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

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

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.

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.

NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

Did Prince Charles “summon” Cabinet Ministers or did he “ invite” them seems to me a far more important question that the Oxford comma.
Obviously he invited them, and good manners assured their attendance. An invitation would never have achieved front page status in the left wing trade to which I increasingly regret devoting my life. In my defence, I have to insist that the newspapermen of my day were neither left nor right wing. After meeting so many practitioners of the shabby trade of politics we were all dodos, the defiantly wingless birds.
For most of my life I have been a reluctant monarchist; approving the office but loathing the occupants of any post-Plantagenet dynasty.
It’s a toss-up which was the worse, the feckless, self-indulgent Stuarts or their successors, the Hanoverians, the last two of whom were spectacularly dreadful: George V let his relations die to safeguard his job and Edward VIII was a pro-Nazi and a traitor to his country.
I think the Windsors may turn out to be the golden dynasty, but only because they have been saved by their womenfolk.
I like to think the stories about the Queen Mother being the daughter of a housemaid are true. Certainly she introduced a better bloodline into the royal nursery. Diana might have been as mad as a hatter but her progeny have been a credit to her. Camilla and the new Duchess have been splendid additions. I would not hesitate to breed from the Cambridges.
But to return to our next king. He was a boy when we met, he making his first royal progress as the Earl of Chester, me writing about it for The Times. I was so impressed by him I came within an ace of writing to the Queen to tell her that her lad done good.
My old friend Charles Quant, who worked closely with him in his charities, endlessly sang his praises ; the son of a friend, wounded in Afghanistan who can scarcely grant human status to anyone who is not an Argyll and Sutherland Highlander was visited by the Prince in hospital. Wales spent twenty minutes at his bedside and he said it was just like talking to an army chum. Coming from him, that is the equivalent of a Nobel Prize.
The Prince, of course, with his demands for special cooking times for his breakfast eggs, for special cushions and his insistence on a special bathroom tumbler, not to mention his forest of butlers and valets, comes across as spoilt. Looking back over his predecessors, it seems that comes with the territory.
Seeking knowledge about their departments by inviting ministers and their aides seems to me swotting on kingship and wholly admirable.
I feel very ashamed that I declined an invitation to meet him on the royal yacht when it was moored off Anglesey.
.LETTERS TO AND FROM THE EDITOR
Subject: spring cleaning
First of the month, and exactly half-way through the year.
As good a time as any to do the PC housekeeping - if you are not doing it regularly (and weekly is best).
MY RESPONSE
DEAR ….............,
I have tried disc clean up and defragmenting. Then I got carried away and removed all unwanted shortcuts. Then I thought I would go to control panel and clear away programmes that were rarely used. And for some reason the bloody computer is now running slower and I am going to have to pay a computer mechanic bags of gold to put it right. And that was only the beginning. I have made a small Chinese garden at the side of the house. I thought it would be nice if it were visited by birds. That meant putting back the hanging basket brackets I removed because they didn't seem Chinese; and that meant stripping off the old Rawlplugs and screws. In the process of doing this the screwdriver slipped and severely cut my thumb. When Celia had bandaged it I thought I would repot the pond plants in larger pots. Unfortunately I forgot to line the pots with hessian so the soil leaked out and discoloured the pond. I had just paid £350 for an ultra violet filter but when I examined it I found it had blocked. I forgot how to unblock it so spent a day looking in vain for the instruction manual. I thought I would calm my nerves by cleaning the garden furniture which has acquired a green mold. The pressure hose was not totally efficient so I thought I would attach the plastic container which contains shampoo. Unfortunately in screwing it in I managed to break the neck of the bottle. I consoled myself by proposing to replant three shrubs from their ugly plastic pots into nice ceramic ones. I knew I had plenty of compost and it was a job where it was difficult to think of anything going wrong because I had done it several times before.
So I went to the shed for the compost and when I opened the door all the tools fell out, nearly decapitating me. I stepped over them to the corner of the shed where I keep compost. And of course the compost I wanted was beneath the non-acid compost I bought when I potted a magnolia - and the sterilised aqua compost and the bag of sand Ken the Carpenter left and the potting mixture chippings for the aloe and the lawn fertiliser. But when I had carried all the unwanted bags away to get to the bag I wanted - it was also non-acid compost because I had over ordered.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that when I went to replace the compost and buy the Hessian I spent money I can ill afford on two more Koi and a couple of Tench, the so-called Doctor Fish.
But when I went to pay my credit card wouldn't work.
Then along you come suggesting I should go through the whole bloody process again.
Kindly fall out (without prejudice).
The trouble began when a friend recommended Tesco Scotch undyed kippers and horseradish mustard.
“I have not had time to taste your bloody kippers. My nerves are in shreds in consequence of recent close encounters with my Koi fish. And it wasn't helped because my wife (until the lawyers open tomorrow) had filed the pond manual (see under) as "Guarantees" and denied all knowledge of it. Fortunately my daughter was visiting and put everything right in half an hour by the town hall clock. However, as soon as I have filed for divorce I will go on to Tesco’s to order a shoal of the kippers you were kind enough to recommend. I will also buy enough horseradish mustard to immolate my future ex-wife as an alternative to alimony. As Menken wisely observed, alimony is the ransom that the happy pay to the devil. He also said that adultery is the application of democracy to love, but we had better not go further into that.

PRESS RELATIONS 2011 STYLE

Interesting that a charge of bribing the Metropolitan police allows one to be arrested by appointment whereas a luckless underling is dragged out of bed in the early morning. Now that it has been admitted police bribes were authorised, it is not easy to believe that Rebekah Brooks was unaware of the Milly Dowler phone hacking. Newspaper executives of my day know that all payments over a thousand pounds have to be signed off by the editor.
After the murder of schoolgirl Sarah Payne, Ms Brooks was blamed by critics for driving paedophiles underground and inspiring mobs to run riot in Portsmouth.
Ms Brooks was vilified for publishing the names and photographs of known sex-offenders to protect children. Some police officers claimed her tactics were wrecking investigations. Tony Butler, the then chief constable of Gloucestershire police, denounced her for "grossly irresponsible" journalism. Media pundits accused her of trying to cash in on eight-year-old Sarah's death
It has been an article of faith with me that the half-hour programmes of Any Answers on R4 contain more perceptive thoughts than the hour of Any Questions which precedes it on Friday/Saturday.

So I wasn't surprised that the most sensible comment about the NoW disgrace came from a listener on the BBC's Home page Comment :

"Conspiracy theory: NoW suddenly releases information about police bribes. Why now? This news caused BskyB share prices to slump as the deal looks in jeopardy. Therefore making it cheaper for News International to buy!! A few journalists will be fired, bent cops go down, the plebs soon forget all about it and miss their Sunday pervy, so buy NoW again and Rupert gets BskyB for a bargain! "

Worth noting that the day after this perceptive comment appeared it was announced that shares in BskyB dropped by a billion pounds.
Dog has shown a gargantuan appetite for eating dog. The Guardian devoted 13 pages to the closure of the News of the World, The Times 11, another 10 pages in the Independent plus two in the “i”, eight in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph seven, six in the Mirror, four in the Sun, three in the Express which inevitably included a mention of Princess Diana and two pages in the Star. On the To-day programme Justin Rose, who must be the worst mannered interviewer in the history of broadcasting announced with astonishment that the programme had received more emails about the disgraceful imbalance of university entrants from comprehensive and fee paying schools, than it did than it did about the closure of the Sun. A more perceptive man might have seen a lesson in that. If memory serves rather fewer newspaper pages served to break the news of the outbreak of World War Two. A sad commentary that the closure of a shabby shop, a purveyor of the malign, should attract such attention when a single page sufficed to chronicle the closure of “Focus”and “Habitat”, a much greater loss to the public

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS 2011 STYLE

A council is firing all 6,500 of its employees, with a promise to re-hire them if they agree to a pay cut. Dismissal letters have been sent by Shropshire Council informing all staff they will lose their jobs on September 30. The letters go on to say employees can return the following day – but only if they consent to a 5.4 per cent pay cut.
Another Council has invited staff to wear woolly jumpers when dentral heating is cut to save heating costs.

CHINA IN A BULL SHOP

The Chinese Prime Minister is on another shoping trip, I see. Having bought America and most of Africa he has his eye on Ruritania - sorry, England. I expect he wants to buy us for the same reason those odd men buy old cars to renovate. I go part of the way myself. I used to buy vintage cars, have them restored at great expense and then sell them for a loss. Started with an Austin 7, in which, Wynford Vaughan Thomas told me, changing gear was like milking a mouse. Next came a Lagonda LG6, after which I mainlined on Series One Land Rovers. But I didn't make the same mistake (selling at a loss) with my MGTD. I loaned it to a chum who sold it for a £10,000 profit and I haven't seen him since.

Hope the Chinese PM does better with us.

I became especially fond of the race when I learned they had a caligraphic character for “horse farting in a field of corn”. Plainly the Chinese have a word for it - whatever IT is.

I do regret not visiting China. The country has fascinated me since, as a young soldier, I read Lin Yutang’s delightful book “The Importance of Living”. That led me to its poets and painters and scholars and to mavelllous novels like the Monkey Epic. It was an obsession shared with my much loved father-in-law, Dr Joe, who when he was in is late sixties learned Cantonese Chinese so that he could deal with his patients in Chinatown.At the same time he did a Spanish O level

Through him, I made many Chinese friends. One couldn’t speak English when he arrived in this country, aged 14. By the time he was sixteen he had gathered a harvest of distinctions in his “A” levels and, at 23, had a mathematical theorem named after him. He has just retired as a much respected professor.

His great-grandfather had been a bureaucrat in the court of the Manchus but had fallen under the spell of the opium which the Brtitish introduced. As a result, he became so poor that he could not afford to buy the classics which his son needed for school. His solution was to come out of his opium induced semi-coma to write out the entire canon of Chinese classics from memory.

I had another friend who served on the China squadron in the Thirties when public beheadings were a daily occurrence and the peasants were treated like animals. The Tiger of Chi’n, who unified China, decreed that the world started with his reign and ordered that every manuscript and painting be destroyed. Nothing changes. Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution had similar aims.

There are four Chinese languages. The ancient style in which the classics are written, the literary style, the business style and the colloquial. China’s system of law was formulated in the time of Yao (2357 to 2255 BC). It hs been described as “if not the most just and equitable, at least the most comprehensive, uniform and suited to the genius of the people for whom it is designed, perhaps of any that ever existed”.

To a Chinaman the civilised world is China. Anything or anyone beyond its frontiers is barbarian.
The Chinese are different. The Chinese see nothing wrong with slave labour; they believe Tibet is part of China. They are suspicious of the West and with good reason. We did our best to wreck the country by flooding it with opium. We also invaded Tibet, supporting the dictatorship of monks and aristocratic families from whom it had suffered throughout its history.

It has taken China twenty years to move from the Middle Ages to leading the 21st cenury world. Perhaps smog does hang over their capital. Very much like the Potteries in the sixties, in fact.



MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH........

Llandudno is my favourite seaside town – and its picture is on our calendar for July. Sadly it has allowed its links with Alice in Wonderland to decay. Alice was the daughter of the Dean of Christchurch College in Oxford who had a holiday home on the foreshore. Once a hotel, it is about to be demolished to make way for a block of flats. The statue of the White Rabbit nearby has been vandalised and the Rabbit Hole, a wonderful “museum” of Aliceobilia has closed.

For over a century the town has gloriously ignored the sad truth that Charles Dodgson is unlikely to have visited Llandudno - and certainly THAT book was neither written nor inspired there. One might just as well celebrate Arnold Bennett who set in Llandudno an exciting part of “The Card” where Denry is launched as an entrepreneur.

The truth is that the Alice link had long been an embrarrasment to the Nationalists who now run the country.Quite out of the question for a country where holidaymakers are handed leaflets saying “Enjoy your holiday but don’t come to Live Here”. Without its tourist industry North Wales would collapse. But Nationalists are still uneasy that their fame rests on an English second-homer.

Fantasy is essential to Nationalism. It enables people to forget that the road to Nationalism leads to the gates of Belsen. As Scotland prepares to go it alone I heard a so-called Scots intellectul explain that it is time to end English oppression. We stole their king, he said, and they remember Culloden. The fact is that all the Scottish regiments fought on the Hanoverian side and we got lumbered with an appalling drunken series of Jameses. But 'twas ever thus. Davy Crockett and the brave defenders of the Alamo from the rascally Mexicans were in fact American slave owners, reacting and rioting against Mexican legislation outlawing slavery.

Marching to the bottom of the hill.....

The generals have said we will only be able to afford to bomb Libya for another three months, which must be a comfort to Gaddafi.They have given similar assurances to the Taliban.
Used we not to shoot traitors who passed vital information to the enemy? But we must not be unkind. They are fighting to the last job
Mind you,Sam Johnson and I are as one in our view of that earlier war in the Falklands Isles when we had bombs to spare.. He said of our invasion in 1771:
“... What have we acquired? What, but a bleak and gloomy solitude, an island, thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter, and barren in summer; an island, which not even the southern savages have dignified with habitation; where a garrison must be kept in a state that contemplates with envy the exiles of Siberia; of which the expense will be perpetual, and the use only occasional. “
My much more modest contribution was to point out we had used a navy we no longer owned, to occupy an island we had given to British Coalite, and to confirm the right to be British of a population whose passports we had withdrawn.
So I find it odd I should warm to the words of an admiral who marched into Number 10 dressed up like Sir Joseph Porter in HMS Pinafore ”to stiffen Mrs Thatcher’s resolve to recapture the islands”, whilst pretending she was Elizabeth I.
Now the sandy admiral warns we would not be able to mount a force further than the other side of the Channel. That is fine by me. We know we can beat the French, who even lost the French Revolution, and I am all in favour of a ban on exporting our forces.

We won’t be happy until we stop pretending we are still Great Britain and enjoy the reality being little England, shorn even, thank the Lord, of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
We really must get out of the expensive habit of invasion. Look what it is costing the BBC to invade the North.
Alas, you cannot keep a bad idea down. The BBC borrowed £813m in a bond-deal to invade the North. Or, as they put it, ”finance a Broadcasting House redevelopment”. However you put it, they will have to pay it back with interest over the next 30 years. Or even longer. The renovation is already £20 million over budget and is running at least two years late, badgered by claims of lavish expenditure.
The BBC might not have had to borrow so much had it not sent 437 people to cover the Beijing Olympics – about 100 more than the number of British athletes taking part. Or spent £25,000 sending a remote-controlled model helicopter, equipped with a camera, flying over Broadcasting House for just two minutes. Part of a £3.9 million arts ‘celebration’ of the flagship. The BBC has also been criticised for spending millions on artwork - but you can’t keep a good overdraft down.
Or, as a BBC spokesman spun it: “The budget for the project was adjusted after the first phase of the redevelopment in 2006 to rebase the construction contract and incorporate changes in scope to accommodate new services like Arabic and Persian TV. The project is currently on schedule to be delivered within its approved budget.”
Relocation of the BBC’s regional headquarters includes the new £400 million base in Manchester and the £188 million construction of a new Scottish headquarters in Glasgow. The Salford base, which will house services such as Radio 5 Live and the sports department, involves the relocation of 1,500 staff from London.
Be prepared. The cost could spiral to £900 million.
Comfort is on hand. Caroline Thomson, the chief operating officer of the BBC has promised: “The days of mega-money are over. The BBC would never again sign contracts similar to the £18 million deal with Jonathan Ross.”
Except between themselves. Most of the suits in Mismanagement are paid far more than the Prime Minister.
And has anyone explained the reason for the move? It cannot be to bring jobs to the North. Departments are bringing their staffs up with them.

A THOUGHT- PROVOKING EMAIL FROM JOHN EDWARDS, COLUMNIST OF OUR PARISH

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people not computers and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why when the stars are out they are visible but when the lights are out they are invisible.

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE FUNNY FARM

In the U.S an enlghtened prison governor had an investigation of his prison population. Our M Poor as Ps are arguing about our prisoners. Perhaps they should read this:
" He found 75 percent [of the prisoners] were reading somewhere between the fourth- and sixth-grade levels. 90 percent never had a legal job. 90 percent were self-identified addicts. 80 percent were self-identified victims of sexual or physical violence as a child. 65 percent had been placed in a special-education class at some point. 75 percent were high school dropouts.


ALL’S WELL - ESPECIALLY WHEN IT ENDS

Tried the Dragon CD (see last week’s rant) on an old laptop and it worked perfectly. New laptop came with Norton anti spyware but as it was expiring I installed AVG. It found a tribe of nasties. I have a warranty with DELL on the laptop for a 4-year service. Tried all morning and got them at last at lunchtime. They said it will cost £65 to clean or £112 for a year. I said I have already paid but they said we are unable to find record of payment. Went to Dell Customer Support. Tried four times with no response. Rang AVG who sad it was a software error and they put me on to Virgin Digital Help. £100 a year. Bought in. They remotely accessed the computer, cleared some really heavy nasties and thoroughly examined the system. Took over an hour on remote control. Result bliss. And the charming young man who spent the afternoon in the innards of my computer was sitting at his desk – in the Philippines!
Summing up DELL isn’t the essence. Avoid. Their printers only take Dell cartridges so Dell can charge high prices for replacement cartridges.They also refuse to repay the costs of warranties
they don’t honour