DUFF & NONSENSE!

Honestly, those inter-stellar hooligans should be locked up!

Look, there's the old universe slowly doing what universes do which is mostly minding their own business when suddenly this bunch of European hooligans send several trillion-zillion of my hard-earned dosh - yes, alright, it wasn't all my money but it's always important to personalise government spending, it builds the anger! - up into the 'wild black yonder' and then, after a few rowdy handbrake U-turns, they deliberately crashed and smashed it into a bit of space detritus which was meandering along doing no-one any harm.  You wait until Capt. Kirk gets a hold of them, he'll teach them how to behave properly!

Of course, in mitigation for what looks like a stellar waste of money, these scientific 'brainiacs' assure us that really, really valuable lessons have been learned.  Oh yeah, what exactly?  Well, they tell us, we'll find out what the earth is made of, as though anyone cared, and in any case we already know more or less.  Or, they plead when they notice your eyes glazing over, we'll find out how life began.  Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it but in the meantime who wants to know - and why?  And what will they be tempted to do when they find out?  And also in the meantime can't any of you space swots think of better ways to blow several trillion-zillion euros?

Of course, I do realise that the sky at night is a beautiful and fascinating spectacle - on the odd occasion when its not cloud-obscured and pissing down with rain - but couldn't they have found something a bit more interesting to aim at than a bit of rubble obviously left over by the 'Oirish' builders who never seem to finish any building works!  I mean, they could have aimed at the north star which would at least have satisfied my curiosity.  I have looked at it occasionally over the years and I still don't quite understand why, with everything else on the move, it remains in the same place pointing north!  I have a theory!  I think the whole universe is just a huge, circular, spinning, painted canvas created by that prankster, God, and the north pole is simply the nail he used to fix it in position.  Well, that's my theory!

Editor's Note:  This blog post was absolutely and definitely NOT written with the aid of three dry martinis!  It's just that sometimes I have these flights of fancy.

 

Let's here it loud and clear for good ol' Ladislao!

Yes indeed, what a man and a true genius!  Jewish, of course, but then so many geniuses are Jewish.  They may, or may not, be The Chosen People but if God has any sense, and I'm not convinced that he has, then he should choose the Jews because, dammit, they're so incredibly useful!  Take good ol' Ladislao, for example, or to give him his full name, Ladislao José Biro, a man who contributed enormously to the well-being of the world - and his surname gives you the clue!  Yes, indeed, he was the man who invented the biro without which no shopping list would ever be written!

The Telegraph has the full story but should you doubt Ladislao's contribution to civilisation then just think what the 20th century would have been like without the three trillion zillion biros for which he was responsible.  Mind you, the late Mr. Henry George Martin, a British accountant, deserves an honourable mention because he was the first backer for Ladislao's invention.  Also, one suspects that Ladislao took great comfort from the fact that his first big customer was Her Maj's Royal Air Force which purchased 30,000 of the useful little scribblers and thus all those targets that were flattened during WWII were carefully noted down by means of the biro!

So thanks then, Ladislao, you saved me a fortune in fountain pens over the years!

 

No more heroes

My next door neighbour is a Lancashire lad, well, slightly past the 'lad' phase, from Bolton and in his north country way he has inveigled me into popping over to The Tippling Philosopher pub for a pint every Wednesday evening.  We sit in the snug, sipping our beer and doing what old men do best - moaning!  Yes, indeed, it's a really fun evening, you should come and join us . . .

Anyway, last night I went into 'moan-mode' first complaining about the fact that there were no more heroes.  This was provoked by the totally unsurprising news, via The Daily Telegraph, that football was riddled from top to bottom in bungs, bribes and back-handers, including the English manager of the English football team.  I blamed my neighbour because the individual concerned was, for nearly ten years, the manager of Bolton Wanderers football club.

Needless to say, anyone who is a sentient human being would not have been surprised at the news given the incredible oceans of money that flow in and around football these days but even so I do think back to my childhood heroes like the late and truly great Stanley Matthews who played, I think, for £5 a week!  I have already sounded off, probably too many times, over the sad decline of athletics which, in its essence, say, ten of the quickest runners in the world racing against each other, is the purest of sports - until someone discovered steroids!

Even so, I thought, there is still one sport that, on the face of it, is impeccable and that is golf.  This is mainly because the rules on behaviour are exceedingly fierce and are deployed instantly and ruthlessly if anyone breaches them.  But alas, those rules do not control the so-called fans.  Today, we read that the brother of one of the British golfers about to take part in the Ryder Cup has issued a stream of insults aimed at the American crowds expected to be there supporting their team calling them “fat, stupid, greedy and classless” and “a braying mob of ­imbeciles”.  Apparently, he was totally unaware that by writing this he defined himself as classless and imbecilic! 

However, in doing so, he reminded me of the other factor in modern sport that turns me off it - the fans!  They are ghastly beyond definition and far from ever wishing to pay good money to see rubbish, I would rather pay good money never to see it - or them - again!

Oh no, 'James Bond' suffered with a nagging wife!

Well, no, not actually James Bond, of course, who according to his portrayal is handsome, hard and masterful with women.  My favourite spy, on the other hand, was short, slightly built and didn't look as though he could punch the skin off a rice pudding - and he was Spanish.  His name was Juan Pujol Garcia and I wrote about him back in 2011.  He was, by all accounts, the greatest double agent the British ran during WWII.  He succeeded in convincing German intelligence that he was running a web of pro-German traitors buried in the British government and armed forces.  This 'phantastical' creation was so realistic that the German High Command came to rely on it and when Garcia carefully dribbled through information to the effect that the real Allied objective prior to the invasion was actually the Pas de Calais, not Normandy, they swallowed it whole and diverted troops, especially tanks, to protect the area thus keeping them well away from the actual landings.

But there was one potential snag - his 'missus'!  She, too, was Spanish and for some reason she really didn't find life in Hendon very exciting!  In fact, she was desperate to go back home to sunny Spain and she gave poor old Juan real 'ear-ache' on the subject, even threatening to spill the beans on his giant double-cross if he didn't take her back home. 

A certain 'Mr. Harris' of MI5, Juan's controller, was forced to take some exceedingly clever steps to persuade Senora Garcia that it would be, er, unwise for her to carry out her threat.  The Daily Mail has the full story and it's worth a read.  Somehow, one feels, James Bond would simply have snapped her neck and tossed her in the Thames!

 

No, me neither!

Sorry, my obscure title was the answer to the question as to whether or not anyone, not suffering with a weakened bladder, got up at 2.00am to watch the (so-called) debate?  The chances of me doing that were fairly slight but, as it happened, after three restless nights brought on by my life-threatening attack of Man-flu (who sniggered?), last night I slept like a baby.  Reading such reports as there are this morning it seems that Dr. Johnson's famous problem as to 'the precedency between a louse and a flea' remains unsolved.

As you all know by now, I am second to none in my affection for all most things American but their political discourse has sunk to sewage levels.  Nobody in their right (or left) mind worships politicians until they are safely dead and buried but, even so, one can tentatively rank them in order of preference.  With Trump and Clinton it is impossible.  Watching them, one thinks back almost with fondness to the, er, glory days of, say, Richard Nixon, or Lyndon Johnson - yeeeeees, quite!

What can one say?  Except, possibly, 'God Bless America', or perhaps more accurately, 'God Help America'!

 

A banking blitzkreig

I have repeated, many a time and oft', the warnings of experts that whilst the Greek and Italian banking crises are important, they fade into insignificance when compared to the German banking crisis - oh yes, there is a German banking crisis and it's just around the corner!  I refer mainly to Deutsche Bank, but also the next biggest bank in Germany, Commerzbank, is also in dire trouble.  Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph spells out the details and whilst it is wrong to exult at the problems of others, especially when their difficulties could very quickly become your difficulties, nevertheless, there is nothing quite like a delicious bowl of schadenfreude!

Shares in Deutsche Bank have been dropping like a stone for over a year now, helped on their way down by the US (non)Justice Department which has slapped them with a $14 billion fine (with friends like that who needs enemies?)  and so critical has the situation become that the 'Kaiserin', herself, has intervened.  In true, Germanic, free market style she has made it absolutely and definitely clear beyond any doubt whatsoever, that her government will definitely not intervene to rescue this bank - verstehen?  Yes, of course, Ma'am, but are you not the leader who invited the world and his uncle to enter Germany if they so wished, until the immigrant figure reached a million or more - at which point you changed your mind?

As Mr. Lynn emphasises in his report, the collateral damage from a collapse of one or two major German banks would shake the already crumbling foundations of the Italian, French and Spanish banking systems at which point the whole European edifice will be trembling but if, under that immense pressure, she changes her mind and decides to support her German banks then standby for massive rage and riots in Greece and Portugal.

Perhaps we Brits invoking Article 50 of the EU treaty will be made redundant as the whole damn thing collapses on its own. Oh dear, what a pity, never mind!

 

Tonight's the night!

Well, actually, that should read 'This morning's the morning!' because the bantamweight fight between 'The Trumpeter' and 'HillBilly' doesn't start until 2.00am, UK time.  Will I be watching?  I'm not sure, it depends whether I sleep well tonight or not.  If I am tossing and turning like last night then I might well descend the magnificent stair-case here at Chateau Duff and after helping myself to a small(ish) glass of Calvados I might put the TV on, after all, I do like blood sports and according to all the previews - 'there will be blood'!

'The Trumpeter' has proved all the experts wrong by slowly but surely shrinking 'HillBilly's lead in the polls to the point where she has demanded bitterly why she isn't 50 points ahead?  One senses that the lady (I use the term loosely) has an enormous feeling of entitlement.  After all, one suspects, her nose was mightily put out when that "uppity nigger" beat her to the job eight years ago and she sure as hell can't believe that a fairground barker like Trump could do the same.

'The Trumpeter', on the other hand, must surely find it difficult to believe his luck.  One suspects, with absolutely no evidence, that he probably never thought he would get this far.  He gives the appearance of being a spur-of-the-moment chancer who decided to throw the dice and to his own infinite surprise he rolled a pair of sixes.  No-one, not even the man himself, has the remotest idea what he will do if he gets the keys to the White House.  The experts (yes, them again!) believe he will act like a madman.  I'm not so sure.  When it comes to decision time I suspect (I hope?) he will be a great deal more circumspect than he appears.  One thing is for sure, other world leaders, particularly the enemies of America will be exceedingly careful before they attempt to provoke him.

I have made my decision.  'HillBilly' is a sick, corrupt, lazy, dishonest and stupid old woman who will extend the strangulating grip of the Leftist Democrat party into every nook and cranny of America.  She may only rule for four years (if she lives that long!) but if she picks the next Supreme Court Justice then the USA will follow a Leftist course for decades.  By contrast, 'The Trumpeter', whatever else he might or might not do, only needs to pick the right (or Right) Justice and America can breathe again.

 

Your Monday Funnies: 26.9.16

Not that I'm feeling particularly funny today because I have gone down with a raging sore throat and the beginnings of a head cold.  Frankly, I blame that bloody flu jab 'nursie' gave me last week!

The unrest began last Tuesday, when Al Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death would be cut by 25% this October, from  72 to 54.  A spokesman said increases in recent years in the number of suicide bombings has resulted in a shortage of virgins in the afterlife.          

The suicide bombers' union, aka the British Organisation of Occupational Martyrs  (B.O.O.M.), responded with a statement saying the move was unacceptable to its members and called for a strike vote.

General Secretary Abdullah Aloud Bang told the press, "Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of Jihad.  We don't ask for much in return, but to be treated like this is  like a kick in the teeth".

Speaking from his shed in Tipton in the West Midlands, Al Qaeda chief executive Aisheet Mapants explained, "I sympathise with our workers concerns, but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands.  They are simply not accepting the realities of modern-day Jihad in a competitive marketplace.  Thanks to Western depravity, there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife.  It's a straight choice between reducing expenditures or laying people off.  I don't like cutting benefits, but I'd hate to have to tell 3,000 of my staff that they won't be able to blow themselves up."

Spokespersons for the union in the Northeast of England, Ireland, Wales, and the  entire Australian continent, stated that the change would not hurt their membership as there are few virgins in their areas anyway.   

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Most seniors never get enough exercise.  

In His Wisdom God decreed that seniors become forgetful so they would have to search for their glasses, keys and other things thus doing more walking. And God looked down and saw that it was good. 

Then God saw there was another need. In His Wisdom He made seniors lose coordination so they would drop things requiring them to bend, reach & stretch.  And God looked down and saw that it was good. 

Then God considered the function of bladders and decided seniors would have additional calls of nature requiring more trips to the bathroom, thus providing more exercise. God looked down and saw that it was good. 

So if you find as you age, you are getting up and down more, remember it's God's will. It is all in your best interest even though you mutter under your breath. 

Nine Important Facts to Remember as You Grow Older

 #9 Death is the number 1 killer in the world.

 #8 Life is sexually transmitted.

 #7 Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

 #6 Men have 2 motivations: hunger and hanky-panky, and they can't tell them apart. If you see a gleam in his eyes, make him a sandwich.

 #5 Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.

 #4 Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing.

 #3 All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

 #2 In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.

 #1 Life is like a jar of jalapeno peppers. What you do today may be a burning issue tomorrow.

 

That's your lot, I am going for a lie down!

 

The Sunday Rumble: 25.9.16

100 not out:   Apologies for my absence yesterday but I had a rather important engagement.  The mother of one of our great friends celebrated her 100th birthday with a tea-party at a local hotel.  I am delighted to say that she was fit enough to make her way round most of the room unaided to great her many friends and family.  She has duly received a charming card from the Queen wishing her well.  It left me wondering whether I would want to live that long?  The jury's still out!

 

Trump will win, er, possibly, maybe:   Thus sayeth the man who has successfully predicted the outcome of every Presidential election since 1984.  Prof. Allan Lichtman, for 'tis he, is a politics swot who ignores opinion polls.  Instead he has a list of 13 key points and the candidate who successfully answers most of them is the winner.  In the current campaign, so far, neither candidate has scored a majority.  The WaPo has the details and it's worth reading.

 

Jolly good show, 'Jezza':   According to that 'very naughty boy', Guido, the congratulations are flooding into 'Jezza' after his magnificent win against the man with no name, no clout, no brains and no reputation.  Yes, already he has received praise from, er, well, Iran, Venezuela and the IRA in the less than delectable forms of Jerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.  Who could ask for anything more?

 

Naughty Donald!   Apparently, the no-good rascal is planning to bring Gennifer Flowers along to the TV debate with 'HillBilly'.  Indeed, rumour has it that he might hand over the podium to Bill's ex-plaything so the two ladies can compare notes.  Such fun!

 

Sorry, more Americana:   I have just read the latest column by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jnr, the founder and editor of The American Spectator, a magazine I subscribed to back in the '80s/'90s when it was a print mag.  At the time I was hugely impressed with the work of one of its young reporters, David Brock, who regularly sank his teeth into the Democrat party and drew blood.  Anyway, for some reason my subscription lapsed and it wasn't until much later that I rediscovered it on the internet.  I was shocked - no, I mean it, shocked! - to discover that Mr. Brock had changed suits and was now beavering for the Left-wing press mainly through an outfit called Media Matters for America, an outfit generously supported by George Soros, no less.  Well, we're all entitled to change our minds as we grow up, I suppose, especially if the money is bigger and better.

And yet ... and yet ... that naughty boy, Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge, has republished an article by Andrew Kerr of The Citizens Audit accusing Mr. Brock, in effect, of not only scamming money from people and organisations contributing voluntarily to a huge variety of pro-Clinton election organisations but also dodging the taxes on his earnings.  Read the entire article at Zero Hedge.

Meanwhile, back at The American 'Speccie', Brock's former boss, Mr. Tyrrell, has been provoked into resurrecting all those earlier  and carefully researched stories that Mr. Brock wrote before he turned his coat:

Yet, before David fell head over heels for Hillary and before he followed the money trail to Clinton Inc., his research pretty much agreed with that of the other AmSpec writers, to wit: David established in the 1990s that the Clintons have a long record of subverting the law, enriching themselves through criminal means, and following practices that are commonplace in Third World countries. Though these practices are rarely attempted in American cities larger than Gary, Indiana. David’s judgment back then was that Hillary was pretty much a career criminal.

[...]

It has all reminded me that many readers have forgotten David’s work and many more were not even born when the Clintons began their journey to the top of Democratic politics. So as a public service The American Spectator has reached back into its ample archives to bring our readers’ David’s earlier findings, and occasionally we shall even publish personal memoranda that David wrote to startled interns on our staff. These memorandums have apparently been long forgotten by him. This material will appear regularly here and may be used by the Clintons’ present political opponent, Donald Trump, free of charge. We expect that the FBI already has this material, but if our early work is helpful to them in any further investigations we are glad to oblige.

Simply too, too delicious!  Check in regularly to The American Spectator site to hear the song that David Brock was singing back then!

 

Ay, she's reet champion, that lass:   Sorry for my pathetic attempt at how they speak 'ooooop north' but I was trying to get across the pathos, bathos and sheer hilarity of the news in The Mail that the Labour party's shadow minister for domestic abuse, Ms. Sarah Champion, was once questioned by police for a violent attack on her then husband back in 2007.  Perhaps her advice for the ladies these days is just how to put in a really effective right hook! I wouldn't want to face her across the despatch box!

 

Beyond my understanding:   Well, there are quite a few things that fit under that cap but sheepdog handling is one of them!  I have just been watching "One Man and his Dog" on the BBC in which shepherds, and their dogs, chase a few sheep around a field to a carefully set pattern.  Sheep are, of course, the silliest creatures God ever invented and simply will not do as they are told.  Why the shepherds don't just shoot them and then throw them into the designated pens, I do not know.  I suppose that would make the kiddie-winkies cry and spoil the programme.  Anyway, it is sort of fascinating and how they do it is beyond me.

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

Charles Murray, chronicler of American times

I remember reading Charles Murray years ago when he co-authored a book, The Bell Curve, which went off like a stick of dynamite about racial intelligence differentials and the resulting class divisions in America  This was no racist rant, merely a long, cool look at the science which then followed the facts.  He has written several books since and the latest, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, has just been published.  He has been interviewed by Spiked-online and in the introduction, the interviewer puts it this way:

With the publication in 2012 of Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, political scientist Charles Murray – celebrated and denigrated in equal measure for his earlier works, Losing Ground (1984) and The Bell Curve (1994) – produced a searing, searching analysis of a nation cleaving along the lines of class, a nation, as he put it, ‘coming apart at the seams’. On the one side of this conflicted society, as Murray sees it, there is the intellectual or ‘cognitive’ elite, graduates of America’s leading universities, bound together through marriage and work, and clustered together in the same exclusive zipcodes, places such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Boston. In these communities of the likeminded, which Murray gives the fictional title of ‘Belmont’, the inhabitants share the same values, the same moral outlook, the same distinct sense of themselves as superior. And on the other side, there is the ‘new lower class’, the white Americans who left education with no more than a high-school diploma, who increasingly divorce among themselves, endure unemployment together, and are gathered in neighbourhoods that Murray gives the title of ‘Fishtown’ – inspired by an actual white, blue-collar neighbourhood of the same name in Philadelphia.

It is in Fishtown that the trends Murray identifies as the most damaging over the past 50 years – family breakdown, loss of employment, crime and a loss of social capital – are felt and experienced. Its inhabitants have a set of values (albeit threadbare ones), an outlook and a way of life that are entirely at odds with those from Belmont. And it is between these two almost entirely distinct moral communities, that the new Culture Wars now appear to be being fought. Sean Collins, spiked’s US correspondent, caught up with Murray to talk about the cultural drivers of this latent class conflict; how it plays into the rise of Trump; and what can be done about this dangerous division.

Like most sympathetic observers I have been horrified by what I have seen 'over there' during this presidential election.  In the maelstrom of current American society and politics, they have chosen, or perhaps had imposed upon them, two of the very worst candidates in my lifetime of 77 years.  It is the most bitter of outcomes that after eight years of a black President the outcome for most blacks is dire beyond belief.  And as described by Murray, the life of working class whites is no better.

Oddly enough, America today reminds me of the state of the British Labour party as it spins helplessly into destruction, and in both cases no solution seems possible.

 

Red dawn dying!

Were I a Labour man, which thank the Lord I'm not, sir, I would be weeping over two articles in this week's 'Speccie'.  Well, yes, you might say, but when is a Right-wing mag (or rag) like the 'Speccie' ever going to print good news about the Labour party?  That, of course, would be to deeply misunderstand the oldest and the 'bestest' weekly magazine in the world.  No-one understands and supports the mainly two-party, parliamentary democracy that has evolved in this ancient Isle better than the 'Speccie'.  To watch as one of these two parties spirals out of control and into destruction is to gaze into a potentially dangerous situation.

In any event, one of the two writers, Nick Cohen, is as socialist as anyone could wish but he is in despair.

English Conservatives and Scottish Nationalists do not wake at 3 a.m., drenched in sweat, worrying about how they can defeat Jeremy Corbyn. Like a drunk who punches his own face, Corbyn beats himself, leaving Labour’s rivals free to do what they will. For English leftists, however, trying to salvage what they can from the wreckage of their party, the apparently simple question of how to take on the far left appears impossible to answer.

Please note that deadly phrase - "leaving Labour’s rivals free to do what they will" - for there-in lies the danger for all of us, Right, Left and Centre.  Parliamentary democracy absolutely and utterly depends on the concept of 'a loyal opposition'.  Nick Cohen admits that the Labour party has been taken and ransacked.  It is now the plaything for juvenile Marxists to indulge their wildest dreams - and dreams do not come wilder!

Utopias are always banal. Corbyn’s Utopia allows his supporters to wallow in the warmth of self-righteousness. They want to end austerity. Stop greed. Bring peace. How they do it is not their concern. Practicalities are dangerous. They take you away from utopia and back into the messy, Blairite realm of compromises and second-bests.

Anyone who knows history knows that utopianism can justify viciousness. By his supporters’ reasoning, leftists who are against Corbyn must be in favour of poverty, greed and war. All tactics are justified in the struggle against such monsters.

For them, achievement is not the purpose, it is the never-ending struggle that is the be-all of their political lives.  In another analysis of Labour's woes, James Forsyth points to the slow but inevitable political death of what might be called Labour's 'Band of Brothers', the beleaguered moderate, social democrat MPs.  The Marxist-Momentum cabals have already identified them and it is only a matter of time before they are hunted down and, er, eliminated.

Alarmingly for the moderates, the party could be beyond saving by 2020. Even the Parliamentary Labour Party, a bastion against Corbynism, could be pushed hard to the left at the next election. Candidate selection will enable Momentum and co. to oust some of their most determined foes. But if boundary changes go through ahead of the next election, the purge could go far further than that.

All of that leaves the parliamentary field free for the Tories to indulge themselves, a state of affairs with which I am not comfortable.  Quite where and how a new, functioning opposition party will arise is beyond me but, even worse, it seems to be beyond the wit and wisdom of experienced observers like Cohen and Forsyth.

 

Look, just **** off, alright?

Yes, you're right, I'm 'Mr. Grumpy' this morning and it's all the fault of my old ex-best friend, Bill Gates.  Last night, he and 'Microsoft-in-the-head' decided to up-grade my computer-thingie.  It took several hours out of my fast disappearing life.  I even thought of 'phoning my IT Manager (aka: SoD) but all I ever get from him is something along the lines of 'I told you all about that the last time', honestly, it is so difficult to get the staff these days!  Anyway, having twiddled my fingers and read the papers - I might even have had time to read 'War and Peace'! - it looks as thought things are back to normal. 

So, back to the title of this grumpy post.  I suspect that several of you - you know who you are! -  have replaced my asterisks with letters of your own spelling out a very rude word.  You are all very naughty boys and girls because you should know that such crudities would never appear in these distinguished columns.  The fact is that I am sick and tired and bored and grumpy of reading and hearing about The Great British **** Off - see, I can't even bring myself to type the wretched word!  The media have been going on and on and on again about this eye-stabbingly boring TV programme.  I mean, seriously, does anyone give a flying you-know-what about which person produces the best cakes?  And who, of those of you residing outside of a dementia home, loses a moment's sleep because the wretched waste of space is moving from the BBC to a TV channel designed for the living dead?  And do any of you really, really care which of the totally unknown - well, unknown to me! - presenters goes along with the programme or walks out?

Yes, well, that gets that off my chest, I think I'll take my meds and go and have a lie down now!

 

Futile gestures - #7,593

In the history of warfare the number of futile gestures must be enormous.  Usually, we try to forget them but, thanks to the film industry, we are to be reminded of one of them from WWII.  Anthropoid was the code name given to the SOE operation which led to the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the SS ruler of Czechoslovakia in May 1942.

It is difficult to be critical of it because the men involved showed enormous courage but even so the whole disaster smacks of 'something must be done!', nearly always a recipe for disaster.  True, Heydrich was a sub-human monster of Hitlerian evil but his assassination led to a massacre in which around 13,000 innocent people were arrested and about 5,000 of them executed.  Included in the butcher's bill was the entire village of Lidice, men, women and children.  Part of the momentum for this operation came from the exiled Czech government of Edvard Beneš who were, apparently, keen to show their allies that Czechoslovakia and its people were, so to speak, 'fighting the good fight'.  Or, in other words, it was politics not strategy that drove this avoidable disaster.

Today's politicians would do well to study Operation Android, in which the Law of Unintended Consequences is writ large, before they embark on military adventures.

 

Thank God I'm not religious!

And yes, I am aware of the irony in my title!  Even so, 'I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any religion'.  Nor have I ever entertained a belief in God, even from my childhood days.  Not, I hasten to add, because I actively resisted the notion but simply because I never believed a word of it.  Frankly, I blame the church!

Perhaps I should explain what has provoked these, admittedly fairly commonplace, non-beliefs.  Yesterday I spotted a headline to the effect that the current Pope, an even more useless holder of the office than some of the dimwits who preceded him, has pushed through by underhand means a change to Catholic rules and regulations whereby divorcees and re-marrieds may now take full part in Catholic ceremonies.  No doubt the progressive wing of the Catholic church is celebrating but I couldn't help wondering what God thought about it.  I mean, He went to all that trouble, even sending his own Son down to earth to lay down the ground rules, and yet up pops this Pope to change the rules - again - because Popes are always changing the rules!

It reminded me of the most depressing book I ever (half) read called The History of Christian Thought by Jonathan Hill.  It tells the story of what happened after the death of Jesus, a man (or Son of God, perhaps) who, it seemed to me, laid down a very decent and sensible list of suggestions as to how to conduct one's life through this 'vale of tears'.  Within a few decades the first of a long list of know-it-all upstarts, like the people who run marketing departments in every big company, came along with innovative changes to improve the product and the message.  Of course, the particular 'big company' concerned was the Christian Church which provided jobs, careers, money and power - so what's not to like?!  Alas, it also led to boardroom rows, splits in the parent company, new start-ups, competition and dog, literally, ate dog.

I have no idea if God exists or not.  The mystery of how things originated, let alone why, is quite beyond me.  However, one thing is certain, He must be mightily pissed off at the way His church is run.  Time for a few heavenly thunderbolts, I feel!

 

 

‘We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language’

Darling Oscar, such a dear boy!  But he was dead right as this telephone conversation indicates:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/19/woman-has-hilarious-response-when-she-calls-barnstaple-police-bu/

Crikey, you couldn't make them up!

"A Nazi, a Fascist, a Communist, a Novelist, a Countrywoman, a Duchess"

That is the heading to a book review by Tina Brown written for the NYT.  The book itself, written by Lara Thompson, is a combined biography of - who else? - the Mitford sisters.  I only have a vague general knowledge of all of them and I do remember wondering years ago if they were actually the invention of some 20th century novelist.  Not so, you couldn't make them up!

The Mitford sisters (and, second from left, brother) in Oxfordshire, 1935.CreditThe Illustrated London News Picture Library, London, UK, via Bridgeman Images

They were all the off-spring of Lord and Lady Redesdale and they should stand as a warning to any wealthy American matrons eager to mix the genes of their sons with those of the British aristocracy!  To be fair to the 'gals', dear old Daddy was as thick as a plank, so much so that he couldn't even get into Eton and failed the entrance exam for Sandhurst - for which the British army should be eternally grateful!

Unity Mitford obviously inherited her father's, er, intellectual abilities by falling in love with Hitler:

[Lara] Thompson is especially good at rescuing poor, half-baked Unity from one-dimensional derision. ­Hyper-romantic, desperate for self-­definition, far less clever than her sisters, Unity in Thompson’s portrait is the kind of girl who today might be the target of a recruiter for ISIS. She had the blond locks and cornflower-blue eyes of all the Mitfords, but she was big-boned and clumsy and pathologically naïve. In July 1934, when Ernst Röhm was dragged from his bed and shot on Hitler’s orders and a hundred other officers executed in the Night of the Long Knives, Unity wrote to Diana, “I am so terribly sorry for the Führer — you know Röhm was his oldest comrade and friend.” Thompson movingly describes what Unity’s life became after the war began and she tried to blow her brains out in a Munich park. She returned to England with the bullet still lodged in her skull — a garrulous, incontinent, overgrown child, cared for till death by her increasingly desperate mother.

Perhaps her sister Diana gave Unity an example to follow by falling in love with Britain's very own, pathetic imitation of the Führer, the late and less than great, Oswald Mosley.  However, Jessica Mitford, displaying typical Mitford individuality, turned Left not Right and joined the communist party before moving to America where she became something of an iconoclast with the honour of have been subpoenaed by Sen. McCarthy.

Nancy Mitford was relatively sedate, earning a good reputation as a novelist and historian.  Her sister, Pamela, was even more sedate having the good sense to marry, and then divorce, a millionaire before spending the rest of her life in the country with a lady companion.

The last Mitford 'gal' was Deborah and I once had the pleasure of 'meeting' her.  Oh alright, not actually 'meeting her' but watching her working away re-potting garden plants for the grounds of Chatsworth.

By Rob Bendall, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6804943

Truly one of the most beautiful houses in Britain and restored to its former glories by the sheer hard work over decades of Deborah Mitford who had married the 11th Duke of Devonshire.  Because of their combined efforts it is now a thriving tourist attraction.

Those Mitford 'gals' - what a collection!

 

Your Monday Funnies: 19.9.16

"Ho-ho, ho-ho, it's off to work we go", well you lot have to but us old retirees just turn over in bed!  Still, here are some funnies to cheer you up:

A State Trooper pulled an 87 yr old woman over for speeding. As he looked at her drivers license he was surprised to notice that attached to it was a conceal weapon permit. Taken aback, he couldn't help but ask if she had a gun in her possession.

She replied in her crackly voice that she indeed did have a 45 automatic in her glove compartment.

The trooper then asked if she had any other weapons to which she replied that she also had a 9mm Glock in her center console.

The shocked trooper asked if that was all and the little old lady held up her purse and replied, "Well, I do keep a 38 special in my purse."

Finally the astonished trooper asked, "What are you afraid of..? The little old lady smiled and replied,     "Not a f******g thing."

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A guy walked into a crowded bar, waving his un-holstered pistol and yelled, "I have a 45 calibre Colt 1911 with a seven round magazine plus one in the chamber, and I want to know who's been sleeping with my wife."

A voice from the back of the room called out,  "You need more ammo!”

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Some good advice for us oldies:

I'm not saying let's go kill all the stupid people. I'm just saying let's remove all the warning labels and let the problem work itself out.

I changed my car horn to gunshot sounds. People move out of the way much faster now.

You can tell a lot about a woman's mood just by her hands. If they are holding a gun, she's probably very unhappy.

You know that tingly little feeling you get when you really like someone you've just met? That's common sense leaving your body.

I don't like making plans for the day. Because then the word "premeditated" gets thrown around in the courtroom.

I didn't make it to the gym today. That makes 1,500 days in a row.

I decided to change calling the bathroom the John and renamed it the Jim. I feel so much better saying I went to the Jim this morning.

Dear paranoid people who check behind shower curtains for murderers: If you find one, what's your plan?

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Some 'quickies' and all in the worst possible taste:

A man and a woman started to have sex in the middle of a dark forest. After about 15 minutes of it, the man finally gets up and says, "Damn, I wish I had a flashlight!". The woman says, "Me too, you've been eating grass for the past ten minutes!"

........................................

An old man and an old lady are getting ready for bed one night when all of a sudden the woman bursts out of the bathroom, flings open her robe and yells "Super Pussy!" The old man says "I'll have the soup."

.......................................

A redhead tells her blonde best friend, "I slept with a Brazilian...."
The blonde replies, "Oh my God! You slut! How many is a brazilian?"

........................................

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather.. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

........................................

I find it ironic that the colours red, white and blue stand for freedom until they are flashing behind you.

OK, that's it, the boss just came in!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 18.9.16

Another Potemkin village:  In this modern age Russian leaders, unlike their 18th century predecessors such as Prince Potemkin, no longer build fake villages to disguise the slum reality but old habits die hard.  Thus, today we have the Russian general election which should, of course, be called the Russian re-election because the result is a foregone conclusion.  Say what you like about the Barnum & Bailey circus that is the American election but at least it is what it purports to be, a free choice for the voters.  I would offer you a link to the story but none of the 'prints' are even bothering to report on it.

 

I stand, sort of, ready to do my duty:   News today that 44% of single Japanese ladies between the ages of 18 to 34 are virgins.  I know, shockin', shockin', but as a proper English gent I am poised to do my duty if and when called upon and surely it can only be a matter of time before the summons arrives.

 

Perhaps the il-Lib-non-Dems aren't all bad:   I make that tentative suggestion because the chairman of the Cheltenham branch  - yes, Cheltenham! - has suggested that young 'gals' leaving school should consider sex work as a possible career move.  Well, I used to do the same as I drove slowly past Sherborne 'gals' school as the young 'fillies' came out, well, I used to until the local constabulary warned me off!

 

Mayor 'de Blathero' is a prat:   I refer, of course, to 'Hizzoner' Mayor Bill de Blasio of 'Noo Yawk' who insists that an exploding bomb device which wounded 29 people, plus another which failed to go off, were deliberate acts but neither of them had any connection to terrorism.  Oh, I see, your Honour, ya mean it was just a sort of joke!  Where do they find these people?!

 

This is the house that 'Jaques' built:   The other woman in my life - but don't tell the 'Memsahib'! - is, of course, Ms. Janet Daly and today in The Telegraph she eviscerates the unbelievably stupid, bordering on insane, activities of 'Junck the Drunk' and his fellow Brussels apparatchiks.  No doubt over the next couple of years our governmental Brexiteers will make their fair share of errors of judgment but they will be as nothing compared to the folies de grandeur likely to be perpetrated by the fanatical 'Junck the Drunk'.  Reading it, and perhaps confusing 'Junck' with 'Jaques' (Delors) who preceded him, I kept thinking of that old British nursery rhyme This Is the House that Jack Built:

This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the rat that ate the malt

That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cat that killed the rat

That ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the dog that worried the cat

That killed the rat that ate the malt

That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cow with the crumpled horn

That tossed the dog that worried the cat

That killed the rat that ate the malt

That lay in the house that Jack built.

And so on and on, check Wiki for the full text.

 

China heading for velly big crash:   And alas, when it happens the collateral damage will be immense.  Like most of you, I guess, I know virtually nothing about global economics but everything I read gives me the 'heebie-jeebies'.  I have mentioned before, 'many a time and oft'', that I do not believe a single statistic issued by the Chinese government.  However, as A E-P points out in The Telegraph, we should take note of the alarum bells ringing, the klaxon sirens hooting and the red flags being hoisted by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS).

China has failed to curb excesses in its credit system and faces mounting risks of a full-blown banking crisis, according to early warning indicators released by the world’s top financial watchdog.

A key gauge of credit vulnerability is now three times over the danger threshold and has continued to deteriorate, despite pledges by Chinese premier Li Keqiang to wean the economy off debt-driven growth before it is too late.

The Bank for International Settlements warned in its quarterly report that China’s "credit to GDP gap" has reached 30.1, the highest to date and in a different league altogether from any other major country tracked by the institution. It is also significantly higher than the scores in East Asia's speculative boom on 1997 or in the US subprime bubble before the Lehman crisis.

The miraculous increase in prosperity for 'zillions' or ordinary Chinese has been pumped up by lax credit controls.  The Communist Party of China is in sole charge and if that 'prosperity' vanishes - so will it - and it will not be pretty!

 

Dave's final 'obit' from Peter Hitchens:  

So, Mr Slippery has finally slipped away, just before he was found out. I wish David Cameron lots of money in his future life, so much of it that he at last begins to wonder if that is what he really wanted.  But can we pause for a moment and ask how it was that this charming but pointless person rose to such prominence in our country?

Ouch! I can't go on but you can if you want to!

 

Oh dear, 'quelle domage', never mind!   I haven't looked at Der Spiegel for some time but today I honoured them with a visit!  If we Brits might face some problems during our Brexit, it is nothing compared to what the 'Euros' will suffer:

In 2015, the study found, Britain was in second place [in net payments into the EU budget]: The British paid 12.7 billion euros more than they got back from the EU. By comparison, Germany paid 15.6 billion. The paper also determined that the British paid more into the EU per capita than Germany did that year. "After this country's withdrawal from the EU, this net amount will have to be redistributed among the other member states," writes CEP report author Matthias Kullas. "The other major net payers -- especially Germany, France and Italy -- will be facing significant additional costs."

Poor old 'Junck the Drunk' might have to start paying for his own drinks! 

 

No more rumbles today

 

So, not all bad, then, that Sarkozy

Write a blog for too long and you will find yourself typing words that you never thought possible.  For example, what an intelligent man that Nicolas Sarkozy is, well, in some things at least.  Brenden O'Neill over at The Coffee House provides one example of Sarkozy's intelligence - and courage! - by reporting the Hungarian dwarf's remarks on anthropological global warming, the new religion de notre temps.

In the speech he said, ‘People [talk] a lot about climate change… but the climate has been changing for the past 4.5 billion years. Man is not the sole cause of this change.’ He then said something that struck me as reasonable but which is apparently mental and unutterable: ‘Sahara has become a desert — [that] isn’t because of industry.’

Cue the sight of red-hot pokers being warmed up and ancient torture chambers being re-opened in the Bastille because to the eyeball-swivelling, mouth-dribbling fanatiques of the global warming religion this was outrageous heresy.

The former leader of the French Green Party, Emmanuelle Cosse, said his remarks were ‘hallucinatory’ — anyone who questions the climate-change creed must be on drugs, right? They went ‘beyond the limits of decency’, she said.

Calm down, dear, yes, the ghastly little man has said and done some awful things in his time but this isn't one of them.  In fact, just the opposite, it's the truth!

Farewell then, Edward Albee, although I thought you had gone years ago

Yes, alas and alack, I heard on the news that Edward Albee has died which surprised me because I assumed he had gone some time ago.  I once had the pleasure - at least, I think it was a pleasure - of acting in his most famous play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.  I remember reading the script because I knew it was coming up at one of my 'AmDram' groups but I really had my eye on another production elsewhere.  In any case, having read the script I remember closing the book with relief and thanking God that I would never have to meet those four ghastly people ever again!  Needless to say, I failed to get the part I wanted in the other production - just another example of an idiot director who failed to spot my outstanding talent - I know, shockin', shockin'!  So, with less than bubbling enthusiasm I went for the role of George in Edward Albee's grim tale almost sort of hoping I wouldn't get it - but I did!

The story is simple.  George is a middle-aged professor at an old East Coast college married to Martha who is the daughter of the college president.  It becomes very clear very quickly that these two are locked in a state of continual marital warfare.  It is evening and they arrive home accompanied by a young couple, Nick, a biology professor and his even younger wife, Honey.  They have all been drinking and that continues non-stop throughout the evening.  Part of the brilliance of the play is that it complies with the three unities of theatre, that is, there is only one plot line, one location (the living room) and theatre time is the same as real time.  To add power to our particular production, the director chose to play it in traverse, that is, the audience were seated either side of the acting area so that we, the players, became like insects scuttling round at the bottom of a petri dish. (This is why the film version with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, ideally cast as George and Martha, never worked because moving the cameras in and out and roundabout destroyed the concentrated tension.)

The characters are all, in one way or another, appalling people who in their increasingly drunken state begin to tear psychological strips off each other.  The tension builds and builds until, in the final few moments, George and Martha sit together, wounded and exhausted, on a settee and he quietly and gently sings to her, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf", a joke on the famous Disney song, and after a small pause, she replies "I am, George ... I am" and the play ends.

It's tough stuff but a very great play.

 

"The Watchman" - Channel 4 TV

So, as I may have mentioned before, but not more than 3,826 times, I have a recording-thingie attached to my 'telly' and a 'do-flicker-recording-thingie' to control and operate it.  As night after night goes by without a single thing to watch you can bet your bottom dollar that when something worthwhile is showing we will be out, or visitors will arrive, so my 'do-flicker-recording-thingie' has become very precious to me - and yes, I know, it's very sad!

Needless to say, me being me, I have ended up with page after page of recorded programmes which, somehow, in some way, I never quite get round to watching.  Anyway, as I may have mentioned before, a couple of weeks ago I spotted that the film "Shakespeare in Love" was on but way past my bedtime.  Now, I know that I have seen that film at least 11 times to the point where I find myself mouthing the lines but I love it so I picked up my 'do-flicker-thingie' - only to discover that it wasn't working! To cut a long, tedious tale short, the inevitable was that I had get an expert in - the usual kid who looked about 141/2 years old and who fixed it in under half a minute - and then charged me 30 quid for the call out!  You know sometimes I hate all this capitalism!

Anyway, I thought the least I could do to make myself feel less grumpy was to actually watch one of the films I had recorded.  I sat down and clicked on "The Watchman" - don't ask me why! - first shown on Channel 4.  It was terrific!  It showed one evening in the life of a security guard monitoring the cctv-room that covered a city centre.  He was obviously a fairly decent bloke trying to do a decent job but that particular night things spiralled out of control.  It was such a simple story but it had me on the edge of my seat - not least because of the performance by Stephen Graham as the watchman.  He is one of those actors whose face is sort of familiar because he keeps popping up in all sorts of films, both here and, rather surprisingly, 'over there' but you probably wouldn't remember his name.  He is a superb actor and the film is a 'must see'.

Oh, and by the way, having checked through my recordings list I see that I already have 'Shakespeare in Love' recorded - and the film version of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" recorded twice over.  Yeeeeees, quite!

 

Eeny meeny miny mo, Hinkley Point will have a go

Honestly, that sexy Theresa is such a tease!  First it's a 'yes', then it's a 'no', then it's 'maybe' and now it's 'yes' again.  Meanwhile the nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point are reaching boiling point and the danger of imminent and premature ejaculation is high!  The French are racing round in circles unsure as to whether to shout about les méchants Anglais or sing 'God Save the Queen'!  They'd like l' argent, of course, but they also wonder whether the cheque will bounce when things go wrong - and they will definitely and absolutely go wrong because they always do, dear!  Meanwhile, the Chinese do what they do best and remain inscrutable!  Actually, that's not really true because they are the noisiest, most temperamental people on earth but these national images are hard to remove.

To be honest, this blog, as most of you know, has an almost never-ending stock of opinions on absolutely everything but, on the rights and wrongs, the ups and downs, the ifs, buts and maybes of the Hinkley Point nuclear power station, alas, this blog is struck dumb, er, mainly because it is dumb!  I have listened to several 'wiseacres' on the radio this morning arguing for and against and all I can do is turn slow circles with unfocused eyes and my mouth hanging open with a huge question mark hovering overhead.  I do have some genuine sympathy for those forced to take a final decision and I thank the Lord it is not me.  The only certainty is that it will be the wrong decision!

Still, there is one shaft of sunlight piercing the gloom, I'll probably be dead before the final bill is presented so the ghostly chuckle you youngsters will eventually hear will emanate from me!

 

Let's hear it for Diego Chelonoidis hoodensis!

What a man - oooops, sorry, I mean, what a Tortoise!  Diego 'Studboy' Chelonoidus was practically the last giant tortoise on the Galapagos but, at the miraculous age of over a hundred, he has fathered some 800 off-spring and thereby saved his species.  According to the report on France24:

Diego weighs about 80 kilograms (175 pounds), is nearly 90 centimeters (35 inches) long and 1.5 meters (five feet) tall if he really stretches his legs and neck.

Alas, certain other, er, critical dimensions are not vouchsafed but I think his productivity speaks for itself.

Little did scientists realize just how effective he was, until six years ago.

"We did a genetic study and we discovered that he was the father of nearly 40 percent of the offspring released into the wild on Espanola," Tapia told AFP.

I may have to fly over to the Galapagos and have a quiet word with Diego and try to learn the secret of his success.  The 'Memsahib' once gave me some little blue pills and assured me they would do the trick but they never worked.  It was only later that I learned from my pharmacist that they were indigestion tablets!

 

Naughty Miss Lionel

I refer, of course, to Ms. Lionel Shriver, the lady writer who, like many of us, took a decision when she was 15 years old but, unlike most of us, she stuck to it!  She was actually baptised as Margaret Ann but being a bit of a tomboy she insisted on Lionel and has stuck to it ever since.  (I know, I know, women . . . but then she was from North Carolina and I am assured by my e-pal, 'Whiters', that in NC 'the men are men and the women are double-breasted' - or something like that!)  Anyway, the lady went on to college, lived for a time in Nairobi, Bangkok and, er, well, Belfast, actually.  During the course of a busy life she married a jazz drummer and taught metalsmithing - yeeeees, quite! Oh, and she also wrote several books which have been received very well.

Actually, as I mentioned a little while back, I am in the process of reading her latest book, called, with sly humour, The Mandibles.  This concerns the Mandible family of several generations who now find themselves struggling, or perhaps fighting, for survival in a dystopian USA in which the economy has collapsed.  It is a sign of her wicked wit that her family are called the Mandibles because, of course, a mandible is the lower jaw of an insect used for crushing its prey in order to feed.

At this point I must confess.  I am enjoying the book enormously but, alas, I have been 'got at' and that has made my reading of it somewhat disjointed and because it has a large cast of characters it is not easy to pick up the threads.  Part of my interruptions have been as a result of an elderly relative requiring hospital and care home facilities and as her nearest relatives we have been involved, but also, 'SoD' stuck his oar in and insisted that I read a new 'interpretation' of the battle of Waterloo which is interesting but told in excruciating detail.  (Honestly, you have no idea what I have to put up with!)

Anyway, the sparky, spikey Ms. Shriver has popped up in the august columns of Her Majesty's Daily Telegraph' where it is reported that a gathering of the high-minded literati were shocked, I tell you, shocked at her suggestion that it was perfectly alright for writers to 'appropriate' the language of minorities and use them in novels and plays.  Actually, this conference of 'the Great and the Good' in literary circles took place 'down under there' and it came as a shock to me that anyone in Australia could be shocked by anything - well, except losing the Ashes, or something:

Shriver, author of 'We Need To Talk About Kevin', which was turned into a 2011 film starring Tilda Swinton, was invited to the Brisbane Writers Festival to speak about fiction and identity politics.

But instead of delivering a mild address, her speech so shocked the organisers that they censored her on the festival website and publicly disavowed her remarks – hastily arranging a conference to rebut her views.

Come on, mate, get the smelling salts over here double quick! 

One woman accosted Shriver outside the hall, and shouted: “How dare you come to my country and offend our minorities?” The author said that the woman had clearly not actually heard her speech, which made no mention of Australian minorities.

She told The Telegraph: "I am dumbfounded at the stir these views have caused, because I would have thought my position self-evidently valid.

"If you do not allow fiction writers to write from the perspective of people different from themselves, there is no fiction.  Only, as noted in the speech, memoir."

Honestly, she's nearly as shocking as that awful Shakespeare who invented all those Welsh, Scots and Irish soldiers in Henry V and proceeded to make fun of them.  He has much to answer for as, of course, does Ms. Shriver.  Even so, it is nice to know that 'Lady Bracknell' is alive and well and living in Brisbane - whodathunkit?!

 

You can't beat a good Jewish joke

And this one is hilarious!  See, there was this grizzled old Left-wing agitator who had spent decades as a Member of Parliament slagging off Israel and the Jews - ooops, sorry, that should read 'zionists' because of course there is absolutely not a scintilla of proof that he and his comrades are even the teeniest-weeniest bit anti-Semitic, oh dear me no, wouldn't dream of it!

Anyway, in our delightfully British, fair play way, every so often a bunch of civil servants come along and decide to re-arrange the geography of the parliamentary constituencies because, dammit, the 'People' (dread word!) will keep moving around and after a while some constituencies grow and others shrink and it is important to try and keep them more or less equal in numbers.

Today our beloved old Leftie has by now, due to the inherent and inbred stupidity of the Labour party, risen to become its less than glorious leader.  Hitherto, he has 'adorned', if that is quite the right word, the seat of Islington North, an absolute bastion of politically correct Left wing gobbledegook dogma and has sailed home comfortably in election after election.  Alas, after these boundary changes are introduced he will be contesting a new seat to be called 'Finsbury Park & Stoke Newington' and guess what!  This new seat, according to Guido:

... will take in the ward of Stamford Hill West in Hackney. Stamford Hill West forms part of a 30,000 strong Orthodox Jewish community. 37.6% of people living Stamford Hill West identify as Jewish.

Well, good luck with that one, Jezza, perhaps you should drop all that Marxist claptrap and take a quick course in Talmudic studies!

 

So farewell then, Dave, you were decent but wrong!

And so, as the sun sinks in the west, we bid farewell to 'Dim Dave'!  Of course, when I describe him as 'decent' I use the word in a political context just as you might describe a departing pimp as 'decent' simply because at least he never kicked his tarts.  Dave was a politician, and to be honest, I don't really want my politicians to be too 'decent'. After all, politics is one of the nastier trades and as the fate of my country is in the hands of whoever is prime minister you want someone who is a bit 'street wise'.

The problem Dave had was his lack of political judgment due in no small part to his OE/Oxbridge background.  He was always impeccably polite but he had that impenetrable air of inherent superiority which rendered him unable to sense the feelings of the 'great unwashed'.  This led him to misunderstand the mood of the country in regard to Europe and brought about his downfall.  Also, alas, he severely misjudged the (non)abilities of his Chancellor - I was tempted to write  'his chancer'!  Osborne should have been sacked years earlier but the old toff network held firm.

Even so, at least he has had the good grace to go - and go early.  He was dead right to intimate that given the early signs of the direction to be pursued by Mrs. May, life would have been impossible for him as a backbench MP.  Only an egotistical Jock dimwit like 'ur wee Gordie' would choose to hang around in those circumstances.  So farewell, Dave, you weren't bad but you weren't much good either!

ADDITIONAL:  But James Kirkup in The Telegraph is scathing!

 

Your riddle of the day

Right, children, sit up straight and see if you can answer your riddle of the day.  How many brain cells are there inside the Labour party leadership?  Come along now, the answer is obvious - none, and that's 'none' as in 'zero', 'zilch' and 'bugger all'!  Just consider for a moment, the Labour party leader, Mr. Jeremy Corbyn - yeeeeees, quite, not exactly 'brain of Britain' material, is he?  But then think on the man standing against him for the leadership of the party, Mr. Owen 'Oily' Smith, who has just announced that despite the majority will of the British public expressed in the recent referendum to leave the EU, he will lead us straight back in, but not just back in, but back in even further, all the way to the Schengen Treaty and its open borders policy.  Golly-gosh, that's smart politics!

Then yesterday we had the delightful sight and sound of Ms. Emily Thornberry MP and Shadow Foreign Secretary being interviewed on Sky News and unable to name the French Foreign Minister.  Why am I not surprised?  After all this immensely stupid woman was the one who, during an election campaign, 'slagged off' a 'White Van Man' who had Union flags hanging from his windows.  Another example of 'smart politics'.  In addition yesterday, she suggested that they should talk about 'really, really' important things like the situation in North Korea but was then unable to name the President of South Korea and appeared not to know that the President is a woman.  Needless to say, Guido has the video.

Where, oh where, do they find these people?

 

 

Your Monday Funnies: 12.9.16

"Hey-ho, hey-ho, it's off to work YOU go" whilst I shuffle around in retirement squalor pleasing myself.  But, being generous, here are a few 'funnies' to cheer you up:

 

Last week, I took my grandchildren to a restaurant. My eight-year-old grandson asked if he could say grace. As we bowed our heads he said, "God is good, God is great. Thank you for the food, and I would thank you even more if Grandpa gets us ice cream for dessert. And liberty and justice for all! Amen!"

Along with the laughter from the other customers nearby, I heard a woman remark, "That's what's wrong with this country. Kids today don't even know how to pray. Asking God for ice cream! Why I never!"

Hearing this, my grandson burst into tears and asked me, "Did I do it wrong? Is God mad at me?" So after I assured him that he had done a terrific job and that God was certainly not mad at him, an elderly gentleman approached the table. He winked at my grandson and said, "I happen to know that God thought that was a great prayer."

"Really?" my grandson asked.

"Cross my heart," the man replied. Then, in a theatrical whisper, he added (indicating the woman whose remark had started this whole thing), "Too bad she never asks God for ice cream. A little ice cream is sometimes good for the soul."

Naturally, I bought my grandchildren ice cream at the end of the meal. My grandson stared at his ice cream for a moment, and then he did something I will remember the rest of my life. He picked up his sundae and, without a word, walked over and placed it In front of the woman.

With a big smile he told her: "Here, this is for you. Shove it up your ass, you grouchy old bitch!"

Kind of brings tears to your eyes, doesn't it?

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 A man died and went to Heaven. As he stood in front of the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him.

He asked, 'What are all those clocks?'

St. Peter answered, 'Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone who has ever been on earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie, the hands on your clock move.'

'Oh', said the man. 'Whose clock is that?'

‘'That's Mother Teresa's', replied St. Peter. 'The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie.’

'Incredible', said the man. 'And whose clock is that one?'

St. Peter responded, 'That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abraham told only two lies in his entire life.'

'Where's Hilary Clinton's clock?' asked the man.

St Peter replied, 'Jesus has it in his office. He uses it as a ceiling fan.’

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Back on January 9th, a group of HELLS ANGELS, South Carolina bikers were riding east on Highway 378 when they saw a girl about to jump off the Pee Dee River Bridge. So they stopped.

Bill, their leader, a big burly man of 53, gets off his Harley, walks through a group of gawkers, past the State Trooper who was trying to talk her down off the railing, and says, "Hey Baby . . . whatcha doin' up there on that railin'?"

She says tearfully, "I'm going to commit suicide!!" While he didn't want to appear "sensitive,"

Bill also didn't want to miss this "be-a-legend" opportunity either so he asked . . . . "Well, before you jump, Honey-Babe . . . why don't you give ol' Bill here your best last kiss?"

So, with no hesitation at all, she leaned back over the railing and did just that . . . and it was a long, deep, lingering kiss followed immediately by another even better one.

After they breathlessly finished, Bill gets a big thumbs-up approval from his biker-buddies, the onlookers, and even the State Trooper, and then says, "Wow! That was the best kiss I have ever had! That's a real talent you're wasting there, Sugar Shorts. You could be famous if you rode with me. Why are you committing suicide?"

"My parents don't like me dressing up like a girl." 

It's still unclear whether she jumped or was pushed.

 

That's your lot, back to the coalface!

 

The Sunday Rumble: 9.11.16

Sorry, sorry, sorry and all that:  I am conscious, as maybe some of you regulars are as well, that this blog has been slightly hit 'n' miss recently.  Of course, this is partly due to my inherent idleness and my strong belief that one should never do anything today that can be put off until tomorrow!  Even so, there have been some additional factors, not least the travails of an elderly - and she's even older than me so that qualifies her - relative who was taken ill during a visit here and had to be rushed to a local hospital and who has now been taken into a local care home.  This has involved constant visits and entanglements with hospital and social service authorities.  My energy levels, never of the highest even in the best of times, have been somewhat depleted. 'SoD' and his lovely 'bouncing Czech' have been brilliant in helping us get the old lady's belongings from London down to here as she settles into her new 'home'.  Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it but I hope life will calm down a bit from now on.

 

'St. Theresa' fights the good fight:   Yes, dammit, I know that sooner or later things will go wrong, they always do, but a couple of months into her 'reign' and Prime Minister May seems to be pressing all the right buttons.  Her latest move to spread the availability of Grammar Schools is excellent.  What a pity Michael Gove MP, one of the best former Education Secretaries in years, blotted his copy book so badly that he couldn't be re-appointed.  Still, at least we have rid ourselves of that dim, dumb Nicky Morgan MP who has been returned to her appropriate place - bottom of the class!

 

Will the Tory party split?   The last time the Tory party split in a spectacular way was in the 1840s when Prime Minister Peel drove through the repeal of the Corn Laws.  Roughly half the party wished to maintain protection for British landowners, whilst the other half wanted cheap food for the people.  Today we read that Liam Fox MP, one of 'The Three Brexiteers', has been lambasting British industry for rank idleness when it comes to exporting but already whiny Tory MPs are bleating about protection for British industry.  Liam Fox is dead right, as Fraser Nelson points out in The Coffee House quoting these deplorable statistics: "UK exports are a pitiful 27pc of GDP, the lowest figure in Europe. The EU average is 43 per cent."  It will be no good having the freedom of Brexit unless we use it!

 

Oh no, a new MS upgrade:   I have just been advised by my NBF (new best friend), Bill, that he is going to offer me "a bolder, smarter Outlook.com".  Of course, Bill, being American, I am not sure whether "smarter" means more clever or just better dressed, so to speak.  However, what I do know with sinking certainty is that it will take me a month of Sundays to work out how to use it.

 

Where do they find these people?   I mean people like Chief Constable 'Dave' Thompson of the West Midlands police force who, I suspect, should be rapidly sectioned for mental health reasons not just for his own good but for the good of the people of the West Midlands.  This is the total prat who has decided that his female police officers should be free to wear the niquab, the Islamic full facial mask, if they so decide.  So tell me, dear reader, how will you behave as you stagger out of your local and are stopped by something that looks like a Dalek demanding you breathe into a bag?  Yeeeeees, quite!

 

They do things differently 'over there':   You can say that again!  In the UNITED States of America - who sniggered? - it appears to be perfectly reasonable for one of the two candidates vying for the presidency to suggest that millions of American citizens should be dumped in a basket labelled "Deplorables" because they are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it".  The final clause, of course, invites anyone and everyone to think up some even more vicious insults.  If she wins - and yes, it was her - how long do you suppose the United States will remain, er, united?

 

But in the end, truth will out:   And it has certainly come out in full TV view today as 'HillBilly' nearly passes out, stumbles to her car and loses her shoe in the process of leaving the 9/11 memorial service.  Even the WaPo correspondent who has constantly dismissed suspicions concerning her health as a Republican plot now admits that her health is an election issue. 

  

No more rumbles today

 

"The point of precedency between a louse and a flea"

God knows, as you do, too, the sheer number of hours I devote to staying abreast of political events in order to keep you all fully briefed and up to date but, I must confess, there are limits.  Last night's debate between Owen Corbyn and Jeremy Smith, ooops, sorry, I mean Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith was a stretch too far.  I have been suffering recently with fatigue attacks and the thought of sitting in front of my 'telly' listening to those two brought on a massive, near fatal, feeling of extreme lethargy so I went to bed!

This morning, waking up feeling exceedingly refreshed but slightly ashamed of my earlier cowardice in the face of extreme boredom, I did at least read John McTernan's report in The Telegraph.  It confirmed my worst fears!  Apparently this 'snorefest' reached new lows in soporific stupidity.  It is a measure of Jezza's stupidity that, according to Mr. McTernan, that silly little twerp, 'Oily' Smith, actually won by a mile.  If, like me, you know next to nothing of Smith's political philosophy let me tell you, courtesy of Guido, that amongst them is his intention to march us straight back into the EU, irrespective of any tiresome details like, say, a referendum result!  As for 'Jezza', his solution to the problem of Islamic extremism is simple - and I do mean 'simple'! - he would rely on "anti-racism" and "community cohesion".  Yeeeees, quite!

If, as is probable - the world being the way it is - the government of 'St. Theresa of May' makes mistakes, cocks up, does something daft, then before having them taken out and metaphorically shot at the next election - just contemplate the alternative!

 

David Davis will face a 'Euro-fanny'

At the risk of sending 'SoD' up into space where he will bombard me with doom 'n' gloom comments about Brexit, I bring you all good news.  'Junck the Drunk' and his fellow cronies have appointed some Belgian Euro-fanatic to lead the Brexit negotiations.  This prime specimen from the Brussels apparat has spent years greasing his way up the Euro pole never losing any chance of pushing 'The Project' further and further.  It speaks volumes that he joined the Spinelli Group named after the Italian communist, Altiero Spinelli, one of the founders of the EU.  'Junck the Drunk', whose influence will grow as Merkel's declines, will urge Guy Verhofstadt, not that he needs much encouragement, to take an ultra tough line against any and all British negotiating points.

Why would that be good news, you might ask?  The answer is obvious, the more obdurate the Euro-fanatics become, the more convinced the British people will be that they took the right decision to get out of this racket.  Another thing to look forward to will be the fact that the British team will be led by David Davis MP, ex-SAS and a determined Brexiteer for years. 

"There will be blood"!

 

Gotta just lurve that 'Speccie'

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the writer of this blog - er, that's me! - is not an original thinker.  Well, after 11 years of pontificating, meandering and straightforward hacking it should be obvious!  Lest you doubt me here's another example, stolen without shame from this week's Spectator.  I never thought the 'Speccie' would ever replace the late, great Auberon Waugh but they managed it with the incomparable Rod Liddle, a man, like his predecessor, who approaches every topic from a unique angle.

This week, Mr. Liddle turned his sharp gaze upon the subject of the reptilian, Mr. Anjem Choudary.  For the benefit of my foreign readers, this ghastly, creepy man is a British-Asian, Islamic fanatic devoted to praising the works of ISIL and encouraging others of similar ilk to do their best to follow the instructions of that organisation.  I stress the fact that he encourages others because, of course, the snivelling coward would never dare to take action himself.

 

After several years of putting up with this obnoxious man, the authorities finally decided to 'feel his collar' and after a trial at the Old Bailey he has been sentenced to five and a half years, a sentence which most of the media think was decidedly too easy.

However, as the astute Rod Liddle points out, Choudary has not actually done anything!  As he puts it, in his inimitable style:

Mr Choudary and his pet halfwit have received their sentences largely, I think, for wishing the complete destruction of western civilisation. I too yearn for this from time to time, such as when I am forced to contemplate a semi-naked Keith Vaz instructing his Slavic rent boys to ‘Treat me like a bitch!’ or whenever I see or hear or smell Labour’s shadow Brexit minister, Emily Thornberry. Wishing for the destruction of an entire civilisation simply on account of these two porky weasels, or because Justin Welby has said something fatuous again, is of course a grotesque overreaction. But we all overreact from time to time. I remember my wife, whom I mentioned earlier, remark while watching an edition of Question Time featuring the comedian Eddie Izzard: ‘Christ help us, please let’s move to Russia.’ That was an overreaction, too.

Quite so!  I have lost track of the number of times during the dismal 'reign' of 'Dave 'n' George' when I have wished a sinkhole to appear in the English Channel and swallow up the entire country, men, women, and especially, the 'kiddie-winkies'!  Part of Choudary's 'crime' was to encourage like-minded Islamists to take themselves off to the Middle East and join the fight.  Like Mr. Liddle, I join that plea - the more of them that bugger off the better!

If Choudary’s injunction had been followed by the, what is it, ten or 15 per cent of British Muslims who approved of 9/11, Isis, the Taleban etc, it would have been the greatest contribution to internal British security since the Emperor Hadrian decided to do a spot of bricklaying. I’d have given Choudary a medal.

It was claimed that Choudary had encouraged Islamists in Britain to, in effect, practice a bit of head-chopping before they departed but according to Mr. Liddle there wasn't much in the way of evidence.  According to the 'Cocklecarrot' presiding over the court, Choudary had been insufficiently vocal in condemning the activities of militant Muslims.  Does that mean we all have to attend a public meeting once a week to denounce Islamic barbarism in order to prove what upright British chaps and chapettes we are?  I think not!

Anyway, buy yourself a copy of the world's oldest and 'bestest' weekly magazine - or better still, take out a subscription, or I might come round and chop your head off!

 

From Russia with love!

In my opinion - "an ill-favoured thing, Sir, but mine own" - one of the very best commentators around at the moment is Peter Hitchens, brother of the late Christopher Hitchens.  Unsurprisingly, they share an ability to espouse surprising opinions which at first glance are something of a shock.  Even so, Peter is well worth reading (which you can do every Sunday in The Mail) because his knowledge and literary eloquence will give you pause before your long-cherished likes or dislikes.

Take Russia, for example.  There are a number of places which I would pay good money to avoid and Russia is one of them.  It's not that I dislike the Russian people because the fact is that I have never met any of them except very much at second-hand via the plays of Anton Chekhov.  Mind you, that's enough to set the alarm bells ringing!  And it's not just because they have perpetrated massive crimes against others, as well as themselves,  after all most great nations, including our own, have blood dripping from their escutcheons.  Even so, in my mind's eye, the whole wretched country reeks of death and blood and misery with not much in the way of mitigating virtues.

But that was before I read Peter Hitchens at his very best in an essay at what appears to be a Christian site called First Things.  He does not blink at nor evade the horror that is Russia but he does set it in an historical context.  Even more important, he corrects the impression of Russia as being a sort of USSR Mk. II.  He reminds us that in fact Russia has shrunk considerably.  He does not attempt to paint Putin as anything other than a thug but reminds us that in global terms he is somewhat puny.

It is obvious from his eloquence that he has an enormous liking, bordering on love, for the Russian people.  I'm not sure he has totally convinced me but he has certainly given me pause.  I urge you all to read the entire article.

ADDITIONAL:  Sorry, sorry, sorry - my bad!  And grateful thanks to Bob (see below) for pointing out my error in providing you all with the wrong link above which only provides background to a detail in Hitchens' article but this is the proper link to his essay which I would urge you to read:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/10/the-cold-war-is-over

 

 

Me no likee Chinese mandarins

I often wonder what good comes out of all those huge international 'gabfests' apart from all the hot air inflating the egos of those concerned.  I suppose that the most one can say is that from time to time you get a glimpse of the reality behind the polite grimaces smiles of the international Great and Good (and the not so good, and the bad, and the downright evil).

For example, there were a couple of small incidents aimed at the Americans when Chinese officials suddenly erupted into shouty fury and insisting that 'this was their country!'  By the small things shall you know them!  The Communist Party of China is a massive, corrupt, self-perpetuating criminal mob with delusions of grandeur, not too dissimilar from Hitler's old gang.  I do understand that the Chinese nation has a history of 'cruel and unusual punishment' meted out to them over the centuries by other nations but they should also recognise that part of their former weakness arose from their own corrupt and useless leaders.  Also, they should recognise that perhaps the greatest single cruelty inflicted on them was from the 'beloved' Chairman Mao!

Anyway, it is now clear that there is an extreme element of nationalism rife throughout the Chinese government which will soon be seeking means to express itself, almost certainly beginning in the South China Sea.  It is a sobering thought that the next POTUS will either be an ignorant, loudmouthed buffoon or a sick, corrupt, old lady, both of whom are at risk of facing criminal indictments.  My advice to the American people - Oi! I heard that! - is that they should spend some time studying the pros and cons of the vice-presidential candidates!

Meanwhile, the rest of should consider laying in supplies!

 

 

What a pity he missed the Downing Street bus

I actually sat and watched parliament in action yesterday afternoon on the 'telly'.  Yes, I know, sad, isn't it?  Needless to say, the 'Memsahib' was not happy but I was interested ('fascinated' is not quite the word) because David Davis MP, our chief Brexiteer, was making a statement and answering questions.  It confirmed my suspicion that it was a disaster when, years ago, he made an awful and inept speech to the Tory party conference and thus allowed that Old Etonian smoothie, David Cameron, to slither into the leadership and then become prime minister.

No one can be absolutely sure just how good, or bad, a leader can be until he or she gets the job.  Even so, I admired Davis back then and I think he was wasted on the backbenches during the misbegotten reign of 'Dave 'n' George'.  His performance yesterday as the minister in charge of an eye-wateringly complicated brief was masterly.  Should (and I have no reason - yet! - to think it) 'St. Theresa of May' stray from the direct path to Brexit then I suspect that Mr. Davis will be a formidable obstacle and he has an ugly enforcer by his side in the form of Mr. Liam Fox MP.

Let us hope that they can all remain allies with a single aim not least because those wily Europeans will seize on any discord!

ADDITIONAL:  Should any of you political nerds, with not much of a social life like me, be tuning into the parliament channel today you might spot a sticky glistening trail across the floor of the House.  This was produced by Keith 'Slitherene' Vaz as he finally resigned from his Commons Committee.  Now, alas, we will have to wait a few years before the good people of Leicester pour slug pellets all over him at the next election.

Your Monday Funnies: 5.9.16

In a break with tradition, this distinguished blog has decided to begin this week's 'Funnies' not with the usual witty, sophisticated jokes - sorry, did you say something? - but with a cartoon which has been shamelessly stolen borrowed with much gratitude from Guido - where-else?

I couldn't have put it better myself - well done Guido! 

Now, back to the 'Funnies' and again this week I can offer you a pot-pourri of some of the very finest one-liners to be had anywhere - and I'll ignore that remark!

 

Due to the current economic crisis, Greece is cancelling the production of all Humus and Taramasalata. It's a double dip recession.

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63 Pakistanis died in Bradford this morning. It was not a terrorist attack, a bunk bed collapsed… The police are blaming AL IKEA .

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Jamie Oliver has been accused of shoplifting a kitchen utensil from Tesco. Oliver says it was a whisk he was prepared to take.

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Police stopped a Pakistani in his transit van on the motorway Policeman says "Do you know the limit is 70?"  The driver leans into the back and says: "Hear that........3 of you have got to get out!"

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Paddy & Mick stagger out of the zoo with blood pouring from them.. "Bollocks to that" said Paddy "That's the last time I go lion dancing

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My mate just hired an Eastern European cleaner, took her 15 hours to hoover the house.  Turns out she was a Slovak.

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Since the snow came, all the wife has done is look through the window.  If it gets any worse, I'll have to let her in.

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I've been charged with murder for killing a man with sandpaper.  To be honest I only intended to rough him up a bit.

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Seven wheelchair athletes have been banned from the Paralympics after they tested positive for WD40.

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Just a reminder to those who stole Electrical Goods in Last Year's Riots...... Your One Year Manufacturer's Warranty Runs Out Soon

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Two Indian junkies accidentally snorted curry powder instead of cocaine. Both are in hospital...... One's in a korma....... The other's got a dodgy tikka

........................................................

In the first few days of the Olympics, eastern Europeans took gold, silver, bronze, copper & lead.

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An Englishman has started his own business in Afghanistan.  He is making Land Mines that look like prayer mats!  It's doing well!  Prophets are going through the roof!

 

The Sunday Rumble: 4.9.16

There is a God!   So I suppose it is entirely appropriate that the Good News arrived on a Sunday!  There is nothing quite like the sight of a truly obnoxious politician tripping over his dick and falling headfirst into a bucket of brown stuff.  And when the politician concerned is of Olympic standard obnoxiousness, like Keith Vaz MP, then let the celebrations begin!

Caught out like so many before him, by those deeply unlovely, dandruff-ridden hacks of 'Fleet Street' indulging himself with male prostitutes and drugs.  So farewell then, Keith, don't think it's been fun knowing you because it hasn't! 

 

Vill ze Kaiserin get a jackboot in ze bum?   Yes, sorry for my imperfect German but today there are local elections in Frau Merkel's constituency and the indications are that her party vill be shot will be given a smack.  I do hope so because it will be yet another piece of falling masonry indicating that the European castle is about to collapse.

 

Be afraid, be very afraid if 'HillBilly' wins:   The woman is unfit to run a corner shop!  She forgets the name of a US ambassador murdered in Libya, she loses countless mobile 'phones containing sensitive information, she lies about everything because that is her default position, she withheld 17,500 e-mails from an investigation, she can never remember anything and she is arrogant and stupid.  Trump may be bad but is she any better?

 

For Goodness sake, Lewis, put your foot down!   Look, I know my  titchy, 10-year old Toyota isn't much but even with that I could have got off the grid at Monza quicker than Lewis Hamilton did today!  I'm grumpy because these days I don't have too many sporting heroes to worship, in fact, I don't think I have any!  But I do have a soft spot for Lewis Hamilton.  He's black-English, he's eccentric and he's a terrific racer.  Today, for the 'umpteenth' time he was left wallowing on the grid despite have thrashed everyone else to gain pole position.  Now he's only two points ahead of that sulky-looking Hun who drives the other Mercedes.  Come on, Lewis, do buck up, your country expects and all that!

 

Two truly great headlines:   I am indebted to Mr. Thomas Lifson of The American Thinker for telling us of two utterly memorable headlines.  Alas, being a Brit I never had the chance to read the originals but now that I know of them I will never forget them.  The first was from The New York Post in 1983 following a particularly horrible crime that had just been committed:

"HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR"

That, I would suggest, deserves a Pulitzer prize!  But another, equally brilliant headline was published just this week in The Washington Times:

"Time to take the keys away from Granny Clinton!"

Dammit, if I bash out this blog for another ten years I would never think of such an inventive, witty and deadly accurate heading.

 

And talking of Grannies past their sell-by date:   The Kaiserin's party - in her own constituency (see above) - was duly squidged in the election today finishing third!  Next up are some Italian elections, followed by the French and then there will be German national elections and one by one these mad, one-eyed, European fanatics will fall.  The result will be catastrophic for Europe but they have brought it upon themselves.

 

No more rumbles today

 

Where there's a Will, there's a way - either right or wrong!

It's the start of the theatrical Autumn season with new productions opening everywhere, including many by Master Will Shakespeare.  The reviews, so far, have made me groan!  That well-known married couple, Mr. Gregory Doran and Mrs. Anthony Sher (or it could be the other way round, of course) have united, yet again, as director and lead actor following two seasons of Henry IV Part I followed by Part II and this year in Will's greatest play, King Lear.  I know that Doran is chief honcho at the RSC these days but is anyone raising any eyebrows at the blatant favouritism by which he chooses his wife/husband for the leading role?  I saw one of the 'Henries' in a 'cinecast' and I'm afraid to say that Sher as that rogering, roisterous womaniser, Falstaff, was a disappointment so I didn't bother watching the second part.

Even so, because Lear is such a gigantic masterpiece I was tempted to try and see it - but then I read some of the reviews!  Of course, the metropolitan critics raved in synchronised rhythm (as they do these days since the late, great Bernard Levin departed) although some of their asides made me wonder.  But, of course, what finished it for me was the news that, as per usual, the RSC had the requisite number of 'stat blacks' in the cast, including one of Lear's daughters!  Before some deranged 'Leftie' charges in with accusations of racism, let me make it quite clear that I would be happy to watch an all-black production of King Lear, but if one of the daughters was white I would instantly lose that absolutely necessary suspension of disbelief required by any audience watching a theatrical production.

Think about it!  Theatre productions are, so to speak, unbelievable.  All those people pretending to be other people, "strutting their hour upon the stage" and asking us, the audience, to take it seriously.  And we do, most of the time, because we suspend our innate disbelief.  It is only on those occasions, when a production or some performances are so bad, that the veil is torn and we see things that defy belief.  King Lear, which is set in pre-Christian times, having one black daughter out of three is just such an example.

Next, the fabulous world of 'luvviedum' is going to ask us to watch Glenda Jackson play the lead role in King Lear, or perhaps that should be 'Queen Lear'.  Now let me remind you that years ago she was superb playing Queen Elizabeth I on TV so she certainly knows how to do the regal stuff!  But, the fact is that Lear is hugely, massively masculine as well as being incredibly stupid in a way that very few women would ever be.  I'm not saying she will fail - I wouldn't dare! - but I would be reluctant to fork out the price of a ticket at Stratford just on the chance!

I have some more to say on the subject of Shakespeare productions, including some of the 'clangers' I have dropped in my time but you will have to wait for those pearls of wisdom - who snorted? - because life is a tad hectic round here at the moment.

 

Let's hear it for three latter-day saints

Today, as the prints are reminding us, is the first anniversary of the death of Alan Kurdi.  Who the hell was he, you ask, not unreasonably?  I didn't know either but this image produces instant recall:

He, of course, was the little boy whose dead body was carried ashore by a Turkish policeman after the boat that was carrying him and his refugee family was capsized and washed ashore.  The image shot round the world with predictable results.  Most of us groaned inwardly, not just out of pity but at the certain, helpless knowledge that there was absolutely sweet FA that we could do about it.

But not all of us!

Step forward and take a bow to thunderous applause, Mr. Bob Geldorf, Ms. Yvette Cooper, MP and wife of Ed Balls, and Mr. Stan Collymore, erstwhile football-kicker and now loud-mouthed commentator.

Whilst the rest of us groaned and grimaced at our helplessness in the face of monstrous cruelty, these three latter-day saints actually did something.  Er, well, they said they would do something.  They all offered to take in at least one refugee into their homes.  So, a year later, how did that all work out?

Not too well, according to that down-at-heel, dandruff-ridden doubter of 'Fleet Street, Mr. James Rothwell in today's Telegraph.  When approached and asked to confirm that they had followed through on their public pledges, positive replies came there none!  Not one!  Not even a maybe!  In other words, they are a trio of prancing, preening do-gooders who do absolutely no good whatsoever.  Thus, whenever any of these publicity-seekers makes an appearance they should be met with a barrage of rotten veg and cries of "Show us your willy", er, well, perhaps not Mrs. Balls!

However, let us hear some genuine applause for Ms. Helen Pidd, a journalist with the Guardian (yeeeees, quite!) who made good on her promise and took in to her home a Syrian refugee.  Well done, that lady!

 

18 good reasons to vote for 'The Donald'

It was only with extreme reluctance that I changed my mind - yet again, and again, and even, again again - and decided that my entirely theoretical vote in the forthcoming Presidential Handicap Race would go to Trump.  The clincher, for me, was that I would rather have a Supreme Court topped up with a Trump candidate than a Clinton one.  However, courtesy of The American Thinker, I now have an additional eighteen more excellent reasons to support 'The Donald'

Below is a list of American 'slebs' who have sworn to flee from "The Land of the Free" if 'that man' ever gets into the White House.  Now, I confess, I am not a expert on 'slebdom' but any list that includes the name of Al Sharpton can only be disgusting and rotten and therefor America will only be improved by their absence.  So 'bring it on', as they say 'over there'.

• Lena Dunham
• Samuel L. Jackson
• Miley Cyrus
• Cher
• Jon Stewart
• Raven Symone
• Natasha Lyonne
• Omari Hardwick
• Spike Lee
• Chloë Sevigny
• Eddie Griffin
• George Lopez
• Al Sharpton
• Neve Campbell
• Rosie O'Donnell
• Whoopi Goldberg
• Chelsea Handler
• Barbra Streisand

The only problem is that some of them might end up 'over here' - dread thought!

 

Our edukashun servis has produced kiddie-winkie doktors

Never mind the National Health Service, just contemplate the Education Service which produced the university degree doctors who are now planning to kill us!  Alright, maybe not all of them but a hefty minority of allegedly higher-educated junior doctors are planning to strike for five continuous days each month.  James Kirkup in The Telegraph spells out the important details:

The BMA [British Medical Association, allegedly the 'elders and betters' of the Junior Doctors!] endorsed the contract, but its members did not: 58 per cent rejected it. 

Or rather, 58 per cent of the 37,000 who voted did. That's 21,500 or so, well under half of all juniors. [My emphasis]

And even they weren't voting explicitly for a five day strike. In fact, they weren't voting for any sort of industrial action: the vote was on the contract, not how doctors should respond to it.  

It's a detail but an important one: the BMA isn't calling the five-day strike on the basis of the vote to reject the revised contract. The legal basis for action is a ballot of members on the original contract. A contract that doesn't exist any more.  

Of course, amongst that minority of dim-witted junior doctors there is an even tinier minority of exceedingly malignant but clever operators who place political action far above the welfare of their patients.  To those so-called 'doctors', their patients are simply "useful idiots" - now who conjured that phrase originally? - to be used in furtherance of their political aims.  People in pain, people in trauma, people in danger of dying will be wilfully ignored and left to suffer.  For example, junior 'doctors' working in A&E will simply march past those needing care and treatment and head out doors to man their picket lines.

If you ever doubted it, now you know for sure that moral philosophy, or even good old-fashioned morality, plays no part in the education of the young these days.  At which point it is worth considering the older generation, that is, the senior consultants and the Grand Panjandrums who run that old, trade union closed shop, the British Medical Association.  James Kirkup again:

Then there are the seniors, the consultants. It's an under-written story that some (that word again) consultants encouraged and even incited the earlier strikes. Why? Surely not because their contracts will soon be revised and they want to soften ministers up first? I'm sure that's true of only a very few of them. 

I wouldn't be so sure of that!  Perhaps it is time to consider striking off any junior doctor who joins this attack - I use the word carefully - on the sick and the needy.  Apart from anything else, it might cleanse the ranks of the medical profession.