DUFF & NONSENSE!

An away day Wednesday

Yes, Darlings, I'm away tomorrow, up in London to visit the theatre and see one of the great heavyweight fights of all time between George and Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  As I may have mentioned, but no more than 286 times, I once played George and ever since my performance has been spoken of in hushed whispers, er, so hushed, in fact, I never heard them!

 

Just for you, Miss Mayfly!

At the behest of 'Miss Mayfly', a regular commenter here at D&N, I have managed to track down the superb article written by Mick Brown for The Telegraph on the subject of Sir Tom Stoppard.  Alas, it is now behind a paywall but happily I saved it when I read it and here it is in full.  It was the very least I could do for my friend, Miss Mayfly, who has on several occasions in the past pulled my theatrical nuts from the fire!

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Playwright Sir Tom Stoppard speaks to The Telegraph ahead of the 50th-anniversary revival of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead about his battle with writer's block, his third marriage to heiress Sabrina Guinness and the play that propelled him to stardom

For the past few weeks Tom Stoppard has been attending rehearsals for the revival of  his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead – starring Daniel Radcliffe, Joshua McGuire and David Haig – at the Old Vic. 

It is 50 years since the play opened for the  first time at this very same theatre, making Stoppard, at 29, the youngest dramatist ever  to have a play performed at the National  Theatre (based at that time at the Old Vic),  and launching a career that would see him  rise to become one of the most acclaimed  playwrights of the modern age.

Stoppard has a reputation for reticence. As  a young man, before he was a playwright, he worked as a journalist for a newspaper in Bristol, but he could never quite believe in  his right to ask people personal questions –  ‘I always expected them to throw a teapot at me or call the police.’ And  it can seem that he is no more comfortable answering them.

The humorist Miles Kington once wrote a play in which Stoppard failed to turn up for an interview arranged to take place at his own home. But he is a man of enormous courtesy and consideration. Where, he asks, when we speak on the telephone, should we meet? A room at the Old Vic, or somewhere more congenial? Somewhere more congenial…

He phones back later that day. He has been scouting around, and there is a small restaurant next door to  the theatre, where he has booked a table. I arrive to discover he has  specified the quietest corner of the restaurant: the manager has virtually cordoned it off. As we sit down, Stoppard gestures across the room.

Stoppard's big break

In 1967, he says, this was a pub; on the opening night of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard and his then wife, Jose, left their seats in the stalls during the interval and came in here, sitting in a booth against the wall, drinking brandies – ‘Brandies!’ He laughs. (As if he could afford them!) – missing the second half of the play altogether.

They returned to the theatre after the curtain had come down, to learn the play had been a triumph. Reviewing it a few days later, Harold Hobson, the Sunday Times theatre critic, hailed it as ‘the most important event in the British  professional theatre’ since Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, nine years earlier.

A brilliant theatrical conceit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead tells the story of Hamlet through two of the play’s minor characters, friends and courtiers of the prince. 

Stoppard takes up where Shakespeare leaves off. In his play, the pair appear onstage  when they are offstage in Hamlet, speaking in  colloquial English, with the exception of a few short scenes in which the dramatic events of both plays coincide and the text returns to the original Shakespearean.

‘We do onstage things that are supposed to happen off,’ says the character of the Player. ‘Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.’

Unaware of the drama taking shape around them, which will ultimately determine their own destinies, the pair engage in absurdist conversation about chance, life, death and  eternity (‘A terrible thought. I mean, where’s  it going to end?’).

‘A young man’s play,’ Stoppard observes  now. But one that established his template of dazzling language, erudition and intellectual high jinks. ‘But what’s it about?’ a reporter once asked Stoppard – who has always been notoriously reluctant to submit to any definitive interpretation of his work. ‘It’s about to make me very rich,’ he reportedly joked.

(And he was right. Ten years after it opened, his agent at the time, Kenneth Ewing, estimated that with its runs in London, on Broadway – where it won a Tony award – and in Germany, Scandinavia and Japan, along with the proceeds from film  rights and book sales, the play had made Stoppard about £300,000 – the equivalent of £3.5 million in today’s money.)

‘One simply has to observe,’ he now says, ‘that the play has been done continually for  50 years. Why is that? It’s not because people have an avid interest in a fictional society at Elsinore. Therefore, you step to one side of it and you look at it and you say to yourself, well it seems to be a play about two people who are told very little about what’s going on; most of what they are told is lies; and they end up dead without knowing how it happened.’

So, the human condition in a nutshell? He gives a faint smile. ‘Yeah...’ He orders sausage and mash, and a glass of wine – which will remain untouched throughout the meal.

Three years ago Stoppard was married for the third time, to Sabrina Guinness. He sold his flat in Chelsea and they bought a house in Dorset, where they now live, keeping her old flat in Notting Hill as a pied-à-terre, where Stoppard is staying tonight.

This is a busy time. As well as preparing for the opening of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, he has just seen an acclaimed revival of Travesties, his 1974 play about Lenin, Tristan Tzara and James Joyce in Vienna in 1917, transferred to the West End, and has lately been in America  overseeing the production of his most recent play, The Hard Problem, which opened in London in 2015.

All well and good, but as he puts it, he is ‘too busy being the playwright to actually write a play’ – a frustration that will become more apparent later in the conversation.  In his younger years, Stoppard’s appearance was often described as Byronic: the thick head of dark, untamed hair, the fleshy lips, the fondness for flowing overcoats, the passing resemblance to Mick Jagger.

The hair is now grey and thinning, but no more tamed, the demeanour venerable Oxbridge philosophy don, the manner genial. Whatever his reservations about giving interviews, he is none the less anxious to make the best of it.

‘I have nothing for you except yesterday’s mashed potatoes,’ he says at one point,  glancing at his plate with an apologetic shrug, as if he is letting the side down. Stoppard is a genuinely modest man. He was born Tomáš Straüssler, in Zlín, Czechoslovakia. His father, Eugen, was a doctor working for the local Bata shoe company. 

From Singapore to Yorkshire

In 1939, when Stoppard was 18 months old,  the company arranged for the family to flee to Singapore in the face of the coming Nazi occupation. After three years they were forced to flee again, this time from the invading Japanese. The young Tomáš, his mother, Martha, and  his elder brother Petr (now Peter) managed to escape.

Dr Straüssler stayed on, intending to follow. It was only later that the family learnt that he had been killed when the boat on which he was leaving was bombed by the Japanese.

(Stoppard’s family history has a way of revealing itself in instalments: he had always known that at least one of his grandparents was Jewish, but it was not until he was in his 50s, following the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, that he learnt from a relative that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish and had perished in concentration camps, along with  three of his mother’s sisters.)

From Singapore, the family made their way to India, eventually settling in the hill station of Darjeeling – ‘a lost domain of uninterrupted happiness’, as Stoppard would later remember it.

In 1946, his mother married an English Army officer, Major Kenneth Stoppard, and the  following year, with the coming of Indian  independence, the family moved to England, settling in Derbyshire.

Stoppard was sent as  a boarder to Pocklington School in Yorkshire, where he excelled in cricket, was only average academically, and was often bullied. He left school at the age of 17, with ambitions to become a journalist, joining the Western Daily Press in Bristol as a junior reporter.

He harboured the usual fantasies of being  a war correspondent, but he came to love the parochial round of local-news reporting – ‘the glamour of flashing a press card at flower shows’ – as well as writing humorous columns and reviewing plays and films.

Becoming a playwright

His passion for theatre was ignited by seeing a young Peter O’Toole performing at the Bristol Old Vic, and by the revolution in theatre driven by a younger generation of playwrights, John Osborne foremost among them. 

He wrote his first stage play,  A Walk on the Water, in 1960 (it was eventually televised in 1963) and wrote short pieces for radio before finally establishing himself with Rosencrantz  and Guildenstern Are Dead.

‘It’s perceived as an overnight alteration in my life,’ he says. ‘And in one sense, that’s so. But I’d been at it in one way or another for seven years, so it wasn’t overnight for me.’  As to whether he expected that it would still be being performed 50 years later, that is another matter.

‘I would never have put the question to myself so nakedly. But on the other hand, I was always thinking that to be a good writer entailed the next 1,000 years. Failure was always certain, but that was the deal.

‘When I was starting off, the idea of having a play performed at the Old Vic was simply beyond one’s dreams. And then when I found myself a few years later at the back of a theatre watching my play, looking around, it came to me as some form of revelation that that thing which I thought could only happen to truly extra-ordinary people – extraordinary writers and so on – it came to me that actually it happens to people like me. And it completely altered some perspective I had on who I was, in  a rather healthy way.

‘It was to do with understanding that I didn’t actually need to be some sort of freak to be good enough for this to happen to me; I could just be what I was. And then you begin to realise that in every department of private and public life there’s a shortfall between the individual identity and the perception about what sort of person should be occupying that space in the world.

'You need to actually meet somebody and know them a little bit to get their dimension right, because until you do so they have almost a fictitious dimension.’ He laughs. ‘What it comes down to is that finding a good president is just as hard as finding a good plumber.’

In earlier years, Stoppard was fond of quoting a line from Christopher Hampton’s play  The Philanthropist: ‘I am a man of absolutely  no convictions, or at least I think I am’; and he has spoken of how one thing that attracted him to writing plays was the opportunity it presented to debate two sides of any argument.

‘Writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself.’ He admits he has never been a playwright who was much  interested in ‘character with a capital K and psychology with a capital S’; rather, a playwright interested in ideas, who has been ‘forced to invent characters to express those ideas’.

It was a truism that his characters tend to speak much as he does, with the same cadences and  sentence structures (conversely, it is striking  how much Stoppard speaks like a character  in one of his plays). As he once put it, ‘When  I write an African president into a play [as he did in Night and Day], I have to contrive to  have him the only African president who speaks like me.’

Thatcher, politics and Harold Pinter

While other playwrights of his generation were engaging in politicking and polemic, Stoppard was always more concerned with employing dazzling language and wit to explore philosophical and moral concepts: Jumpers (1972) was a farce that considered the existence of God; Night and Day (1978), an exploration of journalistic ethics; Arcadia (1993), a country-house comedy that moved between Regency England and the present day, touching on classicism, sexual desire, chaos theory and landscape gardening.

His most recent play, The Hard Problem (2015), is a study of consciousness and ethics. You came out of a Stoppard play feeling not bullied or badgered  but inspired and elated – and feeling much cleverer than when you  went in.  He has never been a man of the Left, describing himself as ‘conservative with a small c’ – ‘a conservative in politics, literature, education and theatre’.

He spoke of his admiration for Thatcher in her early years as Prime Minister. In Night and Day he attacked the closed shop, and  later described himself as ‘gung-ho for Wapping’, prompting Harold Pinter to come to his defence, saying ‘not everyone who votes Conservative in England is representative of an Evil Empire’. 

 Despite their political differences, Stoppard and Pinter were good friends. Among other things, they shared a passion for cricket, Stoppard often turning out for Pinter’s team of literary chums.

Pinter had a long-standing association with the Comedy Theatre in London. The story goes that some years ago, before Pinter’s death, when plans to change the name  to the Harold Pinter Theatre threatened to fall through, Stoppard  suggested to Pinter (whose plays are not known for being a barrel of laughs) that he should change his name instead to Harold Comedy.  

'My life as a grown up began rather late'

In the mid-1970s, Stoppard became actively involved in human-rights issues, particularly the plight of Soviet dissidents. In 1977 he visited the Soviet Union and met with Andrei Sakharov, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist and human-rights advocate.

He also returned to his native Czechoslovakia for the first time since 1939, where he befriended the playwright Václav Havel (later the country’s president), who would be imprisoned for his political views. He wrote influential articles supporting the newly formed Czech Charter 77, and plays for the stage and television – notably Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Professional Foul (both 1977) – dramatising the issue of human rights.

In 2013, he was awarded the  PEN Pinter Prize for his work opposing  abuses of human rights.  ‘For most of my life as a grown-up, which began rather late,’ he says, ‘I have had very  firm ideas and convictions about free societies in apposition to unfree societies of different kinds. 

‘There’s no question in my mind that the idea of the autonomously  free individual is how human beings ought to be living. And there is no  ideology remotely persuasive enough to convert me away from such  a view.’

At the time that he was visiting Russia and Czeschoslovakia in the late 1970s, he says, he would trot out ‘my Christmas-cracker mantra, which was that the things that appalled one about Britain were abuses of the system, whereas in other ideologies – and I was talking about communism at the time – they represented the system in good  working order’.

He says that in Travesties there is not a phrase that he has Lenin saying that did not come from a book, speech or article that Lenin himself wrote. ‘And it gets a strange laugh in the theatre when he says that everybody will be free to write, say and think whatever they like – and then there’s a big “but”.’ He smiles.

‘And it turns out that everything ethical, honourable and permissible is defined by the tenets of Bolshevism. One can say things, and indeed write constitutions, whether in the Soviet constitution or the American constitution, that would be a model for any country if they were effected to the letter.

'But it seems that you can reduce it to human nature or to social reality and a fundamental urge to power, and these wonderful words leave a lot of room for interpretation to preserve and reinforce the status quo – of the haves.’ His stepfather, Major Stoppard, was a man who believed ‘that to have been born an Englishman was to have drawn first prize in the lottery of life’.

It is a sentiment that Stoppard readily allows might have been amended in his case to include not simply ‘to have been born an Englishman’, but ‘to have become one’.

Stoppard's early England years

He has always been passionate in his love for England, its culture, its institutions and its traditions. When his family first settled in Derbyshire, they would regularly picnic in the grounds of England’s finest country house, Chatsworth. ‘By the time I was 10 or 11,’ he once recalled, ‘I thought this was England and I loved every blade of grass.’

And he still does - up to a point. The England that ‘I really fell for’, he says, now exists only ‘as a kind of memory. 

‘I got imprinted when I arrived, and probably for ten more years after that, with a picture of a kind of England. And I think of the model of a just society and a congenial society being as good as ever. But at the same time there’s a slow drift...a tendency to corruption, a vulgarisation through consumerism....’ 

He pauses. ‘I’ve always relied heavily on the possibility of altruism in my sense of what England is, can be and should be. A friend of mine gave me an excellent phrase a few years ago, which is that one should live as in a contest of generosity. Its something that people understand very, very well within families: “there’s one piece of fish left on the plate, you have it!” “No, no you have it!”

'People understand that instinct, and it’s always been a matter of extending that social and civilised way of thinking and behaving to include not only your family, but your neighbours, your street - the entire radius of your existence. And in Britain it is underpinned by something that is centuries old, which is the idea that law and parliament, and the distinction between them, is absolutely fundamental to be able to live in that way. 

‘What I mean is that the aspiration of England that exists in the abstract, of what a society is capable of being if people behave unselfishly...that is still in place. It is still a very, very good idea, but that idea isn’t functioning very well. But, do I still love England? Yes. Would I like to live anywhere else? No.’

A reclusive man, unnerved by emotion

The novelist Derek Marlowe, with whom Stoppard shared rooms in London’s Ladbroke Grove during the penniless years, once described him as having a dual  personality, like the author of Alice in Wonderland. ‘His public self is Charles Dodgson – he loves dons, philosophers, theorists of all kinds, and he’s fascinated by the language  they use. But his private self is Lewis Carroll – reclusive, intimidated by women, unnerved by emotion.’ 

Kenneth Tynan, writing of Stoppard in The New Yorker in 1977, put it more pointedly, saying that no one would ever call Stoppard passion’s slave, or imagine him blown off course by a romantic obsession. ‘It is felt by some of his friends,’ Tynan  went on, ‘that his sexual ambitions, compared with his professional ambitions, have always been modest.’ 

‘I think that’s fair,’ Stoppard says now. ‘I’ve always been essentially a monogamous sort of person.’ His first marriage, to Jose Ingle, foundered when she had a nervous breakdown, apparently unable to cope with his new-found success following Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

They divorced in 1972, with Stoppard taking custody of their two sons, and in the same year he married Miriam Moore-Robinson (described by Tynan as ‘a dark-haired pouter pigeon of a girl, buxom and exuberantly pretty’), who would become famous in her own right as the television personality and health expert Dr Miriam Stoppard.

The couple went on to have two more sons. But after 18 years the marriage broke down when Stoppard became involved in a very public liaison with the actress Felicity Kendal.  That relationship petered out after eight years. Stoppard says he had not expected to get married again.

On marrying a Guinness

But in 2014, to the surprise of many, and at the age of 76, he married Sabrina Guinness, 17 years his junior. An heiress and television producer, Guinness is known for her friendships with Prince Charles, Mick Jagger and the Tory politician Jonathan Aitken, and was once described as the most eligible woman in Britain, but she had  never married.

She and Stoppard had been friends for 20 years. I’m curious: how does such a long-standing friendship become a love affair, and then a wedding?  He pauses. ‘There’s a rather nice sentence in The Sun Also Rises, when Jake says to Mike, “How did you go broke?” And Mike says, “Two ways  – first slowly, then suddenly.”’ He laughs.

‘I can’t really answer your question.’  He suggests – not altogether convincingly – that when he and Sabrina first started ‘walking out’, as he puts it, he tried to persuade her that he was not the man for her.  ‘My refrain was, “You really don’t want  somebody like me,” because I’m very anti-social.

'I said, you need somebody who likes  to go out and about, and I don’t want to go  anywhere. I don’t want to go to anybody’s dinner party, book launch, gallery opening. I don’t want to do any of it. I perform sociability,  but I’m seriously self-sufficient.’

Sabrina, I say, is very sociable. He looks exasperated. ‘As I kept pointing  out! Which is why I concluded that she really didn’t want to have a consort that is just  a curmudgeon.’ Happily, they seem to have worked it out: dinner parties at home with a small group  of friends, ‘which I love’, and fewer excursions to events he doesn’t love.

‘Dinners for 200 with speeches, and award ceremonies – no, I’m not keen.’ Her effect has been civilising in other respects. Left to his own devices, he says, he turns immediately into ‘a slut, and things go to hell. Yesterday, Sabrina went home [to their house in Dorset]. We make our bed every single morning without fail; but the moment I know I’m on my own, the idea of making my bed seems to me completely absurd. I’m going to get back into it tonight. Why would I make it again?

'In other words, if I’m living alone and writing, the idea of putting the writing aside to “tidy up a bit” [the phrase drips with irony] is just ridiculous. So I’ve become much nicer to live with since I got married.’

Stoppard's writing routine

Friends, indeed, say that Stoppard is ‘as happy as a bee’ since marrying. ‘Look at him. He used to be so hangdog; now he’s smiling all the time. They’re perfect for each other.’  Stoppard once said that he found it hard to work away from domestic stability.

‘Did I?’ He reaches for his coffee. ‘Well, yes and no. When I’ve been in terrible time-trouble and up against it with a deadline, very occasionally I would just go to a hotel and write half  a script in three days, or something. I used to love working in hotels.

'Nowadays, because  I smoke when I work, I can’t work in hotels. There was a time when all I needed was 24- hour room service, an ashtray and a fountain pen.’ He sighs in blissful recollection. ‘It was very good for productivity.’

(Smoking and writing have always gone in hand for Stoppard; he tells the story of how, as a penurious young writer on a deadline, he devised a method of sellotaping sandpaper to his desk and then spilling out some loose matches from a box.  

‘So if I wanted a cigarette I could just pick it up, strike the match and keep going, instead of having to stop, open a box of matches, take out a match, strike it with both hands and carry on. It was irritating.’ The inference is he was too hard up to buy a lighter).

He is presently at a stage, he says, where every other person he meets asks whether  he has a new play on the way, and if not now what does he intend to write about in the future. The answer is, he doesn’t, and, honestly, he has no idea. He thinks on this. 

Perhaps if he could just spend some time at home with Sabrina, with  no commitments for the next month – less the playwright than a man writing a play – something would come up. ‘I think in the past I needed quiet time on my own to write the play. But now I need it to choose a play to write.’ 

(Later, as we step on to the escalator at Waterloo tube station he will challenge himself to name all the papers and periodicals he reads before we reach the bottom: ‘The Telegraph, Times, The Guardian, the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, the New Statesman, The Spectactor, Prospect, Standpoint...’ He sighs. ‘It takes up far more of my time than I can afford.’)

On Trump, climate change and the future

Perhaps all that reading that will provide inspiration. But then again, he allows, perhaps not. A play, he says, ‘should  just come out and hit you, like a locomotive coming out of a fireplace, like in Magritte. ‘There is this distinct moment, which is an enormous simultaneous lifting up and calming down, which can be paraphrased into the  statement, “Oh good – there’s one more play I can write!”

'And it’s quite precise. It’s not, you know, I really ought to tackle climate change, or I really ought to take some notice of America in the age of Trump. 

'It’s nothing like that, and it won’t be anything like that. Being interested and aware of salient parts of the political world, or any kind of world, is meaningless as regards trying to create something. And I may not  actually write any more plays anyway…’

And would that worry him?  ‘Yes, it would.’ He is 79 now, and it is the natural order of things, he says, that death takes away one’s friends, one’s acquaintances, and sooner or later oneself.  ‘Really, I don’t think about my wife and  children in the context of, “When will I die?” But I do think about, “Will I have written a decent play?”’  But he has written many decent plays.

He shrugs. ‘Well, it doesn’t seem like that  to me. No. I think I’ve written a few that are  fine – pretty good. But the one where you over-reach and get hold of everything in the right order, with the right degree of elegance, with nothing otiose, nothing lacking… That one  I suppose I’ll never write. But it’s the one you want to write.’

The waitress is clearing the plates. He drains the last of his coffee. ‘I don’t much like myself in this conversation,’ he says at last, ‘because it’s making me too important. Well, it is important to me, but in the scheme of things it’s not of great importance whether I write a play or not.

'I just want it for myself, for my own sense of having an identity and fulfilling my purpose, and things like that. But I’m well aware that I’m very, very fortunate, and I have lived a very charmed life, so to speak to you on a note of complaint is simply absurd.’ He smiles. ‘So I’m going to stop.’ 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead previews from Saturday (0844-871 7628; oldvictheatre.com)  

Travesties is showing at the Apollo Theatre until 29 April (0330 333 4809)

Just remember, Donald, "it's the economy, stoopid"!

'Today's the day the teddy bear Donald has a picnic', well, something like that anyway!  He is going to spell out his budget and he has already announced that he is shovelling several 'squillion-brillion' towards 'defence' which, no doubt, he would describe as 'yuuuuge'.  All this will be paid for by targeting 'waste, fraud and foreign aid', plus, making those in receipt of American military assistance pay more for the privilege.  That will go down like a shit sandwich in various European capitals and quite whether 'Ahab the Arab' will pay up is anyone's guess!

I do hope, Donald, that you do your sums properly because the distinguished editors of The National Review remind us that you are also intent on even 'yuuuuger' spending on infrastructure projects.  My eyes are beginning to water!  Also, the NRO point out that foreign aid represents only about 1% of government expenditure.  The truly enormous lay outs by the Government are mainly in entitlement claims, the likes of Obamacare, and quite how you begin slashing those is not yet clear.

Anyway, good luck with all that, Donald, but if you are intent on keeping those Democrat rascals out for a second term then make sure you do your sums!

 

The Awan brothers - eh, what, who're they?

I am obliged to Mr. Scott McKay of The American Spectator - oh alright then, yes, I nicked the entire story off him and I'll buy him a drink when we meet, er, unless I see him coming of course - now, where was I?  Oh yes, the Awan brothers about whom you know nothing, not least because, according to Mr. McKay, the American media resolutely refuses to mention them - nothing to see here, move along! 

Whilst all the media hoo-ha has been about Russian spies working for Trump Inc., nobody has reported the intriguing story of the three 'Paki' stooges who, until three weeks ago when they were fired, worked for sundry Democrat Congress 'critters' on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence!  Yes indeed, those 'good ol' American bro's', er, Abid, Imran and Jamal Awan who are from Pakistan, actually, were employed by the Democratic party to operate the computer systems for this distinguished and highly sensitive committee and others until the blindingly obvious occurred to the Democrat dimwits and they were fired.

Read all the details over at The American 'Speccie' and then file under "You Couldn't Make It Up"!

 

 

"Should have gone to Specsavers" - #3,839

'That'll teach them thickoe northerners and their useless footie players to keep well out of 'souf Lon'on' in the future', more or less said, or grunted, a bunch of Crystal Palace supporters at the weekend.  With the sort of careful  and cunning planning you expect from 'souf Lon'oners', they executed a daring and cunning ambush on the team bus from Middlesbrough.

 

'That'll show 'em', they chanted, er, well, up until they discovered they had attacked the wrong bus - actually, it was their own team's bus!  Damn, it makes yer prard to be British, dunnit?!  Thanks to The Telegraph.

ADDITIONAL:  For the benefit of my foreign readers you can try this for a fine collection of Specsavers ads which will make you laugh more than my Monday Funnies!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrIO2ysCa6RlmDYWPGYtXbO_1XuEXn4_Y

 

 

 

The Democrat party solution - same old same old!

Similarities between our political parties 'over here' and theirs 'over there' should never be pursued too closely but, even so, just a quick glance at the shambles of the Latter-day Comrades running the Labour party and the 'hissy-spitty' community (dis)organisers running the (non)Democratic Party and one cannot help but make comparisons.

I will not waste your time dwelling on the Labour party as it swirls down the plughole of history but the 'Dems' deserve a little consideration not least because, being American, their capacity for violence is never far from the surface.  The fact that they have just voted in a lawyer to head their national committee does not indicate that they will remain law-abiding, for there is no group so adept at law-breaking than lawyers, particularly Left-wing lawyers, and they don't come much more Left-wing than Mr. Tom Perez.

He was an Obama 'heavy' who used his weight inside the Dept. of (non)Justice in order to bend the rules and further his, and his Leader's, Left-wing policies.  According to John Fund at the NRO:

“After nearly a decade as a powerful federal bureaucrat, Tom Perez will finally be able to be out in the open about using the law to help Democrats,” Christian Adams, a former career Department of Justice lawyer who worked for Perez and now runs the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation, told me. “At Justice, he used the law to help Democrats win elections. Now he can finally be honest about his agenda.” Adams was one of several critics at Justice who observed just how political and biased Perez could be as he headed the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ from 2009 to 2013. In July 2012, a federal district-court judge concluded that the DOJ’s own documents in the New Black Panther Party case “appeared to contradict” the sworn testimony of Perez before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights."

So, a lawyer and a liar - why am I not surprised?!

"Perez’s entire tenure at Justice was controversial and politicized. In 2013, Justice’s inspector general, an Obama appointee [my emphasis], issued a stinging 256-page report slamming Perez’s unit for “deep ideological polarization” and a “disappointing lack of professionalism.”

Out of 113 professional lawyers recruited for the (so called) Civil Rights Division, and not counting the political appointees, not one of them showed that they had ever worked on behalf of a conservative organisation.

In the unlikely circumstances that Mr. Jeff Sessions, the new Attorney General under President Trump, has no orders from above to follow and is therefore confused as to his priorities, then I suggest that he enters, or rather, kicks the door down, to the offices of the Civil Rights Division in the Dept. of (non)Justice with an exceedingly large axe in his hands!

Meanwhile, we can all sit back and watch Comrade Perez 'do a Corbyn', as we call it 'over here'.  This highly sophisticated political technique follows roughly the same methodology as that pioneered by the famous Pied Piper of Hamelin when he played his magic flute and led all the kiddie-winkies into the river where they drowned!

 

One of the first of the wicked 'Greenie' witches

I am obliged to Mr. Alan J. Favish at The American Thinker for confirming my deeply held suspicion that most universities are staffed and run by idiots but those situated in California are actually run by the brain-dead!  He brings to our attention the fact that one of the colleges at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) has decided to change its name to the Rachel Carson College.

Rachel Carson, of course, is the 'Great Green Goddess of all Greenies' everywhere and forever.  In 1961, her book, Silent Spring ,was hugely influential and the global campaign that followed led to the cessation of the use of DDT as a means of controlling mosquitoes which carried malaria.  The result was that zillions of 'ickle-lickle-mozzies' lived and, er, zillions of gross, ghastly humans died, especially those under 5 years of age!

Honestly, you have to ask, should we just burn all 'Greenies' at the stake in order to save Mankind?

 

Your Monday Funnies: 27.2.17

And the Joke of the Year at the Oscars is ... the Oscars!  Oh my giddy aunt, a damp, chilly, Monday morning and I found myself reeling round the kitchen clutching my sides with helpless laughter.  Sorry, People, I don't think my jokes are going to give you that level of laughter!

After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year, British scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 200 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 150 years ago. 

Not to be outdone by the British, in the weeks that followed, an American archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet, and shortly after, a story published in the New York Times: "American archaeologists, finding traces of 250-year-old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network 50 years earlier than the British". 

One week later, Australia's Northern Territory Times, reported the following:

"After digging as deep as 30 feet in his backyard in Tennant Creek, Northern Territory, aboriginal Billi Bunji, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely fuck-all. Billi has therefore concluded that 250 years ago, Australia had already gone wireless..." 

Makes me feel bloody proud to be Australian! 

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And now a fine series of 'jokes' worthy of the late, great Tommy Cooper.  Talk about laugh, you might - just!

 

The Grim Reaper came for me last night, and I beat him off with a vacuum cleaner.   Talk about Dyson with death

…………………………………………..

I went to the cemetery yesterday to lay some flowers on a grave. As I was standing there I noticed 4 grave diggers walking about with a coffin.  3 hours later and they're still walking about with it.

I thought to myself, they've lost the plot!!

…………………………………………..

My daughter asked me for a pet spider for her birthday, so I went to our local pet shop and they were £70!!!   Blow this, I thought, I can get one cheaper off the web.

……………………………………………..

I was at an ATM yesterday when a little old lady asked if I could check her balance, so I pushed her over.

………………………………………………

I start a new job in Seoul next week. I thought it was a good Korea move. 

…………………………………………….   

I was driving this morning when I saw a parked RAC van.  The driver was sobbing uncontrollably and looked very miserable.  I thought to myself, that guy's heading for a breakdown.

………………………………………………..

Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarfs are not Happy.

………………………………………………

My neighbour knocked on my door at 2:30am this morning, can you believe that, 2:30am?!  Luckily for him I was still up playing my Bagpipes.

………………………………………………..

Paddy says "Mick, I'm thinking of buying a Labrador."Blow that" says Mick "have you seen how many of their owners go blind?"

……………………………………………….

My girlfriend thinks that I'm a stalker Well, she's not exactly my girlfriend yet.

……………………………………………….

I was explaining to my wife last night that when you die you get reincarnated but must come back as a different creature.  She said she would like to come back as a cow. I said "You're obviously not listening."

…………………………………………………….

The wife has been missing a week now.  Police said to prepare for the worst. So I have been to the charity shop to get all her clothes back.

……………………………………………………….

Sat opposite an Indian lady on the train today, she shut her eyes and stopped breathing. I thought she was dead, until I saw the red spot on her forehead and realised she was just on standby. 

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The wife was counting all the 5ps and 10ps out on the kitchen table when she suddenly got very angry and started shouting and crying for no reason. I thought to myself, "She's going through the change."

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When I was in the pub I heard a couple of plonkers saying that they wouldn't feel safe on an aircraft if they knew the pilot was a woman. What a pair of sexists. I mean, it's not as if she'd have to reverse the bloody thing!

…………………………………………………………..

Local Police hunting the 'knitting needle nutter', who has stabbed six people in the rear in the last 48 hours, believe the attacker could be following some kind of pattern.

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Bought some 'rocket salad' yesterday but it went off before I could eat it!

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A teddy bear is working on a building site.  He goes for a tea break and when he returns he notices his pick has been stolen. The bear is angry and reports the theft to the foreman. The foreman grins at the bear and says "Oh, I forgot to tell you, today's the day the teddy bears have their pick nicked."

……………………………………………………………

Murphy says to Paddy, "What ya talkin into an envelope for?"  "I'm sending a voicemail ya thick sod!"

……………………………………………………………

Just got back from my mate's funeral. He died after being hit on the head with a tennis ball. It was a lovely service.

…………………………………………………………….

19 paddies go to the cinema, the ticket lady asks "Why so many of you?"  Mick replies, "The film said 18 or over."

 

Right, that's your lot - you'll be glad to hear!

 

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 26.2.17

Right, stop all that progress - NOW!   Yesterday 'SoD' descended to, er, sort out my computer - yeeeees, quite!  The end result is that everything's the same and everything's different and it's driving me nuts!  Why can't they - yes, it's always "they" - just leave things alone because it takes me years to get the hang of it all every time they change something. Needless to say, I blame 'SoD' and he blames Microsoft!

 

And stop all that Oscar crap as well!   And yes, you're right, I am 'Mr. Grumpy' this morning.  I gather that most of the 'luvvies' who are up for a prize this evening are planning to provide us all (or 'you all' because I will not be watching!) with endless anti-Trump speeches.  How can I put this?  In a very deep and meaningful way, do I give a flying crap what Ms. Meryl Streep thinks (I use the word with my fingers crossed) about President Trump?  I just hope that the brain-dead of America switch off in their zillions!

 

Trump gets his retaliation in first:   He's not totally bonkers, that Trump fella', despite what all those snooty White House scribblers would have us believe.  He has returned his invitation to their annual dinner in which he would have been savaged.  I never thought much of all that 'palsy-walsy' stuff between Presidents and scribblers, it gave the latter a totally false sense of their own importance.  Dandruff-ridden, smelly socks, waste-tip scavengers is what they are, or at least, it's what they should be!

 

Booker is on good form today:   First of all he - or at least his best friend, grumpy Richard North - insist that Hitler never had any intention of invading Britain in 1940, so that settles our mini-debate from the other day because no-one in their right mind would pick an argument with Richard North!  Also, Booker provides a brief history of the sleazy efforts of m' Lords and m' Ladies to avoid making members of the House of Lords own up to being in receipt of EU dosh when they stand up to debate matters European.  Well worth a read. 

 

Keynes and Europe:   In pursuit of an argument I was having on another blog - well, I can be a bit contrary from time to time! - I was pointed to an article by Robert Skidelsky which contained this little gem:

In 1940, immediately after the fall of France to the Germans, the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote to a correspondent: “Speaking for myself I now feel completely confident for the first time that we will win the war.”

I couldn't have put it better myself, well, I mean, I was only one year old at the time!

 

Ding, dong, the witch is, er, still alive, actually:   According to those very naughty boys and girls at Breitbart, opposition to President Trump is so pathetic and useless that the Dems have sunk even lower than Hollywood 'luvvies' at the Oscars in order to find an effective means of opposing him.  They have turned to a witches' coven which will summon up a spell to bind the president:

 

Apparently these witches will cast their spells every time there is a crescent moon waning.  Tell me that isn't Hillary in the background!

 

 

So no change there then!   I was intrigued to read that the Democratic party had elected a new leader, some chap called Thomas Perez.  There's 'Good News' and 'Bad News'!  The 'Good News' is that he defeated, but only just, one of the worst sort of black, Islamic, American agitator-politicians who was ferociously anti-Israel.  The 'Bad News' is, according to The American Thinker, that the winner, Mr. Perez, is not much better!  He was one of Obama's more fanatical lawyers who bent every law that he could in order to make it submit to his own and his master's political will.  Maybe, just maybe, Trump will not be too bad compared to what may come!

 

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

 

The 'lesbian-straightener' strikes again!

It has been some considerable time since 'the lesbian straightener' entered these hallowed columns.  I refer, of course, to Mr. Chris Huhne, former 'il-Lib-non-Dem' MP who found himself in a spot of bother when his missus ratted him out to the 'Plods' over an incident in which he lied to them in a sworn statement.  Apparently she had found out that he was having it off with one of her friends who apparently worshiped at the shrine of Sappho, well, she did until 'Superman' Huhne put her on the straight, if not narrow, road to normality!  However, despite his, er, good deed, it did not save him from doing time in Cell Block 11!

Of course, all that is old history but following a rare visit to What's Up With That, the excellent site that gives you the straight news on so-called global warming, suddenly the old 'lesbian straightener' was back again.  In a fascinating, if depressing, article, they offer up three examples of Green lunacy.  The first featured the utterly stupid notion of felling zillions of trees in America, turning them into wood pellets and shipping them 'over here' so that the Drax power station could burn wood instead of coal.  Needless to say, this lunacy can only be carried out with the assistance of £450 million a year subsidy from HMG - yeeeees, quite!  Also needless to say, guess who is running this scam?  Step forward the lesbian straightener!  Where does he find the energy?

 

Are the Lords and Ladyships really that stupid?

According to The Telegraph, that festering collection of old, political has-beens, never-wases, never will-bes and octogenarian mouth-dribblers who spend most of their time in Britain's most luxurious Old Peoples' Refuge, aka, the House of Lords, are thinking of voting for two amendments to the 'Brexit Bill' which will, in effect, throw down a gauntlet at Mrs. May's elegantly shod feet.

Bring it on, is my instant re-action!

That is all it will take to make up the Prime Minister's cautious mind and induce her to call an election.  Needless to say, top of her election promises will be a wholesale destruction followed by reconstruction of the House of Lords which should see most of the old coots and countesses out on the street!  A new arrangement for the composition of an upper house will be drawn up which will be more suited to modern times and will keep those old fossils and retreads in line.

The fact that an early election will pulverise the Labour party is simply a great dollop of cream on an already delicious cake!

 

An absolute 'must read' - AND THAT'S AN ORDER!

Yes, sorry to be so imperative, not my usual style as you know well, er, you do know, don't you?  Anyway, I would like you all - pretty please! - to read an excellent article in The Telegraph by Mick Brown based on a long lunch-interview with Sir Tom Stoppard.  Regular readers will know - and have been bored stiff on numerous occasions - that next to 'old Will', himself, Stoppard is far and away my favourite playwright.  I have been lucky enough to direct three of his plays and to have seen many more.  Speaking as a rank amateur myself, I can say that his plays are so brilliant that even us amateurs have difficulty spoiling them! His wit, his intelligence and his unbelievably wide learning shine through no matter what we might do to his texts.  It is a great pity that reading play scripts is not more widely practised.  If you have just a little imagination you will be able to visualise the scenes and the characters who inhabit them and in fact by reading them you will be able to pause and savour the brilliance. 

Do yourselves not one but two favours, read the interview and then buy a copy of 'Arcadia' and read it.  By the way, did I mention that this is an order!

 

'Alas, poor UKIP, I knew it well'

It is exceedingly irritating that really intelligent, knowledgeable savants like me - sorry, did you say something? - will never make it in politics.  When I view the collection of buffoons, phantasists, fruit cakes, born again liars and total dipsticks who fill our parliamentary benches, it is truly amazing that the people have not risen and in one mighty voice called for me to take over.  Frankly, I can't help thinking that they just don't deserve me!

All of which brings me to those rank amateurs, the 'Kippers', who, en masse, constitute the UKIP party. I may not have what it takes to be a politician but they have even less!  The deeply unpleasant fact that I have faced and which your average 'Kipper' needs to face is that professional party politics, or at least, successful professional party politics, is a highly skilled occupation requiring enormous practice (er, that's bad practice, of course), the ability to keep, or appear to keep, several fake balls in the air at once whilst simultaneously smiling, smiling, smiling!  Alas, the 'Kippers', bless their cotton socks, are just ordinary people with ideas above and beyond their abilities to implement them, just like me, really!

That said, of course, it is also necessary to add that they did achieve something quite revolutionary.  In the same way that, back in the day, the sans culottes in France managed to chop the head off a King, so to the 'Kippers' by means of their sheer mass managed to 'chop' the head of a Prime Minister and the fact that it was a fairly empty head should not diminish their victory.  Even so, just like the French example, having achieved their main objective the 'pros' moved in and took over from the 'ams' - it was ever thus!  So, yesterday at the by-elections we saw UKIP run headlong into a political brick wall and finish second behind even Jezza's shambles of a political party.

The message is clear in the words of the old song, "It's all over, it's all over".  Don't think I'm not deeply grateful because I think 'Nige' should be smothered in ermine and medals and his statue should be erected in Parliament Square facing the Commons not least because, alas, that is about as close as he or his fellow 'Kippers' will ever get to the House of Commons which will remain packed with the usual loathsome lot of lying liars.

It was ever thus!

 

Sorry, I went a.w.o.l.

A severe 'dose of the domestics' yesterday, in which I had to take an elderly - yes, even older than me and I feel a hundred these days! - and batty lady on several visits.  First, I had to take her to a clinic to be seen by a 'psycho-babbler' - and yes, you know what I think about them! - because she is convinced 'people' are inhabiting her home!  So we wasted an hour whilst he elicited all the facts that I could have given him in five minutes, and then he gave her some pills, and that was that!

Then I took her to a shoe shop to buy her some shoes with a Velcro strap rather than laces which she has difficulty tying.  Well, chaps, you know what it's like going to such shops with any lady, let alone an exceedingly elderly and slightly batty one!  And, of course, she then decided she wanted a new handbag and some slippers, too.  Several lifetimes later we emerged and then I had to find a pharmacist to supply the pills that she had been prescribed.  By now it was way past my mid-morning, strong, black coffee-shot moment without which I begin to resemble Jack Nicholson in that film where he turns into a murderous nutter!  But I decided to press on and get it all over as quickly as possible.

Next I had to take her to a supermarket where she wandered with her trolley up and down and across and then up and down again bumping into other people's trolleys and the odd 'lickle kiddie-winkie' - so she's not all bad! - whilst she tried to remember what she wanted!  Then, finally, I took her home and she spent what seemed like the rest of my life checking that none of 'the little people' were around.  And all the time, I mean without respite, she kept up a non-stop prattle about absolutely bugger all whilst every nerve in my body was screaming for a strong, black coffee.

No, thank you for asking, I did not kill her which I trust the good Lord above will take into consideration when I approach the pearly gates!  And the reason I did not kill her was that beneath all her non-stop inanities she is a good person - dammit!  Anyway, by the time I returned home there were flecks of foam around my lips and steam emitting from my ears, so it was a pity really that the 'Memsahib' had had a bad day, too, with her back and pelvis bones aching like mad, mostly because she had tried to do too much which I had told her not to do!  I went to bed early!

And today 'SoD' is visiting and if he so much as mentions Brexit - there will be blood!

 

 

"To err is human; to forgive, divine"

Thus sayeth the late Alexander Pope and as he was something of a deep thinker and I am not, I will not argue the point.  The phrase came to mind after I read a report on the recent military trial of a young Israeli soldier who shot dead an already wounded Palestinian terrorist who had been subdued fifteen minutes earlier.  The military court convicted the soldier of "voluntary manslaughter" and sentenced him to 18 months in prison, although the prosecution asked for 3-5 years.  The soldier's defence was that he thought the prisoner still posed a threat because a knife he had used was nearby and also he thought the prisoner might have a bomb-belt.

Needless to say, the result has caused a furore and divided the Israeli nation.  It rather reminded me of the case 'over here' involving a Marine NCO who 'offed' a wounded Afghanistan fighter after he had been taken prisoner and who was convicted and imprisoned and is now fighting to have his sentence reduced.

What can you say about such cases?  Not much, unless you were there and had detailed knowledge of the background and the particular incident.  So I will not say much except that, in general, executing PoWs is wrong and anyone who does it should be forced to face the consequences in a court of law.

 

It's not just her, it's the rest of 'em!

Regular readers will already know of the doubts I harbour concerning 'St. Theresa of May'.  The Brexit debate was a litmus test for all of our leading politicians including, and especially, her.  She chose the soft option of supporting her Prime Minister by admitting that she favoured 'Remain' but then made absolutely no effort to campaign in favour of it.  Her silence was deafening!  Well, you could say that was shrewd politics but it was hardly brave.  Since then, to be fair, she seems to be determined for Brexit but, as 'old Will' put it: "Hence shall we see, / If power change purpose, what our seemers be."

However, my unease is spreading from her to her cabinet colleagues.  Perhaps it is unfair - but, heh!, when was politics ever fair? - to slag off Ms. Elizabeth Truss, the Minister of Justice, whose department gives every appearance of being unfit for purpose with prisons looking so cosy the scallywags must sometimes consider breaking in!  Or the Prison (non)Service sending convicted murderers out by taxi for minor surgery where they can be 'rescued' by villains bearing guns.

Then there is Sajid Javid, the Minister for Local Communities who keeps disappearing every time the brown stuff hits the fan in his department.  I had high hopes for him given that he was from humble origins but managed to work his way up the corporate banking ladder making millions as he went.  Also, he was a keen Brexiteer, well, he was up until it came time to choose which side in the referendum when he lost his nerve and ratted out.

I have mentioned before my instinctive dislike of Amber Rudd who was a ferocious and ill-mannered 'Remainer' but clung on to become Home Secretary after Cameron was dismissed.  Our less than distinguished Minister for Defence, Michael Fallon, gives the appearance of being a muppet with the hands of sundry Generals and Admirals up his shirt-tails!

The Tory party should be exceedingly grateful that the Labour party is led by a daft, old loony propped up by a gang of Trots.

 

'Vee haf veys of making you listen!'

Sunday night there was nearly an argument here in Chateau Duff.  I say 'nearly' because, of course, now that we no longer have a cat the only argument likely to arise is between me and the 'Memsahib' and the conclusion of that is foregone.  When we had a cat, naturally, the cat always won!  Anyway, the first episode of 'SS-GB' clashed with some utter soppiness the 'Memsahib' wanted to watch and, ipso facto, I had to scrabble around, first, trying to find the 'do-flicker-thingie' and, second, trying to remember which buttons to press to record my programme for later viewing.

Having just watched it tonight I wondered why I bothered?  Again, I strained to understand the dialogue which - natch! - was muttered and mumbled and incomprehensible.  Why can't these utterly useless 'luvvies' enunciate their words clearly?  I have been slightly - only slighty! - mollified by reading in The Telegraph that I am not alone in my inability to make out much of what was being said.  Several viewers pointed out that they could understand the German actors speaking English better than the Anglo-mumblers!

Some BBC management plonkers offered up a variety of pathetic excuses.

Charlotte Moore, the BBC’s director of content, said last year: “It is incredibly hard to get to the bottom of where things go wrong.  It is often several different problems coming together. Sound is a very exact science.”

So, Ms. Charlotte Moore, how come I never have any problem hearing every word of the latest Midsomer Murders series which, by the way, rather worryingly, my wife seems to watch endlessly?

 

 

Hockney, David: Could do better!

Look, I'm no art expert, in fact, I'm no expert at anything very much, but - and here come some dread words for artists everywhere! - I do know what I like - and so do you.  Sorry to bore on but I am left with no alternative except to repeat my tedious mantra that art, first of all, is visceral!  You look and either you like, or dislike, or you yawn.  There-after, particularly if you like, you then spend minutes, hours, days, and in some extreme cases, a lifetime, trying to explain to others why you like a particular painting or the collected works of some particular artist.  If you are an 'expert', of course, you will convince suckers people that your opinion is the impartial truth.

Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, 1968
acrylic on canvas,  83 1/2 x 119 1/2 in.

David Hockney has an exhibition of some of his works opening in London.  I don't pretend to any particular knowledge of his paintings mostly because, on the odd occasions I have come across them, they have left me unmoved.  The picture above shows two people in a room.  The picture below, by Edward Hopper, also shows two people in a room.

Room in New York by Edward Hopper

Now that intrigues me!  Don't ask me why because I can't explain it but Hopper's lonely people, captured in their tiny rooms and who never look at each other, fascinate me.

I can't explain it, like I said, it's visceral!

 

Your Monday Funnies: 20.2.17

Somewhat hurried today because we are both tottering off to the 'Quacks' this morning - boring-snoring!

 

Mick, from Dublin appeared on 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' and towards the end of the program had already won 500,000 euros. "You've done very well so far," said Chris Tarrant, the show's presenter, “But for a million euros you've only got one life-line left, phone a friend. Everything is riding on this question. Will you go for it?"

"Sure," said Mick. "I'll have a go!"

"Which of the following birds does NOT build its own nest?    

a) Sparrow

b) Thrush

c) Magpie

d) Cuckoo?"

"I haven't got a clue." said Mick, ''So I'll use my last lifeline and phone my friend Paddy back home in Dublin. Mick called up his mate, and told him the circumstances and repeated the question to him.

"Fookin hell, Mick!" cried Paddy, "Dat's simple it's a cuckoo."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm fookin sure."

Mick hung up the phone and told Chris, "I'll go with cuckoo as my answer."

"Is that your final answer?" asked Chris.

"Dat it is."

There was a long, long pause and then the presenter screamed, "Cuckoo is the correct answer! Mick, you've won 1 million euros!"

The next night, Mick invited Paddy to their local pub to buy him a drink. "Tell me, Paddy? How in Heaven's name did you know it was da Cuckoo that doesn't build its own nest?"

“Because he lives in a fookin clock!"

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Once upon a time there was a very handsome male camel named Alfred with two huge camel humps. He fell in love and married a beautiful female camel named Marie, who had one perfect camel hump and beautiful lips. 

As time progressed, they became the proud parents of a wonderful baby boy camel, born with no humps. 

They contemplated long and hard on what to call their beautiful little boy then they finally decided on ......

Are you ready for this?   

Humpfree!

 

Oh, please stop your whining.  It's a nice little story and a lot better than some of the other rubbish I print!

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A couple were on their honeymoon, lying in bed, about ready to consummate their marriage, when the new bride says to the husband, "I have a confession to make; I'm not a virgin."

The husband replies, "That's no big thing in this day and age."

 The wife continues, "Yeah, I've been with one guy."

 "Oh yeah? Who was the guy?"

 "Tiger Woods."

 "Tiger Woods, the golfer?"

 "Yeah."

 "Well, he's rich, famous and handsome. I can see why you went to bed with him."

 The husband and wife then make passionate love. When they are done, the husband gets up and walks to the telephone.

"What are you doing?" asks the wife.

 The husband says, "I'm hungry, I was going to call room service and get something to eat."

 "Tiger wouldn't do that."

 "Oh yeah? What would Tiger do?"

 "He'd come back to bed and do it a second time."

 The husband puts down the phone and goes back to bed to make love a second time.

When they finish, he gets up and goes over to the phone. "Now what are you oing?" she asks.

 The husband says, "I'm still hungry so I was going to get room service to get something to eat."

 "Tiger wouldn't do that."

"Oh yeah? What would Tiger do?"

 "He'd come back to bed and do it again."

 The guy slams down the phone, goes back to bed, and makes love one more time.

When they finish he's tired and beat. He drags himself over to the phone and starts to dial.

 The wife asks, "Are you calling room service?"

 "No! I'm calling Tiger Woods, to find out what the par is for this damn hole."

 

Sorry, if you're a keen golfer you have probably heard that one a zillion times before.  Well, it serves you right for playing such a silly game!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 19.2.17

'Seek and ye shall find', unfortunately:   This started my day with a snigger.  According to The American Thinker, Chelsea Clinton was so 'shocked, I tell you, shocked' by the news that an illegal (six times over!), female immigrant had been arrested in the very same court in which she was seeking legal protection from her violent boyfriend that she asked via Twitter for another word for "horrifying"?  Alas, the answer from a Ms. Juanita Broaddrick may not have been what she was looking for - "Your father, Bill Clinton".  You may recall that Ms. Broaddrick claimed to have been raped by 'good ol' Bubba'!

 

Man up, Donald!   I must confess that I am becoming wearied by Trump's never-ending moans and groans about the 'meejia'.  Yes, it's a fair point to remind us that they are frequently - always? - biased but it was ever thus and normally the bias breaks both ways which is why I ignore 'The Graun' and stick mainly to 'Her Maj's Daily Telegraph'.  So, Mr. President, if you don't like CNN - who does? - then stick with Fox News.  It's fair enough to remind people every so often not to believe everything they read but, pur-lease, don't go on and on about it.

 

Mind you, this is what they said:   'Extreme on economic issues, extreme on the so-called social issues, he even has had an “extreme foreign-policy makeover,” according to The Atlantic. His views on immigration, MSNBC says, represent the Republican party “shrinking down to its most extreme elements.” One cable-news panelist insists he was the most extreme Republican presidential candidate ever. Paul Krugman laments that he has forsaken all serious policy thinking for “dangerous fantasy.” Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times is also alert to the “dangers” he presents, the “most dangerous of all” being his views on Iran, though Kristof also worries that he is too buddy-buddy with that awful, scheming Benjamin Netanyahu. Predictably, Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow dogpiled him for his perplexing relationship with Moscow. Vice calls him a “sociopath” and Maureen Dowd dismissed him as “an out-of-touch plutocrat” who keeps “his true nature . . . buried where we can’t see it,” a devious figure who is so awful deep down inside that he “must hide an essential part of who he is” from the public.'

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445054/media-trump-both-unreliable

Er, but, that was what they said about Mitt Romney, not Donald Trump.  Spot the difference!

 

Hitchens targets NATO:   He points out that after the Soviet Union imploded, all those American Cruise and Pershing missiles, along with most of the NATO troops and tanks and artillery, all went home.  However, that huge, swanky NATO HQ in Brussels remains in place along with its thousands of over-paid brass hats and their, er, support staffs.  Why?  Who needs 'em?  More to the point, who pays for 'em?  Today The Telegraph gets very excited about some obscure plot to assassinate the PM of Montenegro - eh? - what? - who? - where? - whose nation has just joined NATO.  And that, I would remind you, means that if titchy and mostly useless Montenegro is invaded, we must, perforce, spend blood and treasure protecting it.  Can't wait!

 

'Chief Constable Plod' strikes again:   Because, you see, according to The Mail he is "120% sure" that the late Sir Edward Heath was a paedophile who assaulted at least 30 children.

Chief Constable 'Mike' Veale

He had better be right because he has kept this investigation running since 2015 and employed around 20 police officers and staff building a case at an estimated cost of £1 million.  He has some support because Mr. Tom Watson MP, no less, supports the claim that Heath was a kiddie-fiddler.  The fact that Watson's infamous allegations against several other public figures collapsed when his main source turned out to be a pathological liar may or may not be an indicator.  We shall see what we shall see!

 

R.I.P. Norma McCorvey:   Norma - who, you ask?  Well, you would probably know her better by her pseudonym, 'Jane Roe', adopted for legal reasons in the (in)famous Roe vs. Wade case which opened the doors to the wholesale murder of babies in the USA.  Her early life was a non-stop train crash but happily she lived through it and later discovered Christianity and became a leader in the anti-abortion movement.  So not a totally wasted life.

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

The 'ifs, buts & maybes' of history

Second guessing history, it's a terrific game, if you have nothing better to do which was obviously the position the distinguished historian, Andrew Roberts, found himself in when The Telegraph asked him to suppose what might have happened if the battle of Britain had been lost.  This is all rather topical at the moment given that a new TV series, based on Len Deighton's famous thriller, SS-GB, is about to be screened.

As Roberts indicates, if the Germans had concentrated on bombing the RAF radar sites it would have blinded the Spitfires and Hurricanes and defeat would have followed.  Invasion would have followed swiftly and there cannot be much doubt as to the outcome.  Roberts speculates that:

Winston Churchill refused to escape alongside King George VI and the Royal Family to Canada, but decided to fight it out in the secret government bunker in Dollis Hill in North London.

“You can always take one with you,” he famously said, and was credited by eye-witnesses with killing three German stormtroopers before turning his Colt .45 on himself. 

Within weeks all organised resistance was over. The Third Reich now extended from John O’Groats to the Polish border with Russia, as the huge swastikas all the way down the Mall from Kriegsflotte Arch to the former Buckingham Palace signified. For we British, the war was over.

What would have followed is actually very clear because the Germans, with their usual efficiency, produced reams of orders for the occupation which were found after the war was over.  In essence, it would have been the 'same-old-same-old' as occurred in every other country they occupied.  Not a pretty thought!  A 'Quisling' government would have been set up but Roberts doubts that Sir Oswald Mosely would have been chosen to lead it.  Instead, he suggests that David Lloyd George might have taken the job given his pre-war agitation for 'peace at any price'.  I have a biography of him somewhere and I must look it up to see if that's a runner.  To be fair, Roberts quotes the late, great philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, who said “To speculate on who would have collaborated if the Germans had invaded Britain is the most vicious game a Briton can play.”

Still, one wonders . . .

 

Nothing to see here, move along!

There's not much that shocks me any more but this story from The Coffee House written by their new writer, Stephen Daisley, left me sitting here with my head in my hands.  It concerns the murderous 'career' of Stephen Port, currently serving a 'whole of life sentence' which means he will never be released although, to quote a phrase, 'hanging would be too good for him'.  I will leave you all to read the story which is sickening in two senses.  First, his cruelty was abominable but, secondly, the Metropolitan Police lived down to their lowest reputation for lazy stupidity - if not worse!

Suffice to say here, that Stephen Port made a habit of enticing young homosexuals on dates during which he drugged them and then murdered them.  He also had the habit of dumping the bodies in more or less the same place and actually reported 'finding' one of the bodies to his local police station in Barking, Essex.  As Stephen Daisley tells it:

What makes these crimes particularly shocking is that the Metropolitan Police apparently had multiple chances to stop them and failed each and every time. Officers allegedly routinely ignored or dismissed information that could have led to Port’s apprehension. Unforgivably, they not only had Port in custody at one point, he was jailed for perverting the course of justice. And still he was able to carry out his murderous campaign under the noses of the authorities.

Despite complaints, and also useful evidence, from the families of the victims, the Metropolitan 'plods' of Barking ignored everything and Stephen Port kept up his killing spree.  I have never been impressed with Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the clown-copper allegedly in charge of the Met Police and surely now is the time to sack him and remove his Knighthood. 

Daisley's story of the Barking police instantly brought back memories of the early books of G. F. Newman whose tales of the working practices of the Met Police were later turned into a TV series.  The first was written in 1970, about the time that I was leaving the army and considering joining the Met.  Having read it, and although it was fictional it had the ring of truth, I breathed a sigh of relief to have missed that particular quagmire.  Every policeman in  Newman's tales was either stupid or lazy or bent - so no change there, then, as far as Barking police are concerned!  According to Daisley, the Met have reported themselves to the Police Complaints Commission and 17 officers are under investigation.

Finally, to cheer you up if you live in the London area, the favourite to be Hogan-Howe's replacement as Metropolitan Commissioner is Cressida Dick, the female police officer who led the operation which resulted in a totally innocent man being shot dead!  Need I say more?

 

 

Pruitt the bullet

I know, I know, my titles are becoming even more obscure than The Times crossword!  However, those who follow American politics will instantly pick up my reference to yesterday's confirmation of Mr. Scott Pruitt as the Director of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the equivalent, as one opponent put it, of placing a fox in charge of a hen-house!  In his previous position as Attorney General for Oklahoma - yes, that Oklahoma where "We know we belong to the land/  And the land we belong to is grand" - he sued the EPA on at least 13 different occasions.  Honestly, I would pay serious money to be present at the first top management meeting he holds as boss of the EPA!  And can you imagine the wailing and shrieking that will emanate from the meeting-room?  All those swivel-eyed, mouth-dribbling, Greenie 'Gauleiters' who have, hitherto, swaggered and bullied their bossy way into other people's lives and livings will now have to choose between sticking with their safe government jobs and fat pensions or flouncing off in a huff to earn a pittance as an agitation 'groupuscle'.

'Ohdearwhatapitynevermind!'

 

 

Not a great day for politics

But then again, when is it ever a great day for politics?  As you will have guessed already, I am about to launch into a massive moan and groan over what has occurred politically in the past 24 hours, and equally you will not be surprised to learn that I haven't actually witnessed or read much about either events.  So far, so typical elderly, pyjama-clad blogger slumped before his spittle-specked computer screen!

First, there was 'The Donald' in full-on, foghorn style at his press 'conference'.  I place commas round the word 'conference' because that word implies a two-way, verbal intercourse which, from the very few minutes I watched, was anything but!  Instead, he bellowed and honked away to his heart's content in a totally pointless vanity exercise.  What was the point?  What did he achieve?  Zilch is the only fair answer, except possibly, the inner contentment to be derived from what my old Ma used to call, "Opening your mouth and letting your belly rumble!"  Oh well, at least none of us are surprised given the nature of his election campaign.  Alas, we must simply stick to the only strategy when contemplating politicians, ignore what they say but watch like a hawk what they do.  And in this particular case, we must cling to our old mantra - ABH, er, that's Anyone But Hillary!

Closer to home, well, my home anyway, today we witnessed the return of Lazarus, aka: Tony Blair.  How this born-again, lying liar has the effrontery to prate at the British people he deceived so slickly I do not know!  But there he was on my TV screen this morning for as long as it took me to find the 'do-flicker-thingie' and zap him into nothingness.  I have just discovered that 'The Speccie' has published the full text of his speech over The Coffee House.  Read it if you dare (I didn't!) but make sure to shower carefully afterwards.  Needless to say he was announcing yet another campaign to overcome the will of the majority of the British people to leave the EU as expressed fairly and honestly in a referendum.  The only good thing to be derived from his effort is that given the deep distaste most people have for him, it is actually a positive imperative for people not only to redouble our efforts to leave but also, it may well convince even more 'Remoaners' to think again.

 

 

 

 

Don't cry for me, Venezuela

I hesitate to accuse many people of being the personification of rank evil but when faced with the likes of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Ken Livingstone, Naomi Campbell, Diane Abbott, Seumas Milne and Owen Jones in the UK; Sean Penn, Oliver Stone and Michael Moore in the US, there is, quite simply, no other word for them.  Lest you doubt me - you wouldn't do that, would you? - then read Jason Mitchell's piece in The Spectator this week.

He reminds us that only ten years ago all the above were singing the praises of Hugo Chavez and his wonderful, humanitarian experiment in Venezuela.  That, they insisted at the time, was the truly socialist road we should all follow to a new world order.  Of course, Chavez died, extremely painfully I hope, of cancer but all of their Left-wing hopes were shifted to their new hero, Nicolas Maduro.  So how's that working out then?

Maduro has turned out to be an economic incompetent of the highest order. Last year imports collapsed by more than 50 per cent and the economy nosedived by 19 per cent. The budget deficit is around 20 per cent of GDP. The minimum wage is now the equivalent of £25 a month. After a Central Bank estimate that suggested that the Venezuelan economy had contracted by 19 per cent last year was leaked to the press, Maduro fired the bank’s president and replaced him with a Marxist loyalist.

[...]

At the heart of Venezuela’s economic chaos lie market distortions. Petrol is sold locally for less than one penny per litre and it receives £12 billion of state subsidies a year. The country has a complex monetary arrangement that makes use of three different exchange rates simultaneously.

This feeds rampant corruption: the president’s cronies can buy dollars from the state at ten bolivars a dollar but sell them at 3,300 bolivars a dollar on the black market. Price controls have made it unprofitable for small businesses to sell staple goods, leading to widespread shortages. Carjackings and kidnappings are now epidemic. Caracas’s murder rate is 80 times higher than
London’s.

Needless to say, human rights have been trampled on and most people believe that Maduro will fix next year's election to ensure that he remains 'El jefe'!  Well, we all get things wrong from time to time but given the scale of the humanitarian disaster overwhelming Venezuela, isn't it time - indeed is it not long overdue - for all those smug, stupid, wealthy and evil Lefties to admit their errors?  Don't hold your breath!

ADDITIONAL

No sooner had I written the above than I clicked over to the always excellent American Thinker to read some good news from Monica Showalter.  She points out that already President Trump has put away the soft-soled slippers worn by his predecessor and replaced them with steel-capped boots in his approach to the 'thugocracy' that runs Venezuela.  In a highly publicised event he met personally with Liliana Tintori, the wife of a Venezuelan thrown into jail years ago on false charges.

What a hell of a change from the mealy-mouthed, don't-upset-them approach seen from the Obama and, to some extent, even George Bush White Houses. Trump not only met with Tintori, signaling that she was welcome in the White House any time she liked, he also posed for a photo with her that included Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, to show an unambiguous united front.

 Not satisfied with that signal written in block capitals, 'The Donald' went one stage further:

It comes just a few days after Trump placed Chavista Vice President Tareck el-Aissami onto a Treasury Department list of actual drug dealers, something that is not done lightly, and requires the most unassailable standards of proof. The U.S. has had it for years, sitting on it, but until now refused to execute in the sanctions order. Trump got that job done, too.

Go, Donald, go!

 

 

A message from our sponsor - Mr. Barney Magroo

Mr. Barney Magroo (Purveyor of Fine Wines and Spirits to the Gentry of Arkansas) is a model businessman in the Trumpian image.  From his (highly) mobile still in the Ozark Mountains, he has built up a 'yuuuuuge' business quenching the thirst, nay, the vast thirst, of his fellow 'Arkies' of whom our regular contributor, 'JK', stands primus inter pares amongst them, er, well, I use the word "stands" loosely, you understand!

Anyway, Mr. Magroo (or 'good ol' Barney' as he is usually known) and his ilk have rightly been congratulated by The American Spectator, no less, for the fact that the American spirits business is booming.

Last year’s liquor volume sales climbed 2.4 percent to 220 million cases, and the revenues were up 4.5 percent to $25.2 billion according to data released by the Distilled Spirits Council. [...]

The growth of the sales of spirits volumes partly reflects that more Americans are adding spirits to their intake. Some 28 percent of Americans call spirits their first choice for tippling, according to a Harris poll. Robert Simonson’s recent book, A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World, well tells how cocktails have gone from low-quality and uncool to top-notch and chic over the past 20 years.

Well, I'll drink to that and I wonder if you can get that book on Kindle?!   Anyway, frightfully well done, Barney & Co, and even more well done to all you American 'piss-artists'.

 

 

Just in case you fail to spot it

In a comment to a post down below, someone called 'Wigner's Friend' sent this link with news on Ms. Anna Raccoon who, to my surprise - and delight - is still living, albeit painfully, and still giving as good as she gets.  I am exceedingly grateful to 'Wigner's Friend - thank you.

https://headrambles.com/2017/02/09/raccoon-poop-deaths-door-step/

 

 

For God's sake, Bond, you got the wrong Kim!

Honestly, 'M' (or 'C' or whatever he calls himself these days) is hopping mad.  Desperate for 'a big hit' to prove our worth to the new Trump security team, well, those that are left, he called James Bond out of retirement.  He's been living in a care home in Eastbourne for the last few years but every day, with loving care, he dismantles and cleans his favourite Walther PPK. 

It was very unfortunate a couple of years ago that a new Chinese care assistant entered his room unexpectedly and was shot and wounded.  Happily, 'the Firm' managed to cover it all up and the nurse was paid off for her troubles.

Anyway, given the mad proclivities of 'Fat Boy' Kim, the looney who runs North Korea and who keeps letting off rockets even when it's not Chinese New Year, 'M' (or 'C') decided enough was enough and called Bond back to the office to carry out one last hit. He should have been warned that Bond wasn't quite the sharp-eyed assassin he had once been when, by accident during the briefing, he steered his electric wheel chair over the foot of the Prime Minister who, given her love for smart shoes, was not amused.

Anyway, off he went, licensed to kill, to the Far East where he decided to refine his techniques by setting aside his Walther and instead armed himself with a poisoned needle.  Accompanied by Miss Moneypenny, and himself disguised as an oriental woman, they found Kim and plunged the needle in.  Er, slight mistake because unfortunately they hit the wrong Kim.  Yes, he was fat and slitty-eyed and North Korean but it was actually Fat Boy's older brother - oh dear what a pity never mind!

                        Fat Boy Kim                                  Even Fatter Boy Kim

You can read all about it at The Telegraph.  Can't wait to see the film! 

 

 

Do get a grip, Donald!

And I don't just mean your handshake!  I warned my readers here at D&N to strap themselves in and adopt the crash position when you took over and, to be fair, so far there haven't been any major catastrophes but even so, "little things mean a lot"!  Running a country is nothing like running a company.  In the latter, as you know better than me, the Boss can swagger about, issuing orders to all and sundry and expect them to be obeyed swiftly and efficiently.  However, as you are finding out the hard way, it doesn't work like that when you are running a country.  You need to define your aims carefully, plot your strategy meticulously, take good advice as to the myriad obstacles there are trying to thwart your purposes which will definitely not be confined to just your political enemies!  Always and forever, there are those pesky lawyers, irritating political opposition and, even more damaging, as you have just discovered, there are your hapless and hopeless friends who will let you down.  You can indulge in political domination and insist on the direction of travel, and indeed you should, otherwise, why bother to be President?  However, as Napoleon once said, "Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted"!

Finally, know thyself! 

 

Here's one Polish immigrant we were lucky to get

I refer to the late Stanislaw Andrezej Wlosok-Nawarski who died last month and no, he wasn't another Polish plumber, he was a Spitfire pilot who was not only exceedingly skilful but also incredibly brave.  According to the Telegraph obit, he was the son of a lawyer who had previously served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army during WWI - don't you just love those strands of lived history when they appear?

Anyway, when the Germans attacked Poland, he and Dad joined up and served in the same Regiment and both were captured.  Along with hundreds of others they were packed into a train which set off for an unknown destination.  Happily, both father and son escaped from the train which, they later learned, was headed to Katyn where thousands of Polish officers were massacred.  Dad decided to stay in Poland but Stanislaw eventually made it to England where he trained as a Spitfire pilot earning several decorations during the war.  Both father and son eventually re-united in 1959.

R.I.P. Flight Lieutenant 'Bob' Nawarski, born August 10th 1921, died January 8th 2017 aged 95, and thank you.

 

'Yerdy-durby-burbles' stink of humbug

This blog prides itself on maintaining the very highest standards in 'elf 'n' safety' so I strongly advice you all to wear a face-mask to protect yourselves from the stench of Swedish humbug (than which, etc, etc) and also to have a sick-bag handy as you read on.  But first of all, a picture:

 

 

There you have it!  Perhaps the greatest collection of Leftie-Feminist humbugs the world has ever seen.  These stern-faced ladies are all 'Yerdie-durbles', aka: Swedes - oh alright then, turnips as well!  More than that they are the new feminist government of Sweden and they are all highly principled feminists determined, now that they hold considerable power in the Swedish government, to not only uphold feminist policies at home but also to demonstrate them around the world, starting with, er, Iran, actually!  So how did that go then?

Well, here they are slithering ooops, sorry, walking past President Rouhani, all of them carefully covering their hair, wearing trousers and overcoats.

Gosh, what a blow (no, no, not that sort - behave!) that was for feminine freedom!  Unfortunately, it did not go down too well with a truly brave woman, Ms. Masih Alinejad, the leader of a women's rights group:

Iranian women's right activist Masih Alinejad who urged Europeans female politicians "to stand for their own dignity" and to refuse to kowtow to the compulsory Hijab while visiting Iran.

Alinrejad created a Facebook page for Iranian women to resist the law and show their hair as an act of resistance, which now numbers 1 million followers.

"European female politicians are hypocrites," says Alinejad. "They stand with French Muslim women and condemn the burkini ban—because they think compulsion is bad—but when it happens to Iran, they just care about money."

Well, what with them being women and being Swedish it can only be a matter of time before they are given the Nobel Peace Prize.  Now, remind me, who was a recent recipient of that prize, and wasn't he a bit of a girlie?

H/tip t0:

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/02/shameful-hypocrisy-swedens-first-feminist-government

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/02/feminist_swedish_

government_wears_hijab_while_in_iran.html

 

Ken Corbyn and Jeremy Loach, er, did I get that wrong?

As you are all well aware - perhaps too aware given that I never stop going on about it - I am something of a 'luvvie'.  Only an amateur one but, believe me, the ego runs just as deep and wide!  Even so, I never watch any of those ghastly awards ceremonies not least because I learned early that whilst some people are brilliant actors the only intelligent things they might have to say are always written for them by someone else!  Left to their own devices it soon becomes clear that they are, by and large, as thick as planks!  Then there are the directors - and I was one of those, too - yeeeees, quite! - who frequently exceed the stupidity of a snail crossing a motorway!

And that brings me on to Mr. Ken Loach!

                  

          Jeremy Corbyn                                  Ken Loach

Alas, there was no way I could avoid parts of his speech last night at the BAFTA Awards ceremony because they kept playing extracts of it on Sky News.  I suspect that Mr. Loach shares a plastic bag with 'Jezza' and each time one of them has to make a speech they just dip into it and pull out words and phrases they have saved over the years, like workers, poor people, rich people, excessive profits, cruel Tories and so on and on ad nauseum which they then stitch together.  Were they ever to share a platform it would be a fine example of synchronised stupidity which would probably earn them their very own TV show, Strictly Come Dumb, perhaps.

I am happy, nay, proud, to announce that I have never, ever seen one of Mr. Loach's films!

 

 

Your Monday Funnies: 13.2.17

Good grief!  There's a huge, bright, yellow thing in the sky this morning instead of all those grey clouds.  This bodes ill, I tell 'e!  Anyway, your funnies . . .

A man in London walked into the produce section of his local Tesco's supermarket & asked for half a head of lettuce.

The boy working in that department told him that they only sold whole heads of lettuce. But the man was insistent that the boy ask the manager about the matter.

Walking into the back room,the boy said to the manager: "Some old bastard wants to buy a half a head of lettuce." 

As he finished his sentence, he turned around to find that the man was standing right behind him, so he quickly added: ".  .  .   and this gentleman kindly offered to buy the other half."

The manager approved the deal & the man went on his way.

Later, the manager said to the boy: "I was impressed with the way you got yourself out of that situation earlier. We like people who can think on their feet here, where are you from, son?"

"Waikato in New Zealand, sir." the boy replied.

"Why did you leave New Zealand?" the manager asked.

The boy said: "Well sir, there's nothing but prostitutes & rugby players in New Zealand."

"Is that right?" replied the manager, "My wife is from New Zealand!"

"Really?" replied the boy - "Who did she play for?"

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

PARAPROSDOKIANS are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence is unexpected. Winston Churchill loved them. Some examples: 

1. Where there's a will, I want to be in it. 
2. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak. 
3. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
4. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
5. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. 
6. They begin the evening news with 'Good Evening,' then proceed to tell you why it isn't.
7. To steal ideas from someone is plagiarism.  To steal from many is called research.
8. In filling in an application, where it says, 'In case of emergency' - notify:  I put 'DOCTOR.'
9. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
10. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they look sexy.
11. Behind every successful man is his woman.  Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.
12. A clear conscience is the sign of a bad memory.
13. I used to be indecisive.  Now I'm not so sure.
14. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Nor is there any future in it.
15. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
16. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car.
17. I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to find one now.
18. I am not arguing with you, I am explaining why you are wrong.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

A man is seeking to join the Glasgow Police force. The Sergeant doing the interview says: "Your qualifications all look good, but there is an attitude suitability test that you must take before you can be accepted." 

Then, sliding a pistol and a box of ammo across the desk, he says: "Take this pistol and go out and shoot six illegal immigrants, six drug dealers, six Muslim extremists, and a rabbit" 

The man being interviewed asks, "Why the rabbit?" 

"Excellent" says the Sergeant. "When can you start?

 

That's your lot this morning ... duty calls!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 12.2.17

Better than cocaine:   Not that I would know what cocaine is like, I'm far too 'frit' to ever try it.  However, I doubt it is anything even approaching the experience I had yesterday.  Coming back from the shops - yes, again, after picking up the things I forgot the day before! - I switched on the radio to 'Classicfm' and - BINGO! - I caught the third and fourth movements of Beethoven's 5th.  Oh boy, did I ever rock 'n' roll!  That is - I insist, dammit! - the most stupendous piece of music ever written.  All of life, all of history, all of everything, is crammed into that composition.  Of course, as usual, it hadn't finished when I parked the car at home so I sat outside in my car conducting the orchestra - as is my wont - whilst the neighbours hurried past, nudging each other and carefully averting their eyes!

 

The leader of your enemy is sometimes your friend:   I am prompted to that confusing heading because I am back into military history again.  It is obvious that in WWII, that ineffable dummkopf, Adolf Hitler, did us the greatest favour ever by invading Russia.  Similarly, his equally stupid predecessor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, gave us an enormous helping hand by pursuing his pipe-dream of creating a navy even bigger than ours.  The eye-watering amount of money it cost denied Schlieffen the means to increase the power of his artillery, and also, the manpower required for this giant navy denied him the seven new army corps he required to ensure that his famous 'right hook' would work.

 

Are the lawyers forming a priesthood?   I ask because 'over here' we have had to put up with high and mighty judges sticking their noses, unnecessarily and uselessly, into matters that were no concern of theirs because the referendum had settled the matter, whilst 'over there', we have seen equally useless judges interfering in matters which are the proper concern of their President - and getting it wrong.  They claimed that no immigrants from the countries covered by Trump's ban had ever been arrested for terrorist activities in the USA.  Now The Washington Examiner reports that in fact since 9/11, 72 of them have been arrested for terror-related crimes and have served at least three years in jail.  "First, let's hang all the lawyers!"    (H/tip to Zero Hedge.)

 

This made me smile:   I am grateful to Mr. Kevin D. Williamson of the NRO who offered these quotes in his latest article:

Esar’s Comic Dictionary (1943) contains two definitions of the word “fanatic,” often wrongly attributed (by me, among others) to Winston Churchill: First, “A person who redoubles his efforts after having forgotten his aims.” Second (my favorite), “One who can’t change his opinion and won’t change the subject.”

 

Do it, Donald!   All this hoo-ha about confirming Trump's choice for executive positions in the government, or whether he was right or wrong to issue his ban on certain immigrants, is mere flannel.  What I am waiting for, impatiently, is his mass assault on the various charlatans hiding inside the government-run global warming mobs.  As Christopher Booker reminds us today, just recently one of the chief scientific honchos in America, having carefully retired first, has now accused his former boss of avoiding rules that cover the use of statistics in order to provide a suitably alarmist report just prior to the 2015 Climate Conference in Paris.  Don't rush it, Donald, get your people to plan the attack in detail and then unleash them with the order not to take prisoners!

 

Well, would you kiss her?   I refer, of course, to Ms. Diane Abbot MP, whom I once described as "a fat, black clown" and who, according to several reports, told David Davis MP, the Minister for Brexit, to "fuck off" when he tried to give her a hug and kiss in one of the parliamentary bars after the Brexit vote. 

Now I know that Mr. Davis is ex-SAS but surely even they have their limits!  Asked by one of his colleagues if it was true that he tried to kiss the lady, he claimed that he had only offered a friendly hug but as for kissing "I'm not blind!"  Very ungentlemanly, of course, but on the other hand . . .  

 

"Old soldiers never die, they merely fade away":  Or so the old saying has it. Anyway, one of them has just departed.  I have never heard of him but according to Russ Vaughn at The American Thinker he was the very epitome of an excellent commander, and as he was an ex-Para I am happy to offer a passing, if somewhat creaky, salute to the late Lieutenant General Hal Moore.

 

Where the Swiss roll, I follow:   Yes, sorry, a pretty rubbish pun even by my standards but the news from plucky, little Switzerland shows the way for Great Britain to follow.  Their government came under pressure from the EU to raise taxes on the many foreign companies that set up there partly to take advantage of exceedingly low tax rates.  The Swiss government caved but under their system if 50,000 people sign a petition then a referendum must be held.  It was, and the government lost roughly 60:40.  So up yours, Junck the Drunk!

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-12/

 

What's the German for "Ooops, sorry"?   Or, on the other hand, what's the Hawaiian (assuming they have their own language) for "Oooops, I just dropped a bollock"?  I ask because I have just read a report in The Telegraph informing me that during a tennis tournament against a German team in Hawaii the American Lawn Tennis Association accidentally sang the first verse of the old German national anthem:

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Über alles in der Welt,

Apparently this is strictly verboten in modern, democratic Deutschland and you will be shot if you use it!  Now I need to know the German for "too, too delicious"!

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

 

OK, it's true - my bottle-washing is crap and my cooking is unspeakable!

It's all very embarrassing, well, it would be if I was 'embarrassable' but after 20 years in the second-hand car trade I'm not, but even so, the sad fact is that as a housekeeper, I am crap!  Thank God that the 'Memsahib', whilst still designated as 'walking (or hobbling) wounded', is at least able to put together enough ingredients to make a reasonable evening meal before she retires to her bed again.  Breakfast (tea and toast), I can manage; and lunch, provided it comes out of a packet, is just about within my ability, so it is an enormous relief that she can just about knock up something tasty in the evening or we'd both die of boredom!

Today I was despatched on a major shopping expedition.  Needless to say, the shopping list was compiled by 'her ladyship', I am completely incapable of planning ahead.  Thus armed, I hurled myself bravely into my local Sainsburys which, given the multitudes present, I thought was giving away free foodstuffs.  Happily, and shrewdly, Sainsburys always has a large flower stand at the entrance which serves as a reminder to me to buy a peace offering because of the absolute certainty that I will get the wrong shopping!  I then launched myself down the vegetable aisles looking for shallots.  For the life of me, I couldn't actually remember, exactly and precisely, what a shallot was, a sort of onion, I thought vaguely.  Again, Sainsburys saved my day by displaying a large bag entitled, er, 'Shallots'!  Pheeew, that's a good start, I thought.

In searching for the shallots, and with my head rotating like a shipboard radar disc, I had abandoned my trolley for a few moments, but being so cocker-hoop at my shallot triumph, I tossed them into someone else's trolley and wandered off with it.  About two aisles further on, I suddenly realised my mistake and had to hurtle back lest I be arrested for 'trolley-jacking'.  Fortunately I found two ladies leaning on each other because they were laughing so hard because they thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen in Sainsburys.

Then I had one of those 'Good News/Bad News' moments which seem to hit me at regular intervals on these shopping trips.  I wasn't actually looking for it at that particular moment but out of the corner of my I spotted, low down on a shelf, some jars of Marmite.  There is a God, I shouted (inwardly) because I just knew before I started that it would take me for ever to find Marmite.  I as about to toss it nonchalantly into my trolley when suddenly the doubt struck.  Checking my list confirmed my worst fears - it wasn't Marmite that the 'Memsahib' required but Bovril!  Needless to say, there was absolutely no sign of Bovril anywhere near the Marmite jars even though both ghastly products are the vile, vomit-inducing invention of some sado-masochistic food producer.  It then took me what seemed like half the remainder of my life to find Bovril because - natch! - you can never find a Sainsburys assistant when you need one!

So yes, life is hard but then, as I keep repeating to myself through increasingly clenched teeth, you can never do enough for a good wife.  And then the truly humiliating thought occurs, how has she managed all this so effortlessly for the last 50-odd years?  I dunno, it's a mystery!

ADDITIONAL:

Off topic, although the ramble above was hardly topical, this sentence caught my eye in one of the financial links that hit my In-box today:

Durex maker Reckitt Benckiser confirms purchase of baby food maker Mead Johnson for $90 a share.

 So with the right hand they make a product designed to stop babies being produced but with the left hand they want to make baby food.  "Shurely shome mishtake!" 

 

 

 

So, a rich, druggie, party girl, socialite dies early - do I care?

Well, I didn't but then I read an essay she wrote for  'The Speccie' back in 1996 and so now I do, just a bit.  I refer, of course, to the late Ms. Tara Palmer-Tomkinson who has just died at the very early age of 45.  Regular readers will already know that whilst my interests are fairly wide they do not extend to the wealthy socialite set, particularly those dim members of it who take drugs, as the late Ms. T. P-T was wont to do.  The only reasons I know anything of her are the fact that she was an exceedingly attractive-looking lady with a name unusual enough to catch my attention as I skimmed past the social pages.

I had, sort of, picked up on her drug habit but I can't say that it bothered me. To paraphrase the old expression, 'everyone's death diminishes me' but that is sentimental tosh.  There are quite a few people whose deaths cheer me up enormously!  But not Ms. T. P-T's, I was merely indifferent.

But then I read her piece in 'The Speccie', reprinted at The Coffee House, and suddenly "I was moved withal".  What an intelligent, elegant, witty woman she was.  How could such obvious qualities allow her to pour her life down a drain?  I reprint the whole thing as a sort of equivalent of removing my hat as her cortege passes:

It is agreeable to wake in the morning and find a national newspaper praising one’s beauty. It is far less agreeable to discover that this praise has been set in the sour old mould of ‘beauty rather than brains’.

The Times diary recently printed two stories suggesting — not to put too fine a point on it — that I am stupid. In the first, I had apparently been introduced to a member of the Life Guards and asked him, ‘Which beach?’ In the second, I had joined a conversation about Sir James Goldsmith’s party, saying, ‘When is it happening? I think I’m supposed to be going.’ The annoyance at seeing oneself so represented soon gave way to curiosity about the longevity of such stories. Like urban myths, they recur generation after generation, attached to one unfortunate female after another. The archetype of the dim society girl is everlasting. Whether she is Daisy in The Great Gatsby or this year’s gossip-column fodder, the accusations rarely change.

You may recall that in Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies one of the characters greets the announcement that there is a Workers’ Revolutionary Party by asking why she has not been invited.

Here, among friends at The Spectator, I can, however, make a confession. Reader, a few months ago I did think Jimmy Goldsmith’s ‘party’ was a social event rather than a political one, and made a comment along the lines of Waugh’s heroine.

In my defence, I would say that the words ‘Goldsmith’ and ‘parties’ have always gone together so harmoniously that it did not occur to me that he might now have turned to the less rewarding business of challenging the Government. After all, my two encounters this summer with this charming and sociable man have been at Imran and Jemima’s summer party and at his soirée for John Aspinall. And history may well judge that Jimmy will be better remembered for his parties than his party.

Now for the lifeguard. Let the Times eat humble pie if it has the grace so to do. My conversational partner that night was none other than David Hasselhoff — the guard (on the beach not in the Household Cavalry) in the Baywatch television series. I thought that the people who write columns were supposed to know about these things. What is the point of them if they mistake actors for soldiers?

It strikes me that the very people who are so keen to imply brainlessness in others must be insecure about their own mental faculties. Why else should they be so rude to others whom they suspect of lacking their intellect? Learning, after all, is not the same as wisdom. Churchill did badly at school, and I have met a lot of Oxbridge-educated people who lack both common sense and finer feeling.

When, for instance, men at dinner parties insist on asking me if I have read a book or article on a subject on which I have not the slightest inclination to inform myself, I am tempted to respond, ‘Do you know the difference between Dolce & Gabbana and John Galliano? Well, don’t ask me questions to which you know I will have to say “no”.’

I share Jane Austen’s observation in Northanger Abbey that a young lady of some leisure is apt to read one thing and declare that she reads another. Like Catherine and Isabella, I prefer a racy novel to heavier fare: ‘Had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of The Spectator instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book and told its name, though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication . . . the substance of its papers so often consisting in statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living.’

Quite. In fact I have ten O levels, and three A levels in Fine Art, English and Ancient History. On the last point, I can echo the stripper in Rita Hayworth’s song:

I have read the works of Plato and translated most of Cato.

Zip. I am such a scholar.

I don’t care for Whistler’s mother, Charley’s aunt or Schubert’s brother.

Zip. Got to make a dollar

It ends: `I’m a broad with a broad, broad mind.’ All power to her, I say.

At school at Sherborne, I learned Spanish and French, but mine and my sister’s great love was always music. I played the piano — the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ rather than the ‘Moonlight Serenade’ — and she the flute. I hate to spoil my tabloid image, but we grew up much more like the Bennet sisters than the light-headed girls around town we are now portrayed as.

As I grow older, I am convinced that the Restoration values of character and wit are what a woman needs to prosper, rather than book-learning. People can be extraordinarily rude and the quicker one learns to shrug that off the better. It has to be some sort of compliment when people I barely know approach me with a pitying gleam in their eye and announce, ‘I don’t care what everyone else says, you’re looking brilliant.’ And if anyone does have a suggestion for how to field that one, I would be grateful.

I did not go to university, agreeing with Rupert Murdoch that it is ‘a place for people who can’t get jobs’. I got my first job instead with Rothschilds, which I left after a while because I felt unstretched. I wrote a poem on leaving, and I’m told Lord Rothschild still has it. It went:

It’s like a war, it’s like a race

To expand the Rothschild client base.

And now it’s time to make the tea:

How stimulating a job can be.

At the end of the day I’m in a mood,

I’ve been so polite when I should have been rude —

And just a girl of 21.

Perhaps I’d better hit and run.

It may not be T.S. Eliot, but at least it (damn near) scans, which is more than you can say for a lot of contemporary poetry. And not every writer can say that someone of Jacob Rothschild’s selective taste framed their juvenilia.

 

 

Mon Dieu, que se passe-t-il?

I almost (but not quite) feel sorry for all those highly paid 'fortune tellers' who daily tell us ignoramuses what is going to happen in the political mine field.  Take La Belle France, for example.  Very soon the French will be facing perhaps the most important election since the end of the war.  Well, let's be honest, no-one much cared who ran France since those far off days.  We all knew they would be prickly and contrary and would take any opportunity to poke us Brits in the eye with a sharp stick. So far, so normal!

But today, the times they are a-changin'!  For very obvious reasons, it really matters to us who leads France for the next few years.  It appears that the Leftie candidate has about the same chance of leading France as 'Jezza' has of becoming prime minister of Britain.  At the other end of the scale we have Mde. le Pen, a sort of Gallic feminine Trump who, like 'The Donald' himself, is constantly written off by the 'experts' as a no-hoper.  Sort of in the middle we have two prize examples of the worst sort of professional politician.  One of them has just been accused of bunging his missus and kids hefty governmental salaries, whilst the other is an énarque, that is, a smooth, secretive operator who graduated from the École nationale d'administration, the establishment that is, in fact, the French establishment.

I am uneasy - I put it no higher - at the thought of Mde. le Pen running France but at least she will by sympathetic to our desire for Brexit, indeed, she may even follow us out of the door!  The other two will be typically French - quelle horreur!

 

Houston, we have a problem!

I did warn you the other day that my e-mail was playing up and today it is broken!  It doesn't seem to effect this blog but if any of my friends cannot get through on normal e-mail just leave a comment here.

Right, now I have to report to 'SoD' who will probably give me a bollacking and tell me it's all my fault!

ADDITIONAL

Pheeeew!  No bollacking from 'SoD', instead he pointed me in a new direction to 'Outlook' and, lo, there was my Inbox and thingies.  Of course, tomorrow I will have forgotten how to do it so the bollacking is only postponed!

Give the job to Sally Bercow

If we must, I mean, really, really must, have a Bercow in the headlines could we not bring back Sally into the limelight.  She is infinitely better-looking and does it all so much better than that utter twit of a husband of hers and in doing so she usually manages to flash a bit of inner thigh which is quite exciting for old geezers like me! 

 

Frankly, Bercow himself has passed from being a national joke to being an embarrassing national prat of the first order.  His outburst yesterday on the subject of President Trump's forthcoming visit was infantile.  I can't help wondering whether his bad-temper stemmed originally from some recent but yet-to-be-reported naughtiness by his wife, or whether he was worried about what might transpire should Sally meet Donald?

 

 

Whatever, it is long past time that parliament should rid itself of this pompous, insufferable poltroon and choose a new Speaker of the House.  Brendan O'Neill at The Coffee House spells out the rank hypocrisy of the man who complains about Trump's 'racism' and 'anti-feminism'.

Bercow, you see, this supposed hero of the refugees and Middle Eastern migrants temporarily banned from the US, voted for the bombing of Iraq. He green-lighted that horror that did so much to propel the Middle East into the pit of sorrow and savagery it currently finds itself. As his profile on the They Work For You website puts it, ‘John Bercow consistently voted for the Iraq War’. On 18 March 2003, he voted against a motion saying the case for war hadn’t been made, even though it hadn’t. On the same day he voted for the government to ‘use all means necessary’ to ensure the destruction of Iraq’s WMD.

[...]

Bercow was one of the authors of this calamity, one of the signatories to the Middle East’s death warrant, and now we’re going to let him posture and preen against Trump’s three-month ban on certain Middle Eastern migrants?

Is there a factory somewhere that takes in noxious waste, re-processes it and then churns out MPs like Bercow?  If so, we should bomb it!

 

 

Didja see it, didja - but didja understand it?

I refer, of course, to the final episode of Apple Tree Yard which has (sort of) entranced the British viewing public with a taste for back-street bonking and murder.  Being, as I am, a well-qualified dirty, old man, I have been glued to 'the box' for the past few weeks watching every episode and I have two complaints.

First, the bonking didn't come up to standard.  The BBC, for reasons beyond my ken, seem especially fond of what we used to call, er, back in the day, 'knee-tremblers'.  They had one in The Night Manager and they repeated the exercise in this production.  Personally, I never went in for them, far too uncomfortable and why would you do something standing up when you can lie down?

But I have a bigger complaint, I could only understand about half the dialogue!  Unfortunately, that half of the mumbled dialogue came from the main characters who were shown up for their appalling delivery by the smaller actors, particularly those in the courtroom scenes who were as clear as a bell.  Not only were Emily Watson and Ben Chaplin 'mumblers' of the first order, but Mark Bonnar added to his incomprehensibility by having a strong Jock accent!  In fact, I am watching Mr. Bonnar in another series and I can't make out what he's saying in that either!

And yes, before you ask, I am an old codger whose hearing isn't quite what it used to be - and, no, that's not as a result of too many 'knee-tremblers'! - which is why I usually wear a set of earphones when watching TV but, alas and alack, they were of no assistance in making out the dialogue in this production.

 

Well, America, this should wipe the smile off your face

Having started your day with chuckles and guffaws, er, you were chuckling, weren't you, not up-chucking at my Monday Funnies?  Whatever, but now I must report on a deeply depressing analysis from Michael Filozof at The American Thinker.  His message is simple, brutal and uncompromising and can be summed up in one crude phrase (apologies, ladies) - America, you're fucked! 

He begins thus:

“With slight shades of difference,” wrote George Washington in 1796, Americans “have the same religion, manners, habits and political principles.”

That is no longer true.

He then goes on to elucidate the complete breakdown in the American body-politic:

What do Americans of the Left and the Right have in common? Nothing  -- except hate for each other.

[…]

For practical purposes, today there are two separate and unrelated constitutions – a constitution of the Left, and a constitution of the Right. The Leftist constitution includes the rights to abortion, anal intercourse, and gay marriage. The Right, reading the “supreme law of the land” as it was actually written, sees no such rights anywhere in the U.S. Constitution.

There is no more 'give and take' on either side, each wants the whole damn thing and will not take prisoners:

The Right regards America’s Founders as men of achievement, morality, and virtue. They see our European heritage as praiseworthy, for it gave us the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, electricity, medicine, clean water, automobiles, powered flight, and landed men on the moon.

The Left sees the Founders as wicked, greedy men who cheated innocent Indians and enslaved innocent blacks. Whites of European descent raped and destroyed the pristine environment with global warming, imposed monogamy and heterosexuality upon women, and subordinated the “peaceful” cultures (like Islam) of black and brown people.

I tremble, so please, people, tell me it ain't so!

 

 

Your Monday Funnies: 6.2.17

As fine a collection of absolute corkers as you could wish for on a Monday morning!

After a tiring day, a commuter settled down in his seat and closed his eyes.  As the train rolled out of the station, the young woman sitting next to him pulled out her phone and started talking in a loud voice:

"Hi sweetheart. It's Sue. I'm on the train".

"Yes, I know it's the six thirty and not the four thirty, but I had a long meeting".

"No, honey, not with that Kevin from the accounting office. It was with the boss".

"No, sweetheart, you're the only one in my life".

"Yes, I'm sure, cross my heart!"

Fifteen minutes later, she was still talking loudly. 

When the man sitting next to her had enough, he leaned over and said into the phone,

"Sue, hang up the phone and come back to bed." 

Sue doesn't use her phone in public any longer.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

I talked to a to a homeless man this morning and asked him how he ended up this way. 

He said, "Up until last week, I still had it all. I had plenty to eat, my clothes were washed and pressed, I had a roof over my head, I had TV and the Internet, and I went to the gym, the pool, and the library. I was working on my MBA on-line. I had no bills and no debt. I even had full medical coverage." 

I felt sorry for him, so I asked, "What happened? Drugs? Alcohol? Divorce?" 

"Oh no, nothing like that," he said. "No, no.... I was paroled."

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

I have been warned by the Race Relations Board that my non-stop 'Paddy' jokes constitute racism at its worst.  So here are a few blatantly disgraceful 'Jockist' jokes - sorry, Jimmy!

The Scots have an infallible cure for sea-sickness. They lean over the side of the ship with a ten pence coin in their teeth."

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In some Scottish restaurants, they heat the knives so you can't use too much butter."    

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

McTavish broke the habit of a lifetime and bought two tickets for a raffle. One of his tickets won a 1,000 pound prize. He was asked how he felt about his big win. "Disappointed," said McTavish. "My other ticket didn't win anything…"    

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

McDougal walked into a fish and chip shop. "I want 10 pence worth of chips, please. I want lots of salt and vinegar on them and two pence worth of pickled onions. And wrap the whole lot in today's newspaper."    

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After discovering that they had won 15 million pounds in the Lottery, Mr and Mrs McFlannel sat down to discuss their future. Mrs McFlannel announced, "After twenty years of washing other people's stairs, I can throw my old scrubbing brush away at last." Her husband agreed - "Of course you can, hen. We can easily afford to buy you a new one now."    

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As a Christmas present one year, the Laird gave his gamekeeper, MacPhail, a deerstalker hat with ear-flaps. MacPhail was most appreciative and always wore it with the flaps tied under his chin to keep his ears warm in the winter winds. One cold, windy day the Laird noticed he was not wearing the hat. "Where's the hat?" asked the Laird. I've given up wearing it since the accident," replied MacPhail. "Accident? I didn't know you'd had an accident." "Aye. A man offered me a nip of whisky and I had the earflaps down and never heard him."

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

A man walks into a Parliament office and says to the receptionist, "I would like to put my name forward for the forthcoming elections to be a Green M.P.”               

The receptionist replied, "Certainly sir. Please fill in this form.'' 

He was filling the form OK until he came to the question - ''Are you circumcised?''  So he asked the receptionist, "Is this question necessary?" 

She replied, "If you are circumcised you are not eligible." 

He then asked, "What difference does it make if I am circumcised?"

She replied, "To become a Green MP you have to be a complete dick!”

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

This blog prides itself on its strictly, non-discriminatory policy - we insult everybody!

God went to the Arabs and said, 'I have Commandments for you that will make your lives better.' The Arabs asked, 'What are Commandments?' And the Lord said, 'They are rules for living.' 'Can you give us an example?' 'Thou shall not kill.' 'Not kill? We're not interested..'

So He went to the Blacks and said, 'I have Commandments.' The Blacks wanted an example, and the Lord said, 'Honour thy Father and Mother.' 'Father? We don't know who our fathers are. We're not interested.'

Then He went to the Mexicans and said, 'I have Commandments.' The Mexicans also wanted an example, and the Lord said 'Thou shall not steal.' 'Not steal?  We're not interested.'   

Then He went to the French and said, 'I have Commandments.' The French too wanted an example and the Lord said, 'Thou shall not commit adultery.' 'Sacre bleu!!! Not commit adultery? We're not interested.'   

Finally, He went to the Jews and said, 'I have Commandments..  'Commandments?'  They said, 'How much are they?' 'They're free.' 'We'll take 10.'

 There, I don't think I left anyone out!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 5.2.17

Better watch out, JK's back in town:   Welcome back, JK, we've missed you, as indeed have sundry widows and divorcees in 'Arkieland', to say nothing of Barney Magroo ("Purveyor of Fine Wines to the Gentry") whose takings have sagged in your absence!

 

Is it just me?   Or do others find rugby as eye-stabbingly tedious as I do?  I was forced to watch two of the matches played yesterday because the 'Memsahib' has what I can only describe as an unhealthy fascination with all those huge men with thighs like tree-trunks - can't think why. God, it was boring!  I seem to have vague memories of rugby matches from the past when it was played by men who looked normal and which were regularly lit up by lightning fast runs by slim, athletic-looking men with great dexterity and athleticism.  Today it is all one great, boring slug-fest!

 

A terrific read:   I made mention of this book the other day when I told you all of my spending spree at Amazon made possible by SoD's generous Xmas gift token.  Airborne by Robert Radcliffe is a real 'Boys Own' yarn set in WWII but it has an added ingredient in the character of the main hero who is part-English but raised in South Tyrol, a peculiar little area with a history all of its own, that exists between northern Italy and Austria.  Mr. Radcliffe has obviously researched his stuff and it adds a fascinating richness to his tale.  Our hero ends up - read the book to find out how! - with the very first volunteers who formed the nucleus of British airborne forces and who had to learn the hard way the then very 'Billy basics' techniques of parachuting at the beginning of the war.  Mr. Radcliffe very cleverly weaves his story in and out of real events featuring real people, like, Anthony Deane-Drummond, an archetypal WWII hero I remember reading about and admiring as a youngster.  (Read his Wiki entry and you will see why!)  I am still only part way into this story but 'I'm luvin' it already'!

 

A bribe by any other name is still a 'bung':   Just ask any of those snooty Lords who will be voting shortly on Brexit whilst they 'trouser' their generous European Commission (EC) pensions.  According to Matt Ridley in The Spectator - where else? - their Lordships are required to declare any interests they receive on any particular topic if they are partaking in a debate or voting on the subject, er, with one exception.  If they are in receipt of an EC pension which obliges them always to support EC activities then they are excused from telling the rest of us plebs!

 

Bit of a 'boo-boo' there, Donald!   It's all very well doing that 'iconoclast thang, Donald' but you do need to get the details right otherwise you will look like a 'komical klutz'!  You are, of course, fully entitled to refuse entry to anyone you don't want in America but those pesky legal niceties have to be squared away first, particularly as you have the vast majority of American lawyers and judges against you.  Only 'E' for Effort on that one, I'm afraid!

 

And now 'Mummy' scolds Donald:   I refer, of course, to Ms. Janet Daley to whom I have extended my generous offer for her to bear my babies, an offer to which I am still awaiting a reply!  Anyway, in today's Telegraph she scolds Donald severely for his mishandling of the entry/visa decision which, in essence, she sums up as an act of stupidity, if not malice, which will have to be repented at leisure.  Or in other words, "He's a very naughty boy!"

 

OK, perhaps I was wrong:   My e-pal, Bob, suggested I should try watching the American Superbowl tonight.  I demurred on the grounds that one-move-a-day chess would be more exciting but then that "very naughty boy", Woodsterman, tempted me with this:

I'm not too sure what part these very fine, young gels actually play in the game but, in a very real and profound sense, do I care?  Also. 'Woodsterman' had this political jibe on his site which is, of course, in the worst possible taste, er, as the dog concerned will affirm:

 

 

Oh no, Good News, say it ain't so!   My final rumble today is aimed mainly at my American friends.  Written by Kevin D. Williamson, it comes from The National Review and, amazingly, it will cheer you all up - promise!  I confess that this blog is often guilty of crying, "Woe is me" - sorry, sorry! - but this article will put a smile of contentment back on your faces.  Go read it, even if you live in Chicago, in fact, especially if you live in Chicago, it will do you good!

 

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

Say it quietly but I think everything is OK

It has been a Good News and a Bad News day today!  The Good News is that 'SoD' was working non-stop on both of our computers and thus there was no time for 'full and frank discussions on Brexit'!  The Bad News is that the Memsahib's computer seems to work OK but MS seem to have altered her e-mail title.  My Best Friend, Bill (Gates), is rapidly approaching my ex-Best Friend status and he needs to buck his ideas up rapidly!

Anyway, if any of you have any difficulties contacting me or the Memsahib by e-mail then use the blog which seems to be working OK.  I am seriously thinking of a return to joined-up writing but actually I can't really do it these days!  I mean, how do you join a 'g' to an 'h'?  No, don't tell me, I'm really not that interested!

HOUSE NOTICE!

Sorry, sorry, sorry but there will be a slight pause to proceedings.  Yesterday was the 'Memsahib's birthday and 'SoD' rocked up so there was no time for blogging.

Today, 'SoD' is carrying out up-dating procedures on my computer which always take longer than anticipated and may well result in the entire thing imploding - these computer swots are all the bloody same!

So, in the famous words of the hugely heroic, Ernest Shackleton, 'I'm stepping outside and I may be sometime!'

God Bless America, well, Alabama, actually!

A lot of appreciative stories concerning the late Alexander Chancellor, the man who saved The Spectator.  I thought this vignette would amuse my American readers.  It comes from Matt Ridley in this week's edition:

[Andrew] Alexander was once prosecuted for driving while many times over the limit in (I think) Alabama. His lawyer tried the long-shot argument that as a naive Brit, he felt unable to refuse his hosts’ hospitality. It worked. The judge promptly halted the trial and apologised profusely on behalf of America.

I will never be rude about the American justice system ever again!

Il est très, très sexy!

So what else do you need to be the next President of France?  After all, if a pudgy little squit like Hollande, or a Hungarian dwarf like Sarkozy, can make it, then it should be no problem for Emmanuel Macron.  Eh? Who? And no, I don't know anything about him either but I know a man who does - Patrick Marnham in this week's Spectator.

Emmanuel Macron (Photo: Getty)

 

Now steady on Ladies, remember you're British!  Anyway, according to Mr. Marnham, it looks as though the French 'Thatcherite' (Eh? What?), Mr. Fillon, who was being tipped to win the presidential race has run into une petite difficulté juridique of the usual kind for politicians of all countries - expenses - yeeeees, quite!  He might well be forced to retire from the race to defend himself.  This will then clear the way for 'Monsieur Dishy' to lead the opposition to the fierce and popular, Mde. le Pen, because the Socialists, bless their mismatched socks, are all over the place to such a disorganised state that one wonders if 'Jezza' has been advising them!

 

Anyway, I urge you all to read Mr. Marnham's article which explains the smooth and devious route by which 'Macron the Moocher' has made his way, nearly, to the top.  He is an interesting man, Monsieur Macron, and not the least of the noteworthy features of his life is the fact that his wife is 24 years older than him!  Très intéressant, n'est-ce pas?

 

 

 

'The Escape from Stalagluft XXVII'

Cue: a stirring, rumpety-trumpety tune - but not too militaristic like those damned Huns - and a cast of jolly decent, square-jawed Brits who have with typical British ingenuity, stumble-bummed wandered out of their prison camp into freedom as a new sun rises over the horizon.  'Makes yer prard to be British, dunnit?'

Well, yes, actually it does.  With an almighty majority that will brook no dissent, our parliamentarians have set us free again.  When, a lifetime ago, the GBP (Great British Public) voted for us to enter what they thought (suckers!) was just a sort of super market, I thought all was lost.  In my wildest, optimistic dream I never thought we would ever make our escape - but we did it, we really, really did it. 

All of those old WWII escape movies featured a hero, you know the type, "a straight-backed chinless wonder from Sandhurst", to quote the late (not as great as I thought at the time), John Osborne.  Today we have such a hero, although just recently he seems to have gone on the missing list.  I refer to the ineffable, 'Dim Dave' Cameron, our former prime minister.  Thanks to his combination of political cowardice and total ineptness, he gave us a once in a lifetime chance to escape - and we took it - and yesterday parliament endorsed it.

"Free again, happy, happy me, free again"

 

A Democrat nightmare

Sorry to keep banging on about American affairs but this is simply too, too, delicious.  Let me begin by acknowledging the efforts of Mr. Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker to explain the finer points - and I apologise if I misunderstand some of the arcane details.

The Democrat party in the Senate finds itself between a red-hot rock and a scorching hard place - oh dear what a pity never mind!  It has to decide what to do in the Senate about the nomination of Justice Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.  He, of course, being a Trump appointee is anathema to all Democrats but in that august body they are in a minority so the only weapon to hand is the filibuster which is the device used by the hated Republicans when in the last couple of years they refused to endorse Obama's pick for the Supreme Court. 

Today, the Dems could use the same tactics but they face two deliciously delicate problems.  First, the Republicans control both Houses and the White House and they could simply outlaw the process of filibuster in respect of Presidential picks for the Supreme Court - 'the dirty rats'!  This would mean that if one or two further vacancies occur in the next four years the Dems would have no means of opposition and that would seal a Right-wing court for decades.

Their other problem is that if they try to oppose the end of the filibuster that might not play too well for several Dem senators facing re-election in two years time in districts that voted for Trump at the election.  On the other hand, if they fail to oppose an ending of the filibuster then millions of snowflake Dems will be outraged, I tell you, outraged and, heavens to Betsy, they might even organise mass marches against what they would think of as 'traitor Dem Senators.

I may not have explained this too well - I'm pressed for time - well, that's my excuse - so do read Mr. Lifson's piece.

 

 

'The Don dun good!'

I confess that I have not read that much about Justice Neil Gorsuch - well, all this 'chief cook & bottle washer' lark whilst the 'Memsahib' lolls in bed is a tad time consuming! - but even a quick skim over his judicial philosophy is enough to convince me that 'The Donald' is spot on!  Gorsuch is a Scalia clone and that is enough to warrant a 'yuuuuuuge' celebration party.  Once again, I am awe-struck at the intelligence of those men who designed the American constitution.  Being a mere Brit, I am all too conscious of the fact that it has taken centuries - some of them exceedingly bloody! - for us to evolve our constitution which, of course, rather sensibly remains unwritten.  But the 'cousins' were not granted that amount of time, or anything like it, to draw up a set of rules that would guide the leaders of their country who were, are and forever will be rogues and rascals - or at least, you have to work on that assumption!

In their recent history, the (so-called) Democrats have gang-banged the Constitution almost out of recognition, either that, or they have with malice afore-thought used every trick in the book to dodge and swerve around it.  Such has been their power over the institutions of America - beginning in Academia - that Constitutionalists have been over-powered, marginalised and silenced.  Not any more!  Or at least, not for the next four years minimum.  The Trump team are absolutely and entirely right to start their programme from day one and, as a lover of irony, I suggest they call it 'Fast and Furious'! 

Of course, they will make mistakes and misjudgements but so long as they concentrate on ripping down the mighty edifices of Democrat rule lovingly constructed over the past few years, then every ivory tower that collapses will be met with cheers and applause.  The targets are easily visible - the (non)Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, Internal Revenue (non)Service, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood and so on and on.

Go, Donald, go!