DUFF & NONSENSE!

And lo, I am returned!

Yes, and to the infinite relief of all my loyal readers who suffer with difficulties in sleeping, I am back and even more eye-stabbingly tedious than usual!  The Memsahib and I enjoyed a very comfy three day stay in an excellent hotel, The Belmont, where the average age of the residents was roughly 83, although there were a few tearaway yobs in their 70s who occasionally 'went off on one'!  Six old friends, in every sense of the word, drove down to share lunch with us on the Tuesday.  On the Monday night I treated myself to the first dry martini I have had in 'yonks', although I had to give the young barman a lesson in how to prepare it - for which I am sure he was very grateful!  All in all, a lazy three day break in arguably the most pleasant town in the Kingdom.  Number of tattoos spotted - NIL!  Need I say more?

Anyway, back with you soon because according to the jungle drums Boris has cut a deal with the Euro-crooks - that can only presage trouble!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 13.10.19

"The horror, oh, the horror"

Image by The Earl of Taint

Another corker from The American Thinker site.  You will recall that 'Fauxcahontas' contributed to "The Pow Wow" cookery book but, alas, to no one's surprise, her recipes were nicked from some French cook-book!

 

'Très bien', "Spiral" is back!   Alors, mes amis, I was doing celebratory somersaults last night because, totally unexpectedly, I saw that the French 'policier' series, "Spiral" was back on BBC4.  Most of the 'old gang' were there including my darling, darling, Audrey Fleurot playing the part of Joséphine Karlsson.  I really must try to improve my written French because, merde alors, she has failed to respond to my numerous letters!

 

A Brexit deal?   "You're 'avin' a laugh!"  There will be NO Brexit deal!  The reason is 'simples', the European 'apparatchiks' do not want a deal, they have never wanted a deal, all they want is total surrender and a victory parade down Whitehall.  If Boris is dumb enough to surrender then he will take the prize as the shortest term Prime Minister in our history! 

 

That Max Hasting better be on his toes!   The week after next he is giving a talk to the Sherborne Literary Society and that expert on any and all matters military will be present - er, that's me, actually, ex-Cpl. Duff!  Bet he's shaking in his boots!

 

Bucket & Spade time - again!  Yes, you will all be delighted to know that on Monday this distinguished blog is going on its holidays! No, no, I'm not jetting off to the south  of France, just chugging gently down to south Devon where the Memsahib and I will enjoy three nights in a very nice hotel on the seafront.

 

Exciting, it is not!  But, what the hell, who needs excitement at our age?  Just give me hot 'n' cold running housemaids and a decent chef!  Should be back on Thursday.

 

"The Quintet of the Hot Club of France":   I just came across that title of, arguably, one of the very greatest jazz combos of all time.  Started by that jazz genius, Django Reinhardt, and later given la crème de la crème when they were joined by the incomparable Stéphane Grappelli, they constituted 'jazz genius' of the very highest order.  I am grateful to 'Commentary' magazine for giving me a kick in the 'memory bank' and I will now start to search for my precious CDs.

 

No more rumbles

 

 

Here's an interestin' fella'

I refer to the Cambridge historian, Robert Tombs, whose speciality is the history of France.  He has an interesting article in The Telegraph which is headed "Misguided Remainers do not understand European history".  Yes, I do realise that is a statement of 'the bleedin' obvious' but his knowledgable analysis is worth reading:

Romantic Europhiles like to hark back to ancient Greece and adopt a quasi-nationalist view that Europa has some deep and continuing cultural identity of which the modern European Union is somehow an embodiment and Europe’s destiny. A glib answer would be that if such identity were real, the EU would not be experiencing so many conflicts. The truth is that Europe is very diverse. Its only historical claim to unity is as Christendom, but even that unity did not last beyond the 11th century. In its languages, cultures and mores it is hardly more a unity than Africa or Asia, and far less so than South America.

So is it, perhaps, that inherent disunity that is the driver behind the 'United States of Europe'?  Not quite, says the Professor:

Should one then turn the argument on its head? Is it precisely because Europe is so divided that it needs the EU? Without it, one often hears, we would go back to the 1930s or to 1914. But so remote from any imaginable reality is war between European democracies that justifying the EU as the force keeping them from each other’s throats is absurd. Even more extraordinary is the idea, espoused by Tony Blair among others, that if we withdraw from ‘Europe’, we might have to go back as in 1914 to stop future mayhem.

Or is it, perhaps, that the EU protects all those 'lickle' European countries from Big Global Bully Boys?  According to the 'Prof', not so:

Mr Guy Verhofstadt declared to cheering Lib Dems that “The world of tomorrow is a world of empires” in which the EU would replace the nation-states. How often we have heard this since Joseph Chamberlain first announced in 1904 that “The day of empires has come”. Leaving aside the question of whether the lumbering EU is remotely capable of bestriding the globe, we should ask ourselves where Chamberlain’s great empires are now.

Good question, and the 'Prof' answers it thus:

One with Nineveh and Tyre is the answer – though interestingly, some of the leading imperialists of Chamberlain’s day became early champions of European federalism. The huge states are all and always in trouble, struggling to hold themselves together and defend their borders. Small, nimble, united and democratic states are more resilient and successful. Where would you put your life savings? Brazil or Switzerland? China or Singapore?

We Brexiteers have no wish to be enemy of the EU.  Quite the contrary, we wish to freely trade and exchange with them.  What we do not want under any circumstances is for their laws to have precedence over ours.

Cue: Enter stage Left, Right and Centre - SoD!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 6.10.19

The difference between two brothers:   I refer to the Princes William and Harry and, no, I do not wish to sink in the mire of speculation concerning their parentage!  Suffice to say that they could not be more different.  William is the straightest of straight arrows, imbued with the sense of duty possessed by his Grandmother.  Harry, by contrast, is a loose canon careening around the Royal deck and likely to go off at any moment.  It's a pity because he is a courageous and likeable young man who did his duty in Afghanistan 'up the sharp end'.  Alas, his wife, I suspect, has an ego that far exceeds her brain cells.  There will be trouble ahead . . .

 

Will Boris blink on the 'chicken-run'?    As he accelerates towards the massive road block that faces him in Europe, in Parliament and in the Courts, will Boris lift his foot off the accelerator or will he push down even harder?  I do not know but the fact that he still employs that determined/fanatical (you choose!) back-seat driver, Dominic Cummings, would indicate that we should not expect the shriek of brakes!  Also, the fact that an increasing number of voters are sick of the whole business and simply want 'OUT', then it will aid Boris, when we finally get to the inevitable election, to show that he has been deliberately obstructed by people intent on defying the will of the majority of voters.  Bring it on!

 

Murray mints:   Do you remember them and their catchy slogan, "Murray mints, Murray mints, too good to hurry mints!"  I am reminded of them, for obvious reasons, because Douglas Murray has entered my life - BIG TIME!  He is, and has long been, a fairly constant commentator on all sorts of subjects in all sorts of newspapers and magazines, as well as being a prolific author on a variety of subjects.  In fact, I have just purchased his latest book: "The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity" so you can expect a review (of sorts) in due course.  He is a former practicing Christian, a homosexual, a strong anti-Islam critic and politically a conservative.  The Guardian described his latest book as "the bizarre fantasies of a rightwing provocateur, blind to oppression."  Apparently they are unaware that he also wrote a book severely criticising my old Regiment when in 1972 it shot 28 unarmed civilians in Derry, 14 of whom died.  So, an interesting fella' and I am looking forward to reading his latest book.  Also, of course, he is a contributing editor of The Spectator - so that's alright then!

 

Call in the Paras!   Apparently, the dim-dumb 'kiddiewankies' are planning to bring London to a halt for a fortnight whilst they protest about '_____________'  (fill in your choice of cause).  I am not really suggesting the military but the police, with the full support of the government, need to act with energy and, if necessary, force!  They might consider spraying them all with yellow paint!

 

Oh 'strewth, I just fell into a gay/queer imbroglio:  Even at my age I keep stumbling over topics about which I know little or sometimes nothing!  The world of 'gays 'n' queers' is one of them but, courtesy of Mr. Murray (see above), I now know very much more.  As I mentioned, Mr. Murray is homosexual and the opening section of his book is devoted to explaining this highly nuanced sub-section of society.  For example, did you know that 'gay' is the word used to describe the more moderate world of homosexuality where-as, 'queer' is the far more extreme version of it?  From that point on, Mr. Murray, with his piercing intelligence, analyses - dare I say? - the 'ins and outs' of this section of society.  I could have managed the rest of my life quite well without it but, dammit, I do have an enquiring mind so I am happy to explore different facets of life, particularly with Mr. Murray as my guide.  All I can say is - 'HOONOO'?

 

No more rumbles

 

An interesting book - well, to me!

I am referring to "Our Boys: The story of a paratrooper" by Helen Parr.  She is now a distinguished academic but earlier in her life as a young girl she was distressed to learn that her uncle, Dave Parr, had been killed in the Falkland Islands whilst serving with the Paras.  Now, later in life, she has returned to this sensitive subject and has used it as a base from which to examine the nature of the Parachute Regiment before, during and after the Falklands war.

She has the essence of the regiment exactly right with its emphasis on  stamina and aggression - both of which could not have been more severely tested than in that freezing, bleak landscape in which virtually everything a soldier needed had to be carried - by the soldier!  She has not flinched from investigating and telling in some detail the nature of very close combat, so close that frequently the bayonet was required.  Nor does she flinch from pointing to some brutal details of the behaviour of some of the 'Toms' when hand-to-hand combat ceased.

Moving back from the 'cut and thrust', so to speak, of the combat, she sets the entire war into the background of UK society then, at the beginning of Margaret Thatcher's premiership, and now, when it seems impossible to imagine British troops going halfway round the world to fight a war - which, of course, was exactly how things were back in 1982!  Not the least of her concerns was, and still is, the nature of the relationship now between British civilian society and its armed forces.

Even so, above and beyond everything is her judicious admiration for 'the Paras', their history and their ethos.  Not a book for everyone but I, an ex-Para who (thank God!) never fired a shot in anger, enjoyed it immensely.

 

 

 

The most astonishing political event in my life!

Mind you, I was only 6 years old at the time so it hardly impinged on my childhood.  Even so, as a keen, er, 'student' of WWII once I (sort of) grew up, this particular event still astonishes me.  After six long years of the most ferocious and dangerous war ever fought in which we, the British people, were led by a political Titan' of extraordinary courage and stamina, what did we do?  We tossed him out without so much as a "Ta very much!"  Instead, we voted in a nondescript 'Mr. Pooter', a decent chap, and all that sort of thing, but not exactly the sort to shake the pillars of the world!

Had I been an adult back then I think I would have emigrated at high speed!  (Gosh, Australia, that was a near escape!)  Even reading about it later, I still shake my head in disbelief but, again from a distance, my admiration for the 'Great British Peeps' grows apace.  Of course, now that the shock has worn off, it is understandable that, Churchill's war notwithstanding, the Tory party was held responsible for the miseries of the 1930s,  and the millions of servicemen returning from overseas, and their families, desperately wanted the socialist nirvana offered by the Labour party.  Of course, it didn't last and at the next election Labour was laid off and 'Winnie' and his Tories were back in.

I am provoked to these ruminations by a review in The Mail of a book by Leo McKinstry titled "Attlee and Churchill : Allies in War, Adversaries in Peace".  I am sorely tempted to buy it but I fear that if I attempt to stuff yet another book into my titchy, little, slim-line Kindle it will explode!

 

 

A far better radio operator than I would ever have been!

As you regulars know, I always keep half an eye on the 'obits' in The Telegraph because they are a constant source of delight and wonderment and humour and, very often, total admiration.  Today, there is an 'obit' on the late, and exceedingly courageous, Sgt. John Sharp who has died recently aged 96.

John Sharp in France sending Morse Code messages from his suitcase wireless

If ever the well known phrase 'He had a good war' applied to anyone it was to this man.  I salute his memory.

 

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 29.09.19

I woke up feeling cheerful, then I read the papers:   Don't worry, I'm not going to summarise them for you, instead, I will let you read them for yourselves but please have an exceedingly stiff whisky to hand!  In no particular 0rder of precedence:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7516523/ANDREW-ROBERTS-Boris-beat-Parliament-going-strike.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7516237/DAN-HODGES-moment-killed-British-democracy.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7516449/Liberals-soon-regret-power-wielded-Supreme-Court-judges-writes-PETER-HITCHENS.html

And I haven't even started on The Daily Telegraph!  Oh God, I may have to start reading stories about Meghan Markle and Harry and, of course, Archie - 'oh, the horror, the horror'!

 

And now I have another problem!   Who the hell am I going to vote for at the next election?  Alas, it will probably not be the Conservative party which is a shame because I think our local MP, David Warburton, is excellent but, alas and alack, the behaviour of the Tory party - or large parts of it! - make it unelectable.  I remain (if you will excuse that vile word!) reluctant to vote for 'our Nige', not because of him but the people who surround him.  This morning, following an article at The Coffee Shop, I am tempted to vote for the Social Democratic party.  (Sorry, did you just blow coffee all over your keyboard?)  Their very title fills me with dread but there are two big points in their favour, first, it is led by Rod Liddle, a political philosopher of , er, great distinction (sorry, did you say something?) and second, there are its stated aims:

We will be the focus on campuses for anti-woke students, the party of freedom of speech and we will continue to be the only party which wishes to reduce immigration, disavows all this gender fluidity nonsense and fights against identity politics and in support of faith, flag and family.

Who could ask for anything more?

 

Now, about this FDR fella . . .   He is rapidly becoming one of those 'enigma/riddle thingies'!  I have long been puzzled by him, especially by the way that, finally, in the late '30s and early '40s, he galvanised the US armed services but - and it's an enormous BUT - he left the US Pacific fleet moored in nice straight rows in Pearl Harbour when he knew, absolutely knew, that the Japs were poised for war not least because he was, with great deliberation, strangling them economically and war was their only choice - and Roosevelt's only hope!  I am reminded of my suspicions by a piece quoted at Zero Hedge which is worth a read.

 

(Sir) Lewis wins- again!   I gather that all was not quite straightforward at the Russian Grand Prix but waddya expect in Russia?  Must read up on the details later.

 

'MDJ' sums it up thusly:   Of course, y'all know that 'MDJ' is 'My Darling Jane' Daley and today in The Telegraph she says this:

So no, I do not think there will be violence in the streets even when the people realise the full consequences of the contempt in which they are held by what they see, quite rightly, as a privileged, arrogant political class. They will not riot or attack the police who they will assume, again rightly, to be blameless. The outcome will be far worse than that because it will not blow itself out in civil disruption which is generally counterproductive (just as the noxious Remain protesters who drown out broadcast interviews are counterproductive). There will instead be despair, disillusionment and alienation between the social classes which will prevail for at least a generation.

If, as seems likely, Brexit is finally defeated by 'you know who', then the consequences will be profound and deeply damaging.  Not the least of them will be a slow but steady growth in detestation, amounting to hatred, in the EU and all its works.  Needless to say, the blind, cloth-eared apparatchiks in Brussels will press on with their mad schemes with ever more fervour.

 

 

No more Rumbles

 

 

Whigs 'n' Tories, er, you know, sort of, this 'n' that . . .

I am forced to confess that I have discovered yet another gaping hole in my knowledge of English history.  Actually, my knowledge has more holes in it than a string vest I once owned!  As I believe I told you recently, I have just purchased a book by Richard Aldous entitled "The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs. Disraeli".  Embarrassingly, this has confirmed my ignorance of the history of mid-Victorian England.  It does not help that Parliamentary structures of those days are so very different to today.  For example, an aristocrat could lead his chosen party from the House of Lords whilst his non-aristo deputy would lead the party in the Commons.  Then there is the inherent confusion between the 'Whigs' and the 'Liberals' who appear to be much the same but sometimes differ.  At least the Tories are somewhat more coherent but not always.  Certainly, party discipline was very much more lax in the 19th century than they are (or are supposed to be!) in the 21st century!

As far as I can tell, the politics of this particular era were simply based on the mutual detestation between Gladstone and Disraeli.  They were consumed by a mutual hatred in which policies were virulently opposed not because of what they were but because of who had proposed them.  'To tell truth and shame the devil', I am finding it exceedingly hard to follow the ins and outs of their endless Parliamentary battles.  The only thing I have learned is that the current shenanigans in Parliament would  not have raised an eyebrow in the 19th century!

Yet another proof of the old saying, "What goes around comes around"!

 

 

They have TDS 'over there' and we have BDS 'over here'

Well, you don't need to be a qualified psycho-babbler to analyse Trump Derangement Syndrome which is spiralling out of control 'over there', any more than you need it 'over here' as Brexit Derangement Syndrome floats ever upwards inflated by the volumes of hot air emanating from Parliament.  The only good thing to be said about both examples of mouth-dribbling lunacy is that it now confirms without doubt that on the whole, by and large and with only rare exceptions, our politicians are stupid beyond belief!

Well, we all knew it, of course, but now, both here and there, we have the ghastly truth not just before our eyes in print and TV but also in our ears as the cacophony of gibberish broadcasts out out at full volume.  Increasingly, Parliament and Congress look and sound like the chimpanzee compound at Chester Zoo* in which the animals constantly leap up and down, screeching at each other as they simultaneously sniff each other's private parts before exchanging blows.  Alas, my inventiveness in describing politicians is severely limited because of my memories of the late, great Auberon Waugh who could eviscerate a politician at twenty paces with a stroke of his pen.  Here are some examples:

The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to parliament [or congress, as the case may be] and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever.

…………………………………………………...

Politics, as I never tire of saying, is for social and emotional misfits, handicapped folk, those with a grudge. The purpose of politics is to help them overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power.

…………………………………………………..

Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish into politics and the shits into law

…………………………………………………...

Anyone in England who puts himself forward to be elected to a position of political power is almost bound to be socially or emotionally insecure, or criminally motivated, or mad.

…………………………………………………..

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Oh, how I miss that man!

 

*https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-secret-life-of-the-zoo

 

 

Rule of law or rule by lawyers?

Interesting times - dammit!  We non-lawyers can only shake our heads in puzzlement as we contemplate the High Court of England voting 3-0 in support of Boris's proroguing of Parliament, and the Supreme Court ruling 11-0 against it!  In both cases, a bit like a Soviet Praesidium, no dissent permitted! 

First of all, let me say that I was disturbed by Boris's attempt to shut down Parliament in order to avoid opposition to his policies.  I understand full well the temptation to utilise real-politik in pursuance of your political aims and in order to thwart your political foes but it needs to be used with care and sophistication - not qualities I would immediately ascribe to Boris or his, er, 'advisors'.

Second of all, I should make it clear that any respect I have for any lawyer of any rank is strictly conditional!  To assume that these 'Cocklecarrots' somehow live in a higher echelon of being from the rest of us, totally free from from prejudice and incapable of error, is to move closer to belief in Father Christmas!  Needless to say, just like the plumber who comes to fix a leak in your house, you grant him a certain amount of respect given his superior qualifications but only until such time as a second leak occurs!  Thus it is with lawyers.

As to the immediate future, we Brexiteers must sit tight and watch our, er, 'Mother of Parliaments' twist every rule in the book in order to thwart the will of the People as expressed in a free referendum that the politicians themselves initiated.  There is only one sword that can cut through this 'gordian knot' and that is a general election.  Let the Remainers try everything they can to piss on the People, sooner or later  - our turn will come!

ADDITIONAL:

Dammit, dammit, no sooner had I written the above than I clicked on to The Telegraph site and read what Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has written today.  There you have it, before your very eyes, the 'yuuuuuge' difference between pros and ams - I am almost embarrassed!  Go read him - now!

 

 

 

Please, pretty please, bring on the election a.s.a.p.

There could not be a better, by which I mean a more auspicious, time to have a general election than now!  The Marxist Labour party is in full-on, self-destruct mode.  It is a well-known warning to beware when thieves fall out although when the thieves concerned are the current Labour party it cannot happen at a better time just as an election looms.  The only mitigation in their favour is that at least they are fairly open about their thievery, indeed, they positively boast about it!  Only the deaf, dumb, blind and brain dead can now be in any doubt as to their aims and intentions.  With malice aforethought, they intend to reduce the country to total impoverishment which, of course, will then provide them with the excuse to introduce 'emergency procedures' (ie, dictatorial rule) from which we are unlikely to escape for decades.  We can then trudge down the road to disaster singing: "Ven-ez-uela here we come"!

Happily, at the moment, the hard-line Marxists are falling out, Big Time, with the hard-line Trotskyites.  It was ever thus in the 'Temple of Higher Communism'!  Also, praise the Lord (and pass the ammunition!), we have one golden opportunity to drive these lunatic Reds not just from our beds but from the centre of British politics and out into the cold and lonely extremes where we can treat them with the contempt they deserve.

The main question to be settled once and for all by an election is obviously the Brexit imbroglio.  Everyone and his uncle with access to a newsroom or TV studio has had the opportunity to honk 'n' hoot on this apparently intractable problem.  The only people not to be given a voice, of course, are, well, er, the People!  Let them speak and let that be an end to the matter!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 22.9.19

Who turned the sun off and the taps on?   I don't know but when I find out he, or perhaps that should be 'He', will get a slap!  We have, or at least, I have, enjoyed two incredible weeks of delicious, non-stop Autumnal sunshine - until this morning!  Needless to say, this non-stop sunshine occurred when I was on duty as volunteer 'garden waterer' to two of my neighbours, so every evening I have been trudging the paths acting as a sort of latter-day 'Gunga Din'.  When they get back they will never know the hard labour I put in - unless I tell them, which I will, over and over!

Talking of 'Gunga Din':   I sort of 'know' of Rudyard Kipling's famous poem but I have never actually read it which is my 'bad' because it is excellent.  Here it is so you, too, can re-educate yourselves:

You may talk o’ gin and beer
When you’re quartered safe out ’ere,
An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it.
Now in Injia’s sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin’ of ’Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din,
He was ‘Din! Din! Din!
‘You limpin’ lump o’ brick-dust, Gunga Din!
‘Hi! Slippy hitherao
‘Water, get it! Panee lao,
‘You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din.’

The uniform ’e wore
Was nothin’ much before,
An’ rather less than ’arf o’ that be’ind,
For a piece o’ twisty rag
An’ a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment ’e could find.
When the sweatin’ troop-train lay
In a sidin’ through the day,
Where the ’eat would make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl,
We shouted ‘Harry By!’
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped ’im ’cause ’e couldn’t serve us all.
It was ‘Din! Din! Din!
‘You ’eathen, where the mischief ’ave you been?
‘You put some juldee in it
‘Or I’ll marrow you this minute
‘If you don’t fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!’

’E would dot an’ carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An’ ’e didn’t seem to know the use o’ fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin’ nut,
’E’d be waitin’ fifty paces right flank rear.
With ’is mussick on ’is back,
’E would skip with our attack,
An’ watch us till the bugles made 'Retire,’
An’ for all ’is dirty ’ide
’E was white, clear white, inside
When ’e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was ‘Din! Din! Din!’
With the bullets kickin’ dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-ranks shout,
‘Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!’

I shan’t forgit the night
When I dropped be’ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should ’a’ been.
I was chokin’ mad with thirst,
An’ the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din.
’E lifted up my ’ead,
An’ he plugged me where I bled,
An’ ’e guv me ’arf-a-pint o’ water green.
It was crawlin’ and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I’ve drunk,
I’m gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was 'Din! Din! Din!
‘’Ere’s a beggar with a bullet through ’is spleen;
‘’E's chawin’ up the ground,
‘An’ ’e’s kickin’ all around:
‘For Gawd’s sake git the water, Gunga Din!’

’E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean.
’E put me safe inside,
An’ just before ’e died,
'I ’ope you liked your drink,’ sez Gunga Din.
So I’ll meet ’im later on
At the place where ’e is gone—
Where it’s always double drill and no canteen.
’E’ll be squattin’ on the coals
Givin’ drink to poor damned souls,
An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Dammit, now I really must read some more Kipling, he captured an era.

 

Is nothing sacred to the 'Woke' idiots?   In this case I am referring to the 'soppy sillies' who run the charity that in turn runs our National Life Boat Service.  According to The Mail, a volunteer life boat skipper has quit in disgust at the increasing stupidity of various management decisions based more on 'Political Correctness' than common-sense.

Last week The Mail on Sunday reported how the RNLI is spending millions on projects abroad, including buying burkinis for Muslim women in Africa.
Now we can reveal that the charity is slashing more than 100 jobs in the UK despite sitting on a cash pile of £126 million – and is facing claims of ‘hushing up’ the loss of one of its lifeboats following a fire on the vessel.

The disclosures follow clashes between the RNLI leadership and lifeboat crews, including the sacking in 2017 of a coxswain at a station in Arbroath, Scotland, after he failed to prevent a prank in which a crewman bared his buttocks.

Two crewmen from Whitby, North Yorkshire, were also dismissed last summer after tea mugs were found to be decorated with ‘inappropriate material of a sexual nature’.

I wonder if any of those 'PC softies' would volunteer to go out in raging seas at midnight to rescue mariners in peril?  Only, I suppose, if the victims first passed a 'woke' test!

 

Greta Thunberg is a dim, dumb, little, lying liar!   Yes, I know she's only a young gal but this grumpy, old man shows no mercy to anyone spouting, misleading rubbish!

As so often in this never-ending agit-prop concerning 'Global Warming' which the fanatics have now dropped as a key phrase mainly because it has been utterly disproven and replaced it with the utterly meaningless 'Climate Change', I rely utterly on the one man I totally admire on this subject.  Yes, of course, it is the superb Anthony Watts.

 

Dawkins well and truly thumped!   Alas, I don't have the time to summarise, suffice to say that Richard Dawkins receives a right hook, a left hook and a kick in the goolies from a man who knows where-of he writes and contradicts just about everything in Dawkins' latest book.  You read and drool over it here:

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/if-richard-dawkins-loves-facts-so-much-why-cant-he-get-them-right/

 

There's no justice in this world!   I have just read in The Mail that George Blake is still alive and well and living in a four-bedroom dacha outside Moscow.  This half-Dutch, half-Turkish, former MI6 agent betrayed hundreds of others to the Russians. 

 

To be fair, which I am not inclined to be, he was an exceedingly brave and resourceful operator, almost to a 'James Bond' level.  Even so, with deliberate malice and forethought his treacherous actions led to the deaths of hundreds of other men.  He should have died of agonising cancer years ago but somehow he dodged the bullet.  I can only hope he has a sad and painful old age!

 

The legal 'brown stuff' will hit the fan:  Either tomorrow or perhaps the day after when their Lordships in the Supreme Court issue a decision on the recent Parliamentary shenanigans.  Actually, I suppose, it will be more like political 'brown stuff' but either way it will smell as sweet!

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

Arnhem: Another glorious failure in our history

Well, I, and others more qualified than me, might describe the Arnhem operation as "a glorious failure" but there is no shame in it.  All nations have their military disasters to place alongside their glorious victories!  Even so, the Arnhem attack was, without doubt, a disaster, not just because it was defeated on the field of battle but also, and perhaps more so, because a victory would have had unbelievably superb ramifications for Europe at the end of the war.  Victory at Arnhem would have allowed the allies to reach Berlin way before the Russians arrived there and slammed down their 'iron curtain'.

So, a brilliant concept from the very top, and a tremendously hard-fought, vicious battle at the bottom but, alas, it was, so to speak, the 'middle-management' where things went disastrously wrong.  The idea of an armoured division advancing some 75 miles up a single highway surrounded on both sides by flood-land must have struck some commanders and staff officers as being completely bonkers!  Alas, this all occurred as Montgomery, usually a brilliant tactician, was at the very peak of his inflated and almost mad, egocentric self-certainty!  He would brook no opposition to his plan.  Even so, the 'middlemen', both the various Generals and not least some of the Air Force commanders should have stood up to him.

Well, it's all 'blood under the bridge' now but it should not stop us from saluting the memories of some exceedingly tough and courageous soldiers who made the greatest sacrifice on our behalf.

"Utrinque Paratus"

 

 

To bomb or not to bomb, that is the question?

In history there are always a host of exquisitely painful moral dilemmas.  To be honest, I usually rush past them because I find that my mind, or what passes for it, usually seizes up if I attempt to answer them.  One of the most hideously difficult ones is the question as to whether or not we should have bombed Auschwitz during the war.

The Daily Mail has an excellent summary of the problem.  

A Professor of Jewish Studies has claimed that the Allied forces should have gone ahead with plans to bomb Auschwitz during World War II, as a symbol of moral outrage.

Speaking in the BBC Two documentary 1944: Should we Bomb Auschwitz? Professor Michael Berenbaum of The American Jewish University in LA, said that a strike should have gone ahead despite the inevitable death toll, arguing: 'Moral protest in the wake of genocide is much better than nothing. Much, much better than nothing.'

As far as I understand it, due to the range, the technical problem was that the Air Force would have to use traditional heavy/medium bombers whose accuracy was hopeless.  Unfortunately, the Mosquito which would have been able to slot a bomb down the chimney of the gas-chambers (not really, but you take my point!) lacked the ability to fly that far.

A raid by traditional bombers would have slaughtered thousands of prisoners.  Of course, in the chaos perhaps thousands might have made their escape but to where?  And would it have put a brake on the mass slaughter when the Germans realised that we knew exactly what they were doing?  'No answer' came the mournful reply!

An agonising decision and I thank God I was not one of those forced to answer it!

 

 

I can't read Cameron's book, I might throw up!

That being the case, I must rely on Mr. Fraser Nelson's opinion upon which I have relied for 'many a year and oft' given that he is editor of The Spectator.  Today, in The Telegraph, he reviews 'Dim' Dave's memoir and the first thing I learned was that my appellation of "Dim" was way below the reality.  The man is dim, dumb, deaf and daft beyond description.  Some of us might, after a heavy night down the pub, attempt to walk through a brick wall but not many of us would keep on trying over and over again even as the cuts and abrasions and injuries mount.  Nor would many of us - any of us? - urge others to do the same!  But Dim Dave did - and still does!

"For The Record" [the title of his memoir] was written as political tragedy, a 700-page apology to the nation for the former prime minister’s role in what he regards as a calamity.

But it’s also a candid account of how he pursued an idea – that the EU can be reformed – and tested it to (his) destruction. We see him making allies, drafting strategies, threatening and begging – but his story ends in failure. He expected diplomacy, but encountered a bureaucratic Death Star whose hunger for power is matched only by its intransigence. From the former Remainer-in-Chief, it’s quite a story.

I'm sure it is but I am not sure if I possess enough sick-bags to read it!  With my emphases throughout.

Once inside its inner circle, he was exposed to the horrors. The directives, the stitch-ups, the knives always out for the City of London. […]. The purpose of these meetings, he discovered, was to grind everyone into submission. Including, eventually, him.

He found the EU to be “peacenik” on security, unable to respond to threats on its doorstep. He vetoed one of the eurozone bailout packages that threatened to suck in Britain, only to see the rules changed so the UK veto would not count.  When the UK tried to go its own way, it “wasn’t simply a disagreement with the others, it was a heresy against the scripture”. He thought Angela Merkel nice, but unreliable. He refers to the “half-life of a Merkel promise”: the time taken between her making one and breaking it. In general, he found “Germany’s unfailing ability to get what it wants in the end.”

And he was surprised?!!!!!!!

Britain’s ability to get what it wants was, by contrast, pretty minimal. When the federalist Jean-Claude Juncker was put forward as European Commission president, Cameron was shocked to discover that just two of the 28 EU member states’ leaders wanted him.

There is a touch of Mr Smith Goes to Washington about what happened next: why, he asks then, go along with this stitch-up? He stays up late drinking wine with fellow leaders, and they promise to back him in stopping Juncker. Then Merkel decides it’s not worth the fight, so they all support a massive decision that they all know to be wrong.

Hello!  Earth to 'Planet SoD'!  Are you reading this?

Cameron goes home appalled. But as he was to find out, this is how things work. “‘Anyone who says that the EU is an organisation based on law and not politics has never seen it act under pressure,” he records. “Whenever there was pressure to transfer powers to Brussels, the lawyers always found a way, but when I wanted to take powers back, those same lawyers always opposed it.” It is a formula to trap democracies: use complex laws and regulation to suck powers in, but never give them back.

Never mind, chaps, 'Steady the Buffs' and all that sort of thing, let's try walking through that brick wall again!

Dealing with their officials, he says, was even worse. “To them, I was a dangerous heretic stamping on their sacred texts.” He records with amazement how the Germans (and others) saw the EU as the fount of democracy, where Brits only ever wanted a forum for economic co-operation.

And still he fails to see the 'bleedin' obvious':

There is almost nothing in those 700 pages to explain why EU membership is a good thing. There is not a single example of anything emanating from Brussels that benefits Britain. So why does he start to talk about Britain’s future being in the EU and about it being a fundamental part of who we are as a country?

Dim, he most certainly is given that he cannot see the truth of what he, himself, has written!

But the great value of Cameron’s book is its candour. He recorded his thoughts once a month, wrote each chapter from the perspective of what he felt at the time, and has not twisted the facts to suit his final conclusion. He regards Brexit as a disaster, but those who read his book would be tempted to see it as liberation. A great democracy was being squeezed inside an unaccountable bureaucracy, and no one else in Europe wanted to risk their career by challenging it – or giving voters the chance to escape it. But Cameron did. He might, one day, come to see it as the greatest single service he did his country.

Thank you, Mr. Nelson, you have just saved me from several weeks of bilious fury which would have accompanied any effort on my part to read 'Mr. Magoo's' nauseating memoir.  Given our long history, we have, er, 'enjoyed' the leadership of countless twits as Prime Ministers but I doubt that many of them could plumb the depths of stupidity reached by David Cameron!

 

 

An absolute 'MUST READ'!

I opened the Daily Mail this morning with drooling excitement but also some trepidation.  The main story was an article by their long-term commentator, Sarah Vine, a lady in the finest tradition of 'Fleet Street' who is more than capable of putting a hefty boot into anything or anyone who displeases her.  Today the target was David Cameron and his wife Samantha.  Of course, this was a response to Cameron's brutal attack on Michael Gove in his just published memoirs in which he accused his old friend of treachury for deciding to back 'Brexit' against Cameron's preferred 'Remain' stance.  Suffice to say that Sarah Vine and Michael Gove are man and wife!  Cue: incoming thunderclaps and lightning bolts!

Not so, actually!  Instead, Ms. Vine in her article creates an elegant  memorial to a past and very close friendship of shared pleasures and tragedy, and deep regret at the shattering end of the links between two families who, in the past, could not have been closer.  Her final paragraphs sum up her feelings:

And that, ultimately, and despite all that has been said and done, is how I will always remember Dave and Samantha. As dear friends who were there at key moments of my life. In the years before power and politics got in the way of those simple, happy, human connections.

Two incredibly kind, generous souls who overcame unspeakable loss with the death of their beloved Ivan, who always embraced life even in the face of tragedy, and who inspire love and admiration in all who truly know them.

Hard as these past few years have been, nothing will ever erase those memories. Because that is what really matters: people. Not politics, not power, not Brexit.

We make mistakes and we move on. Or we should at least try. And we remember the good times. Because, in the end, that is all that remains.

It was a kind and thoughtful lament and my admiration for Ms. Vine is enormous.  

 

Lest you doubt the sheer nastiness of the EU . . .

We Brits, in general, and our Prime Minister, in particular, now know from distasteful experience exactly the extremes of pig-ignorant vileness the 'Euros' will sink to at every chance to insult us.  The Prime Minister of the non-nation, Luxembourg, invites our PM to a news conference which he has carefully stuffed with a baying mob of anti-British yobs and yobettes primed to unleash a barrage of screaming insults.  And what is the response from the leadership of the two leading countries in this stitch-up of a German conglomeration?  A mild 'tut-tut' from Berlin and a hearty 'superbe, très bien fait' from the little squirt who struts around in France.

GET ME OUTTA HERE!

 

I'm gonna sue that Daily Mail!

Many years ago I re-named the Liberal Democrats as the 'il-Lib-non-Dems' because it was becoming ever more clear that beneath their, er, very nice, middle class, middle England camouflage, they were in fact a party of bullies and autocrats.  It was only the fact that their chances of ever seizing real power were minimal that most people simply dismissed them as 'also rans'.  Now, however, given the almighty political flux that has smashed our politics to bits, they perceive a chance through a hung Parliament, or a deal with Labour for them to reach the higher levels of government.

Instantly, their bossy, zealous leaderette, the deplorable Jo Swinson, lets the mask slip by proclaiming that were she to gain power then she would obliterate the majority choice of the British people and simply exterminate the Referendum result.  And lo, it was no more, it will cease to exist, that free Referendum is a dead Referendum!  As Mr. Stephen Glover puts it in today's Mail:

Having observed the party over the years, I'm not surprised. Most Lib Dems are doubtless thoroughly nice people. But their party is not very nice. It is surprisingly ruthless, and adept at twisting the rules. They might be more accurately described as the Illiberal non-Democrats.

We shouldn't forget how, during the 2010 election campaign, the party solemnly promised to abolish tuition fees. Then, having been tempted into coalition by the Tories, it promptly agreed to treble them. […]

Yet it turns out she is an unusually slippery operator. Not only is she happy to kill off the 2016 referendum result. There was a time, although she has chosen to forget it, when she was herself in favour of an EU referendum.  On Sunday, she declared sententiously that she couldn't 'forgive David Cameron for calling the referendum'. Yet in 2008 she proposed an In/Out poll from the Lib Dem benches, and criticised Brussels over its undemocratic procedures.

Perhaps my title for that bunch of rogues is a tad tricky to roll off the tongue so instead they should henceforth be known as the Lying-Liars party!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 15.9.19

I just don't get it!   I am referring to this 'religion thing'!  Every Sunday morning the bells peal from the Church outside my front door and in ones and twos but rarely more, the worshippers stroll past on their way to the service.  And every Sunday morning I wonder why?  Well, of course, it's because they believe but, alas and alack, I do not.  Even worse (I suppose), neither do I want to believe!  I should hasten to add that even so, I am, on the whole, exceedingly grateful to the moral code laid down by Jesus Christ (allegedly) which I think is as fine a guide to life as anyone could wish for but beyond that, I cannot go.

 

I want a sort of "Beam me up, Scotty" device:   Not that I wish to go anywhere - although a flash trip to the 'Arkie' mountains would be good! - no, what I want is a sort of 'Fast Forward' button that will whizz me past all this hideously shameful (and 'sham full') Parliamentary pantomime.  Actually, it would be even better if it could whizz forward twenty years so that the true nature of the European monster will began to show its hideous nature even to the dim, dumb Troglodytes who worship at its feet!

 

Why do I 'lurve' Victoria Beckham?   No, no, it's not because she is a mega-rich, attractive lady, at least, not entirely!  I think it is because, above and beyond all else, she generally keeps a low profile and (so far!) has avoided the sewers of depravity which swirl past all 'slebs'.  She appears to be a hard-working Mum who runs her own business and, by and large, minds her own business!  Yes, I wish that she would smile a little more often, particularly when she receives yet another proposal from me, but even so, I do still 'lurve' her!

 

 

At least there's a laugh on the 'telly' tonight:   On one of the film Channels they are re-running that 'Jack Reacher' film with that well-known midget, Mr. Tom Cruise, playing the lead!  How he ever got the part I do not know because 'Jack Reacher' he was not!  Mind you, writing that reminds me of an exceedingly tough guy called 'Tony' Fleming' I met years ago in the army who was born and raised in an exceedingly rough part of Liverpool.  When it came to street/pub fighting he knew where-of he spoke having been at it since he was 14 years old!  When I once asked him if he was scared of anyone, he replied in the negative but added the warning that you always had to be careful of the little guys!

 

So what happened to the Trump mega-disaster?   I remember being warned by sundry media sources, well, most media sources, actually, that the inauguration of Donald Trump as President inevitably meant the end of the world.  To be fair, even without the, er, assistance of those wailers 'n' moaners, I must confess that 'back in the day' I was fairly nervous of the prospect.  Even so, here we are nearly three years on and I'm still waiting!  The only outstanding question is, if 'HillBilly' had won would I have had to wait so long?  Don't bother replying, I think I know the answer.

 

Damn right!   There is a story - alright, a 'flyer' - in The Sunday Mail today indicating that there are moves afoot to earmark the hitherto empty plinth in Trafalgar Square for a statue of Prince Phillip.  Actually, they rather wittily describe him as "Plinth Phillip"!  Off hand, I cannot think of anyone more deserving of the honour.

 

 

No more Rumbles

 

Re-enter, stage centre, a dim, dumb Mr. Magoo

In case any of you are bewildered by my heading, I will provide you with the 'Wiki' description of 'Mr. Magoo' as "a wealthy, short-statured retiree who gets into a series of comical situations as a result of his extreme near-sightedness, compounded by his stubborn refusal to admit the problem"!  Yeeeeeeees, well, I think that about sums up the Rt. Honourable David Cameron, former Prime Minister of this parish!  As Ms. Camilla Tominey summarises it in The Telegraph:

And his surprise at the notion that “non-voters voted” also appears to miss the point about Brexit being a protest vote against the Establishment - and over-privileged people like him. 

While he has the good grace to admit that he set expectations “far too high” on his own failed negotiations with the EU - that he was pleased to come back with a deal that was “dumped on” by the press is yet another revelation laying bare the catalogue of misjudgments at the heart of his premiership.

In insisting the referendum was ‘inevitable’, he tries to shift the blame from his own Project Fearmongery to the eurozone crisis and the “huge political pressure” - although denies Ukip played a part (yeah, right).

Personally, I am delighted that 'Dim Dave' was indeed so far out of touch with the real world as to be almost inhabiting another planet!  It was his dense stupidity that gave us the chance for freedom.  The fact is that the Metropolitan clique that always knows so very much better than us what is best for us received an enormous kick in the ballots and poor 'Dim Dave' is still weeping with the pain.  And still, with his European eyeballs swivelling, he doesn't even begin to understand why it happened.  Needless to say, this same gang that has honed its malpractices to razor-sharpness continues its trickery and crookery in ever more disgusting attempts to deny the right of the majority.

Lest you doubt the monumental stupidity of this Old Etonian, Oxford-educated, upper-class twit, 'there is nothing so became his premiership as his leaving of it':

Yet the former Prime Minister wants the book [his memoir] to dispel the idea that he just swanned off.

Many will question his claim that he wanted to be in Downing Street for a three to four-month period, helping with the transition to a new prime minister.

If that was the case, why on earth did he resign within hours of the 52/48 result?  [My emphasis]

The answer to that was provided years before by his predecessor, a woman with more courage and brains in her little finger than 'Dim Dave' possesses in his entire being - 'he was frit!'

 

 

And I am still not feeling much better today!

However, there is one bright spot in my life.  Yesterday, in the depths of my depression I decided to treat myself to a new book on the history of two, er, 'giants' of the 19th century, Gladstone and Disraeli.  Of course, I know of them but not much about them.  I am learning fast as I devour Richard Aldous's book "The Lion and the Unicorn".  I know that I am prone to raving about sundry books on a fairly consistent basis but this truly is an absolute corker!  Yes, it covers the political shenanigans of the Victorian era which, though important, do not move us to passion these days - after all, we have our own problems!  However, what Mr. Aldous does bring out is the deep and abiding hatred between these two men.  'HOONOO'?  Not me, poor ignorant fellow that I am but I am learning fast!

I am also learning about their very different, in fact polar opposite, characters.  Gladstone the stern, stubborn Victorian and Disraeli the glamourous showman.  Both were highly intelligent but more important, and more entertaining,  was their shared viciousness in the political knife-fight that ensued as they both reached the heights of political power.  Simply too, too delicious!

 

 

 

I was ill yesterday

And today I am not much better!  What are my symptons?  Nausea, filled with bile and sick to my stomach.  Yesterday, I truly plumbed the depths of despair because for the first time in my 80 years I utterly despised my own country.  Having watched and listened to the capering monkeys in Parliament on Monday I almost vomited.  This collection of dis-Honourable Members, led by that unctuous, crap-filled chimp who sits in one of the highest, most venerable seats in the land could only have sunk lower in my estimation by actually pissing and shitting on the floor of the chamber.  Yesterday, I was truly depressed - and I still am!  Without ignoring the many frailties that beset any nation I truly believed that when a crisis arose, as they do both here and everywhere, the ranks of our leadership would, by and large, stand firm and do the honourable thing.  Three years ago this collection of crooks and liars voted roughly 5 to 1 to set Article 50 running because 'we, the People' had voted to leave the EU.  Ever since, and non-stop, they have used every device in the book, and several outside the book, to defy us.  There are ominous signs that that fine collection of kiddie-killers, the IRA, dearly beloved by the leaders of the Labour party, are winding up to a new campaign.  If so, Paddy, you can make a start by blowing up Parliament, er, but only when there is a full house!  And frankly, you can blow me up, too, because I am sick of it!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 8.9.19

One for 'SoD' and Jimmy:  There is a review in this week's 'Speccie' of a biography of the late General Sir Thomas Graham who fought with distinction in the Peninsular war and ended up as Wellington's second-in-command.  He founded the Perthshire Volunteers, later the 90th Foot which eventually amalgamated with the 26th Foot to form the Cameronians.  The reviewer makes a somewhat obscure reference to more modern times when the Cameronians were stationed in Germany and referred to by the locals as "giftzwerge — ‘poison dwarfs’, the Cameronians being tough if generally diminutive men of Glasgow and Lanarkshire."  Surely not, such a calumny!

 

And now one for my American pals:   The name rang a very distant bell but for the life of me I could not recall anything concerning the life and (well deserved) death of Huey P. Long who was, according to Ellen Carmichael at the National Review quoting the historian Arthur Schlesinger, "the closest thing to a dictator the U.S. has ever seen." 

 

Huey P. Long in 1935 (Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress)

Long was the utterly corrupt governor of Louisiana and a US senator and was shot dead, almost certainly by his bodyguards who, er, 'defended' him when he was punched by a young doctor, Carl Weiss for remarks Long had made about his parents.  I cannot precis the story so go read Ms. Carmichael's article which is fascinating.  It was prompted by the very recent death of the son of the man who punched Huey P. Long.

 

'Downton Abbey' - hoodathunkit?   If, in these proletarian times, 1o years ago someone had asked you to invest money into a TV series based on the lives, the triumphs, the vicissitudes, the loves and the disputes of a frightfully posh and wealthy family in Yorkshire and their 'below stairs' servants, would the second word of your reply been "off"?  If so, you would have missed a goldmine!  Now the film is due out shortly and even more 'dosh' will roll in.  The team deserve every bit of it.  It is superbly written, filmed and acted.

 

Snort/snigger of the year:  'MM', I refuse to spell out her full name lest I lose even more readers, dumps her new baby Archie on 'Harry the Hubby' and dashes over to 'Noo Yawk' to, er, support her best friend, Serena Williams, in the tennis championship final - who promptly loses to some unknown teen-ager!  Simply too, too delicious!

 

Those damned Aussie ruffians!   They should jolly well give us back our 'Ashes' because, er, well, you know, we, sort of, deserve it, don't we?  Oh, take that as a 'NO' shall I?

 

Two women sharing the steering wheel:   A frightening prospect in any situation but absolutely terrifying when the vehicle concerned is the US of A and the women concerned are 'Fauxcahontas' Warren and her 'lyin' liar' friend (allegedly), Hillary Clinton.  Actually, it is reported that they both detest each other but, hey, when it comes to a Presidential election anything is possible.  As Ms. Monica Showalter puts it at the American Thinker site:

"Warren may still not be able to stand Clinton, but Clinton is useful to Warren for rigging the Democratic nomination"

'Over here' and 'over there', politics sure is a dirty business. 

 

"The king is dead, long live the King!"   I refer, of course, to the King of the F1 racing circuits, (Sir) Lewis Hamilton who ran second to young Charles Leclerc for most of the race but due to tyre problems finished third.  Snidey spoilsports, er, like me, might complain about some of the stewards' decisions on one or two of Leclerc's driving 'manoeuvres', including his driving straight over the chicane and thus, technically going 'off circuit'.  However, this was Monza and he was driving a Ferrari so what else would you expect?  Even so, it is now very clear that Leclerc is a superb driver and destined to win several world championships.  Alas, poor Vettel, he is heading for the 'knacker's yard' and I wonder if he will drive again next year.  In the meantime, (Sir) Lewis has a fight on his hands but there are many more races to be run.

And so to bed . . .

 

No more rumbles

 

 

Hurrah, more 'Mossies'!

For those of you confused, or just plain bored, by my post below on the famous Mosquito aircraft of WWII, the Daily Mail has just published an excellent story on the history of that amazing aircraft because some 'wizard prang chaps/nut jobs' (delete to taste) are about to start building a new one using the original plans.  Of course, one of the terrific advantages of the 'Mossie' was that it was built almost entirely of wood and canvas which was dead cheap back then.  Despite that, it could fly at around 400 miles per hour!

I would give my right arm for a chance to see that fly and I would give my other arm for a chance to fly in it!

 

 

 

Johnson, Boris: Lower Sixth: Could do better

I confess to having misgivings concerning Boris.  I do not blame him in any way for the despicable treachery of his Tory 'Remainers'.  Anyone who can vote for a Brexit process, for a referendum, then promise to abide by the result of the people's choice and then use every Machiavellian trick in the book to destroy it, deserves far worse than being booted out of the Tory party.  Tied, naked, to a stake in the centre of their constituency towns and pelted with offal would be more suitable!

However, given that, I have to say that I have been less than impressed with Boris's performances in public.  I watched his first PMQs and he came across as a stuttering, stammering toff straight out of a tale by P. G. Wodehouse!  The main thrust of what he was saying was excellent but his way of saying it was appalling.  He has been compared by some silly people to Churchill but that great man was a politician who was never short of an elegant and cutting phrase delivered with the precision of a guided missile.  He is obviously not a man who can think and talk fast on his feet.  Happily, his main opponent, 'Jezza', looks and sounds like an escapee from an old folks home.

As to the current impasse, there is only one possible solution and that is a general election.  I have no firm idea how that would work out but I can only hope that the dreaded 'Peeps' turn in fury against the despicable cheats and liars who have deceived them.  A man may hope, may he not? 

 

 

There are no words . . .

The ructions in Westminster are almost beyond description although our 'meeja' are making every effort to do so as they swathe through the equivalent of half a Brazilian rain forest to print their editions, er, well, if there are any Brazilian rain forests left, of course!  The default mode appears to be that the nation is hopelessly divided but that is to assume that our, er, 'representative' Parliament actually does represent us!  No one can be sure of that and the only way to prove or disprove it is to have an election, or in other words, let the People speak.  It is interesting that the politicians most reluctant to face the People are the ones who have used every trick in the book to ensure that the majority views of the People, as expressed in the referendum, are now ducking and diving to avoid any chance of having to go face to face with the electorate.  Even, and this is truly extraordinary, the Labour opposition party who would in normal times be gagging for any chance to bring down the government via a general election and who have maintained, up until this week, non-stop agitation for it to happen, have now totally 'chickened out' and refused the means for it to occur.  I wonder why?

Even so, my feeling is that, by one means or another, an election will occur very soon.  And "then shall we see what our seemers be!"  As an entrenched 'Leaver' ever since the first referendum which I thought then and continue to think now, with even greater certainty, was a gigantic error of judgment, I still have no idea of how a general election would turn out.  My 'gut feeling', never to be relied upon, is that the dreaded 'Peeps' will exact a huge revenge on those who, having asked for and received our opinion in the second referendum, then, in effect, pissed on us and deployed every 'tricksy' device possible to thwart our majority opinion.

An election?  Bring it on!

 

 

Patrick J. Buchanan is a total tit!

I have just read an article by this leading Republican politician on the subject of WWII that is so stupid as to worry me that this buffoon has any influence on American foreign policy!  Using the perfect vision binoculars of hindsight, this less than great historian condemns the British for their decision to go to war over Poland in 1939.  Pointing to the end result in which Poland, along with most of Eastern Europe, was swallowed whole by the Soviet Union he accuses the Brits of rank stupidity and, by implication, the Americans of strategic genius when they twiddled their thumbs doing nothing whilst the Japs sneaked in and came within a whisker of sinking the entire US fleet in Hawaii.

Britain decided to go to war because they realised that war with Germany was inevitable.  It was only a matter of 'when', not 'if'!  Chamberlain fudged our chance when Germany attacked Czechoslovakia but at least it sealed the belief that it was only a matter of time - and a useful excuse - before we would be forced to go to war. No-one at the time could have foreseen how events would develop - what a pity we did not have the services of that great American prophet, Patrick J. Buchanan!  The British government knew, and Churchill knew more than most, that we were almost totally unprepared for war and it came as something of a surprise to us, and the Germans, that we actually won the Battle of Britain!  In those circs, the British decision to go to war anyway was not without some courage as well as acknowledging the inevitable.

But Buchanan will not have it so!  According to him it was all our fault that the Soviets over-ran Eastern Europe!  This anti-Semitic buffoon made numerous efforts to run for the Presidency but happily the American public rejected him over and over again.  God bless America!

 

 

Dammit, missed again!

I keep having these, er, 'original thoughts' but through a combination of idleness and distractions I never quite get around to expressing them - story of my life, I suppose.  Anyway, for some time the impression has grown in me that if you are a white, middle-class, reasonably intelligent member of society who tends to the centre of what can be called traditional opinion - your end is fast approaching!  Desperately trying to form square ready to defend the middle-ground it has dawned on me that we are surrounded.  The loonies, the radicals from both ends of the political spectrum, the fanatics, the mouth-dribbling 'thickoes' who have to share their meagre supply of brain cells are closing in on us from all directions.

All of the above is a generalised description but thanks to Mr. David Cole at Taki's Mag we have a more specific analysis aimed at the state of American society today.  His opening paragraphs set the scene:

In a season 3 episode of NYPD Blue, profoundly un-PC detective Andy Sipowicz (played by Dennis Franz) gives his son, a newly minted beat cop, a lesson in street patrol. Sipowicz points to a group of young black guys standing on a corner. He tells his son that the men, while not technically doing anything illegal, nevertheless have to be chased off, because a klatch like that can only mean trouble.

“Right now they own that corner,” Sipowicz says. “A good cop’s gonna take it back.”

And there, in that one scene, is an inadvertent depiction of what’s happening in America today. Leftists are Sipowicz, and they’ve decided that wherever and whenever “too many” whites gather, they gotta be run off. How many times do we see the media slam a movie, a TV show, an editorial board, a slate of candidates, or a roomful of people merely for being “too white”? It’s simply taken for granted that anything deemed “too white” is bad and in need of dispersal. It’s not that the actions of the whites who gather are necessarily wrong; the people are wrong. They’re wrong for being white and “owning” a corner.

"As any fule do no", what happens 'over there' soon ends up 'over here'.  In fact examples of the ferocity of anti-white, anti-middle class, anti-middle of the road politics are manifold.  Happily, at 80 years of age I am on my last few laps so, with a bit of luck and a following wind, I may dodge the bullets - and yes, that is an image I am happy to use!  

 

 

So now it begins . . .

And as far as I am concerned, it cannot happen quickly enough!  Of course, I refer to the coming general election which is as near a certainty as anything is in politics.  The Boris/Cummings alliance is working a treat.  It has smoked out all the serious 'Remainers' lurking in the Tory party although, given Boris's promise to boot them out of the Tory party, it remains to be seen how many of them go down with their European ship!  Across the aisle, there are numerous Labour party MPs whose own constituency voters made it clear in the referendum that they wanted 'OUT!'  If the Tories are somewhat split, it is nothing compared to the Labour party whose utterly useless leader was once vocal for Brexit but has now been forced to trim his ragged sails to the point where no-one can be sure which course he will follow.

The Boris/Cummings alliance has obviously worked exceedingly hard to chart a course through the swirling, murky waters of Westminster.  I see signs of real intelligence applied to the myriad possibilities that are available to the loons, fanatics, egotists and the seriously mentally impaired who swarm the corridors of Parliament of whom the detestable 'Squeaker' Bercow is but one example.  So far, for them, it has been one long parade of monstrous egotism but now they are but weeks or even days away from facing their enemy - the dreaded 'Peeps'!  If you doubt me, just pause and imagine how the soppingly wet Mrs. May would have coped!  In the meantime the equally fearsome Boris/Cummings political machine has started its engine and is ready to advance against them.  Time, methinks, for those ladies and gentlemen to concentrate their minds and seriously contemplate their future as non-persons!  

Heroics, of course, are to be admired but I would remind them that the death rate is enormous!

 

A jolly decent German Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, er, and Britain!

I refer, of course, to the late Prince Albert, loving husband of Queen Victoria, of whom it might be said given her portraits, that 'he should have gone to Spec-Savers'!  I must instantly confess to my almost total ignorance of this man and his life but the other day whilst in my default mode of slumped in front of the 'telly' with my 'do-flicker-thingie' to hand, I came across a programme providing details of his life as a 'British' prince.

Part of the reason for my ignorance of him is that he quickly learned that under the British system there was no room for Royal interference in politics.  He was shrewd enough not only to learn that but take heed of it.  Consequently, he does not figure largely in the political history of the period.  However, being a man of extraordinary energy and drive, he threw himself into what only can be described as a multitude of 'good works', culminating in the 'Great Exhibition of 1851' which to the surprise of many of his contemporaries was a success of global proportions. Thanks to him, a hundred years later I was able to visit the 'Great Exhibition of 1951' where, amongst other things, I remember seeing the 'Skylon'.

Anyway, whilst it is not high on the list of my reading priorities, I really must try and find a biography of the man.  In the meantime, what can I say except, "Vielen Dank, Ihre Königliche Hoheit!"

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 1.9.19

Dammit, I lost - again!   The Memsahib and I have a little game, er, well, actually it is so ruthless and deadly it comes close to warfare, in which on the first day of each month we both try to be the first to deliver, before midday, mind, the ancient line, "Pinch, punch, first day of the month, no return, white rabbit".  Yet again she cheated today because I came downstairs and was sitting on the patio enjoying my usual glass of orange juice when the bedroom window flew open and out she popped, like Punch's wife, and shouted out the winning words.  God knows what the neighbours think!

 

I'm glad Dan Hodges is back:   He has been on holiday/skiving (you decide) from the Mail on Sunday for weeks.  Happily, he does not seem to have lost his commonsense:

It was Parliament that voted to grant the British people a referendum on our membership of the EU. It was Parliament that voted to trigger Article 50 when a majority of those people voted to leave. Five hundred and sixty-eight of our 650 current MPs were elected on manifestos pledging to respect the referendum result.

It was Parliament that voted on three separate occasions to prevent Britain leaving the European Union with a deal. And it was Parliament that voted on March 26, 2019, to take control of the Brexit process, held a succession of votes on its preferred Brexit model and spectacularly failed to find a majority for any of them.

All the haughty expressions of democratic outrage we have heard over the past few days ignore a single, simple fact. The people of Britain voted to leave the European Union in the biggest expression of popular will ever seen in this country since the introduction of the universal franchise. And, more than three years later, our politicians persistently and pig-headedly refuse to respect and implement that democratic instruction.  [My emphasese]

 

 

Perhaps he's only half a tit:   As opposed to being a 'total tit' which is where I consigned the Archbishop of Canterbury until this morning.  Much to my surprise, he is reported in Her Maj's Daily Telegraph today as saying:

In remarks reported by the Church Times, he added: “We have to take seriously the fact that the majority voted Leave. We may not like it, but that is democracy; and that means we have to stop whingeing about it and do something about reuniting the country.” 

Jolly well said, 'Bish', old boy!  Next time I pass the collecting box at St. John's church, just outside my front door, I must remember to drop a few 'bob' in!

 

Control yourselves, ladies, this do be Dorset man:

My word, you would not want to mix it with the Cerne Abbas giant!  According to the Telegraph, he is getting a 'make-over' because that damned grass will keep on growing.  According to the delightfully named Ms. Boudica Fox-Leonard who is one of many volunteers helping to give him a 'make-over', "The left nipple on the Cerne Abbas Giant is looking a bit grassy!"  Well, we can't have that, can we?

Even so, I trust dear Boudica will keep well clear of his naughty bits!

 

Not quite as sexy as the Cerne Abbas giant:   Same technique though, this time just outside Salisbury where there is a collection of Regimental badges carved into the chalk hillside.

Known as the Fovant Badges, most of them were done during WWI by troops waiting to go over to France.  They include the Australian Forces badge, second from left, because many of the men involved were from Australia.

 

Alan Dershowitz tells it the way it is:   Beware, America, it is not China or Russia, let alone Iran, who are your greatest threat; it is your very own, internal, hard Left who are the real danger to everything you hold dear:

I make the controversial claim that today the "woke" hard-left is more dangerous to civil liberties than the right. To be sure there are hard right extremists who would use — and have used — violence to silence those with whom they disagree. They are indeed dangerous. But they have far less influence on our future leaders than their counterparts on the hard-left. They are not teaching our college age children and grandchildren. They are marginalized academically, politically and in the media. The opposite is true of hard-left Stalinists. Many have no idea who Stalin even was, but they are emulating his disdain for free speech and due process in the interests of achieving the unrealizable utopia they both sought. They also have in common the attitude that noble ends justify ignoble means.

I cannot speak for Americans but in my trembling British opinion the next Presidential election is absolutely crucial.  If the Dems win then the fabled 'city upon a hill' will be shaken to its foundations.

 

The winds, or slipstreams, of change are blowing in F1:   The new kid on the Ferrari block, Charles Leclerc, beat his team-mate, Sebastian Vettel, into 4th place as he took the chequered flag at the Belgium Grand Prix today.  (Sir) Lewis Hamilton chased him down but could only finish second.  The other 'new kid on the block', (mad)Max Verstappen lived up (or down!) to his reputation by hitting another car in an audacious over-taking manouvre and thus wrecking his car.  Things are hotting up in F1 racing!

 

No more rumbles 

 

 

 

 

 

"Oh for the gift that God would gi'e us ..." and all that sort of thing!

All round the world people are watching, or, to be absolutely accurate, being forced to watch because their 'meeja' will permit no escape, the British wrestling with the conundrum of 'to Brexit or not to Brexit?'  All I can offer by way of sympathy is that although it might be eye-stabbingly tedious for you lot overseas, just imagine the shrieking tedium of it over here on 'this our septic Isle!'  As y'all do know, I like Grand Prix racing not least because it is all over in under two hours but nothing would induce me to watch the 24 hour Le Mans race - let alone that ghastly French bicycle race that seems to go on and on and on for half a lifetime!  I prefer my pleasures to be enjoyed in as short a time scale as possible, a bit like my sex life, as the 'Memsahib' would no doubt confirm, er, if she can remember that far back!

Anyway, back to Brexit which, as it enters its last few laps, we can now see the chequered flag being prepared for October 31st.  However, the 'Remoaners' have now switched into full-on, shrieky-hissy-fit mode and given their rank stupidity and vile temperaments, plus the malignancy of the ultra-Left who are dribbling at the possibility of violence on the streets, not because they care a toss over Brexit (which most of them would prefer) but because they see opportunities for overthrowing the entire system. 

What a difference 40-odd years makes in the life of a nation.  Back then, those of us who were adamant nay-sayers in the referendum to decide whether or not we should join the EU, simply accepted the decision of the majority of our fellow subjects and went on about our business - whilst quietly ruminating that "There may be troubles ahead".  Compare that civilised, dare I say, adult, approach to the mass hysteria of today.  What has made the difference, I wonder, and then I saw (and read!) the obvious answer.  It has been the influx of the 'kiddie-winkies' onto the voting registers, those who were barely out of nappies back then but are now honking, hooting, ill-educated yobs and yobettes with barely a grain of historical knowledge or appreciation of their own country.

Of course, I hope that Boris will get us over the threshold and into freedom but a tiny, wicked part of me secretly wishes that the 'screechers' get their way and that I live long enough to relish the gradually dawning realisation on the part of the 'kiddie-winkies' that they have locked us into German rule for ever!

 

 

 

Old battles are never won, or lost, they just keep on re-fighting!

I enjoyed a snigger at a story in today's Mail that informs us all that the French have opened a new museum close to the battlefield at Agincourt.  Apparently, its purpose is to correct all that totally false (and mostly British!) corruption of history which has led people to believe that the British actually won the battle!  Oh, mes enfants, you have been sadly misled by those perfidious Albion-ites!  To add gravitarse, oops, sorry, gravitas to cette nouvelle histoire, the museum was actually opened by a distinguished lady nearly old enough to qualify as an exhibit, Mde. Brigitte Macron, no less.  I am only surprised that her son, ooops sorry, husband failed to attend!

To be fair, 'our 'Enery', the Fifth of that ilk, was not exactly a military genius and his campaign in France began with massive losses in his army due to dysentery, thus indicating that the 'Army Catering Corps' of those days was even worse than today's!  Anyway, it doesn't matter what the French have to say on the subject because we have the greatest propogandist of all time on our side:

WESTMORLAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

KING. What's he that wishes so?
My cousin, Westmorland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Dammit, that fella' was a great scribbler - he should go far!

 

 

Does anyone give a flying fig that Prince Andrew bonked a few birds?

Yes, you may call me out for raising the utterly tedious subject of the late, unlamented Jeffrey Epstein only a few days after telling y'all that I automatically skip any news report bearing his name!  Alas, now his sorry tale has been supplanted by Prince Andrew who, being a 'Royal' and all that sort of thing, is now the lead story in all the 'meeja' including, for all I know, the Church Times!  Mind you, I suppose that if he drives off the front pages all that 'screechy-weechy' hysteria from the anti-Brexit loons who are currently swinging from their own petards (too, too delicious!) then in my view that makes him "A Good Thing"!

So, here we have a wealthy, single, middle-aged man with time on his hands and a bulge in his trousers who pals up with a mega-rich, sex-obsessed bachelor who possesses an endless list of young 'fillies' eager to do whatever it takes to move in these, er, luxurious circles.  It is claimed that some of these young women were under-age although in this era of non-stop shagging I'm not sure that age limits apply!  Equally, I suspect that were you able to stop these young women on the threshold of Mr. Epstein's 'palace' and suggest to them that given their juvenile status perhaps they might like to think again, my best guess is that you would be side-swiped with a hefty handbag and told to get out the way and get lost!

If ever there was a 'typical man of our times', or of any times actually, then Prince Andrew is it.  Served his country 'up the sharp end' in the Falklands war, failed marriage, no ambition, plenty of money, a Royal title, time on his hands - what else would he do other than 'Bonk for Britain'?  In a way, sad and possibly a waste of talent but who cares?  And who the hell wants it plastered across their newspaper day after day after day?

Not me!

 

 

'Boing-Boing' drops a bomb!

You will have heard that Boris has decided to prorogue Parliament and you may well, just like me, wonder what that means.  The minutiae of parliamentary procedures are always a mystery so allow me to offer you some guidance.  The effect of Boris's action will be, in no particular order, 'Squeaker' Bercow's eye-balls will swivel at high speed as flecks of foam fly off his lips, 'Grievous' Grieve MP will clench his jaw until his jawbones crack, the smug smirk will be instantly wiped off the fat, self-satisfied face of Kenneth Clark MP, wee Mrs. 'McWhinge' up in 'Jockland' will self-elevate in fury and 'SoD' will launch a four-letter storm but happily he's in Czechia so no-one will understand him!  Needless to say, all of these things are, without a doubt, in the distinguished words of Sellars & Yeatman, "A Good Thing!"

Whilst the hysterical 'Remoaners' screech "Treason!", whilst simultaneously forgetting all the diabolical tricks they were intending to pull to stop Boris from reaching the Brexit date of 31st October, it is worth noting Guido's reminder that Boris's plan will result in just four lost Parliamentary days as compared to the six weeks lost by John Major back in '97 when he pulled the same trick, and that this particular Parliamentary session is the longest since 1653!

So just go, Boris, go!

 

 

An irony that is almost orgasmic!

I gave myself a break from Fischer's monumental history of Germany, not because it is anything less than brilliant but because it is so bloody heavy for my poor old arthritic hands!  Instead I switched back to Stuart Sweeney's "The Europe Illusion" which is on my Kindle and therefor 'easy-peasy' to handle.  I was rewarded with a dollop of the most delicious irony I have enjoyed for years.  Describing the immediate post-war period, Mr. Sweeney points out that war-shattered Britain was in receipt of 'yuuuuuuuge' amounts of American dollars to assist its recovery - which, under a Labour government, was immediately spent on building a socialist state!  Not exactly an American dream, then!  Mind you, the Dems were in power then so perhaps they didn't mind too much.

At the same time, 'just over there', the equally exhausted French and Germans fell into each others arms and more or less pooled their American 'dosh' in order to resuscitate their coal and steel industries in a joint venture which they hoped would lead to an equally pooled sovereignty.  This enterprise, the Schuman Plan, would eventually lead to the European Union.  Happily, dear old 'Ernie' Bevin, for all his socialist fervour, remained a 'true blue red' Brit and insisted on British independence from what he could see would eventually be a European behemoth.  Needless to say, the Europhile Economist of the time deplored this policy - so no change there, then!

Good old Ernie!  (Never thought I would write that!)

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 25.8.19

Uncork the 'Champers' and celebrate!   My 'recce patrol leader' (aka: JK) informed me yesterday in comments below that the odious Michael Mann, he of the infamous 'hockey stick' graph which purports to prove global warming, has just lost his case against Dr. Tim Ball whom he sued over the good doctor's refutation of Mann's dodgy statistics.  (Actually, JK, I had picked up the news but I was too 'knacked' yesterday to post a triumphant 'Hoorah'.)  Mann and his lawyers, ducked and dived to put off the court hearing for 8 years but eventually, "Truth will out".  In the meantime, Mann's case against Mark Steyn remains mired in the US court system - with more than little help from Mann's lawyers.  Can't wait for the truth to come out in that court case!  (I should live so long my life already!)

 

So it's war!   And, of course, like all wars the collateral damage to bystanders will be enormous.  I refer, of course, to the US/China trade war.  I am simply - because I am simple! - unable to comment with any authority on the pros and cons of it except to say that I suspect that an increasingly belligerent and powerful China has been using underhand tactics in furtherance of its trade/political ambitions.  No other western politician would dare to call them on it except the equally belligerent Trump.  I just hope that he can fight the good fight as well as talk it!

 

MDJ writes excellent sense today:   Well, actually, My Darling Jane (Daley) writes excellent sense every Sunday in The Telegraph and today she attempts to search and make sense of the swirling, contrary tides beneath the surface of Anglo-European discussions.  On the whole she is hopeful which is more than I am - but what the hell do I know?

 

Now this will shake the rafters 'over there'!   I refer to the sad news that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (86) of the US Supreme Court has been re-admitted to hospital for pancreatic cancer treatment.  I would not wish that upon anyone, er, well, maybe a few, but certainly not her who, despite her silly political views, appears to have led an honourable life.  Even so, the fact is that she is a hopeless old Leftie and her retirement would provide 'The Donald' with a gift to his presidential record.  No doubt RBG will cling on for absolutely as long as possible but were she to fall off the twig, hopefully 'The Donald' will have the chance, against a sea of opposition - remember Kavanaugh? - to choose an 'originalist' Justice, that is, a judge who bases his rulings on the original constitution. 

 

In which I worry about Brigitte Macron:   Of course, the lady is in a dire situation being, at 66, some 25 years older than her 41-year old squirt of a husband and, even worse, being constantly in the publicity eye of the world.  Thus, such are her Herculanial efforts to appear as young as her husband that she is in danger of appearing mummified!  Show your age, dear, and don't pay any attention to him!

 

But, Barack-baby, what about all that rising sea level you promised?  Apparently, rumours that President Obama is actually President Canute are true!  This is the new multi-multi-zillion palace country cottage that Mr. ex-President is thinking of buying in Martha's Vineyard.

  

Mind you, I'm sure he is only thinking of it as a chance to invite some boys from the Chicago 'hood' over which he ruled all those years ago to enjoy a Summer vacation!

It was the best of cricket, it was the worst of cricket:  Very, very sorry, my Aussie friends - er, we are still friends, aren't we? - but this must rank as the most incredible Test Match of all time.  In their first innings, England were skittered out for a truly embarrassing 67 runs!  They went in for their second innings facing a monstrously 'yuuuuuuge' Australian lead which most people doubted they would even reach halfway.  But they did it, by Jove, they did it, so now it is one each and two more matches to play.

 

 

No more rumbles 

 

 

Late on parade - again!

But it's not my fault, honestly!  I have been doing my 'Nurse Ratchet' duties by accompanying the 'Memsahib' to our local hospital where she underwent a second eye procedure to sort out (hopefully!) her cataract condition.  We arrived at 9.15am and did not get away until nearly 1.00pm.  The 'op' itself only took about 20 minutes!  Anyway, it's all done and hopefully done well.  I, of course, am now chief cook and bottle-washer - such fun!

Talking of fun - of a sort! - it will be fascinating to watch, from the side-lines now, how La Belle France deals with a swollen Deutschland now that it finds itself all alone on a German-dominated Europe.  Of course, it has been a constant problem for France to deal with since 1871 and, alas, usually it has not worked out well!  Once again, Britain will become semi-detached!  All the smaller nations of the EU will be eager to click their heels to German orders which will leave France on its own trying to balance power on the Continent - just like old times, really!  Needless to say, there will be sundry 'soppies' who will tell us that Germany is no longer a threat, which of course it will not be, er, up until the time some European nation has the effrontery to say "Nein" to German orders!

We shall see what we shall see!

John Keiger is worth reading over at The Coffee House

 

 

 

And the Germans are not the only ones to fall in love with war

Before I swivel my, er, 'gun' in the direction of America, let me admit that we Brits too have a long and less than distinguished history of fighting unwinnable wars of which the American war of independence was merely one such example!  However, I was very impressed with an article by John C. Hulsman at the 'CAPX' site today.  In it, Mr. Hulsman points up the syndrum suffered by America in forever doubling down on "the losing gambler syndrome" when it comes to unneccessary wars.

The losing gambler syndrome, better known in economic circles as the sunk costs fallacy, is a fact of human nature that casino magnates well understand. When someone losses big at the tables, invariably they have an overwhelming urge to invest ever more resources to make good on their catastrophic losses. Dad cannot go back to Mom telling her he has lost the kids’ college fund. So he keeps playing…and keeps losing. The reason for his demise—the terrible odds—is never analytically addressed.

I saw this doleful process up close and personal in Washington. From Vietnam, through Iraq, to the endless war in Afghanistan, the propensity to keep strategically gambling even as the losses pile up is perhaps the single greatest intellectual error the United States has made in the past 50 years, and it largely explains all three debacles. Yet, tragically, in the increasingly lame excuses the military has presently made to stay in Afghanistan, the US seems to have learnt almost nothing from their trio of calamities.

It is a doleful read, and for me, as a former supporter of American efforts in Vietnam and in Iraq, especially embarrassing.  To be fair, I was doubtful about Afghanistan but that was based on our own less than successful efforts in previous centuries!

Anyway, I must take the 'Memsahib' to her weekly 'keep fit' class whilst I do some shopping.

 

 

 

Sorry to bore on but . . .

I just came across this quotation in Fritz Fischer's book from a memo issued by the German Chancellor, Bethman-Hollweg on the 9th September 1914 under the general heading of "War Aims".

"4:  We must create a central European economic association through common customs treaties, to include France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Poland, and perhaps Italy, Sweden and Norway.  This association will not have any common constitutional supreme authority and all its members will be formally equal, but in practice will be under German leadership and must stabilise Germany's economic dominance over Mittel-europa." [My emphasis]

Well, it took them two world wars and a zillion dead but they made it in the end!

Happily, however and coincidentally, just as this gross ambition was put in writing, the battle of the Marne took place, led bravely if desperately by France but also with some British support as well.  The German army was driven back, von Moltke suffered a nervous breakdown and the Schlieffen plan* was smashed!

Vive la France!

*To be fair, by then it was not really von Schlieffen's plan but von Moltke's.

 

 

The Sunday Rumble 18.8.19

D&N Health Warning:   Do not, under any 'circs', read Peter Hitchens today!  To do so might well ruin your health, destroy any vestiges of good humour remaining in you and even nudge you to "to take up arms against a sea of troubles'!  It might even drive you to 'do an Epstein'!  You have been warned!

 

'Her Maj' is above and beyond all praise:   As we approach the anniversary of the explosive slaughter of Lord Mountbatten, his 14-year old grandson and a local lad helping with the boat, I am reminded of the way in which 'Her Maj' conducted herself when forced, by State business, to shake hands with the smirking, murderous psycho, Martin McGuinness.  That she did so with impeccable manners is a tribute to her deep attachment to a sense of duty.  Happily, McGuiness died young aged 66 of a particularly gruesome and painful condition called amyloidosis.  Perhaps there is a God!

 

Only 74 days to go!   Apparently, according to the 'meeja', the Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay MP, has just signed the 'commencement order' which releases the brakes on the process by which we leave the EU on 31st October.  Note to self: must order in some 'Champers'!

 

I'm hooked on "Downton Abbey":   They have started re-running the series during the afternoons on one of the more obscure TV channels and the 'Memsahib' was captivated, so I suggested we buy the DVD box set and watch it in our own time.  It is a superb piece of 'TV theatre'.  Exceedingly well written and exellently performed, in particular by Ms. Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary.  Born and raised in Romford - yeah, Romford, innit, know wot I mean?! - her upper-class accent is superb - not least the way she very slightly elongates the last syllable of the last word she delivers.  It is impeccable acting of the first order and she is far from being the only one!

 

Another stray thought on "Downton Abbey":   Of course, the 'toffs' of those times enjoyed an exceedingly comfortable life-style but I am not sure I could have put up with the plethora of servants constantly surrounding them.  As a 5-star, lazy bugger of the first order, I would be happy for a team to follow me around picking up everything I carelessly drop but I suspect that after a while I would demand solitude!

 

Another difference between 'pros' and 'ams':   I would never have made it as a professional actor - and not just because I wasn't a very good actor!  Yes, it's wonderful, Darling, if you are one of the chosen few who make it to the top of the tree but just think about the vast majority doomed forever to play 'walk-ons' or even worse, perhaps, to be cast in a tiny role with five lines in a show that runs and runs and runs!

 

No more rumbles

 

 

A mass immigration much to be desired

The Adam Smith Institute - naturally! - has come up with an interesting idea that Britain should immediately grant automatic citizenship rights to the 169,000 British Nationals living in Hong Kong and open up the application process to Hong Kong nationals.  Oh boy, would I like to see all those hard-working, intelligent and vigorous people infesting our businesses, universities and high tech companies in Britain.  What a super-charge of energy that would be!  I still remember the influx of Asians from Uganda which some people thought would be a disaster but which has added immensely to the business ethos in Britain.  In Hong Kong's case, it would be China's loss and our gain!

 

 

Arguably, the greatest and dumbest double-cross in history

I refer to the 'German/Soviet Non-Aggression Pact' of 80 years ago, on which subject, Mr. Victor Davis Hanson writes, succinctly and shrewdly, at the National Review.  It is perhaps the greatest example of a duplicitous double-cross that at the time was considered to be a total world disaster but which turned out in the end to be a world saviour!  It all seemed like a Grand Strategic master-stroke to the two villains concerned, Hitler and Stalin but, alas for them, it turned out to be the sort of "cunning plan" that Laurel and Hardy might have dreamt up!

Yes, it set Hitler free to concentrate all his efforts in swallowing western Europe and providing a free run for him to take out the British once and for all, helped, of course, by massive supplies sent to him by his "new best friend", Joe Stalin!  At the time, the only grit in the deal was that the Japs, who had been attacking Russia confident that Stalin would have to keep his army facing West, suddenly realised that Hitler had dropped them in it and that their assaults on Eastern Russia would have to be scaled back as the massive Russian army was left free to manouvre.  As 'VDH' puts it:

Japan quickly withdrew from its losing Russian war. In time it signed its own non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, in April 1941 — ironically, just months before Hitler’s planned Operation Barbarossa, the massive invasion of Russia.

Simply too, too delicious!  Instead, the silly 'Ninjas' went south and attacked America - BIG MISTAKE!

The only lesson to be learned, I suppose, is that these rough, tough, allegedly crafty dictators steeped in the arts of real-politik, are actually just as dim, if not dimmer, than the democratic dimwits we elect to office!

 

 

The smack of exceedingly firm government

A fascinating look behind the curtains at No.10 Downing Street courtesy of Ms. Katy Balls in today's Spectator - where else?  Apparently, everything that has been hinted and rumoured concerning that spinning Dervish, Dominic Cummings, is true - and there is even more - with my emphasese!  

The government is in campaign mode. All leave has been cancelled and No. 10 staff are expected to work 11-hour days at a minimum: daily meetings at 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. reinforce this point. Ministers are summoned to regular no-deal preparation meetings. The number you have to attend depends on your seniority. Tory HQ is going through an overhaul and its ‘attack unit’ is being strengthened. Talks are under way about how to expand quickly if a snap election is called. The latest plan is to enlist staff from right-wing think tanks on secondment. 

At last, the smack of firm government after all the utter feebleness of Mrs. May, who truly deserves that hoary, old saying, "She is so wet you could shoot snipe off her!"  And what a warm feeling it gives me to know that those fat-arsed bureaucrats have been told to cancel their holidays and work their socks off!

Some tire of the relentless schedule. ‘I haven’t had a proper break for over a year,’ complains one minister. Others say they are motivated not by enthusiasm but fear. ‘There’s a more sinister feeling,’ sighs one member of government. ‘They give the impression of being more strict and there’s a sense that Dom would rip your head off if you broke the rules.’ But for most Tories this regime is acceptable — even welcome — because it stands a chance of getting Brexit done. A mission on which all of their fates depend. As one Tory MP tells me: ‘I am not throwing my toys out of the pram, as I may be losing my seat in three months.’

For the first time since I voted 'LEAVE'  in the referendum, I truly believe we might just do it!

 

"The David Duff Preservation Society"

No, no, no, I don't mean that I should be preserved!  I am merely inaugurating the opening of a gallery of notables who, in my opinion - and you all know how impeccable my opinion is! - should be immortalised.  I was thinking of this over the past couple of days whilst giggling at the latest folly of the utterly dim, Caroline Lucas MP, our one and only - thank God! - Green Party MP.   I have long enjoyed her interventions in Parliament because she is an attractive lady with a sweet smile and it is such a pity that she obviously possesses no more than three brain cells!  (Mind you, that is probably two more than several other MPs!)  Her latest idea of forming a national coalition government made up entirely of women immediately reduced half the country to giggles, and then reduced the other half, comprising the 'woke' dimwits on the Left who suddenly realised that all the ladies chosen by Ms. Lucas were - SHLOCK-HORROR! - white, not a single coloured among them!  Cue brickbats and insults raining down on poor Ms. Lucas's innocent head.  So, as I said, I had her in mind to be the first of my 'Immortals' but then, this morning, I read Mr. Peter Hitchens's blog!

Again, regular readers will know that I am an avid follower of Mr. Hitchens' weekly column in The Mail on Sunday but for some unknown reason I rarely if ever click on his blog.  This morning I did and nearly leapt to my feet in enthusiasm when I read a (long) post from him on a subject which has fascinated me for years.  The title is as follows: A Review of Paul Lever's 'Berlin Rules' and Fritz Fischer's 'Germany's Aims in the First World War'.  Let me quickly make clear that whilst I am sure Sir Paul Lever's book has considerable merit, especially as he was the former Ambassador to Germany, it is mention of Fritz Fischer's book that instantly switched me on.  I know I have read it, and I am certain that somewhere I have a copy but, alas, my attic library is such a shambles I cannot find it anywhere!  (Note to self: check that 'SoD' didn't nick it!)

Whilst most history is fascinating to a degree, it is the history that is still influencing our times that is riveting! 

Fischer’s publisher’s offices in Hamburg were firebombed, which just goes to show how history can engage the passions when properly tackled. Amazingly, there are still people who insist, despite Fischer’s mounds of archive evidence to the contrary, that the First World War was a collective accident into which Europe sleepwalked. I am amazed how many people still believe this comical absurdity. There was absolutely nothing accidental about the Schlieffen Plan to smash France in weeks, nor about the enormous Krupp siege guns which were revealed to an astonished world, the nuclear weapons of their time, when it became necessary to pulverise the Belgian forts at Liege.

I should add that, from Mr. Hitchens' review, Sir Paul Lever's book looks like a 'Must Buy' not least for its analysis of German power exerted within the so-called 'European Union' which decades ago the late, great Sir Nicholas Ridley described, accurately, as "a German racket".  It was, it is and forever will it remain, so the quicker we get out the better!

ADDITIONAL:  'Drei mal hurra'!  That's German for 'three cheers' because I have found Fischer's book and, of course, my first act must be to apologise to 'SoD' for even hinting that he's a book thief - who him? No, never!  So that's the good news but, alas, the bad news is that it's a paper-back edition nearly 2" thick which makes it heavy to lift, hard for my weedy arthritic fingers to hold the pages apart and the typeface is titchy!  I think I must see if it's available in Kindle format - so much easier!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 11.8.19

Plenty to bore about rumble about today!

The Epstein saga:   This is going to run and run and being an American scandal it will be 'yuuuuuuge'!  To be honest, I am already losing such minimal interest as I ever had but 'still 'n' all' there will be much fun to be had watching various well known faces turning scarlet!

 

Gauke the Dork:   I refer, of course, to that ineffably pompous prat, David Gauke MP.  Happily, 'Boing-Boing' pulled the trigger on him within days of taking over in No.10 but he had been Justice Minister and Lord Chancellor.  It was in that capacity he reprimanded a judge who had told a grossly fat, persistent offender to lose weight and get a job. As Mr. Peter Hitchens puts it in The Mail:

At first glance, the thing is just ridiculous. You think that at some point you will wake up in the midst of this nonsense, and grown-ups will return, from wherever they have been hiding, to restore the country to sanity. But they don’t. The one thing you can be sure of in this country now is that the state, where it possibly can be, will be against common sense.

 

'Boing-Boing' bangs the gavel:   And yet more good news!  At last we seem to have a Prime Minister determined to toughen up the criminal (non)justice system under which sundry malefactors are sentenced to 'yuuuuuge', long prison terms - and are then let out after a few months with a bag of sweeties and a message from the prison governor telling them to behave!  According to reports, 'Boing-Boing' is determined to have honest sentencing which is enforced and prison regimes which are strict and uncomfortable.  He had better get on with it because behind him, slapping her truncheon into the palm of her hand, stands Priti Patel, the new Home Secretary who has similar views and will brook no softness!

 

Better watch out, the 'Cummings' is coming!   Oh, how I wish I could be a fly on the wall inside No.10 and observe the howls of anguish as the 'Cummings Tornado' rip-roars through the hitherto comfortable, cosy establishment of quill-dippers.  I know little of the man except for his tremendous efforts in helping the country to win the Brexit referendum.  According to all the reports, Dominic Cummings appears to be a single-minded maniac but happily, very happily in my opinion, his maniacal energies are all directed at the slothful and mostly useless civil service to ensure that from now on all of them are concentrated 24/7 on driving through Brexit.  Go, Dom, go!

 

America, if you want your constitution, you can have your constitution:   Just don't send it over here!  Thus, speaks - or rather writes - 'MDJ', My Darling Janet (Daley) who will be, of course, the proto-mother of my children - if and when she ever gets round to answering my summons!  In the meantime, she has a fascinating article in The Telegraph pointing out the flaws and problems with the American constitution.

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution was devised to protect the new-found states against the danger of a coup by federal government which was seen as a form of proxy for the old colonial ruler. It guaranteed the right of the states to form militias and, as a necessary corollary, of the people to bear arms. It is an almost perfect example of the danger embodied in a written constitution – which is to say, it froze the historic concerns of the time in which it was written, into the unforeseeable future. [My emphasis]

Dammit, she is an exceedingly shrewd lady.

 

Best photo of the year!   A really good news photo is one which tells its own story as clearly as a written report.  Thanks to The Mail on Sunday:

 

Poor old 'Phil the Pill' Hammond as pictured on the Underground with his cases as he finally vacates No.11 Downing Street two weeks after he was given the push!  What can one say except - ohdearwhatapitynevermind!

 

Let's hear it for the 'extras'!  Yes, all those (sort of) faceless men and women who people the background to so many films, for example, the British born Mr. Robert G. Haines (1894 - 1961) in their role as 'extras'.  As an exceedingly amateur amateur actor myself, I have a sort of fellow feeling for them.  In a (sort of) interesting article at the Los Angeles Review of Books there is an article on Mr. Haines' career in which the sheer number of famous movies in which he appeared is quite incredible.  Most of his 'work' barely lasted more than a day but he never stopped working.  Good for him - and the rest of the unsung heroes!

 

The, er, Charter for a National Government:   Mr. Charles Moore is a well known 'naughty boy' which is only right, fitting and proper for an ex-editor of The Spectator.  So, very naughtily, he suggests a manifesto for the Remainer Faction, led by Kenneth Clarke, who are striving by all means possible to undo Brexit:

“We’re against the referendum. We’re against the result of the referendum and against the promise we MPs made to implement it. We don’t agree with the 17.4 million people who voted Leave and we don’t think that the biggest vote for anything in our history should be respected. Parliament, including many of us, voted for Article 50 and for the Withdrawal Act, which ensure that we leave if no deal is made; but we’re against them all the same. Unite!

“We want a second referendum – except some of us, including me, don’t. We want to leave the EU with a deal – except that some of us, including me – don’t want to leave at all. We think this Parliament would vote for a deal – except that most of us threw out Mrs May’s one three times by huge majorities. Unite!

“The Conservative Party has just voted heavily among both its MPs and its members for Boris Johnson to be leader. We’re against that. Jeremy Corbyn has twice been elected Labour leader, but we’re against that too. And by the way, we’re against the promises made by both the main parties at the general election to ensure Brexit – or at least I am. Unite!”

Couldn't have put it better myself!

 

Must stop now, I have a book to read:   Hitherto, I have never thought of John le Carré as a humourist although the title of his book that I am reading is "Our Kind of Traitor" and that drips with dry, sardonic humour!  I picked it up from the church fete a couple of weeks ago and it is a corker!  Packed full of the sort of odd-ball eccentrics you would expect to find inside MI6!

 

 

No more rumbles

 

 

Douglas Murray provides us all with a 'Must Read'!

The heading to Mr. Murray's excellent piece in today's Telegraph says it all:

"The Remainer myth that Europe is a safe bet has become untenable"

Apparently, 'You Tube' has released some historic videos of 'that woman!" delivering some blistering speeches on the myriad faults and dangers of the EU.  They are, apparently, receiving millions of hits - why am I not surprised?   I admit that over the decades that followed our 'yuuuuuuge' error in voting to join that insane behemoth, I began to despair of ever making our escape from 'Stalag Luft 27'.  But happily, along came 'our Nige' (aka: Nigel Farage), truly the most remarkable politician never to have set foot in Parliament.  Quite literally, he changed the landscape and showed us the way to escape.

Lest you doubt, Mr. Murray urges you to take a long, hard look at the reality of what is going on 'just over there' as he has done by constant visits to all the corners of the EU.  In eastern Europe there is growing resentment at the bullying nature of the Brussels' hierarchy - and if any nations have recent and first-hand knowledge of that sort of thing, then it is the eastern Europeans!  Equally, there is festering resentment in Rome and Athens which, although there are faults galore on all sides, the locals know full well who to blame!

To add to the panic on board the (not so) good ship, 'Europa', their engine-room on which they all rely, Germany, is clanking and clunking and emitting steam and smoke from every orifice!  Mind you, none of that will bother the 'Heavenly Fathers' in Brussels who will simply yank the throttles to 'Full Steam Ahead' which will, of course, merely ensure an even greater crash ahead than the one that is inevitable.  The last command from the Brussels' bridge will be, "MAN THE LIFEBOATS!"

Thank the Lord we're out on 31st of October!

 

 

 

Go-go, GO, Boris, Go!

No, no, I don't mean 'go away', I mean 'keep going on'!  If even half of Mark Sidwell's article in The Telegraph is accurate, then we are poised for another Thatcherite revolution - hoorah!

That's because Boris Johnson’s bold Cabinet appointments signal more than a change of government. They reveal a new political paradigm: it is the first Cabinet in more than 20 years not defined by Tony Blair’s “third way”. [My emphasis]

After Tony Blair was finally beaten in an election, who took over?  The soaking wet David Cameron, of course, followed by the drippy Mrs. May.  Did anyone notice any difference?

Even when the Conservatives limped back to power in coalition under David Cameron, it was in the hands of a leader who embraced his “heir to Blair” nickname and later supported the rise of Red Toryism. Theresa “Nasty Party” [er, that's her own Tory party to whom she is referring!] May was a consistent cheerleader for reducing Conservative policy to an echo, rather than offering a distinctive choice.

Boris appears determined to get us out of the rut and, happily, he has appointed "a swivel-eyed loon" called Cummings as his hatchet man and set him loose amongst the bureaucrats and the jungle of enfeebling 'rules 'n' regs' - many of which, of course, originated from Brussels.  Needless to say, Boris is showering us with money in order to be fully primed for an election before Christmas.  His timing could not be better as Corbyn's utterly useless Marxist-Labour party falls into a fetid swamp of anti-Semitism and internal squabbles and the hitherto threatening Brexit party starts losing the air it needs to remain afloat because Boris has nicked it.  Of course, we need to stand by to repel 'Remainers' who are going insane with mad plans to stop Brexit but I very much doubt that, at this late stage, they will succeed.

So, "Go, Boris, Go!' and set us free!

 

 

 

Do not read this, 'SoD', it will ruin your lunch!

Courtesy of the invaluable Zero Hedge site, in general, and Mr. Mike Shedlock (no, me neither!) in particular, here are not one but EIGHT good reasons for us to Brexit, as summarised by me:

1:  We can slash corporation tax rates which will off-set profit drops in general trading.

2:  A falling exchange rate which will assists exporters and hurt importers.

3:  Given the balance of trade in which Germany, in particular, exports 'yuuuuuugely' to the UK, rising tariffs will hurt an already suffering Germany.

4:  Fishing rights will provide open seas for British fishermen and clobber their European  counterparts.

5:  We can make our own trade deals free of European interference.

6:  Rules and Regs:  We will be free from the EU's mammoth rules and regs and can set our own in a way that suits us.

7:  It is disputed whether or not Britain can refuse to pay a Brexit fee for leaving but in any case the EU will find itself looking down the back of the settee for any spare change to cover the gaping hole in their income from our payments.

8:    Long Term Consequences:  Both we and the Europeans will suffer in a 'No Deal' situation but the long term outcome favours us over them.

Well said, Mr. Shedlock, and I am sure 'Her Maj' will show her appreciation very soon!

ADDITIONAL:  I just read this in The Telegraph:

A shock drop in German manufacturing output during June means the country may be heading towards a technical recession, analysts have warned.
Figures released this morning showed German industrial production slumped 1.5pc in June, plummeting past analysts’ expectations of 0.4pc.