DUFF & NONSENSE!

God! How I hate the cold!

Well, of course I do!  Despite my Scottish blood, I am by upbringing and by nature a 'soppy Southerner', as my 'Yorkie' friends would put it!!  Consequently, I loathe cold weather, as I warned 'Her Maj' when I volunteered for the Army.  I actually dropped her a note - as you do! -  when I joined up to ensure that I would only be sent to warm climes.  Where was the first place she sent me?  Bloody Narvik in the Norwegian Arctic Circle!  Anyway, it's now nearly as cold as Narvik down here in so-called 'zunny Zummerzet' and I'm fed up with it!  The only good news is that so far there has been no snow BUT here is the headline from The Mail:

"Now for the Big Freeze: Met Office warns up to FOUR INCHES of snow will sweep UK from today, with temperatures set to plunge to -10C this weekend"

Such fun!

 

 

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 18.10.20

We bid farewell to bonny Scotland!   Well, there's no way we can force them to remain!  Mind you, if that's "the high road" they are determined to take, then all we can do is shut the door firmly - very firmly! - behind them and wish them good luck in the 'welcoming arms' of the European Union, a.k.a. the German racket!  It is patently obvious that nothing is more important to  'Mrs. MacWhinge' than, er, well, 'Mrs. MacWhinge', actually, and her place in Scottish history.  The fact that eventually it will sink lower than the Loch Ness monster has not yet dawned on 'the wee lassie' but it will, eventually, and I hope I will still be around to attempt my version of a Highland fling!

 

Fascinating book review in The Spectator:  The title of the book written by Catherine Grace Katz sums it up -  The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War.  I might just treat myself to a copy, after all, you can always depend on the ladies to to go to the secret heart of a meeting between men and as meetings go, they do not get much more crucial than Yalta!

 

California - here I do NOT, under any circs, come!   Well, I have just read Douglas Murray's report on the, er, 'golden' state and it stinks - literally!  

Anyone who has visited San Francisco in recent years will have noticed that one of the world’s most beautifully positioned cities has turned into an American dystopia. Nowhere in the first world is actual inequality more pronounced. The proximity of Silicon Valley has made property unaffordable to anyone below the millionaire class. And when that class comes down from their towers or ventures into the centre of the city they encounter sights rarely seen outside of a zombie movie.

The incentivisation of homelessness, dire provisions for the mentally ill and easy access to legal and illegal drugs have meant that even the city’s boutique shopping streets are crowded with people who have made the streets their home. A portion of the responsibility for this lies with Mayor Gavin Newsom who, having made such a success of San Francisco, became Governor of California, to see if he could make his policies fail on a larger canvas.

Needless to say, California is ruled ruthlessly by Left-wing 'Democrats' whose crass stupidity and corruption is obvious to all - well, all except those who actually live there and vote, apparently!

 

What's the Norwegian for "Jolly good show, chaps!"   Well, for once, at least, the Nobel Peace Prize officers managed to reach the correct decision for granting a Nobel Peace Prize, although, to be accurate, it's not so much to whom they gave the prize - it was "the World Food Programme for its efforts to combat hunger and to prevent it being used as a weapon of war" - but whom they ignored".  Thus, the ineffably smug and stupid, Greta Thunberg was passed by!  What can one say, except perhaps, 'Ohdearwhatapitynevermind!'

 

More rumbles later . . .

 

 

 

Don't mention the weather!

Just as I see and hear lightening flashes and thunder, I was going to produce yet another dirge concerning the 'bloody-bloody' weather 'over here' but somehow, having just viewed reports from 'over there' on my TV, I think a polite silence is called for!  Crikey, I know they always do things bigger and better 'over there' but those storms blasting Louisiana are something else!  Instead of my usual Limey whinges I will keep 'schtum' and wish everybody 'over there' well as they face those incredible, battering winds and rain.  I was thinking of offering a food parcel but one from me would probably only contain a couple of empty Scotch bottles and I suspect that my old buddy, JK, has more than enough of them!

Or perhaps I could entertain my neighbours by going out onto our communal lawn and giving them some full on Lear:

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!

Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once

That make ingrateful man!

Dammit, why did I never get that part?!

 

 

 

Forbes can 'F' off!

To be truthful, I have never heard of Mr. Michael Shellenberger before today when I read, at the always informative Zero Hedge, that hitherto he has been an ardent 'Warmer', forever warning us all that 'the end of the world is nigh cos' you're all gonna fry, baby!' or words to that effect.  Now, however, Mr. Shellenberger has stood up and proffered a sincere apology "for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years."  Forbes, the international publisher of mostly smelly, brown stuff, has instantly withdrawn all of Mr. Shellenberger's articles.

Who knows, perhaps that ugly, little, Scandi girl might now find the courage to own up to her deceits which have lavished such a spectacular level of high, international fame and fortune on her.  I'm not holding my breath, mind!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 28.6.20

Understanding is beginning to dawn!   Now, at least, I am beginning to fully understand what "Going to Hell in a handcart means!"  Perhaps, Field Marshall Foch put it better with "My centre is giving way, my right is retreating …", although he added that in response he intended to attack!  Whatever, both 'over here' and 'over there' our societies appear to be disintergrating and the (so-called) 'powers that be' appear to be clueless over what to do.  Sometimes, edging ever closer to our mutual, good friend, Death, is a comfort!

Oh no, I've been 'Hefferlumped' - again!   Well, of course, as I intimated earlier, I have just finished Simon Heffer's superb - and I do mean superb! - history of Britain during the Great War.  So now I have bought his earlier work "High Minds: The Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain".  I have no doubt that it will as perceptive and well-written as his later work "Staring at God".  Dammit, I just 'lurve' history and my only regret is that I will never be able to thank the late Miss Purvis, an elderly, unmarried lady, like several others who taught me at school and who were doomed to spinsterhood having lost their beloveds during WWI.

Latest score: Dom 1, Blob 0:  According to reports, Sir Mark Sedwill, the 'Grand Blob of Blobs' (ie: the Head of the Civil Service), is to be fired.  The lesson is obvious now to all the lesser 'blobs' - don't mess with the Dom!  Dammit, up above I intimated that I was asking "Death where is thy sting-a-ling?" but now, I want to live at least another 25 years to find out the background to this example of 'history in the making'!

All this knee-bending is ludicrous!   And I can state here, clearly, that I will never 'bend the knee' to anyone except Her Maj, er, on the understanding that one of her footmen will help get me upright afterwards!

Yes, that about sums it up:   I was much taken with these words from Andrew Stuttaford at The National Review:

What is really killing Italy’s economy, Italy’s banks, and Italy’s public finances are the consequences of Italy’s decision to cheat its way into the euro, a currency for which it — as at least some of those putting together the single currency knew — was never suited.

Italy wasn’t suited to the one-size-fits-all euro then, and Italy is not suited to the one-size-fits-all euro now. The least bad way out of this mess remains, as it always has been, the division of the single currency into ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ units.

But don't hold your breath waiting for Brussels to see 'the bleedin' obvious'!

Who is Zion Lights?   I don't know for sure but I think I want her to have my babies!  Well, I nearly always admire people who learn things and then change their minds.  It's nearly my bedtime so I will not go into the details, just pop over to the CAPX site and read about a remarkable and rather attractive lady.

 

No more Rumbles . . .

 

For God's sake, America, get a grip of your (non)judicial courts!

I have, many a time and oft', taken a swipe at what is laughingly known as the American 'justice' system - and yes, I know ours isn't that terrific but, by and large, bit by bit, it gets on with it and comes to a decision.  Not so 'over there'!  

It is now nearly ten years - TEN YEARS! - since that global warming fraudster, Michael E. Mann began legal proceedings against the National Review [NR] magazine (and Mark Steyn) when they published criticism of his so-called 'scientific proof' that the world was warming. 'Prof.' Mann instantly re-acted with a legal attack against both which, interestingly, both recipients eagerly awaited their day in court.  It's a good job they didn't hold their breath waiting because, as the NR makes clear, nothing, absolutley nothing, has moved on in the glutinous swamp that is the American court system.  As the NR puts it:

A few days before launching his lawsuit against what he called “this filthy organization,” Michael Mann wrote that there “is a possibility that I can ruin National Review.” Nearly a decade later, we are still fighting his attempt to do precisely that.

[…]

We’ve said we’d use every tool and argument at our disposal to defeat Mann, and that’s what we’ve done. Mark Steyn posted the blog item in dispute in July of 2012. Mann sued in October of that year, and we filed our first motion to dismiss in December of 2012.

When that was denied by the trial court, we filed a motion to reconsider. When that, too, was denied, we appealed to the D.C. Court of Appeals — twice. This brings us to 2014. After oral arguments, the Court of Appeals sat on the case for two years. Then, the court denied our appeal. This was in December of 2016. Because the opinion had myriad obvious flaws, we petitioned for a rehearing. Incredibly enough, the court then delayed for yet another two years. When the court finally issued an amended opinion, all it did was add one footnote and amend another.

In some desperation - and who can blame them? - the NR reaches for a Churchillian quotation to express its rage at the utter uselessness of the American courts:

So far, the courts have, to quote Churchill, elected to “go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.” They brushed past the anti-SLAPP statute that was designed to prevent this from happening. Our hope is that the same won’t happen with Section 230, which is also meant to protect the free-speech rights of online publishers.

It is a matter of considerable irony that the only “malice” that the discovery process has uncovered is that exhibited by Michael Mann. When planning his suit, Mann described National Review as a “threat to our children,” beholden to “greedy fat cat corporate masters.” His stated intention was to bring us “down for good.” Needless to say, this is not how a country with a First Amendment or a culture of free speech is supposed to work. It’s past time that this suit is dismissed as incompatible with both, and a failure on the facts and the law.

For Gods sake America, get a grip, I'm losing faith in you!  This might happen in Russia but . . . !  And I bet Atticus Finch didn't have to put up with that sort of terminal sloth in his court!

 

 

 

 

About this Global Warming . . .

Now where do you think this photo was taken?

No, not the road outside Greta Thunberg's house in Sweden although I wish it was!  No, this example of 'Global Warming' is in, er, well, Saudi Arabia, actually!

The story is reported by Julia Celestial at The Watchers site and it is possible that this cold snap will prove to be the coldest on record for all those Arabs who normally shuffle about sweating in their night-shirts!

Temperatures are expected to hit -4 °C (24.8 °F) in some regions including the south of Tabuk, Taimah, and Al-Ula. Meanwhile, most other regions such including Makkah will see 10 °C (50 °F), Riyadh with 2 °C (35.6 °F), and Madinah with 3 °C (37.4 °F).

Send that Swedish dimwit over there!

 

 

I have been waiting patiently for this!

Like everyone else I have been shocked and worried by the Australian bush fires calamity.  I had my suspicions - based on nil expertise! - but kept them to myself.  Today, they are confirmed by an article at The American Thinker from which I will quote extensively but urge you to read the whole thing - particularly if you are Australian!

No one denies the fires were made worse by dry conditions resulting from a drought and record hot temperatures. But, as measured by the amount of forestland destroyed, the 18 million acres for this year’s fires pale in comparison to the 290 million acres burned to the ground during the 1974 bushfire season. That’s equivalent to the size of France, Portugal and Spain combined, and the 1974 fires occurred years before anthropogenic global warming theory suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the 1980s. 

Of course, bush fires have occurred in Australia with regularity for millennia and long before Europeans moved in.  

According to Australian forester and former acting fire control officer Ian McArthur, climate change did not cause the current crisis:

“Long unburnt fuels [dead trees, tall grass, undergrowth, etc.] in national parks are the primary cause. Basic fire management states that a fire needs oxygen, a heat source and fuel. The only one of those that can be manipulated is fuel. The more fuel, the more intense the fire, the harder it becomes to suppress the fire.”

There is nothing anyone can do about two of the three essential elements of these wild fires - heat and oxygen.  However, there is much that can be done about the third essential ingredient, fuel i.e. dead trees, tall grass, undergrowth, etc.  

In commenting on the cause of the fires, Ms. Devine wrote that “blaming climate change is a cynical diversion from the criminal negligence of [Australian jurisdictions] which tried to buy green votes by locking up vast tracts of land as national parks, yet failed to spend the money to control ground fuel and maintain fire trails.” (Fire trails are roads built in forests to provide emergency access to firefighting equipment and personnel.) [My emphasis]

At this point, 'enter stage Left', and I do mean 'Left', the 'Greenie Brigade'!

Burning ground fuel in the cooler months was standard fire prevention practice, until progressive bureaucrats in Australia’s state and federal governments began vigorously opposing controlled burns in the name of “biodiversity.” According to Frank McKee, senior fire control officer in Boyne Valley, it’s next to impossible to get all government departments to agree to hazard reduction burns on state-owned land. “You have to jump through hoops so high it’s ridiculous,” McKee said.

'It's the same the whole world over', well, as far as California, anyway:

Unless natural ground fuel sources are controlled, there’s not much that can stop a wildfire from consuming vast tracts of wooded land during hot, dry and windy conditions. (That’s a major reason the recent wildfires in California were so devastating: in support of “biodiversity,” a succession of Democrat governors created an inferno-in-waiting by refusing to clear the state’s forests of an estimated 130 million dead trees.) [My emphasis]

My advice to my 'Aussie mates'  is quite simple - burn as many 'Greenies' as you can, er, but only in the wet season!

 

 

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 15.01.20

Hey, schmuks, don't mess with Her Maj!   I haven't read the details - life is short and getting shorter! - but from the commentary it looks as though H&M have been handed their arses on silver salver!  Meghan will not care, she is, after all, a grovelling subject of the Hollywood dynasty - good luck with that one!  Harry will probably feel the self-inflicted wounds as time goes on.  My totally clueless guess is that Meghan's mini-career prospects will gradually wither along with her relationship with Harry and the pair of them will shuffle off into the twilight of obscurity.  I hope I'm wrong, I usually am!

 

With apologies to Matt and the DT:

 

Make Meghan's dad a Duke!   Thomas Markle appears to have more common-sense in the finger he uses to yank open a can of beer than his dippy daughter has in her entire body!  Give him a seat in the House of Lords! 

 

Lord Bercow? Pass the sick bag - quick!   According to reports, 'Jezza' Corbyn, as leader of the opposition, is considering offering Bercow a seat in the Lords.  Presumably he will sit as a Labour peer thus reducing even further the opinion of the dreaded 'Peeps' as to the worthiness of the Labour party.  'Good thinking', Jezza, that should improve your chances at the next election - NOT!

 

Off out for lunch:   Er, with the Memsahib, of course, at The White Post restaurant.  Good grub and superb views across 'Zummerzet'.  Back later . .

 

Sent to me by a friend:  Whose head will surely be chopped off in the Tower!

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!

 

A question I asked some time ago:

Asked again by The American Thinker - when and why did "Global Warming" become "Climate Change":

When the accelerated warming trend that began in the 1980s ran out of steam in 1997, what would become an extended levelling-off period set in. Instead of acknowledging their dire predictions of unstoppable rising temperatures were embarrassingly wrong, climate doomsayers came up with a new tag for the alleged threat. What was once referred to almost exclusively as “global warming” was quietly given an alter ego: “climate change.” Since global temperatures were in a virtual flatline, claims of cataclysmic warming were no longer believable. Rather than admitting they were wrong and looking for another way to destroy capitalism, the doomsayers simply switched gears, and invented a clever new trick to frighten voters with terrifying scenarios of imminent environmental calamity. Since runaway warming wasn’t happening, they concocted the specious narrative that extreme weather events, every one of them, are caused by, you guessed it: climate change. Almost overnight, climate change was made the scapegoat for every severe hurricane, drought, flood, heat wave and blizzard that appeared, as if such unpleasant things had never before occurred. 

Couldn't have put it better myself!

 

 

No more rumbles 

 

 

 

Another good reason to privatise the BBC

Well, the number of good reasons to privatise the BBC grows exponentially but Matt Ridley adds a few more.  Did you know, for example, that there is a BBC rule that if anyone on air suggests that global warming is tosh then a global warming mouth-dribbler MUST be given a following slot.  In Mr. Ridley's example, he was invited on to the Today programme when Charles Moore was guest editor for one day.  Mr. Ridley's well-supported scorn for global warming nonsense is well known so he was followed on air by Sir David King, former government chief science advisor. As Mr. Ridley points out, Sir David is a qualified chemist, while he is a qualified biologist!

I sat there open-mouthed as he beautifully demonstrated my point with one exaggeration after another. He said that Europe’s dash for diesel had nothing to do with greens, when green pressure groups pushed actively for it. He said that we will see 1-2 metres of sea level rise this century, when the current rate of rise is 3.4 millimetres a year with no acceleration (or 0.3 metres per century). He said that all of Greenland’s ice cap might melt and could cause 5-6 metres of sea level rise, though at current rates of melting, Greenland’s ice cap will be 99% intact in 2100. He said that wild fires were being caused by trees dying out because of rising temperatures, rather than a failure to manage increasingly luxuriant vegetation in fire-risk areas leading to a build up of tinder. He said scientists are agreed that Calcutta will have to be moved, when the Ganges delta is actually expanding in area, not shrinking.

And so on and on and on and it is not confined just to Sir David and the BBC:

What readers of newspapers and listeners to the radio do not see is the sustained and deliberate pressure put on editors to toe the alarmist line on climate change. Take Bob Ward, who works at the London School of Economics, where his salary is paid by a billionaire, Jeremy Grantham. Ward is not employed to do research, but to “communicate” climate science. He chooses to interpret this as a duty to put pressure on the media to censor people like me. He complains to the Times almost every time I mention climate change, often getting his facts wrong, and kicked up a huge fuss when the Times, after publishing half a dozen of his letters declined to publish another one.

I am shocked, I tell you, shocked that the Maldives have the effrontery to continue to exist years and years after the 'experts' told them they were doomed.  Then there was that total prat, Paul R. Erhlich, who used to feature constantly in these, er, distinguished columns, who warned, with my emphasis:

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” He later went on to forecast that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s, that 65 million of them would be Americans, that crowded India was essentially doomed, that odds were fair “England will not exist in the year 2000.” Dr. Ehrlich was so sure of himself that he warned in 1970 that “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come.” By “the end,” he meant “an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”

Well, England is still here and, amazingly, so is Dr. Erhlich!  Mind you, for a full-on 'gloomster-doomster' of the first order, he did provide us all with a huge laugh when he accepted a bet with Julian Simon which you can read about on Erhlich's Wiki entry and which he lost - BIG TIME!

The real threat to all of us are 'experts'!

 

 

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 29.12.19

Whither the House of Windsor?  The 'Heffalump' has an interesting article in The Telegraph today on the subject of the Royal family and its future.  As 'Her Maj' put it in her Xmas speech, it has been "a bumpy year" for the Windsors.  Andrew has been a prat - so no surprise there, then! - and Harry has married an American 'wannabe diva' who obviously detests all things British and much prefers the, er, 'high society' of Hollywood.  I don't altogether blame her for that but I suspect that 'Prince' Harry will eventually tire of it all.  Never mind, Charles stands ready, indeed, probably tapping his foot in frustration, to ascend the throne and hopefully his dottiness will be accepted by his subjects over time.  Let us all thank God that behind Charles stand William and Kate (and Kate's mother!), quite possibly the most sensible family unit in the entire Royal hierarchy!

 

Better watch out, BBC, the axeman cometh!   Yesterday, Mr. Charles Moore, he of the world's greatest magazine, The Spectator, was granted the role of editor on the BBC's morning agit-prop programme, "Today".  His report on the experience is well worth reading particularly the difficulties put in his way to stop him inviting in a 'global warming' sceptic for an interview.  Rumour has it that the swivel-eyed 'Greenie', Roger Harrabin, who purports to be the BBC Environmental Editor, was not amused!  Come on, Boris - and Dominic! - don't hang about, chop them off at the knees and let the BBC earn its living in the real world!

 

And it may be Douglas Murray wielding the axe!   As you may have gathered after several admiring mentions on this blog, I am a devoted admirer of Mr. Murray and his works.  Not least his latest article in today's Mail in which he hopes, and perhaps even prays, that the era of 'woke' dictatorship will end in 2020.  Alas, I fear that too many non-celebrities desperate for celebrity will keep the fires burning and continue to throw sensible people on them.  Still, a man may hope, may he not?

 

"The top ten most influential books of all time":   That is the courageous title of an article at The American Spectator written by Larry Alex Taunton.  I will leave y'all to judge his judgment but it prodded me into wondering which books have been the most influential on me?  Tricky one, that!  I suppose it boils down to which books have remained in my memory over the past 80 years?  Well, one in particular has never left it - "The White Company" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  It was the first book given to us in my first term at Grammar School - and whilst I am shaky on the details, the essence of it has never left me.  It demonstrated courage in war but also benevolence.  A terrific read for any young lad.

 

"First Things" first!   I have just read a book review by Peter Hitchens, alas written in July - my bad! - on the prickly, tricky subject of Benjamin Netanyahu.  Needless to say, Hitchens' views are always worth reading on almost any subject.  However, this particular review was published by a totally new site to me - "First Things".  Intrigued, I checked out the site - and instantly subscribed to it!  I would urge y'all to do the same!  Yes, at first glance it appears to have a religious bent but they don't shove it down your throat - and if they publish Hitchens then they can't be all bad, can they?

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 8.12.19

Art criticism at its very best:   As y'all do know, I am in a quiet way a bit of an old 'arty-farty'.  I rarely pay attention to art critics because I know what I like even if, sometimes, I don't exactly know why!  But here is a man whose, er, 'taste' I would trust implicitly.  Recently an 'artwork' was unveiled which consisted of a banana duct-taped to a wall with a price tag of $120,000 attached.

On Saturday, the man, Mr. David Datuna, who is obviously of impeccable, er, taste, ate the banana!

 

Are you as confused as me over the forthcoming election?   Well, neither of us can be blamed given, as an example, two headlines in the same edition of the Sunday Mail:

"Tories scent victory with fresh poll showing late Labour surge has not materialised"

"Boris Johnson refuses THREE times to say if he would quit, should the Tories fail to win the election, as polls tighten with just days to go" 

I think I'll just stick to the pattern of the tea leaves at the bottom of my morning cup of tea!

From The Telegraph

 

Classic Peter Hitchens:   He is always a 'Must Read' on a Sunday but today he covers a range of topics all of which make you think.  I never followed his late brother and I wonder if he was a patch on Peter?

 

Hoot of the Year:   I am indebted to the Red State site for providing the hoot of the year from the lips of that well-known American comedienne, Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton.  She was re-acting to that mummified creature who calls herself Nancy Pelosi who has inveighed against Trump's evil ways and threatened dire legal counter-measures.  'HillBilly' responded with these immortal words: “no one is above the law”.

 

If only!   Apparently that irritating little girl, Greta Thunberg, is complaining that 'they' are trying to silence her!

Well, 'they' are obviously not very good at it because she never shuts up talking total 'tosh'!  Good job she's not my daughter!

 

Why I no longer go the theatre:  Particularly if it is a play by William Shakespeare.  The pig-ignorant dolts who rule 'theatre-land' these days are an insult to my intelligence but not to theirs because they do not have any!  This from a review of Richard III in this week's 'Speccie':

This modern-dress production (co-directed by Sean Holmes and Ilinca Radulian) has been cast without regard to race, gender or age. Anyone who doesn’t hold a professorship in Plantagenet genealogy will struggle to comprehend the sinuous plot. Richard (Sophie Russell) enters wearing a white footballer’s shirt inscribed RICHARD 03. Clear enough. Margaret, played by a man, also appears with her name embroidered on her football kit but with the letters covered by a coat. An easy blunder to correct. Harder to fix is the sparse company which isn’t populous enough to serve the text. Matti Houghton plays Anne and two other large-ish roles. Colin Hurley begins as Hastings and morphs into Tyrrell, the Mayor and Oxford. Steffan Donnelly opens as Margaret and ends as Richmond.

Need I say more?

 

No more Rumbles

 

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 10.11.19

Remembrance Day:   An article in today's Mail took me by surprise.  They conducted a survey of some of those very 'foreign fields' on which British soldiers perished.  What was extraordinary was the fact that local people still tend these graves lovingly, some of them despite the fact that their history of inter-action with the British army was not always, shall we say, amicable!

In the heart of the African bush, Kokou Esso, an impoverished villager, carefully sweeps the grave of a British upper-class Army officer. It is well-tended, pristine and, most of all, remembered

Even in Russia the graves of various British servicemen who died there are still cared for - including the ones who perished in the abortive attempt to oppose the Bolshevik revolution!  For what it is worth, my grateful thanks to all of them.

 

Incoming 'SoD':   Posting might be a tad erratic today because I have it on high authority that 'SoD' might be visiting.  NOTE TO SELF: Don't mention the 'Br' word!

 

That Peter Hitchens is tossing grenades again!   This time his target is Winston Churchill as war leader who is, of course, a 'yuuuuuge' target and therefor fairly easy to hit!  Even so, Hitchens is in receipt of some fairly heavy counter-battery fire from some distinguished historians.  I will not attempt to summarise the arguments but I will provide you with the links so that you WWII buffs can study them at your leisure.  This is his opening salvo in today's Mail:

700 people came to see this talk about my book 'The Phoney Victory' in Edinburgh . Now you can share the experience

At last! The recording of my appearance last August at the Edinburgh Book Festival to discuss my widely-ignored book ‘The Phoney Victory’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb8A4AGKGkg&feature=youtu.be

The interviewer is Ruth Wishart, to whom I offer my thanks . Likewise to the Edinburgh Book Festival, the only major book festival which showed any interest in this book .

I think the unfairness and idiocy of the boycott of silence to which the book has been subjected by festivals and reviewers was well-illustrated by the fact that 700 people attended this event, and I missed my train home because so many people wanted me to sign books afterwards.

I have addressed two other private events about this book and on both occasions received an enormous amount of interest. It is not because this book is a commercial flop that it is being ignored, but perhaps because it might be a success if it were given normal levels of publicity.

These are two responses.  The first is from Daniel Johnson at Standpoint.   The second from Richard Evans, a history swot from Cambridge.  I am unqualified to adjudicate so I will leave it to you WWII students to take your own decisions.

 

I never thought I would write these words!   However, I really think I will miss Phil Hammond, the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Yes, he looked like a gormless twit and over Brexit he demonstrated it!  However, he kept a canny eye on the nation's finances which are looking remarkably healthy despite the squealings of the 'Remainers'.  Alas, both Boris and 'Jezza' are throwing money - er, our money, I would remind you! - in all directions in their desperation to win the election.  There will be tears - or even blood!

 

More war - sorry!   But this is just a Hollywood film of a particular battle and I am sorry to say that it is based on one of the most crucial, subtle and sophisticated battles of WWII.  I refer to the Battle of Midway which involved not just the courageous sailors and airmen involved but also the highly secret skills of the American code-breakers.  Somehow, don't ask me how, I just cannot believe Hollywood will do it justice.  Read a bbook on the subject and be amazed!

 

Another tricky question for my American friends:   I keep coming across hints and whispers and the occasional nudge here and there in the 'meeja', to the effect that California is headed towards a financial collapse of Argentinian proportions!  Tell me it ain't so!

 

Too, too delicious!   I am referring to the plight of Michael E. Mann, the, er, 'inventor' of the 'Hockey Stick' graph which purports to show an up-tick in global temperatures.  He sued one of his critics, a Dr. Tim Ball, in the Canadian courts - and lost - BIGTIME!  Ordered to pay costs to Dr. Bell, he has so far refused.  The similar case against Mark Stein which Mann started some seven years ago has still not been judged in court because Mann keeps dodging.  How much faith do you have in global warming prophets?  That much, eh?   Sucker!

 

No more rumbles 

 

 

 

 

Australia! Make this man your Prime Minister!

I refer, of course, to Mr. Craig Kelly (and no, hitherto, me neither!) who is a Member of your House of Representatives.  This exceedingly diligent and sharp-eyed fella' has just caught out your tax-payer funded 'Greenie collective', aka: Bureau of Meteorology in outright lies.  According to the ever diligent Mr. Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker this 'collective of lying liars' have been

. . . altering graphs showing the number of very hot days so as to obscure the fact that 1952 had more of them than recent years and adding a newly "discovered" hot day to a more recent year to make it appear that they are increasing.

 

 

But, hey, with a few adroit clicks on their 'lying-liar, do-flicker-thingie', they changed the story to fit their own agit-prop:

 

 

I would suggest to my Aussie friends that they now raise the temperature at their 'Bureau of Make-it-up-as-you-go Meteorology' by burning it to the ground!

NOTE:  Don't worry, your usual Sunday Rumble will follow when I have had some 'brekkers' and sorted out all these bloody clocks which seem to have gone wrong overnight! 

 

 

 

As always that damned Charles Moore says it before me!

Like persistent indigestion, my increasing irritation with that 'Mr. Nice Guy' icon of global warming-'wankering', David Attenborough, simply will not go away.  In fact, it mounts higher and higher as his, er, 'saintly', white-haired mug appears constantly in the 'meeja'.  I was just waiting for him to issue yet another 'Pte. Frazer' style warning to the effect that "We're all doomed, I tell ye, doomed" and that would have 'set me off on one' but in steps Mr. Moore and does the job for me - well, I have been a subscriber to The Spectator for decades so he owes me one!

In a post at The Coffee House entitled "Why I'm fed up with David Attenborough", he says:

There is now a small but growing number of people, myself included, who are fed up with [him]. His early days were wonderful — he was an adventurous zoological and ethnographic broadcaster and then a great controller (the first) of BBC2. But in recent times his role as a National — even Global — Treasure has gone to his head.

Mr. Moore suggests that instead of the constant bad-mouthing of humanity there should be far more extolling of the wonders we have created:

Today’s equivalent would show us the wonders of scientific discovery, industrial development, engineering, computing, AI, markets, trade, supply chains, medicine, transport, media, languages, nature conservation — the millions of things that human beings, and only human beings, can do for the planet they inhabit.  [My emphasis]

Damned right - and I'm fed up with being nagged!

 

 

They are coming for you . . .

Be afraid, be very afraid!

 

 

Image by Dianny of Patriot Retort

 

My thanks to The American Thinker site whose daily 'cartoons' are always worth a look.

 

 

 

There are lying-liars and then there are global warming so-called scientists

As if anyone, apart from poor, dim, Greta Thunberg, needed reminding that all allegedly 'scientific' statistics confirming alarming increases in global temperature should taken, not with a pinch of salt, but a bucket full!  Especially so if you are relying on the 'Environment Canada' outfit who give every appearance of being manned by graduates from the University of East Anglia (UEA) who were caught a few years back tossing out any stats which failed to support their theory that the end of the world is nigh!  

According to Mr. Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker site "mere actual, historical data that might raise doubt about the extent of purported warming over time must be thrown out and replaced by “models” of what the “scientists” think the historical temperature record must have been. [My emphasis]  

Thanks to the persistent investigation of a Canadian reporter we learn:

Canadians already suspicious of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax are likely be even more suspicious given a report by Ottawa-based Blacklock’s Reporter that Environment Canada omitted a century’s worth of observed weather data in developing its computer models on the impacts of climate change.

The scrapping of all observed weather data from 1850 to 1949 was necessary, a spokesman for Environment Canada told Blacklock’s Reporter, after researchers concluded that historically, there weren’t enough weather stations to create a reliable data set for that 100-year period.

You couldn't make it up - although they can - and do!

 

 

 

Worried about the planet? FAGGETABOUTIT!

This blog is deeply concerned about the future of our planet and so we have not one, but two, climate advisors from both ends of the earth.  In no order of preference we have Andra from Australia and 'JK' from deep in 'them thar hills' in Arkansas.  Industrious little beavers that they are, they never cease to bring us the latest despatches from the Global Climate wars.

First there is this from Andra quoting Prof. Ian Rutherford Plimer who is:

An Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific papers, six books and edited the Encyclopaedia of Geology.

So, presumably he knows where-of he writes and here are a few extracts:

"Okay, here's the bombshell. The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland... since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet - all of you.

Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress - it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for all humans and all animal life.

I know... it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle and replacing all of your 90 cent light bulbs with $9 light bulbs... well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.

[…]

I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth.

And here is something that this blog noticed and mentioned some time ago:

Hey, isn’t it interesting how they don’t mention 'Global Warming' anymore, but just 'Climate Change' - you know why? It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past few years and these global warming bull artists got caught with their pants down.

'JK', my other environmental adviser who always takes immense care to recycle his empty bottles after each tasting of Barney Magroo's 'Fine Wine and Spirits', was 'yuuuuugely' upset by this picture of discarded turbine blades dumped by one of those 'cuddly' wind farm operators who really, really care about the environment!

From a site called "Powerline" the rank hypocrisy of those wind farm con-artists who warm the hearts of 'tree huggers' everywhere but then dump their unwanted industrial equipment anywhere is shown up for what it is.

Thank you Andra and 'JK' for confirming my worst suspicions.

 

 

Tell Miss 'Thingamy' she can fly back home on Concorde!

Sorry about the "Miss Thingamy" in my title but for a moment I simply could not recall the name of that peculiar-looking Scandie gal who sailed across the Atlantic, rather than fly, to warn all you 'Yankee-doodles' that you are on the tip of extinction from global warming!  However, now I remember her name - Miss Greta Thunberg, of course.  How could I forget?

Anyway, dear Ms. Thunberg, I bring thee glad tidings of great joy, although to be honest, I don't think you will appreciate it, but the fact is, there has been no warming in the good, ol' US of A since 1985:

 

Temperature readings from 2005 (far left) to the present (far right) show absolutely no warming.

 

In fact, the chances are that there has been no warming since the 1930s.  The phony stats touted by the 'Warmers', as Anthony Watts proved years ago, are as bent as Michael E. Mann's 'hockey stick' graph!  Today we have a set of clean and un-interfered with measurements taken from a wide collection of weather recording sites across America which were set up specifically in locations clear of any local interferences such as concrete or tarmac or massive reflective windows which bent all the results from the older weather sites.  

These new results conform closely to satellite readings which indicate a warming of merely:

0.15 degrees Celsius since 2005, which is less than half the pace predicted by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate models. [My emphasis]

So, dear Miss Thunberg, you can fly home on a gas-guzzling aircraft without troubling your precious conscience but, please, do us all a favour and just shut up and keep your 'hot air' to yourself!  Tack så mycket!

 

 

 

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 

 

 

The end of the world should have been over by the year 2000, actually!

Well, that's what the top United Nations 'eco-expert' told us in 1989!  According to him, 19 years ago, we should have already suffered total disaster because:

. . . entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Brown told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.

Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study.

″Ecological refugees will become a major concern, and what’s worse is you may find that people can move to drier ground, but the soils and the natural resources may not support life. Africa doesn’t have to worry about land, but would you want to live in the Sahara?″ he said.

Well, to be fair, we have, er, 'suffered' an exceedingly warm 'Zummer down 'ere in deepest Zummerzet', to the extent that I actually removed my shirt on a number of occasions whilst watering the lawn and as a result some of the elderly ladies who live here felt quite faint, so I am told.  But even so, the end of the world seems to have passed me by!  How about you?

…

"Reclaim the Power" need to reclaim their three shared brain cells first!

I confess that I nearly fell off my chair when I read this story in The Mail.  A 'really, really' caring, concerned climate change rabble group called "Reclaim the Power" determined to throw a cordon round the HQ of the evil empire that is "Drax", a gas plant supplier - yar, boo, hiss!  Well, it must be evil with a name like "Drax" which sounds like the 'baddie' in a James Bond movie!  Anyway, here they are with 'Sister Smug' in the foreground:

All this took place in Moorgate, one of the busiest commercial districts in London and both workers and traffic were entangled for hours until . . . duh! . . . the Greenie nitwits found out that Drax had moved out weeks earlier and the premises were now occupied by . . . wait for it! . . . but put down your cup of coffee first!  . . . "Norwegian firm Statkraft, Europe's largest renewables generator".

Oh my giddy aunt, stop it, stop it, my sides are splitting!  Do these 'dimboes' expect us to take them seriously?

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 23.6.19

Apologies and all that:   Yes, sorry about my going a.w.o.l. on Friday and most of Saturday.  No alarums or excursions, just a host of this, that and the other with an added dash of idleness - so no change there then!

 

When reality exceeds parody:   I refer to the less than delightful couple who live next door to 'Boing-Boing' Boris and who carefully recorded his domestic row before calling the police - and then reporting the whole thing to 'The Guardian'.  It turns out that they are both 'theatre people, darling', although neither of them seem to have, er, 'created' even a ripple of interest in that precious niche.  Needless to say, they are both 'Jezza'-worshipping Lefties which explains why their first port of call was to 'The Graun'.

I only republish their photograph just in case they ever become your neighbours - in which case I would urge you to sell up and move.  Mind you, as per usual, 'Boing-Boing' deserves the 'brown stuff' coming at him from all directions for being such a twerp - again!  For God's sake, man, eat your humble pie and go back to the 'missus' and try to concentrate on running the country!

 

The 'Quacks' are usually right:   Nobody is more sceptical of the 'Divine Right of Quacks' than me because, of course, they are merely human beings with all that that implies.  Even so, I always follow their instructions for the bleedingly obvious reason that they have the expertise that I totally lack.  Yes, of course, sometimes they get it wrong but on the whole, by and large, they get it more or less right.  If you doubt that proposition then let me ask you if, in the event of a faulty water-pipe in your bathroom flooding your house, would you call a carpenter or a plumber?  I raise the subject because of a story in The Telegraph today concerning the death by cancer of a 38-year old mother who resolutely refused the normal treatment and instead relied on:

"a vegan diet of mainly raw fruit and vegetables, supplemented with turmeric, seaweed and spells in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. She sought help at a clinic in Mexico, where therapies included placing her feet in a basin of water that supposedly drew toxins from her body."

You couldn't make it up but those scoundrels who propagate 'alternative' treatments do it all the time.  

 

I am in 'luuurve' with Condoleezza Rice:   Yes, to the best of my somewhat 'iffy' memory, she was a pretty sharp Sec. of State and was always an exceedingly attractive lady, so I enjoyed a good chuckle at her response to a black professor of English:

Condoleezza Rice was approached by a professor of English and asked to recommend a book by a black woman, to round out the racially and sexually sensitive curriculum. Rice said, “How about my The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948–1983?” 

Nice one, 'Condo', baby!

 

The same old, same old:   I know this will test the patience of my intelligent readers but, please, try and read this through to the end and then my summary:

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot.

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard of temperatures in the Arctic Zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.

Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed that the Gulf Stream was very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the Eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring have never ventured so far north in the old seal hunting ground. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.

You must take this seriously because it was published in The Washington Post, no less, and several other distinguished newspapers.  The only teensy-weensy problem is that the publication took place in, er, 1922, actually! My thanks to Jack Helner at The American Thinker.

 

'Boring-snoring' but he won - again:   Yes, (Sir) Lewis Hamilton cruised to victory at the French Grand Prix most of which I napped through!  Still, what an incredible driver he is!

 

Trump's somersaults:   It is not necessarily 'a bad thing' for a POTUS to change his mind but when it is on a matter of war or peace then changing the Presidential mind 10 minutes before the first shot indicates a troubling lack of fore-thought and planning.  Thus it has been with the American/Iranian stand off and whilst I suspect that the decision of the President to holster his six-gun was right it was, in the words of a truly great General, "A fine run thing"! 

 

 

No more rumbles 

 

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 16.6.19

Thank you - again - Mr. Hitchens:   There is not a better way to start a Sunday than with a dose of Hitchens!  Er, that's Peter, of course, not his late brother about whom I know very little.  Anyway, Peter's column in The Mail on Sunday is almost the equivalent of my regular glass of cold orange juice every morning, it clears the tubes, so to speak.  Today he discusses the merits and demerits of 'Boris' as a future Prime Minister and sums it up, thusly:

He is disappointingly different from the stage comedian so many think they love. As it happens, I have always quite liked him, but I wouldn’t ask him to look after my cat for a weekend, let alone put him in charge of a medium-sized nuclear power.

 

And you, too, Mr. Dan Hodges:   The other 'absolutely must read' columnist for The Mail on Sunday.  Today he confirms my own utterly uninformed opinion - call it a guess - that the Remainers and the 'Bolsheviks' (that's Labour!) will shoot down any 'no deal' plan to Brexit and, of course, as I have said many a time and oft', Brussels will not give a centimetre to aid our departure.  Boris will face exactly the same road block that the 'Maybot' faced.  There is only one way round it and that is a general election in the Autumn.

 

Let's hear it for the plucky little 'Hongers 'n' Kongers':   I refer, of course, to the people of Hong Kong who have demonstrated their courage in refusing to accept a dangerous directive from 'Xi Ping-a-ling' and his ghastly gangsters in Peking.  The 'Hongers 'n' Kongers' only represent a tiny fraction of the total Chinese population but I can't help wondering how many of the wider population are secretly - very secretly if they are wise - cheering them on?

 

Feeling cheerful?  Then don't read Jeremy Warner!   He reminds us in his Telegraph column that this Autumn two major economic posts will need to be filled.  First, a new Chancellor will be required when Philip Hammond is booted out by Boris.  This may be Boris's first and most critical decision.  Second, a new Governor of the Bank of England will have to be appointed when that mostly useless 'Canuck', Mark Carney, is sent back to Canada to change Justin Trudeau's nappies!  Good riddance to both of them but choosing their successors is going to require sound judgment - yeeeeeeeees, quite!

 

The end of the world must wait upon Rep. Elijah Cummings:   According to all those terrified 'Warmers', the end of the world is nigh and to prove it no less an authority than Rep. Elijah Cummings (Dem - natch!) summoned Ms. Judith Curry, an eminent climatologist and fierce critic of the current alarmist agitprop, to his Congressional committee.  But guess what!  Suddenly, the end of the world was put on hold because Rep. Cummings was more concerned with attempting to charge two Trump officials with contempt, or some such.  Ms. Curry sums it up this way:

If you follow me on twitter, you may have noticed that I was scheduled to testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Jun 12. The subject of the Hearing is Contending with Natural Disasters in the Wake of Climate Change.

Late on Jun 10, I received an email telling me that the Hearing is postponed (as yet unscheduled). Apparently the Committee finds it more urgent to have a Hearing related to holding the Attorney General and Secretary of Commerce in contempt of Congress. Interesting to ponder that Congressional procedural issues are deemed to be more important than Climate Change.

To those of you unfamiliar with Rep. Cummings it is sufficient to say that he represents nearly half of the wreckage that is the once proud, bustling city of Baltimore - or 'southern Chicago' as I think of it!

 

And now the end has come:  No, no, not me, so you can put that champagne back in the cellar!  I mean my new hero, the late, great Thomas Cromwell.  I have finally reached the end of John Schofield's excellent but tragic biography of one of the shrewdest, wisest men ever to run the government of England.  What a pity he had to do his duty under one of the stupidest, most malignant kings ever to stain our throne.  Never mind, at least he managed to set a foundation for a new, Protestant England that would eventually rid us of Popery.  Mind you, reading that book left me with a profound shame for my total ignorance on the subject.  Moral: must read more books, er, but how I will find the time I do not know.  Next up is "Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges" by Antony Beevor and I already know how depressing that is going to be!

 

 

No more rumbles 

 

 

 

Hey, Aussies, can you spare a dime?

I ask because, of course, I am a scrounger by nature but also because you seem to have a few quid to spare given that the Queensland government is actually paying the multi-zillionaire, climate fraud, Al Gore, $320,000 to organise a propaganda training conference to bewitch suckers into believing his arrant nonsense that the world is about to boil over!  Happily, we can put our trust in God's good humour because snow just fell in Queensland for the first time since 2015!  Honestly, you couldn't make it up!

 

 

 

Time to Mann-up!

As I have mentioned before several times, I am exceedingly leery of the American justice system.  Of course, it is 'yuuuuuuuge' and therefor bound to throw up anomalies and contradictions and dodgy decisions but perhaps worst of all, it can be excessively long-winded and dilatory. Take The National Review (and Mark Steyn, too, come to that!) vs. Michael E. Mann, the 'inventor' of the 'Hockey Stick' chart which proves - absolutely and definitely proves, I tell you - that man-made global warming really and truly and cross my heart and wish to die, is occurring!  

Michael E. Mann took exception when the NR and Steyn stuck two fingers up in his direction and shouted, in effect, "Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!"   He opened court proceedings against both parties which were mounted in the DC circuit, so hardly out in the boondocks, and yet both cases, despite urgings from the NR, and Steyn, are still unheard and are about to enter their eighth year!  That is a national disgrace for a country that claims it has the greatest judicial system in the world!

 

 

Who turned the heating up?

As all my regulars here at D&N already know, my knowledge of science can only be described as lamentable.  Even so, I do deserve an 'E' for effort as I try to keep half an eye on scientific matters, particularly when I suspect that some of them are, shall we say, less than scientific and more political!  Thus it is with so-called Global Warming.  My mentor in this abstruse subject has always been Mr. Anthony Watts ever since I discovered his site "Watts Up With That".  Way back in the day I came across his site and admired his somewhat different approach to all this AGW panic.

Instead of worrying about the stats produced by 'Warmer' fanatics, he concentrated on the means by which they obtained these stats, that is, the actual measuring devices themselves.  Helped by an army of volunteers from across America, he was able to show that many of these devices had been 'on site' for decades but, unknown or ignored by the 'Warmers', it was evident that the immediate surroundings had changed radically.  What had been a virtual 'green site' in the '40s was now surrounded by concrete and bricks and reflective windows, to say nothing of the myriad air conditioning units pumping out their warm air in the immediate vicinity.  The stats confirmed the panic of the fanatics but they were 'false flags'.

Needless to say, the science has moved on to increasing levels of sophistication including satellite readings.  Here are the main measuring organisations with their exceedingly varied estimations of exactly - er, sort of - how much global temperatures have increased in degrees/centigrade per decade:

AIRS: +0.24 (from the 2019 Susskind et al. study)
GISTEMP: +0.22
ECMWF: +0.20
RSS LT: +0.20
Cowtan & Way: +0.19
UAH LT: +0.18
HadCRUT4: +0.17

Which climate dataset is the right one? Interestingly, the HadCRUT4 dataset, which is managed by a team in the United Kingdom, uses most of the same data GISTEMP uses from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Historical Climate Network. Among the major datasets, HadCRUT4 shows the lowest temperature increase, one that’s nearly identical to UAH.

The other problem with the 'AIRS' reading is that it is based on only 15 years of measurement, far shorter than the basic minimum required of 30 years.  As Mr. Watts reminds us:

The 15-year period in this new study is too short to say much of anything of value about global warming trends, especially since there was a record-setting warm El Niño near the end of that period in 2015 and 2016. [My emphasis]  The El Niño event in the Pacific allowed warm water heated by the Sun to collect, dispersing heat into the atmosphere and thus warming the planet. Greenhouse gas induced “climate change” had nothing to do with it; it was a natural heating process that has been going on for millennia. [My emphasis]

As that well-known climate scientist, er, Prince Hamlet put it, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 28.4.19

Yesterday was a double good day:  First of all, the 'Memsahib' had the dressing on her right hand removed because the wound has healed nicely.  Second of all, we went shopping and bought a ready-cooked chicken - well, it was bound to be better than if I had cooked it! - and the 'Memsahib' suddenly remembered a recipe she hasn't done for ages - 'Chicken Mustard'!  In this, the chicken is chopped into small bits and heated in a sauce made up of cream, dry mustard, mushrooms, Worcester sauce and various other bits and pieces. (Exact recipe to follow later when she is up and about!)  Unencumbered by the dressing on her right hand she was able to throw that together and it was 'scrummy, Mummy'!  Well, there are only so many cheese on toasts you can eat when I am running the kitchen!

 

The second good thing yesterday:  A couple of weeks ago, for a reason I cannot recall, I was reminded of one of the very best thrillers I have ever read.  "I Am Pilgrim" by Terry Hayes.  Er, the other thing I cannot recall is what the damned book was about!  I know it featured some smart-arse, American secret agent and that it ended up - natch! - somewhere in the Middle East - I think!  However, what I did recall was how much I enjoyed it and so, given the reminder, I decided to buy a copy for my Kindle.  Like all my good intentions, I never quite got around to it and anyway, as y'all do know because I never stop boring on about it, I am still deep into the 'brown stuff' that was the British political scene in the 1930s.  Anyway, yesterday, in a half-hearted attempt to tidy up the shambles in my attic, I sorted through a pile of old paperbacks and - HOORAH! - I found my original copy.  Last night I read the first five chapters and I was right - it's a corker!

 

Dan Hodges asks the critical question:   Once again, I am grateful to Mr. Dan Hodges in The Mail for asking the truly critical question of the day: 

Who runs Britain? Who is actually responsible for the governance of our nation this morning?

Chillingly, he answers his own question:

It isn’t the Prime Minister. Mrs May holds that title, but has relinquished any grip on the office. The only meaningful decision left for her now is the announcement of the date of her departure from Downing Street.
It’s not the Cabinet. As the Huawei debacle has revealed, their focus is no longer on running the Government but jostling for the premiership. The views of the voters of Britain are now secondary to the views of the 120,000 members of the Tory Party who will be eligible to vote in the upcoming leadership election.

Sorry to re-use a hoary, old cliche but 'power abhors a vacuum'.  Who or what fills this particular hole I do not know.  I hope that the local and then the European elections devastate the Tory party because, to paraphrase 'the good Doctor', 'nothing concentrates a mind like a hanging in the morning!'  Also, it will be truly delicious to send Farage's army of Brexiteers to Brussels! 

 

A 75th Anniversary to be remembered but not celebrated:   I am grateful to The Telegraph for reminding me of the ghastly tragedy that occurred 75 years ago at Slapton Sands in Devon.

On that beautiful stretch of seaside, 75 years ago today, at least 749 American soldiers and sailors lost their lives.  They were practicing for the D-Day landings which would take place a few weeks hence.  Unhappily, they were caught by a small flotilla of German E-boats who took them by surprise and inflicted dreadful casualties.  "We shall remember them."

 

Message from the 'Memsahib':  As promised, the recipe for Chicken Mustard:

Chicken Mustard- Serves four

½ pint double cream
2 tablespoons Mango chutney
1 tablespoon Worcester sauce
1 Dessert spoon dry Colman mustard
1/4lb Mushrooms sliced

Method:

Mix all ingredients together, heat the mix for half an hour at 170⁰ and then pour over the chicken pieces. 
Pork chops are good as well.

ENJOY!!!!!

 

Dotty Dipstick of the Year!   Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you - no, go on, take her, she's all yours - the dumbest blonde Dame ever, Dame Emma Thompson:

With star-like stupidity she flew all the way from California, laying a carbon carpet as she went, in order to join all those pig-ignorant prats who brought central London to a standstill in order to, er, 'save the planet'!  Thank you, darling, now fly back where you came from and don't bother coming again!

 

That damned fickle Finn!   I refer, of course, to Valtteri Bottas who, dammit, is supposed to be the No.2 driver for Mercedes thus assisting (Sir) Lewis to yet another well deserved victory.  Instead, he nicked first place leaving (Sir) Lewis to finish second - the bounder!  Mind you, it was an impeccable drive.

 

No more rumbles today!

 

 

 

Anymore for the Democrat nomination bus?

Actually, there appears to be enough declared/sort of declared/might declare 'candidates' to fill a train let alone a mere bus!  Ms. Anna L. Stark at The American Thinker analyses the passengers on what she calls "the crowded clown car". There appear to be 18 declared candidates, 7 about to declare candidates and 5 what she calls 'outlier' candidates.  She saves her nuclear option until last!

With my abysmal ignorance of such matters, alas, I can offer you no detailed or expert guidance on this particular 'train of fools'.  The ones about whom I have some slight knowledge, such as Sen. 'Fauxcahontas' Warren, are of such unbelievable stupidity as to almost make your average Westminster MP appear to have more than three brain cells!  What is rather more worrying is that most of them appear to be eye-ball swivelling Marxists who make 'Jezza' Corbyn look normal!  I stress the words "appear to be" because I doubt any of them have even read page 1 of Das Kapital!  All they do is 'Trot out' (Oh very witty, Wilde!) the current shibboleths of what purports to be Left-wing, er, thinking - yeeeeees, quite!

It is an indication of where the Democrat party has ended up that one undeclared (so far!) outlier (or should that be 'outliar'?) would almost be greeted with relief were she to enter the race.  I refer, of course, to the dreaded 'HillBilly' Clinton who, despite her dishonesty, laziness and total irresponsibility, might be an improvement on the others.  At the moment, so I gather, it is 'good ol' Barnie Sanders, America's answer to 'Jezza' Corbyn, God help them, who appears to have most of the 'moolah' and, this being America, most of the support.  However, as I indicated above, Ms. Stark, at the close of her article reveals the nuclear alternative - Michelle Obama!  She's famous, she's well-liked but above and beyond all that - she's black and she's a woman!

EMERGENCY!  EMERGENCY!  EMERGENCY!

I have just read the following dire warning at the excellent, global climate site WUWT:

Scientists have issued a dire warning: the current number of Democratic presidential candidates is simply unsustainable.

No one ever thought this many people would run for president,” said climate scientist Dr. Raymond Hall, “and the planet just can’t take it. We’re talking each of them eating up resources vying for airtime, printing stickers with trite slogans, and flying from Iowa to New Hampshire. If they were actually all to be in one place for a debate, it would be an ecological disaster.”

Scientists recommend the current Democratic field be reduced to less than half the current number or we could see an increase in hurricanes, droughts, kaiju, and “other climate change things.” As for what to do with the excess candidates, researcher Jeannie Perry said, “As always, I’d recommend firing them into space. Barring that, someone should just sit down with them and explain to them that no one is ever going to vote for them and hope that keeps them from running around consuming resources in a futile effort for presidential power.”

You have been warned!

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 14.4.19

A cheerful way to awake:   Yes, indeed, there's nothing like waking up with a smile and that is exactly what I did this morning as I heard on my bedside radio the sound of (Sir) Lewis Hamilton roaring to victory at the Chinese Grand Prix.  What an incredible race driver he is!  Even so, if Ferrari can sort out their internal politics with team leader Vettel under enormous pressure from 'the new kid on the block', Charles Leclerc, then (Sir) Lewis might well face testing times ahead!

 

What to do about that damned Aussie-Scandie?   As if our, er, distinguished(?), Home Secretary did not have enough on his plate, he must now decide whether to send Julian Assange to America where 'The Donald' is already licking his lips in anticipation, or, to Sweden where sundry ladies are already sharpening their scalpels prior to de-balling him!  Personally, and at the risk of upsetting my American friends, I think the ladies should have first go.  I have mentioned before that I have considerable reservations concerning the American justice system, especially when politics are involved.  I was amused at a headline at The National Review which asked "Why isn't Assange being charged with collusion with Russia?"

 

I stayed up last night!   Having deployed zero energy for the past few days, I decided to stay up late and whilst idly flicking round the talentless desert that covers most of the TV channels, I came across a film called "Red".  It was complete and utter tosh from start to finish and featured a host of 'way past it' actors who should have known better.  Needless to say, I watched it to the end and enjoyed every minute of it!  I gather that the film grossed $199 million thus proving that all those old actors, or their agents, know a hell of a lot more about movies than me!  This is a sample of the cast list:

Bruce Willis as Francis "Frank" Moses
Morgan Freeman as Joe Matheson
John Malkovich as Marvin Boggs
Helen Mirren as Victoria Winslow
Karl Urban as William Cooper
Brian Cox as Ivan Simanov
Richard Dreyfuss as Alexander Dunning

and finally, of all people, Ernest Borgnine - dammit! where did they dig him up from?  Anyway, I chuckled my way through it all, not least because, I suspect, the actors were all enjoying themselves enormously - well, on their money, wouldn't you?

 

Thanks, mate!   I refer, in my impeccable 'Aussie' accent, to my e-pal, 'AussieD', who has sent me a link to Quadrant On-line and an article by Anthony Daniels which says everything which has festered within me for the last few years.  Here is Mr. Daniels' opening sentence which gives you the flavour of his essay:

The precise date of the discovery by theatre directors that they are greater than Shakespeare cannot be specified: the discovery was more a process than an event. But by the time I saw a production of Richard II at the Almeida Theatre a few weeks ago, the superior genius of any director over that of Shakespeare was an established principle and indisputable fact.

I will be returning to this subject - you have been warned!

 

The odious Bercow clings on:

According to The Mail, despite indicating that later this month he would announce his retirement, the despicable, little tit intends to cling on for longer.

Sorry to ruin your Sunday with a picture of the ghastly little monkey but I thought you should know.  Oh God, what have we done to deserve a House of Fools like this?

 

My bad, my life already!

Sorry, sorry, but as a sympathetic friend of Israel I really have not followed closely their recent election in which, to a lot of people's surprise, 'Benjy Boy' was re-elected as Prime Minister.  The great question for me is, is that "A Good Thing" or "A Bad Thing"?  I really must try and keep up with these matters.

 

Is it time to pelt David Attenborough with rotten veg?  I ask because I am utterly fed up with seeing him appear, mostly on the BBC (British Bilge Corporation) telling us yet again - and again - and even more again, that the end of the world is nigh because of global warming.  Sorry, Sir David, you're a lovely old sweetie but, alas, you are also a prat!  And an exceedingly boring prat, at that!

 

 

No more rumbles 

 

An exceedingly convenient truth

Courtesy of the grumpy, old git who runs the excellent "I Hate the Media" site, I was delighted to be directed to another site called "Humans Are Free", the title of which is, I suppose, another example of American optimism!  Even so, it was fun to read an article there pointing out that 13 years after Al Gore's ten absolutely definite and dire predictions from his film "An Inconvenient Truth" have turned out to be total 'blx'!

1. Rising Sea Levels – inaccurate and misleading. Al was even discovered
purchasing a beachfront mansion!

2. Increased Tornadoes – declining for decades.

3. New Ice Age in Europe – they’ve been spared; it never happened.

4. South Sahara Drying Up – completely untrue.

5. Massive Flooding in China and India – again didn’t happen.

6. Melting Arctic – false – 2015 represents the largest refreezing in years.

7. Polar Bear Extinction – actually they are increasing!

8. Temperature Increases Due to CO2 – no significant rising for over 18 years.

9. Katrina a Foreshadow of the Future – false – past 10 years, no F3 hurricanes; “longest drought ever!”

10. The Earth Would be in a “True Planetary Emergency” Within a Decade Unless Drastic Action Taken to Reduce Greenhouse Gasses – never happened.

Why am I not surprised that a grifter like Al Gore who has made a fortune from all his global warming 'blx' turns out to know about as much about science as I do - er, I failed maths, physics and chem! - but even so 'they' gave him a Nobel Prize.  It should have been a 'Nob prize'!

 

 

Humbuggery - 'Noo Yawk Times' style!

They care, they really, really care about our fragile planet do the 'lardy-arse' humbugs, like Mr. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who run the wretched fish and chip wrapper that is the New York Times!  They thrashed 'The Donald' for unwinding 'St. Obama's' gentle, caring climate policies thus making 2018 "one of the most discouraging years in recent memory for anyone who cares about the health of the planet."  In fact, they thundered, 1918 was "a year marked by President Trump’s destructive, retrograde policies, by backsliding among big nations, by fresh data showing that carbon dioxide emissions are still going up, by ever more ominous signs”.  Shockin', truly shockin'!

But then some scruffy, dandruff-ridden oik from a down-town rag asked the NYT whether or not they would join a movement to ban the use of private jets which are 'yuuuuge' producers of carbon.  Answer came there none!  Perhaps, because:

The Times offered 50 wealthy readers the chance to join its writers on a luxury private jet tour around the world earlier in 2018.

Travelers joining the $135,000-per-person world tour got to ride in style on an “exclusively chartered Boeing 757 with first-class, fully lie-flat seat.” The world tour was set to begin at Times headquarters in New York City on Feb. 8, and last through March 5.

The tour was expected to net The Times upwards of $6.7 million, which is part of Sulzberger Jr.’s plan to “monetize” the paper’s name in an era where news agencies are struggling. In fact, Sulzberger gave guests a behind-scenes-tour of The Times’ headquarters before their 26-day tour, according to a brochure.

Given their vicious attack on the 'Ginger Ninja' this raises a truly 'yuuuuuuuuuuge' question of overwhelming importance - would you even want to wipe your arse with a copy of the New York Times?

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/28/the-ny-times-was-silent-when-thedcnf-asked-if-it-would-support-banning-private-jets-why/

 

 

 

'Greenie-Warmers': the joke that never stops giving

Over the years I have lost count of the number of 'Greenie-Warmers' who have attempted to paddle their way to the North Pole because, of course, the arctic ice is melting due to the infamy of Mankind and our greedy ways.  Needless to say, one by one, they have become stuck in the ice and had to be rescued.

Today I bring you - no need to thank me! - a variation on this long-running joke.  An 'electric car', driven of course by solar power because we can't have all the little penguins poisoned by diesel fumes.  Also, and this is really, really important, the car was built from plastic waste!  

This superb vehicle was designed and built for the sole purpose of driving to the South Pole, er, quite why I do not know but, alas and alack, it only made it so far before, well, actually, it began to snow - who could have expected that in this over-heating world?  Also, it was Antarctica's summertime so obviously the expedition's leaders were not British because we Brits know for a certainty that anytime you fancy a Summer trip to the seaside, you just know the weather will go bad on you!

Anyway, this heap of plastic rubbish, ooops, sorry, I mean this plastic waste motor vehicle and its dim, dumb occupants were forced to abandon their 'Greenie' mission but we should all applaud and thank them for providing us all with a giggle in these trying times.  In the meantime, I suppose they might as well drive their vehicle to the nearest Council tip and dump it there!

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/19/solar-voyager-forced-to-abandon-mission/

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 25.11.18

It's a mad world:   This morning I thought I would treat myself to a good, old-fashioned lie-in.  So, after dashing downstairs to serve all those bloody birds their morning rations in the garden - well, they make such a squabbling racket if there's no grub I wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway!  So, I dashed back upstairs and jumped into a still warm bed.  Instant oblivion!  But then the other 'bird' in my life nudged me and demanded breakfast.  Naturally, I obeyed orders but I was duly grateful for an extra couple of hours 'kip' and assumed that I would be bursting with energy for the rest of the day.  Nah!  I feel absolutely knackered now.  I think I may go back to bed!

 

So now we must depend on Parliament:   "Oh, the horror, the horror!"  All the fake deal-making is over and only the 'honourable' - who sniggered? - Members of Parliament stand between us and a slow but inexorable descent into the sludge and slime of the EU swamp.  Will they have the courage, the honour, the decency to follow the democratic decision of the people of Britain and tip this "mess of pottage" down the sewer swiftly followed by Mrs. May and 'Oily' Robbins?  Put simply, I do not know. 

 

Yes, that about sums it up:   The incorrigible owner of 'IHTM' sums it up in a sentence:  

"In France they riot over gas tax increases. In California the morons vote to keep it." 

What can I say except 'Vive la France!'

 

Now, about that Pacific problem . . .   A few days ago I mentioned that I might write about an interesting aspect of Pacific affairs - about which, of course, I know next to nothing!  Also, to add to my difficulties, I only heard it very vaguely through my bedside radio ear-piece which I have jammed in my ear during the night.  With all those warnings duly posted let me explain what I thought I heard.  "As any fule do no", the Chinese are pushing and shoving and corrupting their way into the governments of just about every nation in the Pacific as they seek to extend and solidify their influence.  However, in one instance, I think in Papua New Guinea (PNG), they went too far and upset the locals who became exceedingly stroppy.  Well, if the Chinese studied the history of the British empire, this is virtually a foregone conclusion,  Nobody did bullying and corrupting better than us!  Even so, I sense that Chinese arrogance is on a scale of its own.  If anyone has any info on this story, please let me know.  In the meantime, Australia, watch out!

 

Why I 'lurve' Victoria Beckham:   She never, ever smiles!  Night after night I slump in front of my TV and at every commercial break I am confronted by scores of 'lay-dees' and they do nothing but smile and smile and smile and then smile some more!  I loathe and detest them all but I love dearest Victoria who, when-ever and where-ever remains bravely po-faced.  Well done, Vicky, darling!

 

(Sir) Lewis ended the season with another win:   Quite right, fitting and proper!  However, next season will be interesting.  I cannot see Ferrari quietly accepting Mercedes dominance and Vettel will be 'spitting zee blood' to put (Sir) Lewis in his place.  Meanwhile, that ace boy-racer, Verstappen, will be driving the Red Bull team to produce a winning car.  Can't wait for next year!

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 28.10.18

Needless to say, on this morning in which some looney turned the clocks back an hour, I am all over the place.  Even so, I will endeavour to keep all my faithful readers supplied with the wit and wisdom of Cpl. Duff - don't say it!

 

Brexit - the 'clincher'!   For all those who still cling to their soppy-soft love for the EU - and yes, that includes you, 'SoD'! - the tin-pot dictators of Brussels have shown the mailed fists that hide beneath their soft kid gloves.  The European Court of Human Rights (no sniggering because that's probably an offence as well!) have now proclaimed that critical comments aimed at Islam and/or Islamists are verboten!  An Austrian lady who gave two seminars on Islam including the information, as written in the Koran, that Mohammed married a 6-year old girl and consummated it when she was 9-years old, was fined.  The ECHR has now extended that decision and it has forbidden any critical Islamic commentary whether it is true or false. You can read all about it at The National Review.

 

We'd be better off with Dogberry and his pals:   Or, to put it another way, the Police Force should be locked up!  As always, Peter Hitchens says it all so much better than I ever could:

Many of us who have had dealings of one kind or another with the modern police suspect that, if we go to them, they will probably manage to mess up the case, ably assisted by the CPS, while also giving our full personal details to the suspect.
Even if they get it right, the criminal will be ‘spared jail’ by a feeble judge. Simpler to let it go.

And by coincidence, The Mail reports today that three police officers involved in the Stephen Lawrence case of 25-years ago are to be interviewed under caution for possible misconduct in public office.  It carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment but I strongly advise you not to hold your breath!

 

More Mohammed:   Dammit, I have only just stumbled on Douglas Murray's article on the 'Cocklecarrots' who sit on the ECHR who have forbidden us all from being rude about Mohammed and his 'religion'.  His final paragraph says it all and I, for one, endorse it:

For my own part I don’t care a jot for the ruling of the ECHR and will continue to say what I like when I like. I trust that across Europe many other people will respectfully reserve the right to do the same.

 

Ok, I surrender!   Well, I have just read the latest review of Max Hastings' monumental history of the Vietnam wars - and yes, there was more than just one of them.  I have resisted buying it, despite the 'rave reviews', because I am still plodding my way through The Story of England by Sir Roy Strong and I have only just reached the Georgian period, er, not that it isn't a terrific read but there's a lot of it!  Anyway, I have just read the review of Hastings' book in The American Spectator by Roger Kaplan and I have decided to give it a go.  I will have to buy a hard-back edition because I suspect there is will be several maps and whilst I worship my Kindle it's just not very good with maps.  Of course, if my ever-lovin' son reads this perhaps he will save his dear, old Dad a few quid by buying me a copy for Christmas!  

 

Alas and alack:   I lunched not wisely but too well!  A short break will be required to allow me to rise up to the seventh level of inner awareness.  When I descend, I will re-join you.

 

We're doomed, I tell you, doomed!   According to WUWT, 'The Graun' is cutting back on its global warming blog spots mainly run by Dana Nuccitelli, a West Coast nutjob prophet of 'The End is Nigh' because of AGW.  'Little Georgie Moonbat' was unavailable for comment - so not all bad then!

 

Sorry, had to pop over to Mexico:   Thank God for my private jet that whisked me across the Atlantic to Mexico so that I could cheer (Sir) Lewis Hamilton on to his World Championship victory!  (Well, dammit, a man may dream, may he not?)  Jolly good show, (Sir) Lewis!

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

When it comes to 'Good News', I never stop giving!

Honestly, you lot owe me - Big Time!  All day and every day I slave away at the 'media front' searching for reports that will put a smile on your faces.  In fact this one will reduce you to helpless giggles as all those silly, hysterical 'Warmers' are left looking like the idiots they undoubtedly are.  Actually, thanks are due to the ever-excellent WUWT - again!

From the Canberra Times 30 years ago:

‘Sea level is threatening to completely cover’ Maldives’ 1,196 islands within 30 years —

Today, thirty years later, not only are all 1,196 islands of the Maldives still in existence, they are all thriving.  In addition, several other islands in the vicinity are actually growing in size!

 

Ich bringe dir gute Nachrichten aus Deutschland

I know, I know, you don't speak German but you might have to if we remain in this German empire for much longer!  Anyway, to translate my title to this post, it is:

I bring you good news from Germany!

But first of all, I must ask you all not to shriek with laughter and fall off your chairs clutching your sides but the fact is, as advised by Mr. Larry Hamlin at the ever excellent WUWT site, Germany's self-styled, 'ultra-Greenie' Energiewende is a colossal and hugely expensive cock-up of the first order!  According to the German Federal Audit Office - why do I think their investigators wear long leather coats and trilbies? - Germany's great 'Greenie' revolution in which carbon fuels would be replaced by nice, clean renewables has, in effect, gone the way of the 'Bismarck':

“A little more than a year before Germany’s climate-policy “milestone 2020”, the auditing body has concluded a catastrophic assessment of the government’s energy policy. Germany would miss its targets for both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and primary energy consumption as well as for increasing energy productivity and the share of renewable energy in transport. At the same time, policy makers had burdened the nation with enormous costs.”

In one way I am irritated because, dammit, I thought we Brits had a monopoly on idiots but apparently not!

"The audit further concluded that the program is a monumental bureaucratic nightmare where “The Federal Government, incidentally, does not have an overall grasp of the costs or any transparency in this respect.”

Now, what's the German for 'Ohdearwhatapitynevermind'?

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 30.9.18

Never mind the Mocking Bird, let's all kill Kavanaugh:   I am grateful to Ms. Ellen Anthony at the American Thinker who reminds me of the famous story of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and thus prompting me to this thought.  She reminds me that the, er, 'heroine' of the story is 'Miss Mayella Ewell' who is a lying-liar of the first order when she makes up the story of an innocent man sexually molesting her.  Am I right in thinking that she is now the spiritual head of the #METOO movement?  Jes' askin'!

 

'Fauxcahontas' announces her run for the Presidency:  Er, well, sort of, you know, like, maybe but then again, maybe not!  Personally, I hope she does because American politics is desperately in need of some laughs and they don't come much more comical than 'Big Chiefette Fauxcahontas' who is, of course, 'a heap big squaw'!

 

Germany in the Scheisse:   See, it's not all bad news!  Apparently Germany has failed to meet EU climate targets which makes them sehr ungezogene Jungs (very naughty boys - do brush up on your languages!)  Apparently that will cost them 2 billion euros to which one can only reply, oh je, wie schade, vergiss es which translates, of course, as 'oh dear, what a pity, never mind!'

 

I'll pass on the cake, Mrs. West, if that's OK:   According to The Mail, Mrs. Rose West, currently serving life in F-wing at HMP Low Newton is proving to be something of a cake-making wizard and has won the prison 'bake off' competition.  She and her late husband, Fred, raped and murdered their own daughter and then went on to kill another nine girls.  At least Fred had the good manners to kill himself and thus save us tax-payers some money but she lives on.

 

"Pack of Lies" by Hugh Whitemore:  As I mentioned before, during my London excursion I went to see "Pack of Lies" by the late Hugh Whitemore.  A little diamond of a play which was once lucky enough to have me playing one of the roles - and I heard that!  It re-tells the real story of the 1960s operation in suburban London which led to the arrest of Helen and Peter Kroger who were deep-cover agents for the Soviet Union.  The title of the play sums it up because virtually everyone in it is practicing deceit of one kind or another.  It is running until November so if you have an idle evening in town it is worth seeing.  Interestingly, the lady playing the lead, Ms. Finty Williams, is the daughter of Dame Judi Dench who played the role when the play first opened in the early '80s!  Ms. Williams is excellent, and so is Ms. Macy Nyman who plays the teen-age daughter of the central characters - a talent to watch out for!

 

Car/train/plane crash ahead!   The Conservative party conference is opening and "there will be blood"!  Mind you, that will be nothing in comparison to the oceans of blood likely to be spilled as the move to Brexit reaches the terminal - or should that be 'terminator'?

 

Sorry, America, but we won - BIGTIME!   As I have mentioned before, my one and only attempt to play what I call 'Hockey at the Halt' ended at the 7th hole, well, actually, well short of the hole!  Even so, I have considerable admiration for those who have (sort of) mastered it because it is damned tricky.  So it is with some pleasure that I learn we have won, and by a stonking margin, the Ryder Cup.  Jolly good show, chaps!

 

The young 'thruster', er, thrusts!   Mr. Gavin Williamson MP, 181/2, who is our new, dashing Minister of Defence is sending 800 British troops into the arctic, er, well, northern Norway, actually!  It is designed, apparently, to send a warning to 'Vlad the Impaler' - bet he's shaking in his boots!  Actually, the first field exercise I ever did in the army was in the Norwegian arctic circle and I thought I was going to freeze to death - until, in the morning, I saw dozens of Norwegian 'kiddie-winkies' skipping along to school in shorts!

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

 

Things could become exceedingly hot for 'the Warmers'

I think the opening paragraph of the report featured in Watts Up With That says it all.  If Michael Mann and his cohorts thought the world is warming, it's about to become boiling hot for them!

Nearly seven years ago, on December 7th, 2011, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic’s (FME Law) sought public records from the University of Arizona related to the Mann-Bradley-Hughes temperature reconstruction that looks like a hockey stick, and development of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. They refused much of the request and FME Law sued. Now (on September 18th, 2018) legal counsel for the University informed FME Law that they were done, that they would be withdrawing their appeal of the trial court’s decision, end the case and disclose the records.

At last, after seven years of holding out in the bunker which contains all the correspondence between Michael Mann and his key 'lieutenants' in the great 'hockey stick' schtik they have inflicted on us, all will now be revealed.  It should make the East Anglia University brouhaha look like a mere ripple in comparison.

It is quite extraordinary that these so-called 'scientists' have spent 'zillions' fighting like mad to protect their papers.  What on earth have they got to hide?  I don't know, but I can't wait to find out! 

 

Time to flog the BBC

For the benefit of my foreign readers who might not be fully aware of the, er, finer points of contemporary English wot is spoke in these modern times, let me explain that whilst the word 'flog' can mean a lashing with whips or canes, it can also mean 'sell', as in 'I want to flog my old second-hand motor, know wot I mean, John?!'

In the case of the BBC, I mean 'flog' in both senses of the word!

Today, I learn, or rather I have my previous suspicions confirmed, that the British State Broadcaster is nothing more nor less than a paid (by me!!!!!) mouthpiece for any and all loony Left beliefs.  I am grateful to one of my favourite (non)global warming sites, Watts Up With That, who have published the BBC's diktat guidelines on how the subject of global warming must be handled by its journalists and presenters.  In effect, it instructs them that any and all attempts, no matter how scientifically supported, to suggest that AGW is a load of old cobblers must be treated with hostility.

There is only one solution to this flagrant bias - privatise the BBC, er, if you can find anyone who is deaf, dumb and blind and possessed of more than sixpence.  I would suggest looking inside the Green Party!

 

 

A boatload of boobies!

Was it that Einstein fella who said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.  Probably not but who-ever did say it was spot on!  The proof can be found in the la-la-land of global warming where they never learn anything from experience.

Thus, the irredeemably dumb students and faculty of Rhode Island University decided in their wisdom to mount an expedition to the Arctic "to advance understanding of and document the effect climate change is having on the environment and biodiversity in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago".  Of course, we all remember, because we haven't stopped laughing, the similar 2013 expedition backed - natch! - by the BBC and 'The Graun' - to check on the, er, disappearing ice in the Antarctic which ended up trapped in the, er, well, ice, actually!

Obviously news of that fiasco had not yet reached the University of Rhode Island so they, too, launched an expedition to check on the melting ice 'oooop north' in the Arctic and guess what - DUH! - it became stuck in the ice!

Now you know why I do not regret missing a university education!

 

 

Zummerzet's reputation has been destroyed!

And no, it's not because I live in 'Zummerzet' - behave!  It's because I have boasted - well, moaned and groaned, actually! - for years that the weather in 'Zummerzet' varies less than enormously between drizzle, showers, rain and thunderstorms.  As I have told you, many a time and oft', it is this constant, natural washing of our skins that gives us all that delicate, beautiful complexion for which we 'Zummerzetians' are famed the length and breadth of, er, well, mostly 'Zummerzet', actually!  However, the advantage of our natural beauty is somewhat off-set by the fact we are also the biggest set of moaners, groaners and bores on the subject of the weather, about which we never stop complaining.  You can bet that in the public bar of The Tippling Philosopher the average conversation (I use the term loosely) is 75% weather, 20% cows, sheep or crops (you choose) and 5% on the meaning of life and our place in the universe!

However, all that has changed because for the last 10 days - weeks? - months? - it feels like years - we have suffered with a colossal heat wave.  Day after day after day of scorching sunshine.  On the little estate where I live, I am in charge of watering the central lawn.  I jumped at this job because a) I am totally crap at any sort of gardening and b) I quickly realised that the chances of my services being called on were miniscule!  Well, they were, up until this frightfully un-British heatwave took over and began roasting us all.  Needless to say, I instantly followed my old Regiment's unofficial motto, "Get Some 'Bronzie' In!", so day after day I have been stripped to the waist as I set about my watering duties like a latter-day Gunga Din.  The result is that my formerly pale and weedy body is still weedy but now it is bronzed, I tell you, bronzed!  I look like a plank of mahogany - and I do the jokes round here!

Alas, there is one unfortunate side effect.  This month is the 30th anniversary of James Hansen's ludicrous prognostications on global warming which can only be described as a 'Big Fail'!  I was very much looking forward to putting the boot into his silly arse but, dammit, it's too damned hot!

 

 

There do be somethin' awry in the universe down 'ere in Zummerzet

Unbelievable, it's Bank Holiday Monday and the sun is shining! In fact, my guess is that it's hotter here than in Miami - whodathunkit? Consequently, there will be no Monday Funnies today because I must top up my tan. From time to time, as I begin to burn, I will pop up here and offer you some of my priceless thoughts on this 'n' that. Well, chances are they will be funnier than my jokes!

 

The euro fanatics do 'stoopid': Why am I not surprised? 49% of Italian voters, thinking they lived in a democracy - suckers! - voted for two populist parties, or 'popular parties' as I prefer to think of them. These two parties agreed a joint cabinet and put it before their Euro-fanatical President who, no doubt after checking with Berlin, Paris and Brussels, promptly tossed it out. So my question is, if last time 49% of Italian voters supported anti-EU parties, how many of them will support them next time? And will that be before or after they have strung up the Italian President in true Mussolini style?

 

 

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa:   But on the other hand, you should see my tan!   I know, I know, I promised to pop back in from time to time to leave a post but 'this'n 'ere bein' Zummerzet' you absolutely cannot ignore a hot, sunny day.  My scrawny, old body is now a delightful, light mahogany and my vitamin D levels are positively over-flowing.  I would display a photo but I know that some of my lady visitors become over-excited, well, I assume that's what it is although it could be hysterical!

 

Now, here's a well-known oddity:   Today, apart from watering the garden, I have done absolutely bugger all and yet … and yet … I am absolutely knackered.  Not just physically but mentally.  I simply cannot think of a single intelligent thing to write about - and I heard that!  Apologies for the lack of service today but I think I will have an early night.  No doubt tomorrow I will awake, refreshed and rejuvenated, and ready to provide you all with some intellectually stimulating writing - and I heard that as well!

 

 

"I shall return" but not until tomorrow!

 

Will somebody please infect the sun with acne!

Had a cold, crap Spring so far?  Well, don't say I didn't warn you!  I have lost count of the number of times I have pointed out to you that the sun has cured itself of acne!  Or to put it into slightly (er, very slightly) more scientific language, sun spot activity has virtually bottomed out!  Don't take my word for it - and you really shouldn't given my dismal record at scientific exams! - instead rely on these two boffins, Frank Bosse and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, who inform us that:

In March our supplier of energy [that's the sun, stoopid!] was more inactive than in the previous months. The sunspot number was only 2,5, which is only 8% of what is normal for this month into the average cycle (month 112).Only solar cycles 5 and 6 were weaker.

They also provide this neat diagram - so useful for us dummies who can't do sums - which shows the record since the 18th century.

Figure 3: Comparison of the previous 24 solar cycles recorded since the 18th century. The current solar cycle no. 24 is the weakest in almost 200 years. Only two other cycles were weaker.

If indeed you are feeling a cold, unseasonal chill I can only suggest that you either throw another politician on the fire, or better still, try vigorously slapping a 'Greenie-Warmer' around, the exercise will warm you up quickly and you will feel better about yourself!  But if you really feel the need to sweat a bit, then start thinking about how life will be under another Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) when from time to time the Thames froze over!

The Dalton minimum in the 400-year history of sunspot numbers, showing the low peaks for solar cycles 5 and 6.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still, it wasn't all bad back then because in 1599, just before the Maunder Minimum set in with a vengeance, old Bill Shakespeare and his mates were able to build the Globe Theatre on the South Bank by sliding the timbers from north London over the Thames on the ice!

 

 

Curing the sun's acne is not a good idea!

I have warned you all before, many a time and oft', that the lack of spots on the sun would drive you all to pulling out your Long Johns from the bottom of your cupboards!  You may well ask me what the hell I know about sun spots and global cooling and I will tell you honestly - zero, zilch and nada!  However, I know a man who does - Anthony Watts on his superb site Watts Up With That?.

Now he is too good a scientist to say definitely that the lack of sun spots definitely leads to cooling on earth, he merely points to a strong historical correlation between the two.  Needless to say, this being a scientific dispute there are plenty of dissident voices denying the possibility - and you can read many of them in his 'Comments' section.

However, I have the clinching evidence denied to just about everyone else.  The sun spot activity definitely started falling away a few years back and this year, down 'ere in 'Zummerzet', the tropics of England, we have had not one but TWO snowfalls!  Need I say more?

 

The Sunday Rumble: 14.1.18

I have this deal, you see:   With a friend and neighbour.  I give him my copy of 'The Speccie' after I have read it and he gives me the Saturday Review section of The Times.  The fact that no money passes between me and my ex-best friend, 'Rupe', adds to the pleasure!  The January 6th edition was a corker and I confess here and now that most of my 'rumbles' today stemmed from there - well, waddya expect here - original thinking?!

 

A very secret loony:   What is it about secret intelligence services that attract so many nutters?  I am provoked to this question by the review of a biography of the late James Jesus Angleton.  He it was who, whilst maintaining a ferocious campaign within the CIA to clear it of Russian spies, 'fell in love' with a frightfully smooth, posh, MI6 agent called, er, Kim Philby who was, 'as any fule do no now', a Russian agent!  I hasten to add that when I use the expression "fell in love" I do not imply any sexual attraction but the fact is that Angleton, the brilliant spy-catcher, was totally besotted with Philby who spent years feeding him false intelligence and passing on American secrets to the Russians.  Not even 'John le Carré ' could have made that one up!

 

I may, just 'may', be about to change my mind:   Who said, "What mind?"  Look, a few years back I gave up on theatre, not just my own amateurish efforts but professional theatre as well.  I also gave up on cinema.  No doubt I could whistle up some fancy excuses but the truth is that old age and idleness played their parts.  However, recently and suddenly I have felt a flicker of interest - I wonder if the same could happen to my sex drive?  Yesterday, I reported that Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was, at last, under new management and already I am trying to work out how I can get there.  Then there is this film about Churchill, Darkest Hour,  which is receiving rave reviews from people whose opinions I trust.  To clinch the argument there was an interview with the actress Kristin Scott Thomas who, apart from her failure to reply to my letters, is a very intelligent woman and who plays the important role of Winston's wife, 'Clemmie'.  Then there is the release of a new film with the very intriguing title of "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" which has also received 'rave reviews' which does not surprise me since it stars Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson - so what's not to like?!

 

Every little helps:   According to Anthony Watts, who is, of course, 'a very, very naughty boy', there were 485 scientific papers published last year, all of which in their different ways, cast doubts on the supposed (very 'supposed') "97% consensus on Anthropological Global Warming".  Why am I not surprised?

 

What I think about Meghan Markle:  Well ... er ... that is ... on the one hand ... but there again on the other ... and sort of ... well, you know ... perhaps ... but maybe not ... and taken in the round, so to speak ... oh bugger it!  The fact is that I do not think anything about Ms. Markle one way or t'other, any more than she thinks about me!  She is obviously an exceedingly attractive lady and I really do hope that she and Harry enjoy a good life but I do just wish that the bloody newspapers and sundry publicity seeking 'slebs' would just s.t.f.u. about her!  Harrumph!

 

Snigger factor AAA+:   The grumpy, old git who runs the 'I Hate The Media' site needs to be preserved in aspic after receiving a Congressional Medal.  Today he reports that a Democrat lawyer candidate for the role of Attorney General in Illinois, was robbed at gun point in Chicago - where else?:

A candidate running for Illinois attorney general was robbed at gunpoint while he was taking promotional photos for his campaign Thursday afternoon in the Northwest Side ward where he’s also the Democratic committeeman, according to his campaign manager and authorities.

Aaron Goldstein, 42, and several members of his campaign team were in the middle of taking publicity shots when the robbery happened, according to Goldstein’s campaign manager. [...] One of the men flashed a handgun and demanded the camera equipment and other personal belongings from the team, according to police.

Needless to say, none of these 'peace 'n' love' Dems had a legal concealed weapon, oh dear me, no, that wouldn't do at all!  Even if robberies have gone up 132% in three years and the murder rate has gone up 41% in four years, it just goes to show that there is no fool like a Dem fool!

 

No more rumbles today 

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 17.12.17

Polite notice:   Today you might not get much of a 'rumble', more like a series of occasional squeaks because my services are required hither and thither - dammit!

 

Cruel and unusual punishment:  I refer, of course, to the current Ashes series taking place 'down under there' in which the England rounders, ooops, sorry, cricket team are being totally humiliated by those cruel Aussies.  They should round up all those so-called English cricketers and send them back home as convicts in a prison ship.  Incidentally, I am deeply grateful to my e-pal, 'AussieD', who has demonstrated his qualifications as an officer and a gentleman by not coming on here and howling with laughter!

 

 

Jezza, a man of principle? You're 'avin' a laugh!   'They seek him here, they seek him there, they seek that Jezza everywhere!'  But according to Dan Hodges, in excellent form at The Mail, when it comes to Brexit 'ye may seek but you shall not find!'  When it comes to Brexit, the slimy little 'git' is everywhere and no where.

 

Peter Hitchens puts the boot into Archbishop 'Weasel' Welby:   Hitchens is another stalwart, like Charles Moore, who has defended the reputation of the late Bishop Bell against the wicked and stupid trashing of his reputation by the Church hierarchy.  This sums up his view:

George Bell, facing much sterner tests in much tougher times, repeatedly chose moral courage over popularity. And that is why Justin Welby is not fit to lace up George Bell's shoes, and why his pretensions to be a moral leader of this country are taken less and less seriously by thinking people.

 

"You can’t please all of the erotomaniacs all of the time":   That is a line from a very amusing book review by Rowan Pelling at The Spectator.  The book concerned is Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy written by a very naughty American gal, Hallie Lieberman.  Did you know that sex toys are still forbidden in Louisiana?  Mind you, there's no problem if your, er, turn on is a Colt .45!  Read the review and enjoy a chuckle.

 

"M. Hulot's Holiday": 

 

Truly, one of the funniest films I have ever seen!  Happily, the late Jaques Tati's creation lives on in the bumbling form of M. Nicolas Hulot, the French Environment Minister.  This man is 'green' in every sense of the word and is determined that La France will give up all those foul, smelly, evil petrol and diesel cars which do so much damage to the environment.  Oh, mon Dieu, now we learn that he actually owns and runs six cars, a motor boat and a motorbike, all of which are powered by internal combustion engines.  Merde alors!

 

No more rumbles today

 

One good pic' is worth a thousand lies

I give you this very fine example which has driven the 'Warmers' to a frenzy.  Apparently - and I urge you to emphasise that word in your mind - this is the 'evidence' that all those poor, likkle, cuddly-wuddly polar bears are starving to death because of - natch! - Global Warming!  It has the enthusiastic support of the likes of Michael Mann, the inventor, and I use the word advisedly, of the infamous 'hockey stick' graph.  He has been supporting forecasts that half the polar bears in the world will be decimated by the middle of this century due to melting ice keeping them from their feeding grounds.  Alas for him, several recent investigation aver that the polar bears are actually doing very well.

Still, if a good photo fails to convince then why not photo-shop a totally false one to, er, 'prove' your point:

Well, that's what the, er, 'distinguished' climate scientist Peter Gleik did in his paper entitled, without a hint of embarrassment, "Climate Change and the Integrity of Science".  I am amazed that he managed to spell the word "integrity" correctly.  Ten tons of offal fell on his head when all those smart Alec, photo techies immediately pointed out that the photo was a phony.

As so often in this climate change lark I am deeply grateful to WUWT.

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 24.9.17

Will 'Mutti' waltz back into power?   Almost certainly, according to the 'experts' but then they said that about 'HillBilly'!  The really serious question is how well, or badly, the Right-wing AfD party will do at today's election?  The thought of an extreme Right-wing party gaining influence in German political circles is enough to make me swallow!  Mind you, just exactly how extreme they are is not clear.  Being anti-EU is not proof positive of Nazi tendencies despite the squeaks and squeals of EU fanatics.  Now, what's the German for 'we shall see what we shall see'?

 

Meanwhile, the bullfight in Catalonia kicks off:   I haven't followed the story in detail but the temperature and pressure between the Spanish government and the provincial Catalan authority seems to be rising by the day as the latter persist in making arrangements for an independence referendum.  What's the Spanish for "Stand-by for incoming"?

 

It's all us old, white men wot dunnit!   Well, when it comes to giggling, or yawning, whenever the tedious subject of anthropological global warming is raised, then according to 'The Graun' it's old, white geezers like me who are to blame.  However, Mr. Ross Clark at The Spectator is quick to provide a context:

But then an awful lot of the people who bang on most about climate change being an ominous threat to Mankind look pretty white and male to me, too. Al Gore, Nicholas Stern, George Monbiot, Lord Gummer and all the rest. Come to think of it, I can’t recall ever seeing a young black female propounding on climate change, either positively or sceptically. It might have something to do with the fact that Western civilisation in general, where a lot of this science is done, after all is still predominantly white. Or maybe the entire field of climate science is what the Guardian would call institutionally racist and sexist.

 

Are our Chief Constables really robots?   There was a time, which may or may not have been quite as blissful as I like to think of it, when Chief Constables were always retired senior army officers.  They may not have been too bright but they usually had some common-sense.  Today, they are all dim 'ex-PC Plods' who have greased their way up the slippery pole by swallowing every bit of politically correct nonsense.  Either that, or the government has secretly replaced them with robots.  A typical example is the Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police who has seized upon allegations that the late Ted Heath was a 'kiddie-fiddler'.  He began his dim-witted campaign by holding a public press conference outside the home of the former PM in which an appeal was made for information from any victims.  Cue: a rush by every publicity-seeking nutter who could smell the chance of financial gain.  So far, the 'investigation' has lasted two years and cost £1.5 million.  A summary is expected on Oct 5th in which it will be admitted that there is not a shred of evidence.  Can we expect that the Chief Constable might be reduced to the ranks?  Don't hold your breath!

 

How hard can it be to land a plane?   That's a question raised in The Telegraph today but happily I can answer it.  It's damned near impossible!  I know this for a fact because, courtesy of my trusty Microsoft Flight Simulator, I have crashed just about every aircraft in more locations than you can think of!  My old joystick still stands on a small table next to my computer, covered in dust, because I haven't touched it for years since I decided to retire from crashing, er, I mean, flying.  Mind you, seeing that article has brought it all back so maybe I might give it another try.  Jolly good show, 'wizard prang' and all that sort of thing!

 

'Jezza' dodges the bullet - again!   The Communist Labour Party (CLP), never comfortable with democracy for any of us, has now decided to ban it for their own members at their party conference.  Like the Tories, they are split between 'Brexiteers' and 'Remoaners' but the 'Central Committee' has decided that they will not permit a public debate on the matter - even if it is far and away the biggest political controversy for decades.  Tells you all you need to know about 'Jezza' and his Comintern!

 

Hitler's underpants sell for £5,000:   Whodathunkit?  Or perhaps more to the point, who would have bought them?  According to The Sun (We Love it!), they came up for auction in Maryland, USA.

I'm sure they are genuine although they seem to be a bit on the voluminous side give that the old song has it that "Hitler, he's only got one ball"!

 

The pollsters were right - for a change:   It looks as though 'Mutti' Merkel has - sort of - won her election but the moderate SPD on whom she was relying to form a coalition government were well and truly spanked and they have opted for opposition.  The big winners were the dreaded Right-wing AfD party, so that leaves 'Mutti' with only the Greenie loonies and the ultra-Left FDP to help her form a coalition government.  One expert is already forecasting another election fairly soon. 

 

No more rumbles today

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 3.9.17

"The day war broke out":   As I typed the date 3rd of September up above I thought, that rings a bell!  Anyway, just as a reminder to old Brits of a certain vintage here's a little memory of the gentle humour that kept us going through grim times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpXkfNKr1b4

 

The best 'pud' in the world:  I pose the question because last night I had a pot of tiramisu which I think qualifies because if you have just ploughed through a stonking great dinner, tiramisu just slides down sweet and easy and the little hint of liquor adds that certain something.  Up until recently, when this damned old-age thing crept up on me, then I would have voted for the British equivalent - trifle.  The problem these days is that I can no longer manage half the bowl which hitherto I had always, since the age of 5, considered my due.  So tiramisu which tends to come in small pots is exactly right.  Mind you, there's always treacle pudding to be considered and, of course, Spotted Dick smothered in custard and I dare not forget the 'Memsahib's home-made apple crumble  - oh God, I must stop this, I'm beginning to dribble!

 

Jolly good show, (Sir) Lewis:   Yesterday that pukka British gent, (Sir) Lewis Hamilton - yes, yes, I know his sartorial taste is not exactly Saville Row, and his hair style makes him look a bit like a Kalahari tribesman and his favourite music is atrocious - but, dammit, he is poised to be the greatest racing driver of all time.  Yesterday he went above Schumacher's record for the number of pole positions and today I remain confident that he will sweep to victory at the magnificent Monza circuit.  Er, go, Lewis, go!

 

Prepare for the worst:   That is, if you are a reasonably sensible Labour Party member and such beings do exist!  According to Mr. Dan Hodges in The Mail, and I think he knows where-of he writes, the lunatic 'Corbynistas' are now determined to unleash unrestricted warfare on the moderate wing of the Party.  They have already 'eliminated' the leader of the Scottish Labour Party and the English Party is next in line.  In Mr. Hodge's words:

Hate, division, conflict. These are not by-products of Corbynism. They are the life-blood of Corbynism. They are what allows it to function.

Time to fight or split, Comrades, the mouth-foaming, Jew-hating Trots are coming for you!

 

Snort-splutter-snigger-howl with laughter:   That James Delingpole is a very naughty boy!  In Breitbart, he reports on yet another 'Ship of Fools' in which sundry dim, dumb, Greenie-wallies set sail for the North Pole to demonstrate the 'truth' of global warming which, in a way, they did because 590 nautical miles short of their target they had to turn back because of ... wait for it! ... ice!  File under: WHODATHUNKIT?  Hat tip to IHTM.

 

And talking of old jokes:   As I was in my first post up above, here's a golden oldie which, being typical of its time, isn't exactly a side-splitter today.  However, I repeat it, courtesy of The Telegraph, because it gives me an excuse to print a picture of Jane Russell:

 Jane Russell in The Outlaw (1943) Credit: Alamy 

She, silly girl, was one of the first not to reply to one of my fan letters although, to be fair, I was only 4 years old then!  Anyway, apparently this joke had them rolling in the aisles 'back in the day':

The joke itself was originally used in a longer sketch called Captain Noseblower, set on a pirate ship.

In it the crew are discussing how to kill time and one suggests they play a game of Jane Russell Pontoon.

His shipmate asks: “Is that the same as ordinary pontoon?”

To which the first replies: “It is, but you need 38 to bust.”

Well, talk about laugh, I nearly did!

 

20 snouts in the trough and there's still 3 years to go:   Much about America puzzles me.  Today the NYT is reporting that there are around 20 Democrat pols already up and running for the Presidency as they suck up to the rich moneybags whose wealth will be required to run a campaign.  Silly me, I always thought that rich business men were shrewd, so how many of them are dumb enough to pour their money into the hands of greasy politicians - particularly following 'Hillbilly's abject failure?

 

Sorry, another boring-snoring race:   But at least (Sir) Lewis won it!  Mind you, I was relying on that Aussie, Ricciardo, to take that damned Hun off but he let me down.  Still, Hamilton is in the lead for the championship for the first time this year - jolly good show!

 

WARNING TO ALL COMMENTERS: 

For the second time in a few days I have been forced to 'snip' certain phrases from comments left here.  On both occasions it was from the same source but please be aware that whilst a certain amount of bad language or rude imagery is allowable on a grown-up blog written for grown-ups - there are limits.  If it continues then instead of snipping the phrases concerned I will just wipe out the complete comment.  You have been warned - be fierce but keep it fairly decent!

 

No more rumbles today