Broadcasting in my day in Wales was largely dynastic. The jobs of the fathers were visited on the sons and daughters. Creativity was not a job specification. When these sprigs from an old twig wanted a new programme they sent Wynford Vaughan Thomas round the country on a horse. That is not to say he did not turn in listenable programmes. Although one of the most brilliant conversationalists I have met, Wynford was also a good listener and he loved people.
Sadly, today's celebrities have not fully mastered thinking, and their purpose as they go whirling round the globe is to be loved by the people they meet. ng, and their purpose as they go whirling round the globe is to be loved by the people they meet.
I did my first published interview on VE Day in 1945. For the next half century scarcely a day passed when I didn’t do one for radio,TV, newspapers. My books are extended interviews with people or research into their lives.
It it took me forty years to become an interviewer. I fell asleep in the middle of an interview for a Radio 4 series. For the first and only time in my life the office was inundated with letters praising my interviewing technique. At last, they all said, an interviewer who isn’t for ever interrupting. I can take a hint.
Received radio wisdom is that answers should be kept short. Otherwise listeners get bored. Rubbish. Interview questions are spurs in the flank of monologues. The interviewer is the jockey - a sort of horseman of the puckered lip. If you can see him, even in your mind's eye, he has failed.
On Radio Wales Vincent Kane was a superlative interviewer. He left space for answers. So did a man called Gerry Monte; and Michael Parkinson and quirky Ray Gosling on the other networks..
. Now the interviewer is the star. His questions swirl like a matador's red cape as he taunts the bull in a suit of too bright lights. I do sometimes wish they could fall asleep and give the other chap a chance.
We don't get interviews. We get cross talk acts between John Humphrys and various elephantine politicians; even crosser talk acts between Paxman’s eyebrows and more politicians. But they never seem to elicit any information. Worst of all Martha Carney whose idea of questioning has unhappy echoes of the Nag.
Are the broadcast media right to concentrate almost exclusively on politics? I know it is cheap but I don't know anyone who listens enthralled. Perhaps I am also wrong in believing that interviewing should not be part of the entertainment industry, which it plainly is.
Wynford Vaughan Thomas was a scholar, an historian with an inquiring mind. That is not one of the requirements of celebrity. Rather the opposite. For them, self love and personal promotion are vital ingredients. Thus we are invited to watch the Arctic gasping with amazement at the antics of Billy Connolly; America may never get over its admiration for Stephen Fry and Griff Rhys Jones cannot see a mountain or the side of skyscraper without scaling them. Michael Palin shows us the world sharing his admiration for himself. Programming is a perpetual procession of personality.
It need not be so. Kate Humble, happily shed of Bill Oddity, has allowed us to share her fascination with the Frankincense Trail. Though I wish “Autumn Watch” was not conducted in such a state of adolescent excitement. Michael White all to rarely illuminates ancient history. Hardly a celebrity, but a peerless broadcaster. There are others. Libby Purves, Eddie Maer, Ed Storton, Melvyn Bragg are masters of the craft, Neil Oliver, the pantomimic Scotsman, overflowing with hair and eagerness, who endlessly circles The Coast is not without charm. The agreeably waspish Brian Sewell has a powerful presence which he released on the Grand Tour but held in check when extolling the beauty and the people he found on the way. That may be a clue. For me the peerless presenter is the architect Kevin McCloud. Where he alights he illuminates. His joy in architecture is manifest. Other presenters of music, history and painting programmes share this obsession with their subject and scorn to rival it. Even a monumentally unpleasant person like Starkey, so vain he has said publicly he would like to be thought of as the 21st century Dr Johnson, subordinates himself to his subject.
But surely the ultimate proof that a week is a long time in radio came with the news that Radcliffe and Maconie , not, as I had thought, a brand of piquant sauce but a comedic duo, are to do their next shows whilst walking Hadrian's Wall If you cannot hear the jokes, that will be the noise the spectre of Hadrian makes as he follows them demolishing his Wall. Oh, Hadrian, after you with the shovel.
Not even death brings relief. I read that several years after his demise, Fred Dibnah, a chap who, had I stood next to him a pub, I would have moved to another bar, is once again going to tour the engineering marvels of England. Including, one assumes, reincarnation.
DIY quizzes and news bulletins fill our days. I would have thought that if satellite news bulletins and the barely live Five proved anything, they prove there isn’t enough news about - or news they can afford to get - to nourish a rolling news coverage. The reason the first popular papers included features is there wasn’t enough news to fill a paper big enough for people to buy. BBC announcers would sometimes come on, announce the nine o'clock news and say, “There is no news today. Goodnight.“
Isn’t news just another fix, anyway? We are used to getting it at stated times like the six o'clock Martini. We think we can't do without it. For the past twelve years we have been ruled by the New Jockobites. There have been log jams on what Dr Johnson memorably called the High Road that leads to England made by a Tartan Horde of BBC presenters. Some take the High Road, some take the Low Road, but they all get to the microphone before us Saxons. As if that were not bad enough, they are all suffering from the delusion that party politics are interesting. Not Politics. Gossip.
Even more depressing, we are now copying the Oompah Whimpering show where you manufacture news by bringing together stage villains or antagonists and inviting them to fight whilst the audience boos and cheers. And Oh, for a Muse of Fire that would ascend the heavens and burn up the Archers, a haven for the most unpleasant community ever assembled in the history of mankind.
ALL THE NEWS THAT IS UNFIT TO PRINT
In the Guardian Alexander Chancellor mocks Cameron for hiding the fact that he is a toff and used to shoot pheasants. Any shooter will tell you that a pheasant which sells for £2 in the game dealer's costs owners £24 in food, care and housing. If I can eat pheasant - and do every winter weekend -for £2 I can only sing “thank heaven for little boys" who are fool enough to subsidise my Sunday lunch with £22. Perhaps they would also consider shooting bread and butter pudding?
Cameron hides his hunting past because, if he didn't, rich upper class writers like Chancellor - who modestly hides the fact he is a toff, the son of a baronet and Lady Sylvia Paget, and who was educated at Eton and Trinity Hall - would criticise him for hunting. By implication, he is criticised for not hunting. Makes him sound like a pheasant, potted whatever he does. I have no brief for Cameron, Tony Blair in a top hat, but so long as he isn't Scotch I do not care who is the next prime minister.
Blair was among our war-mongering politicians who attended a service to Commemorate the Iraqi invasion and the 127 servicemen whose deaths they brought about. The Archbishop of Canterbury made his distaste plain as did the father of a dead soldier .
A service of apology would have been in better taste. Not only to the families of the dead soldiers. What about the thousands of American troops and the 100,000 Iraqis who died and would have been alive today had Hussein been left in power until his own people rempved him?
On R4 a news editor defended his decision to play in a news magazine the tape of the last minutes of three helicopter pilots who died as their chopper crashed. There have been few protests. Very few in comparison to the hundreds who complained about the broadcasting gigolo who joshed his partner for looking like a “Paki”. Even more joined in when Bruce Forsyth said that thirty years ago it would not have been noticed and anyway the Diggers called us “Limeys” and “Poms” when we were fighting side by side. In France in the Middle Ages the English were called “Rosbiffs” and rather liked it. What of “Scouser” and “Tike” and “Jock” and “Taffy” “Fenny” and “Gog” and “Hontu”, “Paddy””Kipper Basher”
A man with the mind of boy who is a victim of Asperges disease is fighting extradition to the US where he faces sixty years in gaol for what was essentially an ill-advised schoolboy prank, searching for UFOs. His last hope was our brand new Supreme Court. He has been told his case was not important enough.
But as so often, it was the Yanks (whoops, sorry, the Americans), including African Americans and Native Americans, who scooped the pool. They discover space travel and the first practical use they make of the Moon? They bomb it into the cosmic equivalent of the Stone Age. On the day their President won the Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps not as bizarre as it appears. Nobel was an arms manufacturer who has been responsible for the death of millions.
Saturday, 10 October 2009
Friday, 2 October 2009
Senility has many joys, even though the medicinal evening Martini meets with disapproval from the Ferret.
Do try it. Four lumps of ice, pour over vodka to the count of ten, add a two-inch slice of twisted lemon peel and two drops of dry Martini. It is a recipe for which I am indebted to my friend Brian Hitchen who got it from a Mafia New York Capo de Tutti Capo who was godfather to his son. I count to twenty because I am usually very thirsty.
I also enjoy the pre- lunch toddle and delight in realising the only people who are worried about my weight are my future ex-wife and the poor devils who are going to be ranging themselves round the coffin handles. The funeral is sorted. No service but a Gathering of the Chums. My barbecue will be preceded by the Peterborough Pipe Band, which has at least one very fine piper, playing “The Flowers of the Forest “and “The Black Bear”.
When I am suitably crisp, there will be a boozy lunch at The Griffin whilst I get ready to be born again, hopefully not on a Delhi pavement.
I have little in common with this world to which I have been attached for rations and accommodation. Oddly enough, the things I will miss,family apart and they usually are, will be my constant companion Gormless, my Teddy bear, my computer and my walking sticks. assembled in tribute to Jogglebury Crowdey, one of R.S. Surtees' most lovable characters. “A fat estimable gentleman who devoted himself to the administration of the Poor Law, the propagation of his species and the manufacture of fancy headed walking sticks. Of children he had 12 with the prospect of more, to each of whom, he flattered himself, if he could leave a sufficiency of sticks he would make them independent.”
My Surtees and the rest of my books have given me so much pleasure that I would like to think of them going to a good home. The obvious solution seemed to be to sell them on Ebay.
I took down James Hogg's “Jacobite Relics”, a collection of the songs of the adherents to the House of Stuart. I loathe Bonnie Prince Charlie, a Polish wife beater who wrecked the Highlands. Anyone with doubts should read “The Private Passions of Bonnie Prince Charlie” by Hugh Douglas. But Hogg's collection of Jacobite lyrics and the Whig responses are superb. I learn that “Scotland the Brave”, the march of the Highland Division to which we former members must traditionally stand to attention, was a Whig ballad. Sadly, we assisted Butcher Cumberland, the hero of God Save the King, in his slaughter.
Hogg, a writer, was a farmer's son. He was dogged by the label “ The Ettrick Shepherd“ given to him by a writer in an Edinburgh satirical magazine.
Next my Allan Ramsay collection. A wigmaker by trade, he started the world's first lending library. He wrote poems in both English and Lalland, the argot of Edinburgh. His poetry salutes his friends who included aristocrats and bawds, topers all. His son was the eponymous painter to whom he wrote:
“With glowing colours thou canst show
Th' embroidered coat and nice toupee;
Draw him a firstrate blazing beau
Easy and airy, gay and free.
“But I can place him on a light
That will his higher merit show
Display what makes him much more bright
His courage. Learning and his wit.”
He is, so far as I know, the only poet who wrote an anacreon to an orange, or indeed one “On a slate falling on Mrs M's breast”. He wrote odes to Edinburgh's bawds and panegyrics to the aristocracy. He summed himself up in the preface to his Collected Poems: “'Tis none of the least of my diversions to see one part of the world laughing at the other, yet all seem fully satisfied with their own opinion and abilities; but I shall never quarrel with any man whose temper is the reverse of mine, and enters not in the same pleasures. 'Tis as ridiculous for one to be disobliged at another's way of thinking as it is to challenge him for having a nose out of shape with his.”
His son was a magnificent portrait painter. Our late Cousin John, whose estate is to be sold at Christie's next year, had several Ramsay paintings. If I can buy one I will die happy but I fear they will be beyond my purse.
The most valuable book I have is Burton's ”Anatomy of Melancholy”, which Dr Johnson said was his favourite book and the only book that got him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise. Burton was a 17th century Oxford scholar, astronomer and mathematician, and the last man to be able to say he had read every book in the world. I have had my copy for forty years and still haven't finished it. He published under the name of Democritus Junior, a philosopher who was “a waspish old man, very melancholy by nature, averse from company in his latter days and much given to solitariness.” He promised to “dissipate you in jests, pulverise you into salt and sacrifice you to the God of Mirth” and warns: "Yet one caution let me give by the way to my present or future reader, who is actually melancholy, that he read not the symptoms or prognostics in the following tract, lest by applying that which he reads to himself, aggravating, appropriating things generally spoken to his own person (as melancholy men for the most part do), he trouble or hurt himself, and get in conclusion more harm than good."
As I riffled through it, I had a pleasant surprise. I found a caricature of me in my youth by another dazzling talent, my great friend Jack Stoneley, who could draw nearly as well as he could write.
Thomas Warton, the Poet Laureate, wrote of “Melancholy” in 1785: “The author's variety of learning, his quotations from rare and curious books, his pedantry sparkling with rude wit and shapeless elegance ... have rendered it a repertory of amusement and information."
Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, is my favourite human being. He wrote about himself because he said that was the only subject on which he was an expert.
“The Autobiography”, which Lowenthal, an American scholar, produced, is apparently an oxymoron. In fact, Lowenthal has collected everything Montaigne wrote in his letters, travel journals and essays to assemble using the witty Frenchman's own words to create this marvel of a book.I first came across it as a schoolboy in our village library, in the far off days when libaris still had books. The new multi milllion pound library in Cambridge has far more space than it has bookshelves
Boswell's Life of Johnson is another favourite but I much prefer the doctor's Collected Works which once saved me from going mad. His prose is like crystal water, liquid, clear and flowing. In his journal “To The Western Islands” he explains in great detail how Scottish windows differ from the English variety. Then adds:
“These diminutive observations seem to take away something from the dignity of writing, and are therefore never communicated but with hesitation, and a little fear of abasement and contempt. But it must be remembered that life consists not of a series of illustrious actions or elegant enjoyments, the greater part of our life passes in compliance with necessities.”
Thanks to Boswell, Johnson has come down to us as a boor. He was nothing of the kind. At night, walking the silent streets, if he came across an urchin sleeping in a doorway, without wakening him, he would slip a coin into his hand. Wakening, they would think they had been visited by an angel.
In a way they had.
I was lucky enough to find the collected works of the Rev Sydney Smith, who founded the Edinburgh Review, He wrote to an unhappy friend, Lady Morpeth, these suggestions. They are as sound now as they were almost 200 years ago.
“1st. Live as well as you dare. 2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75 or 80 degrees. 3rd. Amusing books. 4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea. 5th. Be as busy as you can. 6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.
7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you. 8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment. 9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you. 10th. Compare your lot with that of other people. 11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.
12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence. 13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree. 14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue. 15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant. 16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness. 17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice. 18th. Keep good blazing fires.
My treasured books have all been written by lovable scholars. None more so than a Norwich doctor, Sir Thomas Browne, who wrote “The Religion of a Doctor“. The book tries to reconcile science and religion. It was placed on the Papal Index because of its unorthodox religious speculations.
Goodness knows what the Pope would make of “Sum” which I am reading now. Very short stories about the Afterlife by a scientist David Eagleman where heaven is variously a place where one is judged by one's credit card ratings, in age groups or where you are forced to live with annoying versions of what you could have been. On a recent radio programme he described his religion as Possibilianism. He claims our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious fiction (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism, he says, “I'm hoping to define a new position -- one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story."
Browne and Eagleman would have got on like a house on fire. Browne was knighted by accident when the Mayor of Norwich refused the honour. He invented many of the words we use today. His “Enquiries into Common and Vulgar Errors “ is my favourite. It includes the beliefs that an elephant has no knees and thus can only sleep leaning against a tree. The best way of catching them is to saw down the tree.
In the 17th century he prophesied America would become the economic equal of Europe: “That is, when America shall be so well peopled, civilized and divided into Kingdoms, they are likely to have so little regard of their Originals, as to acknowledge no subjection unto them: they may also have a distinct commerce between themselves, or but independently with those of Europe, and may hostilely and pyratically assault them, even as the Greek and Roman Colonies after a long time dealt with their Original Countries.”
Three history books are essential. Merry gossipy Herodotus, David Fromkin's masterly analysis of Versailles and its attendant follies “A Peace to End All Peace” and the “Armies of the Sand” by John Sabini which tells of the war between Egypt and the Wahabi in the early 19th century over the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina..Important I believe because they explain the collective suicide of Western civilisation
There are so many favourites on my shelves. My “Winnie the Pooh”, “Wind in the Willows”, my collection of Old Bill cartoons, the facsimiles of medieval Books of Hours and the “Tournaments of King Rene”, a magnificently illustrated book of rules of jousting.
It is no use. E-Bay is out. I had a blind friend who continued to collect books because their presence comforted her. I know how she feels. To paraphrase the childhood prayer, there may or may not be angels round my death bed. If there are, they will be sitting on a wall of books.
Saturday, 26 September 2009
IN PRAISE OF WALES
I am a Fenman now. Although it is a land without scape and, as Bill Bryson said, if you stand on a chair in Cambridgeshire you can see Suffolk, it has been a grand place in which to be old. The “Fennie” may be seen by outsiders as phlegmatic, even aboriginal. That is not true.
When in another life I was Welsh, it annoyed me that the Welsh were seen as narrow- minded chapel-goers, in suits made from the battered covers of old prayer books. The enmity between North and South is virulent. Gwyn Thomas, a South Walian, said of the Northerners: “Their idea of gaiety is a purple spotted shroud.”
That is neither true nor kind. Rene Cutforth was nearer the mark: “Mediterranean in the rain.” Certainly that is true of the 'gwerin', the working men and women I knew when I lived on Anglesey. It was the faux middle class who invented nationalism, largely to ring fence the good jobs on offer.
The working class are witty, funny, generous and respect scholarship. It would never occur to them to think of creative writing, as the English do, as a hobby. The Welsh peasants are quick witted and wildly generous. An eminent psychiatrist Dafydd Alun Jones once pointed out to me that 'spree' is a Welsh word (sbri in Welsh). It describes the actions of God-fearing farmers who disappear for days of revelry. Only getting home in time for Sunday chapel.
He said the reason his countrymen had so many religious revivals was that their eagerness to debauch was forever leading them to the edge of the Pit, from which the revivals dragged them back.
My mates were people like Hughie Bugail who was our village policeman. Well, that is what the Chief Constable thought. Bugail means shepherd and Hughie's main occupation was policing the flock of pedigree sheep he kept on Malltraeth Marshes, breeding and training sheepdogs, and the only crooks he collared were shepherds' crooks that were works of art.
Bob Ty Lawr lived in a barn with his long dog Fly. When he was refused a drink in a posh coastal pub, the Mermaid, he picked up a the goldfish bowl, drank it, ate the fish, stamped out of the pub, jumped into the Menai Strait and swam to Caernarfon where he had four pints in The Castle and then swam back. Eddie Pont Dic was part cap, an oily plate that grew like a fungus from the top of his head. He observed of caravanners who rented his orchard: “Funny people the Sais (English). They eats in the garden and shits in the house.”
Owen Thief was a brilliant footballer. He had the talent of a young George Best. He was the only boy to be capped twice for the Welsh Schoolboys. Everton snatched him up as soon as he left school. An Anglesey boy who had barely crossed the Menai Bridge except to pay football, the bright lights of Liverpool dazzled him. On his first night he fell into bad company and discovered drink. Subsequently he was sent to prison where he shared a cell with Harry McVicar.
I once gave it as my opinion that Gwyn the Lift was the perfect name for the village taxi driver. I was deafened by snorts of disbelief. ”Don't leave anything lying about,“ I was warned.
Gwyn shared the wife of a farm labourer by whom he had a son. He blamed it on the black out. Both he and his wife took a great interest in the boy's welfare and visited him weekly. The labourer explained to me: “I don't like what is going on but what can I do? I have got to have my shirts washed.”
The wife of an oyster farmer, Terry Barrack, moved in with the landlord of the local inn, The Groeslon. “It's terrible,” Terry told me,“I have to go all the way to Menai Bridge for a pint.”
Our councillor's husband Glyn Brownson, who was half Indian, was “Glyndustani”. An Indian pedlar who came to his door was met with a torrent of Indian. “ Go easy,” said the pedlar nervously in a broad Welsh accent, “I'm from Cardiff.”
After dining with the script writer John Stephenson, I realised that I kept swerving to the wrong side of the road. I stopped the car at the nearest phone box.
“Who you ringing?” asked John. “The police,” I told him. ”I need a lift home.”
Horrified, he insisted on taking the wheel. I told Gwyn, our other bobby, about it and it was his turn to be horrified. “He had no right stopping you ringing me,” he said. ”That is how accidents are caused.”
My wife and I were under the protective wing of the village family of black sheep, called cruelly the 'cacau'. The eldest,Trevor, asked me if I had any gardening jobs. Since it was December, I had none. So he went to the Groeslon, snatched the till and ran away with it. He got about five yards and two years in prison.
His brother Raymond came to us every year for his Xmas dinner (we subsequently discovered he went to five other houses). Trefor had told me it was my fault he stole the till because I wouldn't give him any gardening. The logic was faulty but I still felt guilty. Raymond told me that because of a warders' strike his brother was being held in a police station cell in Wrexham. I had many friends there so I rang the custody sergeant to ask him to put Trevor on the phone so we could wish him a Merry Xmas.
The sergeant quivered with indignation: “You should know better, Skiddy.” “Aw, come on,” I said, “who is going to know?” “It's not a matter of that. He's not had his pudding yet. You'll have to ring back in half an hour.”
* * * * * * * * * *
The United States is governed by fewer than six hundred senators and congressmen. Our tiny disunited kingdom has more peers than that. We also have six hundred and twenty-five MPs, three devolved governments and a plethora of Metropolitan councils. Since most of our governance emanates in Brussels, this would seem over generous. I believe we would be better governed by an Oligarchy with Cable as Chancellor, assisted by Major, a banker, who never gets the credit he deserves for bringing peace to Northern Ireland, Haig as Foreign Secretary, Field, assisted by Duncan Smith, as Home Secretary and Colonel Tootal, late of 3 Para, as Minister for Defence. It would be difficult for them to make a worse fist of it than the current incompetents. Cabinet talent is so scarce that one minister was confirmed in her job as Attorney General after being fined £5,000 for breaking her own law. She described it as no worse than a parking offence, which to her it probably isn't. She has allegedly wrongly claimed £170,000 expenses.
They are not all bad. As it happens I had lunch this week with one of the new baronesses. I explained I have given up tonic water because it is the reason I am putting on weight and all wine tastes of jam. She understood perfectly and put a bottle of gin by my plate. Her noblesse clearly in full oblige.
When in another life I was Welsh, it annoyed me that the Welsh were seen as narrow- minded chapel-goers, in suits made from the battered covers of old prayer books. The enmity between North and South is virulent. Gwyn Thomas, a South Walian, said of the Northerners: “Their idea of gaiety is a purple spotted shroud.”
That is neither true nor kind. Rene Cutforth was nearer the mark: “Mediterranean in the rain.” Certainly that is true of the 'gwerin', the working men and women I knew when I lived on Anglesey. It was the faux middle class who invented nationalism, largely to ring fence the good jobs on offer.
The working class are witty, funny, generous and respect scholarship. It would never occur to them to think of creative writing, as the English do, as a hobby. The Welsh peasants are quick witted and wildly generous. An eminent psychiatrist Dafydd Alun Jones once pointed out to me that 'spree' is a Welsh word (sbri in Welsh). It describes the actions of God-fearing farmers who disappear for days of revelry. Only getting home in time for Sunday chapel.
He said the reason his countrymen had so many religious revivals was that their eagerness to debauch was forever leading them to the edge of the Pit, from which the revivals dragged them back.
My mates were people like Hughie Bugail who was our village policeman. Well, that is what the Chief Constable thought. Bugail means shepherd and Hughie's main occupation was policing the flock of pedigree sheep he kept on Malltraeth Marshes, breeding and training sheepdogs, and the only crooks he collared were shepherds' crooks that were works of art.
Bob Ty Lawr lived in a barn with his long dog Fly. When he was refused a drink in a posh coastal pub, the Mermaid, he picked up a the goldfish bowl, drank it, ate the fish, stamped out of the pub, jumped into the Menai Strait and swam to Caernarfon where he had four pints in The Castle and then swam back. Eddie Pont Dic was part cap, an oily plate that grew like a fungus from the top of his head. He observed of caravanners who rented his orchard: “Funny people the Sais (English). They eats in the garden and shits in the house.”
Owen Thief was a brilliant footballer. He had the talent of a young George Best. He was the only boy to be capped twice for the Welsh Schoolboys. Everton snatched him up as soon as he left school. An Anglesey boy who had barely crossed the Menai Bridge except to pay football, the bright lights of Liverpool dazzled him. On his first night he fell into bad company and discovered drink. Subsequently he was sent to prison where he shared a cell with Harry McVicar.
I once gave it as my opinion that Gwyn the Lift was the perfect name for the village taxi driver. I was deafened by snorts of disbelief. ”Don't leave anything lying about,“ I was warned.
Gwyn shared the wife of a farm labourer by whom he had a son. He blamed it on the black out. Both he and his wife took a great interest in the boy's welfare and visited him weekly. The labourer explained to me: “I don't like what is going on but what can I do? I have got to have my shirts washed.”
The wife of an oyster farmer, Terry Barrack, moved in with the landlord of the local inn, The Groeslon. “It's terrible,” Terry told me,“I have to go all the way to Menai Bridge for a pint.”
Our councillor's husband Glyn Brownson, who was half Indian, was “Glyndustani”. An Indian pedlar who came to his door was met with a torrent of Indian. “ Go easy,” said the pedlar nervously in a broad Welsh accent, “I'm from Cardiff.”
After dining with the script writer John Stephenson, I realised that I kept swerving to the wrong side of the road. I stopped the car at the nearest phone box.
“Who you ringing?” asked John. “The police,” I told him. ”I need a lift home.”
Horrified, he insisted on taking the wheel. I told Gwyn, our other bobby, about it and it was his turn to be horrified. “He had no right stopping you ringing me,” he said. ”That is how accidents are caused.”
My wife and I were under the protective wing of the village family of black sheep, called cruelly the 'cacau'. The eldest,Trevor, asked me if I had any gardening jobs. Since it was December, I had none. So he went to the Groeslon, snatched the till and ran away with it. He got about five yards and two years in prison.
His brother Raymond came to us every year for his Xmas dinner (we subsequently discovered he went to five other houses). Trefor had told me it was my fault he stole the till because I wouldn't give him any gardening. The logic was faulty but I still felt guilty. Raymond told me that because of a warders' strike his brother was being held in a police station cell in Wrexham. I had many friends there so I rang the custody sergeant to ask him to put Trevor on the phone so we could wish him a Merry Xmas.
The sergeant quivered with indignation: “You should know better, Skiddy.” “Aw, come on,” I said, “who is going to know?” “It's not a matter of that. He's not had his pudding yet. You'll have to ring back in half an hour.”
* * * * * * * * * *
The United States is governed by fewer than six hundred senators and congressmen. Our tiny disunited kingdom has more peers than that. We also have six hundred and twenty-five MPs, three devolved governments and a plethora of Metropolitan councils. Since most of our governance emanates in Brussels, this would seem over generous. I believe we would be better governed by an Oligarchy with Cable as Chancellor, assisted by Major, a banker, who never gets the credit he deserves for bringing peace to Northern Ireland, Haig as Foreign Secretary, Field, assisted by Duncan Smith, as Home Secretary and Colonel Tootal, late of 3 Para, as Minister for Defence. It would be difficult for them to make a worse fist of it than the current incompetents. Cabinet talent is so scarce that one minister was confirmed in her job as Attorney General after being fined £5,000 for breaking her own law. She described it as no worse than a parking offence, which to her it probably isn't. She has allegedly wrongly claimed £170,000 expenses.
They are not all bad. As it happens I had lunch this week with one of the new baronesses. I explained I have given up tonic water because it is the reason I am putting on weight and all wine tastes of jam. She understood perfectly and put a bottle of gin by my plate. Her noblesse clearly in full oblige.
Saturday, 19 September 2009
A PRIDE OF YOUNG LIONS
The Queen of Sheba asked Solomon for a ring inscription which would always be true whatever the circumstances. He offered: “This Too Shall Pass”.
That hilarious physical cartoon which is the nearest we have to a Defence Secretary tells us he has a dilemma - and I must say he looks it.
The generals are telling him he must increase the defence budget, whereas his constituents want him to cut it. The inscription I would offer him is equally simple: “We Can No Longer Afford Aggressive Warfare”.
I am currently reading “Danger Close; Commanding 3 Para in Afghanistan” by its former C.O. Stuart Tootal DSO. He warns that we will be in Afghanistan for decades. Why?
Mr Brown said in December: "Three-quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Our aim must be to work together to do everything in our power to cut off terrorism."
No one showed him an atlas so he could see that for the second time we had invaded the wrong country. Predictably, his claim angered Pakistanis because he was on a goodwill visit to Pakistan at the time.
A senior diplomat there said that in seven plots no Pakistani person was involved. “True, a Briton of Pakistani origin, but a third-generation, born and bought up in Britain. We don't agree with Brown's claims that three-quarters of these plots originate in Pakistan. We don't have a magic wand to turn these people into extremists. These people were born in Britain, taught there, bred there."
The terrorists who planned to blow up airliners were all British. It would appear we need our soldiers nearer home. The idea that we should invade a foreign country in order to protect the homeland is risible.
“Attack State Red”, the story of the Anglian Regiment in Afghanistan, is probably the greatest book on war I have ever read. It is so obviously true and written in such detail, and indeed with such controlled passion, readers should automatically qualify for a campaign medal. It's so real I could not finish it. Those magnificent young men with such qualities of bravery and loyalty to each other remind one of the Spartans at Thermopylae, who were, according to a tablet there, "a shining example of belief and dedication to duty and higher moral values and ideals."
Their memorial on the battlefield by the poet Simonides reads: "Go tell the Spartans, passerby/ That here by Spartan law we lie."
Ruskin thought them the noblest words ever uttered by man and they also apply to those Anglian soldiers.
I keep thinking how desperately we need such men to grow old in their service to their country. Not blown to bits in a squalid post-colonial adventure, the stated aim of which is to keep in power a corrupt government. That is a new aim because the original one was “to rid the country of al-Qaeda” (which is next door in Pakistan) and to rid the country of its opium (when the sensible aim would be to pay a higher price for the poppy juice, purchasing the entire crop and using it for medicine). Further aims, we are told, are to bring democracy and establish equal rights for women (in direct defiance of an age old corrupt culture run by War Lords, who, anyway, we are bribing). And in that endeavour our young men risk capture and being skinned, as has happened to scores of Russians, the skin from their stomachs being pulled over their heads.
Not in my name.
One other thing. There is no disciplined army called al-Qaeda. That is spin. The enemy is the Wahabi, a desert tribe recruited by Ibn Saud to win his new kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Wahabi price was that he adopted their perverted interpretation of the Koran as the national religion of the kingdom which was foreign to the mainstream Arab thought. It was Wahabi warriors who were partly responsible for the Indian Mutiny and for fermenting anti-West behaviour ever since. I assume the reason they are not identified springs from a reluctance to offend the Saudi Royals.
============================ ===== ============================
I think we have much to fear from our mis-government which is clearly not on our side. Look at us in Our Land of Hope and Glory, groping our way in the half light thrown by those EC bulbs, desperate for a cigarette, no doubt bumping our knees on the slop bucket which by law we will be required to keep in the kitchen. Fingers numb with cold because we cannot turn the heating up, we sort through our other rubbish to make sure it is in the right bin; terrified of taking the dog for a walk in case it chases a rabbit; faced with a £5,000 fine if we take next door's kids to the shops; and watching powerless as the banks we have just bailed out with £60 billion of our hard earned money refuse us an overdraft whilst awarding themselves bonuses, despite bringing the World Economy to near collapse.
We Unhappy Few are ruled by a government that sells Rover cars for £10,000 to a group of men who award themselves millions and give another million to a girl friend. They won't get away with it, of course. Lord Meddlesome sternly hopes they will apologise and promise not to do it again.
If our island home is Mother of the Free, then I, for one, want to get adopted.
_______________________ ___________________________ ______________________
== ========== ============ ============== ========= ================
Were you to ask, I would describe myself as an elderly gentleman of quiet pursuits, academic leaning and pleasing contours. Why tailors do not share this view is beyond me.
When I ordered a cashmere duffel coat from Thailand, the tailor telephoned me at enormous expense from Bangkok because he didn't believe my measurements. A Scottish tailor, who was making me Highland dress for my grand-daughter's wedding, refused to believe I was 55 inches both round the chest and what I laughingly call my waist. “Have you never heard of all round reporters?” I asked witheringly.
Many years ago in Doncaster when I was still 10 stone I was being measured for one of those fashionable Edwardian suits with the drainpipe trousers, the cuffs on the five button jacket and the velvet collar, a style later stolen by the Hoi Polloi.
“I don't believe it,” said the tailor. “Your measurements. Amazing. Would you mind if I called in my colleague from next door?”
When the other tailor came in, he too was invited to measure me. He was astounded. “One shoulder higher than the other, the legs are different sizes and so are the feet.”
I have since learned that 99 per cent of us have a slightly lower right shoulder and most of us have different foot measurements. But by then the damage had been done.
This week I suffered the final indignities.
I want to have a tweed sports jacket built. My own man in March can only get the duller tweeds. Because of the credit squeeze, and the action of a millionaire who has bought the Harris mill on the Isle of Harris, only four dull weaves are being offered. Eventually I found a tailor in Ross on Wye with the sort of tweeds that would stun a bookmaker. I explained my situation to him and had my man in March measure me so there could be no error. When the new tailor read the measurements he emailed me, querying them and offering to sell the tweed direct to my own man, so that he could build the jacket.
Spotting a vintage velvet smoking jacket on E Bay, I sent off my measurements to the seller. I got a one word reply. It was:
“WHAT??”
___------------------------ ------------------------ -------------------------
THE END IS NIGH.....................................
That hilarious physical cartoon which is the nearest we have to a Defence Secretary tells us he has a dilemma - and I must say he looks it.
The generals are telling him he must increase the defence budget, whereas his constituents want him to cut it. The inscription I would offer him is equally simple: “We Can No Longer Afford Aggressive Warfare”.
I am currently reading “Danger Close; Commanding 3 Para in Afghanistan” by its former C.O. Stuart Tootal DSO. He warns that we will be in Afghanistan for decades. Why?
Mr Brown said in December: "Three-quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to al-Qaeda in Pakistan. Our aim must be to work together to do everything in our power to cut off terrorism."
No one showed him an atlas so he could see that for the second time we had invaded the wrong country. Predictably, his claim angered Pakistanis because he was on a goodwill visit to Pakistan at the time.
A senior diplomat there said that in seven plots no Pakistani person was involved. “True, a Briton of Pakistani origin, but a third-generation, born and bought up in Britain. We don't agree with Brown's claims that three-quarters of these plots originate in Pakistan. We don't have a magic wand to turn these people into extremists. These people were born in Britain, taught there, bred there."
The terrorists who planned to blow up airliners were all British. It would appear we need our soldiers nearer home. The idea that we should invade a foreign country in order to protect the homeland is risible.
“Attack State Red”, the story of the Anglian Regiment in Afghanistan, is probably the greatest book on war I have ever read. It is so obviously true and written in such detail, and indeed with such controlled passion, readers should automatically qualify for a campaign medal. It's so real I could not finish it. Those magnificent young men with such qualities of bravery and loyalty to each other remind one of the Spartans at Thermopylae, who were, according to a tablet there, "a shining example of belief and dedication to duty and higher moral values and ideals."
Their memorial on the battlefield by the poet Simonides reads: "Go tell the Spartans, passerby/ That here by Spartan law we lie."
Ruskin thought them the noblest words ever uttered by man and they also apply to those Anglian soldiers.
I keep thinking how desperately we need such men to grow old in their service to their country. Not blown to bits in a squalid post-colonial adventure, the stated aim of which is to keep in power a corrupt government. That is a new aim because the original one was “to rid the country of al-Qaeda” (which is next door in Pakistan) and to rid the country of its opium (when the sensible aim would be to pay a higher price for the poppy juice, purchasing the entire crop and using it for medicine). Further aims, we are told, are to bring democracy and establish equal rights for women (in direct defiance of an age old corrupt culture run by War Lords, who, anyway, we are bribing). And in that endeavour our young men risk capture and being skinned, as has happened to scores of Russians, the skin from their stomachs being pulled over their heads.
Not in my name.
One other thing. There is no disciplined army called al-Qaeda. That is spin. The enemy is the Wahabi, a desert tribe recruited by Ibn Saud to win his new kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Wahabi price was that he adopted their perverted interpretation of the Koran as the national religion of the kingdom which was foreign to the mainstream Arab thought. It was Wahabi warriors who were partly responsible for the Indian Mutiny and for fermenting anti-West behaviour ever since. I assume the reason they are not identified springs from a reluctance to offend the Saudi Royals.
============================ ===== ============================
I think we have much to fear from our mis-government which is clearly not on our side. Look at us in Our Land of Hope and Glory, groping our way in the half light thrown by those EC bulbs, desperate for a cigarette, no doubt bumping our knees on the slop bucket which by law we will be required to keep in the kitchen. Fingers numb with cold because we cannot turn the heating up, we sort through our other rubbish to make sure it is in the right bin; terrified of taking the dog for a walk in case it chases a rabbit; faced with a £5,000 fine if we take next door's kids to the shops; and watching powerless as the banks we have just bailed out with £60 billion of our hard earned money refuse us an overdraft whilst awarding themselves bonuses, despite bringing the World Economy to near collapse.
We Unhappy Few are ruled by a government that sells Rover cars for £10,000 to a group of men who award themselves millions and give another million to a girl friend. They won't get away with it, of course. Lord Meddlesome sternly hopes they will apologise and promise not to do it again.
If our island home is Mother of the Free, then I, for one, want to get adopted.
_______________________ ___________________________ ______________________
== ========== ============ ============== ========= ================
Were you to ask, I would describe myself as an elderly gentleman of quiet pursuits, academic leaning and pleasing contours. Why tailors do not share this view is beyond me.
When I ordered a cashmere duffel coat from Thailand, the tailor telephoned me at enormous expense from Bangkok because he didn't believe my measurements. A Scottish tailor, who was making me Highland dress for my grand-daughter's wedding, refused to believe I was 55 inches both round the chest and what I laughingly call my waist. “Have you never heard of all round reporters?” I asked witheringly.
Many years ago in Doncaster when I was still 10 stone I was being measured for one of those fashionable Edwardian suits with the drainpipe trousers, the cuffs on the five button jacket and the velvet collar, a style later stolen by the Hoi Polloi.
“I don't believe it,” said the tailor. “Your measurements. Amazing. Would you mind if I called in my colleague from next door?”
When the other tailor came in, he too was invited to measure me. He was astounded. “One shoulder higher than the other, the legs are different sizes and so are the feet.”
I have since learned that 99 per cent of us have a slightly lower right shoulder and most of us have different foot measurements. But by then the damage had been done.
This week I suffered the final indignities.
I want to have a tweed sports jacket built. My own man in March can only get the duller tweeds. Because of the credit squeeze, and the action of a millionaire who has bought the Harris mill on the Isle of Harris, only four dull weaves are being offered. Eventually I found a tailor in Ross on Wye with the sort of tweeds that would stun a bookmaker. I explained my situation to him and had my man in March measure me so there could be no error. When the new tailor read the measurements he emailed me, querying them and offering to sell the tweed direct to my own man, so that he could build the jacket.
Spotting a vintage velvet smoking jacket on E Bay, I sent off my measurements to the seller. I got a one word reply. It was:
“WHAT??”
___------------------------ ------------------------ -------------------------
THE END IS NIGH.....................................
Saturday, 12 September 2009
Golden Age Concerns
A fusillade of blank bullets is the final salute to the recently deceased Golden Age in which we have lived since it was ushered in by Attlee's government over half a century ago. Blank bullets because the MoD is billions of pounds in debt.
A symbolic salute because it has been A Fool's Golden Age. When the benefit society was launched we were poorer than we had ever been in our history. The war had left us deeply in debt to America, a debt that generous country insisted should be paid back immediately, thus achieving one of its war aims which was the destruction of the British Empire.
I do not complain about the notion of a Benefit Society. It was that rare thing in politics, a generous gesture, and I have benefited from it.
My great-grandfather was so rich he bought a separate house for his children and hired servants to look after them. Thanks to an unwise marriage, my grannie ended her life living in one room in Moss Side, sharing kitchen and bathroom.
Since I became eighty I have had Rolls Royce medical service and am still visited regularly by district nurses. I have pensions which meet my needs; I qualify for an an attendance allowance; my TV licence costs me nothing; I am not charged for chiropody treatment, optical examination or medical prescriptions. I have a disabled pass which entitles me to park almost anywhere and the key to disabled lavatories, worldwide. Thanks to the Internet, I am in touch with my circle of much valued chums. Grannie's only sources of entertainment were her books and the accumulator powered radio. The Internet is my club, my shopping centre, my research library, my concert hall, my Citizen's Advice Bureau and my secondhand bookshop. I can listen to the radio on it, watch TV programmes and write blogs and books.
Sadly, the talentless crew who run TV networks are only creative in assessing their own salaries. The technology over which they have no control is brilliant, the programmes they air are not. They are largely repeats. Happily, viewers have at last tumbled to this confidence trick.
ITV1 and BBC1 suffered their worst ever month of ratings in August, whilst Channel 4 clocked up its poorest score for 25 years as viewers turned off lack-lustre summer schedules on the main networks. ITV1 pulled in an average all-day share of just 15.15% for the whole month, eclipsing its previous worst figure of 16.1% in July. BBC1 also had its worst monthly all-time share, at 19.51%. Channel 4 had a share of 6.47% for August, down on its performance in August 2008.
Predictably the talentless ones have found a new way to waste millions. Not by making better programmes. They say they cannot afford that. We will soon be able to switch on High Definition making it possible to watch programmes we have demonstrated are not worth watching on old- fashioned TV.
For all that, as Oscar Wilde observed, I am dying beyond my means and I wonder if my grandchildren, nay, my children, will be able to boast a similar end-of-life style?
I can remember when our policemen were wonderful, when politician were honourable and when the House of Lords was staffed by gentlemen. I can also remember music. How different are things now. The tribal chant has replaced music. The nation's dpoctors have signed on o crew the ship of fools. They say we can cure a our feral young of binge drinking by banning adverts. I wonder how many were encouraged to become drug addicts by adverts.
Moonlighting MPs have admitted their spare time jobs are bringing fifty times the average salaries of their constituents. Yet in hundreds of pages of submissions they made to Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. they expressed continued resentment at the public's anger over the abuse of expenses. They continued to argue that they should be allowed to sell taxpayer-subsidised homes at a profit; insisted they should be allowed to employ family members. One backbencher said he should not even be required to submit receipts for expenditure and claimed: "This makes MPs into petty accounting clerks."
Only nine MPs responded to a consultation on the siting of eco-towns and none responded to consultations on human embryo research and compensation for crime victims.
In one thing the MPs were correct. They have done nothing wrong in charging excessive expenses. Their crime was much greater. They passed the fraudulent legislation that made their claims tenable. Every MP who voted yes should be barred from office.
The banks which all but wrecked Western civilisation are using the money borrowed from tax payers to continue to pay themselves massive bonuses. Quangos proliferate, Council executives are wildly overpaid, though the services they provide are being reduced. We are committed to wasting more young lives in an unwinnable war to support a corrupt government which is incapable of ruling Afghanistan. The only thing our Establishment has learned from its mistakes, apparently, is that it can continue to get away with making them. Even when they accidentally get something right, they alter it to make it look wrong.
On inadequate evidence, that Libyan got a life sentence. Cancer has ensured he served it. Of course Brown did not want him to die in a British prison. Think of the excuse that would give the terrorists.
Brown denies he extracted commercial gain out of the repatriation. More fool him. A BP team were given permission to survey for oil of which the West stands in desperate need. If the agent's death has been parleyed into a new source of oil then those luckless passengers who died over Lockerbie have been martyrs in a good cause.
Parenthetically, the Scottish Nationalist Party is calling for Scottish Independence. I believe more Englishmen than Scots are in favour of this historic change. Scotsmen see the UK has been ruled by their fellow countrymen and are aware what a mess they have made.
The government policy-makers should spend some time reading Carl von Clausewitz. Echoing the great 19th-century Prussian military theorist, nation-building advocates must always keep in mind that military strategies are formulated to reach political outcomes, and not the other way around.
Mr Brown, who has achieved the impossible by being an even worse prime minister than his bloodstained predecessor, has recently given a superb example of this kind of muddled thinking. He says we cannot leave Afghanistan until the Afghan army is able to hold the country against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. That means a revival of the Hundred Years War. I have a friend who has earned his living writing about wars from the Falklands on. He knew most of our generals when they were junior officers and keeps in close touch with them. He has close ties with our Special Forces. He recently sent me this email:
“............The problem is the politicians who will not listen to the generals, brigadiers and colonels on the ground. The soldiers are patrolling day after day and returning exhausted and have to leave the ground - even that just outside their bases - to the enemy. The Afghan Army cannot be trusted and the police are a fifth column. Another brigade will allow the British Army to do what it does best and that is fight and dominate ground at night while the Special Forces of the SAS and SBS can be inserted deep, deep into the badlands - assuming, of course, they have the helicopters - to attack the leadership and the real bad boys in their own midden. The technology for calling in air strikes is so advanced nowadays that the Special Forces can call in the raid and vanish without having to fire a shot themselves. Boots on the ground mean that the soldiers can watch for the bombers and either deal with them themselves or call in a drone or Apache or even an American B-1 bomber. Another brigade and the proper number of helicopters and you will see a drastic downturn in casualties caused by IEDs. But the politicians won't listen and, if they do, won't do what they are advised. The days of Colonel Blimp are long, long gone. Today's generals are incredibly clever men as are the brigadiers. Most double their money in civvy street as soon as they leave the Army. To the politicians it is all about fighting war on the cheap. They don't cut off the money to the idle dossers who won't work or the leeching drug addicts who can't work through their own stupidity or the families of illegals who seem to have more rights here than the natives. Hard decisions have to be taken and if they want to win a breathing space to sit and talk the Taliban round - after killing off a few of the drug barons - then they're going to have to give the commanders the tools they need to do the job. The politicians don't seem to understand the cultural differences between the Afghans and their stone-age mentality and that of the West. Democracy in Afghanistan. That means doing what the Elders decide, not what some half-cock corrupt politician like Karzai and his cronies want as they skim off millions and zillions of foreign aid.
Mr Tory Blair, who ordered our youth into both Iraq and Afghanistan so he could sail to world glory on a sea of the blood of our children, has at least two children of his own of military age, but neither is serving. One, Euan, has led a gilded life, university, internships in Washington, at banks etc and the fat daughter who could also serve. Neither does. It also begs the question: How many children of the politicians who took us to war are in uniform? The answer - NONE. How many of the politicians who took us to war have ever served? Answer, you've guessed it, NONE.”
I don't think I can usefully add to that.
A symbolic salute because it has been A Fool's Golden Age. When the benefit society was launched we were poorer than we had ever been in our history. The war had left us deeply in debt to America, a debt that generous country insisted should be paid back immediately, thus achieving one of its war aims which was the destruction of the British Empire.
I do not complain about the notion of a Benefit Society. It was that rare thing in politics, a generous gesture, and I have benefited from it.
My great-grandfather was so rich he bought a separate house for his children and hired servants to look after them. Thanks to an unwise marriage, my grannie ended her life living in one room in Moss Side, sharing kitchen and bathroom.
Since I became eighty I have had Rolls Royce medical service and am still visited regularly by district nurses. I have pensions which meet my needs; I qualify for an an attendance allowance; my TV licence costs me nothing; I am not charged for chiropody treatment, optical examination or medical prescriptions. I have a disabled pass which entitles me to park almost anywhere and the key to disabled lavatories, worldwide. Thanks to the Internet, I am in touch with my circle of much valued chums. Grannie's only sources of entertainment were her books and the accumulator powered radio. The Internet is my club, my shopping centre, my research library, my concert hall, my Citizen's Advice Bureau and my secondhand bookshop. I can listen to the radio on it, watch TV programmes and write blogs and books.
Sadly, the talentless crew who run TV networks are only creative in assessing their own salaries. The technology over which they have no control is brilliant, the programmes they air are not. They are largely repeats. Happily, viewers have at last tumbled to this confidence trick.
ITV1 and BBC1 suffered their worst ever month of ratings in August, whilst Channel 4 clocked up its poorest score for 25 years as viewers turned off lack-lustre summer schedules on the main networks. ITV1 pulled in an average all-day share of just 15.15% for the whole month, eclipsing its previous worst figure of 16.1% in July. BBC1 also had its worst monthly all-time share, at 19.51%. Channel 4 had a share of 6.47% for August, down on its performance in August 2008.
Predictably the talentless ones have found a new way to waste millions. Not by making better programmes. They say they cannot afford that. We will soon be able to switch on High Definition making it possible to watch programmes we have demonstrated are not worth watching on old- fashioned TV.
For all that, as Oscar Wilde observed, I am dying beyond my means and I wonder if my grandchildren, nay, my children, will be able to boast a similar end-of-life style?
I can remember when our policemen were wonderful, when politician were honourable and when the House of Lords was staffed by gentlemen. I can also remember music. How different are things now. The tribal chant has replaced music. The nation's dpoctors have signed on o crew the ship of fools. They say we can cure a our feral young of binge drinking by banning adverts. I wonder how many were encouraged to become drug addicts by adverts.
Moonlighting MPs have admitted their spare time jobs are bringing fifty times the average salaries of their constituents. Yet in hundreds of pages of submissions they made to Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. they expressed continued resentment at the public's anger over the abuse of expenses. They continued to argue that they should be allowed to sell taxpayer-subsidised homes at a profit; insisted they should be allowed to employ family members. One backbencher said he should not even be required to submit receipts for expenditure and claimed: "This makes MPs into petty accounting clerks."
Only nine MPs responded to a consultation on the siting of eco-towns and none responded to consultations on human embryo research and compensation for crime victims.
In one thing the MPs were correct. They have done nothing wrong in charging excessive expenses. Their crime was much greater. They passed the fraudulent legislation that made their claims tenable. Every MP who voted yes should be barred from office.
The banks which all but wrecked Western civilisation are using the money borrowed from tax payers to continue to pay themselves massive bonuses. Quangos proliferate, Council executives are wildly overpaid, though the services they provide are being reduced. We are committed to wasting more young lives in an unwinnable war to support a corrupt government which is incapable of ruling Afghanistan. The only thing our Establishment has learned from its mistakes, apparently, is that it can continue to get away with making them. Even when they accidentally get something right, they alter it to make it look wrong.
On inadequate evidence, that Libyan got a life sentence. Cancer has ensured he served it. Of course Brown did not want him to die in a British prison. Think of the excuse that would give the terrorists.
Brown denies he extracted commercial gain out of the repatriation. More fool him. A BP team were given permission to survey for oil of which the West stands in desperate need. If the agent's death has been parleyed into a new source of oil then those luckless passengers who died over Lockerbie have been martyrs in a good cause.
Parenthetically, the Scottish Nationalist Party is calling for Scottish Independence. I believe more Englishmen than Scots are in favour of this historic change. Scotsmen see the UK has been ruled by their fellow countrymen and are aware what a mess they have made.
The government policy-makers should spend some time reading Carl von Clausewitz. Echoing the great 19th-century Prussian military theorist, nation-building advocates must always keep in mind that military strategies are formulated to reach political outcomes, and not the other way around.
Mr Brown, who has achieved the impossible by being an even worse prime minister than his bloodstained predecessor, has recently given a superb example of this kind of muddled thinking. He says we cannot leave Afghanistan until the Afghan army is able to hold the country against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. That means a revival of the Hundred Years War. I have a friend who has earned his living writing about wars from the Falklands on. He knew most of our generals when they were junior officers and keeps in close touch with them. He has close ties with our Special Forces. He recently sent me this email:
“............The problem is the politicians who will not listen to the generals, brigadiers and colonels on the ground. The soldiers are patrolling day after day and returning exhausted and have to leave the ground - even that just outside their bases - to the enemy. The Afghan Army cannot be trusted and the police are a fifth column. Another brigade will allow the British Army to do what it does best and that is fight and dominate ground at night while the Special Forces of the SAS and SBS can be inserted deep, deep into the badlands - assuming, of course, they have the helicopters - to attack the leadership and the real bad boys in their own midden. The technology for calling in air strikes is so advanced nowadays that the Special Forces can call in the raid and vanish without having to fire a shot themselves. Boots on the ground mean that the soldiers can watch for the bombers and either deal with them themselves or call in a drone or Apache or even an American B-1 bomber. Another brigade and the proper number of helicopters and you will see a drastic downturn in casualties caused by IEDs. But the politicians won't listen and, if they do, won't do what they are advised. The days of Colonel Blimp are long, long gone. Today's generals are incredibly clever men as are the brigadiers. Most double their money in civvy street as soon as they leave the Army. To the politicians it is all about fighting war on the cheap. They don't cut off the money to the idle dossers who won't work or the leeching drug addicts who can't work through their own stupidity or the families of illegals who seem to have more rights here than the natives. Hard decisions have to be taken and if they want to win a breathing space to sit and talk the Taliban round - after killing off a few of the drug barons - then they're going to have to give the commanders the tools they need to do the job. The politicians don't seem to understand the cultural differences between the Afghans and their stone-age mentality and that of the West. Democracy in Afghanistan. That means doing what the Elders decide, not what some half-cock corrupt politician like Karzai and his cronies want as they skim off millions and zillions of foreign aid.
Mr Tory Blair, who ordered our youth into both Iraq and Afghanistan so he could sail to world glory on a sea of the blood of our children, has at least two children of his own of military age, but neither is serving. One, Euan, has led a gilded life, university, internships in Washington, at banks etc and the fat daughter who could also serve. Neither does. It also begs the question: How many children of the politicians who took us to war are in uniform? The answer - NONE. How many of the politicians who took us to war have ever served? Answer, you've guessed it, NONE.”
I don't think I can usefully add to that.
Saturday, 5 September 2009
DISPATCHES FROM THE WAIST LINE
This DNA business continues to alarm.
I have been reading the startling story of our first single-cell ancestor. A merry little chap who lived in boiling springs and ate nothing except sulphur.
Not my idea of a good time. The boiling springs I could live with. Could? I have. I've been in hot water for the best part of eighty years now. But I cannot help wondering what dieters would have made of the sulphur diet. About twenty column inches of superficial rubbish in the national dailies, I suspect. No doubt bringing the conversation round to an attack on the defenceless and harmless chip buttie.
Harmless, do I hear you cry? Harmless, I answer firmly. Because I've noticed one thing about these diet nuts. Anything that they start by saying is bad for you always ends up being good for you within ten years at most. And anyone who doubts me should think about the potato. It's not all that long since we were being led to believe that a mouthful of potato would produce an instant heart attack at Force 12 on the Beaufort Scale. Now we are being encouraged to shovel the stuff down.
I can't think why dieticians have such a down on chips. They have had more publicity out of them than the entire Association of Fish Friers. But I don't worry. Any day now a group of doctors who are in need of a bit of free advertising are going to discover the nutritional value of the chip and it will be lettuce that sends you blind. Can't stand the stuff myself. Just makes me sorry for cows who are doomed to a lifetime of uncooked greenery. But I'm a carnivore. I think heaven will be a vast, eternal agricultural show where the elite meat will meet, the pork does everything but talk, sheep dog your every step and collies flower.
Vegetables I am fond of. Straight from the garden, of course. And when I've dug them out of the ground I always run with them to the kitchen. Because the reason they taste better fresh is that the moment a pea or a bean dies all the sugar in its cuddly little body starts turning into starch.
Which is why, if you looked out of my back door, you would see beans practically within hand's reach of the chair I'm sitting in writing this. Because when you are stepping in the ring at my weight, well, the shorter the short dash, the better.
Though I cannot claim the fine tuning of this man I met in the South of France who was heavily into wild boar. He was in the right place for catching them, of course. But, like me, he was the wrong shape. His problem was as follows: He lived as far up a Pyrenee as you could decently reach by public transport. But the boars very perversely chose even higher slopes as desirable residences. It was the Mohammed and the Mountain syndrome and, as he couldn't reach them without a fork-lift truck, he had to think of a way of bringing the boar to him. It was at this point he learned that, fond as he was of wild boar, it was as nothing to the mania wild boar have for sweet corn. From then on, he said, it was easy. He planted two rows of sweet corn against his garden fence and sat in the bedroom window with his shot gun. Word soon got around among the wild boar, as it does about new places to eat, and before you could say “Pass the marinade” it was wild boar for all.
And talking of France, why do we write menus in French? You go Chinese or Indian, you don't expect to know what you are eating and it wouldn't make much sense even if you did. Who has ever seen a water chestnut? You just hope when you order from the menu it isn't anyone you know. But 'poisson' in a pub? Boeuf Wellington? Who beat who, for goodness sake? And crepes Suzette? Pancakes. Crepe is what dresses used to be made from in the happy days before denim.
Consoling Consultation (Chinese style)
Q: Doctor, I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?
A: Your heart only good for so many beats, and that it – don't waste on exercise. Everything wear out eventually. Speeding up heart not make you live longer; it like saying you extend life of car by driving faster. Want to live longer? Take nap.
Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: You must grasp logistical efficiency. What does cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So steak is nothing more than efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef also good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And pork chop can give you 100% of recommended daily allowance of vegetable product.
Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?
A: No, not at all. Wine made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that mean they take water out of fruity bit so you get even more of goodness that way. Beer also made of grain. Bottom up!
Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have body and you have fat, your ratio one to one. If you have two bodies, your ration two to one, etc.
Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise programme?
A: Can't think of single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No pain – good !
Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?
A: YOU NOT LISTENING! Food are fried these day in vegetable oil. In fact, they permeated by it. How could getting more vegetable be bad for you???
Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise muscle, it get bigger. You should only be doing sit-up if you want bigger stomach.
I have been reading the startling story of our first single-cell ancestor. A merry little chap who lived in boiling springs and ate nothing except sulphur.
Not my idea of a good time. The boiling springs I could live with. Could? I have. I've been in hot water for the best part of eighty years now. But I cannot help wondering what dieters would have made of the sulphur diet. About twenty column inches of superficial rubbish in the national dailies, I suspect. No doubt bringing the conversation round to an attack on the defenceless and harmless chip buttie.
Harmless, do I hear you cry? Harmless, I answer firmly. Because I've noticed one thing about these diet nuts. Anything that they start by saying is bad for you always ends up being good for you within ten years at most. And anyone who doubts me should think about the potato. It's not all that long since we were being led to believe that a mouthful of potato would produce an instant heart attack at Force 12 on the Beaufort Scale. Now we are being encouraged to shovel the stuff down.
I can't think why dieticians have such a down on chips. They have had more publicity out of them than the entire Association of Fish Friers. But I don't worry. Any day now a group of doctors who are in need of a bit of free advertising are going to discover the nutritional value of the chip and it will be lettuce that sends you blind. Can't stand the stuff myself. Just makes me sorry for cows who are doomed to a lifetime of uncooked greenery. But I'm a carnivore. I think heaven will be a vast, eternal agricultural show where the elite meat will meet, the pork does everything but talk, sheep dog your every step and collies flower.
Vegetables I am fond of. Straight from the garden, of course. And when I've dug them out of the ground I always run with them to the kitchen. Because the reason they taste better fresh is that the moment a pea or a bean dies all the sugar in its cuddly little body starts turning into starch.
Which is why, if you looked out of my back door, you would see beans practically within hand's reach of the chair I'm sitting in writing this. Because when you are stepping in the ring at my weight, well, the shorter the short dash, the better.
Though I cannot claim the fine tuning of this man I met in the South of France who was heavily into wild boar. He was in the right place for catching them, of course. But, like me, he was the wrong shape. His problem was as follows: He lived as far up a Pyrenee as you could decently reach by public transport. But the boars very perversely chose even higher slopes as desirable residences. It was the Mohammed and the Mountain syndrome and, as he couldn't reach them without a fork-lift truck, he had to think of a way of bringing the boar to him. It was at this point he learned that, fond as he was of wild boar, it was as nothing to the mania wild boar have for sweet corn. From then on, he said, it was easy. He planted two rows of sweet corn against his garden fence and sat in the bedroom window with his shot gun. Word soon got around among the wild boar, as it does about new places to eat, and before you could say “Pass the marinade” it was wild boar for all.
And talking of France, why do we write menus in French? You go Chinese or Indian, you don't expect to know what you are eating and it wouldn't make much sense even if you did. Who has ever seen a water chestnut? You just hope when you order from the menu it isn't anyone you know. But 'poisson' in a pub? Boeuf Wellington? Who beat who, for goodness sake? And crepes Suzette? Pancakes. Crepe is what dresses used to be made from in the happy days before denim.
Consoling Consultation (Chinese style)
Q: Doctor, I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life. Is this true?
A: Your heart only good for so many beats, and that it – don't waste on exercise. Everything wear out eventually. Speeding up heart not make you live longer; it like saying you extend life of car by driving faster. Want to live longer? Take nap.
Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: You must grasp logistical efficiency. What does cow eat? Hay and corn. And what are these? Vegetables. So steak is nothing more than efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef also good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And pork chop can give you 100% of recommended daily allowance of vegetable product.
Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?
A: No, not at all. Wine made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that mean they take water out of fruity bit so you get even more of goodness that way. Beer also made of grain. Bottom up!
Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have body and you have fat, your ratio one to one. If you have two bodies, your ration two to one, etc.
Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise programme?
A: Can't think of single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No pain – good !
Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?
A: YOU NOT LISTENING! Food are fried these day in vegetable oil. In fact, they permeated by it. How could getting more vegetable be bad for you???
Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise muscle, it get bigger. You should only be doing sit-up if you want bigger stomach.
Saturday, 29 August 2009
I grow, I prosper; Now, gods, stand up for bastards - King Lear
I feel like something out of East Lynne, but may I make a plea from the wintry doorstep? I like to think I may have entered the family via the Duchess of Beaufort (nee Frances Scudamore) who was accused of adultery with William Lord Talbot of Hensol by whom she was said to have an illegitimate daughter. She married the Duke in 1729. I was born in 1929. Significant, eh?
The Duke sued in the Ecclesiastical Court for permission to divorce Frances by Act of Parliament. She counter-sued claiming that the Duke was impotent. In a letter to the Court in 1742 she wrote: "The privy members of the Duke were never to my knowledge turgid, dilated or erected in such a way as may be usual or necessary to perform the act of carnal copulation. As a result the Duke never did penetrate or enter my body."
When he heard the news of the Duchess's claim, the Duke cried, "The bitch has got us. She'll stop my divorce and put that bastard child in line for my fortune. You see a ruined man...."
As she had given birth to an illegitimate child, the Duke agreed to prove HIS virility before a distinguished panel which included Horace Walpole, the Dean of the Court of Arches, two physicians, three surgeons, an ecclesiastic court and several other gentlemen.
His manservant James Phillips suggested the potency test which had last been used in York in 1433. Indeed it was Phillips who started the hare. Another manservant at Holme Lacey, the Duchess's Herefordshire home, beckoned Phillips to follow him on tiptoe and peep through the keyhole of Her Ladyship's dressing room. Inside, Phillips saw her sitting on Lord Talbot's knee. He entered the room - “she jumped up and smoothed down her petticoats, but I saw her lace cap was tumbled and her bosom exposed. Talbot crossed his legs and turned away to stop me from seeing his trouser buttons were undone.”
Phillips deposed that whilst the Duke was away Lord Talbot visited the house three times a week.
An undermaid reported that five of the six chairs in the dining room had been set side by side to make a couch. On the chairs and floor they found bits of silver lace, rubbed off the back of the gown the Duchess was wearing.
She was heard to say on another occasion: “You make me very hot. I am not able to bear it. What would you have me do, my precious lord? I fear the servants suspect us.”
The proving took place in a Dr Meade's London home. When Walpole arrived, his friend the actor and playwright Colley Cibber said: “Good thing you are here. You are Controller of the Pipes. Let's hope the good Duke can control his. His Lordship's member is on everyone's lips.”
Thomas Grey, the poet, sighed: “That things like this should be done for money. Simply to be revenged on Talbot for four score thousand pounds.”
Lord Orrery observed: “Alas, what money can recompense for such injuries?”
The General Consensus was that the the Duke should have openly demonstrated his virility in a brothel. However, as Walpole said, “This man at the age of seven acceded to one of the noblest titles in England. A Plantagenet, direct descendant of John of Gaunt, he has royal blood in his veins. He is the Duke of Beaufort, Marquis and Earl of Worcester, Earl of Glamorgan and Barons Herbert, Raglan and Beaufort of Raglan Castle. One of the richest noblemen in Europe.”
Sir Horace Man, the Ambassador to Florence, said: “... and about to be humiliated in a way not seen in England since a case in York in 1433.”
That case was tried in open court with seven women. The Duke performed behind a screen. He was dressed in a powdered wig with side curls, his hair gathered at the back in a bow from which a ribbon went round his neck, rimmed shirt, lace cravat and knee-breeches, fitted over stockings with gold buckle shoes.
As he approached the screen looking frail and weak for his 36 years, he turned and bowed to the company. “When I knock on the screen, come to me speedily at that moment.”
Ten minutes later there was a knock, the sound of happy gasps......................Beaufort had proved his case.
JUST A THOUGHT...........................
Why should other departments and agencies of the state transform themselves and the way they do things, while the vast, creaking NHS structure - the world’s third largest employer after Indian rail and the Chinese army - stands intact and protected?
Nigel Lawson famously observes in his memoirs: ‘The National Health Service is the closest thing the English have to a religion, with those who practise in it regarding themselves as a priesthood. This made it quite extraordinarily difficult to reform.’ ...................... Mr Cameron, desperate to prove his theological orthodoxy as a worshipper in the church of St Aneurin Bevan, condemns heresy unambiguously.
Yet what the NHS religion needs now is not unquestioning doctrinal traditionalism but its equivalent of the Reformation: a revolution in practice and the distribution of power within the faith, away from the ‘priesthood’ to which Lawson refers, and towards the parishioners - that is, the patients themselves...(The Spectator Aug 19)
And remember:
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO-HOO, what a ride!!"
The Duke sued in the Ecclesiastical Court for permission to divorce Frances by Act of Parliament. She counter-sued claiming that the Duke was impotent. In a letter to the Court in 1742 she wrote: "The privy members of the Duke were never to my knowledge turgid, dilated or erected in such a way as may be usual or necessary to perform the act of carnal copulation. As a result the Duke never did penetrate or enter my body."
When he heard the news of the Duchess's claim, the Duke cried, "The bitch has got us. She'll stop my divorce and put that bastard child in line for my fortune. You see a ruined man...."
As she had given birth to an illegitimate child, the Duke agreed to prove HIS virility before a distinguished panel which included Horace Walpole, the Dean of the Court of Arches, two physicians, three surgeons, an ecclesiastic court and several other gentlemen.
His manservant James Phillips suggested the potency test which had last been used in York in 1433. Indeed it was Phillips who started the hare. Another manservant at Holme Lacey, the Duchess's Herefordshire home, beckoned Phillips to follow him on tiptoe and peep through the keyhole of Her Ladyship's dressing room. Inside, Phillips saw her sitting on Lord Talbot's knee. He entered the room - “she jumped up and smoothed down her petticoats, but I saw her lace cap was tumbled and her bosom exposed. Talbot crossed his legs and turned away to stop me from seeing his trouser buttons were undone.”
Phillips deposed that whilst the Duke was away Lord Talbot visited the house three times a week.
An undermaid reported that five of the six chairs in the dining room had been set side by side to make a couch. On the chairs and floor they found bits of silver lace, rubbed off the back of the gown the Duchess was wearing.
She was heard to say on another occasion: “You make me very hot. I am not able to bear it. What would you have me do, my precious lord? I fear the servants suspect us.”
The proving took place in a Dr Meade's London home. When Walpole arrived, his friend the actor and playwright Colley Cibber said: “Good thing you are here. You are Controller of the Pipes. Let's hope the good Duke can control his. His Lordship's member is on everyone's lips.”
Thomas Grey, the poet, sighed: “That things like this should be done for money. Simply to be revenged on Talbot for four score thousand pounds.”
Lord Orrery observed: “Alas, what money can recompense for such injuries?”
The General Consensus was that the the Duke should have openly demonstrated his virility in a brothel. However, as Walpole said, “This man at the age of seven acceded to one of the noblest titles in England. A Plantagenet, direct descendant of John of Gaunt, he has royal blood in his veins. He is the Duke of Beaufort, Marquis and Earl of Worcester, Earl of Glamorgan and Barons Herbert, Raglan and Beaufort of Raglan Castle. One of the richest noblemen in Europe.”
Sir Horace Man, the Ambassador to Florence, said: “... and about to be humiliated in a way not seen in England since a case in York in 1433.”
That case was tried in open court with seven women. The Duke performed behind a screen. He was dressed in a powdered wig with side curls, his hair gathered at the back in a bow from which a ribbon went round his neck, rimmed shirt, lace cravat and knee-breeches, fitted over stockings with gold buckle shoes.
As he approached the screen looking frail and weak for his 36 years, he turned and bowed to the company. “When I knock on the screen, come to me speedily at that moment.”
Ten minutes later there was a knock, the sound of happy gasps......................Beaufort had proved his case.
JUST A THOUGHT...........................
Why should other departments and agencies of the state transform themselves and the way they do things, while the vast, creaking NHS structure - the world’s third largest employer after Indian rail and the Chinese army - stands intact and protected?
Nigel Lawson famously observes in his memoirs: ‘The National Health Service is the closest thing the English have to a religion, with those who practise in it regarding themselves as a priesthood. This made it quite extraordinarily difficult to reform.’ ...................... Mr Cameron, desperate to prove his theological orthodoxy as a worshipper in the church of St Aneurin Bevan, condemns heresy unambiguously.
Yet what the NHS religion needs now is not unquestioning doctrinal traditionalism but its equivalent of the Reformation: a revolution in practice and the distribution of power within the faith, away from the ‘priesthood’ to which Lawson refers, and towards the parishioners - that is, the patients themselves...(The Spectator Aug 19)
And remember:
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO-HOO, what a ride!!"
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