skidmore's island

Budget? BODGET

2012-01-28T03:22:00.000-08:00

People who pay cash in hand to tradesmen are “diddling” the economy and diverting money from hospitals and schools. So says, Dave Hartnett, the country’s most senior taxman.

Let’s see now. That is the man who let Tesco off millions and had a mountain of meals on Big Business that Red Rum couldn’t jump over.

Listen up, Dave. The Government owes £1 trillion. Used, presumably, to pay £9.3 billion for the Olympic Games (including £23 million for the opening ceremony which stars a procession of underpaid nurses), plus several millions a year for upkeep of the sites; £32 billion for the HS2 High Speed train; heaven knows how many billions in bonuses for the bosses of nationalised banks; £1 billion to shore up the Houses of Parliament against chronic subsidence, its moral subsidence remaining unchecked; £150 billion to replace lost revenue on London properties placed offshore; £7.6 million owed by foreigners who reneged on their NHS bills and more millions lost on overseas students who renege on university loans; £400 million aid to Pakistan to be spent on protecting women; and £32 million to demolish Middlesbrough Arts Centre that nobody wanted.

There could be 750,000 (one in five) fraudulent council and housing association tenancies in England, vastly outstripping the Government’s estimate of 50,000.The cost to the taxpayer could be as much as £13.5 billion a year.

MPs get a £5 million subsidy on meals and drinks. BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten wants management NOT to cut £15m from the budget of the BBC's 40 local radio stations. The BBC spent more than £11 million ferrying staff around Britain and putting them up in flats and hotels during the past two years as part of its efforts to move production outside London. The £2 billion move to Media City in Salford has resulted in only 16 new jobs, eight of them temporary.

We are not alone. “Free” Scotland faces a bill of £140 billion as the cost of independence.

That’s life in austerity UK but hold your foot up...

If we are borrowing so much, surely there is more than enough left to buy 85-year-old Our Gracious and her 90-year-old ailing husband a £60 million yacht? Just think of the peerages it would earn. By the same token, two thirds of councils have slashed their budgets for elderly care homes and a third of our old people cannot afford basic household items. Wouldn’t Our Gracious, who promised to dedicate Her Life to Her People, prefer it if we spent the £60 million on caring for poverty stricken and sick pensioners? Look after the “trillions”, Dave, and the “pennies” will look after themselves.

There will always be an England - which when you see how it has turned out is a pity. There won’t always be a Scotland, which would be no bad thing, but the greatest loss would be Great Britain.

Great Britain came about as a result of an ill advised Scottish overseas venture. In 1698 William Paterson tried to launch a Scottish Trading Colony in the Americas. Its failure bankrupted the Company of Scotland and the Scottish nation. At Queen Anne’s urging, England paid off the Scottish debt. The price was joining the Union as a junior partner. England did not want it because it meant accepting Scottish MPs and the Scots did not want it because they valued their independence. The Scots Establishment can hardly be blamed for trying to dissolve the partnership. Sensibly the Scots population still don’t want it, though on this side of the Border there is overwhelming support. It is the Establishment which opposes it.

Perhaps they fear the solution which Salmond really wants. An independence where Scotland gets the oil but England continues to pay the bills. The last things the SNP wants are the debts of the Royal Bank of Scotland, compulsory conversion to the Euro, ownership of the bankrupt ship yards. They are keeping the nuclear submarine base because we cannot afford to build another in England.

Much is made of Voltaire’s view that Edinburgh was the most civilised city in Europe. So it was, in the middle class drawing rooms of that city. The tartan myth was invented there, practically single-handedly by Walter Scott, a bankrupt novelist with delusions of grandeur. He invented the Highlands, though much of the area was aboriginal, living at a subsistence level which shocked Dr Johnson.

A more recent Boswell, Neil Oliver, a young man with long hair and a short memory, has recently dominated our TV screens with a history of Scotland. That is a contradiction in terms. The history of Scotland is a recital of betrayal of a subdued lower class by its leaders. The chiefs sold their clans to the English; the Jacobite revolution began the decimation of the Highlands which the Clearances completed. Prebble in his history of Culloden writes of the clansmen, many of them mere boys, who were forced to fight for far-from-bonnie Prince Charlie, a half Polish drunk and wife beater. In the Clearances what was left of the clansmen were exported to make room for sheep and sporting estates.

Good came out of Evil. It was those expatriate Scots who made the Empire work. A combination of Scottish industry and English luck was irresistible. But then, as now, as Sam Johnson pointed out, “The noblest prospect a Scotsman sees is the High Road that leads to England.”

They colonised the Inns of Court and Grub Street whilst the English filled the ranks of the Highland regiments. When I joined the Black Watch (RHR), a CSM, two corporals and a piper came from the same Manchester suburb as I did. Most Scotsmen went into Corps where they learned a useful trade. My Scottish relatives were horrified at my choice. A shrewd bunch, I doubt if they are members of the SNP.

I was interested to see that the gaffed Salmond wants to claim the Scottish regiments as his defence force. Fine by me. I am sick of seeing Jocks wasted in unnecessary wars but there is a slight problem. Any time now the MOD axe is going to fall on another highland regiment because they are having trouble recruiting and are seriously under strength. So much trouble in fact that they are now recruiting in Fiji and the ranks are filling with exotics from faraway places. They are still Jocks, of course, because when you join a highland regiment you join a family and they are “bonnie fechters”, witness the medals they win. Will Fiji, one wonders, get a vote in the Salmond ruffle?

DON'T BE ALARMED

2012-01-21T02:36:00.000-08:00

can never work out whether my lawfully wedded is consciously funny or whether she provokes hilarity through some genetic mesalliance.

This week we have been setting the burglar alarm. Like most things she does, this begins with her unshakeable belief that all things are sensate and – worse - malevolently so.

Thus the burglar alarm has its eye on us. It waits to mock us if we put a foot wrong. It knows if we are trying to trick it by remaining in the house when it has been set. It is not enough for my lawfully wedded to set it, step outside and return. I have to put on my duffle coat, the dog has to put on its body warmer and we all have to troop outside. The alarm is set and gives of the self important bleep which tells the world that guard mounting is taking place. All well and good.

Well, no, it isn’t because it continues to bleep as we stand shivering on the garden path. It knows, in my lawfully wedded’s view, that we are attempting a subterfuge. It senses we are standing in a shivering knot on the other side of the front door and continues to bleep to warn us it knows exactly what we are up to and it is one too many to be so easily duped.

So we go in again and remove the dog’s lead, have a cup of tea and go to the lavatory. Over the day this becomes a ritual, much to the confusion of the dog who cannot work out why its daily walk has been shortened to two strides down the path. He whimpers uneasily. My lawfully wedded feels she must reassure with a lengthy explanation of what we are doing and why. None of which the dog understands, even when she repeats it. We go in and out so often we resemble the old couple in the weathervane.

A well ordered family at this point would summon “Tich”, our Italian electrician. No use. “Tich” is the son of a Sicilian POW whom centuries of Mafia domination have taught wariness. When he hears the sound of our alarm, by Pavlovian response he switches off his mobile and hides.

When we finally reach him he is totally baffled but he does tell us there is no need to leave the house to test the alarm. He says you just have to stay still. No problem because by this time I am frozen stiff.

What is particularly provoking is that the house is only rarely empty and then only for the length of a statutory dog walk, which is the only time I ever leave it.

Trips? Not on your life. My lawfully wedded joined my daughter on a visit to the da Vinci exhibition. I stayed at home and was not even safe there. As regular readers will know, I am too fat to fit into a scanner so that my inside is still a mystery to the medical profession.

My wife returned from her visit to Town triumphantly waving a copy of the Evening Standard which told how London hospitals are coping with the obese. They are sending them to London Zoo to put them through giant scanners which will take elephants. It is not very nice that when one’s lawfully wedded has home thoughts from abroad elephants spring to mind.

Holidays????? I assume you are joking since wherever one looks liners are overturning. It’s obvious why. They are built like me. There is not enough below the plumb line to keelhaul Tom Thumb and a great deal too much above the line just waiting to tip over.

In any case I hate cruises. The nearest I have been to one is an overnight voyage to Sweden. I had more fun in an army prison and a great deal more freedom. Cruise ships are S.S. Stalag Lufts with punishments like deck quoits and dancing.

Not that there is much fun at home what with the burglar alarm, the Olympic Games and the Diamond Jubilee. The London Olympics will be a health minefield according to the Lancet. We can look forward to stampedes, heatstroke and mass infections. We are all paying a fortune to get cholera.

Queen Victoria refused to pay the cost of her diamond jubilee in 1897. As Arthur Bigge, the Queen's private secretary, told the Treasury, "the Queen may abandon the whole celebration if she finds that the Privy Purse is likely to be called upon to again pay as in 1887."

He continued: “Her Majesty is not personally desirous of any festivities. They are going to take place solely because the nation evidently expects them. It would certainly be ungenerous to mulct the Queen for the cost."

As it was the Prince of Wales cut the Diamond Jubilee celebrations to just 10 days so he could go to "an important Newmarket week". The queen refused to offer bed and board to foreign royalty: they had to be put up by the public purse.

Bigge wrote: "The Queen has spoken so very strongly to me about what Her Majesty had to pay 10 years ago for the last Jubilee and everything has gone so well that I shall indeed be sorry if Her Majesty is annoyed by a disagreeable finale to her efforts to please her subjects and the world at large."

In the end Parliament agreed to fund the whole party.

Oh that Our Majesty would take the same view. No such luck. An MP in pursuit of a knighthood has suggested we bribe her with a new Royal Yacht. It’s not the cost I worry about. I have turned down one invitation to party on the royal yacht when it visited Holyhead. A second refusal might block me forever from the Birthday Honours.

I wasn’t being anti-monarchical. Some years ago a dining club of which I was a member had a function on a liner in Liverpool where I was awakened from a post-prandial drunken slumber by a Lascar steward. Convinced we had sailed, I believed I had been white slaved, bound for the harem of some pederastic Eastern potentate. No foot of mine has touched a deck since.

I DON'T CARE TO WHOM GLASGOW BELONGS

2012-01-14T03:02:00.000-08:00

I am not surprised that twice as many people in England and Wales than in Scotland would vote for Scottish Independence. Hell is being forced to listen to James Naughtie interviewing Alex Salmond about it. Independence? I would even give them the oil so long as they promised to march those particular blue bonnets back over the border. What is it about Salmond that reminds one of Harry Lauder and that endless line of unfunny Scottish comedians? He has an air of a man in a polystyrene kilt about to break out with “I Love a Lassie”.

Of far greater moment was the admission about the Olympic Park. The former Mayor of London, newt fancier Ken Livingstone, you will recall, valued the 500 acres including stadium, aquatic centre, press HQ and development land at two billion pounds. He promised the money would repay the Treasury and the National Lottery. A more expert valuation this week estimated its worth as less than £160 million, a 75 per cent drop. One developer warns that the park will need hundreds of millions of pounds, a huge drain on the taxpayer, for any regeneration scheme to work.

I do hope it was nothing I said.

Not the only money worry for Lord Coe. He must have congratulated himself for the wheeze of a 50 pence Olympic piece which carried an explanation of the offside rule in football. According to some experts, the explanation is wrong. The coin shows two players, one apparently offside and the other onside. Because of an intricacy to the rule introduced in 1995, both players could be considered onside, some say. Not so, insists Neil Wolfson, a referee and coin designer. I don’t know who is right but I question the PR sense of designing a coin with a subject that has been provoking boring arguments since the days football was played with pigs’ bladders by players who were overpaid at £11 a week.

Many of you share my concern about The Games. Blog reader Perry discloses that Olympic organisers have set out social media rules for the 70,000 Games Maker volunteers, including a ban on pictures or posts featuring backstage VIPs.

Old broadcasting chum Allan Barham writes: “In one radio comedy show of the time I remember a government minister going abroad and saying to another minister, ‘Don't worry, if anything goes wrong just hold a festival.’ I suppose holding a festival is a better distraction than holding another war.“

Not much cheaper, though.

My cousin Jean had an interesting story to tell about an earlier, more dignified Games:

“I am a volunteer at a local charity shop. Another volunteer's father, Harold Langley, trained at Sparkhill Harriers in Birmingham. He won a medal at Much Wenlock in 1923 (where a earlier Game was held), represented GB in the 1923 Olympics in Paris and was a judge at the 1948 Olympics. He was a true athlete. He was given a blazer depicting the emblem of the Games. He used to put his hand over the emblem because he was so modest, and certainly made no money from it.

“’His daughter has no children and she generously gave me his scrapbook and numerous photographs of his achievements and his races, including at Much Wenlock. I had relatives living in MW and my cousin's husband put me in touch with the secretary (an ex teacher) of the Society. They were over the moon with the photographs and the scrapbook is being revived professionally by an archivist. They have also received a grant to extend their museum and I imagine the town of 2,500 inhabitants will be awash with visitors in the summer. “

On Jean’s advice I bought “The British Olympics” and was not surprised to find this profitable spin off of the British Games was printed in Croatia.

The notion of the Games being a tradition handed down from Ancient Greek takes a bit of swallowing. Greece was overrun by the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century after a thousand years as part of the Roman Empire. Tourkokratia (Turkish Rule) lasted until 1821, by which time the entire Greek aristocracy who claimed ancient Hellenic ancestry had been wiped out.

Like most other things, the Games was a British invention that was taken over by foreigners intent on making a swift buck. The first British Olympics were held on Dover’s Hill in the Vale of Evesham in the 1620s and still continue to this day. The original competitions included shin kicking, single stick fighting, bear baiting and a tug of war. Like most wars they were caused by religion. Robert Dover who founded them was a lawyer and intended them as a fight between “puritans and pleasure seekers“. He was firmly on the pleasure seekers’ side. He even wore a suit of King James I’s cast-off clothing, borrowed from a friend who was groom of the bedchamber to the king.

The Olympic Games at Much Wenlock in Shropshire were a spin off organised in 1850 to “improve the morals of the working class”. Events included football and cricket matches and a race for old women with a prize of a pound of tea. The founder was a local doctor William Penny Brookes.

Among the early visitors was Pierre de Coubertin who went on to found the Olympics as we know them today. He admitted: “The Olympic Games which modern Greece has been unable to restore....is due not to a Hellene but to Dr W.P. Brookes.”

Why, one wonders, are we loading ourselves with debt, traffic jams and bomb attacks by importing a foreign version of an English original ?

FOR THE WHY JUMP?

2012-01-07T03:50:00.000-08:00

Crowds flocked to a beach in Norfolk for a New Year treat- ogling the rotting corpse of a sperm whale. It seemed somehow symbolic.

The Cultural Olympic is even sillier. In Liverpool an underwater machine will send a column of steam 65 feet into the air. It will cost £500,000 and its maker is not even sure it will work. It will depend on the weather. It may also not work because the creator forgot to seek planning permission.

Planning permission will not be needed for the barge filled with Norwegian rock which is to be towed round our coasts at a cost £550,000, reminding us of climate change. One hopes it does not bump into the wooden sailing ship made from donated pencils and piano lids.

No costing is available for the cost of thirty cyclists travelling from Coventry to London towing a 30 ft statue of Lady Godiva FULLY CLOTHED. Wales will thrill to the sight of a wingless bird (the fuselage of an old DC9) “nesting” in various towns and hopefully avoiding the flying football field cut from turf near Edinburgh. Two matches will be played on it. In the interest of harmony, let us hope not by perpetually warring Hearts and Hibs.

In keeping with our straitened times, London 2012 was welcomed in by a short 15- minute ceremony. It still involved burning £1.5 million of fireworks, a sum which would have paid for permanent homes for the city’s homeless. Instead it was a gift to the shameless.

New Year’s Day saw another costly parade. This one launched The Yawn of the £9 billion Olympics, the most costly sports days in history. Lord Coe announced that it was a victory for sportsmanship at roughly the same time the Culture Minister warned that the biggest betting fix in history was already threatening every event. We had already been alerted that this triumph of sportsmanship was such an obvious terrorist target the army has been called in to defend it.

All in all it was a funny way to celebrate what both Empress Merkel and Napoleon Sarkozy warned could be the year capitalism collapsed in Europe. All Nero did was fiddle while Rome burned and he has been vilified for two thousand years.

How much more favourably would future generations have viewed us if the Mayor of London had announced, as the then mayor did before the 1948 Olympics, that there would be no opening ceremony, no firework display. Not only are tax payers being required to fund the biggest betting scam in the history of sport. Libraries are closing, care services for the old and sick are being cut and our soldiers march from the front line to the redundancy queue. Yet we are required to fund the delusions of grandeur of the organisers. We get little in return. The government has conceded the costly games do NOT encourage anyone to join the huffers and puffers.

London will provide the IOC and the ‘Olympic Family’ (including the Committee members, staff and officials) with 40,000 hotel-room bookings for the entire duration of the Games. This includes 1,800 four- and five-star hotel rooms for the IOC elite. Six Park Lane hotels have been booked out for the duration of the Games, including the Dorchester, the Grosvenor and the Hilton. The 40,000-room booking does not, of course, include accommodation for the competitors themselves - they are having an Olympic Village built for them at a cost to taxpayer of £325 million. Nor is any accommodation being reserved for spectators. On the evidence of the documents, visitors to the Games will probably find that any hotel within a 50-mile radius of London is already fully booked.

It now emerges that there will also be 3,000 air-conditioned limos for officials, whose drivers must wear hats and uniforms. The enormous fleet will include more than 3,000 BMW 3 and 5 Series saloons. Parked end to end, this would equate to a ten-mile tailback.

However, traffic should not be a problem for the VIPs who will cruise along specially reserved ‘games lanes’ near the venues. The IOC will be given 250 miles of so-called ‘Zil’ lanes - named after the old Soviet limousines that enjoyed traffic-free passage. They will stretch from London to Weymouth, where the sailing games are being held.

The IOC does love its little details. The hat stipulation is one of literally hundreds of examples of its micro-management. London must provide a ‘dance café’ in the Olympic Village, so that the athletes can boogie together. A flower shop is also required, which the IOC insists ‘should provide a range of flowers and gifts for customers in the Olympic Village’. British taxpayers will be relieved to know that ‘a balloon rental service is optional’.

The guidance given by the Olympocrats can be bewildering. It offers pages of information about the employment of housekeepers for the athletes, for example. ‘It is recommended that the same housekeeping staff perform their duties for the same teams daily’, because this will ‘build relationships and trust’, ‘give confidence’ and ‘maintain standards’. Making the bed is not enough.

British authorities have cravenly agreed to let the IOC create what is, in effect, a state within a state. During the Games, normal London life, including ordinary commerce and the right to basic freedoms, must be subordinated to the five-ring circus that is the Olympic ‘brand protection’ policy.

The IOC is paranoid about what it calls ‘ambush marketing’, which it claims is a ‘serious potential threat to the Olympic Movement’ even if it admits that it has, in fact, ‘not been a significant problem in the past’. Ambush marketing, in the Olympocrats’ eyes, appears to be any branding or promotion for an organisation which has not paid large amounts of money to the Olympics organisers.

Candidate cities, the manuals say, ‘are required to obtain control of all billboard advertising, city transport advertising, airport advertising etc. for the duration of the Games and the month preceding it to support the marketing programme’. The cost of hiring these billboards alone will surely be vast.

Beware of Greek traditions requiring gifts, especially since London, like many another Olympic host, will be left with a massive debt and a host of unwanted buildings. Millennium Dome, anyone? (Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081005/Olympic-VIPs-whisked-London-4-000-BMWs--green-www.spectator.co.uk/essays/6526463/the-true-cost-of-the-olympics )

NEWS ITEMS

Olympic organisers are set for a backlash after the synchronised swimming was oversold by thousands of tickets.

London 2012 have admitted an error has led to 10,000 too many tickets being sold for sessions.

Many of those people who have bought tickets for the Aquatics Centre events have been asked to return them. They will now be offered tickets to other events at the Olympics.

(Reuters) - London Olympic organizers suspended the official ticket resale website on the day of its launch (Friday) following computer problems that left would-be purchasers frustrated and angry.

(Guardian)The BBC has warned its London Olympics coverage could see it forced to cut back the length of some editions of BBC1's 6pm and 10pm news bulletins in the summer.

Live coverage of the London Games will be broadcast on BBC1 and BBC3, with comprehensive coverage on the corporation's flagship channel due to run from 6am to midnight – close to 18 hours of daily coverage throughout the two-week event.

LET US PREY

2011-12-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

I have just celebrated my 82^nd Christmas. Well perhaps celebrated is putting it a mite strongly. Apart from a delicious lunch with our favourite neighbours on Boxing Day and another in a country pub on Christmas Eve we spent it sipping champagne, watching some splendid TV – little of it current productions which plumbed new depths of banality. Even banality can have depth in TV land.

In place of a paper hat I wore the livery of the S.A.S. (The Scrooge Appreciation Society which I founded many years ago), a woolly hat emblazoned ”Bah Humbug”, carpet slippers and capacious track suit bottoms.

It would not be true to say that I dislike Christmas. Dislike? No. Loathe? Yes.

Christmas is a children’s festival which over the past half century grown-ups have gradually corrupted. Only a child has the perception to accept the duality of Santa Claus and loving fathers or the whole fairy fiction of Christ’s birthday. No shepherds would be watching their flocks in the depth of winter: there is no nutritious new grass to chew; sheep spent the winter corralled in sheep folds. It is impossible to collect taxes in December because there is nothing left to tax. Taxes are collected in September when the granaries are full and the fruit and vegetables have been gathered in and sold. Finally there was no comet showing the way to the manger. Chinese astronomical charts go back through recorded time and the only major comet activity was in September 4 AD when historians believe Christ was born. House of David? Very likely. In the highlands clan members were traditionally related to their chief, literally the Father of His Clan.

Virgin Birth? That was tried as a defendant’s plea in a High Court divorce court in London in the ‘20s. It was thrown out by the judge. One of my princely Welsh ancestors raped a nun and St David was the result. The nun was later canonised as St Non and in St David’s in Pembrokeshire there is the ruin of a chapel at the place where the rape took place. Latin authors claimed a similar fate befell Mary. The Talmud claims Jesus's actual father was a Roman soldier called 'Panthera' .The union occurred during a punitive expedition led by the general Varus.

The Jewish historian Josephus mentions three characters who people thought were messiahs and who were crucified by the Romans: Yehuda of Galilee (6 CE), Theudas (44 CE), and Benjamin the Egyptian (60 CE). It is possible that the Jesus story is partly based on their lives.

People are still rewriting religious truths. A Welsh chum of mine, the Reverend Geraint ap Iorwerth, was never happy with a Holy Trinity of “two he’s and an it“.

Forty years ago he founded the Order of Sancta Sophia which sees God as the Divine Feminine. Believers from all over the world visit first his website and then make pilgrimages to the Church of Wales’ St Peter ad Vincula at Pennal, near Aberdovey, where he is rector. ap Iorwerth told me: “People are fed up with traditional religious structures. The church is dying because most people live outside the old religious commitments. Less than eight per cent of people in Wales go to church or chapel on Sundays so there has got to be something wrong.

“I still function as a traditional Anglican priest for those who see me in that role, but I promote the ancient Celtic church as well. It was gentler and more tolerant. They are more in touch with the feminine and more akin to the Eastern Church. Praise and thanksgiving rather than doom, gloom and hell fire.

“The Wisdom of God, always feminine, can bring people together. She is almost like a Divine Consort. Pennal is where Christ and Sophia dance together.”

They dance in greatly altered surroundings. Next to the altar is a sanctuary dedicated to all religions with an icon of the Divine Wisdom from the Byzantine church. A barn has been converted into an Ashram. There are sacred trees in the churchyard and a slate picnic table which doubles as an altar. Nearby is a barbecue and a bonfire site where, on all major feast days, fires are lit as they would have been in pre-Christian times to celebrate Midsummer (Feast of St John the Baptist) and the Celtic New Year (All Hallows’ Eve).

The Rector says: “I don’t think there is one true faith. The Cosmic Christ is beyond all religions. Who are we to limit his Person? He came to teach humility and we are arrogant to say there is no True Love in other religions.

“How can we claim an exclusive line to God when every religion gives you a different perspective of Truth? God would have been daft to leave it all to Christianity.

“I am on the fringe of orthodox religion and content to stay there following the Celtic tradition of going out to help where help is needed.”

SECOND HELPINGS

2011-12-23T03:11:00.000-08:00

I read where this reporter had a friend who bought a turkey and it was run over twice. That beats my turkey which was only run over the once. But I never miss a chance to repeat the story at this time of the year:

I keep going back in my mind to the Christmas when I was out of work and this pal of mine said: "Don’t suppose you will be having much of a Christmas?"

I said: "If I wanted a mince pie I would have to buy it on H.P. We will be out on Xmas Day because it is warmer out than it is in the house. I have promised the kids we will go to Radio Rentals to watch the Queen's Speech through the window. Then we are going to a park to mug robins for their breadcrumbs."

"Not having a bird on The Day then?"

"Not unless I can grab one of the robins as we steal its breadcrumbs."

He said: "Why don't you nip down to the market just before it closes on Xmas Eve? They practically give birds away. Then," he said, "come to the Press Party at the Continental Cinema."

So I did. I picked up a chicken with my last fifty pence and went to the party. Where I set up a record for drinking free scotch and eating vol-au-vents that remained unbroken for many years.

Then this guest said: "Let's play rugby."

Another guest said: "We haven't got a ball."

A third guest said: "Yes, we have," and grabbed the parcel of chicken from where it had been roosting under my arm.

Everyone but me applauded the skill with which the next guest, a rather showy chap, executed a back pass with my parcel between his legs.

I was less pleased than anyone when another guest followed through with a drop kick.

It was powerful, I will say that. It sent the parcel soaring across the foyer, out into the street, over the heads of the passers-by, to drop, perfectly positioned, under the tyre of a passing bus.

They were all very apologetic. The manager of the cinema particularly. He said he hoped the parcel hadn't contained anything important. I said, no, it was just a chicken I got for tea on Boxing Night.

For the rest of the party I was a bit thoughtful, though I did manage to clock up a further freeloader's record of eighteen scotch and a round dozen vol-au-vents.

At the death the manager came up and gave me a parcel. "I hope you will accept this replacement with our apologies," he said.

It was a twelve pound turkey. Which would have been nice... but we didn't have an oven at the time, just a gas grill. So we had to cook it a leg at a time.It was a twelve pound turkey. Which would have been nice... but we didn't have an oven at the time, just a gas grill. So we had to cook it a leg at a time.

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From one of my favourite writers, the incomparable Geoff Mather, comes this Xmas cheer...

Concert review from the Bangkok Post 27/08/98:

The recital last evening in the chamber music room of the Erewan Hotel by US pianist Myron Kropp can only be described by this reviewer as one of the most interesting experiences he has witnessed in a long time.

With sparse, sandy hair, a sallow complexion, and a deceptively frail looking frame, the man who has re-popularised Johann Sebastian Bach approached the Baldwin Concert Grand, bowed to the audience, and placed himself upon the stool. As 1 have mentioned before, the Baldwin Concert Grand, while basically a fine instrument needs constant attention, particularly in a climate such as Bangkok. In this humidity, the felts which separate the white keys from the black tend to swell, causing an occasional key to stick, which apparently was the case last night with the D in the second octave.

During the "Raging Storm" section of the D Minor Toccata and Fugue, Mr

Kropp must be complimented for putting up with the awkward D. However, some who attended the performance later questioned whether the awkward key justified some of the language which was heard coming from the stage during the softer passages of the fugue. During one passage, Mr Kropp turned around completely so that, whereas before his remarks had been aimed largely at the piano and were therefore somewhat muted, to his surprise and that of those in the chamber music room, he found himself addressing himself directly to the audience. But such things do happen, and the person who began to laugh deserves to be severely reprimanded for this undignified behaviour.

Unfortunately, laughter is contagious, and by the time it had subsided and the audience had regained its composure Mr Kropp appeared to be somewhat shaken. Nevertheless he swivelled himself back into position facing the piano and, leaving the fugue unfinished, commenced on the Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor. Why the concert grand piano's G key in the third octave chose that particular time to begin sticking I hesitate to guess. However, it is certainly safe to say that Mr Kropp did nothing to help matters when he began using his feet to kick the lower portion of the piano instead of operating the pedals as is generally done.

Possibly it was this jarring that caused the right front leg of the piano to buckle slightly inward, leaving the entire instrument listing at a 35-degree angle from that which is normal. A gasp went up from the audience, followed by a sigh of relief as Mr Kropp slowly rose from the stool and left the stage. A few men in the back of the room began clapping, and when Mr Kropp reappeared a few moments later it seemed he was responding to the ovation. Apparently, however, he had left to get the red-handled fire axe which was hung back stage, and began chopping at the legs of the piano.

When the weakened legs finally collapsed altogether and Mr Kropp continued to chop, it became obvious to all that he had no intention of going on with the concert. The ushers came rushing in and, with the help of the hotel manager, two Indian watchmen, and a passing police corporal, finally succeeded in disarming Mr Kropp and dragging him off the stage.

************************************

The passing of Christopher Hitchens did little for my Xmas spirit.

From the New York Times I pass on some of his invariably wise words:

On what gives life meaning:
“A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called ‘meaningless’ except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so.” (“Hitch-22″)

On friendship:
“One melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realization that you can’t make old friends.” (Harper’s magazine, 1999)

On public speaking:
“If you can give a decent speech in public or cut any kind of figure on the podium, then you need never dine or sleep alone.” (“Hitch-22″)

On alcohol:
“On the whole, observe the same rule about gin martinis – and all gin drinks – that you would in judging female breasts: one is far too few, and three is one too many. Do try to eat the olives: they can be nutritious.” (Vanity Fair, 2003)

My friend Mike Flynn whom many will remember from Radio Wales writes;

Hi Ian

I hope you are feeling well and fully primed for the festivities.

My wife was in Tesco's yesterday and was trying to check out with three packs of aspirin and a pack of Strepsils.

It appears they are not allowed to sell you that combination. Three packs of aspirin are the limit but not with Strepsils. Or you can have three packs of Strepsils but no aspirin.

However if you want to drink yourself to death there no limit.

EAT UP GUESTS MAY ARRIVE

2011-12-17T01:31:00.000-08:00

In a week when the Virgin Birth is celebrated it was chastening to hear a scientist extolling the sea urchin to which virgin births are commonplace. Many things can replace sperm in the love life of this aquatic Marilyn Munroe, even soap powder, biologists insist.

I am never brimming over with the illusory Spirit of Christmas but the realisation, as a retired stud, that I could have been replaced in a welcoming bed by a packet of Persil did little for my ego.

Then there was my continued transformation into 20th Century Fox as doctors intensified the Great Cancer Hunt. This week I was required to swallow a tiny camera which then ran amok in my small bowel, frantically taking 10,000 happy snaps. So far the combined safaris have not found their prey but a preview of the latest epic held a surprise. My small bowel is a dead ringer, even down to the fringes, of the God Particle, or the Higgs Boson as we hunters prefer to call it. One is quietly proud that not only am I A Camera: I am a fully portable Hadron Collider. Quite an achievement when you think the one in Switzerland is 18 miles long whilst my team of doctors only has one mile of intestines to go at. The next time someone is rude about my 58-inch waist I shall point out with becoming hauteur that the space is needed for the Big Bang which happened there. I am the parent of the Universe.

Long serving husbands will know that in order to get a wife to pursue a given action one has only to suggest she does the opposite. So when the Head Ferret borrowed a Sat Nav I looked forward to an interesting clash of wills. I was not disappointed. When she was switched on, the lady in the Sat Nav suggested we turn left at the end of our road: my wife turned right. With commendable restraint the lady in the Sat Nav said she would recalculate but when she suggested we go on for 1.2 of a mile to turn right at the T Junction my wife perversely turned left. Again, without a trace o impatience, the lady in the Sat Nav offered to recalculate. She repeated the offer five times in the fifty mile journey to the hospital, usually because the two of them had different views on which outlet from roundabouts the car should take.

“Well,” I said, “you won’t want to waste money on one of them!”

It had the desired effect. We are going out on Monday to buy a Sat Nav.

It being Christmas, this column is happy to extend its hospitality to my chum, the gifted writer Colin Dunne. Another chum John Julius Norwich publishes a “Christmas Cracker”, an annual collection of amusing apercus and cuttings in which I have managed to make two appearances over the years.

Colin sends me this gem which I have put up as a Cracker:

A STORY FROM AFRICA

A factual account by Wilbur Smith

The plight of the Black Rhinoceros is due mostly to the value of
its horn and the ferocious poaching that this engenders. However, a
contributory factor to the declining rhino population is the animals’
disorganized mating habits. It seems that the female rhino only becomes receptive to the male's attentions every three years or so, a condition known quite appropriately as "Must".

In the early Sixties, I was invited, along with a host of journalists and other luminaries, to be present at an attempt by the Rhodesian Game and Tsetse Department to solve this problem of poor timing. The idea was to capture a male rhino and induce him to deliver up that which could be stored until that day in the distant future when his mate's fancy turned lightly to thoughts of love. We departed from the Zambezi Valley in an impressive convoy of trucks and Land Rovers, counting in our midst none other than the Director of the Game Department in person, together with his minions, a veterinary surgeon, an electrician and sundry other technicians. Game scouts had been sent out to scout the bush for the largest, most virile rhino. They led us to a beast at least the size of a small granite koppie with a horn on his nose considerably longer than my arm. The trick was to get this monster into a robust mobile pen.

With the Director of the Game Department shouting frantic orders from the safety of the largest truck, the pursuit was on. The tumult and the shouting were apocalyptic. Clouds of dust flew in all directions, trees and vegetation were destroyed, game scouts scattered like chaff, but finally the rhino had about a litre of narcotics shot into his rump and his mood became dreamy and benign. With forty black game guards heaving and shoving, and the Director still shouting orders from the truck, the rhino was wedged into his cage, and stood there with a happy grin on his face.

At this stage, the Director deemed it safe to emerge from the cab of his truck, resplendent in starched and immaculately ironed
bush jacket with a colourful silk scarf at this throat. With an imperial gesture, he ordered the portable electric generator to be brought forward and positioned behind the captured animal. This was a machine which was capable of lighting up a small city, equipped with two wheels.

The Director climbed up on the generator to explain that an
electrode inserted into the rhino's rear end would deliver a mild electric shock, enough to pull his trigger. The Director gave another order and the veterinary surgeon greased something like an acoustic torpedo attached to the generator with sturdy insulated wires. He then went up behind the somnolent beast and thrust it up him to a full arm’s length, at which the rhino opened his eyes very wide indeed. The veterinary and his two black assistants now moved into position with a large bucket. We, the audience, crowded closer. The Director, still mounted on the generator trailer, nodded to the electrician who threw the switch - and chaos reigned.

In the subsequent departmental enquiry the blame was placed squarely on the shoulders of the electrician. It seems that in the heat of the moment, instead of connecting up his apparatus to deliver a gentle 5 volts, he had crossed his wires and the rhino received a full 500 volts up his rear end. Four tons of rhinoceros shot six feet straight up in the air. The cage, made of great timber baulks, exploded in pieces and the rhinoceros took off at a gallop.

We, the audience, took to the trees with alacrity. This was the only occasion on which I have ever been passed by two journalists half way up a Mopane tree. From the top branches we beheld an amazing sight, for the chariot was still connected to the rhinoceros’s rectum, and the Director of the Game Department was still mounted upon it, very much like Ben Hur, the charioteer. As they disappeared from view, the rhinoceros was snorting and blowing like a steam locomotive and the Director was clinging to the front rail of his chariot and howling like the north wind, which only encouraged the beast to greater speed.

The story has a happy ending, for the following day after the Director had returned hurriedly to his office in Salisbury, another male rhinoceros was captured and caged and this time the electrician got his wiring right.

A nice Christmas story for you from Mike Flynn:

An elderly wheelchair-bound woman and two female accomplices are being chased by police over the theft of a Christmas elf named 'Chippy' from a garden centre.

The two-foot-high, lucky mascot with an emerald green outfit and rosy-cheeked smile, was part of a 'Santa's grotto' display at Woodcote Green Garden Centre in Wallington, south London.

The 'elf-nappers', caught in the act on CCTV, left the garden centre's chiefs stunned that 'anyone would stoop so low'.

Meanwhile the good news is that young criminals are being given party bags of sweets on their first night behind bars. Ashfield Young Offenders’ Institution, in Gloucestershire, believes it helps them settle in to their new surroundings.

The bags contain fudge, Refreshers and Polos.

A SAD MOMENT AND A RUM DO

2011-12-10T01:24:00.000-08:00

I have just finished what will almost certainly be my last book. Oddly it is not the writing I will miss. This blog uses up a week’s intellectual energy. The great joy of authorship is researching, gradually assembling the building blocks of books. The excitement of discovering gems of information which others have missed; of gradually bringing your subject to life.

The best time was researching my book on Owain Glyndwr when for two years or more I immersed myself in medieval life. I share the Buddhist belief that there is no such thing as death. Everything else in nature recurs. Why not the human spirit? Since it has no physical substance it cannot decay as the body does. I think we have lived in every age since time began so that researching the lives of people in the fourteenth century was more remembering than discovering.

Living in the Middle Ages was pure joy. There was something deeply endearing about its inhabitants. It is like living in Christmas before it became a vulgar sales opportunity. Even the carols are better and plain song is music at its most harmonious.

The medieval Chronicles were pure tabloid journalism. Adam of Usk’s writings were a series of the sort of page leads the Mirror used to produce in the days when it was a newspaper. He described the ceremony of proving the Pope was a man by examining his private parts whilst he was seated on a commode like seat, before an audience of thousands. When th Priest announced “ He Has Balls” the congregation roared back “ God Be Praised”,He wrote of a hound devoted to Richard II until he was deposed when it left him for his successor Henry IV.

So obsessed did I become with Medieval monk artists that I made a collection of facsimiles of their breath-taking illuminated manuscripts; the books of hours with lively pictures of peasant life; the Psalters where the margins are filled with drawings of piety and the scribbles of fornicating monks at play. But above all I loved the Bestiaries in which the fact they hadn’t seen so many of the beasts did not prevent the scribes from describing them.

Thus the beaver, whose testicles are used in medicine and eagerly sought.When it is pursued it bites them off and throws them to their hunter. Chased a second time, it stands on its back legs to demonstrate it no longer possesses them.

Elephants, which are unable to bend their legs, sleep leaning against trees. Hunters are advised to partly saw the trunks of trees so that they will break under the elephant’s weight and the beast fall over.

The panther, which is prey to all creatures because of the sweetness of its breath, eludes capture by throwing crystal balls as it flees. The hunters pause and, mistaking their reflection for a rival, stay to fight it whilst the panther breathes a perfumed sigh of relief. The ibex has two horns which are so strong that when it falls from a high precipice its horns bear the weight of its body and it escapes unhurt. Or my favourite:

“The unicorn, which is also called the rhinoceros in Greek. It can be caught in the following fashion; a girl who is a virgin is led to the place where it dwells and left alone there. As soon as the unicorn sees her it jumps into her lap and embraces her and goes to sleep there; then the hunters capture it.”

My most exciting find was a sort of medieval “Health and Safety” regulations for waging war.It was an insert folded into the Black Book of the Admiralty . Making war on holy days is forbidden and the discomfort of being under siege can be eased. The siege is lifted until an agreed date. If the town is not relieved by that date it surrenders.

War was taken very seriously. When Edward I captured a Scottish castle he invited its constable to a sumptuous feast.

But when he saw the amount of supplies in the castle Edward decided that the Constable could have opposed him more vigorously. He had him beheaded for not resisting the king’s attack.

NO HELP FOR HEROES

Today six dozen ex-matelots and their families are gathering at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire to witness the unveiling of a small memorial to the survivors of the battleships “The Prince of Wales” and ”The Repulse” which were sunk by the Japanese off Singapore on December 10, 1941, three days after Pearl Harbour. Pearl Harbour is commemorated with parades and services. The Prince of Wales has declined an invitation to attend the Staffordshire gathering and the Royal Navy is represented by a Petty Officer. The £13,000 cost of the memorial has been met by families and well wishers.

I am no fan of Churchill who I believe was the Alastair Campbell of his day. A gifted spin doctor. As a war leader he was abysmal. He over ruled the First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound, who favoured a slow build up in the Indian Ocean. Churchill insisted on a more aggressive strategy and sent the two battleships into the thick of battle without air cover. The ships were attacked by 85 Jap fighter bombers. More than 800 sailors were drowned or burned to death. Gallipoli, which he also master-minded, had taught Churchill nothing.

Writing in the Spectator some years ago, the historian Noble Frankland pointed out that Churchill, the architect of the debacles of Gallipoli and Norway, thought that air supremacy on a battlefield would add complication without advantage; that the Germans would be unable to break the French on the Western Front. (He also sacrificed the entire Highland Division by insisting it fought on at St Valery after the evacuation of the BEF in a silly attempt to keep France in the war). He thought the Japanese would be too cautious to enter the war. If they did Singapore would be invulnerable. He thought that neither submarines nor aircraft would pose a serious threat to battleships. He despatched the battleships "Prince of Wales" and "Repulse" to Singapore without air cover and both were sunk.

I think the Prince of Wales might have spared time to honour his namesake or the Navy which has more admirals than ships might have spared one.

CONGRATULATIONS

To our nephew Rutti Lucas who has just been appointed to a new job with British Oxygen. He will be devising computer models (???) to optimize energy use in chemical production facilities (???).

The question marks because none of the family, which includes a raft of Oxbridge scholars, has the slightest idea what it is.

BENCH MARKED

2011-12-03T04:16:00.000-08:00

I used to go for walks. Now I have a daily stumble. More particularly I stumble from bench to bench in our lovely riverside park where the water is fringed by magnificent giant willows. I can sit for hours drinking in their beauty.

The Council has recently spent many thousands of pounds installing CCTV cameras along the main path in the park overlooking the benches to spot people breaking the law.

The new cameras disclosed an alarming state of affairs.

People have been sitting on a bench next to the children’s playground.

Not only sitting either. Congregating and drinking and taking drugs, like as not. The Council faced with this alarming situation acted immediately.

It has removed the bench.

Benches remain in less accessible areas of the park offering unlimited access for furtive congregation and orgies unlimited. But the bench where my crippled caravanserai rested has been taken away.

I am unable to explore the dank caves of the civic mind, and admittedly removing the benches is an effective means of preventing people from sitting on them. We could wipe out burglary in a trice by getting rid of our possessions and there would be no rape if women were banned from public places. Dig up the roads and immediately end drunken driving and other lesser motoring offences.

Fenland March is not alone. A reader Chris Sheridan writes: “This is a collection of letters sent to a newspaper local to me after it had asked for examples of stupidity:

ONE

The traffic light on the corner buzzes when the lights turn red and it is safe to cross the road. I was crossing with an intellectually challenged friend of mine.

She asked if I knew what the buzzer was for.

I explained that it signals blind people when the light is red.

Appalled, she responded, 'What on earth are blind people doing driving?'

She is a Local County Council employee in Harrow, Middlesex. (And she's NOT blonde).

MIND YOU, RATEPAYERS ARE NOT IMMUNE. STORY FROM POTTERS BAR, HERTFORDSHIRE

I live in a semi-rural area. We recently had a new neighbour call the Highways Department to request the removal of the 'DEER CROSSING' sign from our road.

The reason: 'Too many deer are being hit by cars on this stretch of road! I don't think this is a good place for them to be crossing anymore.'
*********************************************

If the civic mind is difficult to explore, how much more are the cavernous depths of the Government’s mind?

There are, they tell us, a million unemployed youngsters. There are also 75,000 new jobs but all have been taken by immigrants. There is a massive debt hanging over us. Most of it incurred by unnecessary wars. According to the Government-funded Riots, Communities and Victims’ Panel, last summer’s riots were our fault. Our conspicuous consumption infected the young rioters. The Panel missed out the bit most of us accept. If you want something, you get a job to pay for it. Not only does the Government encourage teenage reluctance to behave in a civilised manner by making discipline rather than ill discipline illegal; not only does it pay them more in benefit than they would get from a job. It has just announced a five per cent increase in benefits.

Collapse of the Euro, capitalism creaking, riots all over the world, a broken society, costly Olympic Games and a national outcry over an off the cuff joke by Jeremy Clarkson who was just doing what the BBC pays him £1 million to make. Collapse of the £30 million trial of eight police officers on charges of perverting the course of justice because the evidence has been destroyed. Victory for Muslim extremists in Tunisia and Egypt, the inevitable result of the Arab Spring, and expensive unnecessary wars

Could it be we are living through the collapse of Western Civilisation and the renaissance of the Moors? Either that or on the verge on the German Empire?

CHRISTMAS TALE

It may read like the work of Thomas the Tank Engine author Wilbert Awdry but a bureaucratic banana skin has been dropped before the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways which helped influence the writer’s work.

Alongside the railways’ quaint little Victorian coaches is number 122, built in a matching style a decade ago as more and more passengers flocked to the twin railways, which carried a record-breaking 300,000 visitors into Snowdonia National Park this year.

Official accessibility regulations apply to British railway coaches built after 1999 – but a wheelchair-friendly toilet simply wouldn’t fit inside the tiny narrow-gauge coaches that ply between Porthmadog and Blaenau Ffestiniog.

So the UK Government granted a special order in 2003 exempting “Vehicle Number 122” from the regulations. However, that order is now among 200 railway regulations which may be thrown onto the Coalition Government’s bonfire of “red tape”.

If the Ffestiniog order goes up in flames, coach 122 may no longer be able to carry passengers unless the Government makes alternative arrangements.

The Government’s “Red Tape Challenge” is examining more than 21,000 statutory rules and regulations, aiming to reduce the burdens on businesses and society. Introducing the rail Red Tape Challenge this month, the Department for Transport (DfT) said: “The presumption is that regulations will go, unless it can be justified why a regulation should be kept.”

A DfT spokesman said the Ffestiniog order and others were on the Red Tape Challenge website for the public and stakeholders to comment on, as part of the process of identifying regulations considered to be of benefit to passengers.

Paul Lewin, general manager of the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways, said the rail accessibility rules – designed for main line trains such as the Virgin Pendolino – should never have applied to Britain’s heritage railways, which let visitors experience steam-age travel.

The Heritage Railway Association had campaigned for Britain’s preserved railways to be covered separately.

“We were aiming for a block exemption so that people didn’t have to put a wheelchair toilet in a carriage dating back 150 years, which would be crazy,” said Mr Lewin. “You can’t physically fit a wheelchair toilet pack from a Virgin Pendolino into a narrow-gauge train, because it’s wider than the coaches.”

His railways have their own ways of catering for disabled visitors. There are ramps for wheelchairs to board trains and guards shout out station names, because tannoy announcements or electronic displays would spoil the interior ambience.

The 2003 exemption order, signed by then transport minister Tony McNulty, lists the ways coach 122 doesn’t comply with the rules, including:

* No audible device to warn when doors are unlocked

* No public address system

* No wheelchair space

* Door handles too stiff

Getting that exemption was so complicated that managers stopped building new coaches at their Porthmadog workshops and have since imported second-hand ones – which are exempt from the rulings – from Romania.

Reader Ken Ashton writes:

You'll like this...

One of my students, a Nigerian, has written to my daughter at the Zoo, requesting...

Free tickets for family

Free flights from Nigeria

Free accommodation

Help with visa application

T-shirts in various sizes

Finance to finish his course

As my Mum used to say, if you don't ask, you don't get.

Except in this case he won't get.

A WORD IN YOUR EGO

2011-11-26T02:52:00.000-08:00

Humiliations abound with age. This week I had a dementia test. It was just a test of memory, though it happened on Wednesday and I have forgotten what it involved. I do remember that I am halfway to dementia which conjures up a life in a strait jacket lived in a padded cell. Not for the first time I was struck with the terrible power of words and how they are linguistic chameleons able to dilute and intensify their power at will.

What is now ”dementia“ was once a chummy “hard of hearing”. I used to have depressions which are now the more sinister Bi-Polar episodes. Four letter obscenities and less unpleasant oaths are now part of the lingua franca and often used in newspaper comments and are indispensable in plays. If I used the word “nigger” in any medium I would be sacked. Yet in my youth it was the name of a river which gave its name to a country. I remember the affection in which the Nigger Minstrels and the gollywog were held. I always shared my bed with Teddy and a gollywog. Now the teddy reigns alone.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The news that the TUC is launching a pop song urging people to strike adds a new dimension of horror to our troubled Economic Times. What use will it be? I would suggest if you added together all the lyrics of pop songs performed over the past twenty years you would have difficulty assembling a coherent sentence.

Truly the world of pop entertainment is a jungle. The heartless elimination of Bleakley and Chiles from the “Daybreak” programme a year after they had been lured from “The One Show” is alarming. Their failure in the programme after their success in “The One Show”, a success which is being reaped by their successors, should lead ITV to think that the fault lies not in their stars but in themselves. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN

Widow devastated to find 'mound of mud' in place of memorial

Even cross bearing name of Second World War mechanic was taken away

Authority acted because records showed grave had not been paid for

But family claim it was bought by funeral directors 23 years ago

By SIMON TOMLINSON

Council workers have left a family distraught after stripping a war hero's grave bare in a row over who owns the plot.

Widow Judy Collins, 72, found decorations had been removed when she turned up to pay her respects.

In place of her late husband Harry's memorial was a mound of mud, she claimed.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

GREAT MINDS ON THE IRISH INDEPENDENT THINKING ALIKE

Let's be honest, Irish schools would probably be well advised to drop Irish classes completely and instead simply replace them with German language lessons.

After all, when you consider that one of Angela Merkel's aides sneered to David Cameron last week that "soon all of Europe will be speaking German", you can see what they have planned for us.

Sure, they may have lost two world wars, as the English never tire of telling them. But this time they have managed to conquer Europe and effectively colonise it without having to fire a single shot.

It seems that after years of them behaving nicely and being rather apologetic about that whole bit of bother between 1939-45, they have now decided that, given their current pre-eminent status on this continent, that they're not going to apologise forever.

That can be the only conclusion drawn from the latest war-related story to do with that country.

As you may know, those super-fun happy Germans had an unfortunate habit of importing hundreds of thousands of slave labourers from countries they had occupied, and one of the worst-affected victims was Belgium.

About 200,000 Belgian men were kidnapped from their own country and brought to work at places like Nordhausen, where the V2 project was based but, after long negotiations between the two countries, Germany finally agreed in 2005 to pay the surviving slaves a lump sum and a pension.

And now they want to tax it.

As the furious Belgian finance minister says: "It is shocking that people who, during World War II, were forced to work by the Nazis have now received tax demands related to the compensation they received."

He then went on to describe the move as "incredibly insensitive".

An insensitive German?

My God, who ever heard of such a thing?

Ian O’Doherty

ANYTHING THAT FREES NEWSPAPERS FROM TRINITY MIRROR......

A leading Welsh nationalist has called for the principality’s national daily newspaper to be taken into public ownership. Bethan Jenkins, who sits for Plaid Cymru in the Welsh Assembly, said radical measures were needed to save The Western Mail from decline. Writing on an independent Welsh news website, she said the Assembly government should nationalise the paper before handing it over to a not-for-profit company run by journalists. Its current owners, Trinity Mirror, told the BBC they were “not going to dignify this with a comment.” The call follows the announcement this week of a further 14 job losses at TM’s Cardiff-based Media Wales operation which includes the Western Mail.

Ich Bin Definitely NOT a Berliner

2011-11-19T02:13:00.000-08:00

Radio Fourceps’ obsession with science programmes is driving tenants of Skidmore Parva shrieking back to newspapers which are united this week in warning of a German takeover of Europe.

Bismarck invented my favourite drink, Black Velvet, a mixture of stout and champagne. Perhaps being part of the German Empire he envisaged won’t be so bad. Though I would not eat black bread and sauerkraut, not if Hell had me.

Poor Bismarck, he must be wearing out jackboots in Valhalla, kicking himself when he works out the cost of his own failed attempts at domination. The first try gave him the taste. When he won the Franco Prussian war France had to pay him an indemnity of 5 billion dollars. From then on things went downhill. World War One cost Germany 37,775 million dollars and World War Two was even worse. It brought Germany a bill of 414trillion dollars. He could have got 27 countries free if he had thought of inventing the Euro.

War making was an expensive folly and they wisely gave it up. America, alas, did not. Their efforts to bring democracy to the Third World at the point of a gun has cost them 6 trillion dollars, which would have repaid their one trillion dollar debt to China and reduced their total debt which stands at 14 trillion dollars. Make money not war is a slogan that has brought Germany the role that America has vacated. We would be debt free too had we not chosen to join them in their crazy adventures.

The end result? Europe, we learn, is run by the Frankfurt Group of eight men led by Angela Merkel and the only bonds the market is buying are German. This week, flushed with success at the peaceful invasion of Greece and Italy, they put us firmly in place when they ordered Britain to put up or shut up about funds to help bankrupt countries. We are anti-Europe as a nation but our Prime Minister has just agreed a two percent rise in the EU's budget, despite the fact the EU cannot get its accounts past its own accountants

It is worth remembering that it is not Germany’s industry that has put her in the pound seats. I was there after the war and I saw the amount of money the Allies poured into Western Germany to rebuild its economy. Industry was given massive grants to buy the best machinery, factories sprang up. The reason the land rover is build of aluminium is that our car industry was forbidden to use steel which all went to export and mostly to Germany. I was friendly with the editor of the Bielefeld News, a weekly paper which was given state of the art machinery when Allied Newspapers, for which I worked in civilian life, was produced on antique presses.

I was on leave when the Mark was devalued. The Germany I left was shabby, the shops were empty. I returned a fortnight later to an entirely different country. Shop windows filled with goods, restaurants doing a roaring trade. Signs of prosperity I didn’t see at home. I went to the Hanover State Fair which was a revelation. There I saw machinery and vehicles, wines and smart furniture, designer clothes; I even bought a dachshund. Things were on sale there that we did not see in Britain for many years. The Allies put Germany ahead of the game in a desperate effort to prevent communism getting a hold.

A few years later I returned to Germany as the guest of 616 RAF Squadron of jet fighters. When I saw the new Germany I knew who had really won the war

If Germany does decide to occupy she will find willing recruits to run Britain where this week a mother-of-three was fined almost £500 for dropping a cigarette.

Tracey John, 48, was smoking on her front doorstep when she was seen by a litter enforcement officer as she dropped the butt on the pavement outside her home.

Nigel Wheeler, service director for Streetcare at Rhondda Cynon Taf Council said: “Eco-criminals will not be tolerated. The illegal disposal of cigarette related waste is the biggest single problem throughout the area. As well as creating unsightly environmental conditions, the offence can attract vermin. The Streetcare Enforcement Team will do all in its power to eradicate this type of behaviour.”

A coroner yesterday issued a damning verdict on rulebook-obsessed fire chiefs who ordered colleagues not to rescue a dying woman trapped down a mine shaft.

Lawyer Alison Hume could have survived if rank and file firefighters at the scene had been allowed to do their job and bring her out, said Sheriff Desmond Leslie.

Instead, the senior officers’ ‘fundamentalist adherence’ to health and safety procedures and failure to take account of the extreme urgency of the situation resulted in the mother-of-two remaining at the bottom of the shaft in Ayrshire for almost six hours after Strathclyde Fire and Rescue arrived.

Fire crews refused to use a winch to pull her to safety because its policy was only to use the rescue equipment to save its own staff.

Ve haf vays of making you balk...........

The BMA, an organisation which will fit happily into a Gesundheit und Sicherheit (Health and Safety) culture seeks to make it illegal to smoke cigarettes in a car. They claim it results in concentrations of toxic fumes. Odd that. After five years research the World Health Organisation failed to find evidence that “second-hand smoke” was harmful.

My chum Monte Fresco offered this cynical but fair comment on the EU:

“Some years ago a small rural town in Italy twinned with a similar town in Greece.

“The Mayor of the Greek town visited the Italian town. When he saw the palatial mansion belonging to the Italian mayor he wondered how he could afford such a house. The Italian said: ‘You see that bridge over there? The EU gave us a grant to build a two-lane bridge, but by building a single lane bridge with traffic lights at either end this house could be built.’

“The following year the Italian visited the Greek town. He was simply amazed at the Greek Mayor's house, gold taps, marble floors, it was marvellous. When he asked how this could be afforded the Greek said: ‘You see that bridge over there?’

“The Italian replied: ‘No.’

********************************************

We have been turning off Radio Fourceps quite a lot. The final straw was an apparently endless series of lectures on the brain. As the last programme faded into oblivion it left me confident I could undertake a simple trepanning, though I cannot think I would find a use for knowing how to stitch a human ear on the back of a mouse. Not for the first time I am left wondering where on earth the BBC goes for controllers. This new one is clearly the product of a laboratory, though obviously not one that specialises in brains.

In order to accommodate the science programmes the new Controller has moved more popular programmes from their pole positions to less listened-to tracts of the radio desert, the late afternoons. When I took over the “Archives” programme on R4 I had an audience of around ten million. Not because I was good. The “Archives” programme at 9 am followed the “Today” programme and benefited from their audience.

When years later Radio Wales wanted rid of me they moved my programmes from lunchtime to late afternoon in the vain hope that I would lose listeners. I imagine that is why an excellent programme “Feedback” which is critical of the BBC has been moved from lunchtime to late afternoon. It is not the only casualty. For reasons which have nothing to do with quality, the lunchtime news programme has been extended and a number of good programmes have been uprooted. I prefer the thinking of the early broadcasters who would occasionally inform listeners “There is no important news today” and put on a gramophone record. If I were controller I would replace all the “news” magazines with brief news bulletins. That would end a nice little earner for windy MPs and the organising secretaries of the various organisations for interfering with practically everything. I would also be glad to hear the new Controller’s excuse for airing the sexist “Woman’s Hour”.

The Night It Never Dawned on Me

2011-11-11T15:49:00.000-08:00

Taz our greyhound like most of his kind has two speeds. Fast and fast asleep. So Celia takes him for walks and I handle the sleeping challenge.

Most of the time we have short sleeping bouts to see who sleeps the longest. When the Ferret has an away-day we are into marathon sleeping.

I thought I was the easy victor on Bonfire Night when I settled down to listen to the one o’ clock news and woke up the next day. It was growing light and after a crafty croissant I went to bed for a Sunday lie in. Difficulty dozing off because for some reason everyone in the town was letting off fireworks before lunch. When I next woke it had gone dark. My watch said eleven o’ clock but there was something amiss. I switched on the new science network on BBC Radio Fourceps, and that is when I realised I had reached the End of the World. It was still dark and there wasn’t a programme about how the bowel works. Even worse. It was a play by Pinter. It was only when I went to the front door and the Sunday Times wasn’t there that the light began to dawn. Literally.

It was still Saturday.

******************************************

I did not have one myself so I don't understand the fuss about education. There must be cheaper ways of keeping children off our backs. The things we teach!

Science and law and rhetoric are what universities were invented for. The rest is jobs for the boys.

Just imagine. It is the Middle Ages and there are these three villeins and one says: "What line you in, then?"

"I teach law at the university."

"Teach? What is teach?"

"I stand up in front of these kids and I tell them how to be lawyers."

"Could end up with more lawyers than jobs."

"Ain't that the truth? But we solved it. The ones don't get jobs, they teach other kids to be lawyers. What’s your line?"

"I write books, but the pay is lousy."

"You should teach. Three months’ holiday a year. All found."

"What can I teach? I just sit down and write."

"It’s not what you teach. It’s what you call it. Let’s see. Books. Latin, ‘libra’. Librature? Doesn't have a ring. That’s it, Literature. You married?"

"On my wages?"

"So you're a bachelor. Great. Bachelor of Arts."

The third villein says could they find him a job and the first chap says: "What do you do?"

"Not a lot. I keep a diary."

“Your Story. Let’s run that up the flagpole and see if it waves...Hang about.Teach what is in everyone else's diary - His Story. You'll do a bomb."

"But I don't KNOW what's in everyone's diary."

"Use your imagination, everyone else did. The Romans claimed they were descended from a wolf and there was this Greek guy Herodotus who invented men whose heads grew out of their chests. Never looked back."

That is how education was born.

*********************************************

Lenin has had 87 years; for Jimmy Savile, a disc jockey turned turbo-charged charity-fundraiser, the honour of lying in state was to last just a single day. But what a day - a blinged up cowboy, Santa, a Royal Marine and a nun in a wheelchair were among the 5,000 that filed passed his gold-covered coffin in a Leeds hotel. Sir Jimmy is to be buried in his trademark tracksuit with two expensive cigars to impress God, along with his Royal Marines bravery medal and Green Beret. He will be buried in Scarborough with his coffin at 45 degrees 'so he can see the sea', said Howard Silverman, his lifelong friend.

The Independent and The Sun.

**********************************

My cousin Mary Gregory offers this:

TWO DIFFERENT DOCTORS' OFFICES ...
> Boy, if this doesn't hit the nail on the head, I don't know what does!
> Two patients limp into two different medical clinics with the same complaint. Both have trouble walking and appear to require a hip replacement.
> The FIRST patient is examined within the hour, is x-rayed the same day and has a time booked for surgery the following week.
> The SECOND sees his family doctor after waiting 3 weeks for an appointment, then waits 8 weeks to see a specialist, then gets an x-ray which isn't reviewed for another week, and finally has his surgery scheduled for 6 months from then.
> Why the different treatment for the two patients?

> The FIRST is a Golden Retriever.
> The SECOND is a Senior Citizen.
>
> Next time take me to a vet!
>
But only if you are very rich...(Ed)

Be Fair to Greeks Seeking Gifts

2011-11-05T01:47:00.000-07:00

I have known Junes by the score, even a girl called April. Marys, Celias and Pennys, heavenly and otherwise; Giselas, Rosemarys, even Ethels. I once knew a girl named Maria but I have avoided Prudence. In my view, if you are not going to spend it there is little point in wearing yourself out earning money in the first place.

I am Greece made flesh. Long holidays, short working weeks, high pensions. Fine by me. And if my debts are being paid by the Germans who seventy years ago subjected Greece to cruel occupation and slave labour, then bring it on. No wonder nationwide ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the German invasion were disrupted by demonstrators, furious that they were paying the price for the Euro’s survival.

Under the terms of the European Union’s latest bailout, VAT in Greece has been raised to 23 per cent, pensions have been cut by 20 per cent and some 30,000 public servants have been put on notice and given a whopping 60 per cent pay cut.

Last week, Mr Papandreou decided it was time to let the Greek people choose their economic destiny. As he pointed out, it would be grotesquely unfair to condemn a generation to brutal unemployment without letting the voters decide for themselves.

‘We will not implement any programme by force,’ he explained, ‘but only with the consent of the Greek people. This is our democratic tradition and we demand that it is also respected abroad.’

The precedent was set in 507 BC. In Athens in classical times all laws were decided by referendum. Every month 6,000 men met on the Pnyx, a rocky auditorium to the west of the Acropolis. It was one of the world's earliest known democratic legislatures, the material embodiment of the principle of, ‘equal speech’, i.e. the equal right of every citizen to debate matters of policy. The other two principles of democracy were firstly equality under the law and secondly equality of vote and equal opportunity to assume political office. The presiding officer of the Pnyx assembly opened each debate with the open invitation, ‘Who wishes to speak?’.

We know what our leaders think of democracy. We are spilling the blood of our children to bring democracy to the Muslim world, whether the Muslim world wants it or not. Our own incompetent Parliament is tearing itself in tatters calling for a referendum to decide whether we should stay in the EU. That, we insist, is our democratic right.

We just don’t see why other nations should share it

*******************************

I have, my friends, an equal stake with you

In this our country, and I grieve to note

The sad condition of the State's affairs,

I see the state employing evermore

Unworthy ministers; if one do well

A single day, he'll act amiss for ten.

You trust another; he'll be ten times worse.

Aristophanes: Ecclesiazusae (393 BC)

Mind you, it would be as well not to imitate them too closely. The Persians, who had trouble with them, had a proverb:

Zeus had five wives. One of them was his aunt, another was his elder sister and a third one he ate. If my aunt had a beard, she would have been my uncle.

All in all, if you think of life as a cinema I am glad I have moved from the dress circle to the fire exit.

Success is very tiring and the more of it you have the more tiring it gets; the more things you are asked to do, boards to join, audiences to address.

I am devoted to constructive failure, which I define as climbing just so far up the ladder to enjoy the view without getting out of breath; but not so high as to get vertigo.

I once interviewed Charlie Chaplin when he disappeared and I found him in a Doncaster hotel re-visiting the theatres he played as a child.

I pointed out that he had vanished in the clothes he stood up in, no suitcases, not even a clean shirt.

He said: ‘Listen, my boy. Success is when all you have to pack is a wallet.’

I AM A MOTORWAY

2011-10-28T16:33:00.000-07:00

“The wise therefore rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies, by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.
If men lack knowledge and desire, then clever people will not try to interfere.
If nothing is done, then all will be well.”

TAO TE CHING by LAO TZU

Obesity does not kill. I am 10 stone overweight, I have shrunk to five foot six and at 82 I continue to confound the medical profession. Diabetes under control, alcoholism a distant but happy memory, liver recovered. Couldn’t wait to tell the doctor my glad tidings.

“Old news,” he told me. “Recent research has shown us there is no relation of obesity to mortality.”

Sometimes I think doctors enjoy watching us suffer on endless diets and denials.

That at the end of another Week Dolorous in which no orifice remained unplumbed.This picture is more a motorway map than portrait. The medical profession is at its happiest snapping away at my innards in pursuit of cancer camps. Now they have a new and thrilling quest: the Mystery of the Missing Blood, about an armful on the Hancock Scale. Wielding an intrusive camera, Dr Bloodhound left no bowel cranny unturned this week. What used to be my colon is now busier – and as often photographed - as the road from Benghazi to Tripoli.

And all this in the week when my rival the M25 had its 25th birthday.

Eager pharmaceutical paparazzi have once again photographed my every available tubular wall and some I had always hoped were unavailable. But no. They seek blood here, they seek blood there, those cameras seek blood everywhere. And that is not the worst of it. Ownership of a colonoscopy adds a fresh dimension of horror to the pre-op purging.

Nothing more to do but lie back and think of England. As so often at times of stress I went scurrying to the past. In this case to the Beaumaris Festival, my favourite time in my favourite town, where every year I interviewed the stars before a lovely audience.

So many golden memories. Asking the opera giant Geraint Evans how he got the ideas for his splendid make ups and being told, “If I had known you when I was preparing Falstaff I would have modelled him on you.” And then shortly afterwards getting a photo inscribed “From One Falstaff to Another”.

Telling the glamorous pianist Moura Lympany I had fallen love with her as a child because during austerity wartime she had worn such glamorous frocks. “Made out of second hand curtains,” she confessed. So I had fallen in love with soft furnishings, I told her, which amused her so much she invited my wife and me to stay with her in Rasigueres in the South of France. Alas, the proposed biography did not come off.

I usually insisted on one to one interviews but on one occasion I agreed to interview four. Alas that meant I only had time for a brief chat with soprano Rebecca Evans of whom I am a slavish admirer. She was still nursing in a South Wales hospital and singing in off duty moments and she too confessed she had made her own frock.

I have the fondest memories of Tito Beltran, a thoroughly nice man and supremely talented. Pursued by women who were to become his downfall. One persuaded a court in Sweden she had not consented to love making. Tito, the gentlest and most courteous of men, was sentenced to a term in gaol I am convinced he did not deserve.

Meanwhile back at the Blood Letting - or to put it more accurately Veins to Let - Dr Bloodhound is forced to admit failure. Intestine, intestine everywhere but not a drop to drink for eager vampires.

Dr Bloodhound is not beaten yet. He is sending me to another branch of the questing camera. This time in Kettering, where more of the Bloodhound pack has got a tiny camera housed in a capsule which I swallow. It enables them to draw coverts as yet undrawn in body parts unhunted. Truly a blood sport but as yet no word on how they are going to retrieve their camera. I don’t like the idea of it endlessly questing like some tireless vein vole.

*************************************

Tycoons’ salaries have leapt up 50 per cent and are rightly condemned by politicians who are refusing to increase their contribution to their own over-generous pensions.

WELSH SQUELCHED

2011-10-22T05:05:00.000-07:00

In another life I was Welsh so I took last week’s World Cup debacle very personally indeed.

My rare Welsh bits are used to being upset. It used to annoy me that the Welsh were seen as narrow- minded chapel-goers, in suits made from the battered covers of old prayer books. I even took sides in the deep enmity which exists between North and South Wales. It can be virulent. The usually benign novelist Gwyn Thomas, a South Walian, said of the Northerners: “Their idea of gaiety is a purple spotted shroud.”

That is neither true nor kind. Rene Cutforth was nearer the mark with his “Mediterranean in the rain”. Certainly that is true of the 'gwerin', the working men and women I knew when I lived on Anglesey. It was the faux middle class who invented nationalism, largely to ring fence the good jobs on offer.

The Welsh gwerin is witty, funny, generous, and it respects scholarship. It would never occur to them to think of creative writing - as the English do - as a hobby. The Welsh peasants are quick witted and wildly generous. An eminent psychiatrist Dafydd Alun Jones once pointed out to me that 'spree' is a Welsh word (sbri in Welsh). It describes the actions of God-fearing farmers who disappear for days of revelry. Only getting home in time for Sunday chapel.

He said the reason his countrymen had so many religious revivals was that their eagerness to debauch was forever leading them to the edge of the Pit, from which the revivals dragged them back.

My mates were people like Hughie Bugail who was our village policeman. Well, that is what the Chief Constable thought. Bugail means shepherd and Hughie's main occupation was policing the flock of pedigree sheep he kept on Malltraeth Marshes, breeding and training sheepdogs, and the only crooks he collared were shepherds' crooks that were works of art.

Bob Ty Lawr lived in a barn with his long dog Fly. When he was refused a drink in a posh coastal pub, the Mermaid, he picked up a goldfish bowl from the bar, drank it, ate the fish, stamped out of the pub, jumped into the Menai Strait and swam to Caernarfon, where he had four pints in The Castle and then swam back.

Eddie Pont Dic was part cap, an oily plate that grew like a fungus from the top of his head. He observed of caravanners who rented his orchard: “Funny people the Sais (English). They eats in the garden and shits in the house.”

Owen Thief was a brilliant footballer. He had the talent of a young George Best. He was the only boy to be capped twice for the Welsh Schoolboys. Everton snatched him up as soon as he left school. An Anglesey boy who had barely crossed the Menai Bridge except to pay football, the bright lights of Liverpool dazzled him. On his first night he fell into bad company and discovered drink. Subsequently he was sent to prison where he shared a cell with Harry McVicar.

I once gave it as my opinion that Gwyn the Lift was the perfect name for the village taxi driver. I was deafened by snorts of disbelief. ”Don't leave anything lying about,“ I was warned.

Gwyn shared the wife of a farm labourer by whom he had a son. He blamed it on the black-out. Both he and his wife took a great interest in the boy's welfare and visited him weekly. The labourer explained to me: “I don't like what is going on but what can I do? I have got to have my shirts washed.”

The wife of an oyster farmer, Terry Barrack, moved in with the landlord of the local inn, The Groeslon. “It's terrible,” Terry told me, “I have to go all the way to Menai Bridge for a pint.”

Our councillor's husband Glyn Brownson, who was half Indian, was known as “Glyndustani”. An Indian pedlar who came to his door was met with a torrent of Indian. “Go easy,” said the pedlar nervously in a broad Welsh accent, “I'm from Cardiff.”

After dining with the script writer John Stephenson, I realised that I kept swerving to the wrong side of the road. I stopped the car at the nearest phone box.

“Who you ringing?” asked John. “The police,” I told him. ”I need a lift home.”

Horrified, he insisted on taking the wheel. I told Gwyn, our other bobby, about it and it was his turn to be horrified. “He had no right stopping you ringing me,” he said. ”That is how accidents are caused.”

My wife and I were under the protective wing of the village family of black sheep, called cruelly the 'cacau' (shit). The eldest, Trefor, asked me if I had any gardening jobs. Since it was December, I had none. So he went to the Groeslon, snatched the till and ran away with it. He got about five yards - and two years in prison.

His brother Raymond came to us every year for his Christmas dinner (we subsequently discovered he went to five other houses). Trefor had told me it was my fault he stole the till because I wouldn't give him any gardening. The logic was faulty but I still felt guilty. Raymond told me that because of a warders' strike his brother was being held in a police station cell in Wrexham. I had many friends there from my days as a freelance in Chester so I rang the custody sergeant to ask him to put Trefor on the phone so we could wish him a Merry Christmas.

The sergeant quivered with indignation: “You should know better, Skiddy.”

“Aw, come on,” I said, “who’s going to know?”

“It's not a matter of that,” said the sergeant, “he's not had his pudding yet. You'll have to ring back in half an hour.”

*************** * * * * * * * * *

STOP PRESS

Almina, Countess of Carnarvon, continued to dog the family from beyond the grave. On October 21, 2011, the Daily Mail published a startling exclusive.

“Downton's greatest secret: A lonely countess, an illicit love affair with an Egyptian prince... and an Earl who has no right to his title. The extraordinary claims about a real life Lord...

By CHRISTOPHER WILSON

“Now here’s a Downton Abbey storyline that writer Julian Fellowes would dismiss as too far-fetched: that the steely Earl of Grantham has no right to his title and should be booted out of the Abbey to make way for a distant cousin.

Yet, in real life, this could indeed be the case for the poor unassuming 8th Earl of Carnarvon, whose family history has been plundered for the storyline of the top-rated TV series and whose stately home, Highclere Castle, is used as its backdrop.

“For new genealogical evidence points to the uncomfortable fact that Lord Carnarvon’s grandfather may well have been the son, not of an English aristocrat, but of an Indian prince. Furthermore, there’s evidence that the family knew about it and covered it up.”

“If this is true, it would mean that the present earl, Eton and Oxford-educated George Carnarvon, has no right to his title, and that the privilege should pass to an unassuming 39-year old Devon teacher, Alan Herbert.

“The author of a new biography of 55-year old Lord Carnarvon’s great-grandmother has unearthed explosive evidence which could alter the 218-year history of the famous title — and provide Julian Fellowes with some rich source material for the next series of Downton.

“William Cross, the writer, claims that Carnarvon’s ancestor, the 5th earl, was undersexed and showed more interest in photographs of nude women than in the real thing.

“His ‘sham’ marriage to heiress Almina Wombwell (they wed in 1895) was merely one of convenience — she brought with her a colossal fortune, just at a time when the family coffers were almost drained. The deal was, he got the money, she got a title.

“But Mr Cross says that Lord Carnarvon was not deeply attracted to his wife — nor she to him — and that sexual relations may have remained dormant long after their marriage.

“Carnarvon’s closest friend was Prince Victor Duleep Singh, a godson of Queen Victoria and the son of the last Maharajah of Lahore. Though a Sikh, he was welcome in the very highest echelons of society and was a close friend of Edward VII.

“Victor had been a friend of Carnarvon at Eton and, as they grew up, he led the young Englishman into ‘wild ways’. They gambled ruinously, and while on a trip to Egypt, Victor fixed up the young peer with a prostitute so he could lose his virginity. ’But Carnarvon contracted a malady from one of the whorehouses, and after returning to England almost died,’ reveals Mr Cross. ‘He retained for life the facial marks from the effects of the disease. Thereafter, Carnarvon was sexually blighted. His fall-back — with his valet Fernside as his confidant — was taking photographs of women. Naughty pictures became his passion, and at the height of his voyeurism he commissioned 3,000 nudes from a photographic studio.’

“If Carnarvon wasn’t interested in his new wife, ten years his junior, then his best friend was. Prince Victor practically lived at Highclere Castle, in Hampshire. ‘He had plenty of opportunity,’ says Mr Cross. Significantly, when the Countess — Almina — became pregnant, she made two sets of plans for the birth of her child.

“The first, official, plan was to have the baby delivered at the Carnarvon family home in London’s Berkeley Square. But she also rented another house — and for good reason. ‘She was terrified,’ says William Cross. ‘The safe house was her planned refuge — just in case the baby was born with the wrong skin pigment.’

In the event, she gave birth to a son on November 7, 1898, who turned out to be fair-skinned, for though Prince Victor had the dark skin of his race, his mother, Bamba, was a white woman.

“Skin colour is believed to be determined by up to seven different genes working together, so as a mixed race man Prince Victor had a mixture of genes coding for both black and white skin in his sperm — and so had the chance of having white offspring.

“In any case, the earl accepted the child as his own, and in so doing averted the inevitable divorce and loss of funds — for it was his wife’s fortune which was to allow him, in a few years’ time, to take his place in history as the man who uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. Almina’s riches took care of that.

Regardless of the boy’s skin colour, the peer’s abiding concern was that if it became publicly suspected that he was indeed the son of Prince Victor, it would have had ruinous consequences on the Carnarvon dynasty, and call into question the whole future of Highclere Castle itself. His wife’s closeness with the Sikh had to be hushed up.

“And so it was — until about 15 years ago, when the then earl decided to commission a biography of Almina. The incriminating evidence was uncovered by the Reverend David Sox, an American academic.

“‘Just between the two of us,’ Sox wrote to a friend soon after his findings, ‘I’ve discovered (quite by accident in the archives) that the earl’s real father was Prince Victor. Victor was constantly at Highclere, as going through my visitors’ books indicates.’

“Until Sox’s startling claim, the 7th earl, a close friend of the present Queen and her racing manager from 1969 to 2001, had made well-publicised plans to publish the biography. But as soon as the awful truth was uncovered, the book was dropped and never mentioned again.

“Sox was regarded as a reliable historian, according to the long-serving Highclere housekeeper, Maureen Cummins. She says: ‘He came into the castle and did a lot of research. In fact, he was so knowledgeable that he was employed for a time as a guide. So it is highly unlikely he would have made the story up.’

“Aristocratic families, beady about their possessions and titles, have learned over centuries how to beat off predators who, throughout history have fed off the rich and famous. The Carnarvons would not want their lands and status to pass to a junior branch of the family — and so the scandal was hushed up, the skeleton put firmly in the back of Highclere Castle’s capacious closets.

“William Bortrick, executive editor of Burke’s Peerage, is unfazed by the revelations: ‘Throughout the history of the British aristocracy such circumstances did happen,’ he says. ‘Probably more often than people realised.’

Indeed, among the present ranks of the aristocracy there is at least one duke and an earl who are generally known not to be the sons of the men outwardly thought to be their fathers.

“‘The only requirement in law is for an hereditary peer, when he succeeds to the title, to produce his birth certificate to prove his identity,’ I was told by another authority. ‘If the certificate falsely claims he is legitimate, and nobody challenges it, he goes through on the nod.’

“And so Prince Duleep’s son became an earl and nobody blinked an eye.

So the question remains – who is the real Earl of Carnarvon?

Step forward Alan Mervyn Edward Hugh Herbert, a bachelor who celebrates his 40th birthday later this month. Mr Herbert descends in a direct line from the 4th Earl of Carnarvon, his great-grandfather (and the father of the under-sexed 5th Earl). This earl married twice, and his son by the second marriage, the Hon Mervyn Herbert, was Alan’s grandfather.

“There are no other male lines of succession in the family apart from Alan and his cousin, the present ‘Earl’. A shy and retiring teacher, he lives in a flat in the large and glorious Devonshire house once owned by his family, another branch of the Carnarvon clan.

“When approached by the Mail this week and told that he had a strong claim to be the rightful Earl, he greeted the news with astonishment.

‘Wow,’ he said, very quietly. ‘I was aware we had some kind of connection with the Carnarvons but that is all. This is a big surprise, I must say. I’d be curious to know more.’

“Such curiosity could open a hornet’s nest, since quite apart from the titles, there’s the question of Highclere Castle, the Carnarvon estates and a multi-million Downton Abbey legacy at stake.

“While it doesn’t automatically follow that if he proves his superior claim to the title, family possessions would pass his way — but they might.

Author William Cross asserts that Almina Carnarvon was made to sign papers attesting to her son’s legitimacy which may well have secured the family’s millions for the present incumbents of Highclere Castle, but often lawyers have a way of finding loopholes in such deeds, particularly if the truth had not been told.

“It is too early yet for the bewildered Mr Herbert to pursue his claim to the earldom, but the door is open for him to do so.

“‘As a matter of decency and courtesy it’s usual to wait for the death of a peer before making a competing claim,’ says Ian Denyer, a Crown Office constitutional expert based at the Palace of Westminster.

‘But there’s no reason, if he wanted to ruffle some feathers, why he shouldn’t go ahead now.’

“The difficulty facing Mr Herbert is that the crucial evidence naming Prince Victor as the father of the 6th earl resides in the archives at Highclere Castle, where biographer William Cross found it.

“Of course, modern science using DNA could prove the truth once and for all. Indeed, the Sikh historian Peter Bance, who has written a biography of Prince Victor Duleep Singh, says that hair from the prince and his younger brother was kept after their deaths.

“Matched with DNA from a member of the Carnarvon family, it could be tested to prove if Mr Herbert is entitled to swap his Devon flat for a stately home in Hampshire.

“Ironically, Mr Herbert has never watched Downton Abbey, saying: ‘I did hear something about it on the radio. It sounds like something I should watch.’

If he did, he might see the 1,000-acre estate where the serial is set and consider the fickle nature of the finger of fate.”

■ The Life And Secrets Of Almina Carnarvon by William Cross can be bought via http://lifeandsecretsofalminacarnarvon.yolasite.com

Which reminds me that today the Ferret and I celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary and I must go now and open the champagne, grateful that we do not know a single Indian Prince.

YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP

2011-10-15T04:26:00.000-07:00

question I am most often asked is how I manage week after week to find topics about which to be scornful. Believe me, that is the easy bit. What is really difficult is to find comic incidents more bizarre than life offers unvarnished. I gave up writing satirical novels because whenever I invented a risible situation life itself provided examples that exceeded the fiction.

This week life beat me so comprehensibly that I am not even going to try to compete.

Here is the news:

We are hovering on the brink of a war of coloured skins. On R4. Woman’s Hour was doing one of those sensitive investigations into social ills which it does so badly, though not on this occasion by the Dolorous Dame Jenni Murray.

The subject was mixed race. Listeners were asked to ring in with their experiences. One said that she still hurts from being told to

“go home nigger”.

Shock horror in the studio and profuse apologies. Not to the poor woman to whom this terrible thing happened. The presenter was shocked to the core by the use on air of the word ‘nigger’. So affected was she that she twice, her voice throbbing with emotion, apologised with a lengthy explanation of how listeners would be upset at hearing the word.

*******************************************

Capitalism is collapsing round our ears. More than a million are unemployed, most of them youngsters. We have just suffered our first teenage riot against which the police were powerless. The EU toy safety directive states that balloons must not be blown up by unsupervised children under the age of eight, in case they accidentally swallow them and choke. Party games that include whistles and magnetic fishing games are to be banned because their small parts or the chemicals used in making them are decreed to be too risky.

Whistle blowers that scroll out into a long, coloured paper tongue when sounded – a party favourite at family Christmas meals – are now classed as unsafe for all children under 14.

As well as new rules for balloons and party whistles, the legislation will impose restrictions on how noisy toys, including rattles or musical instruments, are allowed to sound.

All teddy bears meant for children under the age of three will now have to be fully washable because EU regulators are concerned that dirty cuddly toys could spread disease and infection.

An EU official insisted that safety experts knew best. "You might say that small children have been blowing up balloons for generations, but not anymore and they will be safer for it," said an official.

****************************************

Meanwhile officials running Telford Junior League have refused to record heavy losses - to spare young players from embarrassment. Scores are limited to 1-0 victories and 0-0 or 1-1 draws across 20 divisions in age groups from the under-10s through to under-16s.

**************************************

Under yet another EU ruling posters showing ladies in lingerie must not be posted on billboards near schools.

*****************************************

BURNING poppies or abusing soldiers may no longer be illegal under plans unveiled yesterday.

Ministers are considering making it legal to use insulting words or actions to avoid "criminalising free speech".

Yobs can currently be nicked for being "threatening, abusive or insulting".

Emdadur Choudhury, 26, was charged last year after burning poppies and five Muslims were convicted for shouting insults at a homecoming parade.

GREAT TRUTHS

From my panchromatic chum Colin Gower:

If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
-- Mark Twain

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-- Winston Churchill

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
-- G. Gordon Liddy

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
-- James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
-- Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Frederic Bastiat, French economist (1801-1850)

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
-- Will Rogers

Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it.
-- Anonymous

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
-- Ronald Reagan

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
-- Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
-- Thomas Jefferson

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
-- Aesop

And consider this...

What one person receives without working for,.another person must work for without receiving.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!

UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL

2011-10-08T05:03:00.000-07:00

When we stepped through the door I thought I had arrived in some celestial butcher's shop. There, in proud array, came cuts of beef which had been hung so long they came with a pension book. Sausages? Paddington sausage which is flavoured with marmalade, black pudding sausages - sausages in short with all the flavours of the Indies. HOME CURED back bacon, plus bacon steeped in molasses and ribs of beef like gargantuan dockers hooks. Opposite, a counter of gourmet gins and liqueurs of every conceivable fruitsweat. On again to sausage rolls where the flaky pastry struggles to contain the meat; home made pork pies in which only the jelly of pigs' trotters is permitted to bind the meat; and pastry fit to make teeth weep with joy. Lucious lasagne; home made steak and ale pie in which the ale would, in the words of Beaumont and Fletcher, "make a cat speak".

Did you mention cheese? TWENTY different varieties including Black Bomber and Snowdonia Bouncer. All meats are grown on the farm and locally slaughtered is the boast.

"Not ALL the meat," I carped, waving my stick at today's specials: haunch of crocodile, bear ragout, python steaks, emu, venison
etc."

"Look out of the window," advised a kindly butcher with cheeks of rosy red. "That's the crocodile house over there and you can

just see the emus behind the deer herd. I regret that we buy in python and bear which require special management skills."

And then I saw it. A tray of Barnsley Chops. Can there be a soul so dead it is a stranger to the Barnsley Chop? A palate so starved of joy it has never felt the caress of meat so sweet it could flavour cake? Surely not. The Barnsley Chop is lamb's stout response to a T Bone steak and in happier days it came with its own kidney, hanging coyly from its under belly. In Doncaster next to the pie and pea shops (another loss to civilisation) every butcher worth his saveloy offered Barnsley Chops.

But stay.....these are pale imitations of the Barnsley Chop. Where is the kidney? The Barnsley Chop does not come with kidneys, I am told. Heresy. No chop would be allowed to leave his mother's side unless accompanied by a kidney chaperone. I emailed a chum with whom I grazed many a Barnsley Chop, sluiced with quantities of Barnsley Bitter.

He wrote back: "Have had the same experience as you. The butcher sold me a Barnsley Chop and I wanted to know where the kidney was. 'No kidney in a Barnsley Chop," he said. And he was adamant. Some years earlier I had been to a restaurant in Barnsley (I think it was called Brookfield, or something similar) especially to have a Barnsley Chop. They claim to have originated 'the B-chop' dish and I remember there was a kidney on my plate. Very nice too. But when I got your note I asked the village butcher the question and he said no kidney in it. So I got in touch with the Barnsley restaurant today, spoke to the chef and he said no kidney in a B-chop. He said the dish had been originated from their kitchen many years ago. 'How come I had a kidney in my B-chop?' I asked. 'You probably had the B-chop dish which includes a kidney but it was not part of the chop.' he said."

Back to the Heavenly Butcher's shop where I threw the question open to the massed butchers. One older and wiser than the rest told me I was quite right. As I might have guessed, it's that pesky EC and "'elf and safety."

"Blame the Meat Inspectors," he told me. "They heartlessly separate kidney and chop in the abbatoir. It's the same with pork chop," he reminded me. "Always came with a full complement of kidney but no longer."

I suppose we are lucky they leave on the fat which protects it against snaw and blaw.

Can there be a more compelling reason for joining the clamour to leave that luckless body?

And while we are on the subject consider this:
Pythagoras' Theorem: 24 words
Archimedes' Principle: 67 words
Ten Commandments: 179 words
US Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words
US Constitution with all 27 Amendments: 7,818 words
EU regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words…
… Europe's Problems Summed Up!

Mind you, we are fighting back.

A Texas businessman decorated a 9-foot-tall tree last Christmas in the lobby of a JP Morgan Chase Bank branch as a favour to the manager. There were protests from On High and the branch manager was told the tree had to go. Wiser counsels have prevailed.
Chase has changed its policy for 2011 and will now allow branch banks to display Christmas trees in their lobbies.

Friends, we are slowly winning the "War on Christmas", says the businessman, but the work is not finished. We must continue to show retailers and national companies that "It's OK to say Merry Christmas." The local paper there is running a campaign offering Christmas protest buttons. Ideal with a Stetson and snakeskin boots.

King Tut and Queen Tut Tut

2011-10-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

I am not writing to the Jockey Club, nor even the Guinness Book of Records, but the Ferret is claiming to everyone who will listen that I am the first man in history (here she usually adds ‘it would have to be a man’) to overdose on Furosemide, the well-known diuretic. My point is that I cannot make a claim because it was accidental and not carried out under supervision or in the presence of authorised time keepers under racing conditions. .

Anyway, I have things to ponder which are rather more worrying. I think I got the wrong blood in the transfusion of recent date. I think they filled my tank with the Rhesus Negative of Count Dracula. I haven’t slept for a week, I have gone off garlic sausages and I cannot see a window without wanting to fly through it. Either that or the man in the next hospital bed who howled all night was at my windpipe in the wee small hours of the morning. I have been on E-Bay but not an ounce of Transylvanian soil is to be had, even for ready money.

Talking of people eating, Julian Fellowes, the chap who wrote Downton, the TV series, enjoys nothing more than a quick snack on the hand that feeds him. He has had the grace to apologise for his latest rebuke of fans of the series who have pointed out anachronisms, but the sin remains.

Time, I think, for the hand to bite back. The whole wonderful series is based on a massive misconception. The eldest daughters of the landowning classes are not human beings: they are bargain tokens to be exchanged for land/money/rank. No horny young man would have attempted to seduce one when there were younger daughters on hand. True, there was a Turkish diplomatic mission in Britain at the time in which the play is set. The Ottoman Empire was crumbling. One of the Sultan’s personal guards, an Albanian, had declared Egypt an independent state. Two America missionaries started a literary society in Beirut where the only subject on the agenda was nationalism. There were secret societies by the dozen. The Sultan urgently needed an alliance with a Western power and England was the first choice. But for the intransigence of Churchill an alliance could have gone ahead and possibly World War One avoided.

There is no way a young diplomat would prejudice the outcome of those talks by seducing his host's unmarried eldest daughter.

A new chum of mine William Cross has just published a fascinating biography of Almina, the 5^th Countess of Carnarvon, who lived at Highclere at about that time. Now there is a lady crying out for a series. And that is not all she was crying out for.

She was fond of a Mellor Moment. When she felt the urge for horizontal gardening she had an arrangement with one of the gardeners at Highclere. She later told a friend how she would stand away from her desk in one of the windows and that was the signal to summon him. She was nothing if not ecumenical. Shortly after her marriage to the 5^th Earl she began an affair with his best man, an Indian Prince.

Almina was the natural daughter of Alfred de Rothschild, who bought her an aristocratic husband, the earl, with a dowry of £400,000. The Prince, who was at Eton with the groom, came at no extra charge.

In fairness, Almina was a generous lady. As in the TV series, she established a hospital for wounded officers at Highclere. She was very strict. When she caught a nurse in bed with an officer in the Scots Guards the nurse was given a severe reprimand. She told her: “That sort of thing puts a severe strain on the patient’s heart and he might have died as a result.”

The hospital had a profitable sideline. Socialites could use it for abortions. No wonder the king sent along a gift of 120 bottles of port, sherry, claret and burgundy.

Anyone was fair game for Almira, even friends of her son. Her most public affair was with Colonel Ian Dennistoun, the husband of her best friend Dorothy, whom she stole and married. Almina insisted that she had sought permission from her husband to start the affair (he at the time was busy excavating the tomb of Pharaoh Tut).Dorothy responded by suing her ex-husband for £13,035 and 18 pence in alimony. In court she claimed he had made her sleep with General Sir John Cowans, the Quartermaster General of the British Army who was involved in a number of similar scandals and must have had a busy war. In return Cowans promoted her husband. The new Colonel wrote to her: “Oh girlie, I hate you using that lovely body of yours as a gift.”

The jury found for Dorothy but in a reserved judgement the Judge dismissed their findings. Despite winning, Almina was ruined by the publicity. Things went from bad to worse. When she died in Bristol in 1969 all Almina’s money had gone and she was renting a terraced house in a semi slum.

Now I reckon if Fellowes had used that for a plot it wouldn’t have mattered if the houses in Downton had been festooned in TV aerials. No one would have noticed.

Sick Note

2011-09-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

A bear however hard he tries/ Grows tubby without exercise/ He takes what exercise he can/By falling off the ottoman.

I do know how the bear feels. After a month of committed falling over onto various surfaces, I decided to consult the doctor. The NHS has a new miracle cure. By the time you get to see the doctor you're cured and when I went I felt fine. The doctor did not share my view. He said, 'You're dying again.' Apparently I was down to a blood count of six when it should have been 12. The practice phone was hot as he tried to contact a gastric surgeon and I was rushed into our new, as yet unpaid for, hospital in Peterborough for an immediate blood transfusion. That was two days ago and I'm still waiting.

Although the hospital seems reluctant to give me blood they are very enthusiastic about taking it. I have had half-hourly blood tests since I arrived. Now it's taking rather longer to find blood than it did to find the Constock Lode. I can't help wondering why they bother prospecting for more blood. Empty veins suggest I'm already dead. But they appear to be enjoying themselves so much it seems a pity to spoil their search.

I've suggested the nurse should grow her two side teeth and wear a cloak, that they might hire a bat on favourable terms or, alternatively, pour some blood in before they take any more out. I await their decision.

As always, the legions of nurses fluttering around my bed have been the soul of kindness and concern. The male nurse is currently on leave from Afghanistan where's he's a Queen Alexandra Nurse with the T.A. He has been twice blown up and once shot. Under the circumstances I am reluctant to complain. Food first class, doctors a delight.

The new hospital was built under the PFI scheme so we'll own it about the time the world ends. It is a monstrous waste of money. Though luxurious in the extreme – patients have their own alcoves or are in multi-purpose wards for four where each patient can be curtained off and each bed has a free TV – the waste of space stultifying.

Coming in, you enter a vast atrium in which you could rebuild classical Rome. It is lined with bookshops and cafes of every description. The nurses tell me the super-wide corridors are endless between departments and they feel as though they're walking 35 miles a day.

It is designed as a leisure centre rather than a place of caring for the sick.

Yours sincerely,

Dracula's Little Helper – and go easy on the garlic when reading this.

P.S. No flowers. Blood sausages appreciated.

PPS. Escape Committee Minute 24/11/11 FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
Skidmore I , local acting sergeanr retired had his escape plan approved by the cttee at1300 hours. He will leave Stalag at his convenience by any means.
Grounds for escape (Priority ONE)
; A Polish patient put in the next bed of Friday 23, howled incessantly until Sat 1200 hours which was very eunnerving for patient involved in blood transferrance. Nurses unable to quiet Polish patient who continued to howl in unknown tongue.. One nurse of Carribean extraction and pleasing contours asked at 2 am if he would like a piece of cake, a cure obviously much pracised by her in family emergency.. Polish patient demurred and continued to look longingly at Skidmore I, local acting sergeant (rtd)
Committee approved temporary escape returning Monday am to keep appointment at Endoscopy Unit (Special Measures) where torture is arranged with internal photography; wearing hospital identity tag and pretending he has come from ward.
(typed in heste.eat after reading)

IS IT STILL 7/11

2011-09-17T04:30:00.000-07:00

I am indebted to Lord Trefgarne who charged the discredited Libyan Government £940,000 for offering to organise a prison break for the Lockerbie Bomber. As I twitched my way through another sleepless night I thought how much I would have liked a slice of that to sprinkle on my porridge.

Then it struck me. President Obama could use the stratagem to pay America’s debt to its landlord, China. He should put in a bill to Al Qaeda for PR services publicising its successful terrorist campaign blowing up, or down, the Twin Towers; and I am going to suggest he puts in a bit extra for frightening the world with the threat that there was another terror attack on the way. It must be the ultimate PR coup to dominate the world’s Media agenda for a week with a ten-year-old story using old pictures to illustrate it. The possibilities are endless. Think of the money we could save by cancelling the entire defence budget. For the foreseeable future we are going to be fighting an endless world war with an enemy using hand guns and dynamite, the weapons their grandfathers used on the North West Frontier in the Flashman Wars.

It will be a relief to escape from our cells in cyberspace to an earlier more less demanding age. Alas, there is little chance of that happening.

This week I have been trying to plumb the workings of the new security cards being issued all over the world to customers of the Hong Kong Bank of China. Think of it... Small, plastic electronic cards issued by whom? The Bank of China. Made in China is an oxymoron. I have drawers filled with electronic plastic gadgets made in China, none of which work.

These security cards are something again. I have ruined two cards and sent three intelligent Pakistani call service youngsters scurrying to darkened rooms where they are now making endless objects of Origami. Fitfully.

The buttons you have to press are tiny. When I eventually got the hang of it the operator made a short, formal speech of congratulation. He may even have bowed, and I swear I heard a ripple of applause go round the call centre. The main problem is racial. My friend the mathematician Garho Tong estimates that I weigh as much as the average Chinese family. In consequence mine is not the slim, tapering finger of Fu Manchu. I overwhelm Oriental press buttons, never covering fewer than two. When my moving finger writes, the buttons move on to get out of the way, the numbers on the buttons being so small. I have more cataracts than Niagara and I am deaf to the Indian calls, love or otherwise, and in consequence can’t hear what the call centre is telling me.

This week I have posted to readers with some reluctance a clever method of bypassing those charming people in far off call centres. They are not methods I would employ myself. I am a devoted admirer of these Children of the Raj.

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Wales is a Limited Company run by a small group of families, however much the Welsh Government preens itself. Sinecures come in dynasties so it is no surprise to learn that Rhodri Talfan Davies has been appointed Controller BBC Wales, like his father and his grandfather before him. I worked for all three of them. I also worked for a cousin who ran the biggest publishers in the country.

Interviewing me was the first broadcasting job given to Rhodri’s father before his meteoric rise. Not an arduous job. The interview only lasted three minutes and the producer, clearly in no doubt which side of his bread sheltered the butter, insisted we have a rehearsal. When I said I had been speaking most of my life and had pretty well got the hang of it, he said, “It’s not for your benefit. If the interviewer doesn’t know what you are going to say he won’t know what to ask you next.”

Talfan had been getting work experience in Border TV where he was known as “ Gerry”. When he came to BBC Wales he was Geraint.

He brought a friend as his deputy who spent much of his time writing plays for the competition - ITV. So it was no surprise to learn that the new Talfan doesn’t even live in Wales.

Broadcasting chum Mike Flynn writes from Thailand:

“I wonder if you may have missed this milestone in Welsh media. Responding to ‘sniffy’ comments about a Talfan Davies dynasty, given that his father and grandfather both held top jobs at BBC Wales before him, Mr Davies said: “I don’t worry about it too much. Inevitably people may scratch their heads and say how is it that he can be appointed.......”

In fairness, the Talfan clan were a pleasure to work for. They didn’t interfere and spread their considerable charm where-e’er they walked, so does it matter that the BBC is a family business?

I hadn’t listened to the station for years but when I heard from Mike Flynn I tuned in. It was like listening to the Rosetta Stone. Its message hasn’t changed since grand-dad ran the shop. It is still largely a home for orphaned gramophone records. The presenters still have voices like cheap scent and the women aren’t much different either.

It’s a great puzzle. The Welsh are generally speaking the wittiest, funniest and sharpest of ‘this septic islanders’. They produce the best actors, the finest commentators and singers and the funniest writers. But even with two languages to go at, the nearest they have got to a decent programme in their broadcasting history was the wartime ”Welsh Rarebit” which cannot have taken a lot of thinking about.

The kindest thing to say about Radio Wales is that it isn’t as bad as Radio Cymru, the Welsh language barrel of laughs. Mind you, the Black Death wasn’t as bad as Radio Cymru. Its programmes, in a Welsh few of its listeners can understand, attract audiences so small it would be cheaper to send the actors round to act in their living rooms.

This is probably sour grapes because the times they are a-changing. Noel Whitcomb, the legendary Daily Mirror columnist was tested for writing ability the hard way. He was handed a clipping from the Lancet about a patient who was writing a letter in his bath with the ink bottle on the floor beside him. The soap slipped out of his hand and went scuttering along the floor. He stepped out of the bath to retrieve it, slipped on its trail and sat on the ink bottle which disappeared up the nearest orifice. Noel was told he would get a column if he could make that into a story usable in a family newspaper. My test for a column in the Sunday Pictorial was to sanitise a story about a customer who was castrated by a whore whose fees he disputed.

Johann Hari won a job as columnist on the Independent when he came down from university and wrote two features in the New Statesman. His subsequent work won him the Orwell Prize.

He has had to give it back after admitting embellishing quotations from other writer’s works, plagiarism and using a pseudonym to attack his critics.

A sackable offence ? Not really. He has been suspended for four months without pay. He will only get his job back if he takes a course (at his own expense) in journalism, including ethics, IN THE UNITED STATES - which merits a hollow laugh. He has had to promise in the meantime not to blog or tweet for the Independent.

In return he will be allowed to go back to work for the paper and the report on his conduct will not be published, as would be the case with any other miscreant.

And they say getting jobs in the Media is

woodn't you know

2011-09-09T23:55:00.000-07:00

Broadly speaking I am in favour of sex education.
Things were managed differently when I was a lad.I was told
I had come off a blackcurrant bush.Not very nice going through life
thinking you were adopted and your real mother was a shrub.
No whittling wood for me on the doorsteps of my childhood. I might
have been cutting up a cousin. As autumn approached each
year I waited in dread for my hair to turn gold and fall
at my feet. In the gardens of my youth pruning time was
an agony.
In the same way no-one has been able to convince me there
are no fairies, so I have never been able to shed - if you
will forgive the arboreal expression - a feeling that I am
part twig,though I reject with vigour allegations that I am a
chip off the old block.
When I got older I was introduced to the more conventional
forms of procreation but to be frank with you I think there
is more gravitas in the blackcurrant method. I had been
conditioned by my horticulturally obsessed mother to accept
the most bizarre explanations. No-one warned me that in real
life the position was absurd and the method improbable.
Not only that it did not always work.
Though in all honesty it worked more often than blackberrying,
an activty which had very sinister connotations in my childhood.
I was always surprised when two people went out to pick soft fruit,
three did not come back. My own efforts to provide myself with a brother
were a gloomy failure. I would select this fine bouncing bud
and place it in a matchbox lined with cotton wool. But alas,
nothing came of it. It was a pity. When the conventional
method was used the end product was never as well designed.
If a human being was a house, it would never get planning
permission. The waste disposal arrangments are at best
rudimentary. Look where the nose is. Right over the mouth.
Would you buy a house where the drainpipe is above the
front door?. And would it have been so difficult to make the
arms retractable? Have you ever met anyone who knows what to
do with his hands when not in use?. In Western dress there
are pockets, or you can stick themn out of the way by
clasping hands behind your back. But have you noticed? If
they don't hold tight to one another they come sneaking round
the front again, first chance they get.
And the feet. I asak you Is there anything in the whole of
nature that looks as silly as a foot? With toes hanging on
the end like a fringe? And another thing. They only bend one
way. Sheer waste. If you could turn them over you could
walk twice as far on them. Think how much easier sleep would
be if you could stack your arms and legs under the bed.
Entwining bedlothes would be a thing of the past. Why legs at
all? Wheels would have been much more convenient.
As to other functions I will only say the blackcurrant bush
has much to commend it. No mouth, therefore no toothache.
Eats through the feet and the leaves. None of those tiring
strolls to work up an appetite for lunch.
Some of us I regret are built even more oddly than most. I
was literally an all round reporter. I was as broad as I was long. The last TV series I made was a source of great embarrassment. Not to beat about the bush - and how that phrase strikes at the heart- where
other people go in at the waist, I went out for quite a
distance. People doubted the reality of my
body.
On radio you get used to the size phenomenum. The way
listeners invariably tell you in a disappointed tone;" You
are much taller on the radio". But what am I to do about the
lady who came up, patted me familiarly on the belt buckle
and asked; " Is that real or are you just wearing it on
tele?".

I ONLY PUT IT DOWN FOR A MINUTE

Like Louis 14th I blame God. When he was told he had lost yet another battle against the English he knew exactly at whose Pearly Gates to lay the blame.
"Sometimes" he said with a meaningful upward glare " I think God forgets what I have done for him"
I felt a touch of the Louise this week when someone had it away with my cromach.

????????????????

My cromach, C R O M A C H
It’s what officers in Highland Regiments carry when they go into battle.

Cromach. Shepherds’ Crook.

Don't ask. It used to puzzle me too. I mean when did you last see sheep on a battlefield,
What made things worse was that mine was cut for me by Hughie Bugail nigh on 40 years ago.

?????

BUGAIL is Welsh.It means shepherd.
Hughie Bugail was our Bobby in Wales. Technically that is..He was down on the books as a policeman but he spent most of his day tending the flock of sheep he kept on Marshes. Sheep that had become unbelievably rare but which had been bred back into respectable numbers. He also bred sheepdogs including a New Zealand strain, I kid you not, which ran over the backs of the flock. Hughie was as much a grin as anything else. There is a kind of rural Welshman who is built like a brick Ty Bach. You know what they are bred from when you look at their faces which are cut from steel and remind you in profile of Roman centurions. They have teeth like eisteddfod stones, huge and blindingly white.
Hughie's uniform bulged with laughter. I never knew him when he wasn’t smiling. Chuckles escaped round his silver uniform buttons, grins blew down his whistle.
If there was a happier man in Wales at that time he kept himself well hidden.
Not that he exported laughter. His sergeant in Bangor all the way up to his inspector in Llangefni, even as far as his Superintendant in Holyhead, well they winced at the sound of his name. That was because they couldn't put a face to it, they saw him so rarely.
I only saw him grim faced once and that was when we had the foot and mouth. Most farmers were delighted. They would have bought F and M off the back of a truck, the compensation from destroying sheep was so good. Not Hughie. He was devastated at the thought of putting down his rare breed. In those days I had a column in the Holyhead and Anglesey Mail with offshoots in Bangor, Holyhead and even distant Caernarfon. Oh I had power. Not a whist card remained unturned but I knew about it. I was the Recorder of Rotary, the Chronicler of the Band of Hope. So it is no wonder the Min of Ag quailed under the lash of my pen. Hughie’s flock was saved, it was, very likely, listed too and forever a stranger t the plastic window frame,
Hughie was so pleased he carved me a shepherd’s crook. I have treasured it for years and now I have lost it. There are some things about old age it is hard to bear because I cannot remember his telephone number to order another.
The problem is this;, as a Bugail the world knew of him, as a telephone listed policeman he is completely unknown ..

THERE WERE OTHER TOWERS................................

April 1937, Guernica was the first city to be deliberately targeted for aerial bombing. Guernica was the ancient capital of the Basques - a group who had withstood the advances of the army since theSpanish Civil War begun in 1936. The region's resilient stand was punished by Franco when he allowed the unprotected city to be bombed by Hitler's air force.
In 1935, General Erich Luderndorff had published "The Total War" (Die Totale Krieg) in which he argued that modern war was all encompassing and that no-one could or should necessarily be spared by the military. He argued that civilians were combatants and should be treated accordingly. His ideas were backed up in Fascist Italy where General Giulio Douhet produced a pamphlet which stated that an army's advance might be suitably assisted by targeting civilians whose panic would severely hamper the ability of the enemy's army to mobilise itself. Such panic could be delivered by "air-delivered terror".
Franco's Nationalists had little air force power. But Nazi Germany was very keen to try out its developing Luftwaffe. Hitler had sent out to Spain his Condor Legion lead by Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, cousin of the Red Baron of World War One.
It is said that it was Richthofen who selected Guernica as a target. As previously stated, the city had great importance to the Basques so it bombing would send a clear message of the military power of the Nationalists to the Republicans. The raid was also an experiment and Guernica had been untouched by the war up to April 1937. No-one knew what a bombing raid would do to a city. A damaged city or one that had been heavily involved in the civil warwould not give the same results as a city that was untouched.
The Condor Legion attacked in daylight and flew as low as 600 feet as it had no reason to fear any form of defence from the city. It was market day so the city centre was packed with people from the outlying area around Guernica. The first bombs fell on the city at 4.30 in the afternoon when the main square in the city centre was hit. The first target of the bombers was a main bridge that lead into the city. Apologists for the raid have stated that the Condor Legion had selected strategic targets and that the one failing of the raid was the Legion's inability to accurately hit targets from height. The bombers that came in after the first wave instinctively targeted the area already on fire -again, the city centre.
By the time the Condor Legion had left, the centre of Guernica was in ruins. 1,654 people were killed and 889 wounded. The world was horrified but Franco denied that the raid ever took place. He blamed the destruction of Guernica on those who defended it
The Condor Legion returned in triumph April 1937, Guernica was the first city to be deliberately targeted for aerial bombing. Guernica was the ancient capital of the Basques - a group who had withstood the advances of the army since theSpanish Civil War begun in 1936. The region's resilient stand was punished by Franco when he allowed the unprotected city to be bombed by Hitler's air force.
In 1935, General Erich Luderndorff had published "The Total War" (Die Totale Krieg) in which he argued that modern war was all encompassing and that no-one could or should necessarily be spared by the military. He argued that civilians were combatants and should be treated accordingly. His ideas were backed up in Fascist Italy where General Giulio Douhet produced a pamphlet which stated that an army's advance might be suitably assisted by targeting civilians whose panic would severely hamper the ability of the enemy's army to mobilise itself. Such panic could be delivered by "air-delivered terror".
Franco's Nationalists had little air force power. But Nazi Germany was very keen to try out its developing Luftwaffe. Hitler had sent out to Spain his Condor Legion lead by Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, cousin of the Red Baron of World War One.
It is said that it was Richthofen who selected Guernica as a target. As previously stated, the city had great importance to the Basques so it bombing would send a clear message of the military power of the Nationalists to the Republicans. The raid was also an experiment and Guernica had been untouched by the war up to April 1937. No-one knew what a bombing raid would do to a city. A damaged city or one that had been heavily involved in the civil warwould not give the same results as a city that was untouched.
The Condor Legion attacked in daylight and flew as low as 600 feet as it had no reason to fear any form of defence from the city. It was market day so the city centre was packed with people from the outlying area around Guernica. The first bombs fell on the city at 4.30 in the afternoon when the main square in the city centre was hit. The first target of the bombers was a main bridge that lead into the city. Apologists for the raid have stated that the Condor Legion had selected strategic targets and that the one failing of the raid was the Legion's inability to accurately hit targets from height. The bombers that came in after the first wave instinctively targeted the area already on fire -again, the city centre.
By the time the Condor Legion had left, the centre of Guernica was in ruins. 1,654 people were killed and 889 wounded. The world was horrified but Franco denied that the raid ever took place. He blamed the destruction of Guernica on those who defended it
The Condor Legion returned in triumph as it had set out on a

Broadly speaking I am in favour of sex education.
Things were managed differently when I was a lad.I was told
I had come off a blackcurrant bush.Not very nice going through life
thinking you were adopted and your real mother was a shrub.
No whittling wood for me on the doorsteps of my childhood. I might
have been cutting up a cousin. As autumn approached each
year I waited in dread for my hair to turn gold and fall
at my feet. In the gardens of my youth pruning time was
an agony.
In the same way no-one has been able to convince me there
are no fairies, so I have never been able to shed - if you
will forgive the arboreal expression - a feeling that I am
part twig,though I reject with vigour allegations that I am a
chip off the old block.
When I got older I was introduced to the more conventional
forms of procreation but to be frank with you I think there
is more gravitas in the blackcurrant method. I had been
conditioned by my horticulturally obsesed mother to accept
the most bizarre explanations. No-one warned me that in real
life the position was absurd and the method improbable.
Not only that it did not always work.
Though in all honesty it worked more often than blackberrying,
an activty which had very sinister connotations in my childhood.
I was always surprised when two people went out to pick soft fruit,
three did not come back. My own efforts to provide myself with a brother
were a gloomy failure. I would select this fine bouncing bud
and place it in a matchbox lined with cotton wool. But alas,
nothing came of it. It was a pity. When the conventional
method was used the end product was never as well designed.
If a human being was a house, it would never get planning
permission. The waste disposal arrangments are at best
rudimentary. Look where the nose is. Right over the mouth.
Would you buy a house where the drainpipe is above the
front door?. And would it have been so difficult to make the
arms retractable? Have you ever met anyone who knows what to
do with his hands when not in use?. In Western dress there
are pockets, or you can stick themn out of the way by
clasping hands behind your back. But have you noticed? If
they don't hold tight to one another they come sneaking round
the front again, first chance they get.
And the feet. I asak you Is there anything in the whole of
nature that looks as silly as a foot? With toes hanging on
the end like a fringe? And another thing. They only bend one
way. Sheer waste. If you could turn them over you could
walk twice as far on them. Think how much easier sleep would
be if you could stack your arms and legs under the bed.
Entwining bedlothes would be a thing of the past. Why legs at
all? Wheels would have been much more convenient.
As to other functions I will only say the blackcurrant bush
has much to commend it. No mouth, therefore no toothache.
Eats through the feet and the leaves. None of those tiring
strolls to work up an appetite for lunch.
Some of us I regret are built even more oddly than most. I
was literally an all round reporter. I was as broad as I was long. The last TV series I made was a source of great embarrassment. Not to beat about the bush - and how that phrase strikes at the heart- where
other people go in at the waist, I went out for quite a
distance. People doubted the reality of my
body.
On radio you get used to the size phenomenum. The way
listeners invariably tell you in a disappointed tone;" You
are much taller on the radio". But what am I to do about the
lady who came up, patted me familiarly on the belt buckle
and asked; " Is that real or are you just wearing it on
tele?".

I ONLY PUT IT DOWN FOR A MINUTE

Like Louis 14th I blame God. When he was told he had lost yet another battle against the English he knew exactly at whose Pearly Gates to llay the blame.
"Sometimes" he said with a meaningful upward glare " I think God forgets what I have done for him"
I felt a touch of the Louise this week when someone had it away with my cromach.

????????????????

My cromach, C R O M A C H
It’s what officers in Highland Regiments carry when they go into battle.

Cromach. Shepherds’ Crook.

Don't ask. It used to puzzle me too. I mean when did you last see sheep on a battlefield,
What made things worse was that nine was cut for me by Hughie Bugail nigh on 40 years ago.

?????

BUGAIL is Welsh.It means shepherd.
Hughie Bugail was our Bobby in Wales. Technically that is..He was down on the books as a policeman but he spent most of his day tending the flock of sheep he kept on Marshes. Sheep that had become unbelievably rare but which had been bred back into respectable numbers. He also bred sheepdogs including a New Zealand strain, I kid you not, which ran over the backs of the flock. Hughie was as much a grin as anything else. There is a kind of rural Welshman who is built like a brick Ty Bach. You know what they are bred from when you lok at their faces which are cut from steel and remind you in profile of Roman centurions. They have teeth like eisteddfod stones, huge and blindingly white.
Hughie's uniform bulged with laughter. I never knew him when he wasn’t smiling. Chuckles escaped round his silver uniform buttons, grins blew down his whistle.
If there was a happier man in Wales at that time he kept himself well hidden.
Not that he exported laughter. His sergeant in Bangor all the way up to his inspector in Llangefni, even as far as his Superintendant in Holyhead, well they winced at the sound of his name. That was because they couldn't put a face to it, they saw him so rarely.
I only saw him grim faced once and that was when we had the foot and mouth. Most farmers were delighted. They would have bought F and M off the back of a truck, the compensation from destroying sheep was so good. Not Hughie. He was devastated at the thought of putting down his rare breed. In those days I had a column in the Holyhead and Anglesey Mail with offshoots in Bangor, Holyhead and even distant Caernarfon. Oh I had power. Not a whist card remained unturned but I knew about it. I was the Recorder of Rotary, the Chronicler of the Band of Hope. So it is no wonder the Min of Ag quailed under the lash of my pen. Hughie’s flock was saved, it was, very likely, listed too and forever a stranger t the plastic window frame,
Hughie was so pleased he carved me a shepherd’s crook. I have treasured it for years and now I have lost it. There are some things about old age it is hard to bear because I cannot remember his telephone number to order another.
The problem is this;, as a Bugail the world knew of him, as a telephone listed policeman he is completely unknown ..

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT

New data shows that children from countries such as Kazakhstan and Albania are more likely to pick up a book, newspaper or magazine on a daily basis than those from Britain. In a table based on the number of teenagers who read regularly, the UK was ranked 47th out of 65 nations, behind countries such as France, Australia, Italy, Canada and Singapore. The data, compiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and reported on in the The Daily Telegraph, also showed that just four-in-ten 15-year-olds read for enjoyment outside school. Tests taken by students in 2009 showed teenagers from Kazakhstan, Albania, China and Thailand were keen readers, with over 90 per cent reading books, newspapers or magazines for pleasure.

...WELL YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN IT WILL COME IN HANDY. In Kazakhstan they talk of little else

THERE WERE OTHER TOWERS................................

April 1937, Guernica was the first city to be deliberately targeted for aerial bombing. Guernica was the ancient capital of the Basques - a group who had withstood the advances of the army since theSpanish Civil War begun in 1936. The region's resilient stand was punished by Franco when he allowed the unprotected city to be bombed by Hitler's air force.
In 1935, General Erich Luderndorff had published "The Total War" (Die Totale Krieg) in which he argued that modern war was all encompassing and that no-one could or should necessarily be spared by the military. He argued that civilians were combatants and should be treated accordingly. His ideas were backed up in Fascist Italy where General Giulio Douhet produced a pamphlet which stated that an army's advance might be suitably assisted by targeting civilians whose panic would severely hamper the ability of the enemy's army to mobilise itself. Such panic could be delivered by "air-delivered terror".
Franco's Nationalists had little air force power. But Nazi Germany was very keen to try out its developing Luftwaffe. Hitler had sent out to Spain his Condor Legion lead by Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, cousin of the Red Baron of World War One.
It is said that it was Richthofen who selected Guernica as a target. As previously stated, the city had great importance to the Basques so it bombing would send a clear message of the military power of the Nationalists to the Republicans. The raid was also an experiment and Guernica had been untouched by the war up to April 1937. No-one knew what a bombing raid would do to a city. A damaged city or one that had been heavily involved in the civil warwould not give the same results as a city that was untouched.
The Condor Legion attacked in daylight and flew as low as 600 feet as it had no reason to fear any form of defence from the city. It was market day so the city centre was packed with people from the outlying area around Guernica. The first bombs fell on the city at 4.30 in the afternoon when the main square in the city centre was hit. The first target of the bombers was a main bridge that lead into the city. Apologists for the raid have stated that the Condor Legion had selected strategic targets and that the one failing of the raid was the Legion's inability to accurately hit targets from height. The bombers that came in after the first wave instinctively targeted the area already on fire -again, the city centre.
By the time the Condor Legion had left, the centre of Guernica was in ruins. 1,654 people were killed and 889 wounded. The world was horrified but Franco denied that the raid ever took place. He blamed the destruction of Guernica on those who defended it
The Condor Legion returned in triumph April 1937, Guernica was the first city to be deliberately targeted for aerial bombing. Guernica was the ancient capital of the Basques - a group who had withstood the advances of the army since theSpanish Civil War begun in 1936. The region's resilient stand was punished by Franco when he allowed the unprotected city to be bombed by Hitler's air force.
In 1935, General Erich Luderndorff had published "The Total War" (Die Totale Krieg) in which he argued that modern war was all encompassing and that no-one could or should necessarily be spared by the military. He argued that civilians were combatants and should be treated accordingly. His ideas were backed up in Fascist Italy where General Giulio Douhet produced a pamphlet which stated that an army's advance might be suitably assisted by targeting civilians whose panic would severely hamper the ability of the enemy's army to mobilise itself. Such panic could be delivered by "air-delivered terror".
Franco's Nationalists had little air force power. But Nazi Germany was very keen to try out its developing Luftwaffe. Hitler had sent out to Spain his Condor Legion lead by Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, cousin of the Red Baron of World War One.
It is said that it was Richthofen who selected Guernica as a target. As previously stated, the city had great importance to the Basques so it bombing would send a clear message of the military power of the Nationalists to the Republicans. The raid was also an experiment and Guernica had been untouched by the war up to April 1937. No-one knew what a bombing raid would do to a city. A damaged city or one that had been heavily involved in the civil warwould not give the same results as a city that was untouched.
The Condor Legion attacked in daylight and flew as low as 600 feet as it had no reason to fear any form of defence from the city. It was market day so the city centre was packed with people from the outlying area around Guernica. The first bombs fell on the city at 4.30 in the afternoon when the main square in the city centre was hit. The first target of the bombers was a main bridge that lead into the city. Apologists for the raid have stated that the Condor Legion had selected strategic targets and that the one failing of the raid was the Legion's inability to accurately hit targets from height. The bombers that came in after the first wave instinctively targeted the area already on fire -again, the city centre.
By the time the Condor Legion had left, the centre of Guernica was in ruins. 1,654 people were killed and 889 wounded. The world was horrified but Franco denied that the raid ever took place. He blamed the destruction of Guernica on those who defended it
The Condor Legion returned in triumph as it had set out on a

Broadly speaking I am in favour of sex education.
Things were managed differently when I was a lad.I was told
I had come off a blackcurrant bush.Not very nice going through life
thinking you were adopted and your real mother was a shrub.
No whittling wood for me on the doorsteps of my childhood. I might
have been cutting up a cousin. As autumn approached each
year I waited in dread for my hair to turn gold and fall
at my feet. In the gardens of my youth pruning time was
an agony.
In the same way no-one has been able to convince me there
are no fairies, so I have never been able to shed - if you
will forgive the arboreal expression - a feeling that I am
part twig,though I reject with vigour allegations that I am a
chip off the old block.
When I got older I was introduced to the more conventional
forms of procreation but to be frank with you I think there
is more gravitas in the blackcurrant method. I had been
conditioned by my horticulturally obsesed mother to accept
the most bizarre explanations. No-one warned me that in real
life the position was absurd and the method improbable.
Not only that it did not always work.
Though in all honesty it worked more often than blackberrying,
an activty which had very sinister connotations in my childhood.
I was always surprised when two people went out to pick soft fruit,
three did not come back. My own efforts to provide myself with a brother
were a gloomy failure. I would select this fine bouncing bud
and place it in a matchbox lined with cotton wool. But alas,
nothing came of it. It was a pity. When the conventional
method was used the end product was never as well designed.
If a human being was a house, it would never get planning
permission. The waste disposal arrangments are at best
rudimentary. Look where the nose is. Right over the mouth.
Would you buy a house where the drainpipe is above the
front door?. And would it have been so difficult to make the
arms retractable? Have you ever met anyone who knows what to
do with his hands when not in use?. In Western dress there
are pockets, or you can stick themn out of the way by
clasping hands behind your back. But have you noticed? If
they don't hold tight to one another they come sneaking round
the front again, first chance they get.
And the feet. I asak you Is there anything in the whole of
nature that looks as silly as a foot? With toes hanging on
the end like a fringe? And another thing. They only bend one
way. Sheer waste. If you could turn them over you could
walk twice as far on them. Think how much easier sleep would
be if you could stack your arms and legs under the bed.
Entwining bedlothes would be a thing of the past. Why legs at
all? Wheels would have been much more convenient.
As to other functions I will only say the blackcurrant bush
has much to commend it. No mouth, therefore no toothache.
Eats through the feet and the leaves. None of those tiring
strolls to work up an appetite for lunch.
Some of us I regret are built even more oddly than most. I
was literally an all round reporter. I was as broad as I was long. The last TV series I made was a source of great embarrassment. Not to beat about the bush - and how that phrase strikes at the heart- where
other people go in at the waist, I went out for quite a
distance. People doubted the reality of my
body.
On radio you get used to the size phenomenum. The way
listeners invariably tell you in a disappointed tone;" You
are much taller on the radio". But what am I to do about the
lady who came up, patted me familiarly on the belt buckle
and asked; " Is that real or are you just wearing it on
tele?".

I ONLY PUT IT DOWN FOR A MINUTE

Like Louis 14th I blame God. When he was told he had lost yet another battle against the English he knew exactly at whose Pearly Gates to llay the blame.
"Sometimes" he said with a meaningful upward glare " I think God forgets what I have done for him"
I felt a touch of the Louise this week when someone had it away with my cromach.

????????????????

My cromach, C R O M A C H
It’s what officers in Highland Regiments carry when they go into battle.

Cromach. Shepherds’ Crook.

Don't ask. It used to puzzle me too. I mean when did you last see sheep on a battlefield,
What made things worse was that nine was cut for me by Hughie Bugail nigh on 40 years ago.

?????

BUGAIL is Welsh.It means shepherd.
Hughie Bugail was our Bobby in Wales. Technically that is..He was down on the books as a policeman but he spent most of his day tending the flock of sheep he kept on Marshes. Sheep that had become unbelievably rare but which had been bred back into respectable numbers. He also bred sheepdogs including a New Zealand strain, I kid you not, which ran over the backs of the flock. Hughie was as much a grin as anything else. There is a kind of rural Welshman who is built like a brick Ty Bach. You know what they are bred from when you lok at their faces which are cut from steel and remind you in profile of Roman centurions. They have teeth like eisteddfod stones, huge and blindingly white.
Hughie's uniform bulged with laughter. I never knew him when he wasn’t smiling. Chuckles escaped round his silver uniform buttons, grins blew down his whistle.
If there was a happier man in Wales at that time he kept himself well hidden.
Not that he exported laughter. His sergeant in Bangor all the way up to his inspector in Llangefni, even as far as his Superintendant in Holyhead, well they winced at the sound of his name. That was because they couldn't put a face to it, they saw him so rarely.
I only saw him grim faced once and that was when we had the foot and mouth. Most farmers were delighted. They would have bought F and M off the back of a truck, the compensation from destroying sheep was so good. Not Hughie. He was devastated at the thought of putting down his rare breed. In those days I had a column in the Holyhead and Anglesey Mail with offshoots in Bangor, Holyhead and even distant Caernarfon. Oh I had power. Not a whist card remained unturned but I knew about it. I was the Recorder of Rotary, the Chronicler of the Band of Hope. So it is no wonder the Min of Ag quailed under the lash of my pen. Hughie’s flock was saved, it was, very likely, listed too and forever a stranger t the plastic window frame,
Hughie was so pleased he carved me a shepherd’s crook. I have treasured it for years and now I have lost it. There are some things about old age it is hard to bear because I cannot remember his telephone number to order another.
The problem is this;, as a Bugail the world knew of him, as a telephone listed policeman he is completely unknown ..

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT

New data shows that children from countries such as Kazakhstan and Albania are more likely to pick up a book, newspaper or magazine on a daily basis than those from Britain. In a table based on the number of teenagers who read regularly, the UK was ranked 47th out of 65 nations, behind countries such as France, Australia, Italy, Canada and Singapore. The data, compiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and reported on in the The Daily Telegraph, also showed that just four-in-ten 15-year-olds read for enjoyment outside school. Tests taken by students in 2009 showed teenagers from Kazakhstan, Albania, China and Thailand were keen readers, with over 90 per cent reading books, newspapers or magazines for pleasure.

...WELL YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN IT WILL COME IN HANDY. In Kazakhstan they talk of little else

THERE WERE OTHER TOWERS................................

April 1937, Guernica was the first city to be deliberately targeted for aerial bombing. Guernica was the ancient capital of the Basques - a group who had withstood the advances of the army since theSpanish Civil War begun in 1936. The region's resilient stand was punished by Franco when he allowed the unprotected city to be bombed by Hitler's air force.
In 1935, General Erich Luderndorff had published "The Total War" (Die Totale Krieg) in which he argued that modern war was all encompassing and that no-one could or should necessarily be spared by the military. He argued that civilians were combatants and should be treated accordingly. His ideas were backed up in Fascist Italy where General Giulio Douhet produced a pamphlet which stated that an army's advance might be suitably assisted by targeting civilians whose panic would severely hamper the ability of the enemy's army to mobilise itself. Such panic could be delivered by "air-delivered terror".
Franco's Nationalists had little air force power. But Nazi Germany was very keen to try out its developing Luftwaffe. Hitler had sent out to Spain his Condor Legion lead by Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, cousin of the Red Baron of World War One.
It is said that it was Richthofen who selected Guernica as a target. As previously stated, the city had great importance to the Basques so it bombing would send a clear message of the military power of the Nationalists to the Republicans. The raid was also an experiment and Guernica had been untouched by the war up to April 1937. No-one knew what a bombing raid would do to a city. A damaged city or one that had been heavily involved in the civil warwould not give the same results as a city that was untouched.
The Condor Legion attacked in daylight and flew as low as 600 feet as it had no reason to fear any form of defence from the city. It was market day so the city centre was packed with people from the outlying area around Guernica. The first bombs fell on the city at 4.30 in the afternoon when the main square in the city centre was hit. The first target of the bombers was a main bridge that lead into the city. Apologists for the raid have stated that the Condor Legion had selected strategic targets and that the one failing of the raid was the Legion's inability to accurately hit targets from height. The bombers that came in after the first wave instinctively targeted the area already on fire -again, the city centre.
By the time the Condor Legion had left, the centre of Guernica was in ruins. 1,654 people were killed and 889 wounded. The world was horrified but Franco denied that the raid ever took place. He blamed the destruction of Guernica on those who defended it
The Condor Legion returned in triumph April 1937, Guernica was the first city to be deliberately targeted for aerial bombing. Guernica was the ancient capital of the Basques - a group who had withstood the advances of the army since theSpanish Civil War begun in 1936. The region's resilient stand was punished by Franco when he allowed the unprotected city to be bombed by Hitler's air force.
In 1935, General Erich Luderndorff had published "The Total War" (Die Totale Krieg) in which he argued that modern war was all encompassing and that no-one could or should necessarily be spared by the military. He argued that civilians were combatants and should be treated accordingly. His ideas were backed up in Fascist Italy where General Giulio Douhet produced a pamphlet which stated that an army's advance might be suitably assisted by targeting civilians whose panic would severely hamper the ability of the enemy's army to mobilise itself. Such panic could be delivered by "air-delivered terror".
Franco's Nationalists had little air force power. But Nazi Germany was very keen to try out its developing Luftwaffe. Hitler had sent out to Spain his Condor Legion lead by Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, cousin of the Red Baron of World War One.
It is said that it was Richthofen who selected Guernica as a target. As previously stated, the city had great importance to the Basques so it bombing would send a clear message of the military power of the Nationalists to the Republicans. The raid was also an experiment and Guernica had been untouched by the war up to April 1937. No-one knew what a bombing raid would do to a city. A damaged city or one that had been heavily involved in the civil warwould not give the same results as a city that was untouched.
The Condor Legion attacked in daylight and flew as low as 600 feet as it had no reason to fear any form of defence from the city. It was market day so the city centre was packed with people from the outlying area around Guernica. The first bombs fell on the city at 4.30 in the afternoon when the main square in the city centre was hit. The first target of the bombers was a main bridge that lead into the city. Apologists for the raid have stated that the Condor Legion had selected strategic targets and that the one failing of the raid was the Legion's inability to accurately hit targets from height. The bombers that came in after the first wave instinctively targeted the area already on fire -again, the city centre.
By the time the Condor Legion had left, the centre of Guernica was in ruins. 1,654 people were killed and 889 wounded. The world was horrified but Franco denied that the raid ever took place. He blamed the destruction of Guernica on those who defended it
The Condor Legion returned in triumph as it had set out on a

Lilly the Propinquir

2011-09-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

For the thick end of half a century, drunk and sober, I have played to an audience and am therefore an enemy of proximity. Propinquity is another matter. Nothing propinks like propinquity.

That is why I find it sad that, according to a recent survey, comparatively few of us older people use the internet. I have just downloaded the Heart Sutra and a film of a Zen Master teaching students about Nirvana. Yesterday I received and passed on a 35 minute film by one of the princes of our trade which records the most important media happening of my lifetime. Nothing less than an attempt to hijack Britain by my old boss Cecil King.

I shop by internet, read by it and, thanks to it. I am in daily commune with my family and a group of dearly loved friends I have not seen since my golden youth in the inky trade. Safe in the knowledge that they will not grow old. Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn. They are forever bathed in the dazzling glow of memory. Proximity? I think not.

Now, fittingly, on this violent day, September 3, I am roused by email Letters of Fire and Sword. The Pipes are playing the Black Bear, the Fiery Cross has gone out.

I received the following email from former Radio Wales presenter Mike Flynn and a number of chums, including the equally legendary Dai Woosnam, the folk musicologist whose website Daigressing you should all try.

Hi Ian,

Daily Mail scribe Roger Lewis has started a row with his review of a book on Wales.

The opening paragraph says it all…

"Not many people in full possession of their faculties would find it appealing or necessary to try to turn themselves into a ‘real Welshman’. Nevertheless, this has been the ambition of Old Harrovian Jasper Rees in his new book Bred of Heaven."

I'm sure you will agree, Ian, that Roger's take on the politics of the Welsh language is pretty spot on. Plaid MP Jonathon Edwards was so incensed by his slur on Welsh as "an appalling and moribund monkey language, which hasn't had a new noun since the Middle Ages", that he wrote to Theresa May demanding that the Home Secretary "remove this sickness from society". He has referred the article to the Press Complaints Commission and to the police.

The full story is in today's Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/welsh-tell-mp-to-lighten-up-over-race-slur-2345252.html

As it happens, I have form in these matters. Indeed a dotty Welsh extremist website once honoured me with the title of Traitor of the Week. I shared it rather puzzlingly with Ryan Griggs, S4C, Radio Cymru, The Welsh Language Society, The Welsh Language Board and a very nice man called Jonesy who was a Radio Cymru presenter.
It was followed by a number of hilarious death threats which I offered to go round personally to receive. Silence followed. Gentle reader, if it still exists do look up the Welsh extremist website: http://dic.sais.somewhere.net.
It is a revelation.

My view on nationalism can be quickly stated: Nationalism is a road which ends at the gates of Auschwitz and we have had a lot of trouble with it in our family. My Auntie Jeannie was the widow of Uncle Tommy, a Scottish Nationalist so incandescent that ten years after his death she was still afraid to visit England.

Her son-in-law Jackie, who looked after the boats of the Emir of Kuwait, invited Auntie Jeannie to visit.

"It's no in England, is it?" she inquired fearfully.

In the event, she had a great time, including supper with the
Emir in his palace. She was not impressed.

"Does he aye get his dinner on tin plates?" she asked Jackie.

"They're no tin," whispered Jackie, "they're real gold."

"Maks nae difference," said my Auntie Jeannie. "Puir man,
ye cannae keep food hot on tin plates."

The day she got home she went to an Edinburgh market
and bought the Emir a six-piece china dinner service.
Alas, we have lost the charming letter of thanks the Emir
sent.

My Auntie Jeannie was the Great Imperturbable.

The nearest thing we had in our family to a tradition was the
Hogmanay Fight. My father emigrated to Manchester but
always returned home to Edinburgh on 30 December. He went a day
early to get in training for the whisky drinking marathon which was the
family New Year.

By tea time on Old Year's Night, whisky had washed away any
seasonal goodwill. By 9 pm naked hostility had replaced it.
My father invariably ignited it by taking out a provocative cigar.

"Bloody Englishman," growled Uncle Tommy, socialist
principles enflamed at the sight of such a capitalist
accessory.

"That makes bliddy two of us," my father would reply every
year.

Uncle Tommy's darkest secret was that he, the
most passionately Scottish of the family, had been born
during a brief visit by his mother to Lancashire.

Blows were exchanged. Three step-brothers, Jimmy and Matty
and Alec, who tried to join the row were rebuffed by Uncle
Tommy on the grounds they weren't family. This made Jimmy and Matty and Alec madder than anyone.

Whilst five brothers fought in the middle of the room, the
wives moved their chairs to the wall and continued their
conversation.

Auntie Jeannie served tea.

At 11.45 pm she would say, "Tommy, have you seen the time?"
The fight ended at once and quarter of an hour later the brothers had their arms round each other and were singing Auld Lang Syne. They don't make Hogmanays like that anymore. Or Auntie Jeannies.

I tell a lie.

There was the Lovely Rose the Hoover of Radio Brynsiencyn. The North Wales newspapers were full of her success this week. The Daily Post reported:

“A GREAT-GRANDMOTHER has fulfilled her lifelong ambition of becoming a television actress – at the age of 85. Rose Roberts, who appears in the new S4C comedy Dim Byd, said the role had given her ‘a new lease of life’. Mrs Roberts said filming her surreal sketches, in which she reminisces about the ‘good old days’ of Facebook, texting and Xbox, had made her feel ‘years younger’. ‘I’ve always wanted to be an actress – it’s been on my mind since I was very young,’ said Mrs Roberts, of Brynsiencyn, Anglesey.”

Rose was the reason Wales was invented. She looked after Celia and me when we lived on Anglesey at Virgin and Child Cottage. When we wrote and presented Radio Brynsiencyn for BBC Wales we couldn’t leave her out. The stars were her, Aled Jones and Angus McDermott, the legendary BBC foreign correspondent who was a Bangor lad.

Rose had a voice which frequently stopped passing ferries. Once she was queuing up for a drink at the bar of the Palladium in the West End of London with another member of our cast Goronwy Generator. She gave tongue and a complete cockney stranger said, “Blimey, it’s Rose the Hoover.”

Never happened to me or Angus, perhaps not even Aled. Oh, we loved that woman.

My friend Ken Ashton is a fellow sufferer. He writes:

“Hell hath no fury like an abused Welshman.
When I was elected mayor of Prestatyn in 1986, someone asked why - 'He's not Welsh.'

There was a good line yesterday in an interview with the lass from Aberystwyth who was in the Python film 'The Life of Brian' - 'My mother was from south Wales and my father from North Wales, which in Wales equals a mixed marriage.'

Another reader has sent me the Wales and West Railway timetable.
London becomes LLundain, Hereford Henffordd, Chester Caer, Manchester Manceinion, Liverpool Lerpwl, but Shrewsbury, Crewe, Birmingham and Wolverhampton appear to have defeated them.
Odd though that they make such a fuss about places like Beaumaris having English names.
……………………….

ZEY ZEEK HIM HERE

ZEY ZEEK HIM ZERE

BUT ZIMMERMAN IS EVERYWHERE

We are a Hexapod. Thanks to the generosity of Jane, my wife’s hairdresser, I am now the bemused owner of a turbo-charged, open- topped, one previous careful owner Zimmer Frame GT. Given to me, I should add, in consequence of an alarming tendency to topple over at the drop of a body, which was in turn a consequence of a head-on collision with a wayward virus.

So now I’m a Happy Hexapod, a six-legged animal with a startling turn of speed. “WHOOSH, it’s Zimmerman!”

A POISONED DART:

They gathered round the microphone, the vocal vultures in their unbecoming dirndl skirts, draped in depressing denim.

They came not to bury Bob Robinson, that charismatic broadcaster, but to patronise him.

Much of the programme, described as a tribute to him, was devoted to sneering at his lower middle class origins.

“I am upper middle class,” bragged Ann Leslie, who made an international laughing stock of the hooped earring. “I am part of the Raj!”
Some "Rajians" boast of alma mater schools unfamiliar to the wider world. Even Parnassus has its mezzanine. What a friend of mine describes as "residential grammar schools".

I have a recurring naughty nightmare in which Ms Leslie breeds with Stephen Fry with Dr Starkey in attendance.

In my time I, a working class jester, have mixed with a number of "Rajians". Indeed I am very fond of them.

An army friend called Villiers had a nice turn of phrase. While cricket captain at Lancing he wrote for a fixture with Eton. In reply the Etonian captain asked: "What is Lancing?" My friend wrote back: "Lancing is what Eton was - a school for gentlemen."

As it happens, Ms Leslie and a sprinkling of Italian princesses were taught in the same convent as my wife.

Ms Leslie took against Bob when he described her editor David English by asking: “Couldn’t he get a higher job, like stealing cats for vivisectionists?”

Fortunately there was enough of Bob’s wit and kindness in the programme for him to survive these deadly embraces but it is sad that among the happy memories it was possible to detect the rents that envious Casca made.

I love the Raj. I number a round dozen among my friends. One, Bill Higgin, a descendant of a Pendle witch and a major in the Indian army, told me, eyeing some Indian doctors as he lay dying in hospital: “The service here is appalling. I have been shouting 'Kwa Hai' and none of those buggers take the slight notice.”

Another friend Fergusson Warren, a jungly Marine also dying in hospital, greeted me when I paid my last visit: “Have you been offered something to drink?”

A third, Lord Langford, as a young man went in to Fortnum and Masons to complain. A frock coated walker shimmied over. "And who might you be?" asked his Lordship. "I am in charge of this floor," he was told loftily. "Then I suggest you sweep it. It’s filthy."

A fourth, Tom Firbank, joined the Coldstreams as a private and rose to lead the Airborne Cavalry as a Colonel, winning the only two MCs awarded in the field in the invasion of Italy.

They would all four have venerated Robinson. His “friends” mocked the way at his dinner parties the ladies left the gentlemen to their port, apparently unaware this was to enable both sexes a moment to seek post-prandial relief. We have in our dining room a superbly constructed 18th century ‘tower cupboard’ which held the chamber pots the gentlemen used.

When I gave luncheon parties at the Chester Country Club the head waiter always set a separate table to which ladies adjourned at the coffee stage. But then they certainly don’t make the likes of “Jimmy the God” any more who boasted he learned his trade at a coffee shop called Claridges.

Mind you, “our betters” go blithely on. Thousands of pounds of taxpayers' cash was spent teaching Foreign Office officials how to play drums, it has emerged.

The cash went on team-building away-days when Labour was still in power. In the two-hour sessions officials kept the beat using dustbins, broom handles, plastic tubs and African tribal drums.

From 2006 to 2010 the Foreign Office paid more than £38,000 to events organisers Poisson Rouge. The highest annual spend was £26,245.79 in 2008/09, when David Miliband was Foreign Secretary. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also used the company's services.

IT GIVES ONE THE HUMP

The BBC is currently telling us it will be a long job to bring essential services back to Tripoli.

I wonder why? In 1917 at the head of an Arab Army Lawrence of Arabia (whatever my Australian friends are going to say) captured Damascus. Once inside the Town Hall with his men, Lawrence deposed the two Algerian collaborators whom the Turks had installed as governors before they evacuated the city. Lawrence then took over as Acting Governor. He wired General Allenby to this effect and received confirmation that he should be in charge of Damascus.

In a four day period, during which he had only three hours sleep, Lawrence organised a new administration, set up a police force, installed sanitation, electrical power, street-lighting, a water supply, a fire brigade, arranged for the distribution of food, the re-opening of the railway, introduced a new currency, and procured forage for the 40,000 horses of the British and French forces now entering the city. He also started a newspaper.

When Lawrence left Damascus four days later, the Syrians had a government that lasted for two years without foreign interference. But then the Past is another country.

AN ACT OF HOMAGE

Kevin Myers: I was wrong about Ahern, he served only at the altar of his ego for political power.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-i-was-wrong-about-ahern-he-served-only-at-the-altar-of-his-ego-for-political-power-2864383.html
Kevin Myers: I was wrong about Ahern, he served only at the altar of his ego for political power
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-i-was-wrong-about-ahern-he-served-only-at-the-altar-of-his-ego-for-political-power-2864383.html
One of the problems about writing columns for a living is that, like an imprudent sexual encounter many years ago, it can come back to haunt you in terrible ways. A reader has reminded me of what I wrote just over three years ago.

IF AT FIRST YOU DO NOT FAIL,TRY AGAIN>

2011-08-27T02:21:00.000-07:00

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.

ITS ALL EYEWASH

2011-08-20T00:19:00.000-07:00

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.

The Swarming of the Flies

2011-08-12T17:07:00.000-07:00

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.

A YEN FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

2011-08-06T03:11:00.000-07:00

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.....

2011-07-30T03:46:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-07-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-09T00:23:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-02T03:20:00.000-07:00

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.....

2011-06-25T03:31:00.000-07:00

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

silly clown valiant

2011-06-18T04:21:00.000-07:00

Lets face it. Five books is a lot for one finger but it is the only way I can type and I have had five books commissioned, bubbling away in the little room above the eyebrows, begging to be let out.
.The Digital Voice Recorder seemed a gift from heaven. Speak your thoughts and watch them appear,as if by magic on your manuscript.
Simply a matter of slipping in the CD provided, following the instructions which will appear on your screen and its away dulled digit. Except that it wasn’t. The process defeated two highly trained computer mechanics when I failed.I took wider advice.Upgrade it I was advised. So I set aside Dragon Speaking 10,used my birthday gift certificate from my daughter and bought Dragon Speaking 11 .
That didn’t work either so I contacted Amazon for a refund. No can do, said Amazson. You have already opened the envelope.I wondered how I could have found out it was the wrong software without opening the envelope. I contacted Nuance who supply the software and a nice chap said what software have you got and I told him with quiet pride I not only had Software 10 I had also paid £40 for software 11 and he said well neither is any good. Olympus had given me the wrong software he said. But obliging chap that he was he offered to download software 10.1 which he said was the appropriate CD and he did.
I keyed it in and clicked where ordered. At first everything went as promised and then I was instructed to key in my customer number and it was rejected. I tried again and again. Again and again I was rejected.
At this point I must have lost my nerve because I went scurrying back to a nice lady at Nuance with whom by this time I was on Christian name terms. She very kindly tried the download herself and said it had worked for her. So I went back to the keyboard and this time a notice appeared saying it was a zip file and if I would press the download button all would be well. So I pressed the download button and got a notice saying if I would press another download button my problems would be over. At this point my typing finger objected. It said it was working harder than ever and I did say as how I was going to make things easier for it. I was in no mood for argument so I rapped its knuckle and it went on its weary way. This time pressing the button brought a notice from someone called Reg work, saying there were 165 errors on the machine and vey sportingly offering to clear things up with a free trial,. In the face of a noticeable shortage of gift horses I complied. That pressure on a button brought a bill for £34 which I thought might be my one finger getting its own b ack but I paid and got another button telling me that my life would be made easy if I backed up my files. By now I was too weak to demur and that cost me another ten quid. I forget what the next tempting offer was but I know that when I had accepted it I was down £100 over a five minute involuntary spending spree.So I emailed my friend Flora on Nuance in a craven bid for sympathy..
She obviously had summed up my degree of technical expertise bt this time because she said probably the best idea would be to ask Olympus who sold the recorder to send me a CD 10.1 which would get round the problem with ease.
There the matter ended and I awaited the next email with a nervous Cousteau like twitch..
I got an email from some one called trial Play telling me that my Winzip software was ready and if I would press the download below it would be delivered. I pressed the download and nothing happened. By this time I was whimpering noisily so I emailed Trial Play support and back came an email quick as a flash. It said thet would answer my eteemed enquiry in 48 hours..
At which point I broke into song, a reedy tenor with nervous gulps “I’ll join the Legion, that’s what I’ll do....and in some far distant region I’ll fight for the right .....” but the rest of that stirring aria from the Red Shadow was drowned in fitful
sobs........

What fright from yonder window breaks......

2011-06-11T03:41:00.000-07:00

Desert Island Discs is a funny place to have an epiphany. I had never heard of Alfie Boe despite his international success as an opera singer, a musical comedy idol and a pop star. To any other ignoramus on the planet, I should explain he was a clog-wearing factory worker, one of nine living in a council house in Fleetwood, who became an opera star. The epiphany was the revelation that he shares with Aled Jones a rare and extraordinary talent and charisma, combined with being an ordinary and likeable young man who liked being in opera but hated watching it.
Up to then it had been a Bloody Sunday. I had just read that regional accents are fading out and being replaced by a Jamaican patois, and there is to be a new production of Romeo and Juliet in which a 14-year-old Juliet strips and makes simulated love on stage, before an audience.
It is the idea of Julian Fellowes, whose wife is a Lady-in-Waiting and who, on the strength of an “Upstairs Downstairs” lookalike script, is wheeled out by the Media TV an as an arbiter of aristocratic behaviour.
One essential quality of the true aristocrat is an assumption of modesty. It is not one that this expert on the behaviour of butlers shares.
He says his script is faithful to Shakespeare’s intentions. It features “appropriate” actors who appear close to how Shakespeare originally envisaged his star-crossed lovers.
Since in Shakespeare’s day Juliet was played by a boy, I think that unlikely. There is some reason to suspect Shakespeare’s sexuality but I cannot see him staging a homosexual romp.
I am not sure the idea is even legal. Fourteen-year-old girls still have some tattered remains of protection. The Government is to ban suggestive posters near schools and the pornographic exploitation of young girls. They are worried that, despite sex education that involves putting condoms on bananas, we have the greatest number of schoolgirl mothers in Europe. They seek to reduce it. An under-age love-in would seem to miss that high expectation by a wide margin. I cannot believe that such performances chime with a society which frowns on smoking on stage.
Be at ease.
Mr Fellowes assures us he is writing a film script which is both sensual yet tasteful enough to avoid accusations of child exploitation. His version, he insists, “keeps pretty true to Shakespeare but is more accessible. We tell the story more economically too.”
I worry about his Thatcher- like use of the Royal “We” but I suppose when your missus is a monarch’s “Gopher” one slips into such usage. But be assure:
“It is now Fellowesian Shakespeare. I’ve kept all the famous scenes and what was said in them. So we have, for example, kept the lines about a rose by any other name.”
I am sure we, perhaps even Shakespeare too, bask in his magnanimity.
In the same Sunday newspaper I was treated to a whole page devoted to a girl’s love affair with Martin Amis. Would that be the would-be literary genius with the mouth of rancid teeth and concomitant halitosis?
I have been reading a manual on how to be a Stoic, because it seems to me that might be just what I need in this whirligig world. Little comfort so far. The author points out that in classic times philosophy was studied as an explanation of life. No longer. Today’s philosophers specialise in logic, metaphysics, politics, science, religion and ethics. There are studies in the philosophy of sport, feminism, even the philosophy of philosophies.
Clearly they have given up on life and who is to blame them?

FOR EXAMPLE
Research by the Centre of Social Justice has established that the Olympic Games, which will feature 26 sports, will not induce people to take up a sport. Previous Olympics, including Sydney 2000, failed to produce an increase in participation. It added that there was no evidence of a link between national sporting success and increased levels of sporting activity.
So far this International Sportsfest has left its host countries in debt. But there are benefits. Those remaining FIFA bosses who escape prison will enjoy a £1.3m junket, including five star hotels and tickets to events like the final of the 100 metres, denied to the rest of you.(I wouldn't go if they were staged in our front garden. Indeed I would draw the curtains) Sepp Blatter, its head, and his Secretary General have been given “all areas passes”, and will be ferried round in chauffeur driven BMWs. Other FIFA bigwigs have been awarded tickets in all prestige events, and 200 heavily discounted rooms in The Mayfair luxury hotel have been booked. We will pay FIFA technical staff £200 a night subsidies for the three weeks they will be here. FIFA will also be offered 2,000 Olympic tickets at face value. In fact the reason so many people were disappointed in the ticket ballot is that only 40 per cent of the tickets available were offered to the public because 60 per cent have gone in freebies.
Last year the Spectator published the complete, contractually binding and previously confidential set of demands made by the 115-member International Olympic Committee (IOC).
London is required to provide the IOC and the ‘Olympic Family’ with 40,000 hotel-room bookings for the entire duration of the Games. The city must control all billboard advertising, city transport advertising, airport advertising etc. for the duration of the Games and the month preceding it. Customs officers and police must ‘co-operate’ in taking action against unapproved Olympics advertising and enforce the confiscation of non-official goods. Brand protection teams will ‘conduct surveillance’. They must ‘attempt to confiscate any infringing material whether inside or outside the venue’.
Spectators at the Games ‘must not wear clothes or accessories with commercial messages other than the manufacturer’s brand name’. ’No athlete or other participant’ at the Games may wear any clothing on which the manufacturer’s name takes up more than 10 per cent of the surface area. No journalist covering the Games is allowed any ‘signage of any kind’, even for his or her own publication — on ‘camera bags, hats or other garments’.
The Olympics flag must be more prominent than the Union flag. There must be a royal reception on the day before the Games open, at which, ‘IOC members are presented to the Head of State’.
Billboards and pageantry throughout the city shall be in French as well as English.
The IOC is getting 250 miles of so-called ‘Zil’ lanes — named after the old Soviet limousines that enjoyed traffic-free passage. They will stretch from London to Weymouth, where the sailing games are being held. It now emerges that there will also be 500 air-conditioned limos, whose drivers must wear hats and uniforms. London must provide a ‘dance café’ in the £325 million Olympic Village. A flower shop is required, which the IOC insists ‘should provide a range of flowers and gifts for customers’.
A balloon rental service is optional, .but ‘it is recommended that the same housekeeping staff perform their duties for the same teams daily’, because this will ‘build relationships and trust’, ‘give confidence’ and ‘maintain standards’.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A letter to a friend
Dear Sarah,

Thank you for your kind concerns about our wounded dog. The other night when he could not sleep I sang him a lullaby. It seemed to soothe him, though once, when singing with the choir of The Big Pit at Blaenavon, I threw the entire choir out of tune and they begged me never to sing with them in public.

Last night - or more accurately at 4 am - the prisoner/dog wakened me demanding to perform his ablutions. He has to go everywhere on a lead, so, harnessed up, prisoner and escort marched into the garden where he instantly knocked me over and escaped. At my great weight, once over, I cannot right myself. I tried pulling myself up by a rose bush and pulled out the bush by the roots. I tried to climb up my walking stick and broke the stick. My floundering about roused the prisoner's curiosity and he abandoned what was clearly a carefully crafted escape plan and came back to find out what I was about. At that point my nerve broke and I fear I abused him. Oh well, his eyes said, if that is your attitude... and stalked off. When, after half an hour, I eventually stood upright and staggered into the room we had vacated, the prisoner was happily sleeping and scornfully snoring - in My Chair!

The whole thing was clearly a devilishly cunning plot. I expect he had heard that when a butterfly dies in Africa the effect is felt here. I see myself as an elderly, crippled, overweight butterfly. The stop press news is that he has been back to the vet and is mending nicely. I am not.

Much love,

Ian

kidmoresisland.blogspot.com

VET DEBT

2011-06-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

Historically lawyers and members of parliament have a richly deserved unsavoury reputation which the parliamentarians have shown themselves anxious to retain.

It is interesting that the most venal trade of all, the veterinary surgeon has escaped opprobrium.

I think I know the reason.

In my view only the atom bomb has been a greater threat to civilisation than TV. Thanks to that devilish invention violence has become endemic. Our feral young have been encouraged to slaughter each other and aspiration has been replaced by insistence. If we see it we must have it.

Some years ago a Yorkshire vet published a series of moderately successful anecdotes. Anxious to bring out a collected edition his London publisher hunted round for a title and eventually settled on “ All Creatures Great and Small” It proved a gold mine. The publishing industry to a man, or more correctly a woman, scratched its hennaed head for biblical titles. I ws writing my book on Ken Williams the policeman naturalist and I was solemnly assured that it would a beat seller if I could establish a biblical connection.

I couldn’t and it wasn’t. However an ecstatic review in the Police Gazette was read by a Yorkshire policeman who ws encouraged to publish his own memoir. That became the TV series “Heartbeat” and I believe he is now a millionaire. It ws par for the course in our family. My wife’s book “ Prisoners of Santo Tomas was the acknowledged inspiration for the TV series “Tenko”, though in admitting it the TV company declined to pay a royalty on the grounds it ws “in the public domain”

The Vets’ stories were also made into a TV series that depicted Vets as loveable, eccentrics who spent their lives with their arms up a cow’s uterus with never a thought about money. It is not sour grapes to say that Herriot had an enviable command of the cliché. The aristocratic eccentric, the wayward charmer, the try harder do gooder and the lovable servant. Surround them with a cast of thousands of well meaning rebel peasants all speaking impenetrable treacle toffee. Place them in an enviable landscape of empty roads, free of caravans, EC lorries and mechanical diggers. Follow that with interminable series about earnest and often beautiful young people learning how to castrate a newt. The result?

A national perception that all Vets are Good Eggs and probably Scottish.

Porridge eating philanthropists to a manHow quickly the perception fades. The writer Max Hastings published an article about vets costs and te a storm of comment
. We have just paid a number of vets a sum of money I once took a year to earn. I remember being charged £40 to discover the cause of death of a five shilling goldfish.A pensioner neighbour found a stray cat which was obviously ill, took it to the Vet and was charged £218. It goes without saying that we coughed up our king’s ransom without a murmur. As did all the people who commented on Hastings article.

“Ah” you will say “ Vets were kinder in my day.”

Rubbish. I have a friend, a vet of the old school who died last week,, An admirable man who would give you his right arm and did in fact give me a C C de France split cane game rod. Often sought my advice on books to read and matters of literary style. Yet if I asked him the most innocent question about dog behaviour an iron shutter came down.

TV is at it worst in documentaries. I watched one in which the presenter claimed that Dr Crippen was innocent of his wife’s murder and based it on “ truths” that he claimed to have discovered about the remains found in Crippen’s cellar, which were those of a man and not Crippen’s wife. He also claimed as a matter for astonishment the Scotland Yard man Inspector True was corrupt.

I have no doubt Crippen was innocent. A significant number of murderers brought to book by Scotland Yard have proved to be innocent In fact it was known at Crippen's trial the remains were those of a man.The judge mentioned it in his summing up.

As to the revelation that True ws corrupt. Some years ago Dr Howard Taylor, a historian from Nottingham University conducted a four year research programme which showed that since the days of Jack the Ripper police forces have been fraudulently massaging crime figures. Until the First World War police efficiency was judged by the LOW number of detections and prosecutions. In consequence crime figures were kept below 90,000 a year and any crimes above that figure were “lost”. From 1880 to 1966 the Director of Public Prosecutions “rationed” murders at a fixed rate of 150 a year, with the connivance of the police.

In 1919 the Government sought for reasons to cut police numbers and budgets. Overnight the crime figures trebled.

Dr Taylor concluded “ It is clear that crime rates have been supply led, rather than demand led and have little reflection of reality”

Even traffic deaths, he found, had been manipulated so that they rose precisely in line with the number of extra policemen required

“All the police did ws claim that one sixth of the force was needed each year for traffic duties and the accident rate rose accordingly.

When I was “doing crime” for The People” scarcely a week seemed to pass without a senior officer going to prison on corruption charges. During the invstigation in to the Richardson Brothers crime syndicate I was given a tip off that one of the gang, a man called Duval, had kept a diary of his time with the gang. and I was sent to find him.

I was told on no account to ring th Metropolitan police. So many of them were in the pay of London g gangs that the Richardson investigation was being conducted from a rural police station in the Home Counties.

Some years later I was hired by Lord Russell of Liverpool, a celebrated lawyer of the day to check the alibi of Hanratty who had been hung for the A6 murder, despite insisting he was in Rhyl at the time.

Hanratty had described the room in a boarding house in Kimnel st where he had slept. He said it had green shiny wallpaper. The police could not find such a room When I went with Russel the landlady after some pretty impressive questioning by him suddenly said.

“There is a room with shiny green wallpaper. The bathroom. And if I am full I let it out to visitors”

As Deputy Judge Advocate General to the British Army of the Rhine Lord Russell was one of the chief legal advisers during the Nurnberg war crime trials held after the end of the Second World War" After our investigation he was adamant that Hanratty ws innocent

Massaging crime figures? I have told here how the Lord Chancellor’s office at the time of the moratorium of death sentences instructed judges that murder charges were to be reduced, Because there were apparently fewer murders there was no argument for the retention of the death penalty

DANGEROUS CUTTING.

POLICE dispatched to a 999 emergency reporting a “bright stationary object” above a caller’s house soon solved the mystery – when they discovered it was the moon.

The recording runs as follows. Police have not revealed the identity of the caller except to say he was from the South Wales Valleys:

Control Room: “South Wales Police, what’s your emergency?”

Caller: “It’s not really. I just need to inform you that across the mountain there’s a bright stationary object.”

Control room: “Right.”

Caller: “If you’ve got a couple of minutes perhaps you could find out what it is? It’s been there at least half an hour and it’s still there.”

Control: “It’s been there for half an hour. Right. Is it actually on the mountain or in the sky?”

Caller: “It’s in the air.”

Control: “I will send someone up there now to check it out.”

Caller: “OK.”

A few minutes later, all became clear in the following exchange between the control room and the police officer sent to the scene.

Control: “Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?”

Officer: “Yes, it’s the moon. Over.”

2011-05-27T23:58:00.000-07:00

When the chauffeur returned our dog Taz from Racehorse Ritz he brought with him a raft of Part One Orders. We were instructed to limit him to one room,.accompany him at all times to the ablutions, not allow him to climb on furniture and above all not let him escape to the Great Outdoors.

Here, at Stalag Luft One, an anti-escape committee was convened. It was pointed out that this entire dwelling was about the same size as my library in our home at Aberbraint. Therefore it was proposed, and seconded, that for the purposes of command the ground (and only) floor of Stalag Luft be designated as 'one room'. A further proposal was adopted that furniture be rearranged in the drawing room to limit movement in early stage of convalescence/captivity. Dog walker to be re- mustered as dog sitter.

The meeting was then adjourned and adjutant(me) retired to my study. Closely followed by Taz, who had ignored recently erected barriers and now glared at him challengingly from the plastic cone which prevents him from biting stitches. An escort was summoned and prisoner and escort were marched out to confinement suite.

Adjutant returned to study and peace reigned until rent by scream from Head Ferret. The dog under advisement had vanished. Suite search failed to discover signs of tunnel and guards were despatched to search perimeter fence. Prisoner discovered hiding behind hedge. Challenging glare replaced by smug insubordinate expression. Prisoner returned to punishment suite. Peace reigned after Last Post was piped.

At 6 am came a sound as of a plastic helmet being dashed against C.O.'s bedroom door. Adjutant observed dog butting said door. Returned prisoner to suite with adjutant spending night on armchair duty till reveille piped.Prisoner insisted on lullaby before sleep. Adjutant obliged and prisoner slept soundly

Anti-escape committee re-convened. Prisoner's records perused. Revealed considerable form for escaping whilst still an apprentice dog on recruitment to Unit.

The problem is that he insists on being with us. With us he is loving and obedient. If we are not within licking distance he gets a red mist. He is the only dog we have ever been owned by to be barred from a boarding kennels.

When he was badged with us on Anglesey he was billeted in a Kennel Yard in which bloodhounds had been confined. He pleaded guilty to burrowing beneath a 6ft high, heavy duty steel fence and tearing through wire on a padlocked gate. When repairs were effected he found a weak join four foot up, made a hole and jumped out. Left in the house, he ate through a listed window, demolished the cat flap, ripped out the phone cable and shredded the cushion flooring in a bid to burrow under the door.

Confined to cars, he ate fourteen seat belts. Estimated cost of replacing and repairing £3,000.

At this point it was discovered from a Children's TV programme that Taz is the shortened form of Tasmanian Devil. Obviously there were personality flaws his previous owners had kept to themselves. Happily his cheery, loving presence more than cancelled them out and it was observed that he only escaped as far as the gate, where he waited placidly for our return.

In the light of these disclosures, the anti-escape committee unanimously voted for compulsory parade of dog to view DVDs of “Colditz” and “Bridge Over the River Kwai” for instruction purposes. Dog warned that future acts of indiscipline may be punished by confinement to the Hole. Adjutant's objection to this description of his study overruled by CO.

Sadly over the weekend the wound became infected and Taz was back in the camp hospital, under guard, on a diet of money; leaving his bemused owners to wonder how his absence leaves a huge chasm so much greater than the space he occupies with his presence.

On Thursday we had an anxious call from the veterinary nurse. He had gone on hunger strike. He was refusing to eat hospital food. Could we bring round some chicken?

The C.O immediately went into Meals on Wheels mode and delivered a tasty melange of chicken and rice. The suggestion of the adjutant that he might like to wash it down with a saucer of Chardonnay was not well received. Before she returned a vet rang to say that if she wanted to visit Taz after Rounds she would be welcome.

That day we had lunch at 4 pm because a second vet rang to say he had been in touch with the Racehorse Ritz who said there was nothing to worry about. Wound infection often happened with greyhounds and Taz could come home the next day.

The adjutant is as well as can be expected though exhibits a worrying tendency to jump nervously for no apparent reason. No doubt in time the attendant nervous twitch will disappear.

LIONS LED BY DONKEYS

Lord Dannett, the noisy Christian who used to be C.I.G.S. is predictably against defence cuts. He says if we do make them we won't be a great nation any more. He asks if that is what we want.

General, you can bet your sweet arse it is. It is time we gave up our seat at the top table. It is time we gave up trying to turn Afghanistan into Slumberland. Afghanistanis are an undisciplined mob which lives to fight.
General, the MOD is already 3.5 million in debt financing your folies de grandeur. Add to that a further billion fighting the Libyan army, whose military experience in war is limited to stealing petrol from the 8th Army.

May I remind you that you are borrowing from your countrymen, who are so broke we are closing care centres and libraries, throwing millions out of work? We even have to buy hospitals on HP.

General, you seem to have misunderstood our role, or perhaps you have not noticed the Empire has gone. Nations sit on the top table because they are powerful and call the shots. We are not. Borrowing billions to buy lethal toys and giving billions in Aid to countries wealthier than we are will not buy us privileges to which we are no longer entitled.

But that is not the reason I want us to be a little nation, bothering no one. The reason is guilt.

My ancestors fought at Hastings, Crecy, Agincourt, in the Civil War; at Ramillies, Waterloo, Trafalgar; in the Crimea and in the Zulu and Boer wars, and every silly war including World Wars One and Two. A branch of us even fought in the American Civil War. It didn't do us any good. We learned nothing, Worse, I am of the generation of World War Two. I grew up watching the destruction of my cities, the death of my school fellows in a succession of blitzes. I spent two years in a beaten Germany, witness to its degredation and the mass obliteration of Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover and Cologne.

My guilt? I have fathered a generation which has learned nothing. A generation of people like you, General, who believe that war is a solution, not a problem. It is something of which I am deeply ashamed and eager to make reparations.

Thanks to my publishing friends Revel Barker and Neil Marr, the thirty odd books I have written are being republished and all the royalties are going to service charities. It won't wash away the guilt I feel but it might help the fine young men and women who will go through life without limbs or genitals just so that our generals and our politicians can swank on a top table they have no right to share.

YOU FEEL BETTER FOR THAT ???????

A mass display of public disobedience, of judicial petulance, blatant abuse of parliamentary privilege and a commercially driven media campaign............

So now we know that Ryan Giggs had it off with Imogen Thomas. Do we feel (a) greatly relieved (b) proud that a blow has been struck for media freedom or (c) slightly shabby and wondering what the fuss was all about? Young men filled with adulation and money, surrounded by nubile young girls eager to give their all. The wonder would be that a testoterone-brimming Adonis turned down the opportunity. I do not suppose the cuckolded Mrs Giggs feels better for the fact we all know of her betrayal by the man she loved. Ms Thomas cannot enjoy the reputation that will be her lifetime companion.

I used to make a handsome living writing stories for the tabloids about similar situations. Cannot honestly say that I felt ashamed. My only fear was that one of my victims might have asked in answer to my probing:
“What has it got to do with you?” I wouldn't have had an answer.

Until recently all I knew of Giggs is that his dazzling talent has entertained thousands of supporters for over a decade. That he is universally liked...
I think I will stick with that memory and the feeling of relief that no one has been nosing into my private life in the way I nosed into theirs.

P.S. In passing, I cannnot believe that any legislation which muzzles Giles Coren is wholly bad.

EVERY DAY HAS ITS DOG

2011-05-20T02:52:00.000-07:00

It was a funny sort of birthday. Celia painfully pulled a muscle either leaning backwards over a basin at the hairdresser or heavy duty gardening. The dog broke his leg in several places for no apparent reason but perversity. Minimal fee for physiotherapy for the Head Ferret. The dog?
We spent the day ferrying him between vets and specialist clinic. Our vet had him in for two days to take X-rays; said we had three options euthanasia, amputation or send to a specialist vet. For that, and little else, he charged us £400. The specialist was in Newmarket and deals with costly racehorses. I knew we were in trouble when I saw the clinic had four receptionists and a glossy brochure on the desk in its palatial premises.
Estimated bill £2,500 to £3,500, plus VAT, with the possibility of additional fees. I have to say from the point of view of the dog it is a bargain. Chicken lightly broiled and a phone call three times a day to tell us how he is enjoying himself
His glance has become so imperious I am practising coming to heel on his whistle and it is a good job we take the Independent. I cannot see him fetching the Daily Mirror and its like. I wouldn't be surprised to hear he was getting up a party for Ascot. I will be taking part time work to pay his fees. Not that I am complaining. I remember what my chum lifeboat cox Dick Evans said to the man he rescued from a watery grave. The man asked what he owed. Dick explained there was no charge because the RNLI was a voluntary service. The man insisted. “Very well,” said Dick, “pay me what you would have given me two minutes before I pulled you out of the water.”
When I heard Taz howling with pain I would have given half my pitiful kingdom, and the leg was so badly smashed it was a long and complex operation.
Having said that, I am concerned that vets are becoming the Dick Turpins of our day. On degree day they wear a black mask with their gowns and mortar boards. Compared to Vets the Great Train Robbers were a Hospital Saturday Fund.
As I write, Taz is convalescing with his new mates, aristocratic racehorses, and nibbling caviare blinis, washed down with Louis Roederer Crystal Brut. One of the legions of nurses who are there to do his bidding tells us he will have permanent limp.
He always was a master of the martyr's glance and the eloquent whimper. Now he is going to be unbearable limping like a latter day Long John Silver. But we cannot wait for tea time to-day to resume our roles as hand maidens.

I KNOW WHAT I DISLIKE
One good thing happened on my birthday. Revel Barker Publishing brought out a magnificent new edition of my biography of Sir Kyffin Williams, RA.
“The Man Who Painted in Welsh” replaces and extends an earlier edition, “A Figure in a Welsh Landscape”, produced by another publisher, which had so many errors as to be virtually unreadable .
Kyffin's views on modern art were sulphuric. How he would have relished this from the new “i” newspaper;
THE VALUE OF TRACEY EMIN
“Until the late 20th century art was unfairly dominated by people who could draw, paint and sculpt well. Tracey Emin's success demolishes the elitist notion that only the technically able should attempt a professional artistic career............................”

IRISH EYES ARE SMILING – AND NO WONDER
Andre Maurois once said that if in the eyes of an Irishman there is anything more ridiculous than an Englishman, it is an Englishman who loves Ireland.
Yet, once again, Our Gracious has been sent, poor lady, to lie abroad for her country. To placate our troublesome neighbours, she has been required to lay a wreath at the memorial in Dublin to that country's martyrs, ignoring the fact that most were executed for murder. Then it was off to take the blame for the Croke Park massacre.
That bloodstained former unemployed plasterer and pederast's brother, Gerry Adams, subsidised his IRA past with unemployment benefits and now lives comfortably bolstered by parliamentary pensions. But he retains the ill manners of his back street birth. He calls the Queen's visit insensitive - and he should know. He is one with that undistinguished cabal of former terrorists who gnawed at the hand that fed them. Archbishop Makarios brought blood to the streets of Cyprus; Yitzhak Shamir was operations officer of the Stern Gang which murdered Lord Moyne and Count Bernadotte; and his predecessor as Israeli prime minister Mr Begin was leader of the Irgun Gang, which had the massacres of the Palestinian villagers of Deir Yassin and the occupants of the King David Hotel on its battle honours.
As so often the case, it is the sainted Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent who tells the true story:

“There's a wonderful book about Bloody Sunday by Michael T Foy, 'Michael Collins's Intelligence War' (Sutton), that I sincerely recommend, from which most of the following details are taken.
A Captain Newbury was staying with his wife at a ground-floor flat at 92 Pembroke Street that morning, when two IRA volunteers arrived at the front door. Still in his pyjamas, he fled to the back window, where a third volunteer was waiting: the three men cut him down in a ferocious volley of shots, while his wife screamed beside him.
After throwing a blanket on her husband's corpse, she collapsed, and gave birth to a stillborn baby. Some days later she herself died. Michael Foy thinks that Captain Newbury was not an intelligence officer. Of the 13 defenceless men murdered in their bedrooms that morning, Foy reckons eight were intelligence officers: the other five were 'unlucky'.
These included two Irish Catholics, an RAF officer (and cousin of Oscar Wilde) Lt L E Wilde, and Captain Patrick McCormack, an army vet, who were both murdered in their beds in the Gresham Hotel.
It could have been far, far worse: many decent IRA men simply ignored their orders, and shot no one.
In the aftermath of this slaughter, Dublin Castle correctly sensed that many soldiers and RIC Auxiliaries would be thirsting for revenge, and confined as many as possible to barracks. Alas, some Auxiliaries, aided by untrained recruits from the Depot at Phoenix Park, arrived at Croke Park, and perpetrated the infamous and legendary slaughter.
But according to Michael Foy -- and I am inclined to believe him -- these RIC men were out of control. They were not following orders, nor were they implementing policy of any kind.
Six of the Croke Park dead were buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, along with the bodies of the innocent Wilde and McCormack.
These evil events now exist largely in a realm of legend, which states that the British secret service was crippled in one brilliantly organised stroke, and so the cruel British army got its revenge with a massacre of the innocents of Croke Park.
But no soldiers opened fire at Croke Park, just policemen -- and most of the recruits doing the shooting were Irish. And if the British intelligence was so crippled by the assassinations, how come the terms of the Treaty 13 months later so comprehensively favoured Britain's strategic interests?
Queen Elizabeth was not born when Bloody Sunday occurred, and neither she nor any of her family had any association with it. This cannot be said of the Irish State, of which the third Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, was involved in the shooting of an unarmed army officer that morning -- the one-legged Captain Baggalay, who was not involved in intelligence, but in civil administration.
His murder was an atrocious affair, but no intelligent person would seek an apology for such a deed in the middle of a very dirty war so long ago.
For the queen to offer a one-sided sorry for Bloody Sunday would merely give a fresh and needless lift to the wings of nationalist mythology; while for the poor dead Newburys in their pitiful Pembroke Street flat, no one either knows or cares.”
- Kevin Myers
Irish Independent

TIME WITHOUT NUMBERSt

2011-05-14T04:31:00.000-07:00

I suppose it is because I am 82 on Monday (I took quiet pride in getting TWO birthday cards from Gordon's Gin PLC and an invitation to sky dive from my gorilla charity), HIM UPSTAIRS didn't think there would be any harm in letting slip a few secrets. So I woke this morning having heard Him answer the age old problem. “Is there any proof we have an immortal soul?”

It is a lot to take in with the morning tea bag but it seemed pretty simple the way He explained it. “You just tell your brain to count to the limit of numbers and then go on counting..............”

How long will that take ?

“Time is an artificial concept.”

It gave me quite a boost on the way to the bathroom to realise I had achieved Enlightenment effortlessly and it was only on the way back that I hit a snag. How do I go on counting when I have reached the limit of numbers?

I tried asking Him but as usual when there are awkward questions – it was the same when I asked him the reason He appears in some religions as an elephant - He copped a deaf 'un. Mumbled something about some chap called Yorrick and dreams and philosophy. He did, however, let slip something about counting beyond numbers being possible beyond time which I have still to work out. He did saytime was artificial and how can you go beyond something that isn't there, especially when you are counting non-existent numbers? I have got nothing to worry about anyway. I have just come across the fragments which are all that are left of the teachings of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who, as you know, is the citizen who taught Socrates:

“All things were together, infinite both in numbers and in smallness, for the small too was infinite and when all things were together none of them could be distinguished for their smallness....”

Pick the bones out of that. All I can say is, it's a funny sort of fragment to leave lying about for later generations to trip over. I mean, he did say ALL things were infinite ….........?

Naturally when you get Stable info from the Elephant's Mouth, as 'twere, you like to share it. So when I got to the clinic to have the most recent stitches removed, I told the pretty nurse about counting beyond numbers.

I forgot how the Head Ferret likes to be part of the audience when someone is inflicting pain on me and she was kibbutzing. “If you were constantly counting in your head how would you carry on a conversation?” she wanted to know.

I ask you?

I replied with icy dignity that some of us can count under our breath. And I made up my mind I was not going to tell her about Elephants and God, not if Hell had me.

“Counting away in your head, you'd never BE ABLE TO FOLLOW THE PLOT IN SPIRAL,” she countered, a touch smugly, I thought.

She had me there. It's bad enough trying to keep up on the corpse tally and wondering if the lady detective ever took a shower. It was like in “The Killing” wondering if that detective was ever going to change her jersey and what sort of state was her underwear in? Never did find out who did it.

The Swedish Wallander was OK. A relief to discover Sweden has even less scenery than the Fens and that not all Swedish women are fanciable. But Branagh's version had me banjaxed. For some reason he replaced activity with the lengthy pause. I know it's a great help not having to learn as many lines but it is confusing to some poor devil who is trying to keep up a corpse count whilst going up to several million in his head trying to communicate with his immortal soul.

So anyway, I have told Him to lay off answering any more questions before they are asked. I'll be meeting Him soon enough and he can tell me everything all at once......But if he could see his way clear to making sure Branagh has a shave before he goes to work........

I gave myself a special birthday gift. I resigned from Facebook and Twitter. I have always felt uneasy about being part of those networks. It was like watching TV in the daytime, which offends one's Protestant work ethic long after one's working life is over. The nosey networks offended some deep sense of being grown up. The catalyst came for me when I found myself seeking to identify those shabby men who have taken out super injunctions. It is nearly half a century since I enjoyed an adulterous association but I remember how the enjoyment was diluted by the feeling of shame. I do not expect actors and professional sportsmen to behave like grown ups: their choice of occupation maroons them in childhood. The knowledge that one has been adulterated against hurts, I would imagine, but for that you have to be Grown Up. The act itself verges on the absurd. If I knew the identity of those shabby injunction men I would not be any the wiser and, anyway, they should be judged by their on-stage prowess. Beyond that they do not exist in an adult world.

I am constantly surprised at the number of my friends who are happily married, despite the adverse publicity, and I believe that it is broken relationships that have produced our feral young. That doesn't mean that I think the act of marriage is important. If one feels able to betray the trust of someone who is important to one then the contract is void anyway. What I object to is that the guardians of our law and our freedom are prepared to corrupt that law if the price is high enough.

I am heartened by the number of my readers who have praised me for casting off the need to tweet and be two Faced-book.

CORRESPONDENTS KEN AND COLIN WRITE........................

Closing the 'news' programme on Friday evening, ITV Wales anchor Jonathan Hill said: 'The end of an historic day for Wales.'
???????
Another hung Assembly, another washout for Plaid, little harm to the Tories, the referendum on AV means nothing changes and more than 50 per cent of Welsh voters couldn't be bothered to turn out.

****** ********* ********

ALMOST half of people living in an area of Rhyl can’t read or write well enough to function properly in every day life. Teenage pregnancy, unemployment, low birth weight babies, alcoholism, poor sexual health, obesity and suicides amongst men are also among the issues that need to be tackled, a report into the levels of deprivation and ill health across Denbighshire claims.

****** ********* *********
Champion runner Roger Bannister has achieved a knighthood, was the first Sports Council chairman, and is a famous neurologist. Two contestants on Friday's The Million Pound Drop ,Andrew and Vanessa were asked; “In 1954, did he go into space, run a sub-four minute mile or become the first man ever to put the toilet seat down?” Andrew shouted, "I think I've seen 'Bannister' written on a toilet!"

++++++

A new guide book has ruffled feathers across Wales after describing Cardiff as a “prodigious drinking town” and Bangor as “soulless”.
The latest edition of Lonely Planet suggests weekends in Wales’s capital see it invaded by “hordes” of “lads and ladettes”, who go “tottering from bar, to club to kebab shop whatever the weather”.
The book is equally critical of Bangor, saying the North Wales city’s “glory days have long since faded”.

POT CALLING KETTLE......
Can we trust our government with custody of our national language?

Heard today: "It's up to drivers to upskill themselves..." - Philip Hammond, MP, Transport Secretary

.LOCAL Newspaper Report

Reported in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle:

A lady died in September, and MBNA bank billed her for October and November for their annual service charges on her credit card, and then added late fees and interest on the monthly charge. The balance that had been £0.00, now was somewhere around £60.00.

A family member placed a call to the MBNA Bank:

Family Member:
'I am calling to tell you that she died in September.'

MBNA:
'The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply.'

Family Member:
'Maybe, you should turn it over to collections.'

MBNA:
'Since it is two months past due, it already has been.'

Family Member:
So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?'

MBNA:
'Either report her account to the frauds division or report her to The credit bureau, maybe both!'

Family Member:
'Do you think God will be mad at her?'

MBNA:
'Excuse me?'

Family Member:
Did you just get what I was telling you . ..
The part about her Being dead?'

MBNA:
'Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor.'

Supervisor gets on the phone:

Family Member:
'I'm calling to tell you, she died in September.'

MBNA:
'The account was never closed and the late fees and charges still apply.'

Family Member:
'You mean you want to collect from her estate?'

MBNA:
(Stammer) 'Are you her lawyer?'

Family Member:
'No, I'm her grandson'
(Lawyer info given)

MBNA:
'Could you fax us a certificate of death?'

Family Member:
'Sure.'
( fax number is given )

After they get the fax:

MBNA:
'Our system just isn't set up for death.
I don't know what more I can do to help.'

Family Member:
'Well, if you figure it out, great!
If not, you could just keep billing her.
I don't think she will care.'

MBNA:
'Well, the late fees and charges do still apply.'

Family Member:
'Would you like her new billing address?

MBNA:
'That might help.'

Family Member:
'Heaton Cemetery, Heaton Road, Newcastle upon Tyne Plot 1049.'

MBNA:
'Sir, that's a cemetery!'

Family Member:
'Well, what the **** do you do with dead people on your planet?'

MBNA were not available for comment when a reporter from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle rang.

'

IN MEMORY

2011-05-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

You will not have heard of her but when Rebecca Osborne died a bright star went out of our firmament. Someone told Lloyd George, “I thought you would have been taller.” Lloyd George replied: “In Wales we measure people from the neck up!”

By those standards Becky was the only giant I ever met. In size she was no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman. A crippling illness meant that she was only three feet high and weighed just 40 lb. She suffered from Werding Hoffman syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes wasting of the muscles.

Suffered? Not Becky. Although almost totally paralysed, with only slight movement of the head and hands, she was a successful novelist and short story writer, a painter, a maker of exquisite miniature rooms and a gardener, though her garden was a toy wheelbarrow. She made jewellery and greetings cards, lace and tapestries on tiny canvases with a miniature needle and very fine thread.

She also made friends like Princess Anne, the writer Celia Haddon and the actor Anthony Andrews, who took her to lunch and gave her his prized “Brideshead” teddy bear.

She was an indefatigable charity worker. With her mother Jenny she turned their garden at Foxbrush, Port Dinorwic, in North Wales, into an award winning member of the National Gardens Scheme.

She was 28 when she died. Even in that she was a record holder because no one else suffering from the disorder, including her sister Vicky, had ever lived beyond the age of six. Nor, it should be said, have many fit people packed so much into so short a time or extended so much love and friendship to so many people.

She once said to me: ”I am long past my sell by date but I cannot let something as silly as a disability stand in my way. There is no point in letting it beat you.”

It never did. She exhibited her tiny 3D model rooms at National Eisteddfods all over Wales. She had sell-out shows at Oriel Ynys Mon, Anglesey, for which she won the North Wales artists development award; Oriel Bangor and the Beaumaris Festival in which she competed successfully against hundreds for a showing in the festival exhibition.

She lived with her parents Jenny and Brian at Foxbrush, a converted 17th century mill. Devoted parents who every night for 28 years took it in turns every half hour to turn her over in her tiny bed; who tirelessly supported her, were her ardent followers in everything she chose to do and were broken hearted and bereft at her loss.

Becky was never able to go to school. Teachers came to her but she had to take whatever teacher was available. For a year it was a music teacher; for two years she learned nothing but maths. She enrolled at the Gwynedd Technical College to do A level English. More accurately, the College enrolled in Foxbrush. A tutor would arrive with five fellow students who became her devoted friends. Needless to say, she passed with top grades.

But nothing in life became her so much as her manner of leaving it. She had been deteriorating since 1997, when she was told she had only three weeks to live. In contemptuous response she joined the Sealed Knot, went to a dozen musters a year, researched the Civil War in exhaustive detail and cozened her parents into a frenzy of costume making and creating cameo roles.

For ten weeks before her death, she bravely battled against excruciating pain which became worse over the Christmas holiday. Even then she was building 3D rooms for her next exhibition and when her hands became totally paralysed used her mother's hands.
When she died there was a Memorial Exhibition of her works although in truth she needed none. Becky is her own memorial which she erected in the heart of anyone who was privileged to know her.

IT'S A PUZZLEMENT..........................

I do not wish to rain on anyone's parade but in the matter of Overcoming Osama how does the Arab, a desert dweller, acquire a tradition of burial at sea? I know the camel is the ship of the desert..........
From the Nazis down to Sad Saddam the tradition has been to bring monstrous criminals to trial and execution. So why kill the pyjama clad binned Lada? He was surrounded by wives and unarmed. They said they shot him to prevent him committing suicide Either wasy he is jusy as dead and a murdered martyr has the edge. Thpmas a Becket's death by asprin butty would not have had quite the resonance How much greater the humiliation of bringing him to public trial than to shoot him in the presence of his children, a practice universally condemned when done by the IRA? We got terribly upset when America invaded Grenada without telling us. How would we feel if the S.E.A. L's raised an angry flipper raiding a terrorist cell in London?
And while we are in questioning mode, who were the two nuns who were sitting the best seats opposite the winning post at the Royal Wedding? I am not saying they had no right to be there but I am puzzled that none of the so-called commentators saw fit to explain their presence.
When I covered Royal Visits or any great occasion I always wore comfortable shoes because it involved a certain amount of pavement pounding. The ladies whose job it was to mingle with crowds at the wedding wore shoes with heels so high they could scarcely totter. The three principal commentators demonstrated a total inability to Dimbleby (senior, not the dreadful brothers). I do not think that Huw Edwards, BBC man in the hot seat, should have needed the teleprompt to which his eyes nervously strayed. Would never have caught Wynford Vaughan Thomas, Vincent Kane, Hywel Gwynfryn orAlun Williams, Welsh presenters and my old chums on such occasions, allowing one in their presence.
You may have heard how at the Glamorgan match Edward Bevan, veteran BBC Wales commentator, continued his commentary as a cricket ball smashed the window of the commentary box, hitting him in the back. That was the THIRD time it had happened to Bevan. They don't make commentators like that any more.

STORY BOARD FOR THE ATTENTION OF DEAN SWIFT

A GIANT orange pumpkin will loom large over a historic market town if tourism campaigners get their way.
They believe a 131ft high structure in Gwydyr Forest above Llanrwst would rival Gateshead’s iconic Angel of the North as an attraction.
ARC, a group set up in 2004 to boost tourism in the Conwy Valley through cultural regeneration, claim the eco-friendly sculpture, designed by New York artist Steven Brower, would bring in visitors.
ARC member Megan Broadmeadow said: “It’s at the planning stage at the moment, but we'd like to hear people's views and involve everyone in developing this landmark structure.
“It will be not only a visual icon, but so large that educational, arts and green activities can happen inside it. It will be built from recycled materials and be eco-friendly where possible.”
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Police seized £300,000 of cannabis plants in a huge drugs raid - then had the haul stolen from under their noses.
Detectives boasted about the giant drugs bust and even posed for pictures with the massive crop of illegal plants.
But, as police stood guard at the front of the cannabis factory, thieves broke in through the back.
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Council staff in South Wales have spent the equivalent of more than 888 years on sick leave last year.
A combined total of 324,431 days were taken off sick by staff employed by councils.
Stress, neck pain, headaches and viral infections were among the reasons given by staff for time away from the office and tucked up in bed.
Bridgend council staff took off sick most frequently, with every employee (equivalent) taking 10 days and seven hours off work on average during last year.

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Northumbria Police spent £1,775,996 on “corporate communications” in the last financial year. This includes £458,602 on “media services”, with the rest going on public consultation, internal communications, marketing and the force website.

The Sunday Post monitored press releases between 9am on Friday, March 11, and 9am, on Monday, 14 March.
During those three days, the media services department released: a minor road accident; a robbery at a shop; a stolen car; a stolen dog and an appeal regarding an assault from a week earlier.
However, a request under the Freedom of Information Act revealed there were 4,665 incidents, including 674 crimes.
These included 55 cases of grievous bodily harm, 20 other assaults, one armed robbery and three other robberies, five rapes, 12 other sexual assaults and 69 burglaries.
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A chief fire officer who retired with a payout of £425,000 returned to work soon after to do the same job with a salary of £75,000.
Peter Holland, from Lancashire Fire and Rescue, has even claimed that the deal has saved taxpayers a 'fortune'.

Not even my old chum Ken Ashton could make that lot up!!!!!