DUFF & NONSENSE!

Will the Israelis wait until after November 6th?

I know, I know, I have cried wolf before but this time I really do believe that Israel is on the brink of an attack on Iran.  Those who think this would be a folly and that the Israelis should learn the 'lesson' from the cold war stand-off between the Soviets and the West, that is, that mutually assured destruction works as a deterrent to both sides, should read 'The Kraut' in The WaPo:

There are few foreign-policy positions more silly than the assertion without context that “deterrence works.” It is like saying air power works. Well, it worked for Kosovo; it didn’t work over North Vietnam.

It’s like saying city-bombing works. It worked in Japan 1945 (Tokyo through Nagasaki). It didn’t in the London blitz.

Charles Krauthammer reminds us of the difference between the Soviet communist ethos based on a material 'here and now', and that of the millenarian ravings of religious zealots who believe that there is an infinitely richer existence beyond this squalid life on earth.  Also, the clerics are shrewd enough to realise that given the tiny size of Israel and the physical concentration of their population the Israelis are, in effect, a one-bomb target.  However, Israel could use all of its arsenal and turn Iran into a wilderness but that would not destroy the vast remaining bulk of Muslims in the Middle-East.  It's a win-win situation for Islam.  Hence the extreme likelihood of an Israeli pre-emptive strike.

There is no doubt in my mind that there is anything other than an enormous doubt in Israeli minds as to the reliability of President Obama as an ally.  Some of his critics accuse him of timidity but that, in my view, is absolutely incorrect.  His world-view is steeped in anti-Americanism and that feeling of domestic antogonism reaches out to encompass America's allies, including us, but especially Israel.  So Netanyahu has some delicate equations to balance and time is not on his side as the Iranians race towards their nuclear goal.  Will Romney, likely to be a more steadfast supporter, win the election?  Can Netanyahu squeeze some useful concessions and/or promises from Obama by assuring him that he will not strike before the election?

In another article, 'The Kraut' quotes an American plan of action which, if Romney wins and impliments it, might just save the day.  In essence (and it's worth reading the article in full), the progenitor of this plan, Anthony Corseman, a military analyst, suggests a three-part approach.  First, make clear to the Iranians that there are only two options left - a deal or a disaster!  Second, let the Iranians know that if they choose not to deal then in addition to surgical strikes against nuclear targets there will also be a massive campaign aimed at the total destruction of the entire infrastructure of their country, in other words, they will bomb Iran back to the stone age.  Third, if they agree a deal then part of it would be an equivalent of the old Marshall Plan in which huge amounts of aid and trade would flow from the West into Iran guaranteeing them a prosperous future.

Of course, it is not a given that Romney would adopt such a hard-nosed policy because no-one knows anything about his foreign policy views, or, whether he has the cojones for such risk-taking.  And needless to say, the Israelis may not wait around to find out!

 

Dear Mr. Berezovsky/Abramovich (delete as necessary)

You don't know me but I am a frightfully respectable and honest - well, alright, I did once, through force of circumstance, have to spend time in the second-hand car trade but none of it brushed off on me, I assure you - English gentleman of the old order in whom you may place absolute trust.  Now I know you must be spitting nails/drinking Dom Pom (delete as necessary) at the decision of the 'Cocklecarrot' who adjudicated on your dispute but equally obviously this is only round one!  The Appeal Court, the Supreme Court, the European Court, all beckon and your ratbags lawyers will be urging you on to stay the course.  Well, of course they will, at anything from £250 to £700 per hour!!! who wouldn't?  If these are indeed the sort of fees you have grown accustomed to paying then I think that somehow, in someway, I could be of service to you.  For example, whilst I realise that you probably have several delicious secretaries to carry your papers, do you not require someone utterly reliable to carry your, no doubt, hugely expensive pen?  I mean, such a tedious business having to reach inside your jacket each time - and it ruins the cut of your suit - so think how useful a pen-carrier would be.  And let me quickly assure you that my fees are strictly commensurate with the responsibility of the task - a mere £50 per hour - oh alright then, to you, £40 per hour because I have it on very good authority that you are an excellent tipper.  Anyway, I'm sure we can come to some form of agreement of mutual benefit to both of us.  I mean, if you are daft enough can afford around £150 mill in legal fees then my very reasonable stipend in return for the onerous responsibility of carrying your pen is a mere nothing - tell you what - my last offer - call it £30 an hour  - and I'll give the pen a bit of a polish each time - I can't say fairer than that!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19413359

 

When thieves fall out

Looking at this picture, courtesy of The WSJ, I am tempted to ask whether they are kissing or head-butting each other?  Or perhaps it is an example of what my Glasgie commenter, Jimmy, would call a 'Glasgie kiss'!

Well, it might have started with kisses and cuddles when the new President of Egypt, Mr. Mursi, met the little glove puppet who thinks he's running Iran at the meeting of the so-called 'non-aligned nations' in Tehran, but it soon turned nasty when two of the principal guests pissed on the Persian carpet, er, metaphorically speaking, of course! 

First, President Mursi of Egypt who since his recent election had been making eyes at Iran, suddenly decided to stick up for the Sunnis against the Shiites, thus taking sides in the great religious divide that runs through the MiddleEast.  He did so by praising the four Caliphs of Sunni-ism, a deliberate jab at Iran's ruling Shiite theocracy.  Then he went even further by berating the Syrian (Shiite and Alawite) regime for its cruelty to its own people in the full and certain knowledge that Iran is supporting them.  Some humor was derived from the Iranian simultaneous interpreter who, when required to repeat what amounted in our terms to shouting 'bollocks to the Bishop', gulped and spluttered and finally just sank into silence.  The Iranian media either refused to cover Mr. Mursi's speech or simply changed his words!

No sooner was the Persian carpet whisked away for instant cleaning when up stepped Mr. Ban Ki-moon, the head honcho of the United Gangster Federation Nations, no less.  He, too, lashed into the Syrian regime who had already walked out on hearing Mr. Mursi's words.  Not satisfied with that, he also laid into the Iranians for their murderous threats against Israel.  Well, that was like shouting 'Bollocks to the Bishop' in the middle of St. Paul's!  Somehow all those Arab outfits and unshaven faces don't quite match what you would expect in a Bateman cartoon but the effect was the same.

By and large, I steer well clear of Middle-East politics because I know even less about it than the other stuff I drone on about.  I have no idea which side we should support in the current Syrian imbroglio except that if Iran is for it then we should be against it - whatever 'it' actually is.  Above and beyond all other considerations it is is essential to keep the split in the Arab as wide as possible.  The more they prey on each other the less time they have to prey on us, so let us ensure that they remain as un-aligned as possible!

 

Sold in two paragraphs!

So there I was, minding my own business in Waterstone's bookstore, when I noticed a paperback edition of all four books which make up the tetralogy of Parade's End by Ford Maddox Ford, the subject, as you all know by now, of a TV series scripted by Tom Stoppard.  Well, as I explained to the Memsahib when she caught me trying to smuggle it into the house - I am strictly forbidden to buy any more books - I didn't intend to buy it . . . but . . . as it was there, in front of me, well, I just had to pick it up and read the first bit, as you do - a glacial stare was the only response so I hurried on - and when I read the first two paragraphs, that was it, I just had to have it - and like every old lag you ever saw up the Old Bailey I went on - it wasn't really my fault, I'm just a slave to my desires, a helpless puppet, what I need is therapy  . . .

Of course, none of it had any effect and I am now on domestic 'jankers' which is only marginally easier than the army's variety.  However, these are the two paragraphs to blame:

The two young men - they were of the English public official class - sat in the perfectly appointed railway carriage.  The leather straps to the windows were of virgin newness; the mirrors beneath the new luggage racks immaculate as though they had reflected very little; the bulging upholstery in its luxuriant, regulated curves was scarlet and yellow in an intricate, minute dragon pattern, the design of a geometrician in Cologne.  The compartment smelt faintly, hygienically of admirable varnish; the train ran smoothly - Tietjens remembered thinking - as British gilt-edged securities.  It travelled fast; yet had it swayed or jolted over the rail joints, except at the curve before Tonbridge or over the points at Ashford where these eccentricites are expected and allowed for, Macmaster, Tietjens felt certain, would have written to the company. Perhaps he would have written to The Times.

Their class administered the world, not merely the newly created Imperial Department of Statistics under Sir Roger Inglebeby.  If they saw a policeman misbehave, railway porters lack civility, an insufficiency of street lamps, defects in public services or in foreign countries, they saw to it, either with nonchalent Balliol voices, or with letters to The Times, asking in regretful indignation: 'Has the British This or That come to this!'  Or they wrote, in the serious reviews of which so many still survived, articles taking under their care, manners, the Arts, diplomacy, inter-Imperial trade, or the personal reputations of deceased statesmen and men of letters.

Well, I ask you , m'Lud, ooops, sorry, I mean, my friends, who could resist the temptation after a delightfully sly, humorous opening like that?  Well I couldn't!  I have been warned that Ford structured his books according to the avante guarde of his day and thus Time flits to and fro, but what the hell, if he keeps up that sardonic tone I will be happy - and I can always double-check with Stoppard's version to keep me, er, on the rails, so to speak. 

 

A Spanish perspective on Orwell and Trilling

In a comment thread down below somewhere, my Spanish e-pal, Ortega, obviously an Orwell admirer, offered some terrific links to the Orwellian ouevre and I encouraged him to come back with his own thoughts on this idiosyncratic (I choose the word carefully) intellectual whose influence, or at least, whose repuatation, still stands tall today.  Obviously a busy man, Ortega sent instead a translation of an essay on the subject of Lionel Trilling's Introduction to Homage to Catalonia by a friend of his, Gregorio Luri.  I thought it was worth reprinting it as a guest post.  I have taken some liberties by correcting it for English usage and clarifying (I hope!) certain passages.  Ortega you must feel free to come back and correct me if I have changed anything into a different meaning. You can see Ortega's original comment here without changes.

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Well, as in answer to your request I had translated something that Gregorio Luri, a friend of mine and a much more clever thinker than I ever will be (what? what do you mean it is easy?), wrote about Trilling and Orwell, I copy it anyway. Maybe it will interest you anyway. Of corse, you may also simply delete it!

Please note that any silly point comes from my poor translation:

 "Just start reading 'The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent', a selection of essays by Lionel Trilling. Those who have read Orwell in catalan may recall that he is the author of the introduction of Homage to Catalonia, also in the first American edition of this book.

Trilling interest me so much, for different reasons. He belongs to that generation of leftist intellectuals who appeared in New York in the first decades of the twentieth century (the New York intellectuals), which has had a so important impact on the subsequent development of the intellectual history of the United States. He was one of its most representative and influential members and certainly one of the most determined to pawn our intelligence in a critique of totalitarianism, without much regard for those who considered him an enemy in his time for this. Unable to have more faith in history than in intelligence, he had no qualms about openly dissent from the Orthodox dissent. The collection of essays published in 1950 under the title of 'The Liberal Imagination' is a great example of this.

The book 'The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent' takes its title from an essay by John Erskine (1914) and it is a declaration of faith in the intelligence. An intelligence, it must be added, freed from the bonds that usually hold it to utilitarian ends, let's say, to happiness. Innocence and purity bored him as much as he hated bigotry. He knew that things are always more complex than what those in need of comfort at all costs want to imagine. In that sense, he was very much a Nietzschian and was profoundly suspicious of the dangers lurking surreptitiously after our best intentions. His ultimate goal: not to disappoint himself.

Trilling was, before anything else, a literary critic. It is no exaggeration to add that he was one of the fathers of modern American literary criticism, as clearly illustrated in 'The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent'. He was convinced that contemporary moral imagination had been shaped by the novel of the last three centuries that had managed to shroud the reader in a moral atmosphere and to further encourage his critical eye into an examination of the underlying reasons for his actions, beyond what conventional education had taught him. In this sense, the history of the modern novel would be the history of contemporary moral sense and a competent literary critic could not be anything but a historian of morality. The novel would have been the great educator of the present.

Death caught him writing an essay on Jane Austen, representative, in my view, of that fraction of literarature morally defeated by the apologists of nihilism, led by Tolstoy, who reveals to us the trivial fall of Ivan Ilyich into an unremarkable death.

About Lionel Trilling on Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. I've just re-read it and I think it is still in full force, for its ability to continue to illuminate the problems of today.
Trilling, who read with great interest Ortega's 'Rebellion of the Masses', knew that Europe had relinquished command in the world. But he also knew that in politics there is no vacuum. Abstention is also a form of political activity and, therefore, it does not relieve us from responsibility in the progress of the world. This is one of the ideas that 'Homage to Catalonia' points out.

Orwell was highly critical of what he called "the English left-wing intelligentsia". He satirized them with some ruthlessness, stating that their entire ideology could fit in half a dozen newspaper articles and they showed a striking inability to offer any real alternatives to the real problems. "There is little substance in it, except for the irresponsible criticism from people who has never been and never will be in a position of government."

Finally, Orwell was particularly interested in preserving the commonsense of ordinary people from the erosion of the apostolic enlighteners of the masses. Moreover, he was convinced that the ingenuity with which ordinary people cling to their values is a real vaccine against the influence of abstract ideas and their potential nihilism. In everyday prejudices, he could sense an unconscious (and no less natural) will for healthy society. If this is so, if political life on its surface shows a profound truth, intellectuals bent on liberating the people no matter what, may be less lovers of the truth than what they proudly and enthusiastically assume."

 

"Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare": James Shapiro

I must begin by creeping to the 'Headmaster', DM, because he urged this book upon me and who am I to dare to refuse?  Once again, Sir, you demonstrate your excellent taste and discernment!  Actually, I was halfway there anyway because Shapiro's earlier book, 1599: A year in the Life of Shakespeare, I now treasure as one of my all-time favourites.  Shapiro has that rare but invaluable talent of passing on a seemingly inexhaustible breadth and depth of knowledge on Shakespeare and his times with the very lightest of touches.  At the end of it you have been well and truly educated and yet you didn't feel a thing - except warm pleasure.

The same is true of his latest book, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare, although it must be admitted that, as DM warned, it gets a little hard-going in the middle.  This is not, I think, Shapiro's fault.  Given the subject matter he is absolutey required to repeat, with as much accuracy as possible, the infantile dribblings of a great many people who should have known better.  The list of fools, suckers, shysters, snobs and dimwits just seemed to get longer and longer.  Here is just a sample:

Mark Twain, Henry James, Sigmund Freud, Tom Bethell (of The American Spectator whose journalism I used to admire), Leslie Howard (the late film actor), Sir Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance and so on and on.  None of these are 'shysters' but I leave it to readers of the book to catergorise them according to taste.

Not, I hasten to make clear, that all these people and many others actually agreed upon who had written Shakespeare's plays, oh dear me, no; like Python's The People's Front of Judea confronting The Judean People's Front, the two sides, one in favour of Francis Bacon, the other favouring the Earl of Oxford, lambast each other with cries of "Splitters!" and both reserve complete contempt for the minority groups in favour of Kit Marlowe or Edmund Spenser or Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all!

That very shrewd observer of both modern and historical life, Hilary Mantel, sums it up beautifully in her review in The Guardian:

It's a tale of snobbery and ignorance, of unhistorical assumptions, of myths about the writing life sometimes fuelled by bestselling authors who ought to know better.

In essence, this disbelief in the abilities of the country boy from Stratford rests upon the belief that no-one could write in so much detail of matters and experiences which, given Will's lower-middle-class background, he could not have experienced himself.  In other words, artistic imagination does not exist.  And this came from several world-renowned writers! 

You couldn't make it up - but they did!

 

The shortest love affair in history

Monday 27th August 2012:  Dear George, I love you.

Tuesday 28th August 2012:  Dear George, let's call the whole thing off!

I refer, of course, to George Orwell whose praises I was singing to the skys skies (sorry, Miss Andra, I'll hand in my 100 lines later), see below, but that was before I actually read something of his work.  I blame my e-pals who urged me to read The Lion and the Unicorn but who failed to provide me with the second part of his title, Socialism and the English Genius, which might have given me a warning.  Parts I and II of the First Section were somewhat romantic but by Part III onwards and into the Second Section it was not so much downhill as a freefall off the cliff!  Reading Orwell on the supposed joys of socialism is like reading one of those Mills & Boone romances in which even a hint of reality is firmly eschewed.

I would dearly love to return to his book and, step by step, take him and his nonsense apart but what's the point?  He's dead and I have learned the hard way on the Trot-lot blogs that people of his mind-set (I refuse to say 'thinking') inhabit a cartoon world of cigar-smoking capitalists and honest, horny-handed sons of soil and toil.  Anyway, his English socialist dream came true in 1945 and instead of galvanising our society to levels of prosperity for all, by the time he died in 1950, we still had rationing which was to continue until 1954 - nine years after the war had ended!  So much for socialism!

I'm sorry, George, but I'm very angry with you.  I think you have led me up the garden path and your intentions were not honourable.  Your brilliant writing smoothed the way to my heart but my reading of it has exposed you for the 'useful idiot' you are, or, were!

And as for all you match-makers - you're all banned!

 

A very slight pause

Today the sun is shining and in its glare there is no escaping the fact that my garden has 'gone over'.  Old 'friends' who displayed their beauty for me during the so-called Summer have now lost their lustre and must - oh, cruel, cruel world - be culled.  All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I must, absolutely must, get out there and do some tidying up.  Not least, of course, because the chance of more sunny days is nil verging on none!  Consequently I may not get around to posting anything until much later in the day, so if you are a wage-slave there is no excuse for you to keep on clicking here, instead you should jolly well get on with your work - for a change!

Further to my previous post, I am very excited at having discovered Orwell and thanks to the generous suggestions of many of my commenters I now have even more reading to cope with!  The other day the 'Memsahib' asked if we had been introduced when I made a surprise visit downstairs.  I had to remind her that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit!

See you all later.

 

George Orwell - Right, Left, Centre or in a space of his own?

I have been prodded into this post on the subject of George Orwell by two recent events.  Needless to say, I know virtually nothing about the man but, hey, when did that ever stop me tapping away?  The first event was reported in the MSM when, and I'm hazy on the details, some 'Pecksniff' in a local council decided that a statue to Orwell could not be erected because he was - too Tory!  Blimey, I thought, that sounds like subtle thinking from a 'Pecksniff' because Orwell is generally known as a Leftie.  The second event, however, confirmed the 'Pecksniff'; it was an article on Orwell in The Weekly Standard by John P. Rossi and the title was The Tory Anarchist.

Now I had better 'fess up and tell you that my ignorance of George Orwell is yet another of those pebbles in the shoes of my conscience (there are so many I wonder why I bother giving my conscience shoes to wear!) which niggles away at me.  The very little I do know, or think I know, of George Orwell makes me suspect that he was a very great Englishman.  He was one of those rarities, it seems to me, who was able to combine great passion, enough anyway to make him volunteer for someone else's war, with calm detachment which allowed him to see through the fakery of the great 'religions' of his time, like the British Empire, and Communism.  To tell truth and shame these devils took considerable physical and moral courage.

So, there is my mea culpa, but now I need some of you swots to recommend a good biography, or even, just a good assessment of his life and works.  I am now, and always have been, much given to hero-worship and I sense that George Orwell was one of life's real heroes.

 

The fight of the century - and I don't care if there are 88 years to go!

Coming soon, Mann v. Steyn, in a US court near you - well, they're bound to televise it.  But first, take a brief pause and read Steyn's short article in The National Review which is the red meat likely to be fought over by these two big cats in this latest and bestest 'rumble in the jungle'.  For those, mostly Brit, readers unsure as to exactly what the Sandusky scandal was, it involved the coach of Penn State University's American football team who was, over a period of years, regularly sexually molesting young boys.  The Penn State authorities were informed but refused to act partly, one supposes, because 'over there' college football teams attract big sponsorship deals.

As Steyn reminded us, Penn State still faces yet another potential scandal if, but only if, allegations concerning the work of their very own Prof. Michael Mann, the inventor of the fabulous 'hockey stick' graph, are proven.  There is, perhaps, no more famous icon that Mann's 'hockey stick' which has been seized upon world-wide by the HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) as a proof of their theory that we are all about to 'fry 'n' die' because of global warming - heh, chance would be a fine thing!  These allegations arose because the 'hockey stick' has so far proven to be wildly out in its predictions but also because of the hacked e-mails from that other nest of HAFs at East Anglia University in which sundry 'scientists', including Michael Mann, were writing of "Mike's nature trick", "hide the decline" and so forth.  Penn State conducted their own investigation and found Prof. Mann had acted absolutely properly but, alas, their so-called investigation into Sandusky's activities means that anything they pronounce upon is treated with derision.

It was Steyn's particular derision which has provoked Michael Mann into either a very brave act or a monumental folly - he has decided to sue Steyn and The National Revue.  The critical point is that hitherto, Michael Mann has refused to release certain research papers for scrutiny by the scientific community.  But now, Steyn's lawyers will have the legal right to scrutinise every single document ever produced by Mann including those he has so far wished to keep private.

This could make 'Climate-gate' look like a mere squabble.  Can't wait!

 

"THE SUN - We Love It!"

Damned fine fella, that Prince Harry, knows how, er, to keep up, um, the royal tradition; and equally admirably, The Sun does its part also by publishing the photos to prove it!  Of course, all the whining and moaning from the other rags are just pathetic bleatings from editors too scared of Levinson to do the obvious, commonsense thing and publish pictures which zillions of people have already gawked at on the internet.

Going back to Harry, he, of course, continues in the vein of earlier heirs and possible heirs to the throne.  Poor old Edward VII, or 'Bertie' to the many amorous ladies with whom he consorted, gradually realised that 'dear Mama' was going to go on and on and on and on and that his chances of ever ascending the throne were minimal.  Thus, he felt free to shag for Britain and the Empire which he did and if the modern Olympic games had begun a little earlier they surely would have given him a Gold medal!  Actually, he did get there in the end but only for a short reign before his place was taken by the usual dull but worthy ruler we have become accustomed to.  The next up was Edward VIII but he was another royal shagger-in-chief which would have been quietly accepted (The Sun did not exist then!) except for the unfortunate fact that he chose an American as his consort and, my dears, not only was she from 'over there' but, even worse, she was divorced - SHLOCK-HORROR!  Exit Edward rapidly to be replaced by a safe, dutiful and dull pair of hands owned by George VI.  He was followed by Her Maj, equally dutiful and, thank God, equally dull but her sister, the late Princess Margaret, kept us all in a state of excitement over her various dalliances.

Charles, ineffably dimwitted, instead of choosing a plain but fertile 'heifer' to bear his children who would have been ignored by a media which was now rampant, he chose a drop-dead gorgeous Princess who captivated the world.  The rest as they say, is history.  Now we have (so far - fingers crossed) another quiet, proper chap as heir-apparent which means that, really, it is Harry's duty to get out there and, er, stand up for Britain and tradition.  He is doing splendidly and long may he continue so to do.

And well done The Sun for showing us how!

 

In which I share a bath with Ferdinand Mount

Well, I have known him, off and on, for about 30-years.  Perhaps 'known' is too strong a word but back in the day he used to write for 'The Speccie' and, like all my favourite columnists, I feel I really do 'know' him even if I have never met him.  Anyway, my somewhat laboured joke in the title to this post refers to the opening chapter of his latest book - Full Circle: How the Classical  World Came Back to Haunt Us.  In this chapter, entitled The Bath, he provides us with a history of baths and bathing as a means of proving his central point in the book that far from following progressive notions in which Humankind has steadily advanced to ever greener pastures in an upland of civilisation (always led by Progressives, of course), in fact we have merely executed a complete circle and are now back where we started in Greco-Roman times.

Now, it really doesn't matter whether or not you agree with Mr. Mount who is, after all, a typical 'Speccie' writer in that he is highly intelligent, perceptive and able to cast a cool but good-humoured  eye over all sort of ideas and then distill his conclusions into shrewd but witty words.  However, having only read his opening chapter on the history of bathing I am convinced!  And, what is more important, in the process of being convinced I have also been effortlessly educated and delighted with a seemingly unending wealth of details and personalities ranging from Sir Daniel Gooch who was Isambard Kingdom Brunel's chief engineer and the patron behind the building in Swindon of the huge bath-house provided for the benefit of his workers on the Great Western Railway, to the eras of Diocletian, Caracalla and Hadrian and their baths each covering some 25 acres which puts them amongst the biggest buildings we know of in the ancient world.  I am tempted to quote that old catchphrase of an equally old Brit comedian whose name eludes me - "notta lotta people know that!"

I know I am always banging on about this book or that but really, truly and honestly and cross my heart and wish to die - this is a copper-bottomed, gen-u-ine, absolute CORKER!  I know that one or two of my regular readers are tremendous brain-boxes (which makes me wonder why they slum it over here) but I bet even they will find things in this book which they never knew and which might, just, alter their perception of our world.

 

I blame that Bernard Levin - and that Tom Stoppard

It was in 1978 that my life changed.  Well, to be exact, it didn't so much change, it was more a case of a door, of whose existence I was only dimly aware, suddenly opened.  The responsibility lies entirely with that word-wizard, the late Bernard Levin.  Through my life I have enjoyed, perhaps 'relished' is a better description, many superb essayists and commentators but none of them ever quite reached the heights seemingly so easily scaled by Levin.  Anyway, back in '77/'78 he had been banging on about a new play by a hitherto new playwright which concerned itself with the plight of Russian dissidents - a subject very dear to Levin's liberal (small 'l')  heart.  The play was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and the writer was Tom Stoppard.  On Levin's urging I went to see it at the Mermaid Theatre.  I came out pole-axed!  Quite simply, I had never seen so much brilliant wit, inventiveness, imagination and, running deeply through the text, such a sustained and passionate plea for liberty. This, I remember thinking as I stumbled away, electrified, from the Mermaid after the show, this is what theatre should be.  My (very) amateurish theatrical career began shortly there-after!

I was very, very, unbelievably lucky to be able to direct three Stoppard plays and I will be forever indebted to the Richmond Shakespeare Society for the opportunities they provided me.  The first was 'EGBDF' in which I attempted to pay homage to Stoppard and, by doing my very best, thank him for opening up a new vista in my life.  The next play of his I directed was Travesties which, to my joy and amazement, eclipsed even 'EGBDF' in brilliance.  It cannot get better than that, I thought - until I directed Arcadia!  For me this is Stoppard's very greatest play.  Philosophical, scientific, historical and artistic themes twist and wind their way through the fabric of his intricate plot but, for the first time in his writing career to that date, he introduces a tragic love story of exqusite tenderness that can turn your previous tears of laughter at his witty dialogue into real tears of loss.

I am provoked to write all this, partly from 'remembrance of things past', but also for great expectations because this is going to be a Stoppardian autumn.  Presumably this is also why Victoria Glendinning conducted an interesting interview with Stoppard published on More Intelligent Life.com which gives you the flavour of this somewhat elusive, elliptical man.  Beginning tonight on BBC2 is the first of five episodes of a TV version, scripted by Stoppard, of Parade's End by Ford Maddox Ford.  According to the previews, the first episode is fairly quiet being mainly an introduction to the characters.  There-after, things take off but, as one perceptive previewer reminded us, Stoppard does not take prisoners amongst his audience.  He just assumes that you are as well-read and intelligent as he is.  Probably, like me, you are not, but it doesn't matter.  If you have a mind that is curious and prepared for intellectual adventure then you may safely place your hand in Stoppard's and he will take you on a journey to remember.  In addition, the film version of Anna Karenina, again, scripted by Stoppard, is about to be released into a cinema near you in September. 

So, book your cinema seat and set your 'do-flicker-recording-thingie' for 9.00 pm tonight, or whatever, but do NOT under any circs miss any of it - and that's an order!

 

Fuck me, I don't believe it! Oooops, sorry . . .

I do apologise for my bad language which I normally try, with varying degrees of success, to avoid but I just went downstairs to make a cup of tea and I saw Sky News reporting that the Norwegian judges have given that murdering swine, Breivik - 21 years in prison with a minimum sentence of just 10 years.  This is a man who deliberately set off a bomb to distract the police which killed and maimed several people and who then went on a literal man and woman hunt to shoot down in cold blood 69 more people most of them teen-agers.  And for that he gets 21 years max and possibly 10 minimum?

This particular post is going to dribble away into nothingness because I simply do not have the words.  The Norwegian judges are a bunch of contemptible cowards and fools not fit to sit in judgment on a motoring offence. Were I a parent of one of those youngsters shot in cold blood I would be setting off now with my rifle to see if I could even the score by taking out some of those judges.  Norway is a lunatic asylum and the loonies have taken it over.

ADDITIONAL:  Quite properly I have been taken to task by my e-pals, 'Webbers' and 'W', who chastise me for my harsh and inaccurate words with regard to the Norwegian judges who were simply following the letter of their ludicrous and insulting law - insulting, that is, to the dead and the bereaved and the maimed.  To clarify matters, which my ill-tempered rant did not, here are the details from Wiki:

• The indeterminate penalty, called "containment" (Norwegian: forvaring), is set at 21 years imprisonment, and the prisoner is required to serve at least 10 years before becoming eligible for parole. If the prisoner is still considered dangerous after serving the original sentence, the prisoner can receive up to five years additional containment. If the additional time is served, and the offender is still considered dangerous, a prisoner can continue to receive up to five years additional containment, and this, in theory, could result in actual life imprisonment. "Containment" is used when the prisoner is deemed a danger to society and there is a great chance of committing violent crimes in the future.^[2] However, the offender can be paroled or released at any time if it is determined that the offender is no longer a danger to society.

By any standard of civilised justice Breivik should never see the light of day except through prison bars.

A Good News Day!

You all know, because I keep repeating myself, that I think another four years of Barack Obama will be a disaster with some very long-term and depressing implications which will only be slightly mitigated if Republican strength in the Congress is enough to put the brakes on.  Mind you, in that event the somewhat veiled faced of authoritarian, unconstitutional, Democrat extremism will then be exposed for all to see - and feel!  As sure as night follows day, rule by presidential diktat will ensue.  However, you will also have detected a certain lack of enthusiasm on my part for Mitt Romney who is not a man bred to inspire.  There are, it seems to me, two Mitt Romneys, the one who passed his own version of 'Obamacare' as a State governor, and the man who ran a very successful capital venture firm which bought up ailing companies and with great ruthlessness turned them around and sold them for a profit.  It will be fascinating to see which Romney enters the White House!

And, oh, yes, he will enter the White House - that is the 'Good News' I bring you.  Happily, on this occasion, it is not my forecast, the history of which is, um, less than dependable, but that of the University of Colorado - no, no, don't click away, these professorial chaps have been dead right for every election since 1980.  The important point about their forecasts is that, instead of merely sampling the electorate as a whole, they concentrate on State-by-State analyses in order to forecast the likely number of Electoral College votes for each candidate.  The key determinating factors, in their view (and mine, for what it's worth - and I heard that!), are unemployment and perceptions of personal wealth, or, to put it in plainer English "It's the economy, stoopid'!" 

Using their well-honed techniques which have correctly forecast the outcome of the last eight presidential elections:

President Barack Obama will win 218 votes in the Electoral College, short of the 270 he needs. And though they chiefly focus on the Electoral College, the political scientists predict Romney will win 52.9 percent of the popular vote to Obama’s 47.1 percent, when considering only the two major political parties. [...]

Their results show that “the apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent,” Berry said.  [It's now over 8.0%] The results indicate, according to Bickers, “that the incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states.”

But it is the individual State analyses which are important and particularly those known as 'the swing States' the number of whose Electoral College votes always being critical to the outcome:

In 2012, “What is striking about our state-level economic indicator forecast is the expectation that Obama will lose almost all of the states currently considered as swing states, including North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida,” Bickers said.

In Colorado, which went for Obama in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 51.9 percent of the vote to Obama’s 48.1 percent, again with only the two major parties considered.

Of course, there are caveats, there always are, but these 'U of C swots' have, quite literally, an impeccable record for forecasting.  So, as you sit at home through this Bank Holiday weekend watching all that global warming pouring out of the sky, at least you can enjoy a little crumb of comfort for knowing that Obama and his wretched politbureau are on their way out and just in time for a Republican president to choose the next one or two Supreme Court Justices which should 'fix' things for the next 25 years.

Remember, you read it here first, er, unless you read it here

.

Have you ever considered a life of crime?

No?  Well, I think you should.  Take, for example, Mr. Asil Nadir, late of 'Polly Peck-a quid-or-three'.  He has just been found guilty of nicking £28 million.  He 'did a runner' back in 1993 and lived a life of luxury in northern Cyprus until he returned here voluntarily in 2010.  He has been sentenced to 10 years in jail, er, well, actually, that's 'Cocklecarrot' talk which translates in the real world as 5 years!  It will almost certainly be served with some ease in a 'Category Lux' prison only mildly less comfortable that the £23k per month house he has rented whilst awaiting trial.  He claims to be suffering with various heart ailments and it might be that he thought, correctly, that as a prize prisoner he would receive excellent, and free, treatment from the NHS whilst serving his time. 

Even if he is unhappy from time to time he can console himself with the thought that it works out at around£5.5 mill-a-year.  And he can enjoy a chuckle knowing that his legal defence which cost around £5 mill was paid for by me and you via legal aid.  Needless to say, the party of law 'n' order (prop. D. Cameron, esq.) who were in receipt of hundreds of thousands of Nadir's stolen money are refusing to pay any of it back.  The Lib-Dems are keeping quiet, too, because like the Tories they are still hanging on to stolen cash from a convicted thief.  Between the two of them they almost make the Labour party look respectable.  Well done, Dave, that takes real genius, that does!

 

El President Rafael Correa is a something beginning with 'c'!

Not too much time for one of my usual beautifully composed, elegantly written and highly intelligent posts - er, sorry, did you say something? - because some dear friends are taking me and the Memsahib out to lunch on the coast.  So, only a moment to enjoy the sight and the stench of prime humbug in the deeply unwholesome person of El Presidente Rafael Correa of Ecuador.  If you have never seen anything beginning with 'c' before, here is a picture of one:

This brave torreador of a South American president waved his red cape in the face of the mighty USA and then stuck his puny little lance into it its backside by granting that nasty bit of Australian offal, Julian Assange, political asylum in his London embassy, thereby scoring a double hit by annoying los Británicos cringos.  Needless to say, within the day all the grunt-snufflers of the extreme Left were out on the streets in support.  Apparently their deeply felt support for 'wimmin's rights does not extend to the two Swedish ladies who claim they suffered sexual assaults from Assange.  El Presidente's picture went round the world and his reputation as the new Nelson Mandela grew.  Well, it grew up until yesterday when unfortunately it slipped up on a Belorussian turd!

The turd in question is President Alexander Lukashenko and here he is in a fairly typical pose.  According to most reports he makes Putin look like your favourite old uncle:

Recently he sent a high-powered trade delegation to Ecuador during which, no doubt, various, er, deals were discussed but - and surely this was entirely coincidental - shortly after the visit a Belorussian dissident who had fled to Ecuador and been granted asylum was arrested by the Ecuadoran police and has languished in jail ever since.  The process of extraditing him back to Belorussia is well on its way and when he is returned to the tender mercies of President Lukashenko he will almost certainly be shot.  For murder or treason, you ask?  No, no, for blowing the gaff on a high-level corruption racket with links to the very top of the Belorussian government.  So much for El Presidente's credentials as a principled upholder of the Rights of Man!

Our government should simply break off diplomatic relations with Ecuador and then arrest Assange as soon as he leaves the embassy.  The chances of that are pretty remote given Dave's lack of backbone so I can only hope that Mark Wallace's shrewd campaign, as reported by Guido, comes off.  Mr. Wallace has offered £6,500 if anyone can succeed in setting off the fire alarm in the Ecuadoran embassy.  What a wheeze!  Anyone got a match?

 

'What's it all about, Georgie?'

With apologies to Bert Bacharach, Lilly Rose Allen and Greg Kurstin, the creators of that splendid song Alfie because I have reproduced part of it here but replaced their hero's name with Georgie, as in Georgie Osborne, our none too bright Chancellor of the Exchequer

What's it all about, Georgie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What's it all about when you sort it out, Georgie?
Are we meant to take more than we give

I ask the questions, Georgie, because I note that in July, a month in which the Exchequor is normally expected to be in surplus, you actually had to go out and borrowed a few quid, well, £600 mill to be exact, and I can't help wondering, Georgie, if you really have quite got a grip of things, I mean, one asks, and it hurts me to do it, but are you quite up to the job?  Or, to put it another way, do you think you might be better employed doing your part-time job as (and I'm trying hard not to giggle here) 'political strategist' to the Tory party full-time rather than wasting half a day everyday pretending to be our Chancellor and losing my our money hand over fist?

Well, I will avoid an early death by not holding my breath waiting for an answer.  It is now quite clear that Georgie and 'Dim Dave' have no coherent policy for steering us through these austere times not least because they have no knowledge or interest in economic philosophy and therefore no ideas beyond the commonplaces of second-raters like that old fool at the Bank, Sir Melvyn 'Plank', who advise them.  Exactly how the coming crash will develop no one can be certain but one thing is dead sure, the future of the 'Stupid Party' is grim beyond belief.  There are a variety of reasons why the Tories are known as the 'Stupid Party' but perhaps the most recent is the fact that they elected 'Dave' as their leader and also, perhaps, because they allowed themselves to be drawn into the viperish embrace of the 'Even Stupider Party', the il-Lib-non-Dems'.

'Dave 'n' George' between them seem to have set out deliberately, not just to upset their natural followers, but to actively attack them!  High speed trains straight through the normally Tory-voting heartlands, wind turbines forced into beautiful countryside inhabited by Tory-voters, planning rules eased so that any get-rich-quick merchant can slap up makeshift houses for the untermenschen to live in even if it's the Tory-voting Home Counties, refusing even to consider leaving the EU, forcing the churches, which by and large are filled with Tories, to accept gay marriage . . . the list goes on.  In fact as I write this I am trying to think of a single idea that they have produced and which I can support wholeheartedly.

So, the chances are, given the extreme unlikelihood of Tory MPs giving the pair of them the boot, that the Tories will lose the next election which means that we will have 'Edenoidal Ed' Milliband as prime minister and 'ur wee Gordie's' very own, personally-trained Big Spender, Ed 'Testicles', as Chancellor.  That could well occur just as the final ramparts of the European dis-Union are crashing all around us and, be honest, if you look long and hard at 'Edenoidal Ed', does he give you a warm feeling of confidence?  Take that as a 'no', shall I?

My prognosis?  I think it's probably very gloomy if only I could see through all that fog.  Or, to put it another way, life's a bitch and then it rains!

 

California crooking the books!

I have wondered from time to time why it is that Californians keep voting in Democrat regimes to their State and City legislatures.  Until fairly recently I put it down to the fact that most of them were thicker than a box of spanners and, like little babes being offered regular spoonfuls of sweet goo, they simply swallowed the bribes and handouts offered by their Democrat politicians without ever giving a thought to where the money was coming from.  Well, now they must be thinking about it because in the last few years the money has started to run out.  One by one Californian cities are going bankrupt.  Policemen, firemen and teachers are being laid off because there are no means of paying them.  Today it is cities, tomorrow perhaps entire counties and, one wonders, how long before the entire State goes belly-up?  And yet . . . and yet . . . still they vote the Democrat ticket!  I was beginning to wonder that if they are that 'stoopid' how much money I might have made flogging my old bits of second-hand shrapnel 'over there'.  But now I begin to see the reason.

It's not 'stoopidity', it's crookery!  According to Jim Kouri's report in The Examiner, an analysis of Californian voting records indicates that more than 720,000 voter registrations are invalid.  Quoting the words of a Ms. Taitz, herself a lawyer and a candidate for office, Kouri reports:

[A]n examination of California's database revealed 723,620 voter registrations which are not valid because of missing birth dates on the forms.

"California's elections code 2150 and 2152 stipulate that an affidavit from an elector has to contain a valid birth date, valid country of origin, a Social Security number, drivers license or a number assigned to the voter if there is no Social Security number or Drivers License number,"

Apparently, the public service(?) employees at the Registration Offices were in the habit of simply entering in birth dates off the top of their heads which has resulted in thousands of registered voters appearing to be up to 150-years old!  In addition there were about 500,000 registrations with no country of origin entered.

It is, of course, a pure coincidence that the very principled Democrat party has maintained an absolute opposition to Republican plans to insist on voter  identification at the poll booths.  They do so on the high-minded grounds that such a policy would discriminate agains the poor, and suggestions that the real reason is that it would decimate the Democrat vote if all the crookery and fraud was stopped, are despicable calumnies of no more worth than those who suggest that the Democrat party is a shoddy collection of shysters and crooks who have reduced American elections to the level of Third World countries.

And that's just California.  God knows what's going on in Illinois and Chicago!

Hat tip to IHTM

 

I'm a prat and, yes, I know you need no reminding!

Some time back I clicked on the wrong 'thingie' and suddenly all my entries under 'Blog Favs' disappeared.  Being an indiscriminate fellow I can tell you the list was fairly long but 'I was shocked, shocked I tell you', to discover how of few my 'favourite things' I could remember.  Fortunately, some of them were listed on my side-bar so that helped, and bit by bit, out of the blue, my memory would suddenly engage and I would recall, with a little cheer, another forgotten name.  This morning was another 'eureka' moment when I suddenly thought of Donald Pittenger and his superb site Art Contrarian.  Mr. Pittenger writes about art regularly and as you know I write about art occasionally but the main difference between us is that he knows where-of he's writing where-as . . . well, yes, quite!  Anyway, it was a joy to rediscover him and, generous fellow that I am, I am going to provide you with one illustration per blog post from his site as it stands today.  You should go over to him for intelligent and perceptive commentary:

Advanced Dressing Station by Henry Tonks (1862-1937) - but read the post and see a very different set of paintings by Tonks.

Les Perruches, c.1925, by Jean Dupas (1882-1964).  Art Deco doesn't get much more 'Deco' than that!

You know who by Norman Rockwell.  Mr. Pettinger provides various examples of Kennedy portraiture but I think Rockwell's is the best.  He shows those rather unflattering 'chipmunk' jowels better than the others.

Bali Scene c. 1933 by Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957).  I put this one in especially for my e-pal, Andra, who is a Bali-lover, or should that be a lover of Bali?

Phantom Corsair prototype - 1938.  Mr. Pettinger has a weakness for vintage cars and planes.

Winthrop Stark Davis (1885-1950) and his illustration from the days when top artists were used to produce elegant advertising.

Leo Tolstoy, none of whose books I have ever read and from the bits and pieces I have read about him my desire to do so has dwindled!  But Mr. Pettinger offers up a range of paintings of 'the great man'.

So pop over to the Art Contrarian and be amused and educated and delighted and excited - which is more than you will be here!

 

The man who told the 'emperors' they were bollock naked!

An interesting historical footnote by Samuel Cregg in The American Spectator the other day in which he paid a fulsome tribute to Wilhelm Röpke (1899-1966) - and, no, me neither!  He was a German economist and one of the leaders of the German 'miracle' following the end of WWII when the nation moved from apocalypse to opulence.  This was achieved by policies based on the so-called 'Austrian school' of economics which, despite their obvious and enormous success have been resolutely ignored by European governments ever since - although 'that woman' did have a go and we did enjoy a brief period of real prosperity before the rats and the weasels returned.

But Mr. Cregg is provoked into paying his tribute to Herr Röpke by the imminent crashing and smashing of Europe which is precisely what he forecast and warned about decades ago:

[N]ot many know that Röpke was also one of the very few free market economists who loudly and publicly criticized what would eventually become today's European Union even before the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957. [My emphasis] Röpke was in short a "euroskeptic" long before the term was coined.

And remember, this was also long before the euro common currency was introduced.  However, Röpke not only understood economic theory and practice but also the ways of politicians:

It's striking just how much Röpke got right about the consequences of the present European integration model. In 1958 [my emphasis], for instance, he predicted it would eventually pit a minority of relatively market-orientated European economies (particularly Germany) against a majority of strongly étatiste-inclined countries. Those nations that ran disciplined fiscal and monetary policies, Röpke argued, would eventually be pushed to "sacrifice" their rectitude "on the altar of Europe" in order to assist less-disciplined nations.

He also possessed a keen eye on the certain multiplication of European civil service bureaucracies until they became powerful enough to be pillars of the new state on their own account:

Röpke also forecast that the precursor to today's European Union, the European Economic Community (EEC), would exacerbate the bureaucraticization that plagued much European economic life. Foreshadowing what would later be called public choice theory, Röpke noted that every single postwar creation of supra-European institutions had produced armies of civil servants with a strong self-interest in expanding their numbers and influence. Less than 6 years after the EEC's creation, Röpke observed that its executive bodies had become "an enormous administrative machine" churning out thousands of growth-stifling regulations. Even worse, he added, the EEC's various departments had already been captured by "socialists and ingrained interventionists."

Sound chap, that Röpke, so if that plinth is still empty in Trafalgar Square we could do a lot worse than put his statue on it.  Or perhaps better still, put it in Parliament Square with him pointing a warning finger at the reptiles inside.

 

Books that moved me #1

I have numbered this particular post because it may become a series, but then again, given my memory which I keep putting down somewhere and forgetting, it is quite possible that I will never write another post on the subject.  Still, as you regulars know, on this blog, 'ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chance' - although, now I remind myself, you don't actually pay anything at all - dammit!  Now, where was I . . . ?  Oh, yes, books that moved me. 

Originally, I was intending to start with Milton Friedman's superb book Free to Choose because it was my first 'lesson' in economics.  I had only become interested in the 'dismal science' because in 1979 'that woman' had come to power and she never stopped banging on about the subject, and as the country was rapidly disappearing down a financial toilet (so no change now, then!), and as all the economists, well, 364 of them in a letter to The Times, were screeching in rage at her plans, I thought I should try and educate myself.  Friedman's book had shot to the top of the best sellers list so I gave it a try.

To be strictly honest, although I enjoyed it immensely I cannot remember anything in it that he wrote because it is now all mixed up with all the other books by other economists and philosophers I read subsequently.  However, the one item that has stuck firmly in my raddled old memory is his version of Leonard E. Read's essay, I, Pencil.  At the time, it hit me like a thunderbolt!  Quite simply, or 'simpletonly', perhaps, I had never looked at the world in that way before.  It was, quite literally, a revelation.  Here is the opening segment:

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that’s all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery —more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.

Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye—there’s some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

You can read the rest of it here and I urge you to do so even if, like me, you have read it before, years ago.  It is truly wondrous - and I choose the word with care.  That little essay should be made compulsory at every school in the land but - 'elf 'n' safety warning - holding your breath might be dangerous!

ADDITIONAL:  Talking of books, I have just read Kevin Myers's latest article in The Irish Independent in which he tries to persuade me, with that damned, devilish, Irish, literary eloquence of his, that Nabokov's Lolita is "one of the greatest works of fiction in the English language".  I cannot comment because I have never read the book.  Myers can normally persuade me to his point of view on anything with ease but it seems to me that his love of the book is based on his admiration for its Catholic and Classical learning which is insinuated throughout as a sort of sub-text.  In fact, he assures us that you cannot read the book with full enjoyment without the help of an annotated guide.  Sorry, Kevin, the story of an older man screwing his 12-year-old step-daughter has never appealed and whilst I accept everything you say concerning Nabokov's intellectual learning, I don't think I will be rushing to Waterstone's on Monday!  Has anyone else read it?

 

OK, you found it, now go lose it again - quick!

This, in case you are wondering is Seated Woman in a Red Hat by that jovial rascal, Pablo Picasso.  According to The Daily Mail, it was found in some museum in America where it had been stored in a backroom and forgotten because, despite the signature, no-one believed it was by Picasso.  Now they do.  So now it's worth zillions!

I describe Picasso as a jovial rascal although I am not sure if he ever was that jovial but he certainly was a rascal but as, by and large, he confined his rascality to the mega-rich and mega-stupid I am inclined to join in his joviality.  Lest you doubt me - you wouldn't do that, would you? - he 'fessed up himself:

 "In art the mass of people no longer seek consolation and exaltation, but those who are refined, rich, unoccupied, who are distillers of quintessences, seek what is new, strange, original, extravagant, scandalous. I myself, since Cubism and before, have satisfied these masters and critics with all the changing oddities which have passed through my head, and the less they understand me, the more they admired me. By amusing myself with all these games, with all these absurdities, puzzles, rebuses, arabesques, I became famous and that very quickly. And fame for a painter means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, were great painters. I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and exploited them as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may appear, but it has the merit of being sincere."

 --Pablo Picasso, Jardin des Arts (March 1964), trans.

If not an artist the man would have made a fortune as a second-hand car dealer!

 

Thank God, synchronised nose-picking is out, and 'footie' is back!

Well, I mean, there is only so much interest to be had from watching synchronised nose-picking, or the ladies topless underwater marbles contest, or haggis-hurling, or whatever else the Grand Panjandrums of the Olympic movement dream up for us every four years.  None of them provide quite that feeling one gets from watching Messrs. Rooney, Ferdinand, Terry et al living down to their well-earned reputations as 'fick, foul-moufed' oafs.  Their behaviour gives you that extra warm glow of self-righteous superiority derived from the knowledge that, despite their zillions, they are still the yobs you always suspected they were.  On the other hand, the likes of Mo Farah, who arrived on these shores at the age of eight having swapped the hell-hole of Somalia for the hell-hole of 'sarf Lon'on', and who by dint of sheer determination and guts grew up to win gold at both the 5k and 10k races, leaves one feeling pathetic and inadequate.  Frankly, the fewer reminders I receive of that sad truth the better!  So today begins the next season of 'footie' in which we can sneer once again at the millionaire grunt-snufflers.  And the poor old presenters on 'TOOOOORK-SPOOOORT' will once again have something to talk about because, frankly, their efforts to try and sound interested in the Olympics and the cricket were embarrassing as well as boring.

 

We've got the wrong Obama in the White House

We want George in the White House, no, no, not George W., I mean George Obama.  He's Barry's brother, you see, and no again, I don't mean the cantish (careful with the spelling!) version of 'brother', as in 'all the world's my brother' and that sort of crap, I mean his real-life, biological brother who lives in Kenya.  Here he is talking to the journalist Dinesh D'Souza who writes about him at Fox News: 

President Obama's family lines have always been in a tangle not least because when it come to the sport of reproducing his father was the equivalent of one of those incredible Kenyan athletes, to the point where he could have screwed for Kenya at the Olympics!  So, George Obama is Barack's half-brother who lives in Kenya and the only really important thing to know is that the multi-millionaire who is also the most powerful man in the world, the leader of the United States of America and who never stops preaching and prating about our duty to help the poor, the sick, the lame and the halt, wouldn't piss on his brother if he caught fire!  D'Souza explains his recent contact with George:

A few days ago I received a call from a man I recently met named George.  He was a bit flustered, and soon informed me that his young son was sick with a chest condition.  He pleaded with me to send him $1,000 to cover the medical bills.  Since George was at the hospital I asked him to let me speak to a nurse, and she confirmed that George’s son was indeed ill.  So I agreed to send George the money through Western Union.  He was profusely grateful.  But before I hung up I asked George, “Why are you coming to me?”  He said, “I have no one else to ask.”  Then he said something that astounded me, “Dinesh, you are like a brother to me.”

Obama's Scrooge-like dealings with his half-brother go further than mere avoidance and verge on the downright malevolent.  George lives in a Kenyan slum:

He lives in a shanty in the Huruma slum in Nairobi.  He gets by on a few dollars a month.  Obama also has an aunt named Hawa Auma, his father’s sister, who ekes out a living selling coal on the streets of a small village in Kenya.  She says she would like to have her teeth fixed, but she cannot afford it.  Obama hasn’t offered to help her either. [...]

In 2010, George also applied for a visa to come to the United States and was refused.   While George confesses that in his younger years he was a delinquent, he has never been convicted of any crime.  Moreover, he has a very good reason to visit the United States: his mother Jael Otieno lives in Atlanta.  So why would the U. S. embassy in Nairobi refuse a tourist visa to the brother of the president who just wants to spend time with his mother.

So somebody put the fix into the embassy and George was refused a tourist visa to visit his sick mother - I wonder who?  In addition, stories have been circulated in the press, including our very own Daily Mail, depicting brother George as a drunken undesirable - I wonder where they came from?  It is true, as D'Souza relates, that in his younger days George did run with the gangs, but he was never convicted of anything, and that later in life he did hit the bottle although now he is making efforts to dry out and is helping to run a sports club for youngsters in the slum.

But I suspect, as does Mr. D'Souza, that these minor peccadilloes are not the worst of his 'crimes' in the mind of his rich and powerful half-brother lording it over the world in Washington, oh dear me no, George has a far worse crime to answer for - political incorrectness!  You see, he doesn't blame the British for the current state of Kenya:

Yet I believe there is a deeper explanation that goes beyond hypocrisy for why Obama wants nothing to do with George.   After all, it would cost Obama so little to raise George out of poverty, and yet he won’t do it.  This isn’t mere negligence; it suggests an active animus.   The reason for that animus emerges in George’s book and also in my interview with George in the film 2016.  In that interview, George rejects the anti-colonial philosophy that was espoused by Barack Obama Sr.   This is the “dream from my father” that President Obama celebrates in his own autobiography.   

From the record of their lives and writings, it’s clear that Barack Obama Sr. and Barack Obama Jr. both share the anti-colonial view that blames Western colonial exploitation for the poverty and suffering of the Third World.  Yet George doesn’t buy it.  He observes that at the time of its independence in the early 1960s “Kenya was on an economic par with Malaysia or Singapore.   Look where we are now, and where they are.  They’re practically developed and industrialized, while Kenya is still a basket case.” George believes that poor countries should take responsibility for their own situation.  “What’s our excuse for failure?  We don’t have one.  We’ve only got ourselves to blame.”  

Bloody hell!  If the Yanks won't have him, get him over here, quick, he's just the man to take over from 'Dim Dave'.  As for Barack Obama, patron saint of all that is Left-wing, let us remind ouselves once again that it is by their deeds not their words that we shall judge them -  and I reckon Barack Obama, the President of the Unites States of America, is an A1, hypocritical shit of the first order!

 

Who would want to be a 'Cocklecarrot'?

I give the 'Cocklecarrots' a hard time on this blog but sometimes I think it must be one of the hardest jobs in the world - to sit in judgment over your fellow men and women and take decisions of momentous importance to the parties concerned and to society as a whole.  For the last few days I have been unable to shake out of my head the truly appalling case of Mr. Tony Nicklinson who suffers with what is known in the jargon as 'locked-in syndrome'.  Even the thought of it makes me shudder!  Seven years ago Mr.Nicklinson, who is now 57 and married with two grown-up daughters, suffered a stroke which has left him with no ability to move or speak.  He communicates via a computer.  His only wish is to die - and who can blame him?  And yet . . . and yet  . . .

Mr. Nicklinson wants the law to be changed so that a doctor can despatch him quickly and relatively painlessly.  Another appellant, known only as 'Martin', in a similar condition wanted the court to allow his relatives to assist him to visit Switzerland where euthanasia is permitted without fear of the law acting against them after the event.  Both requests were turned down by the three judges of the High Court.  The reasons for doing so are many and obvious and I will not rehearse them here but I was pleased and slightly surprised to read Lord Justice Toulsen's additional argument to the effect that such a radical change in the law was above and beyond the powers of the High Court and its judges.  One doesn't expect too much in the way of humility from your average 'Cocklecarrot' but Toulsen was entirely right.  It is not for judges to make such decisions but only our elected representatives in parliament.  Yes, yes, I know, but they're all we have in the democratic system under which we all live, and at least we can toss the rascals out from time to time which is more than we can do to the 'Cocklecarrots'.

In the meantime, helplessly and hopelessly, one can only spare a thought for Mr. Nicklinson and 'Martin' and their respective families in the hellish predicament in which they find themselves.  At moments like this I wish there was a God I could believe in and pray to for divine intercession - but there ain't!  Sometimes life's a bitch - and then it rains!

 

A case of severe PBS, doctor

What is PBS, you ask?  For goodness sake, you really must keep up to date with the latest medical jargon.  It means Psycho-Babble Syndrome, about which I wrote recently.  If you haven't got it then you need to aquire it - quick!  And before you click away from this muttering to yourselves that 'Mr. Grumpy' from South Somerset is off another one today let me make clear that I have been provoked into this post by a book review in the Los Angeles Review of Books - and when it comes to psycho-babble, Los Angeles is the world's leader!  I wrote about this just a few weeks ago and pointed to the malevolent synthesis between the psycho-babblers, themselves, and Big Pharma.  What I had not realised, but Mr. Andrew Scull, the book reviewer, makes clear is that there is a third party to this unholy alliance - you!  By which I mean, you, the general public.  But first, let me reproduce the illustration I used in my previous post on this subject:

These increasingly large volumes are the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of the American Psychiatric Association, or, DSMs, for short.  They contain all the boxes which require to be ticked in order for you to be 'diagnosed' with this, that or the other syndrome.  The production, or perhaps 'construction', of DSM-V is on its way but has been much deleayed not least by honourable and brave intercessions by the main author of DSM-III, Robert Spitzer, and a leading contributor to DSM-IV, Allen Frances.  These two men have gradually come to the conclusion that there is something rotten in the state of modern psychiatry and have become increasingly vocal about their doubts.  Needless to say, the scientific world being bitchier than the Women's Institute, this has brought down buckets of brown stuff upon their heads.  The book being reviewed, All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders is written by Alan Horwitz and Jerome Wakefield.    

The first, and perhaps the main, problem is diagnosis of mental illness and when, some time ago, certain psychiatrists investigated the process in a careful manner:

Their findings dramatically reinforced the growing suspicion that their profession’s claims to expertise were spurious. Prominent figures like Aaron Beck, Robert Spitzer, MG. Sandifer and Benjamin Pasamanick published systematic data that dramatized just how tenuous agreement was among psychiatrists, even the most prominent ones, regarding the nature of psychiatric pathology; consensus barely exceeded 50 percent whether the subjects were patients in state hospitals or out-patient settings. And in 1972, a systematic study of diagnostic practices in Britain and the United States found massive differences: New York psychiatrists diagnosed nearly 62 percent of their patients as schizophrenic, while in London only 34 percent received this diagnosis. And, while less than five percent of the New York patients were diagnosed with depressive psychoses, the comparable figure in London was 24 percent. Further examination of the patients suggested that these differences were byproducts of the preferences and prejudices of each group of psychiatrists, and yet they resulted in consequential differences in treatment. [My emphases throughout this post] 

It was these sorts of criticisms which led to the decision of the American Psychiatric Association to try and pin down exactly which symptoms relate to which illnesses and publish them in a manual form.  Thus was born the DSM volumes which, like Topsy, 'have growed and growed'.  Needless to say, Big Pharma watching anxiously from the sidelines and rubbing its hands with glee at future profits to come from 'cures' for these spurious ailments encouraged the psychiatrists to greater efforts.  Put simply , the more 'syndromes' there are, the more 'cures' can be offered - at a price, natch!   But now the public has joined in.  Get yourself a nice, handy 'syndrome' and it's, hey-ho, and off to your local DHSS for the requisite handout!

Consequently, the number and variety of 'syndromes' has multiplied:

Of more contemporary relevance, a range of commentators have noticed the explosive growth of depression as a diagnosis, to the point where it is now frequently termed ‘the common cold’ of psychiatry; the equally dramatic expansion in the number of children being diagnosed with ADHD; the appearance out of nowhere of juvenile bipolar disorder, which apparently became forty times as common between 1994 and 2004; the epidemic of autism, a formerly rare condition afflicting less than one in five hundred children in 1990, which has now mushroomed into a disease found in one in every ninety children. More than a few scholars have been tempted to attribute these seismic shifts not to any real alteration in the numbers of sufferers from these disorders, but to disease-mongering by the psychiatric profession and by Big Pharma, the multi-national pharmaceutical industry that obtains a huge fraction of its profits from the sale of drugs aimed at mental disorders of all sorts.

The construction of the DSM volumes provided cover for the psycho-babblers to hide behind.  In effect, if enough of their more distinguished members agreed that, say, living and breathing were likely causes of high anxiety, which indeed they are for most of us at some time in our lives, then we can all be diagnosed as suffering with Living Breathing Anxiety Syndrome (LBAS)!

Oddly enough, just writing this has increased my heart rate, my eyes are bulging and I'm breathing heavily - sorry, must finish now - I'm off to my local psycho-babbler and then straight down to Social Services.  Yippeee!

 

Is Obama a pussy?

Or is he, as Mr. Edward Klein, the former editor of the WaPo Magazine, maintains in his recent book, merely an amateur?  Karin McQuillan at The American Thinker tends to the 'pussy' point of view.  Me?  I guess that he's a mixture of the two.  But at this point let me issue my ''elf 'n' safety warning', this entire subject is on a par with exclusive tales promising to tell you the 'really-real' truth about Marilyn Monroe/the Kennedy shooting/that black dress in the Oval office and so on and on.  Still, who doesn't enjoy a bit of juicy tittle-tattle?

In my elderly, pontifical and repetitive way I have frequently advised you all to watch what people do, or don't do, rather than what they say.  Bearing that exceedingly wise (and generous) advice in mind let us consider the curious case of the assassination of Osama bin Laden.  According to several reports, Obama refused to authorise the raid on three seperate occasions despite being urged to proceed by all of his advisors, military and civilian, but with one notable exception - Mrs. Valerie Jarrett.  Mrs. Who? I hear you ask and I berate you for failing to read this blog thoroughly because I wrote about her here and again here.  Let me tell you that she is a creepy, corrupt, Chicagoan greaser of Olympic standards.  She it was who gave the 'newbie' Obamas their first leg up the Chicago political/social scene.  She has remained close, closer than a limpet, ever since.  She now sits outside the Oval Office and no-one, but no-one, gains admission without her say-so.

Returning to the subject of what people do, consider this.  They do not come much tougher than Rahm Emanuel, another product of the Chicago political machine, and when Obama took office Emanuel went into The White House as his Chief of Staff - or so he thought!  After two years he left!  I wondered why at the time but now I have a shrewd idea - he realised that he was CoS in name only and that the final word on everything was given by Mrs. Jarrett.  Emanuel's successor as CoS, Bill Daley, warned the President against tangling with the RC Church over contraception but was over-ruled because Mrs. Jarrett urged the President to take them on - and he, too, has departed.  Larry Summers, chief of the National Economic Council warned Obama that the government should not get involved in venture capital deals like the Solyndra investment but was over-ruled not least, one supposes, because Mrs. Jarret wanted her Chicago buddy, the zillionaire George Kaiser, to be helped because he had a 35% stake in the company.  Larry Summers is no longer in government.

According to McQuillan, the only reason Obama finally and reluctantly over-ruled Jarrett on the assassination of bin Laden was because he was scared of the political back-lash that would result if news of his pussy-like hesitation leaked out to the general public.  If you are wondering what it is that gives Mrs. Jarrett the power she has over this pathetic man let me tell you one of the ingredients - flattery.  Always with men in positions of power it is necessary to keep up a steady flow of flattery.  And don't be parsimonious about it, lay it on with a trowel, they can never get enough of it.  Here is how Mrs. Jarrett, the real POTUS, does it:

In his biography of Obama, “The Bridge,” David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, quotes White House senior adviser and longtime Obama friend Valerie Jarrett: “I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. … He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. … So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. … He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

Someone pass a sickbag - quick!

 

Those bloody Jews, why can't they stick to their stereotype?

They are just so irritating, those Jews, when they don't stick to the script that has been written for them.  Thus, when the Jew-hating terrorist leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who has promised 'never to rest until Israel is wiped off the face of the map' asks, surreptitiously, if the Israelis could please give his brother-in-law special heart surgery because it's not available in Gaza, those hard-faced Israelis should have told him and his brother-in-law to go jump in the Dead Sea!  Instead, cunning swine that they are, they agreed.  Indeed, any Palestinian who requires special medical treatment in Israel can be treated on request.  This diabolical act of kindness cunning was obviously undertaken solely for the purposes of embarrassing the Hamas leadership because, guess what, when asked:

No one from Hamas was available for comment on the case.

Hat tip to Fox News via IHTM

 

'Ello, 'ello, why are the crew getting the lifeboats ready?

Honestly, living in Europe these days is a bit like being a passenger on one of those Italian-owned liners with a Greek captain which seem to sink with monotonous regularity.  Yesterday, Martin Hesse in Der Spiegel reported on the efforts being made by European banks and financial institutions to ready themselves for the collapse of the euro:

Banks, investors and companies are bracing themselves for the possibility that the euro will break up -- and are thus increasing the likelihood that precisely this will happen.

There is increasing anxiety, particularly because politicians have not managed to solve the problems. Despite all their efforts, the situation in Greece appears hopeless. Spain is in trouble and, to make matters worse, Germany's Constitutional Court will decide in September whether the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is even compatible with the German constitution.

September!  Thank God for that, you can hear the euro pols muttering, at least it won't interfere with our summer holidays.  Money, however, never goes on holiday!  Apparently, the amount of inter-bank lending has reached new lows in Europe especially when such lending is required to cross borders.  Absolutely none of the banks trust the others and even the trans-national banks are reluctant to lend to their own branches in other European countries:

In addition to scaling back their loans to companies and financial institutions in other European countries, banks are even severing connections to their own subsidiaries abroad. Germany's Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank apparently prefer to see their branches in Spain and Italy tap into ECB funds, rather than finance them themselves. At the same time, these banks are parking excess capital reserves at the central bank. They are preparing themselves for the eventuality that southern European countries will reintroduce their national currencies and drastically devalue them.

Nor is this nervousness confined only to banks and financial institutions:

The fear of a collapse is not limited to banks. Early last week, Shell startled the markets. "There's been a shift in our willingness to take credit risk in Europe," said CFO Simon Henry.

He said that the oil giant, which has cash reserves of over $17 billion (€13.8 billion), would rather invest this money in US government bonds or deposit it on US bank accounts than risk it in Europe. "Many companies are now taking the route that US money market funds already took a year ago: They are no longer so willing to park their reserves in European banks," says Uwe Burkert, head of credit analysis at the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, a publicly-owned regional bank based in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg.

"Crikey!" said the look-out on the Titanic, "What's that bloody big white thing?"

 

Go east, young man! OK, so it's back to China, then.

I started my investigation, no, my amateurish probing, into China a few weeks ago (see 'China' under 'Categories' in the side-bar) with great enthusiasm and then, somehow, in some way, I was side-tracked.  Story of my life, really!  Anyway, it has been niggling away at me, especially with that fine example of Chinese justice in action at the trial of Gu Kailai plastered across the media in recent days.  But still, Olympian distractions followed by American electoral thrills and spills diverted my attention.  But today, I came across a fascinating article by Minxin Pei on The Diplomat site.  Quite apart from his Chinese ethnicity, he seems to be a very shrewd observer, all the more so because he confirms my (as in 'me, me, me'!) suspicions concerning the real, as opposed to the apparent, strength of China.

He begins, quite rightly, by emphasising how tricky it is to gauge a nation's real strength.  Too many factors are at play to make it an exact science:

One obvious problem is the measurement of power.  Shall we look at the size of a country's economy or its level of wealth? Should we also consider the momentum and sustainability of its growth?  Is its external environment a legitimate variable to include in calculating its power since any country's power is relative to that of its potential adversaries?

And misjudging another adversarial country is all too easy as the Japanese found out after they kicked sand in the face of the American sleeping giant in 1941.  Even so, Mr. Minxin Pei tries his best to judge more closely than most the true strength of China today and comes to the conclusion that they have some deep and fundamental problems to overcome.  He dates the decline from ('Dim' Dave please note!) the end of the Beijing Olympics.  The global financial crisis hit China and caused a drop in the growth rate:

To be sure, Beijing's stimulus package of 2008-2009, fueled by deficit spending and a proliferation of credit, managed to avoid a recession and produce one more year of double-digit growth in 2010.  For awhile, Beijing's ability to keep its economic growth high was lauded around the world as a sign of its strong leadership and resilience.  Little did we know that China paid a huge price for a misguided and wasteful stimulus program.  The bulk of its stimulus package, roughly $1.5 trillion (with two-thirds in the form of loans from state-owned banks), was squandered on fixed-asset investments, such as infrastructure, factories, and commercial real estate.   As a result, many of these projects are not economically viable and will saddle the banking system with a mountain of non-performing loans.  The real estate bubble has maintained its froth.  The macroeconomic imbalance between investment and household consumption has barely improved.

Remember, dear reader, my stories of those fantastic cities without hardly a single inhabitant?  Just like those blocks of empty apartments that cover the seafront of southern Spain from Gibralter to Barcelona, there are zillions tied up in what are now absolutely useless, non-performing loans.  I have read elsewhere that the state-owned Chinese banking sector is seriously distressed.

There is a far more deep-seated problem the Chinese have to face and that is their demographic.  For the first time the proportion of Chinese of working age has started to drop and the number of elderly has begun to increase considerably:

In 2010, 8.6 percent of the population was 65 and older.  By 2025, the figure will likely be 14.3 percent.  An aging population will increase labor costs, reduce savings and investments, inflate healthcare and pension costs — and slow down growth.

Any drop in employment for whatever reason will instantly begin to cause suffering to Chinese families.  Already, the Chinese people, 'armed', so to speak, with modern methods of communication are able very easily to let their feelings be known.  The Communist Party of China knows that its legitimacy is paper-thin but any effort to shift from one-party rule to democracy will be highly risky particularly if it is forced to take place in hard economic times.  The ordinary Chinese people strike me, from this distance, to be the very opposite of the disciplined, ant-like marchers we saw at the Beijing games.  They are a vociferous and independent-minded lot who have tasted the fruits of personal wealth.  If the milk and honey ever cease to flow who knows what their re-action will be?

I would add two final thoughts of my own.  China is run on the basis of state-controlled capitalism.  That is an oxymoron both in a grammatical sense and also in logical terms.  Sooner or later the Chinese will be forced to face the fact that governments cannot control the impulses of capitalism except in the sense of laying down a set of laws for all under which the capitalists can be free to pursue their personal interests.  Until they sort out the incoherence implicit in state-controlled capitalism, the fault line will remain. Second, I have always believed that there is a centrifugal force inherent in a huge nation like China which might lie dormant for decades or even centuries but is never completely absent.  There will be rich, powerful and international Chinese leaders in the regions who might think they would be better off on their own.  They might not succeed in their ambitions but their efforts could prove disasterous.

 

An Olympic rumble

The last gasp show:  I went to bed about half past ten last night unable to take any more of the so-called tribute to British music.  It all seemed to be summed up by the somewhat sad, raddled, over-weight, over-age and over here figure of George Michael.  If he's amongst the best that British pop-music talent has to offer then it confirms my belief that the whole industry is following HMV down the toilet.  Perhaps it cheered up later but the first few songs were dirge-like, tuneless and seemingly endless.  The fact that they saw fit to air a recording of John Lennon moaning the words of the soppiest lyric ever written, Imagine, indicated to me that the organisers were scraping the barrel.  Pity because I rather enjoyed the opening show.

A suggestion to improve the games: First, no more sports which require the services of 'judges' to decide the outcome.  I exclude fighting games in which judges decide if a hit or a throw has taken place, but no more equivalents of "9.5 for artistic interpretation" and all that sort of thing.  Of course, I realise that means excluding gymnastics which I consider to be a true test of courage and skill but it's a price worth paying if we never see synchronised yawning diving or swimming ever again.  Second, get rid of handball!  I thought basketball was the most boring game ever invented but handball takes takes tedium to torture levels.  Gitmo detainees should be forced to watch handball for the remainder of their prison terms.

Personality athlete of the games:  For a change I will join the crowd and pick Mo Farah, winner of both the 10k and 5k races, and the new face of New Britannia!

He is Somali by birth and spent the first eight years of his life in Djibouti.  I suppose, if fate had twisted the cards differently, he could have ended up crewing a pirate ship off the Somali coast!  Instead he came to join his British-born father in London.  Sent to his local state school with poor English he struggled but his athletic talents were spotted by his PE teacher, Alan Watkinson, who took him under his wing and encouraged his early efforts.  (Let's give that man a Knighthood!)  The rest, as they say, is history.

Another suggestion to improve the games:  I should charge for all this free advice!  In future, beach volleyball should be confined to the Brazilian ladies only.  At my first viewing, which featured ladies from 'Godwotaland' playing against the ladies of 'Getmeouttahere', I was, I confess, mildly excited but as time went on it was apparent that in this world there are ladies from Brazil and, er, the rest.  They just have the knack, those Brazilian gels, of filling their bikinis to the very brim and one watches with sustained excitement for the first sign of, shall we say, spillage! 

(Yes, it may seem sad to you but an old man must take his pleasures where he finds them - and I bet it cheered up your Monday morning, too!)

The biggest winner of the games:  No need to name him, really, but for my foreign readers please meet Mr. Boris 'Bonker' Johnson.  Currently he is the Mayor of London but shortly he will be taking over the leadership of the Tory party from 'Dim Dave'.  I have no idea whether he will be a

good leader but it will be a laugh finding out!  Apart from any other consideration, it will be a hoot watching sundry po-faced foreign leaders coming to London and trying to make out if Boris is prime minister or court jester whilst simultaneously trying to keep an eye on their wives and/or daughters.

Final thought:  Thank God, the 'footie' season starts next Sunday.  More lunacy, I know, but at least it's lunacy I'm familiar with.

 

It's that "vision thang"!

Sorry, my last word, I promise, on American politics, well, until next week, anyway!  I am reminded of the title to that old 1930s book by Christopher Isherwood, I Am a Camera, because today I feel as though 'I am a thermometer'.  A few months ago I remember feeling all hot and excited by 'My Darling Sarah' - no, not like that, er, well, not exactly like that - what I mean is that at long last there was the sound of a genuine libertarian (note small 'l'!) voice.  She fell away and in the interim there was the mother and father of family fights within the Republican party which left it battered and bruised.  As my temperature dropped and my interest wained, Romney plodded to eventual victory and I suppose, in retrospect, that rather stands to his credit not least because he survived more or less intact - unlike his opponents.  Then we had what I call 'the phoney war', an eye-stabbingly tedious sort of 'handbags at dawn' affair between Obama and Romney in which Romney was hurt and Obama demeaned himself.  My temperature dropped to near zero!  But now, with the appointment of Paul Ryan, the whole character of the campaign has changed radically.  At last we have a battle of ideas.

At the risk of repeating myself, although I confess to quite liking my words of wisdom - sorry, did you say something? - the American electorate are now faced with a stark choice and there is no hiding place.  They know, without any shadow of a doubt, exactly where Obama and the Democrat party are headed.  It is not an ignoble idea but like all such it is the practice that turns it malevolent. They can see across the Atlantic the results of governments spending and borrowing and spending yet more and then borrowing again.  That ends in one of two ways, either a new government comes in and slams on the brakes, or, the country goes bankrupt and at that point, the real nasties in the Democrat woodwork will come out with 'final solutions' the like of which only exist in your worst nightmares.

But now, the American people can choose a different route.  They have a candidate very experienced in running big business and in running a State government.  Yes, he's made mistakes - who hasn't? - but he's obviously intelligent enough to have learned from them.  Running with him, he has a young man with a well-honed political and economic ideology.  He has proved in the past to be adaptable enough to seek support from the sensible wing of the Democrat party in order to get results rather than waste time posturing.  He has great oratorical skills and will explain to people in terms they will recognise his alternative vision for a sound America based on sound money which will allow, once again, the space for American ingenuity to flourish.  I very much doubt if either of them know much, or anything, about foreign policy but if that keeps them from needlessly interfering then so much the better.  Anyway, it is not foreign policy that is America's problem, it's the economy, stupid!  Now where I have I heard that before?

 

Obviously Mitt reads this blog - shrewd fella'!

Well, yesterday I was urging him to pick Paul Ryan as his 'Veep' and today he has done so!  But I suppose I should start with an apology because also yesterday I had the temerity to doubt that he would.  Obviously it is not wise to underestimate Mr. Romney!  A few weeks ago I quoted from an article in The American Spectator by Quin Hillyer and, just in case, I kept it on record.  Hillyer chose six suitable candidates for the job and Ryan was one of them.  However, he put two, not including Ryan, "in a class of their own".  This is part of his summary in favour of Ryan:

Even before Paul Ryan morphed from impressive young congressman to conservative superstar, I was touting him back in 2008 among the four best choices for vice president. He would remain a superb choice. He can explain Republican budget and entitlement positions better than almost anybody out there, in terms almost anybody can understand; he knows how to attract blue-collar votes; and he might help Romney finally snatch Wisconsin for Republicans at the presidential level. (My emphasis)

That is exactly and precisely what the Romney campaign needs, and it should even please the grumpy, old 'Kraut' who, as I mentioned in my previous post, was demanding that Romney should inject some ideology into his campaign.  Ryan, according to Hillyer, can do exactly that and as his speciality is the field of economic and financial strategy, that is precisely where ideology and practical politics meet and merge.

  

There is one other tremendous advantage in Romney's choice.  If Romney wins there is a young heir apparent ready to carry the torch further into the future.  If Romney loses, it still leaves Ryan well-placed to challenge in four years time.  If Ryan won in 2016, he could undo most of the worst damage likely to be inflicted on the USA by yet another rotten, corrupt  and corrupting Democrat political machine led by a clueless glove-puppet.  And if the American people are dumb enough to re-elect Obama, then let us hope they are wise enough to turn both Houses Republican so as to stymie his worst efforts.  However, in such a case, it would probably allow him to pick another Supreme Court Justice (or two?) and that would be a disaster whose effects would last for decades.

This link takes you to an interesting insight into the 'Romney way' as developed by him during his tenure of Bain Capital:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/313555/ryan-way-robert-costa?pg=1

Worth a read.

 

Dare I ask, was MDA wrong?

Regular readers will know of my love, mixed with fear, for strong, bossy blondes with attitude, hence my grovelling, besotted adoration of My Darling Ann (Coulter).  And yet . . .  and yet . . . and for God's sake don't tell her, I am beginning to 'hae me doots' - DM will doubtless correct my Scottish accent.  She assured me - oh yes, she only writes those articles for me - that Mitt Romney was 'The Man' because, solid and boring though he was, he would not frighten either the horses or the independent voters, and they are the key to every election.  Well, it's true, he hasn't frightened the independents, or anyone else come to that!

So now I have been forced to get in touch with my masculine side and I turn - natch! - to 'The Kraut' over at the National Review.  He suggests there are two line of attack for Romney to take - frankly, I am still waiting for any line of attack from him, although I must confess that it is difficult to judge from 'over here'.  Anyway, 'The Kraut' reckons you can confront Obama either on his record or his ideology.  With courage above and beyond the call of duty I challenge 'The Kraut' over his 'either/or' approach.  Why not both?  There's still three months and a convention to go.  The problem, I suggest meekly, is that Romney does not have an ideology.  That is why I hope, but not with much confidence, that he picks Paul Ryan as his 'Veep'.  Now that would put a shed-load of ideology into the campaign and give the Right something and someone to be enthused by, leaving Romney to continue his impersonation of a walking, talking, tailor's dummy!

Obama is the worst president since Woodrow Wilson.  He's a liar and a charlatan pushing a political ideology which will lead inexorably to the economic, military and democratic death of the United States.  His record in office is abysmal and Romney should be leading by at least 10 points - but he ain't!

"Shomething wrong, shurely!"

ADDITIONAL:  Some very sound sense from John Podhoretz at Commentary.

And just to satisfy your curiosity:  

                     Ann Coulter                                      Charles Krauthammer

Well, which one would you choose?

 

You don't need an aircraft carrier, General, you need a worm!

Apologies for the slight slowdown around here but I am under a certain amount of domestic pressure at the moment, which roughly translates as 'the Memsahib is a bit crock and I'm having to do things I normally take for granted.  I have warned her that much more of this and I'm going to trade her in for new model!

Anyway, I have been amused (slightly) by China's efforts to build and operate an aircraft carrier.  This has caused the Indians to redouble their efforts to bring their aircraft carrier capacity up to the maximum.  It reminds me of all those admirals between the wars who followed Adm. Fisher's pre-WWI policy of building bigger and bigger battleships with bigger and bigger guns.  After the First War it was the cheeky young officers who saw that the battleship era was over and that aircraft carriers were the new queen on the naval chessboard.  Today, of course, it is missiles, both attack and defence missiles, which are critical and, I guess, a titchy little destroyer now carries ten times more destructive power than Adm. Yamamoto's favourite 18" gun battleship, the Yamato.

But tomorrow, I suspect, it is going to be 'electronics' that will be key to success on the battlefield.  Of course, I use the word 'electronics' in the widest sense, not least because I am a man who gives himself a silent cheer everytime I manage to switch my computer on and off!  As the bankers have learned - the hard and expensive way - just recently, we are all utterly reliant on 'electronics'.  When they go wrong, or just go off, we are well and truly stuffed.  It is essential, I believe, that armies and navies need to practice operations without 'electronics' and see how far they get and how well they do.  Being essential, my guess is that that they don't bother!

I am provoked to these musings on modern warfare by a small story on the BBC News site introducing us to 'The Worm'!  It's a pity this is written and not spoken because it really needs that American guy who does the voice-overs for thrillers to use his deep-pitched, gravelly voice to say omminously, "The Worm is coming!"  Here it is:

Doesn't look much, I admit, but the possibilities are manifold.  It's the latest robot made for the Pentagon and it imitates not so much "the action of the tiger" but more that of the worm! Made of a flexible mesh 'skin' with wires around it, the operator can send pulses down which makes the 'body' contract and expand and slowly, 0.2" per second, cross ground.  So be careful if you are walking along scanning the skies for a drone so small it looks like a bird (that too exists!) because you might tread on a 'worm'.

Right, that's enough meandering for this morning, I will return later.

 

In which I stand foursquare in support of a Labourite Police Commissioner

Relish the words in that title because you will not see their like again in my lifetime!  But first let me tell you that as far as the idea of elected Police Commissioners is concerned I am undecided.  Yes, I like the idea of an elected official running our police services but, as always, the politicans have injected their poison into the proposal so that now the post will become entirely political, as opposed to the current 'Old Boys' network of professional Police Commissioners who are entirely politically correct and therefore just as bad.

However, it is a particular story from The Daily Mail which concerns me today, not just in the abstract, as it were, but in the particular because Mr. Bob Ashford, a Labour man to his pink fingertips, was intending to stand for election to the post in my county of Somerset.  Unfortunately he has been struck off the list of candidates by some Jobsworth because when he was 13 years old (some 40-odd years ago) he was fined £5 for being in the company of a gang of boys who were caught shooting at tin cans with an air gun - yes, yes, I know, today they'd be holding up their local newsagent but it was a different world 40 years ago!  Anyway, Mr. Ashford denied even touching the gun but was 'advised' to plead guilty and accept the £5 misdemeanor fine thus giving him a 'criminal' record.

Ever since then, Mr. Ashford has always declared this micro-stain on his record including when he applied to stand for the job of Police Commissioner.  At first he was accepted onto the list but has now been forced to resign.  He has spent most of his life working with and for young people in the Somerset area and, despite his appalling politics, it is obvious to me that he is more than qualified for this job.  Let him stand, I say!

 

Impure, adulterated gossip and innuendo but it's against Obama so that's alright then!

The so-called 'birther controversy' is all rather 'old hat' now despite the fact that it has still not yet been fully answered.  Happily, however, there is another one bubbling away which I trust the ratpacks of the American Right-wing press (if any exist outside of FoxNews) will pursue with the ferocity with which their Left-wing associates are hounding Romney over his tax returns.  I have heard mention before of the refusal by Obama and his college to release his student records but I knew very little of what it was about.  Mr. Wayne Alleyn Root of The Blaze enlightens me - as far as he can:

Obama has a big skeleton in his closet. It’s his college records. Call it “gut instinct” but my gut is almost always right. Obama has a secret hidden at Columbia- and it’s a bad one that threatens to bring down his presidency. Gut instinct is how I’ve made my living for 29 years since graduating Columbia.

Scrummy-yummy, mummy, tell me more:

Romney should call a press conference and issue a challenge in front of the nation. He should agree to release more of his tax returns, only if Obama unseals his college records. Simple and straight-forward. Mitt should ask “What could possibly be so embarrassing in your college records from 29 years ago that you are afraid to let America’s voters see? If it’s THAT bad, maybe it’s something the voters ought to see.” (My emphasis)

Now so far, I admit, Mr. Root sounds like your average dustbin-searcher but actually he has considerable personal knowledge of Mr. Obama's college days - because he was at Columbia with him!

If anyone should have questions about Obama’s record at Columbia University, it’s me. We both graduated (according to Obama) Columbia University, Class of ’83. We were both (according to Obama) Pre-Law and Political Science majors. And I thought I knew most everyone at Columbia. I certainly thought I’d heard of all of my fellow Political Science majors. But not Obama (or as he was known then- Barry Soetoro). I never met him. Never saw him. Never even heard of him. And none of the classmates that I knew at Columbia have ever met him, saw him, or heard of him. (My emphasis)

And Mr. Root reminds us all that the WSJ contacted a random 400 students who had studied at Columbia and nary a one of them had ever heard of Barack Obama a.k.a Barry Soetoro.  He goes on to wonder how 'Barry' managed to gain entry to both Columbia and Harvard Law?  He suggests the following:

If you could unseal Obama’s Columbia University records I believe you’d find that:

A)   He rarely ever attended class.

B)   His grades were not those typical of what we understand it takes to get into Harvard Law School.

C)   He attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student. (My emphasis)

D)   He paid little for either undergraduate college or Harvard Law School because of foreign aid and scholarships given to a poor foreign students like this kid Barry Soetoro from Indonesia. (My emphasis)

The killer question, of course, is the corollary to the one that is repeated ad nauseum to Romney over his non-disclosure of his tax records: why, Mr. President, are you going to such lengths to keep your college records secret?  Oh, and how was it for you in Indonesia?

ADDITIONAL:   This blog prides itself on its reputation for fairness and accuracy, a reputation which stretches from one end of this garret to the other.  So, I would draw your attention to an article in The American Thinker by Michael Iachetta which explains some of the anomalies concerning Obama's student history - but not the main one which remains: was he financed through college as a "foreign" student?

 

Sir Melvyn would have given a Gallic shrug if he wasn't so British

I watched and listened, sort of, as the Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Melvyn, er, wotsiname - well , he is a bit forgettable - gave his report on the British economy - look, I'll not have any sniggering! - and answered questions from the dandruff-ridden hacks whose speciality is economics but who are, of course, no better nor worse than their down-market, 'sleb'-chasing associates.  I think I can sum it all up in a phrase - SNAFU!  For those unacustomed to military jargon that is 'Situation Normal All Fucked Up'.  However, I think the emphasis should be on the word 'normal'.  In effect, Sir Melvyn told us that this is how it's been for the last 5 years and so far as he can tell (Gallic shrug, peut-être?) we can all look forward to more of the same in the next 5 years, and no, since you ask (and the ratpack did ask and kept asking) there was sweet Fanny Adams that he could do about it whilst that rabble of garlic-chewing, sausage-eating, spaghetti-swallowing, paella-shovelling dimwits 'just over there' continued with their 'danse macabre' (une autre, peut-être?).  Well, he didn't actually say that but, as a fearfully learn-ed student of Shakespearean verse, I can tell you that was the sub-text!  Frankly, I was quite happy with that.  Things aren't too bad and we all know, do we not, that if and when they get better the drunken sailors in charge of the nation will spend money they do not have in order to bribe us for our votes, and if the banks and bankers are kept busy concentrating on getting their borrowings under control then they will not have the time or wherewithal to gamble on their mad, cocaine-fuelled dreams of turning a sixpence into zillions overnight.  Yes, by and large, I quite like bumping along in the middle, so, all together now, with me:

When it was up it was up, and when it was down it was down,

And when it was neither up nor down it was only halfway up!

 

Some Olympic sniggers

"'E a proper pronker", they might be saying in Beijing for poor Liu Xiang who settled himself carefully into his starting blocks for his heat of the 110m hurdles, then, on the start, sprinted off at high speed - straight into the first hurdle!  No, no, Liu, old lad, you're supposed to jump the bloody thing not knock it over.  Still, he did better than the last Olympics when he only managed two paces before his hamstring parted with a crack that sounded like false-start signal from the pistol.  To be fair, at the games before that he actually won the gold medal.  Just think, all that training, all that dedication and, no doubt, all that non-stop bullying from the Party's sport commissars - and all for absolutely nothing.

China's Liu Xiang falls onto the track during his men's 110m hurdles round 1 heat at the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium August 7, 2012.
(EDDIE KEOGH/REUTERS)  The Globe and Mail

Really, I suppose, that was tragedy rather than comedy but this is definitely giggle-snigger ammo and it is well and truly aimed at those big-mouth Aussies who swaggered about at past Olympics letting us all know that Poms were pathetic at sports, little better than a bunch of 'Sheilas', they kept telling us.  Where are they now? 12th, with only four golds, 12 silvers and 9 bronze - oh dear, what a pity, never mind!  Where are we?  Modesty forbids but only the Yanks and the Chinks are in front of us and if you take it on a population comparison basis we are ahead of both of them.

[...]

Sorry for that short pause but overcome with emotion, or stunned with disbelief, I felt moved to sing "God Save the Queen" but not for too long, thank goodness, because I had forgotten most of the words.

 

Would you follow James Hansen's investment advice?

Not too much time this morning - things to do, people to see - so this post is mostly pictures which, as you probably don't have that much time either, is 'A Good Thing' and also saves you from my deathless prose! 

If you had any doubts, you naughty person, concerning the grave warnings issued for the last 30 years by the not-very-Great and definitely-not-even-very-Good faux climate scientists then these diagrams will confirm your worst suspicions concerning their ability to forecast what tomorrow will be let alone anything further into the future.

You can cut to the chase very simply with this diagram.  The key line is the bright green one which shoots up, up and away and represents Prof. James Hansen's forecast of where global temperatures would be if CO2 was not severely curtailed.  Thanks to all those naughty Chinese and Indians, to say nothing of the lying liars in the west, carbon emissions have increased, not fallen.  The next things to look at are the lines with green dots and pink dots.  They are the 'actual' temperatures recorded by two 'distinguished' American scientific bodies.  Oooops, 'shurely shome mishtake', Dr. Hansen!

Now have a quick glance at how well the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change did in the forecasting game.  The green, blue and red lines are their various forecasts of how boiling-hot it would be if we didn't cut emissions and the orange line is their forecast for what would happen if we went back to the stone age and lived 'clean'.  The pink line is reality - or as near reality as we can get on a global basis!

This final diagram is an illustration of the 'Harmonic Model' of forecasting versus reality.  I would like to offer you a brief description of the 'Harmonic Forecasting Model' but, alas, I don't have the time and anyway, I haven't a clue what it means or how it works.  No doubt some of you math swots will be able to explain.  Anyway, one thing is for sure, it looks a hellava lot more accurate than Hansen's and the IPCC's pathetic efforts, and if Dr. Hansen gives you a tip for the Stock Exchange or the 3.30 at Epsom - spend your money on booze, it will be cheaper in the long run!

 Hat Tip to C3 Headlines.

 

The Chinese really do deserve a better government

A few posts back I wrote about an old and very poor Chinese lady who picked up live but discarded babies from rubbish tips and nurtured them.  Today, I'm back on the subject of China and the Chinese because I have been provoked by John Simpson's article in last week's Spectator(£).  In it, he describes what he calls the 'office of last resort', that is, the place where, possibly, ordinary Chinese citizens may take their complaints and requests for compensation and/or justice for wrongs inflicted on them by local government.  I stress the word 'possibly' because it is extremely likely that before you and your petition reach this 'office of last resort' you and your family will have been attacked, beaten, jailed and your home demolished.  That, you see, is the Chinese way!

So, you would expect this office, or, to give it its proper Chinese title, guojia xinfang ju (the State Bureau for Letters and Calls) to be deserted and, for appearance's sake, staffed by a single clerk with the cushiest job in the world.  You would be wrong.  According to Simpson, every day there is a crowd of petitioners, usually middle-aged or elderly and all of them poor.  They come from all over China and their stories are appalling.  They are watched constantly by a policeman who, at the first sign of trouble - and Simpson and his camera crew were definite trouble in police eyes - will call for re-inforcements.  Before they arrived, Simpson collected together a handfull of their stories which they thrust upon him.  Here are a couple of examples which, as Simpson stresses, cannot be verified by him, but who the hell would go through what these desperate people go through to try and get redress for a pack of lies?

Chen Tanzhang, from Fu'an in Fujian province, is now 54.  In 1993 [Eh? That's 19 years ago!]his 8 year old daughter Xiaofang ('Little Fragrance') went missing.  The next day, the Public Security Bureau told him to come and pick up her body from its basement car park.  It was Xiaofang's.  No one helped him: he had to carry her body to the local mortuary.  He claims she was raped and murdered by someone close to the deputy party secretary.  This man was tried  and sentenced to 18 years, but released after a year.  Mr. Chen has been petitioning ever since.  He has no money, existing only on handouts from friends.

[...]

Jiang Shunsheng, from Hunan province, used to be a village party secretary, until he was accused of corruption.  His post was taken by a relative of the county party secretary.  Mr. Jiang was jailed for a total of 14 months for petitioning Beijing, and while he was in prison several detainees were told to beat him up.  His wife was also arrested and abused.  Now their 13-year-old son has been refused admission to the local school.

And so on, and on, and on.  Apparently this idea of an 'office of last resort' dates back to emperor times when it acted as a sort of safety valve for local disputes with local authorities.  The national leadership of the Chinese Communist Party adopted it as a means of distancing themselves from misbehaving local parties and, on the rare occasions when wrongs are (sort of) righted, they gain the credit.

The State Bureau for Letters and Calls - how Orwell would have loved that one!

Sir John Keegan: Farewell and thanks

I have been mulling over the possibility of writing a series of blog posts under the general heading of 'Books Wot I Read and Remember', in fact, I might yet do so - you have been warned!  Amongst them would certainly be John Keegan's The Face of Battle.  I have just taken my copy down from my bookshelf and am somewhat shocked to see that it was published as long ago as 1976 - where did the time go?  Anyway, alas and alack, Sir John Keegan has just died and so we have lost one of the very best writers of military history for the non-specialist.  That particular book, his first, I think, looked at war in different ages from the bottom up.  Rather than concentrate on the high and mighty manouvres of the generals, he told us what it was like for the archer at Agincourt, the infantryman at Waterloo and the 'Tommy' at the Somme.  But he was far, far, more than just a mere raconteur, he analysed closely the physics and mathematics of warfare and how they impinged on the men 'up the sharp end'.

He went on to write other books on military history in his pelucidly clear writing style so that matters of great moment and complexity were teased out into easily understood explanations.  I must read some more of him because according to his Wiki entry he took a swipe at the 'God of Warfare', Karl von Clausewitz, which angered his fellow historians.  I always enjoy a contrary view so I must look that up.  Anyway, what's not to like and admire about a man who wrote this:

I don't look to find an educated person in the ranks of university graduates, necessarily. Some of the most educated people I know have never been near a university.

Quite so, quite so, couldn't have put it better myself!  Anyway, I for one am very grateful for the life and works of John Keegan which have give me not just historical information but also historical insights.

ADDITIONAL:  Since writing the above I have come across this paper by Christopher Bassford suitably entitled "A Polemic" in which, I gather from a  brief glance, is a defence of Clausewitz and a fairly vigorous defence, too!  Goody-goody, nothing like a really vicious, academic punch-up, beats the Olympics every time! 

 

Something up with which I will not put!

Yes, I admitted the other day that I was slowly warming to all those 'hearties' and their Amazonian 'heartiettes' running, jumping, throwing, paddling, pedaling and all that but I do draw the line at ladies boxing.  They can wrestle, preferably (in my opinion) in mud dressed in topless bikinis, or, if they insist, they can judo each other in baggy sexless suits, or, they can attempt to pierce or slash each other with swords whilst dressed in those rather fetching, dead sexy, white suits, but boxing is OUT!  There is something truly repellant about the sight of two women punching each other with their fists.  I have no particular knowledge and certainly no experience to prove my belief that punching a woman in the breasts is almost as painful for her as it is for a man to be punched in the groin.  Hence, I suppose, the reason why they aim their punches mainly at their opponent's face.  This, of course, avoiding as it does the skill of a steady battery of body shots, makes for a lousy boxing experience for the viewer quite apart from any finer feelings.  To an old romantic like me a woman's face, especially a young woman's face,  is "a thing of beauty" even if, alas, not necessarily "a joy for ever". Thus, for me, the sight of two girls slugging each other in the face is abhorent to the point of sickening.

 

Once upon a time . . .

Now and then, take a look at these 'then and now' photos of old London sent to me by my e-pal, JK,  The very last photo looks like Kenneth Branagh and his chums from the Olympic opening show.  The other (semi) interesting thing is exactly when and who decided that we drive on the left?  Jest askin'!  Anyway, thanks, Jk, for a fascinating link - but that's not an encouragement for you to send me 200 more!

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/07/25/once_upon_a_time_in_old_london_town#0

Help! Heeeeelp! Someone please HEEEEELP!

It's getting to me.  Inch by centimetre it's creeping over me.  I fought it and fought it but still, inexorably, it is engulfing me.  I am still struggling but only just . . . so please help.  Oh, hell, I give up.  I'll just spend the next nine days watching the Olympics like everyone else.  A man has only so much disdain for all those 'hearties' and 'heartiettes' running, jumping, throwing things, pedaling and paddling, it is all so . . . damn silly!  And yet . . . and yet . . . it's getting to me.  That little Brit girlie will be granted the right to bear my babies if she wins the Heptathlon!  And those two handsome lasses in their rowboat were simply splendid.  I'm not quite so keen on the swimmers because they are in danger of showing up my own, ahem, swimming prowess.  (By the way, have I mentioned I go swimming six mornings a week? Alright, alright, no need to be like that!)  Anyway, suffice to say that they cover 800 metres in the time it takes me to reach the other end of the pool - at which point I usually have to ask one of the elderly ladies to help me out!  However, there is one sport to which I am utterly resistant - judo.  Not just because that nasty little thug, Putin, was in the crowd watching but because for the observer it is utterly tedious.  Two opponents, pull, push, tug, kick, twist, turn, grapple and absolutely nothing happens.  Then, one of them stumbles and falls and the other falls on top and they both wriggle around until the game is stopped and the commentator declares "Nippon Number One", or "All Blitiss Officers Will Work" or "Tora, Tora Tora", or something equally incomprehensible.  It's a pity because I remember years ago taking 'SoD' (Son of Duff) to judo lessons every weekend and because they were learning I could see the skill in it.  Unfortunately, at this level they are all as good as each other and every move is countered.  Even so, alas, I think next week I will surrender to this particular bit of bread and circus tossed to me by my Dear Leader, not least because all the other TV channels have surrendered and are running nothing but repeats of repeats.

 

Everyone should have their own 'Kraut'!

He's such a tonic!  Or perhaps 'antidote' is a better word.  For example, I was somewhat disheartened when the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, came here, opened his mouth and attempted to put both feet in it!  Of course, the ratbags of Canary Wharf were on him in seconds and for their usual reason, er, that's circulation in case you don't know it, they blew it up into a far bigger gaffe than it was.  Even so, he's a practiced politician and should have known better. 

He then went off to Poland and Israel and, according to the American MSM, he went on hurling gaffes around like Obama hurls drones!  The MSM 'over there' are, for the most part, the communications wing of the Democrat machine and so they even managed to outdo the Canary Wharf rats in their hyping of Romney's bloopers.  I didn't follow the details of exactly what he was supposed to have said which is why I tell you that you really should have a 'Kraut' to turn to in need.  I mean, of course, Charles Krauthammer, who, in The National Review, turned his steely gaze at this minor hoo-ha-ha and injected some realism into it.  First of all, he castigated Romney for his British blooper:

In answer to a question about the Olympics, he expressed skepticism about London’s preparations. The response confounded and agitated Romney supporters because it was such an unforced error. The question invited a simple paean to Olympic spirit and British grit, not the critical analysis of a former Olympic organizer.

So much for that but then, turning to the Polish trip, it transpires that Romney did not say anything untoward, in fact, just the opposite:

The Warsaw leg was a triumph. Romney’s speech warmly embraced Poland’s post-Communist experiment as a stirring example of a nation committed to limited government at home and a close alliance with America abroad, even unto such godforsaken war zones as Afghanistan and Iraq, at great cost to itself and with little thanks.

Especially little from the Obama administration, which unilaterally canceled a Bush(43)-era missile-defense agreement with Poland to appease Russia. Without any overt criticism of the current president, Romney set out a foreign policy of radically greater appreciation of and fidelity to American allies.

The only unfortunate language was used by an understandably irritated staffer who snapped at members of the (Democrat) press corps for shouting out stupid questions.  But by now the (Democrat) MSM were in full cry and when Romney, during his trip to Israel, told the absolute truth concerning the differences between Arab and Israeli societies and how, in effect, the former could not run the proverbial whelk stall whilst the latter would have a chain of discount whelk stalls up and running in weeks, they tore into him.  'The Kraut' Korrekted, ooops, sorry, must stop with the aliteration jokes, put the non-story into context: 

What about the alleged gaffe that dominated reporting from Israel? Romney averred that Israeli and Palestinian economic development might be related to culture. A Palestinian Authority spokesman obligingly jumped forth to accuse Romney of racism, among other thought crimes.

The American media bought it whole, despite the fact that Romney’s assertion was a direct echo of the U.N. Arab Human Development Report, written by Arab intellectuals and commissioned by the U.N. It unambiguously asserted that “culture and values are the soul of development.” And went on to report how existing cultural norms — “including traditional Arab culture and values” — are among the major impediments to Arab economic progress. (My emphasis)

The report deplores the rampant corruption, repressive governance, and lack of women’s (and human) rights as major contributors to backwardness in the Arab world. (In the Palestinian case, it faults Israeli “occupation,” but a U.N. document that doesn’t blame Israel for every Palestinian sorrow, if not the world’s, has yet to be written. Moreover, that excuse doesn’t work for today’s occupation-free, Palestinian-run Gaza.) Is there any question about Romney’s assertion? PLO/PA corruption is a legend. Palestinians are repelled by it. Why do you think the PA lost the 2006 (and last) free election?

Romney’s point about “culture” was to highlight the improbable emergence of Israel from resourceless semi-desert to First World “startup nation,” a tribute to its freedom and openness.

In addition, Romney made clear that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel, no ifs or buts.  Also, he made clear to the Israeli government that if he is president and they feel the need to defend the existence of their country he will not stand in their way.

So, courtesy of 'The Kraut' we now know that apart from treading on 'Dim Dave's' shiny shoes, and who really cares about that,  his trip was a great success, that is, the exact opposite of what was reported. 

So, there is hope - not a lot, but some!

 

Immigration: how was it for you?

There was an interesting conversation over at waka waka waka, the site of my old e-pal, Malcolm Pollack, which began on the subject of Danny Boyle's production which opened the Olympic games but moved on rapidly to the subject of immigration and whether it is 'A Good Thing' or 'A Bad Thing'.  Now I cannot get the damned subject out of my mind - not that I have managed to come to any definitive conclusion, mind you!

To start with, I'm not at all sure how, and with what, you measure the cost/benefits.  There are obvious costs in schooling, in welfare benefits and in medical services for this fairly hefty influx of people.  On the other hand, most of them work (in direct contrast to our own home-grown under-class), start businesses, pay taxes, raise families which, again in contrast to much of English society, are imbued with a strong family ethic.  Looking back, I suppose the first modern influx were the Jews fleeing this or that European maniac.  I don't think anyone could say that was anything other than a superb gift to this country.  The contribution of the Jews to the scientific and artistic and indeed just about every aspect of our society has been tremendous. 

After them came the Caribbean blacks in the '50s and '60s.  They may not have contributed so much to the intellectual life of Britain but they have certainly raised the standards of sporting achievements.  And again, most of them worked hard and contributed to society.  It is perhaps an ironic commentary upon the success with which they have melded into the home-grown population that last year's riots were very definitely an 'equal opportunities' exercise with black and white 'youfs' and 'youfettes' working well together!  That their young people have proved such a disappointment to their hard-working immigrant parents is, of course, entirely the fault of the white, well-meaning, infantile and utterly malignant influence of what I call the 'Polly Toynbee Tendency'!  The fact that more and more Caribbean parents are sending their children to school back in their old Islands says it all.

Next along was the Asian invasion.  This, I think, needs to be divided between the Hindus and the Muslims.  The Hindus flocked in first when many of them were expelled from Uganda.  Again, somewhat like the Jews, they have definitely been a major contributor to British life particularly in the world of business.  By and large they keep themselves and their communities to themselves and I suspect, but cannot prove, that many (most?), whilst all too well aware of the bad things in British society, are simply grateful to be living in a sytem which is fairly stable, prosperous and with a rule of law.

Finally, we have the mass Muslim invasion.  This has proved more difficult, not so much, I think, because of the immigrants themselves but because they 'represent', so to speak, troublesome, difficult countries which are very different from the UK.  On top of that, they are imbued with a fairly militant religion which senses that it is under threat (which it is, in the long run) and is therefore all the more fierce.  This has co-incided with international tensions between, using the shorthand, 'the west' and 'the Muslim east'.  However, once again, it is a truly remarkable, one might say 'miraculous', fact that this influx has passed off so well.  Of course, there are troubles and tensions and fights and occasional hard violence, but given the scale of the numbers involved it is quite extraordinary that it has been so peaceful!  Even the terrorist influence has been minimal with just a few young men doing what all young men dream of doing, fighting for this or that cause. 

What is often over-looked is the effect we are having on them!  There is a case currently active in the courts in which a Muslim father and his wife are facing charges over the alleged murder of one of his daughters who failed to abide by paternal, male discipline.  I have no idea if the man is guilty or not but his predicament moves me to pity.  I really do not wish to use the old cliche that it resembles 'a Shakespearean tragedy' - except that it does!  Here is an obviously proud, fierce man imbued with the traditions of his ethnicity and religion brought to a blazing rage by a daughter subverted (in his eyes) by western notions of individual liberty, a concept utterly foreign and repugnant to him.  I repeat, I do not know whether he went as far as murder, but the end result is the same, his family and his life have been destroyed.  He must wonder if he might not have been better off remaining in Pakistan!

All these musings, of course, like everything else on this blog, take us nowhere definite.  Mass global shifts in populations will continue for exactly the same reason that dogs lick their bollocks, because they can!  How they turn out in this or that particular country depends entirely on the nature of the host country concerned.  For Britain, I suppose all that one can say, very tentatively, is so far so good!

 

They blinked!

So the Grand Financial Panjandrums of Europe met, talked, lunched and then emitted the equivalent of a weedy, wet fart!  The Spanish market dropped 5% immediately.  'Nuff said then but standby, as the old song goes, "There may be troubles ahead". 

Should Sir Humphrey be sacked and replaced with Steve Hilton?

I gather that there are moves afoot in Tory party circles to allow ministers to remove top ranking civil servants in their departments who prove to be recalcitrant, or, as is the case in the Department of non-Education, downright obstructional against government policy.  In effect, this would take us into the American system in which a new presidential regime moves in with a completely new set of advisors with power to act and over-ride civil servants.  I must say it has its attractions, not the least of which is that there would no longer be any excuses for the politicians to offer up when they fail to do that which they promised.  Of course, it means that when Labour have their chance they, too, will be able to ram their mostly rotten policies down our throats, but then again, at least we will know them for what they are.  I incline to this view not least because it seems to me, from a considerable distance, that the calibre of our top civil servants has fallen mightily in recent decades.  Whilst a Double First from Oxbridge was never a guarantee of intelligence at least it did indicate an ability to absorb and remember huge amounts of information and then regurgitate it in a coherent form.  A 2.1 from Huddersfield 'PolyVersity' in flower arranging does not inspire confidence.  And it should be remembered that when these grease-monkeys oil their way up to the office next door to the minister their capacity for mischief is enormous.