The only amusing response to the recent riots was the suggestion by Cameron and Miliband that they had a solution.
In a pig’s orifice they do. Everything that is wrong with life in England is down to political mismanagement.
In 1903 the Ottoman Empire offered an alliance. A young Churchill , who was to become the first and ultimate spin doctor, persuaded the Cabinet to refuse. He compounded his folly by hijacking two battleships the Turks had paid to have built in British yards. In consequence the Ottomans signed a non-aggression treaty with Germany. Churchill compounded his folly by organising the lost battle at Gallipoli.
Lloyd George bought Arab support in the First World War by promising them home rule for Arabia. At the same time the Sykes-Picot Treaty arranged a carve-up of Arabia between England and France, and the bit that was left over they gave to the Zionists (Lloyd George’s family firm were lawyers for the Zionist Movement and both he and Balfour were Christian Zionists).
Germany sued for a negotiated peace in 1917. The Allies rejected the offer, insisting on unconditional surrender. Versailles treaty terms ensured economic collapse which allowed the Nazi party to gain control.
That in turn made World War Two inevitable. Russia bamboozled Churchill and Roosevelt into giving the Bolsheviks control of half Europe and laid the ground rules for the Cold War.
The post-war Labour government set up a costly welfare state at a time when the Americans had emptied our Treasury.
Government interference cost us our export trade, our police force, our rail system and our education structure. Legislation outlawed the discipline of our young and crackpot theories ruined traditional teaching methods.
We were led by the nose into the Common Market and as a direct result our freedoms have been eroded, our courts superseded and our industry wrecked. We have fought expensive unnecessary wars we could not afford in countries whose concerns are not ours. I know we have to pretend the Irish Peace (?) was a triumph of negotiation but the IRA won and it’s all starting again. Our Iron Headed Chancellor Brown sold our gold reserves at the bottom of the market.
The Glazer family in the U.S. bought Manchester United with 500 million dollars of their own money and saddled the club with interest payments of tens of millions by borrowing the balance of the £1.5 billion purchase price. They are going to pay off the debt by a flotation on the Asian stock market which will bring the family £1.8 billion profit. Britain is the only country which allows foreign companies to buy sporting clubs with borrowed money.
The fabric of England has been torn to shreds by a deliberate policy of excessive immigration. The land is despoiled to make millions for aristocratic landowners and MPs by a devil’s planting of wind turbines. We are told they will run at maximum power, when at best they will reach thirty per cent.
Quell the riots? They caused them by their incompetence.
THE TERRIBLE TWINS
I have always considered the apparently endless career of Dimbleby and Sons compelling evidence of the evils of nepotism. Wynford Vaughan Thomas was a much better commentator than Richard and his sons have competed for the title of worst chairman in radio history. I am not alone in this view. A disgruntled listener has complained in the Radio Times that Any Questions? is in desperate need of a chairman who does not dominate the programme. He suggests Nick Robinson, which is fine by me – but then any replacement would be welcome. Eddie Mair, perhaps?
The listener says that Marathon Jonathan asked nineteen questions which left time for only five questions from the audience.
The following week was even worse. Four questions from the audience.
From Marathon Man? Twenty-three.
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Saturday, 20 August 2011
ITS ALL EYEWASH
I had such a funny blog ready about how I woke up wih a black eve which I assumed was the result of nocturnal husband bashing but turned out to be dandruff of the eyelash.
Then I got this email from a tall friend;
I fell backwards last night (early this morning) in what the hospital will probably mark in the statistics as a "drink related" incident -- although I'm not actually sure what caused me to fall. Anyway, I banged my head on a flower pot and damaged my back and will be wheelchair-bound for about three weeks. I hadn't really appreciated what a long way it is to fall.
Another friend reported;
My daughter Rachael had to be at the Zoo - PR media manager - by 4.30am this morning, to sort out the Daybreak TV progamme - they were doing snippets from the Zoo.She was stopped on the car-park by two marked cop cars and an undercover car and she e-mailed us -
They started to tell me about a woman currently in custody who had a wish to stroke a big cat and could I sort it out. I’m thinking its 4.30am, its freezing, I’m stuck in a building with coppers, I’ve a film crew outside and you want me to deal with a nutter?? Not only that but my bra fell apart just as I was leaving the house this morning. It’s not even 10am yet.
I know when I am trumped so I decided to write about the riots;
If you want to waste your time ask a policeman what he was doing on the first night of the riots. We already know. He was making sure the greater part of London was a shoplifting free zone in the recent expression of teenage petulance. And I for one don't blame him. Apart from a triple murder, the heaviest riot charge in recent outbreaks has been manslaughter – against a policeman who was doing his job.
One of the many Metrolpolitan Commissioners who have been playng musical chairs in recent days offered a much more bizarre reason.
“If we had made arrests it would have meant we would have had to take policemen off the streets to fill in the necessary forms,” he explained.
With the best will in the world one cannot see why that would be a bad thing. Better, surely, than mass street photography and further massive overtime bills, searching for the shoplifters and arresting them and then going back to fill in the forms.
When Queen Victoria asked the Duke of Wellington how to get rid of birds flocking into the Crystal palace, he answered her in two words: “Sparrow Hawks”.
I have another two words for getting Tweeters off the streets. Digital Recorders. They fit snuggly next to the whistle and all the other toys the Politically Correct PCs carry. Out of the question, I suppose. They are succesfully in use in the US, where they arrest wrongdoers , bundle them into the police van and speak the arrest details into the recorder. When the tapes are full, they are collected by a single officer and are taken back to HQ, plugged into computers and the recordings are automatically transcribed.
How do the police know which details belong to which perpetrator? By using indelible ink to write a number on the offender's wrist with corresponding numbers identifying the tapes.
There is a second, even cheaper, solution. Reduce the form filling. Pre-1985 when the CPU was set up, one piece of paper sufficed. Now it takes thirty.
The situation in London was only returned to normality by borrowing policemen from other parts of the country. That means the 46 per cent of the front line policemen available in those parts of the country will be reduced even further.
“There's a hole in your bucket, dear Commissioner? ... Then mend it...”
My nightmare is being trapped in a broken lift with Fry and Starkey. Perversely both are teachers of enormous gifts. Fry's documentaries on language and Starkey's lectures on the Tudors were a joy to hear. Outsude that narow field they are a pain in that part of the anatomy they favour.
So I never thought I would leap to the defence of either.
Starkey was quite right. Our popular culture is black and has been for years. It's not always a bad thing. It has given the world jazz, the blues and a number of singers who illuminate our sorry age. Less happily, its extremes mesmerise youth. It has taken ballroom dancing back to the jungle, it has reduced the language of the young to pidgin and brought allure to the tribe as a unit. The problem is not with the blacks: it is with the young who take all of the bad but none of the good things we owe to the Caribbeans. Kindness, cheerfulness and spiritual values are just a few of their virtues.
None of the troubles had anything to do with race. The police could not control the riot because they were badly led. In the days when our bobbies were thief takers they would have waded in as they did in the provinces. Now they are led by sociologists. All could have been avoided by limiting immigration and assimilating those who do come to live here.
It is the same breed who are horrified at the idea of shutting down the social networks which rally the rioters. Why? Such behaviour is illegal once the Riot Act is read. Nor is it unfair to evict tenants from subsidised housing if one of the family is convicted of crimes against society. If the convicted is part of a family which has a history of disruptive behaviour, then kick them out. But by turning rioters into paupers and making innocent people homeless is a pretty sure way to increase the number of rioters. By the same token, the people who claim the sentences were too harsh on the two Northeners who planned riots that failed are wrong. Inciting riots is a serious offence and we have seen the results of such incitement: terrible damage, a policeman on a manslaghter charge and three murders.
I remembered the old Scottish tale of my father. "The Lord cast the sinners into the fiery pit and the sinners cried 'Oh Lord, I didnae ken.' And the Lord replied: "Ah well, ye ken the noo."
Have no fear. The world is rushing to our aid. The African Union today adopted a unilateral resolution to deploy army troops and care packages to England as looting and violence spread from London to other major cities. Spokesperson Charity Khumalo said: “We can no longer stand by while these savages tear themselves apart.”
The AU, meeting today in an emergency session to discuss the ongoing rioting in the UK, has declared that they will do “everything in their power to help bring civilisation to England”.
“It’s just so sad, you know?” said Khumalo, speaking from the organisation’s HQ in Addis Ababa.. “Sitting here and watching them on TV while their society implodes. We cannot in good conscience remain idle and let it happen.”
The spokesperson told journalists: “You look in the mirror and you see teeth untouched by modern dentistry. It’s heartbreaking enough to make anyone put a brick through a Starbucks.”
A SAD GOODBYE
My chum the broadcaster Robert Robinson was always a master of timing. If he had to leave the stage he has graced so long with his presence, last week was the time to choose. I say chum but, though we often worked together on radio, we never met. The first time I interviewed him I was nervous because he did not suffer foolish broadcasters gladly. So I expected trouble when at the end of our interview the engineer announced the tape had not worked.
Robinson could not have been kinder. He did the whole thing over again. More than that, some weeks later on “Loose Ends” he praised a phrase I had used suggesting Switzerland was a fiction and the alps were folded up every sping when it became Holland.
Over the years we often worked together and between broadcasts exchanged letters and books . When I was dropped by BBC Wales for being English, he was the first to deride the decision publicly. A dangerous act for a freelance.
I loved his detective novel “Landscape With Dead Dons” and once asked why he did not write a sequel. His answer was as perceptive a piece of literary criticism as I have ever heard.
“Detective fiction is the literary equivalent of painting by numbers.”
KEN ASHTON'S POSTBAG
THE only identifiably Welsh representative on a list of highly-paid public officials is a 73-year-old peer who spent years out of Britain as a businessman in Monaco. Lord Rowe-Beddoe appears on a list of more than 300 senior civil service and quango members released by the Cabinet Office as part of a UK Government transparency exercise. Between them, the people on the list are paid up to £60m a year. Lord Rowe-Beddoe is paid £35,000 a year for four days’ work a month as one of two deputy chairmen of the UK Statistics Authority, now based in Newport.
THE leader of a council which imposed controversial pay cuts on its workers was paid more than £1,800 a week from the public purse in 2010-11, it has emerged. Rhondda Cynon Taf’s Labour leader Russell Roberts picked up £58,962, including £1,177 in travel and subsistence, from his work as leader of the authority. In addition, he received £23,544 as chairman of South Wales Police Authority and £13,344 as a member of Cwm Taf Health Authority. His total remuneration from the three appointments was £95,860. Pauline Jarman, Plaid Cymru’s opposition leader on RCT, which is the second biggest council in Wales, said: “Council workers who have seen their terms and conditions cut by up to 40% will wonder how Russell Roberts has the cheek to tell employees that cuts have to be made, when he’s taking home £1,843 a week before tax from the public purse.”
Afghanistan is now open to tourism for the first time in 23 years. Many people will be curious to see it first hand, especially since it has been on television so much recently. ABDUL RAHMAN, Afghan Minister of Tourism, 2002.
ASHTON IS BLESSED WITH A 7 YEAR OLD GRANDSON WHOSE VALUE IS BEYOND RUBIES
His infant activities bring sunshine to my day.
"Your friend Jacob likes to play 'hotels' and, at breakfast yesterday, he offered me a 'menu'. I requested a full English, toast with marmalade, proper coffee - and a dancing girl.
'I'm sorry, sir,' he said, 'we don't have dancing girls on a Thursday.'
I pretend tutted and he suggested, 'I have a lady in the kitchen and I could ask her to dance.'
After breakfast - porridge and toast - he asked for comments and I said the food had been good, but the service rubbish in that I had to make my own toast and wash the dishes - and the dancing girl was rubbish.
'I'll give you a refund on the dancing,' he said, 'and take it out of her wages.'
He's written a letter to himself this morning, as he says he never gets any post. And he's posted it.
AND ALL I CAN DO IS SNIFF IT.....
My gin and tonic snuff is a qualified success but reports like this induce tears.
“LONDON, Bombay and Plymouth all have well established links to famous gins. Now Brecon can be added to the list after the Penderyn distillery took gold at the 2011 International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC) – the “Oscars of the spirits world”. Made within the Brecon Beacons National Park, Brecon Special Reserve is infused with juniper from Macedonia, orange peel from Spain, Chinese cassia bark, Sri Lankan liquorice, Madagascan cinnamon, French angelica root, Russian coriander, Indian nutmeg, Spanish lemon peel and Italian orris root. It uses mineral water drawn from directly beneath the Penderyn distillery, filtered through 340 million-year-old rock formations. The makers of the spirit, until now barely known outside of Wales, said they were over the moon with the result. “
A LINE FROM THE FRONT LINE
"I have a new computer which is taking time to adjust. You will be astonished to know that you have been given special status by the system - your Blog is automatically put into my junk mail box - but you have unique standing there, and I hope you will take it as a compliment - but the heading was not of my doing!
jean x
Made in China like everything else, I expect they have perfected a modem that rejects things the Government doesn't like. Damned clever people these Chinese.
Then I got this email from a tall friend;
I fell backwards last night (early this morning) in what the hospital will probably mark in the statistics as a "drink related" incident -- although I'm not actually sure what caused me to fall. Anyway, I banged my head on a flower pot and damaged my back and will be wheelchair-bound for about three weeks. I hadn't really appreciated what a long way it is to fall.
Another friend reported;
My daughter Rachael had to be at the Zoo - PR media manager - by 4.30am this morning, to sort out the Daybreak TV progamme - they were doing snippets from the Zoo.She was stopped on the car-park by two marked cop cars and an undercover car and she e-mailed us -
They started to tell me about a woman currently in custody who had a wish to stroke a big cat and could I sort it out. I’m thinking its 4.30am, its freezing, I’m stuck in a building with coppers, I’ve a film crew outside and you want me to deal with a nutter?? Not only that but my bra fell apart just as I was leaving the house this morning. It’s not even 10am yet.
I know when I am trumped so I decided to write about the riots;
If you want to waste your time ask a policeman what he was doing on the first night of the riots. We already know. He was making sure the greater part of London was a shoplifting free zone in the recent expression of teenage petulance. And I for one don't blame him. Apart from a triple murder, the heaviest riot charge in recent outbreaks has been manslaughter – against a policeman who was doing his job.
One of the many Metrolpolitan Commissioners who have been playng musical chairs in recent days offered a much more bizarre reason.
“If we had made arrests it would have meant we would have had to take policemen off the streets to fill in the necessary forms,” he explained.
With the best will in the world one cannot see why that would be a bad thing. Better, surely, than mass street photography and further massive overtime bills, searching for the shoplifters and arresting them and then going back to fill in the forms.
When Queen Victoria asked the Duke of Wellington how to get rid of birds flocking into the Crystal palace, he answered her in two words: “Sparrow Hawks”.
I have another two words for getting Tweeters off the streets. Digital Recorders. They fit snuggly next to the whistle and all the other toys the Politically Correct PCs carry. Out of the question, I suppose. They are succesfully in use in the US, where they arrest wrongdoers , bundle them into the police van and speak the arrest details into the recorder. When the tapes are full, they are collected by a single officer and are taken back to HQ, plugged into computers and the recordings are automatically transcribed.
How do the police know which details belong to which perpetrator? By using indelible ink to write a number on the offender's wrist with corresponding numbers identifying the tapes.
There is a second, even cheaper, solution. Reduce the form filling. Pre-1985 when the CPU was set up, one piece of paper sufficed. Now it takes thirty.
The situation in London was only returned to normality by borrowing policemen from other parts of the country. That means the 46 per cent of the front line policemen available in those parts of the country will be reduced even further.
“There's a hole in your bucket, dear Commissioner? ... Then mend it...”
My nightmare is being trapped in a broken lift with Fry and Starkey. Perversely both are teachers of enormous gifts. Fry's documentaries on language and Starkey's lectures on the Tudors were a joy to hear. Outsude that narow field they are a pain in that part of the anatomy they favour.
So I never thought I would leap to the defence of either.
Starkey was quite right. Our popular culture is black and has been for years. It's not always a bad thing. It has given the world jazz, the blues and a number of singers who illuminate our sorry age. Less happily, its extremes mesmerise youth. It has taken ballroom dancing back to the jungle, it has reduced the language of the young to pidgin and brought allure to the tribe as a unit. The problem is not with the blacks: it is with the young who take all of the bad but none of the good things we owe to the Caribbeans. Kindness, cheerfulness and spiritual values are just a few of their virtues.
None of the troubles had anything to do with race. The police could not control the riot because they were badly led. In the days when our bobbies were thief takers they would have waded in as they did in the provinces. Now they are led by sociologists. All could have been avoided by limiting immigration and assimilating those who do come to live here.
It is the same breed who are horrified at the idea of shutting down the social networks which rally the rioters. Why? Such behaviour is illegal once the Riot Act is read. Nor is it unfair to evict tenants from subsidised housing if one of the family is convicted of crimes against society. If the convicted is part of a family which has a history of disruptive behaviour, then kick them out. But by turning rioters into paupers and making innocent people homeless is a pretty sure way to increase the number of rioters. By the same token, the people who claim the sentences were too harsh on the two Northeners who planned riots that failed are wrong. Inciting riots is a serious offence and we have seen the results of such incitement: terrible damage, a policeman on a manslaghter charge and three murders.
I remembered the old Scottish tale of my father. "The Lord cast the sinners into the fiery pit and the sinners cried 'Oh Lord, I didnae ken.' And the Lord replied: "Ah well, ye ken the noo."
Have no fear. The world is rushing to our aid. The African Union today adopted a unilateral resolution to deploy army troops and care packages to England as looting and violence spread from London to other major cities. Spokesperson Charity Khumalo said: “We can no longer stand by while these savages tear themselves apart.”
The AU, meeting today in an emergency session to discuss the ongoing rioting in the UK, has declared that they will do “everything in their power to help bring civilisation to England”.
“It’s just so sad, you know?” said Khumalo, speaking from the organisation’s HQ in Addis Ababa.. “Sitting here and watching them on TV while their society implodes. We cannot in good conscience remain idle and let it happen.”
The spokesperson told journalists: “You look in the mirror and you see teeth untouched by modern dentistry. It’s heartbreaking enough to make anyone put a brick through a Starbucks.”
A SAD GOODBYE
My chum the broadcaster Robert Robinson was always a master of timing. If he had to leave the stage he has graced so long with his presence, last week was the time to choose. I say chum but, though we often worked together on radio, we never met. The first time I interviewed him I was nervous because he did not suffer foolish broadcasters gladly. So I expected trouble when at the end of our interview the engineer announced the tape had not worked.
Robinson could not have been kinder. He did the whole thing over again. More than that, some weeks later on “Loose Ends” he praised a phrase I had used suggesting Switzerland was a fiction and the alps were folded up every sping when it became Holland.
Over the years we often worked together and between broadcasts exchanged letters and books . When I was dropped by BBC Wales for being English, he was the first to deride the decision publicly. A dangerous act for a freelance.
I loved his detective novel “Landscape With Dead Dons” and once asked why he did not write a sequel. His answer was as perceptive a piece of literary criticism as I have ever heard.
“Detective fiction is the literary equivalent of painting by numbers.”
KEN ASHTON'S POSTBAG
THE only identifiably Welsh representative on a list of highly-paid public officials is a 73-year-old peer who spent years out of Britain as a businessman in Monaco. Lord Rowe-Beddoe appears on a list of more than 300 senior civil service and quango members released by the Cabinet Office as part of a UK Government transparency exercise. Between them, the people on the list are paid up to £60m a year. Lord Rowe-Beddoe is paid £35,000 a year for four days’ work a month as one of two deputy chairmen of the UK Statistics Authority, now based in Newport.
THE leader of a council which imposed controversial pay cuts on its workers was paid more than £1,800 a week from the public purse in 2010-11, it has emerged. Rhondda Cynon Taf’s Labour leader Russell Roberts picked up £58,962, including £1,177 in travel and subsistence, from his work as leader of the authority. In addition, he received £23,544 as chairman of South Wales Police Authority and £13,344 as a member of Cwm Taf Health Authority. His total remuneration from the three appointments was £95,860. Pauline Jarman, Plaid Cymru’s opposition leader on RCT, which is the second biggest council in Wales, said: “Council workers who have seen their terms and conditions cut by up to 40% will wonder how Russell Roberts has the cheek to tell employees that cuts have to be made, when he’s taking home £1,843 a week before tax from the public purse.”
Afghanistan is now open to tourism for the first time in 23 years. Many people will be curious to see it first hand, especially since it has been on television so much recently. ABDUL RAHMAN, Afghan Minister of Tourism, 2002.
ASHTON IS BLESSED WITH A 7 YEAR OLD GRANDSON WHOSE VALUE IS BEYOND RUBIES
His infant activities bring sunshine to my day.
"Your friend Jacob likes to play 'hotels' and, at breakfast yesterday, he offered me a 'menu'. I requested a full English, toast with marmalade, proper coffee - and a dancing girl.
'I'm sorry, sir,' he said, 'we don't have dancing girls on a Thursday.'
I pretend tutted and he suggested, 'I have a lady in the kitchen and I could ask her to dance.'
After breakfast - porridge and toast - he asked for comments and I said the food had been good, but the service rubbish in that I had to make my own toast and wash the dishes - and the dancing girl was rubbish.
'I'll give you a refund on the dancing,' he said, 'and take it out of her wages.'
He's written a letter to himself this morning, as he says he never gets any post. And he's posted it.
AND ALL I CAN DO IS SNIFF IT.....
My gin and tonic snuff is a qualified success but reports like this induce tears.
“LONDON, Bombay and Plymouth all have well established links to famous gins. Now Brecon can be added to the list after the Penderyn distillery took gold at the 2011 International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC) – the “Oscars of the spirits world”. Made within the Brecon Beacons National Park, Brecon Special Reserve is infused with juniper from Macedonia, orange peel from Spain, Chinese cassia bark, Sri Lankan liquorice, Madagascan cinnamon, French angelica root, Russian coriander, Indian nutmeg, Spanish lemon peel and Italian orris root. It uses mineral water drawn from directly beneath the Penderyn distillery, filtered through 340 million-year-old rock formations. The makers of the spirit, until now barely known outside of Wales, said they were over the moon with the result. “
A LINE FROM THE FRONT LINE
"I have a new computer which is taking time to adjust. You will be astonished to know that you have been given special status by the system - your Blog is automatically put into my junk mail box - but you have unique standing there, and I hope you will take it as a compliment - but the heading was not of my doing!
jean x
Made in China like everything else, I expect they have perfected a modem that rejects things the Government doesn't like. Damned clever people these Chinese.
Friday, 12 August 2011
The Swarming of the Flies
The mistake was to think of “Lord of the Flies” as a work of fiction. When we were eleven my bosom pal Bobby Thompson and I were persuaded by a charismatic 13-year-old called Bunny Praeger to join his syndicate of schoolboy shoplifters. There were branches in six schools in the centre of Manchester and the more prosperous suburbs. It was a very well thought out network and we only stole to order. Predictably, my speciality was books. Our raincoats had pockets that went through to our suits. Bunny taught us to leave the coats open when we stretched over a counter so that the raincoat covered our busy thieving hands.
It was a great success, though short-lived. The reason it withered was our fear of punishment and the difficulty, seventy years ago, of inter-school communication.
We manage things so much better in this brave new world. We have banished discipline and given our children electronic toys which make communication instant. Now our deprived youths all have Blackberries and bikes.
The art of politics is a constant effort to repair the harm done by the preceding politicians. The problem of the Arabs was caused by their betrayal by Lloyd George’s government. It was the action of the Allied governments at Versailles that made World War 2 inevitable. Our feral youth and the fact that Britain has the highest figure of teenage pregnancy can be laid at the door of the parent of permissiveness, Roy Jenkins. Harold Wilson hid youth unemployment by opening universities to young illiterates. We support the Arab Spring despite the fact that Tunisia is now ruled by fundamentalists, the most coherent party in Egypt is the Arab Brotherhood and there is evidence of a heavy fundamentalist presence among the Libyan rebels.
Whatever the politicians tell us were the reasons for the recent breakdown of civilisation in England, we need to know nothing more than that every generation has criminal propensities and there are always charismatic schoolboys like Bunny Praeger to harness them.
Happily, that is not one of my worries.
There is only one thing wrong with old age. It does not last long enough. Only the old have complete command of their time. For most of life, doing nothing is frowned upon. Only old folk can muse with impunity. Or, for that matter, doze. I enjoy a nap after breakfast but only in my eighties can I indulge myself. We can ponder with impunity the sad truth that Western civilisation is going to Hell in a handcart but only really worry when the Co-op runs out of croissants.
ACCOLADE du jour
A friend boasts: “We switched fuel supplier yesterday and needed a credit check - the adviser told us we were more creditworthy than America.”
HEADLINES I HAVE LOVED
"Harry Potter dwarf spared jail over juggler's hat sex act" - Daily Telegraph of 29 July.
Readers write...
Two British solicitors, one of them high profile, have allegedly scammed around 100 UK investors out of the thick end of £2 million to finance a multi-billion government bond fraud against any number of European banks.
The attempted bank scam came to a sticky end in May when a 54-year-old Australian called John “Jack” Sparrow was handed a two year jail sentence in Barcelona and a hefty fine after being found, according to evidence placed before the judge, with 3000 fraudulent banking documents on his lap-top, and a further 1500 scanned images of genuine bank documents from which he could ‘cut-‘n-paste’ official bank seals, signatures and anything else he needed to make documents look genuine.
Greater Manchester Police fraud squad spent a year investigating the UK end of this fraud and concluded the activities of the two solicitors were ‘part of a fraudulent scheme’.
But in an attempt to satisfy the 100 innocent investors who are trying to come to terms with the fact they have more than likely lost £2 million, instead of arresting the pair, the fraud squad handed each of the two solicitors an astonishing letter.
It simply stated that if they did it again they would be nicked.
In a separate letter to a bunch of furious investors which include a prominent Lincolns Inn QC, the fraud squad stated in conclusion: ”We would ask that the decision we have taken is respected and that further contact is only made if you have substantial new evidence that would cause a review of our decision.”
When persuasive evidence was offered that the two solicitors were trying to borrow even more money to keep the allegedly fraudulent scheme going, the fraud squad pulled down the shutters of their HQ and refused to take a statement from the complainants.
Finally, after a frustrating two months trying to kick down the doors of GMP’s HQ, the Chief Constable, Peter Fahy, somewhat reluctantly promised investors he would look into their complaints.
Yesterday (Friday Aug 5th) Detective Chief Superintendent Darren Shenton, Head of the Serious Crimes Division, announced:” I have commissioned the review referred to and expect this to be complete no later than Mon 22nd Aug, when you will be notified of the outcome.”
You may wish to watch this space……
Best wishes
Peter Reece
HELL AS EXPLAINED by a Chemistry Student
The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
(1). If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
(2). If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number
(2) must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.
The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'
THIS STUDENT RECEIVED an A+
Chris Sheridan
WE ARE NOT BEATEN YET............
News Item: Wenzhou train crash: It was first reported that on-the-spot death toll was 35, and the remaining deaths were in the hospital due to ineffective medical treatment.
According to the Central Chinese Government directive, if more than 36 people die on the spot, then the responsible Communist Party secretary will be removed. Only on-site deaths are counted for this purpose. Now some historical data:
April 1993, Dashiqiao City, Liaoning Province, train and bus collided, 35 people were killed.
March 1995, Anshan, Liaoning Province, mall fire, 35 deaths.
November 1995, Shandong Province, more than 40 counties (cities) suffered storm hit, 35 people were killed.
June 1996, Yunnan Qujing the case of alcohol, 35 people were killed
.May 1997, Shenzhen Huangtian airport crash, 35 people were killed.
August 2001, Xinjiang, a sleeper bus crashed into the bridge in Xinsha, 35 people were killed.
July 2003, Hebei Xinji fireworks factory explosion, 35 people were killed.
July 2003, Shandong Zaozhuang coal mine flooding, 35 deaths
August 2003, Sansui County, Guizhou landslide, 35 dead
February 2003, Liupanshui gas explosion, 35 people were killed
December 2003, Liaoning Tieling fireworks factory explosion, 35 people were killed
August 2004, Shanxi Linfen mine, 35 people were killed
March 2005, the territory of Jiangxi Shangrao highway explosion, 35 people were killed
December 2005, Xinan, Henan coal mine flooding, 35 deaths
April 2006, Shanxi Xinzhou explosion, 35 people were killed
July 2006, Hunan tungsten ore zone Yaogangxian floods, 35 people were killed or missing
July 2006, Guangxi typhoon, 35 dead
July 2007, heavy rains in Chongqing, 35 people were killed
July 2007, Shandong storm, 35 people were killed
November 2007, Bijie gas outburst accident, 35 people were killed
November 2007, Hubei Yichang-Wanzhou Railway rock fall, 35 people were killed
May 2008, a tour bus suffered landslides in Aba County, 35 people were killed
July 2008, Wei County, Hebei coal mine explosion, 35 people were killed
November 2008, Yunnan mud-rock flow, 35 people were killed
September 2009, Pingdingshan mine, 35 people were killed
June 2010, Fujian, Guangxi and Sichuan floods caused 35 dead
June 2011, heavy rain, Hubei and Hunan, 35 people were killed
Or to put it another way;
.. 1993年4月，辽宁省大石桥市列车与大客车相撞，35人死亡
1995年3月，辽宁省鞍山商场火灾，35人死亡
1995年11月，山东省40多个县（市）遭受暴风袭击，35人死亡
1996年6月，云南曲靖假酒案，35人死亡
1997年5月，深圳黄田机场空难，35人死亡
2001年8月，新疆一卧铺客车在新沙干渠桥坠入渠中，35人死亡
2003年7月，河北省辛集市烟花厂爆炸，35人死亡
2003年7月，山东省枣庄煤矿发生透水，35人死亡
FROM OUR MAN IN CHINA
I have personal experience about the weather in major cities in China. I have encountered really hot days in places like Shanghai, Nanjin during steaming summer. The temperature broadcast was always 39.8, 39.5, 39 deg C. I was quite amazed. Later on someone told me that there is a rule in China that when the temp goes above 40 deg, civil servants can take the day off and go home. That is why. Well, of course, unless that is really hot, well above 40.
Guys in HK can check really easy whether this is a phenomena like the “35 casualties - rule”.
FROM ANOTHER OF OUR NATIONWISE SYNOSPIES
“But as the fresh evidence ... demonstrates, coercion, terror and systematic violence were the foundation of the Great Leap Forward.
"Thanks to the often meticulous reports compiled by the party itself, we can infer that between 1958 and 1962 by a rough approximation 6 to 8 per cent of the victims were tortured to death or summarily killed - amounting to at least 2.5 million people. Other victims were deliberately deprived of food and starved to death. Many more vanished because they were too old, weak or sick to work - and hence unable to earn their keep. People were killed selectively because they were rich, because they dragged their feet, because they spoke out or simply because they were not liked, for whatever reason, by the man who wielded the ladle in the canteen. Countless people were killed indirectly through neglect, as local cadres were under pressure to focus on figures rather than on people, making sure they fulfilled the targets they were handed by the top planners.”
Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, by Frank Dikotter.
It was a great success, though short-lived. The reason it withered was our fear of punishment and the difficulty, seventy years ago, of inter-school communication.
We manage things so much better in this brave new world. We have banished discipline and given our children electronic toys which make communication instant. Now our deprived youths all have Blackberries and bikes.
The art of politics is a constant effort to repair the harm done by the preceding politicians. The problem of the Arabs was caused by their betrayal by Lloyd George’s government. It was the action of the Allied governments at Versailles that made World War 2 inevitable. Our feral youth and the fact that Britain has the highest figure of teenage pregnancy can be laid at the door of the parent of permissiveness, Roy Jenkins. Harold Wilson hid youth unemployment by opening universities to young illiterates. We support the Arab Spring despite the fact that Tunisia is now ruled by fundamentalists, the most coherent party in Egypt is the Arab Brotherhood and there is evidence of a heavy fundamentalist presence among the Libyan rebels.
Whatever the politicians tell us were the reasons for the recent breakdown of civilisation in England, we need to know nothing more than that every generation has criminal propensities and there are always charismatic schoolboys like Bunny Praeger to harness them.
Happily, that is not one of my worries.
There is only one thing wrong with old age. It does not last long enough. Only the old have complete command of their time. For most of life, doing nothing is frowned upon. Only old folk can muse with impunity. Or, for that matter, doze. I enjoy a nap after breakfast but only in my eighties can I indulge myself. We can ponder with impunity the sad truth that Western civilisation is going to Hell in a handcart but only really worry when the Co-op runs out of croissants.
ACCOLADE du jour
A friend boasts: “We switched fuel supplier yesterday and needed a credit check - the adviser told us we were more creditworthy than America.”
HEADLINES I HAVE LOVED
"Harry Potter dwarf spared jail over juggler's hat sex act" - Daily Telegraph of 29 July.
Readers write...
Two British solicitors, one of them high profile, have allegedly scammed around 100 UK investors out of the thick end of £2 million to finance a multi-billion government bond fraud against any number of European banks.
The attempted bank scam came to a sticky end in May when a 54-year-old Australian called John “Jack” Sparrow was handed a two year jail sentence in Barcelona and a hefty fine after being found, according to evidence placed before the judge, with 3000 fraudulent banking documents on his lap-top, and a further 1500 scanned images of genuine bank documents from which he could ‘cut-‘n-paste’ official bank seals, signatures and anything else he needed to make documents look genuine.
Greater Manchester Police fraud squad spent a year investigating the UK end of this fraud and concluded the activities of the two solicitors were ‘part of a fraudulent scheme’.
But in an attempt to satisfy the 100 innocent investors who are trying to come to terms with the fact they have more than likely lost £2 million, instead of arresting the pair, the fraud squad handed each of the two solicitors an astonishing letter.
It simply stated that if they did it again they would be nicked.
In a separate letter to a bunch of furious investors which include a prominent Lincolns Inn QC, the fraud squad stated in conclusion: ”We would ask that the decision we have taken is respected and that further contact is only made if you have substantial new evidence that would cause a review of our decision.”
When persuasive evidence was offered that the two solicitors were trying to borrow even more money to keep the allegedly fraudulent scheme going, the fraud squad pulled down the shutters of their HQ and refused to take a statement from the complainants.
Finally, after a frustrating two months trying to kick down the doors of GMP’s HQ, the Chief Constable, Peter Fahy, somewhat reluctantly promised investors he would look into their complaints.
Yesterday (Friday Aug 5th) Detective Chief Superintendent Darren Shenton, Head of the Serious Crimes Division, announced:” I have commissioned the review referred to and expect this to be complete no later than Mon 22nd Aug, when you will be notified of the outcome.”
You may wish to watch this space……
Best wishes
Peter Reece
HELL AS EXPLAINED by a Chemistry Student
The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
(1). If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
(2). If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number
(2) must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.
The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'
THIS STUDENT RECEIVED an A+
Chris Sheridan
WE ARE NOT BEATEN YET............
News Item: Wenzhou train crash: It was first reported that on-the-spot death toll was 35, and the remaining deaths were in the hospital due to ineffective medical treatment.
According to the Central Chinese Government directive, if more than 36 people die on the spot, then the responsible Communist Party secretary will be removed. Only on-site deaths are counted for this purpose. Now some historical data:
April 1993, Dashiqiao City, Liaoning Province, train and bus collided, 35 people were killed.
March 1995, Anshan, Liaoning Province, mall fire, 35 deaths.
November 1995, Shandong Province, more than 40 counties (cities) suffered storm hit, 35 people were killed.
June 1996, Yunnan Qujing the case of alcohol, 35 people were killed
.May 1997, Shenzhen Huangtian airport crash, 35 people were killed.
August 2001, Xinjiang, a sleeper bus crashed into the bridge in Xinsha, 35 people were killed.
July 2003, Hebei Xinji fireworks factory explosion, 35 people were killed.
July 2003, Shandong Zaozhuang coal mine flooding, 35 deaths
August 2003, Sansui County, Guizhou landslide, 35 dead
February 2003, Liupanshui gas explosion, 35 people were killed
December 2003, Liaoning Tieling fireworks factory explosion, 35 people were killed
August 2004, Shanxi Linfen mine, 35 people were killed
March 2005, the territory of Jiangxi Shangrao highway explosion, 35 people were killed
December 2005, Xinan, Henan coal mine flooding, 35 deaths
April 2006, Shanxi Xinzhou explosion, 35 people were killed
July 2006, Hunan tungsten ore zone Yaogangxian floods, 35 people were killed or missing
July 2006, Guangxi typhoon, 35 dead
July 2007, heavy rains in Chongqing, 35 people were killed
July 2007, Shandong storm, 35 people were killed
November 2007, Bijie gas outburst accident, 35 people were killed
November 2007, Hubei Yichang-Wanzhou Railway rock fall, 35 people were killed
May 2008, a tour bus suffered landslides in Aba County, 35 people were killed
July 2008, Wei County, Hebei coal mine explosion, 35 people were killed
November 2008, Yunnan mud-rock flow, 35 people were killed
September 2009, Pingdingshan mine, 35 people were killed
June 2010, Fujian, Guangxi and Sichuan floods caused 35 dead
June 2011, heavy rain, Hubei and Hunan, 35 people were killed
Or to put it another way;
.. 1993年4月，辽宁省大石桥市列车与大客车相撞，35人死亡
1995年3月，辽宁省鞍山商场火灾，35人死亡
1995年11月，山东省40多个县（市）遭受暴风袭击，35人死亡
1996年6月，云南曲靖假酒案，35人死亡
1997年5月，深圳黄田机场空难，35人死亡
2001年8月，新疆一卧铺客车在新沙干渠桥坠入渠中，35人死亡
2003年7月，河北省辛集市烟花厂爆炸，35人死亡
2003年7月，山东省枣庄煤矿发生透水，35人死亡
FROM OUR MAN IN CHINA
I have personal experience about the weather in major cities in China. I have encountered really hot days in places like Shanghai, Nanjin during steaming summer. The temperature broadcast was always 39.8, 39.5, 39 deg C. I was quite amazed. Later on someone told me that there is a rule in China that when the temp goes above 40 deg, civil servants can take the day off and go home. That is why. Well, of course, unless that is really hot, well above 40.
Guys in HK can check really easy whether this is a phenomena like the “35 casualties - rule”.
FROM ANOTHER OF OUR NATIONWISE SYNOSPIES
“But as the fresh evidence ... demonstrates, coercion, terror and systematic violence were the foundation of the Great Leap Forward.
"Thanks to the often meticulous reports compiled by the party itself, we can infer that between 1958 and 1962 by a rough approximation 6 to 8 per cent of the victims were tortured to death or summarily killed - amounting to at least 2.5 million people. Other victims were deliberately deprived of food and starved to death. Many more vanished because they were too old, weak or sick to work - and hence unable to earn their keep. People were killed selectively because they were rich, because they dragged their feet, because they spoke out or simply because they were not liked, for whatever reason, by the man who wielded the ladle in the canteen. Countless people were killed indirectly through neglect, as local cadres were under pressure to focus on figures rather than on people, making sure they fulfilled the targets they were handed by the top planners.”
Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, by Frank Dikotter.
Saturday, 6 August 2011
A YEN FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
The New Presidential toy: http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Whenever I have been broke it meant that I had no money. Apparently the same rules do not apply to countries.
America, which rents its homeland from China, hasn't got enough ready cash to pay its civil service. But for some reason that does not mean America is short of money. It baffles me in the way I used to baffle the Midland Bank.
I remember with joy the day my bank manager said to me “It would be nice if we could get back to our original arrangement where you gave money to me”.
That was the same bank manager, who, when I listed my hunting and boating expenses to illustrate the ‘Hamlet’s Ghost of my overdraft’,
replied, as older readers will recall: “May I remind you Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies as you are one of the Midland Bank's.”
Britain’s own fiscal fantasies soar to heights too rarefied for mere mortals. We are told that we have not sufficient money to run a decent health service or finance the wars in which politicians take such delight. Our fighting men are being rewarded with redundancy and we are spending £9.3bn of public money on a glorified schools sports day and £30 billion improving a rail service to cut half an hour off travelling times. By macabre coincidence, families will be £35 billion worse off as a result of cuts, which mostly will be wasted on Chattering Choo Choos.
About 30 years ago a man I met in a pub had a solution to our road and rail difficulties which even then seemed to politicians to be insoluble. “Canals,” he said. He pointed out that on the North Wales coast, 10 miles from where we were drinking, was a little used deep water port, one of many others round the coast of this septic isle. These ports were linked to what had once been a very efficient canal system.
Unfortunately, the canal system was much more efficient than the new rail service. So the rail companies bought the canals and allowed them to fall into disuse. If they were restored - and many have been since I met him - they would move freight at little cost whilst easing motorway congestion.
POTS AND KETTLES
Keith Vaz, who chairs the committee which is investigating the evil tabloids, claimed more than £75,500 in expenses for a flat in Westminster despite his family home being a £1.15 million house just 12 miles from parliament.
Its members are drawn from a parliament which practised expense fiddles on an industrial scale. Its evidence is provided by a police force under examination for corruption by the evil tabloids. Pots and kettles join in a merry dance
The wrongs they have committed still pale into insignificance besides the four U.S. reporters from Denver who started the Boxer Rebellion in China. On a slow news day they created a news story which fictitiously claimed four demolition experts had been commissioned by the Chinese to demolish the Great Wall as part of its plans to Westernise the country. Unhappily, the story was reprinted by newspapers in China where it infuriated boxing enthusiasts in an Athletic Club.
So incensed were they by this attack on China’s cultural traditions that they rioted. The riot escalated into the Boxer Rebellion in which thousands died, property was looted and the Emperor and his court were forced to flee. It took a month before peace was restored – North American Review, 1939.
What a blessing this blog is banned in that unhappy land. Perhaps that story is why. Once bitten twice shy and the knowledge they have bought America would be too much for the populace.
NOTES FROM THE LAND OF THE FREE
Ian,
I visited the Conwy Council Recycling dump to see when I could dump some household things. The sign giving the opening times is very, very large, metal, and official. It reads :
Open Mon - Fri 9am - 6pm Apr - Sep
9am - 6pm Oct - Mar
Sat - Sun 9am - 6pm Apr - Sep
9am - 6pm Oct - Mar
In other words, they're open every day at the same time (except for Christmas Day, Boxing Day, etc., etc.) No wonder they're in a mess.
Alan Barham
....................................................................
A pub landlady who put up handwritten ‘No Smoking’ posters while waiting for official signs to arrive has been taken to court and ordered to pay nearly £300.
Inspectors who visited Dawn Lemm’s pub – the Judge and Jury in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, were told – discovered she had violated regulations which decree that ‘No Smoking’ signs must be rectangular with the shortest side at least 6.3in long.
...................................................
A group of Morris Dancers was given marching orders from a pub – their shoes broke the bar’s music ban. The 15 members of the Slubbing Billy’s troupe, who hoped to enjoy a quiet drink after entertaining market goers with their folk routine, had assured staff that they weren’t there to perform their merry jig.
But they were left hopping mad after claiming that a barmaid yelled ‘No bells’.
From 2012-13, the basic salary for councillors across Wales will be £13,175. Leaders of the largest “Group A” councils – Cardiff, Swansea and Rhondda Cynon Taf – will receive £52,700, “Group B” council leaders will be paid £47,500, and “Group C” leaders will get £42,300. Similarly, payment for other senior roles – deputy leader, executive member, committee chairs, opposition leader and mayor – will vary according to authority size.
Ken Ashton
Whenever I have been broke it meant that I had no money. Apparently the same rules do not apply to countries.
America, which rents its homeland from China, hasn't got enough ready cash to pay its civil service. But for some reason that does not mean America is short of money. It baffles me in the way I used to baffle the Midland Bank.
I remember with joy the day my bank manager said to me “It would be nice if we could get back to our original arrangement where you gave money to me”.
That was the same bank manager, who, when I listed my hunting and boating expenses to illustrate the ‘Hamlet’s Ghost of my overdraft’,
replied, as older readers will recall: “May I remind you Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies as you are one of the Midland Bank's.”
Britain’s own fiscal fantasies soar to heights too rarefied for mere mortals. We are told that we have not sufficient money to run a decent health service or finance the wars in which politicians take such delight. Our fighting men are being rewarded with redundancy and we are spending £9.3bn of public money on a glorified schools sports day and £30 billion improving a rail service to cut half an hour off travelling times. By macabre coincidence, families will be £35 billion worse off as a result of cuts, which mostly will be wasted on Chattering Choo Choos.
About 30 years ago a man I met in a pub had a solution to our road and rail difficulties which even then seemed to politicians to be insoluble. “Canals,” he said. He pointed out that on the North Wales coast, 10 miles from where we were drinking, was a little used deep water port, one of many others round the coast of this septic isle. These ports were linked to what had once been a very efficient canal system.
Unfortunately, the canal system was much more efficient than the new rail service. So the rail companies bought the canals and allowed them to fall into disuse. If they were restored - and many have been since I met him - they would move freight at little cost whilst easing motorway congestion.
POTS AND KETTLES
Keith Vaz, who chairs the committee which is investigating the evil tabloids, claimed more than £75,500 in expenses for a flat in Westminster despite his family home being a £1.15 million house just 12 miles from parliament.
Its members are drawn from a parliament which practised expense fiddles on an industrial scale. Its evidence is provided by a police force under examination for corruption by the evil tabloids. Pots and kettles join in a merry dance
The wrongs they have committed still pale into insignificance besides the four U.S. reporters from Denver who started the Boxer Rebellion in China. On a slow news day they created a news story which fictitiously claimed four demolition experts had been commissioned by the Chinese to demolish the Great Wall as part of its plans to Westernise the country. Unhappily, the story was reprinted by newspapers in China where it infuriated boxing enthusiasts in an Athletic Club.
So incensed were they by this attack on China’s cultural traditions that they rioted. The riot escalated into the Boxer Rebellion in which thousands died, property was looted and the Emperor and his court were forced to flee. It took a month before peace was restored – North American Review, 1939.
What a blessing this blog is banned in that unhappy land. Perhaps that story is why. Once bitten twice shy and the knowledge they have bought America would be too much for the populace.
NOTES FROM THE LAND OF THE FREE
Ian,
I visited the Conwy Council Recycling dump to see when I could dump some household things. The sign giving the opening times is very, very large, metal, and official. It reads :
Open Mon - Fri 9am - 6pm Apr - Sep
9am - 6pm Oct - Mar
Sat - Sun 9am - 6pm Apr - Sep
9am - 6pm Oct - Mar
In other words, they're open every day at the same time (except for Christmas Day, Boxing Day, etc., etc.) No wonder they're in a mess.
Alan Barham
....................................................................
A pub landlady who put up handwritten ‘No Smoking’ posters while waiting for official signs to arrive has been taken to court and ordered to pay nearly £300.
Inspectors who visited Dawn Lemm’s pub – the Judge and Jury in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, were told – discovered she had violated regulations which decree that ‘No Smoking’ signs must be rectangular with the shortest side at least 6.3in long.
...................................................
A group of Morris Dancers was given marching orders from a pub – their shoes broke the bar’s music ban. The 15 members of the Slubbing Billy’s troupe, who hoped to enjoy a quiet drink after entertaining market goers with their folk routine, had assured staff that they weren’t there to perform their merry jig.
But they were left hopping mad after claiming that a barmaid yelled ‘No bells’.
From 2012-13, the basic salary for councillors across Wales will be £13,175. Leaders of the largest “Group A” councils – Cardiff, Swansea and Rhondda Cynon Taf – will receive £52,700, “Group B” council leaders will be paid £47,500, and “Group C” leaders will get £42,300. Similarly, payment for other senior roles – deputy leader, executive member, committee chairs, opposition leader and mayor – will vary according to authority size.
Ken Ashton
Saturday, 30 July 2011
TILL DEBTS DO US PART.....
Two quotations sum up marriage, good and bad. The first by Goethe was: “The Wedding March sounds to me like soldiers going into battle.” The second, by that splendid poet and dancing wit Anon, is more tender. “Marriage,” claims Anon, “is not two pairs of eyes looking at each other: it is two pairs of eyes looking in the same direction.”
Alas, in this brave new world there is an epidemic of squinting. Face to face rather than eye to eye and back to back rather than looking in the same direction. The embittered wife of a friend of mine who surprised us all by running off with an actress warned me that she would never speak to me again if I had anything to do with her husband. I had to tell her if I only socialised with those of my friends still living with their wives I would have no one to speak to.
That is not quite true. I only said it to cheer her up. In fact I was pleasantly surprised to discover how many of my friends are happily married. There are still some reasons for cheer. We have a decent champagne with Sunday lunch now that it's half price in the Co-op, and I suppose the fact you can buy champagne in the Co-op is a sign of progress.
Not everything has a bright side. I was horrified this week to read that in the US army there are women snipers.
My former RSM “Tibby” Britten, who put the fear of death into generations of soldiers, had charge of a training course of officer cadets, who, although they are not commissioned, are always called 'Sir'. He used to tell them, “ I will call you,sir and you will call me sir. The difference is you will mean it.“
The purpose of what is now called bullying in the army was simple. It was to make a soldier more afraid of his own NCOs than he was of the enemy. We are now told that this is disgraceful. That harsh discipline robs soldiers of their dignity. That we must be kinder to the young men who fight for us.
May I, as an old soldier, say that this is rubbish. The trade these young people have chosen to follow is war. I admire our fighting men but, though their reasons may be noble, war is the most disgraceful activity on the planet. It is persuading young men to dress in funny clothes and kill total strangers who have never done them a lick of harm. It has no dignity; and kindness in training is misplaced.Unfortunately the love of battle is hard wired into our youth.
You will find very little of kindness in the training of our elite fighting units.
Although I believe the Second World War was a just war, very few wars are necessary. The first world war was caused by the conceit of the Kaiser and I cannot think of any other war this century that wasn't the result of political mismanagement.
So given those views it must follow that I am totally opposed to women who are the givers of life being involved in taking it. It looks as though we are once again playing “Catchup”. The Ministry of Defence has a series of non-physical tests which women will find easier to pass.
I loved the army. If I hadn't been sent to prison I would have made it my career. But it takes part in institutionalised mass murder. And the complicity is shared by the front line soldier and even the girls working the computer that fires the guns.
This isn't equality. This is exploitation. The army has always has cocked things up. It has done so again. It is making thousands of soldiers redundant and now there are not enough left to let the politicians flex their muscles.
I read with horror that the government is still reviewing the extent to which women should be sent to the front line. Of course none of our leaders has ever been in a front line. Almost as terrible is an invention described once in the New Statesman. Luminous toothpaste designed so that motorists can see pedestrians at night by their luminous smile. Or what about the Hungarian condom which plays the Internationale “Arise ye Workers” at the appropriate moment? But it is the Darwin Awards which year by year produce the highest amazement quotient.
They often list spectacular deaths. Like Krystof Arzinsky, a polish farmer who was drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and test their strengths. They clubbed each other with frozen swedes, then one man grabbed a chainsaw and cut off his foot. “That's nothing,” said Arzinsky, grabbed the saw and cut off his head.
Toughness contests are a traditional part of Polish life. Participants even wear a special toughness hat.
Then there was the year the Darwins included a court report of the murder trial of three friends. They began their contest by hammering nails into their own flesh. One dared another to chop his hand off. The other hacked at the hand and then put his head on a chopping block and challenged a friend to cut it off. He did. Alas, it was their singing of a folk song, “Roll the head of a giant”, which woke the neighbours and brought the contest to an end.
Speaking as a golf widower, I am alarmed by the number of people who die on a golf course. I was particularly struck by the man who was caught short on a golf course and relieved himself up a tree which was struck by lightning. The electricity travelled up the stream of urine and electrocuted him.
BOTHERED GOD.......
I yield to no one in my admiration for Kevin Myers who this week mused on the sad fact that the good never inspire us the way evil does:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-the-good-never-inspire-us-the-way-evil-does-2831126.html
And from Wales...
Church leaders have launched an investigation after a vicar burnt pages from the Bible. The Bishop of Bangor branded the actions of an old friend of mine, the Reverend Geraint ap Iorwerth, as “disrespectful”. Rev ap Iorwerth, of St Peter ad Vincula in Pennal, near Machynlleth, cut up pages from the King James' Bible to mark its 400th anniversary, but also to take out texts which he said revealed a “cruel and vile God”. He said he had received “incredible” support after unveiling the artwork last week. He said: “I find it highly offensive people would think I have given my life to serving that type of God and that I would regard the words of the King James Bible as sacred truth."
Yori believed God was a lady. He was certainly no gentleman
Alas, in this brave new world there is an epidemic of squinting. Face to face rather than eye to eye and back to back rather than looking in the same direction. The embittered wife of a friend of mine who surprised us all by running off with an actress warned me that she would never speak to me again if I had anything to do with her husband. I had to tell her if I only socialised with those of my friends still living with their wives I would have no one to speak to.
That is not quite true. I only said it to cheer her up. In fact I was pleasantly surprised to discover how many of my friends are happily married. There are still some reasons for cheer. We have a decent champagne with Sunday lunch now that it's half price in the Co-op, and I suppose the fact you can buy champagne in the Co-op is a sign of progress.
Not everything has a bright side. I was horrified this week to read that in the US army there are women snipers.
My former RSM “Tibby” Britten, who put the fear of death into generations of soldiers, had charge of a training course of officer cadets, who, although they are not commissioned, are always called 'Sir'. He used to tell them, “ I will call you,sir and you will call me sir. The difference is you will mean it.“
The purpose of what is now called bullying in the army was simple. It was to make a soldier more afraid of his own NCOs than he was of the enemy. We are now told that this is disgraceful. That harsh discipline robs soldiers of their dignity. That we must be kinder to the young men who fight for us.
May I, as an old soldier, say that this is rubbish. The trade these young people have chosen to follow is war. I admire our fighting men but, though their reasons may be noble, war is the most disgraceful activity on the planet. It is persuading young men to dress in funny clothes and kill total strangers who have never done them a lick of harm. It has no dignity; and kindness in training is misplaced.Unfortunately the love of battle is hard wired into our youth.
You will find very little of kindness in the training of our elite fighting units.
Although I believe the Second World War was a just war, very few wars are necessary. The first world war was caused by the conceit of the Kaiser and I cannot think of any other war this century that wasn't the result of political mismanagement.
So given those views it must follow that I am totally opposed to women who are the givers of life being involved in taking it. It looks as though we are once again playing “Catchup”. The Ministry of Defence has a series of non-physical tests which women will find easier to pass.
I loved the army. If I hadn't been sent to prison I would have made it my career. But it takes part in institutionalised mass murder. And the complicity is shared by the front line soldier and even the girls working the computer that fires the guns.
This isn't equality. This is exploitation. The army has always has cocked things up. It has done so again. It is making thousands of soldiers redundant and now there are not enough left to let the politicians flex their muscles.
I read with horror that the government is still reviewing the extent to which women should be sent to the front line. Of course none of our leaders has ever been in a front line. Almost as terrible is an invention described once in the New Statesman. Luminous toothpaste designed so that motorists can see pedestrians at night by their luminous smile. Or what about the Hungarian condom which plays the Internationale “Arise ye Workers” at the appropriate moment? But it is the Darwin Awards which year by year produce the highest amazement quotient.
They often list spectacular deaths. Like Krystof Arzinsky, a polish farmer who was drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and test their strengths. They clubbed each other with frozen swedes, then one man grabbed a chainsaw and cut off his foot. “That's nothing,” said Arzinsky, grabbed the saw and cut off his head.
Toughness contests are a traditional part of Polish life. Participants even wear a special toughness hat.
Then there was the year the Darwins included a court report of the murder trial of three friends. They began their contest by hammering nails into their own flesh. One dared another to chop his hand off. The other hacked at the hand and then put his head on a chopping block and challenged a friend to cut it off. He did. Alas, it was their singing of a folk song, “Roll the head of a giant”, which woke the neighbours and brought the contest to an end.
Speaking as a golf widower, I am alarmed by the number of people who die on a golf course. I was particularly struck by the man who was caught short on a golf course and relieved himself up a tree which was struck by lightning. The electricity travelled up the stream of urine and electrocuted him.
BOTHERED GOD.......
I yield to no one in my admiration for Kevin Myers who this week mused on the sad fact that the good never inspire us the way evil does:
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-the-good-never-inspire-us-the-way-evil-does-2831126.html
And from Wales...
Church leaders have launched an investigation after a vicar burnt pages from the Bible. The Bishop of Bangor branded the actions of an old friend of mine, the Reverend Geraint ap Iorwerth, as “disrespectful”. Rev ap Iorwerth, of St Peter ad Vincula in Pennal, near Machynlleth, cut up pages from the King James' Bible to mark its 400th anniversary, but also to take out texts which he said revealed a “cruel and vile God”. He said he had received “incredible” support after unveiling the artwork last week. He said: “I find it highly offensive people would think I have given my life to serving that type of God and that I would regard the words of the King James Bible as sacred truth."
Yori believed God was a lady. He was certainly no gentleman
Friday, 22 July 2011
CHINESE CRACKERS?
Rupert the Red Faced Magnate doesn't know the half of it. Most humble day of his life? What about me, matey?
Was it something I said ? Perhaps it was their Prime Minister I offended when I suggested that after buying America he came to this country looking for a bargain. But I must say I thought China was over-reacting when I opened the emails this morning and read this:
“I was just wondering whether you knew your blog page is blocked in China? I always have to wait before I'm somewhere such as Hongkong, where they're quite indiscriminate, before I can have look. Have you any idea why this might be (you being blocked in China, not Hongkong being indiscriminate)?
Tom”
This to a man who celebrates the Chinese New Year with double portions of Chop Suey.......
Cutting me off from my millions of eager readers in the Middle Kingdom! I who have just paid a mandarin's ransom creating an Oriental Garden at the back of the house. Be fair. I didn't know what a Chinese Garden looks like and I do have three Buddhas, including one that lights up at night. If that doesn't give a chap fair entry into the Kingdom of Ch'in, I don't know what would.
As it happens, it's not the first run in I have had with the Red Perilous. I was underbidder on Ebay for an embalmed penis that was on offer last year. Not that I would have had much use for one but I just wanted to be ableto mention it as a conversation opener. I understand they are considered in China to be very lucky, though not, I imagine, for the original owner.
Or maybe he is upset by the fiver a month I bung to this lady in Devon, vicar's wife, who runs a charity saving moon bears from the Chinese farmers who breed them in circumstances of great cruelty.
Goodness knows who is going to bar me after this week's rant which is about those sub-eitors who coin cliches for a living. You know the sort of thing: “Arab Spring”, “At this moment in time“, “At the end of the day”.
Or the one that really gets up my nose: “Underclass”.
Nothing new about the underclass of course. In the 15th century it even had a name. It was the Society of the Coquillard, and the Parisian poet Francois Villon wrote about it. There was a similar society in England in Elizabethan times with its own king and language. In the 18th century the novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding wrote both amusingly about them in Tom Jones and passionately on the same subject in numerous essays and pamphlets. Daniel Defoe turned them into soft porn in Moll Flanders. Henry Mayhew’s mid-19th century tract “London Labour and the London Poor” is one of the ultimate horror stories. The underclass was the stuff of Dickens and the endless concern of William Cobbett.
Disraeli coined the phrase 'two nations', formed by a different breeding, the rich and the poor. In the forties and fifties I was one of dozens of reporters forever doing investigations for papers like the Mirror and the Sunday People into prostitution and the lot of the underprivileged, as we then more politely knew them.
I am not suggesting that poverty isn't demeaning. But it's not the poor who are causing the trouble. Any troublemaker I have met has got more spare cash than I have.
The structure and the disciplines of society have broken down. Reporters today are writing about the grandchildren of the lawless underclass I wrote about. Three generations of anything goes. What else do you expect?
I once interviewed a street girl who was then earning four times my salary, having previously worked in a cake shop for three pounds a week. I asked what had brought about her downfall.
“Common sense,” she said. “Would you spend eight hours a day, six days a week, on your feet for three quid when you can pick up a hundred quid on your back?”
Cobbett said his greatest wish was to see England’s industrious, laborious, kind and virtuous people as happy as they were when he was a child. In fact they weren't happy. Perhaps they never will be. Economists tell us full employment would be disastrous. We will always have an underclass and it has only grown because the population is bigger. I am not saying relative poverty isn't dreadful. But it's not as bad as it was in the thirties and the forties. Surely the truth is that people don't cope as well.
Many people get by. They don't have any extra money.They have to budget. My parents lived like that for most of their lives. Even in the fifties every penny of my salary was spoken for and put in a series of envelopes.
Churchill with his Family Allowances Bill, Lloyd George with his dole and pensions, Aneurin Bevan with his health service and Lord Beveridge’s report on social security should surely between them have eliminated both poverty and the underclass if it were just a matter of economics.
Isn't the real reason that the discipline society exerted on itself started to crumble in the fifites and vanished altogether in the sixties? And the sort of respectable tradesman, who, when I was a kid, set the tone of our council estate, has left to live in a house he has bought?
Isn't it another fault that expectations have risen at a time when there is no economic reason they should?
I remember an ITV programme “The Big Story”. It featured a Scottish single parent whose children were running wild. In a home much smarter than mine, made up and smartly dressed and suffering from a hangover, she sat in an armchair while the kids went out for breakfast - four packets of crisps. Any wonder they were disfunctional?
JARGON
The assumption of the plain English Society is that people wish to be free of jargon.
It ain’t necessarily so. Hammrersmith and Fulham’s planning department once sent out an amendment to their district plan. It read:
“Line 5. Delete bottle neck. Insert localised Capacity Deficiencies.”
They also wrote a letter which contained this little pearl:
“It is considered that further investigations should be carried out into this property before a recommendation could be made concerning the possibility of undertaking a feasability study.”
And what about this British Telecom signal? “.......it would be useful if regions could maintain a temporising stance with minimal extension” - which, I take it, means “lean on your shovels till you hear different”.
South Cambridge Council once dropped its jargon and hurriedly picked it up again after a tenant in rent arrears received this from them: “Let me make one thing clear; if for any reason we don’t get your money you will be out of that house so fast, it’ll make your head spin.”
To revert into jargon, when that letter arrived the body waste came into accelerated conjunction with the air distribution and ventilation mode.
But jargon covers a multitude of virtues. Nicknames are the jargon equivalent of pebbles on the beach of conversation. Teenagers use jargon to share secrets. And racing would be no fun without their argot which is a mixture of Romany, Yiddish and Back Slang. “Abakia. Glimp the corrie on your tuckers“ means ”Quick, come here. Look at that girl behind you.”
We need our jargon, don’t we? It means our words are understood by a select few, rather in the way that royal courts spoke in French. We attack establishment jargon; but journalists too have their own language.
On the Mirror we once concocted the perfect tabloid intro. It was: “Glamorous grannie Ethel Bloggs (38. 26. 37) wept last night when she learned her vicar had eloped with her budgie. Tracker dogs have been called in.“
I swear I once received a letter from the old GPO which read: “If you do not receive this letter you should immediately contact the GPO.” And there was a famous nuclear shelter for councillors at Yeoville. It had an outside loo.
I treasure a book which invented new jargon for teenagers. Burgacide was when your hamburger slid between the bars of the barbecue onto the hot coals. Choctasy describes the joy of discovering a second layer of chocolates when you have eaten the first. Academe is practically 100 per cent jargon and aren’t the bureaucrats playing a game to see who can out-jargon the other?
Army jargon is like a geography and history lesson combined. 'Backshesh' came from the desert campaigns of General Gordon’s day; service on the China Station brought 'char' - Chinese for tea. And some jargon has history. Did you know that in restoration England 'Tory' was the nickname of Irish outlaws?
FOOTNOTE: A word of thanks to my old broadcasting chum Phil Rickman who broke the deafening silence about my latest book, The Man Who Painted In Welsh, the biography of Sir Kyffin Williams, RA. He has invited me to talk about it on his books programme on Radio Wales at 5.30pm this Sunday. My old foe the Welsh Arts Council will hate that.
Was it something I said ? Perhaps it was their Prime Minister I offended when I suggested that after buying America he came to this country looking for a bargain. But I must say I thought China was over-reacting when I opened the emails this morning and read this:
“I was just wondering whether you knew your blog page is blocked in China? I always have to wait before I'm somewhere such as Hongkong, where they're quite indiscriminate, before I can have look. Have you any idea why this might be (you being blocked in China, not Hongkong being indiscriminate)?
Tom”
This to a man who celebrates the Chinese New Year with double portions of Chop Suey.......
Cutting me off from my millions of eager readers in the Middle Kingdom! I who have just paid a mandarin's ransom creating an Oriental Garden at the back of the house. Be fair. I didn't know what a Chinese Garden looks like and I do have three Buddhas, including one that lights up at night. If that doesn't give a chap fair entry into the Kingdom of Ch'in, I don't know what would.
As it happens, it's not the first run in I have had with the Red Perilous. I was underbidder on Ebay for an embalmed penis that was on offer last year. Not that I would have had much use for one but I just wanted to be ableto mention it as a conversation opener. I understand they are considered in China to be very lucky, though not, I imagine, for the original owner.
Or maybe he is upset by the fiver a month I bung to this lady in Devon, vicar's wife, who runs a charity saving moon bears from the Chinese farmers who breed them in circumstances of great cruelty.
Goodness knows who is going to bar me after this week's rant which is about those sub-eitors who coin cliches for a living. You know the sort of thing: “Arab Spring”, “At this moment in time“, “At the end of the day”.
Or the one that really gets up my nose: “Underclass”.
Nothing new about the underclass of course. In the 15th century it even had a name. It was the Society of the Coquillard, and the Parisian poet Francois Villon wrote about it. There was a similar society in England in Elizabethan times with its own king and language. In the 18th century the novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding wrote both amusingly about them in Tom Jones and passionately on the same subject in numerous essays and pamphlets. Daniel Defoe turned them into soft porn in Moll Flanders. Henry Mayhew’s mid-19th century tract “London Labour and the London Poor” is one of the ultimate horror stories. The underclass was the stuff of Dickens and the endless concern of William Cobbett.
Disraeli coined the phrase 'two nations', formed by a different breeding, the rich and the poor. In the forties and fifties I was one of dozens of reporters forever doing investigations for papers like the Mirror and the Sunday People into prostitution and the lot of the underprivileged, as we then more politely knew them.
I am not suggesting that poverty isn't demeaning. But it's not the poor who are causing the trouble. Any troublemaker I have met has got more spare cash than I have.
The structure and the disciplines of society have broken down. Reporters today are writing about the grandchildren of the lawless underclass I wrote about. Three generations of anything goes. What else do you expect?
I once interviewed a street girl who was then earning four times my salary, having previously worked in a cake shop for three pounds a week. I asked what had brought about her downfall.
“Common sense,” she said. “Would you spend eight hours a day, six days a week, on your feet for three quid when you can pick up a hundred quid on your back?”
Cobbett said his greatest wish was to see England’s industrious, laborious, kind and virtuous people as happy as they were when he was a child. In fact they weren't happy. Perhaps they never will be. Economists tell us full employment would be disastrous. We will always have an underclass and it has only grown because the population is bigger. I am not saying relative poverty isn't dreadful. But it's not as bad as it was in the thirties and the forties. Surely the truth is that people don't cope as well.
Many people get by. They don't have any extra money.They have to budget. My parents lived like that for most of their lives. Even in the fifties every penny of my salary was spoken for and put in a series of envelopes.
Churchill with his Family Allowances Bill, Lloyd George with his dole and pensions, Aneurin Bevan with his health service and Lord Beveridge’s report on social security should surely between them have eliminated both poverty and the underclass if it were just a matter of economics.
Isn't the real reason that the discipline society exerted on itself started to crumble in the fifites and vanished altogether in the sixties? And the sort of respectable tradesman, who, when I was a kid, set the tone of our council estate, has left to live in a house he has bought?
Isn't it another fault that expectations have risen at a time when there is no economic reason they should?
I remember an ITV programme “The Big Story”. It featured a Scottish single parent whose children were running wild. In a home much smarter than mine, made up and smartly dressed and suffering from a hangover, she sat in an armchair while the kids went out for breakfast - four packets of crisps. Any wonder they were disfunctional?
JARGON
The assumption of the plain English Society is that people wish to be free of jargon.
It ain’t necessarily so. Hammrersmith and Fulham’s planning department once sent out an amendment to their district plan. It read:
“Line 5. Delete bottle neck. Insert localised Capacity Deficiencies.”
They also wrote a letter which contained this little pearl:
“It is considered that further investigations should be carried out into this property before a recommendation could be made concerning the possibility of undertaking a feasability study.”
And what about this British Telecom signal? “.......it would be useful if regions could maintain a temporising stance with minimal extension” - which, I take it, means “lean on your shovels till you hear different”.
South Cambridge Council once dropped its jargon and hurriedly picked it up again after a tenant in rent arrears received this from them: “Let me make one thing clear; if for any reason we don’t get your money you will be out of that house so fast, it’ll make your head spin.”
To revert into jargon, when that letter arrived the body waste came into accelerated conjunction with the air distribution and ventilation mode.
But jargon covers a multitude of virtues. Nicknames are the jargon equivalent of pebbles on the beach of conversation. Teenagers use jargon to share secrets. And racing would be no fun without their argot which is a mixture of Romany, Yiddish and Back Slang. “Abakia. Glimp the corrie on your tuckers“ means ”Quick, come here. Look at that girl behind you.”
We need our jargon, don’t we? It means our words are understood by a select few, rather in the way that royal courts spoke in French. We attack establishment jargon; but journalists too have their own language.
On the Mirror we once concocted the perfect tabloid intro. It was: “Glamorous grannie Ethel Bloggs (38. 26. 37) wept last night when she learned her vicar had eloped with her budgie. Tracker dogs have been called in.“
I swear I once received a letter from the old GPO which read: “If you do not receive this letter you should immediately contact the GPO.” And there was a famous nuclear shelter for councillors at Yeoville. It had an outside loo.
I treasure a book which invented new jargon for teenagers. Burgacide was when your hamburger slid between the bars of the barbecue onto the hot coals. Choctasy describes the joy of discovering a second layer of chocolates when you have eaten the first. Academe is practically 100 per cent jargon and aren’t the bureaucrats playing a game to see who can out-jargon the other?
Army jargon is like a geography and history lesson combined. 'Backshesh' came from the desert campaigns of General Gordon’s day; service on the China Station brought 'char' - Chinese for tea. And some jargon has history. Did you know that in restoration England 'Tory' was the nickname of Irish outlaws?
FOOTNOTE: A word of thanks to my old broadcasting chum Phil Rickman who broke the deafening silence about my latest book, The Man Who Painted In Welsh, the biography of Sir Kyffin Williams, RA. He has invited me to talk about it on his books programme on Radio Wales at 5.30pm this Sunday. My old foe the Welsh Arts Council will hate that.
Friday, 15 July 2011
FOR MOG
We are a great grandfather. What is even more astonishing my child bride is a great grandmother (the children deny the step bit). My lovely grand-daughter Laura, with some help from her husband Tomos (a fact which has largely gone unnoticed by my women folk), recruited you, Morgan Glanmor Livingstone into the family at 9.47 on Tuesday morning, weighing 8lb 8oz.
A large name for such a small scrap but you will no doubt grow into it. Our family have a choice of some pretty exotic names. Let’s face it we have the choice of some pretty exotic people. Since Sir John Skydmore married Alice, the daughter of Owain Glyndwr, the Welsh rebel in the 15th century, the ancestry has been swelled by four kings (including the Welsh Arthur) a saint and a sister of the Virgin Mary. According to ‘A history of Wales’ by J.E. Lloyd, the overnight declaration is as follows:
Owain Glyndwr, Grufud Fuchan, Philip ab Ifor, Llywelyn, last Prince, Gruffud, King John, and then nine generations to Rhodri Mawr, King of all Wales. By Grufud Fuchan’s marriage to Elena the family also descends from Grufud Maelor II, Madog (thought by some to have discovered America), Grufud Maelor I, Owain Gwynedd, then by seven generations to Rhodri Mawr, . So that is Four of a kind, Kings Up and not a bad starter as a poker hand. The Historia o Uched Dewi in Jesus College goes further. Dauyd vab Sant vab Keredig, vab Kuneda, vab Edern, vab Padarnn Peisrud, vab Deil, vab Gordeil, vab Dwuyn, vab Onut, vab Aullach, vab Eugen, vab Eudoleu, vab chwaer Veir Wyryr, van Iessu Grist. Cannot say fairer than that and under the circumstances he got off lightly with Morgan Glanmor.
Mog, you have been born, alas, into a dustbin that was once a civilised country. We have discovered in recent years that our MPs are venal, our police force is corrupt, our legal system pure slapstick, the banks dishonest, the media juvenile, the arts a pantomime, and commerce is demonstrably evil. Only our soldiers emerge with honour and they are being wasted in silly wars. We are witnessing the Decline and Fall. We lack only a Gibbon, and Morgan Glanmor Livingstone is the perfect name for a historian. Your timing is perfect and my birth present to you is a perfect subject for your research. King Arthur is among ypur ancestors, AND ARTHUR WAS WELSH whatever the TV dramatists claim.
Recent scholarship identifies the historical “Arthur” (the bear) which was the Goidel Welsh battle name of Owain Dantgwyn, the son of Uther Pendragon, who ruled Powys until 500 AD from Viroconium, near Wrotexter in Shropshire. Our family crest is a bear’s paw and there he is, swinging from our family tree
The Grail origins are in the Celtic myth of Tuatha de Danaan, literally The People of the Goddess Diana who populated Ireland before the coming of the Milesian Gaels. Their history is called Echtrae, Visits to Other Lands. Part is chronicled in Cleabhar Gabhala Erenn, The Book of Invasions, and more orally in folk tales which were copied by the early Christian monks. The Top God was Dagda and his daughter was Brigit (parenthetically the river that ran through the grounds of our house on Anglesey was the Braint, which is the Welsh Brigit; on Wales becoming Christian Brigit's wells became the wells of St Mary).
To resume. The Tuatha came from four cities and each city had a treasure. The Spear of Lug and the cauldron of Dagda were two of them. The cauldron was a deep, wide dish or platter which automatically refilled itself with whatever was the favourite food of its owner. In Welsh history quoted by Giraldus Cambrensis, it became the ‘Dysgl’ (platter) of Rhydderch, a 6th century King of Strathclyde. The list which contained the Dysgl also contained a
drinking vessel, the Horn of Bran, which gave whatever drink its owner desired.
There was a migration from Celtic Britain to Amorica (Brittany) to escape the Anglo-Saxon invasion - even today a Welsh speaker can understand the Breton language. Naturally the folk tales went with them, including the Arthurian saga - Arthur, Parsifal (Perceval), Lancelot and Gawain, who were originally Welsh knights.
These legends were pillaged by the Troubadour poets, namely Chrétien de Troyes in 1180 in a poem called Perceval, Wolfram Jan Esenbach in his poem Parsifal, and the Diderot Perlesurus, a prose romance from Northern France.
The Welsh version was enshrined as Peredur in the Mabinogion. Lancelot's story was part of a vast compilation known as the Vulgate Cycle which also contained ‘The Quest del St Graol’, and the last two books of Malory's Morte d'Arthur.
All these source books were written within 50 years of 1180 and they all made the same mistake. In Old French the word for ‘horn’ and ‘body’ was the same, ‘cors’ (they are similar now, cor and corps) so the Horn of Bran which bore the single word ‘Beneiz’ changed from the Blessed Horn to the Blessed Body, the Corpus Christi, the vessel that carried the all sustaining wafer.
Lug's Spear became the Lance that Pierced Christ's side and the platter became the goblet in which his blood from the wound was caught.
The Celts are at the root of many things. A book ‘Where
Troy Once Stood’ insists that Celts were the tribes of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
I should caution you that practically every family whose ancestors lived in Tudor Wales can make similar genealogical claims to ours.The Welsh historian Gwyn Alf Williams said he would not trust any Welsh history pre-Henry VIII (who, by the way, was Welsh and was responsible for the Act of Union which still upsets Welsh nationalists. )
WELCOME, MY GREAT GRANDSON TO THE MAD WORLD YOU HAVE INHERITED..... and it is getting worse. The recent referendum on the Assembly’s law-making powers cost almost £6m, according to a new report. The report, by the Electoral Commission, showed the entire spending on the campaign and count, including its own expenses on promoting the referendum and the costs of counting officers in local authorities, came to £5.89m. .
Decent pot but hardly a full house. Only 24% of people in Wales were aware of the referendum in January 2011.
A large name for such a small scrap but you will no doubt grow into it. Our family have a choice of some pretty exotic names. Let’s face it we have the choice of some pretty exotic people. Since Sir John Skydmore married Alice, the daughter of Owain Glyndwr, the Welsh rebel in the 15th century, the ancestry has been swelled by four kings (including the Welsh Arthur) a saint and a sister of the Virgin Mary. According to ‘A history of Wales’ by J.E. Lloyd, the overnight declaration is as follows:
Owain Glyndwr, Grufud Fuchan, Philip ab Ifor, Llywelyn, last Prince, Gruffud, King John, and then nine generations to Rhodri Mawr, King of all Wales. By Grufud Fuchan’s marriage to Elena the family also descends from Grufud Maelor II, Madog (thought by some to have discovered America), Grufud Maelor I, Owain Gwynedd, then by seven generations to Rhodri Mawr, . So that is Four of a kind, Kings Up and not a bad starter as a poker hand. The Historia o Uched Dewi in Jesus College goes further. Dauyd vab Sant vab Keredig, vab Kuneda, vab Edern, vab Padarnn Peisrud, vab Deil, vab Gordeil, vab Dwuyn, vab Onut, vab Aullach, vab Eugen, vab Eudoleu, vab chwaer Veir Wyryr, van Iessu Grist. Cannot say fairer than that and under the circumstances he got off lightly with Morgan Glanmor.
Mog, you have been born, alas, into a dustbin that was once a civilised country. We have discovered in recent years that our MPs are venal, our police force is corrupt, our legal system pure slapstick, the banks dishonest, the media juvenile, the arts a pantomime, and commerce is demonstrably evil. Only our soldiers emerge with honour and they are being wasted in silly wars. We are witnessing the Decline and Fall. We lack only a Gibbon, and Morgan Glanmor Livingstone is the perfect name for a historian. Your timing is perfect and my birth present to you is a perfect subject for your research. King Arthur is among ypur ancestors, AND ARTHUR WAS WELSH whatever the TV dramatists claim.
Recent scholarship identifies the historical “Arthur” (the bear) which was the Goidel Welsh battle name of Owain Dantgwyn, the son of Uther Pendragon, who ruled Powys until 500 AD from Viroconium, near Wrotexter in Shropshire. Our family crest is a bear’s paw and there he is, swinging from our family tree
The Grail origins are in the Celtic myth of Tuatha de Danaan, literally The People of the Goddess Diana who populated Ireland before the coming of the Milesian Gaels. Their history is called Echtrae, Visits to Other Lands. Part is chronicled in Cleabhar Gabhala Erenn, The Book of Invasions, and more orally in folk tales which were copied by the early Christian monks. The Top God was Dagda and his daughter was Brigit (parenthetically the river that ran through the grounds of our house on Anglesey was the Braint, which is the Welsh Brigit; on Wales becoming Christian Brigit's wells became the wells of St Mary).
To resume. The Tuatha came from four cities and each city had a treasure. The Spear of Lug and the cauldron of Dagda were two of them. The cauldron was a deep, wide dish or platter which automatically refilled itself with whatever was the favourite food of its owner. In Welsh history quoted by Giraldus Cambrensis, it became the ‘Dysgl’ (platter) of Rhydderch, a 6th century King of Strathclyde. The list which contained the Dysgl also contained a
drinking vessel, the Horn of Bran, which gave whatever drink its owner desired.
There was a migration from Celtic Britain to Amorica (Brittany) to escape the Anglo-Saxon invasion - even today a Welsh speaker can understand the Breton language. Naturally the folk tales went with them, including the Arthurian saga - Arthur, Parsifal (Perceval), Lancelot and Gawain, who were originally Welsh knights.
These legends were pillaged by the Troubadour poets, namely Chrétien de Troyes in 1180 in a poem called Perceval, Wolfram Jan Esenbach in his poem Parsifal, and the Diderot Perlesurus, a prose romance from Northern France.
The Welsh version was enshrined as Peredur in the Mabinogion. Lancelot's story was part of a vast compilation known as the Vulgate Cycle which also contained ‘The Quest del St Graol’, and the last two books of Malory's Morte d'Arthur.
All these source books were written within 50 years of 1180 and they all made the same mistake. In Old French the word for ‘horn’ and ‘body’ was the same, ‘cors’ (they are similar now, cor and corps) so the Horn of Bran which bore the single word ‘Beneiz’ changed from the Blessed Horn to the Blessed Body, the Corpus Christi, the vessel that carried the all sustaining wafer.
Lug's Spear became the Lance that Pierced Christ's side and the platter became the goblet in which his blood from the wound was caught.
The Celts are at the root of many things. A book ‘Where
Troy Once Stood’ insists that Celts were the tribes of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
I should caution you that practically every family whose ancestors lived in Tudor Wales can make similar genealogical claims to ours.The Welsh historian Gwyn Alf Williams said he would not trust any Welsh history pre-Henry VIII (who, by the way, was Welsh and was responsible for the Act of Union which still upsets Welsh nationalists. )
WELCOME, MY GREAT GRANDSON TO THE MAD WORLD YOU HAVE INHERITED..... and it is getting worse. The recent referendum on the Assembly’s law-making powers cost almost £6m, according to a new report. The report, by the Electoral Commission, showed the entire spending on the campaign and count, including its own expenses on promoting the referendum and the costs of counting officers in local authorities, came to £5.89m. .
Decent pot but hardly a full house. Only 24% of people in Wales were aware of the referendum in January 2011.
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