re not talking about? I had the gut instinct that these were villains masquerading as victims who, solely by virtue of surviving (very likely by any means necessary), felt that they had earned the right to be heroes, their basic, animal self-interest dressed up with glorified phrases like “triumph of the human spirit.”

It's difficult to know how to respond to this except to wonder if the gas is still switched on at Dachau and if so whether or not they could squeeze in just one more!  Ms. Breslaw claims to possess "a gut instinct".  I would put it more accurately by describing it as a 'gutter instinct'.  To sneer, to insult, to spit upon anyone who survived the Nazi extermination factories (or the Communist gulags, or the Chinese mass murders of Mao, or - well you fill in your own choice) is behaviour so vile as to be beyond description.  Needless to say, or at least, needless to say amongst grown ups with even half an idea of the way of the world (so that excludes the brainless Ms. Breslaw), they were not all saints inside places like Dachau.  There were, perhaps some outright saints but the other 99.9% of the inmates were the usual very human mixture of vice and virtue.  They all wanted to survive because that is part of being human.  Most did not and those that did were, I guess, 95% lucky and 5% intelligent.  Your name either came up on the daily rosta or it did not.  The longer you were an inmate the smaller became your chances of surviving.

So, Ms. Breslaw, here's five examples of those who made it.  What would you do if you were facing them?  Shriek insults at them for surviving?  Insinuate slyly that they obviously worked for the Germans because they lived and others did not?  Harangue them for failing to push themselves to the head of the queue leading to the gas chambers?  Perhaps even suggest that they do the 'decent' thing and top themselves?

True evil comes in many forms but amongst the worst is when it appears in the form of a monumentally stupid, 'Noo Yawk' Jewish, clacker-mouth with the moral and common sense of a slug - if that is not an insult to slugs!  I truly hope and wish (and would pray if I knew who to pray to) that Ms. Breslaw gets cancer.  Then we'll see what she has to say about survival and survivors!

 

The man had balls as well as a brain!

Poor old Albert, er, Einstein that is, was a very misunderstood man.  Well, I for one never understood a word he wrote, or at least, sometimes I would catch a glimpse of the great shining truth he espoused but just as I was about to shout "Eureka!" I would blink and away it would go with the fairies - into infinity, I suppose! Anyway, his wife obviously didn't understand him, either, judging by this note he addressed to her as the conditions for him remaining with her for the sake of the children:

CONDITIONS

1. You will make sure:
   1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
   2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
   3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.
2. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:
   1. my sitting at home with you;
   2. my going out or travelling with you.
3. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:
   1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
   2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
   3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.
4. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.

 

Needless to say, she left after five months!  Still, guy's got guts whatever else you think about him.  I mean, if it was me (assuming I could summon up the courage to write such a thing), I would probably die of starvation because I would never dare eat anything the Memsahib produced!  Odd, isn't it, that perhaps a brief scribble like that tells you more about the man than a detailed biography. The quote came from the delightful and always interesting Lists of Note site.

 

'What's in a name?' - loads'a money!

I am grateful to Mr. Noel Koch at The American Spectator for pointing to the chicanery inherent in the deeply unscientifc theory and practice of 'Psychobabbling' - my word for this particular example of withcraft, not his.  Apparently the very latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is about to be published.  Did you notice in the photos above of the earlier editions how they keep getting bigger and bigger?  Well, part of the reason is that the more you can stuff in it the more cash pours out of it into the gently rubbing together but ever-so sympathetic hands of the psychobabblers!

Thus, according to Mr. Koch, quoting the NYT, under the heading of 'Depression' there is currently no entry for 'bereavement'.  Apparently, the psychobabblers are divided over this because whilst some feel that it is normal to feel sad when a loved one dies, others feel it is a pathology requiring treatment, er, for a fee, natch!  Still, what's good for psychobabblers is also good for comedians according to Mr. Koch who reminds us that their tired and stale jokes about ladies suffering with PMT (Premenstrual Syndrome) can now be replaced with jokes about PDS (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and whilst you might not be amused the psychobabblers are laughing all the way to the bank.  Mr. Koch puts it this way:

It is statistically verifiable that once a behavioral condition, however transitory, is labeled a "disorder" the number of people diagnosed with the "disorder" goes zooming up the charts. Suddenly tens of thousands of people who formerly were reduced to having to pull up their socks and get on with their lives can now lie back on the couch and indulge a "disorder" they didn't previously know they had. That is very gratifying for some personalities and very lucrative for the person who "diagnosed" their disorder.

However, you should not assume that this is all a racket run solely for the benefit of the psychobabblers, oh dear me, no, because lurking off-stage rubbing its hands in eager joy is Big Pharma with a treasure trove of (eye-wateringly expensive) pills that will 'cure' this, that or the other 'disorder'.  Unfortunately, some of these pills are slightly too effective in that they have a tendency to kill the patient, or to be precise, they encourage depressions of such magnitude that the patient often kills himself!

In my opinion, all psychobabblers should come with a government health warning!

 

Now this doesn't shock me at all!

The other day I was shocked by an example of old-fashioned sportsmanship but today I can barely suppress a yawn when I pass on to you the utterly predictable news that all those scary IPCC reports forecasting the end of the world were less useful than a pile of manure even if the stench of rotting faeces was more or less the same! 

Joseph L. Bast at The American Thinker has been reading very carefully a report by something called the Inter Academy Council (IAC - no, me, neither) who have subjected past IPCC reports to rigorous analysis.  You'll never guess what they found:

The IAC reported that IPCC lead authors fail to give "due consideration ... to properly documented alternative views" (p. 20), fail to "provide detailed written responses to the most significant review issues identified by the Review Editors" (p. 21), and are not "consider[ing] review comments carefully and document[ing] their responses" (p. 22).  In plain English: the IPCC reports are not peer-reviewed.

The IAC found that "the IPCC has no formal process or criteria for selecting authors" and "the selection criteria seemed arbitrary to many respondents" (p. 18).  Government officials appoint scientists from their countries and "do not always nominate the best scientists from among those who volunteer, either because they do not know who these scientists are or because political considerations are given more weight than scientific qualifications" (p. 18).  In other words: authors are selected from a "club" of scientists and nonscientists who agree with the alarmist perspective favored by politicians.

Or, to put it another, less academic, way - the whole rotten festering thing is a crock!  Mr. Bast warns that the next IPCC report is already being smoothed and ironed by the usual suspects.  It will be full of 'alarums and excursions' to frighten the children and Mr. Bast asks, not unreasonably:

And on this basis we should transform the world's economy to run on breezes and sunbeams?

(Today, in an act of unprecedented generosity I am taking the Memsahib out to visit some ornamental gardens and then to lunch.  Thus, you lot will have to knuckle down and do some work for a change instead of clicking in here every five minutes for a snigger!  By the time I get back this afternoon I might - well there's always a chance - have thought of something intelligent to write!) 

Sorry, sorry, Wage Slaves, I forgot the Monday morning joke

Actually the joke is a headline but let me give you the back story, or perhaps 'front' is a better word for it.  It concerns the priapic (ex)Congressman Anthony Weiner who, and here I quote from the New York Post story written by Annie Karni:

tweeted a picture of his bulging crotch to a 21-year-old college student and then falsely claimed his account had been hacked.

Washington, being as stiff-necked as Mr. Weiner is stiff-crotched, insisted that he resign his seat in Congress.  Not, of course, that they gave a rat's arse about him sending pictures of his tumescence to young women and then lying about it, but being caught out is unforgivable.  So, Mr. Weiner fell on his weapon of choice, so to speak, and decided to spend more time with his family - poor bastards, what have they done to deserve that?  Anyway, he has now decided to mount a come back - look, I do the jokes round here! - and may run for mayor of 'Noo Yawk'.  That, of course, is the cue for the joke.  The NY Post, in the finest Murdoch tradition headed their blog link:

Re-erection campaign!

Gotta love those Yanks!

 

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Nothing like a bit of Latin to give this sorry old site a spurious air of learning.  The phrase is literally translated as "who will guard the guardians themselves?"  Fortunately (or otherwise) the question does not arise in the shifty, dodgy, underhand world of the higher reaches of  'The Academy' because there do not appear to be any guardians at all!  Frankly, the soft-shoe shuffle and slight of hand executed with such dexterity by people entrusted to lead the brightest and best of our youth into ethical and high-minded excellence would make my old mates in the used-car trade look like saints!

We have already witnessed 'over here' the sight and sound of whitewash being slapped all over the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit who were shown up for the non-scientific rascals they are by leaked e-mails.  Then we had to hold our noses whilst we watched, happily from a distance, Penn State University steam cleaning the odiferous turds off their no-doubt white steps deposited there by Prof. Michael Mann, he of the infamous Hockey Stick - or should that be 'schtick'?  He, like Phil Jones et al from the UEA, duly had a bucket of whitewash tipped over his 'saintly' head despite a string of offences against the scientific ethical code.  But, of course, it was Penn State (sounds like an American prison, doesn't it?) themselves who conducted the 'investigation' a couple of years ago, but now we have the result of another, but this time independent, investigation into how this less than prestigious academy looks into the maloderous activities of  its employees.

The Jerry Sandusky case barely made the media 'over here' but he was the head coach of the Penn State (American) football team and has just been convicted of 45 charges of sexual abuse of young boys including rape and sodomy, offences committed over years.  Needless to say, in the weird, weird world of American academe things like football teams attract absolute 'zillions' in sponsorship and so suspicions and complaints about Sandusky's behaviour were whitewashed into oblivion by the very highest in the university's management regime.  The later investigations showed culpability up to and including the President of the University.

As Rand Simberg points out in a particularly bitter article for Open Market. com, it is obvious that pursuit of the dollar was paramount in the thinking of the University's management.  As he reminds us, Prof. Mann moves in very high and rich circles including sundry heads of state, the United Nations and an ex-Vice President of the USA who has made zillions from government-backed 'Greenery'.  In other words, Michael Mann attracts Big Bucks for Penn State U!  Consequently the myriad questions, doubts and outright accusations aimed at him are very unlikely to be answered by the people who employ him.  Unless, of course, the Sandusky affair prompts the new regime to try honesty for a change. ('Elf 'n' Safety Warning: Do not hold your breath waiting!)

In the meantime, would you want your 'kids' to go to Penn State U?  Thought not!

 

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!

Look, I like stereotypes, OK?  I'm comfortable with people behaving, almost always badly, in the manner which I have prescribed for them based on the deep well of my prejudices.  For example, I am enormously grateful to Messrs. Terry and Ferdinand, frère et frère, for confirming my profound conviction that most 'footie' players are a bunch of knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers with IQs in the minus level.  I was even glad, in a weird, masochistic way, to see Andy 'grunt-snuffle' Murray 'Blubbing for Britain', well, the Scottish bit of Britain, anyway, in front of the world's media.  The pre-fight brou-ha-ha that precedes every boxing match is, of course, in the finest tradition of the old fairground, 'roll up, roll up' way of getting the punters in.  (I believe in these more refined(?) days they call it 'marketing' - yeeees, quite!)  But the problem is that one cannot help but suspect that the numbskulls huffin' and puffin' at each other actually believe their own hype.  I could run through most professional sports and find further examples of stupidity and greed coupling but it is all too depressing.

Thus, to repeat my title, 'I was shocked, I tell you, shocked' to read yesterday of the outrageous behaviour of Mr. Barry Wiggins.  For those of you ill-educated in the farther reaches of the sporting world, let me tell you that Mr. Wiggins is a pedaler.  No, no, not a pedlar, he doesn't go around flogging things, well, except subscriptions to SKY TV who sponsor him (well done, Rupe!)  No, he's a cyclist and a pretty good one from all accounts.  And unlike some of his less than distinguished predecessors he doesn't keep hopping off his bike in order to go and 'shoot up' behind a hedge!  No, Mr. Wiggins is clean, he's a winner and, dammit, he's British!  So yesterday, during that interminable tour of France that these pedalers insist on doing every year for reasons quite beyond my ken, some unutterable rascals threw tin-tacks on the road and about thirty of the riders had to stop to fix punctures. (LOOK!  You are allowed a slight snigger but falling about helpless with laughter is not allowed - this is serious!)  Anyway, Mr. Wiggins (I am tempted to refer to him as the Right Honourable Wiggins but that title has been more than somewhat sullied recently), who was leading the race but was being pursued by the current champion who suffered from this sabotage, deliberately slowed down so that his rival could catch up!  

I am now in a state of shock.  You cannot believe how distressing it is when certain fixed poles in your existence are suddenly moved.  Suddenly, you begin to understand that uncertainty principle.  For a professional sportsman to actually behave in a sportsmanlike way is an enormous shock.  I mean, you can't rely on anyone these days.  Truly, the earth moved for me!

 

The Sunday Rumble: 15 July 12

Hoorah for the Jobsworths:  You will not often see those words on this blog so savour them whilst you may.  I nearly fell out of bed with laughter this morning when I heard on the news that some Jobsworth had switched off the sound system in Hyde Park just as someone called Bruce Springsteen and that dreadful little scouser, Paul McCartney, were about to bawl and shout their final numbers.  Apparently they had over-run their finishing time 0f 10.30 and according to the by-laws no more 'music' was permitted.  You don't even have to listen to their demented wailing to know just how awful they are, instead just look at this photo and imagine, courtesy of the BBC:

The over-excited oaf on the right is Steven Van Zandt, a member of Springsteen's E Street Band, and his finer artistic feelings were deeply hurt at being cut off in his, er, prime:

"English cops may be the only individuals left on earth that wouldn't want to hear one more from Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney!"

No, no, darling, there's lots more of us who would pay good money never to hear from either of them again - or you, come to that!

How to break the world record: With the Olympic yawn-a-thon stumbling catastrophically to its imminent opening I think it behooves us all to raise our different games.  We may not be able to break the 100 metres sprint record, in fact, many of us couldn't even run 100 metres, but in our different ways we should try to improve our performance.  I made an inadvertant start this morning when I shuffled into the kitchen and glancing at the 'telly' I saw this:

In an amazing feat of pure athleticism I both found and activated the 'do-flicker-thingie' in the world record time of 0.17 seconds and, bingo, she was gone.  'Harry Harperson' has that effect me.  How about you?

Is 'Dave' going to do a 'Harold'?  Rumours in the 'hackosphere' that  Georgie's time may be up.  Apparantly the ratings agencies are moving closer to a downgrade on British credit worthiness which is hardly surprising given that both George and Dave continue to spend and borrow like the toffs they are whilst pretending to be austere minders of the privie purse.  Dave's popularity is not only sinking amongst the electorate but even amongst his own party, as last week's massive rebellion indicated.  When Harold MacMillan was faced with a similar problem he executed his infamous 'night of the long knives', sacking, I think, six cabinet ministers starting with his chancellor.  Thus, he earned his soubriquet of "Mac the Knife"!  Will Dave have the ruthlessness to do the same?  He might have to do something because I cannot see either him or this coalition lasting.

Well, would you want your ear licked by - a lawyer?  As you all know, this blog is ceaseles in its efforts to bring you all the news that's fit, or unfit, come to that, to print.  Thus, with the assistance of the greatest grubber of news items big, small and infinitesimal, Drudge, I bring you a report of dirty goings on in a Kauai court.  Where the hell is Kauai when it's at home, I hear you mutter, so let me inform you ignoramuses that it is on the Island of Oahu (correction - see comments) in Hawaii, birth place (allegedly!) of the greatest (sort of) black man ever born.  According to that great newspaper of record, the Star Advertiser:

A Kauai District judge found an attorney guilty Thursday of licking his client’s ear at his Lihue office. 

Lawrence McCreery, 64, was convicted of harassment by per-diem District Judge Frank Rothschild. 

On July 26, 2011, McCreery was discussing a 21-year-old woman’s child custody case when he touched her arm, said a news release from the Kauai prosecutor’s office, and McCreery made a strange sound, hugged her tightly and licked the back of her right ear.

Shockin', shockin', of course, but they don't tell us what we all want to know - how much did he bill her for that little lick?

Anyway, mention of Oahu reminds me that I still have work to do on the Pearl Harbour bit of my forthcoming talk.  Mind you, I'm still shaking my head in wonderment that those two crucial American carriers were absent having delivered aircraft to Wake and Midway when the Japs struck.  They were scheduled to be back but bad weather delayed them.  Perhaps, just perhaps, there is a God!

 

Do not, under any circs, miss this!

Well, if you live in the UK, that is.  Tonight on BBC2 at 11.30 they are showing the 2006 film version of The Painted Veil.  An apparently very slight tale of sin and redemption by that crafty, in all senses of the word, old master, Somerset Maugham.  Superbly well-acted, and the scenery from Guilin in Guanxi province simply takes your breath away.  I just hope it shows up as well on a small screen.

Some critics sniffed at the 'smallness' of the story but Maugham knew better.  Inside a human relationship there is a whole universe of conflicting emotions and that genuine worth and even heroism may lay dormant until events conspire to bring it forth.  This is a first-rate film that honours a first-class writer.

 

There's none so blind as those with blind ambition

I really must knuckle down this weekend and make some more progress on the PowerPoint design of my talk on How the Japanese Lost WWII in the First Six Months which I am due to give in September.  It's a fascinating, complicated and exciting tale but somehow, in some way, everytime I think about it I feel like running repeatedly head first into the nearest brick wall.  I had similar feelings when I designed my earlier talk How the Germans Lost WWI in the First Six Weeks.  Over and over again I found myself slumped back in my chair and muttering, "The fools, the fools, how could they be so stupid?"  I know, I know, that hindsight is always 20/20 but even so, the sheer folly and hubris of the main players is almost beyond belief.

It is best expressed by the Japanese Emperor who, prior to Pearl Harbour, actually set both his army and navy staffs seperately the task of evaluating the likely outcome of war with the USA.  Both of these organisations were, in their own terms, a mixture of the militaristic and the bombastic.  Their senior officers, like their counterparts worldwide and throughout time, were eager for glory, not just for their nation but for their own reputations in the history books.  Who would not wish to go down in history as one of the 'Great Captains' alongside Alexander, Julius Caesar, Frederick the Great and Bonaparte?  But, and this is doubly extraordinary given their bitter rivalry with each other, both the army and the navy came to the same doubting conclusion, that if the war lasted more than 18 months Japan would lose.  In other words they had to cripple American giant in the first year.  And yet . . . and yet  . . . they went ahead and took what was a screamingly obvious and highly doubtful gamble.

Exactly the same type of thinking occurred in Wilhelmine Germany.  There a psychotic Emperor with delusions of grandeur based on feelings of inferiority and stoked by a fear which fed itself, aided and abetted his own phantasy .  Again, it was all based on a giant gamble - the Schlieffen Plan - which was predicted(!) to knock France out of the war in 42 days!  And virtually no-one stood up and shouted out loud that this was more than nonsense, it was verging on the idiotic.

I am prompted to take these somewhat gloomy historical thoughts and bring them into the present.  Earlier this week an American academic suggested that it would be a benefit if Iran did succeed in aquiring nuclear weapons.  I am only going on the reports of his reasoning because I have not yet read his own words but it seems that he thinks it would bring a sort of repeat of the frozen strategic position in Europe during the Cold War.  Of course, it was a 'cold' war in Europe(!) precisely because neither side could see any chance of advantage over their opponent.  It was called, somewhat inapropriately, MAD, standing for Mutually Assured Destruction.  Apparently this professor reckons the same thing will occur in the Middle East.  I beg to differ!

In the west, religion, which by its very nature is irrational, has virtually ceased to be an important factor in guiding international affairs (or even internal affairs, come to that!) but that is not the case in Islamic countries.  There, religion, which is drummed into children from a very young age with whole slabs of text to be memorised, is a major factor in their world view.  Just as in early Christianity, martyrdom is considered the highest of virtues.  Also, it needs to be remembered that Islam is riven by a fault line in exactly the same way that Christianity was between Catholic and Protestant.  It's not so much Israel that needs to fear but Saudi Arabia because the split and the hatred between Sunni and Shiite is dangerously high.  If and when Iran possesses nuclear weapons then the Saudis will instantly call in their IOUs from Pakistan.  Thus, we will have a region of the world armed with nukes and nerve gas with a population not averse to the idea of martyrdom.

I know it will give our poor old globe a tremendous economic shock but in my view it is better by far that the Israelis with American help take out the Iranian nuclear capacity before it is established.  Does that make me as nutty as von Schlieffen and Yamamoto?  Don't answer that question!

 

Picture of the week? month? year?

Stolen from Guido - who else? - and I will leave you all to spend the weekend thinking up suitable captions which, if they are even half as filthy as the ones at Guido's site you can deposit over there.  Still, it's worth a visit because some of them are hilarious - mon Dieu, quelle horreure!

 

So John Terry is NOT a foul-mouthed, pig-ignorant, grunt-snuffling, RACIST yob ...

He's only a pig-ignorant, foul-mouthed, grunt-snuffling yob - so that's alright then!  Consideration of, and comparison to, his 'footie' and legal opponent, Mr. Anton Ferdinand, leads one back inexorably to the unanswerable conundrum of the precedency between a louse and a flea.  To delve further into this murky tale will only provoke one into consideration of the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing retards who introduced this ridiculous law in the first place so it is best left undisturbed.

I apologise to both the ladies and my foreign readers for what will appear to them to be an even more totally incomprehensible post than usual.  Suffice to say that it is concerned with a particularly ripe example of 'footie' foolishness, than which, etc, etc.  In the unlikely event that you are actually interested in finding out more, try this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-18827915

 

'VeeP' tweet!

Sorry, but nerd that I am, I cannot resist the ongoing saga of who 'Boring Mitt' will choose as his running  mate.  Currently the American MSM is full of stories that 'Condi' Rice might be the surprise choice.  She would certainly bring some foreign policy experience to the team which would be useful given Romney's lack of it.  But it's what she brings to the election race which really counts.  She's black and thus scuppers the more scurrilous attacks by the Dem-supporting MSM.  Peggy Noonan in The WSJ puts it like this:

A public figure of obvious and nameable accomplishment whose attainments can't be taken away from her. Washington experience—she wouldn't be learning on the job. Never run for office but no political novice. An academic, but not ethereal or abstract. A woman in a year when Republicans aren't supposed to choose a woman because of what is now called the 2008 experience—so the choice would have a certain boldness. A black woman in a campaign that always threatens to take on a painful racial overlay. A foreign-policy professional acquainted with everyone who's reigned or been rising the past 20 years.

On the other hand, Jeffrey H. Anderson at The National Review goes strongly on Paul Ryan:

• Picking Ryan would excite and unite the party.
• By putting Ryan on the ticket, Romney would add the party’s single best spokesman on three huge issues: Obamacare, the budget, and the debt. Imagine Ryan debating Joe Biden — or Hillary Clinton.
• By adding such a heavyweight to the ticket, Romney would convey to the electorate how high the stakes are in this historic election.
• The pick would also show strength. By making it, Romney would (rightly) indicate that he’s not afraid of being overshadowed by anyone.

There is no doubt in my mind that Ryan would be an ideal choice once they were in power because he has a well-earned and formidable reputation as a man who understands economics and possesses a well-thought-out ideology to support his views.  How much help that will be in the actual election, I'm not so sure.  However, given the financial tsunami rapidly coming over the horizon towards America I'm not sure they can do without him.

William Kristoll at The Weekly Standard supports Ryan as the best choice but his guess, from reading the tea leaves, or I suppose, this being America, reading the coffee grounds, is that 'Condi' Rice is the likely pick.

 

Art for art's sake!

It's Friday!  Doesn't mean much to me now that I'm in retirement, one day just merges into the next and quite frequently I have no idea which day of the week it is.  But for you poor wage slaves, Friday is usually a good day and, if your particular 'tractor factory' is in the UK, I am told that there is a possibility it will stop raining for 27 minutes at some time over the weekend!  So, to set you in the right mood, here are a few paintings for you to gaze at which will, I'm sure, raise your spirits even further. 

Obviously I begin with my favourite, Paul Klee, and a painting entitled The Vase :

Here's another called Rising Star:

Don't bother to try and make realistic sense of it.  For virtually his entire life Klee (to use the current argot) 'pushed the envelope', experimenting with colour, shape, line and composition.  Rumour has it that if you look closely enough you will find a Higgs Boson in there somewhere!

I have liked Beh Shahn's work for years but the fact is that he was a dreadful old' Trot' and most of his work is dead miserable.  However, I did find this one which has some innocent charm to it.  It's called Amusement Park: 

Of course, I cannot resist offering some John Singer Sargent.  This one brings back personal memories for me because the 'Memsahib' and I once holidayed in a lovely old Croatian town on the coast of Illyria.  Part of the reason we chose it was because they have a high-speed ferry that crosses the Adriatic providing day trips to Venice.  We had never been to Venice but everyone told us that on your first visit you should try and go in by sea.  Excellent advice and this, more or less, was the view with which we were greeted:

However, if I am going to feature Singer Sargent then I must, I cannot do otherwise, than show one of the many very beautiful - and very rich - ladies he painted.  Here is Madame Paul Poirson - sexy little minx, ain't she?

Finally, and especially for my old e-pal, DM, here are a couple of Turners.  He does demonstrate a strong 'drama queen' tendency in some of his paintings but this one will knock your socks off:

 

But here's something more soothing, called Sunset on the River:

There, that's got you all relaxed and ready for the weekend, hasn't it?  No, no, there's no extra charge, it's all part of the service here at D&N.

 

Excuse me whilst I rollick in some 'Schadenfreude'

Nothing like a nice rollick and being a thoroughly nasty old brute you will not be surprised to know that after irony it is Schadenfreude which makes me shiver with delight.  I enjoy a double shiver when the object of my gloating is Nicholas William Peter Clegg, the leader of our infamous 'il-Lib-non-Dem' party.  This party achieves the impossible by actually showing the other two sets of lying liars in a slightly more appealing light.  Nobody, but nobody, does double-dealing humbuggery like Lib-Dems.  I have written 'many a time and oft' on the man who very nearly beat 'Cleggers' to the leadership, the amazing Lesbian-straightener, Chris Huhne.  I use the term 'straightener' with some unease because he is about as straight as a Somerset road, and indeed, this particular 'Right Honourable Gentleman' is going to be forced to explain his road behaviour in some detail to the 'Cocklecarrots' next September.  The fact that 'Cleggers' actually out-manouvred the 'Lesbian-straightener' tells us all just how supple he is!

Thus, you can imagine my deep and abiding pleasure in watching this humbugging hypocrite receive a steady stream of slaps in the face whilst trying to ram through Parliament his self-serving proposals to reform the House of Lords.  He stood there with his chubby cheeks quivering (no, the ones on his face, I wouldn't dare inspect the others), his upper lip well and truly stiffened (with super glue, I imagine) and his voice gradually sinking to an exhausted growl by the end of his constantly interrupted speech.  This was not so much 'mob rule' as 'yob rule', as all those big Tory boys took the chance to put the boot in to the little lad, aided and abetted, in a sort of 'shall I hold your coat?' way by the 'proles' on the Labour benches.  It was rude, it was crude, it was cruel - and, oh boy, how I loved it!  It is quite clear that in political circles no-one likes the il-Lib-non-Dems, except 'The Graun' - and that tells you all you need to know about them.

 

Will boring beat blarney?

You may have noticed my lack of commentary on the presidential race.  The reason is simple, I just cannot get very excited about it and the reason is - Mitt Romney.  That man could 'Bore for the USA' at the Olympics!  I remember MDA (My Darling Ann[Coulter]) telling us all that Romney's great advantage was that he would not frighten the independents.  According to all the wiseacres, it is the independents who always and forever hold the key to the White House door.  That's all very well and good but what happens if he just sends them all off to sleep?

Fortunately he is faced with a man who talks and thinks in empty platitudes.  It must be catching because his wife does the same.  Here is an example which gave one of my 'Trot-lot' American bloggers an orgasm:

Dear old Ted McLaughlin over at his 'jobsanger' site quivered with excitement at those portentious and totally empty words and wrote: "The United States is very lucky to have such a wonderful First Lady!"  Unfortunately, her husband already tried the sonorous but empty platitude shtick during his first campaign.  Who will ever forget "Hope 'n' Change"?  Not the unemployed and the repossessed, I suspect!

The Dems are making much, or at least, as much as they can, from Romney's previous occupation in that most hated of all quarters - Big Business.  But somehow, when you look at mild-mannered Mitt, before your eyelids flutter shut, he just doesn't come across as a cigar-chomping, mail-fisted Capitalist red in tooth and claw.  A lot, I think, will depend on his choice of Vice-President.  Would he be wise to pick someone with charisma and drive and deep convictions on the rightness, as well as the Rightness, of the free market, or, would he do better to avoid offering a target for the Left-wing MSM to aim at and choose another Mr. or Mrs. Boring?

I don't know.  All I do absolutely know is that Obama is one of the most dangerous men in the world.  His 'Hope 'n' Change' was hope for a socialist America and the means to change it to exactly that.  The result will be disasterous for them and for us.  I know many of my regular readers are, shall we say, less than enthusiastic for America given their frequent blunders in the past but at a much deeper level they are crucial for our well-being.  In America, if nowhere else, there still burns a candle for the sort of political philosophy which is based on liberty and free markets.  The candle is reaching its end and is beginning to gutter which is unsurprising given the winds of socialism that are whistling through the banging shutters of the Republic.  They, and we, need a new man to replace the candle with a lamp and to fix up the house again over the next eight years.

 

"China is on the cusp of a deflationary vortex"

Thus spake, or rather, wrote, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph.  His article reminds us that there is no hiding place in this new, 21st century, global economy.  The old British saying that if America sneezed we caught a cold is completely out of date.  Today, economic disasters in one area spread round the world with the speed of the 1918 influenza epidemic.  I have mentioned before my doubts concerning the Chinese economy when I provided reports on all those brand, new cities which had been built on borrowed money and which were deserted.  It reminded me of southern Spain in the late '90s when all you could see for miles and miles along the coast line were hundreds of cranes and block after block of empty flats and villas. A E-P quotes a Chinese economist:

"While an economy-wide generalized deflation is yet to be seen, the deflationary spiral looks to have started in some industrial sectors, attesting to considerable stress with the economy. Persistent deflation can be poisonous," said Xianfang Ren from IHS Global Insight in Beijing.

A good indicator of the financial sense of well-being amongst affluent, middle-class Chinese is the casino revenues in Macau.  The Chinese have gambling fever the way we have 'footie' fever.  A E-P reports that the revenues have dropped 11% in June.  He points us to the very informative Also Sprach Analyst site which provides 10 big indicators that all is far from well 'out there':

1:  Heavy equipment makers who provide financial deals for their customers to purchase are finding it increasingly difficult to collect their dues.

2: Steelmakers' profits have collapsed for lack of demand.

3: Some steelmakers are producing but many steel traders further down the line are going out of business.

4: Through lack of demand from heavy industry coal stocks are enormous and some warehouses are almost full.

5: Both coal miners and steelmakers are diversifying into new businesses - including selling pigs!

6: The cotton inventory at the ports is huge partly due to speculators coming unstuck as the price of cotton fell.

7:  As mentioned before, the Macau casino revenues have dropped. 

8: When the Chinese government tightened policy last year bank loans were hard to get so a new and shadowy system of 'Trusts' grew up but now the companies who used these devices are finding it increasingly difficult to repay.  Many of them are real estate developers.

9: Yet another dodgy banking practice has come to light inone province when a fair-sized company went broke.  Unfortunately, many smaller companies were accessing bank loans on the basis of another company guaranteeing their borrowing.  It turns out, (natch!) that all the companies in this particular area were all guaranteeing each other's loans.  Cue falling dominoes!

10: The Chinese yuan/renmimbi is falling.  The government is happy for that but it still indicates problems.

A E-P sums it up thus:

But at the end of the day, the country is bursting with industrial over-capacity. As Caixin reported recently, eight of the ten largest shipyards did not receive any new orders in the first five months of the year.

Albert Edwards from Societe Generale said the danger now is that China suddenly lurches into a deeper downturn, unleashing a flood of excess goods onto global markets and sending a powerful deflationary impulse across the world.

Well, if they do release a flood of cheap goods at least my tailor, 'M. A. Talan', will be able to keep me in the style to which I have grown accustomed with chinos for £14 or less, perhaps!

 

Sorry, Mr. Smith, but I just can't take any more

A few posts back I mentioned that I was reading, or at least, trying to read, Mr. Tom Rob Smith's book Child 44.  It was a long, hard slog with frequent pauses for me to swallow down the nausea brought on by Mr. Smith's all too accurate depiction of life in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.  The central love story intrigued me because it featured a young married couple made up of a man who was so indoctrinated with the Party line that he could see no further than the nearest Party edict, and a woman who despised him and herself for a life of deliberate deception necessitated by the sheer struggle to survive under the regime.  Very gradually they change under the pressure of events and come to recognise each other's virtues.  The plot line was suitably enigmatic and interesting but gradually, as the story turned into more of an 'actioneer', it began to verge into the preposterous.  At the time I bought the book I also bought a later one of his, again set in the Russia of the early '50s, but the fact is that I simply cannot face another descent into the totalitarian hell of Stalin's Russia.  The problem is that Mr. Smith depicts it all with too much verisimilitude and, wimp that I am, I simply cannot face a second dose of it.

 

No more NATO?

An interesting article by Robert Kaplan on the Stratfor site in which he lays bare the inadequacies of NATO and, in essence, poses the question: what is NATO for?  Quite correctly he reminds us that even from its inception NATO was utterly dependent on American military might.  The fairly hefty armed forces of Britain and France which they possessed at the end of WWII soon withered on the vine of a domestic public opinion tired of war and demanding welfare state benefits and the shrinkage has continued unabated.  Now, as American grand strategy turns to face China rather than Russia, even the American contingent is disappearing as two of the four American combat brigades in Europe are withdrawn.  'Dave' and the 'Dwarf' might have puffed their chests out after their Libyan adventure but as Kaplan cruelly reminds them - and us:

Whatever one thought of the Libya intervention, the details make for a bad advertisement about NATO. As one U.S. Air Force planner told me, "It was like Snow White and the 27 dwarfs, all standing up to her knees" -- the United States being Snow White and the other NATO member states being the dwarfs. The statistics regarding just how much the United States had to go it alone in Libya -- pushed by the British and French -- despite the diplomatic fig leaf of "leading from behind," are devastating for the alliance.

More than 80 percent of the gasoline used in the intervention came from the U.S. military. Almost all the individual operation orders had an American address. Of dozens of countries taking part, only eight air forces were allowed by their defense ministries to drop any bombs. Many flew sorties apparently only for the symbolism of it. While most airstrikes were carried out by non-U.S. aircraft, the United States ran the logistical end of the war.

NATO has become like that other great tottering mirage, the so-called European Union, a figment in the imaginations of the politicians who refuse to see the pikestaff that is plainly before their noses.  At least in the area of international finance the markets are forcing the euro-zone politicians to face the realities of life but, alas, the great blundering NATO machine stumbles on - but only for as long as the USA fills the tank.  In my view, the quicker America pulls out the better because there is every chance with this bloated military monstrosity, which fights wars as far away as Afghanistan, of getting us into something we have no business or interest in.  The recent 'handbags-at-dawn' incident between NATO member Turkey and its neighbour Syria is a case in point.  Do we really want to fight for the Turks?  Whilst NATO exists the politicians will continue to use it as a plaything.  So, please Uncle Sam, thank you for sticking around when Uncle Joe was pissed on vodka and being a thoroughly bad neighbour but now it's time to force us Euro-weenies to grow up and fight our own battles.

Of course, he added hurriedly, that doesn't include us, your cousins  nephews!  No, no, you can keep your airbases and rocket sites on our strategically placed off-shore island and your CIA is more than welcome to stay.  After all, whilst at the moment you are more concerned about the South China Sea you would not wish to give up your influence and your bases, free of Franco-German influence, on the other side of the Atlantic, would you?  No, of course not!

But being serious for a moment, the demise of NATO would require Britain to rethink with great clarity what arrangements, if any, it should make in the field of defence.  I might waffle around that subject tomorrow.

 

 

Vanidy 'Van' Bailey is a non-person - and that's official!

'It', by which I mean the afore-mentioned Vanidy 'Van' Bailey, is now the first permanent 'thing' to be in charge of - and please give me a moment here - the bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender and queer (pheeew, did I forget anybody?) student life of Harvard University.  According to The Harvard Crimson, via those subversive ratbags at IHTM, 'it's first task "would be setting goals for the upcoming academic year."  Alas, 'it' has not actually specified what these goals will be for the - hang on, let me take a breath - bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender and queer student life of Harvard University.  Imagination is left to run riot!

Now you may be wondering at my unusual lack of manners, this blog being, of course, always gentlemanly in every respect, in referring to Vanidy 'Van' Bailey as 'it' and 'thing', but the fact is that I am doing so at 'its' request.  You see, the staff writer reporting on this great story, Nathalie R. Miraval, dropped a bit of a bollock - ooops, no she couldn't do that being a girlie - I mean, she made a boo-boo by referring to 'thing' as "her" and "she" and was instantly reprimanded and forced to add a correction to her story:

An earlier version of this article used the pronoun "she" to refer to Vanidy "Van" Bailey, the newly appointed director of bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer student life. In fact, Bailey prefers not to be referred to by any gendered pronoun.

A total loopy-loo dipstick by any other name, or pronoun, remains a total loopy-loo dipstick.  Being bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender and/or queer is an aggravation most people would prefer to avoid but God rolls the dice and the genes land where they will but given that extra problem in life would you really want 'thing' to be in charge of your, er, "goals"?  Personally, I wouldn't want her in charge of sharpening pencils!

Oh God!  A sudden thought, Nathalie is a girlie, isn't she?

 

Another coincidence! Is someone watching me and my paranoia?

According to my TV programme guide, last night BBC4 was supposed to be showing the film Amadeus.  It is one of those tremendous films which, despite seeing it over 25 years ago, I have never forgotten although, somehow, I have never seen it since.  Anyway, I decided to record it but there appeared to be a glitch with my 'do-flicker-recording-thingie' which refused to show the scheduled programmes and remained stubbornly stuck on the previous night's listing.  (I'm not one to complain, Rupe, old mate, but  . . .)  The film was terrific although I suspect it annoyed the hell out of Mozart-lovers as Hollywood invariably does when it makes a film of anyone's hero or heroine.  Who could ever forget Tom Hulce's incredible performance as Wolfgang, himself?  And "incredible" is the word because I assumed that Mr. Hulce had exaggerated the characterisation.  But, and this is where the coincidence comes in, the current letter on show at the superb Letters of Note site (not to be missed and that's an order!) is one from the 21-year-old Mozart to his young female cousin.  I will simply reproduce one paragraph to give you the, er, flavour:

So sorry to hear that Herr Abbate Salate has had another stroke choke. But I hope with the help of God fraud the consequences will not be dire mire. You are writing fighting that you keep your criminal promise which you gave me before my departure from Augspurg, and will do it soon moon. Well, I will most likely find that regretable. You write further, indeed you let it all out, you expose yourself, you indicate to me, you bring me the news, you announce onto me, you state in broad daylight, you demand, you desire, you wish you want, you like, you command that I, too, should send you my Portrait. Eh bien, I shall mail fail it for sure. Oui, by the love of my skin, I shit on your nose, so it runs down your chin.
(Translated by Robert Spaethling)

So, if anything, Mr. Hulce downplayed the role of Mozart!  I adore, selectively, classical music but know very little of the people who compose it or play it.  Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart a total nutter?  I would be glad to know.  Incidentally, I should also declare an interest.  I once played the hugely important, but for some reason very tiny, role of Count Orsini-Rosenberg in the stage version.  My performance was spoken of in hushed, er, very hushed, terms!

 

Don't cry for me, Andy Murray!

Look, along with, I guess, most of the population, with the exception of his mother, I don't like Andy Murray.  (I don't like his mother much, either, but that's another story.)  Not that I know him, of course, all I know is his public personna and, to be fair, were he a reader of this blog I doubt that he would like me very much in return.  Even so, I am happy to agree that he is a 'nearly-great' sportsman and that puts him in a rather large pantheon of 'nearly-great' British sportsmen.  I mean, nobody does 'nearly-great' as well as we do!  We are the greatest nation on earth for 'almosts', 'nearlys' and 'not quites'.  When we do actually produce a truly world-class champion in, I would argue the hardest sport of all, the decathlon, we don't really like him too much.  Poor old Daley Thompson, yes, we applauded; yes, we were amazed (gob-smacked, more like); but somehow we never really took to him.  We're traditionalists here, you see, and we can only really warm to losers.

But I digress - again.  In his public personna, Andy Murray comes across as an archetypal 'grunt-snuffler'.  It's not just his almost impenetrable Jock accent, it's the obvious fact that he has trouble summoning up a complex thought worthy of more than three words, a grunt and a snuffle.  Wayne Rooney has similar difficulties. But we (I mean I) can forgive him all of that provided he loses in the proper British manner.  Tim Henman, another world-class loser, knew exactly how to behave.  Clenched jaw, lips barely moving, proper words of congratulation to his vanquisher, a promise to do better next time and off he went to prepare to lose the next match.  I suspect he learned his behaviour from his father who, from the occasional TV shots of him watching his son in action, never cracked a smile or even applauded!

Yesterday, alas, 'ur wee Andy' blew it.  In the British field of sport you can deck your opponent, or, better still, the umpire, and no-one will mind particularly, but you must never, ever - blub!  Blubbing is the sort of thing indulged in by second-rate actresses receiving an Oscar, not by stern, upright, British losers.  Apart from the wider implications, it upsets me (as in 'me, ME, ME') enormously!  As soon as he started crying yesterday I felt that ridiculous rush of embarrassment hit me - ridiculous because why should I be embarrassed? - and, as always in such moments of desperation, I couldn't find the bloody, sodding 'do-flicker-thingie' to zap Murray out of my site and sound!  The 'Memsahib' threw a wobbly and stomped out to the kitchen to watch Murray booing on the other TV whilst I wrecked our living-room trying to find the device that would obliterate him.

Oh well, roll on the World Cup, then I can watch eleven of our regular losers do what they do so well - lose!

 

 

More creepy coincidence

This coincidence business is happening more and more often.  Only the other day I told you about the excellent but gut-wrenchingly awful Child 44 written by Tom Rob Smith.  The opening chapter describes in wincing detail the horrors of the Ukrainian famine.  I have read some of the history books on this mass murder wrought on his own people by Joseph Stalin but somehow statistics never quite convey the full and loathsome flavour.  In just one chapter Mr. Smith does what a dozen history books can never do - make you feel ill.

That was a few days ago but last night I decided to watch a programme I had recorded on my 'super-dooper-do-flicker-recording-thingie' (thanks, Rupe!) concerning the life and somewhat mysterious death of a Welsh reporter called Gareth Jones (1905-1935).  The programme, on BBC4, was called, rather intriguingly, Hitler, Stalin and Mr. Jones.  I am forced to agree with Ian Hollingshead in The Telegraph who thought that the very remarkable life and death of Gareth Jones was ill-served by this rather poor documentary. 

 

Jones was from a middle-class, Welch background and attained a first class degree in modern languages at Cambridge.  He seemed to have an effortless ability to identify the important circles in which an aspiring young man with no connections should mix and as a result, Hollingsworth writes:

He graduated from Cambridge in 1930 and spent the next five years working variously for Lloyd George, The Times, the Economist, Rockefeller and British intelligence. He also managed to meet Randolph Hearst, share a 16-seat aircraft with Hitler, whom he likened to a “middle-class grocer”, and have dinner with Goebbels.

How Somerset Maugham or John le Carré would have enjoyed knowing him!  However, back to my creepy coincidence.  He first made a name for himself by visiting the Soviet Union - he had learned Russian - as a journalist.  This was in the early '30s when Stalin's version of "hope 'n' change" had begun in the Ukraine.  Rather shrewdly, Jones skipped off the train before it reached its destination where he would have been met by Party apparatchiks.  Making his own way he saw the truth which was a deliberate policy of mass starvation.  We now know, or at least, estimate, that some 10 million men, women and children perished in the Ukraine during this period.  Jones reported this via The Times and all hell erupted over his head, led by The New York Times and its despicable Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, who ran a headline: “Russians hungry, but not starving”.  (Heavens to Betsy, the NYT lying for communism, 'who'da thunkit'?)

Jones was now a marked man but he continued his travels moving into ever higher circles of influence.  Eventually, in the mid '30s, following his nose to yet another potential trouble spot, he went into inner Mongolia and the border between China, Russia and Japanese-controlled Manchukuo.  There, in a desert wasteland, in the company of an exceedingly dodgy German of very mixed loyalties, he was taken prisoner by some bandits.  Somehow, the German was freed but Jones was killed. 

A short life but one that was lived to the full.   Come on, Mr. le Carré, there's a cracking book to be written here - and an even better film.  But in the meantime I wish these creepy coincidences would leave me alone!

 

This book makes me sick!

No, I mean really, it does.  I kep reading a bit until I feel the bile rising and then I put it down and leave it for a day until I have the stomach to try again.  Then why bother, I hear you ask, but the problem is that it is a vey good, well-written book, it's just, well, oh hell, I had better explain.

The book is Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith and everybody and their uncles have praised it up hill and down dale - but it still makes me sick.  What Mr. Smith is doing so brilliantly is exactly what Alan Furst has done so brilliantly with central Europe in the late '30s early '40s.  He, you may already know if you pay attention to my recommendations - er, you do, don't you? - evokes that period so vividly that you can almost smell the Gaulloises cigarettes and the ersatz coffee.  Smith does the same thing with Stalinist Russia but with him you can only smell the sheer, rank fear that oozes out of everyone with their sweat.  From my little knowledge of that period I suspect that he has it exactly right.  The violence is casual, unthinking and driven entirely by a mix of ideology and orders.  There are no exceptions - men, women, children, the sick, the lame and the halt, all are despatched frequently for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I jest occasionally at the body count in some of the 'pulp fiction' to which I am addicted but somehow it is never real.  Jack Reacher takes down six men singlehanded and it leaves you chuckling but the characters in Mr. Smith's book put a bullet in the head of a kneeling child without compunction - and that is all too real.  It has taken me a week to just reach halfway.  I suppose I must finish but, oh God, I'm not looking forward to it.

 

As the sun sets, the bugle sounds, we bid farewell to ...

2nd Bn, the Royal Welch, incorporating the South Wales Borderers (of Rorke's Drift fame), Royal Welch Fusiliers, The Welch Regiment whose combined service included the Boyne, Quebec, Indian mutiny, Waterloo, Crimea, Boer War, the Somme, Normandy, Iraq.

2nd Bn, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, incorporating the Northumberland, Warwickshire, Lancashire and Royal (City of London) Fusiliers.  They variously served in the American Revolution, Napoleonic wars, Boer War,both World Wars, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan.  Famously the Lancashires won 7 Victoria Crosses before breakfast at Gallipoli.

2nd Bn, the Yorkshire Regiment, incorporating the Green Howards.  In the 18th century regiments were frequently named after their colonels and at the time there were two Col. Howards. To distinguish them they were given different coloured facings to their tunics.  Thus, one became Howard's Buffs soon simplified to 'the Buffs'; and the other became the Green Howards.  They won 16 Victoria Crosses including the only one to be awared on D-day.

3rd Bn, the Mercian Regiment, incorporating the 38th Foot, 64th (2nd Staffs) Regiment, 2nd Bn the North Staffs Regiment.  They fought everywhere from Ireland to Russia to Africa, France, Iraq and Afghanistan.  They won 13 Victoria Crosses.

5th Bn, the Royal Regiment of Scotland (the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders).  They fought at Waterloo, the Crimea, Passchendaele, Crete, Palestine, Suez, Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan winning 16 Victoria Crosses.

Two armoured regiments are to be merged with sister regiments and a regiment of artillery is to disappear.  A total of six Engineer and Logistic formations are to be disbanded.

And so it ends, "not with a bang but a whimper".  And it has ended, my friends, once and for all.  By "it", I mean pretensions to grandeur, the self-delusion that we are still a world power, willing and able to project our strength about the globe.  The beginning of the end started around 1900 and reached its culmination 45 years later.  Everything since then has been a vain attempt to stave off the inevitable mixed with occasional demands of duty, the Falklands campaign, for example.  We are now a middling world power but a somewhat stronger regional power.  It is time to think hard about our new place in the world order and how we can set about stopping our decline.  Not, I hasten to add, that I have any wish to resuscitate old habits of attempting to boss the world about, but only to establish a reputation as a fiercely independent country confident of its own abilities.

Warning - I might bore more on this subject anon!  In the meantime, pause a moment and think on the histories of those proud regiments and the men who served in them, gentlemen and rogues, scallywags and heroes, to paraphrase Orwell, 'rough men who stood ready to do violence on our behalf'.

 

A flea and a louse fight in the House

The 'louse' complained, long and hard, loudly and bitterly, that he had been traduced by the 'flea'.  The 'flea', giving a good impression of Harry Flashman, leaned on the despatch box and directed a half smile/half sneer, which he must have practiced for hours in front of a mirror, towards the 'louse' who became so red in the face he was in danger of setting off the fire alarms.  The point that the 'louse', himself, has a well-earned reputation for traducing just about everyone else, especially if they are in his party, was lobbed, like a well-aimed grenade into his lap by the 'flea'.  Of course, the fact that the 'flea', a former public schoolboy, an Oxbridge graduate, an honourable Member of Parliament and therefore, by all British standards, a gent (do stop giggling!), had made an accusation of malpractice against the 'louse' without the tedious business of actually providing proof, was yet another squirt of high octane fuel into this ferocious fight.  A good time was had by one and all especially as the miniature 'cockroach' who normally sits in the chair was absent and was thus unable to be a spoil-sport.  Of course, the massed ranks of smarmies behind the 'flea' thoroughly enjoyed it but also, I suspect but cannot prove - 'well who needs boring old proof': Osborne G., passim - a great number of the plebs behind the 'louse' were quietly enjoying his discomfort, too.

For the benefit of my foreign readers: 

"There is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea."              Samuel Johnson

 

If you think it's rough here, keep an eye across the Channel

I complain frequently that 'Dim Dave' lacks any sort of coherent political philosophy which results in our 'Ship of State' wallowing about at the mercy of any wayward current or wind that blows up but I suppose that is marginally better than having a leader with a very definite but wrongheaded political philosophy which will drive his nation straight towards the rocks.  I refer to President Hollande, a 'red in tooth and claw' socialist who has just announced his new tax regime which he has aimed directly at two soft targets - his own wealthy countrymen and foreign (mainly British) home owners.  At least 'Dave' had the good sense to announce that Britain would "roll out the red carpet" to any French citizens - and their businesses - fleeing an oppressive tax regime.  Look out for a surge in house prices in London and Kent.  As for the big increase in tax on rents and capital gains earned by Brits who own houses in France, the Brits will no doubt be upset but their local French neighbours will be even more so because they have grown to realise that the influx of Brits has become a mainstay of their local economies and without them they will sink once again into bucolic decay.  However, there is a hint or two in the prints of the possibility that this tax aimed directly at, er, notre cher frères européenne, might be illegal under European law!  Oooh, just too, too delicious, I'm quivering with the irony of it all!  Apparently, and I stress the word deliberately, there are to be some government cuts as well, but, 'Comrade' Hollande intends to employ a further 150,000 civil servants to help promote "a more competitive industry".  Yeeeeeeeees, quite!

 

Bob Diamond: dead clever or dead stupid?

Bit of both, I would say, having watched his three hour 'interrogation' by the Commons committee.  They tried, my God, how they tried, to get him to 'cough' but he wasn't giving anything away, well, none of the really important people, that is, like his fellow big-shots in the bank, the Grand Panjandrums in the Bank of England and least of all any ex-ministers.  Of course, the fourteen little scrotes from the dealing floor were tossed to the dogs without compunction but they're not really important, you see.  Or at least, for the moment they may not be important but I wonder if they have a few tales to tell and if, even as as I tap away here, the dandruff-ridden hacks of The Sun ("We Love It!") are already waving Rupe's chequebook ubder their noses?

I felt that by and large the MPs made as good a fist of it as they could given that, as one of them suggested, Diamond was 'playing a Boycott'.  For the benefit of my foreign readers, Geoffrey Boycott was one of our greatest cricket batsmen, notorious for going in to bat and then staying at the crease for an eternity whilst scoring at a snail's pace irrespective of whether the team actually needed fast scoring.  Anyway, the result was that Diamond spent three hours saying nothing.

Even so, saying nothing on certain aspects whilst appearing to be voluble, even garrulous, on others in order to waste time, still provides some indicators.  One thing stood out clearly and that was that Mr. Diamond was promoted way above his abilities.  He was a typical example of a man probably brilliant as a hands-on operator but lacking all the intellectual ability to be a great hands-off leader.  In military terms, the truly Great Captains of History have the ability stand away from the detail and take in the broader picture which will include non-military factors.  At the same time, they are disciplined enough to allocate time, on a daily basis, to carry out regular visits to junior formations much lower down the command structure in order to speak to the junior officers and their men and get a feel for what is going on in their army.  I recently praised Mungo Melvin's excellent biography of von Manstein in which he describes the way the General, irrespective of alarums and excursions all along the front, would always find time to be driven as close to the front line as possibe to gauge the situation and the morale of his troops at first hand.  This skill Diamond obviously lacked and it seems to me that his underlings knew better than to burden him with bad news!

In my opinion there is no need for yet another Leveson-style 'bore-athon'.  A short, sharp enquiry to dig out the other malpractitioners and then a few additions to the forthcoming Finance bill including clear lines of personal legal responsibility is all that is required.  As for Osborne's silly effort in tomorrow's Spectator to throw a bucket of poo over 'Brown & Balls, the Brokers Men'; he should be careful the wind doesn't change direction so that he gets some of his own back!  I don't think the public like this intra-party blame game, they just want the banks sorted out and due restitution made to those who suffered financial hardship.  I hope that the money eventually stripped from the banks by fines goes to those who were their victims.

 

They seek him here, they seek him there, they seek Higgs boson everywhere

But as always in the enticing, exciting, maddening world of particle physics, not only are they not certain they have caught the elusive little bugger, but even if they have, they cannot be sure it is the real Higgs boson.  I have similar problems getting hold of the soap in my bath! 

For those of you even more flummoxed than usual by my opening paragraph perhaps I should explain that in the ethereal world of quantum physics this slippery particle called Higgs Boson, if only they could pin it down, would be the keystone to the great soaring arch of what the swots call, in a somewhat pedestrian way, the 'Standard Model' of the universe.  However, as always with swots, they can never entirely agree on whether or not it's raining let alone anything as mega-complex as the entire universe, so, according to Wiki:

Alternative sources of the Higgs mechanism that do not need the Higgs boson are also possible and would be considered if the existence of the Higgs boson were ruled out. They are known as Higgsless models.

Personally, I find topless models more exciting but there's no accounting for what turns the swots on.  As regular readers will know, I am a late developer when it comes to quantum physics (and a lot of other things, too, come to that!)  I still have my very dog-eared copy of The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav, a book I only bought because of the title and which quite blew my mind away.  It is, I think, still one of the very best books to explain "the New Physics" to idle fellows like me who failed every swots-type exam on offer.  By today (it was written in 1979) it must be well behind the times but the fundamentals of this whole new world that exists below the level of the atom remain much the same.  I did pursue the subject and have a shelf of books to prove it but in the end there is no getting around the fact that I don't speak the language.  By which I mean, I don't 'speak' mathematics'.  And without the 'language', even with the help of superb 'translaters' like James Gleik, John Gribben et al, you can never quite get your head round all of it.

Also, and this possible finding of the Higgs boson will confirm my suspicion, that in the end - there is no end!  My admiration for the great scientific explorers is boundless - but so is the field in which they are exploring, it seems to me.  Perhaps 'field' is the wrong analogy.  They seem to me to be more like cave explorers who, having entered a vast, new, dark, mysterious cave and gradually brought up more and more powerful lights to illuminate it, suddenly spot a mousehole over at the far end and, somewhat gloomily I suppose, they realise that there is yet another cave within the cave which they will have to explore.

My admiration for them is total - but I know my limitations and so I will simply cheer them on from the sidelines.

 

One for the album - not!

Should Guido Fawkes require a volunteer to carry the box of matches as he trundles his barrels of gunpowder along the basements at the Palace of Westminster I am happy to oblige, not just for the many pleasures he has brought me by exposing the general poltroonery of the political class, but especially for this one, gleaned, he tells us, from Ed Balls' very own website circa 2009.  What a nice, happy, friendly occasion:

It was taken outside Barclays where 'Ed the Banker-Slayer' said, according to Guido, that he was “delighted” to praise Barclays for “changing the face of banking”.  Time to get the air-brush experts at work, Ed, or perhaps they could photo-shop Osborne's mug in place of yours, that might work.

My thanks to Guido.

Empty Eds need banging together

I have tried to work out why 'Dopey Ed' and 'Nasty Ed' are insisting that the latest bank scandal should be subject to a judicial enquiry given that it will take a year to set up and a year to run which will take it up to just before the next election.  The scandal of fiddled figures went on when both Eds were in government and when 'Nasty Ed' was City Minister.  Already the prints are hinting that Labour ministers were, so to speak, setting the scene for the bankers to cut inter-bank lending rates to help ease the situation - oh, nothing criminal, dear boy, all we said was that it would be jolly nice if the rates came down, if you get my drift, old chap.  Do both Eds want this all dragged out just before an election?  Do they not realise that under oath before a judge there will be very little wriggle room?  They are quite mistaken if they think that blackening the name of bankers will somehow whiten theirs!  In my view the public rate politicians and bankers somewhere down there alongside kiddie-fiddlers and Mad Mullahs.  In fact, for once in my life I am not too shy of admitting that 'back in the day' I was once a second-hand car dealer.  Almost respectable by today's standards!

ADDITIONAL:  Now that Barclay's 'bouncer-in-chief', Bob 'diamond-geezer' Diamond, has resigned he will face tomorrow's parliamentary committee with very little to lose.  If blood sports are your thing it will be worth watching particularly if some gobby Labour oik tries to throw his prejudices around.