The Aged P

Full marks to the NHS..The Lovely Mrs P slipped and fell while we were out hiking. Fortunately we were just starting out, 100 yds from the car park. A friend an I managed to lift her up but she couldn’t press with her right foot so we hobbled to the car.

Drove to East Surrey Hospital A&E…from arrival at emergency, initial assessment, further examination, X Ray, broken ankle diagnosed, leg plastered and leaving for home…all in just under 2 hours. Staff were efficient, caring, considerate and good humoured…just sayin’…..

Against the background of an irrelevant US Presidential “contest” between two men who mouth similar platitudes and promises on behalf of rival coalitions of nepostic, self serving party hacks only motivated by the desire to get their snouts in the taxpayer funded trough and a Europe becoming increasingly governed by and on behalf of an entrenched and self appointed oligarchy of bureaucrats it would be only too easy to sink into a miasma of hopelessness.

Don’t

The west is in crisis. Governments have grown too big, living beyond their means – and ours. The true costs of extra officialdom have been concealed. Parasitical politicians have been hopeless at holding to account the elites who now preside over us. As a result, Western nations are mired in debt and chronically misgoverned. Should we despair? Actually, no. Precisely because the West s Big Government model is bust, things are going to have to change. The West is on the cusp of dramatic changes driven by the failure of her elites, technology and maths. At the precise moment Big Government becomes unaffordable, the internet revolution makes it possible to do without it. Be optimistic. We are going to be able to manage without government – and thrive. The old political and economic order is about to give way to something vastly better.

Ploughing the same furrow as Prof Glenn Reynolds in his 2006 classic “An Army of Davids” Douglas Carswell, a British Tory MP, shows in his new book “The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy” how we, the little people, can use the internet to undermine and subvert the dreams and schemes of an elite that, until recently, controlled all the cultural engines of the state through their monopolies of communication and media.

Which is why, of course, the elites want to exert greater control of the internet.

As the Tea Party in the USA and UKIP in Britain will vouchsafe, the battle will be tough and remorseless – but fight we must if we are not to be bound by the soft chains of a decrepit and amoral lassitude, drugged into submission by the lies and baseless promises of the parasites who feed on the wealth created by our toil and sweat.

So – let’s fight back…find out more about the ITU Conference in December, publicise it and ask your local political parasites WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY GOING TO DO ABOUT IT….

An old cowboy went riding out one dark and windy day
Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way
When all at once a mighty herd of red eyed cows he saw
A-plowing through the ragged sky and up the cloudy draw

Their brands were still on fire and their hooves were made of steel
Their horns were black and shiny and their hot breath he could feel
A bolt of fear went through him as they thundered through the sky
For he saw the Riders coming hard and he heard their mournful cry

Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred, their shirts all soaked with sweat
He’s riding hard to catch that herd, but he ain’t caught ’em yet
‘Cause they’ve got to ride forever on that range up in the sky
On horses snorting fire As they ride on hear their cry

As the riders loped on by him he heard one call his name
If you want to save your soul from Hell a-riding on our range
Then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride
Trying to catch the Devil’s herd, across these endless skies

Would a song about the punishment for sin come out of the modern music industry? I doubt it but those terrifying lyrics have a resonance that might make even the most urbanised record company executive or Hollywood icon hesitate before snorting that next line of coke…

There are many versions of this classic cowboy song, written in 1948 by Stan Jones, working then as a Park Ranger in Death Valley. It took Jones into a prolific song writing career in Hollywood, a career sadly terminated by his untimely death in 1963, aged 49.

The biggest selling version was by Vaughn Monroe in 1949 but it’s the voice of Johnny Cash that, to me, really brings out the true nature of the song as a warning of the consequences of not changing your ways – a message that probably always hit home to The Man in Black as he reflected on his own stormy life.

Actually it was Burl Ives who made the original recording but Monroe rushed to get his own version out first.

However, the Ives version has a more folksy intimate feel that seems better suited to the tale that Jones heard as a twelve year old in Arizona…..

An impressionable 12 year old rode to the top of an Arizona hill one afternoon with an old Cowboy friend to check a windmill. A big storm was building and they needed to lock the blades down before the wind hit. When finished, they paused to watch the clouds darken and spread across the sky. As lightning flashed, the Cowboy told the boy to watch closely and he would see the devil’s herd, their eyes red and hooves flashing, stampede ahead of phantom horsemen. The Cowboy warned the youth that if he didn’t watch himself, he would someday be up there with them, chasing steers for all eternity. The terrified boy jumped on his horse and took off for the the safety of home.

“they paused to watch the clouds darken and spread across the sky”……reminds me of my favourite Maynard Dixon painting…..

Victoria Cross and Bar

The Victoria Cross is the highest award for gallantry in battle for British and Commonwealth service personnel. It was introduced at the request of Queen Victoria in 1856 and it was her wish that it should be open to all ranks, not just officers. It is sparingly awarded for most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy” It is usually presented to the recipient, or, in the case of a posthumous award, to a recipient’s family, by the monarch at a special ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

To be awarded the VC is a singular honour, recognition of courage above and beyond the call of duty – so to receive it twice is the mark of something extra special, so special that it has only happened three times in just over 150 years.

One such man was Arthur Martin-Leake (1874-1953) of Ware in Hertfordshire. He was a surgeon who volunteered to join the British army during the South African Wars. He was originally a trooper in the Imperial Yeomanry. After his year service was completed he stayed on in South Africa as a civil surgeon. A few months later he volunteered again, this time as a surgeon captain in the South African Constabulary attached to the 5th Field Ambulance.

He won his first VC during an action at Vlakfontein, on the 8th February, 1902. Surgeon-Captain Martin-Leake went up to a wounded man, and attended to him under a heavy fire from about 40 Boers at 100 yards range. He then went to the assistance of a wounded Officer, and, whilst trying to place him in a comfortable position, was shot three times, but would not give in till he rolled over thoroughly exhausted. All the eight men at this point were wounded, and while they were lying on the Veldt, Surgeon-Captain Martin-Leake refused water till every one else had been served.

In 1903 he left the army to work as a medical officer with a railway company in India but in 1912 he volunteered for the British Red Cross in Montenegro during the Balkan War and was awarded a medal by the Red Cross of Montenegro for his efforts. He returned to India but in 1914 he volunteered once more for the British Army, this time with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Belgium.

Within a few weeks he won a bar to his original VC for most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty throughout the campaign, especially during the period 29th October to 8th November, 1914, near Zonnebeke, in rescuing, whilst exposed to constant fire, a large number of the wounded who were lying close to the enemy’s trenches.

Later in the war he commanded a Field Ambulance unit and then a Casualty Clearing Station where he was once again commended for his conduct during action.

After the war he returned to his job in India until 1937 when he retired to his home in Hertfordshire but at the outbreak of WW2 he commanded a local ARP unit which was charged with organising safety and security during air raids.

He died in 1953 of lung cancer and his ashes are buried at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, High Cross, Near Ware, Hertfordshire.

You and Yours is one of several Radio 4 programmes that still have Reithian values embedded within and earlier this week they had a useful and timely piece on “Not Going To University”

On Call You and Yours we’ll be asking do you need to go to university to be successful? More than four hundred thousand students are just starting their new courses across the country, and have committed to spend at least three years and in the region of fifty thousand pounds in getting a degree. But is university the only path to getting solid qualifications? If you didn’t apply or didn’t get in, are you left feeling flat and directionless?

Increasing graduate unemployment and dumbed down degree courses have made a mockery of the “50% at university” pimped by the Blair drones who never really left student politics. So a serious attempt to remove “not going to uni” as a badge of shame is to be welcomed.

Overall there was a great deal of common sense in the programme. But in the course of the broadcast when somebody advised going out and doing any job rather than waiting for something “suitable” one of the presenters agreed about working in a supermarket or McDonalds until something “worthwhile comes along”

Now that is rather odd when you realise that companies in the supermarket and fast food areas are doing very well and are major employers. Retail is also one of the few areas where it is still possible to rise quickly through the ranks via enthusiasm and hard graft without an initial fistful of paper “qualifications”. It is also an honest way of earning money to pay the bills.

But the BBC has always had a rather aristocratic disdain for “trade” and shopkeepers because that is the feeling of the media demi-monde that inhabits and controls the organisation. Selling is a grubby little business in their opinion whereas “making” things is godlike, hence their idealisation of manufacturing, ignoring the fact that stuff is useless unless it’s sold.

That, of course, was the mistake made by the communists who ruled Russia for over seventy years. Lenin and Stalin were so obsessed with production that they forgot that the goods and the crops also had to be distributed. Transport networks and retail systems were neglected – the USSR was always a logistical nightmare.

The result? Goods stockpiled at chokepoints and zero choice for consumers who were therefore forced into buying crap products.

Maybe I can draw a more clearer picture – Thatcher losing in 1983 and Britain under Michael Foot during the 80s = British Leyland cars and BT still dictating who could have a phone…

How about we put it another way to You and Yours?

Not going to uni but you need to earn money but nothing suitable in the pipeline? You could always fill in the time in at the BBC until you got something worthwhile at Tesco or McDonalds…

H/T for pic…SodaHead

The fearless BBC is never afraid to grasp nettles…

Social services and police “missed opportunities” to stop the sexual abuse of young girls in Rochdale, a report into a grooming scandal has revealed.
……………………………………………………..
It comes after nine men were jailed in May for grooming girls as young as 13.

Oh and why were these opportunities missed?

“Deficiencies” and “patchy” training of front line staff were behind the failings, the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board said in its review of child sexual exploitation.

Ah, the old patchy training ploy, as Inspector Cluseau would say…but never fear

Lynne Jones, chair of the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board, said the council had “responded” to the review and had “improvements” had already been put in place.

That’s right, somebody wheeled out the same robot that was constructed in 1973, called it Lynne Jones, and pressed the button marked “LESSONS LEARNED”

“…working together….sharing information….raising awareness…..staff traing…..”

Only deep down towards the end of the piece, however, does the “fearless” BBC offer up a “by the way, please move along, nothing to see here” factoid

During the trial there were demonstrations by far-right groups after it emerged that white girls were being exploited by the gang, eight of whom were of Pakistani origin, with another from Afghanistan.

OMG – those crazy “far-right” groups with their racist agenda….take to the hills……oh, wait a minute

However, Greater Manchester Police said that there was no racial element to the case. It said that the main issue was older men exploiting vulnerable young women and girls.

Phew, that’s a relief. It wasn’t because of their cultural background….it was because they were “older men”. It’s not race/culture – it’s age/gender.

Julie Bindel, however, took a different view

One youth worker in south Yorkshire told me that because religious Muslims are being pressurised to marry virgins within their own extended family networks, it means that some are more likely to view white girls as easily available and “safer” than Pakistani girls.

Moreover, she felt that the reluctance of Social Services, Police and CPS to act in these cases wasn’t really down to lack of training or “working together” – but fear of being accused of being racist. This allowed the BNP to hijack the issue which obviously made it even more toxic. Now, of course, some people are speaking out…but why were they silent for so many years?

Anna Hall made a documentary for Channel 4 about Bradford Social Services which included interviews with two mothers who said their teenage daughters were being groomed.

The explosive grooming story nearly didn’t make the shortlist. Hall had already filmed several other stories through the children’s department which she was unable to screen for legal reasons. “We weren’t looking for this issue,” she says. “It just kept surfacing. Social workers said, ‘You can’t do that story because it’s too difficult.’ What did they mean by ‘too difficult’? Too racially sensitive?”

The BNP made a big deal of this film, seeing it as a vindication. Channel 4 got cold feet, especially as the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire spearheaded a campaign to stop it being shown.

So it does seem that one thing that motivated the various agencies to keep this in the Pending file was the fear of being accused of racism even though there were clearly people in the Muslim community who were confronting it.

There are, however, a growing number of individuals within the Muslim communities who are willing to speak out against the criminals. Mohammed Shafiq, the director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for peaceful harmony between different ethnic communities, advocates better education about sexual exploitation to be disseminated through imams and other community leaders.
“I was one of the first within the Muslim community to speak out about this, four years ago,” says Shafiq, “and at the time I received death threats from some black and Asian people. But what I said has been proved right — that if we didn’t tackle it there would be more of these abusers and more girls getting harmed.”

But there also appears to be another factor which pushed it down the agenda, according to the Telegraph

Police said the victims were from “chaotic”, “council estate” backgrounds and as many as 50 girls could have been victims of the gang.

That explains it, then – not nice little middle class girls from the suburbs or twee villages. Chief Constables would scarcely get into their golf clubs before being badgered by “concerned” members of the public. But “white trash” from those chavvy council estates….maybe they were, y’know, asking for it?

No wonder these evil men were happy in their work. Their culturally influenced disparagement of these girls was buttressed by the prejudices of officialdom against the Sharon’s and Tracey’s of the white working class..

A self fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one…..

The Queen wanted to know why Abu Hamza was allowed to remain in the UK spewing his hate for this country while being subsidised by taxpayers.

“She spoke to the home secretary at the time and said, surely this man must have broken some laws. Why is he still at large? He was conducting these radical activities and he called Britain a toilet. He was incredibly anti-British and yet he was sucking up money from this country for a long time. He was a huge embarrassment to Muslims, who condemned him.”

So do we ma’am, so do we.

Well now even the grand panjandrums at the highest level of the European court have told us it’s OK to extradite him to the USA.

How kind of them.

Now all the lawyers are happy (and richer), the bleeding hearts cannot accuse us of ignoring the bar of world opinion, the race relations/human rights lobby must grit their teeth and pretend to be content and this vile, revolting quivering jelly of hatred and venom is on his way to America to face his accusers in court.

Except not yet

The European Court has now ruled that these men can be extradited as well, but the Home Office can only say it will happen “as soon as possible” at some unspecified point in the future.

Why the hell do we have to wait? Why can’t he be placed on a plane tomorrow and flown across the Atlantic? Isn’t there anybody in this government with a spine?

On second thoughts that’s a stupid question. The spine was removed from our government on November 28th 1990 and has never been replaced.

No wonder these extremists despise us…

….and what sort of signal does it give to those many British Muslims who are battling to show that they can maintain their faith and remain true and loyal citizens of the UK?

But of course there’s nothing new about the spinelessness of western governments…

I’m in my 70s and remember skating round to this at Brixton Roller Rink (long gone) when I was a teenager, trying to impress the girls – and someone else was also probably checking out the talent at the same time across the ocean…

I’m 68 and this is my favorite R’ n R’ instrumental of all time. Reminds me of Bond’s Ice Cream parlor back in 1957 in Cedar Grove, NJ where I spent more time than I did in my own home.

Plonking around on an acoustic guitar at home trying to copy the guitar solo (and failing miserably) I remember thinking if you can play guitar like this then you can call yourself a guitarist…

So, anyone remember “Honky Tonk” by the Bill Doggett combo? It was a massive hit in 1956 but seems to have fallen down the memory hole which is a pity because, in my opinion, it contains not one but two of the greatest instrumental solos ever – Billy Butler on guitar followed by Clifford Scott on tenor sax. Never tire of listening to them and every time I get that tingle at the back of my neck.

Of course you’ll never find it on any “great guitar solo” lists since those lists usually assume that rock music only began in 1965. Why? Because that’s when “rock journalists” appeared so increasingly the first decade of rock and roll is just forgotten….

“Honky Tonk” was conceived by Clifford Scott and Billy Butler (who played guitar in Doggett’s combo) in an informal hotel room jam session before a dance in Lima, Ohio. That night, on stage and without rehearsal, Butler told Bill Doggett and drummer Shep Shepherd to “just play a shuffle” and when they got through the people started to applaud. They wouldn’t get off the dance floor, they just continued to stand there and appalud “more, more, more..”. So they did it again, played some other tunes and had an intermission, and when they came back the audience started yelling “We wanna hear that tune!”. And they didn’t even have a name for it. When the band got back to New York, they set up a recording session with a studio down on 31st Street. The engineer turned the machine on, he goes out to take a smoke – he wasn’t regulating the controls, he wasn’t doing anything – and Doggett’s band went on and just played. When they started to stop, he said “Keep it up!”, which they did and that’s how it became a two-sided record. “Honky Tonk”, parts 1 & 2, went to # 2 on the pop charts and # 1 on the R&B charts in 1956. Writing credit goes to B. Doggett, S. Shepherd, C. Scott and B. Butler.

BTW…if you fancy trying that Billy Butler solo you might find this useful…

I have no sympathy for Tory Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell in the ongoing “Plebs” row. I still think he should go but , when I read The Sun’s report quoting the official police log why did it immediately conjure up images in my mind of shady deals in pubs between hacks and coppers as a result of notes written up after conversations in the police canteen?

Of course such images only stem from memories of the “bad old days” and do not accurately reflect the relationship between police and press in the 21st century.

Not at all….

Tim Montgomerie, from ConservativeHome, his magisterial perch at the summit of Mount Olympus, has pronounced his verdict on the Andrew Mitchell “swearing at a police officer” fandango – and it appears that it’s all part of dastardly plod plot to kneecap the Cameron regime.

His focus is on the Police Federation and the Bob Crow PF spokespersons who come onto our screens and mouth toneless drivel in the same manner they might recite “evidence” in court in order to fit up some lowlife loser for an extra 156 burglaries he didn’t really do.

He implies that the PF has an agenda and are milking the Mitchell incident for all they are worth so we should accept his apology and move on because maybe Mitchell is a “bruiser” but he is a diamond geezer who is only fiery because he is passionate about his brief.

Yeah – pull the other one

If, as he left Downing Street with his bike it had suddenly dawned on him that he had behaved stupidly and gone back immediately and apologised with good grace then that might have been sufficient. But his apology only came when the situation went pear shaped and, most likely, he received a sharp phone call from Number Ten – it was therefore that classic of modern politics the gritted teeth apology mouthed unwillingly as a red hot poker hovers menacingly close to the derriere.

Of course the PF is milking it – but that doesn’t excuse Mitchell’s conduct. As one commentator said

What one member of a party said when he had a bad day couldn’t really concern me less these outbursts happen people get stressed and a dam breaks. I am glad he has apologised that is the right response and had it been in a less public instance i imagine that would be the end of it. However even he must be aware that his actions have reflected very badly with the general public and are now doing harm to both the party and its message, he shouldn’t have to be pushed out he should realise he needs to go. The fact he hasn’t and has chosen to place his self intrest above the good of the whole reflects worse on him in my book than the initial fiasco.

It also reveals the lack of sensitivity in Cameron’s political antennae. He should have immediately recognised the political/social ramifications of this incident and acted quite brutally. It would have squashed the “toff” narrative dead in the water and shown the key quality of ruthlessness that leaders must display at odd moments to instil a little fear into the lower ranks.

Not good enough, I’m afraid, Mr Montgomerie. Mitchell should disappear – and fast.