Amber Alert!

I have written before about times of deep contentment, of a happiness forged through adverse times, of family ties and meetings which bring warmth to these old bones.

But this Christmas family gathering was just a slight bit extra special for me. Not because of the arrival of my fourth grandson, welcome though his arrival was; not because of the presence of all the immediate family members, inclusive of three noisy grandsons as well as the sleepy infant mentioned before; but esppecially for the presence of the invader; a preposterous ball of fluff disguised as a Shih-Tzu puppy named Jo-Jo.

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This small animal obviously believed he was either a large Rottweiler, an equally-large Bull Mastiff or a fully-grown American Pit Bull, and I can confirm that, whilst out walking, this intrepid puppy challenged a dog which was at least six times larger than he!

I was in serious danger of being licked to death by this small animal, and I was rather sorry to see him depart, but all good things come to an end, and my home is once more quiet.

…and the bile and ‘spin’ rolls ever onwards.

Christmas. the Season of Goodwill towards all our relative, friends, acquaintances, and hopefully a lessening of tension towards those who wish to do us harm. Unfortunately, no-one told the BBC, so the lies, the garbage, the spin and the disdain rolls ever onwards.

The second of the guest editors on the BBC Today Programme lived down to every expectation believed possible. The editor today was Michael Sheen the actor and, unfortunately, the activist. He is a very good actor; unfortunately, his ‘Lefty’ viewpoints covered every syllable broadcast as he wished. Billed to the audience as an ambassador for UNICEF, we were bombarded with every possible combination of his prejudice and bile. The syrian refugees were fine targets for his treacly sympathy, with the usual small children’s suffering held up as an example of how We should do so much more. We visited Port Talbot, as Sheen is Welsh, and we then heard of how awful the austerity cuts were, and how the rugby club had donated the Xmas lights after the council pulled out. We heard how ‘Climate Change’ was definitely responsible for all the floods in Lancashire. Yorkshire and Cumbria, and once again we were TOLD that we had to give ever more to other countries, because we, as dirty, filthy capitalist running dogs; had caused all this change in the first place, and the ‘Refugees’ deserved our cash, and the Cumbrians; obviously, did not!

Fury diminished!

Firstly, I would confirm that I would rather schedule open-heart surgery without anaesthetic upon myself than have watched the BBC Sports Personality Farce / Clownfest / Contest (delete applicable).

I originally wrote:- I find that I have more than a sneaking regard for just one of those nominated, namely Tyson Fury; as he has demonstrated that he has more than enough guts and determination to not only batter several other men insensible in his pursuit of his Championship goals; but also to continue in the paths and beliefs which have nurtured him from an early age. He is gloriously politically-incorrect, and revels in the uproar from all those who are ‘OFFENDED’, by his statements regarding homosexuals, paeadophiles, etc., all spoken with the greatest goodwill and meaning.

But then he went and spoiled everything by apologising for any ‘OFFENCE’ taken by his earlier words. How truly, truly depressing!

It all depends who is listening.

The Prime Minister added: Assad can’t be part of Syria’s future. He has butchered his own people. He has helped create this conflict and this migration crisis. He is one of the great recruiting sergeants for Isil.”

So speaks the great Humanitarian; but one must ask why, if this man worries so much about a nation which we have no interest in, either diplomatic or trade: why do we not hear him vent his wrath upon President-for-Life Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Mugabe, who has bankrupted his nation’s people; yet lives the true high life on the proceeds of stolen diamonds, whilst his people starve.
Funny: that!

Are you sure the signal said ‘Fire’?

Some nine years ago, I wrote a slightly sardonic piece about the Royal Navy, and the effects of budget cuts on the administration of that Navy around the time of Trafalgar. It was built around the extremely unlikely possibility of commercial sponsorship for the Royal Navy, and I copy it herewith:-

The following conversation is taken from records unavailable for many years after the tragic events of Trafalgar unfolded, but in the light of recent disclosures regarding certain sponsorship deals for the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar, it was deemed timely to reveal them at the present time!

The scene is Portsmouth Dockyard, in the shore offices occupied by Admiral Nelson and his staff, three months before the battle which decided the fate of modern Europe.

Hardy. “My Lord Admiral, good news from the teams out searching!”

Nelson “Searching, Hardy? Searching for what, exactly?”

Hardy “Why, for the extra sponsorship deals that we need to allow a fully-funded fleet to go out once more to search for the French fleet.”

Nelson “I do wish that the Government hadn’t saddled us with keeping all costs associated with the campaign outside the normal funds which have been voted by Parliament!”

Hardy “It was something to do with these new ideas you floated, if you will pardon the expression, My Lord, floated to keep apart the normal campaign expenditures by which we were funded for Copenhagen, the Nile and the blockades, from the your new ideas regarding fleet manoeuvres and tactics. The Admiralty felt that as such proposals such as abandoning the tried and trusted methods such as sticking rigidly to…”

Nelson “Ah yes, Hardy, I remember; they wanted me to agree not to break our line-ahead formation! A member of the Admiralty Board claimed that as I was using ideas which had been the result of these new-fangled discussion and focus groups, and thus bringing untested tactics to the Navy’s battles, they should be funded by private subscription instead of from Navy funds! Yes, I recall the talks. You said ‘good news’ Hardy?”

Hardy “Well, Sir, we have full agreement where the names of the donors can be painted in between each of the gunports, with such titles as “Cornwall’s gunpowder is the best!” and “From the Tudors onwards, Rutland’s Oaks have served England!”. We have almost completed all the negotiations with the major sponsor, but there is one detail outstanding. We need your approval to allow to be flown, immediately below your own flag and that of the Union Flag, all ships of the line should fly a third flag which states, “Only Blogg’s Ship’s Biscuits are good enough for Nelson!”

A journey from Trafalgar to Star Wars; not as unlikely as one may think!

Different son, better ending?

25 “Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’ 28 But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, 29 but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!’ 31 And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’”

I rarely quote from religious texts or books these days; religion itself does not play much part in either my life or my thinking, but I do like the sound of rare good news. The New Testament text I quoted from celebrates the return of the prodigal son, a parable about the presumed lost, and then found. Such an item is also the rare, the extremely rare, items of good news which come into the public domain. Despite the liberal calls for the release without any charge of the traitorous lying deserter Bowe Bergdahl: we read that Gen. Robert B. Abrams, head of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009. This craven coward deserted his post in Afghanistan, joining the Taliban who sheltered him for five years; (or as his story states he was imprisoned), and was only released at the express wish of President Hussein Obama by swapping five Taliban terrorists from Guantanamo Bay. Obama wanted Bergdahl to be freed without charge, but the United States Army recognises a deserting coward when it sees one.

One for the Army!

and the music is great as well!

I use T’Internet for many reasons; for interest, for knowledge, for research, for entertainment; as well as an aid to my writing. I have come across, as we all probably have, the weird, the downright disgusting, the propagandist, the plain factual news sites (truly very rare indeed)

But, very occasionally, I find someone posts or pictures an item which is almost luminous in its purity, its elegance, its pure artistry, an artistry which stems from a craftsman who knows both physics as well as poetry, who understands gravity as well as symmetry, who utilises momentum as an engine. There are probably many, many more examples; but I find this truly fascinating; and would place it on a par with a ship berthing in a home port after a rough voyage.

 

Unfortunately, he is an fffff-ing Muslim: Bruv!

Muhammad, the so-called prophet of Islam stated:

“I have been sent with a sword to fight people until they say there is no God but Allah.”

How many mainstream newspapers publish or print anything remotely critical of Muslims, especially drawings, cartoons or of the Muslim propensity towards extreme violence?

Generally astute readers will no doubt have noticed that it is always ‘Islamic Extremists’ who are doing the slicing and dicing; never the ‘peace-loving and integrated Muslim’ who just take a machete and attempt murder in a suburban Underground Station.

Remembering, as we should, the Fort Hood jihadi murders by Nidal Hassan; labelled ‘Workplace violence’ by Barack Hussein Obama. Remembering the San Bernadino killings by an ordinary suburban couple, where they massacred 13 and injured 29 more. The attack, carefully planned and not ‘spontaneous’ was to be followed by more murders by means of the 13 pipe bombs and the 4,500 rounds of ammunition for their semi-automatic rifles. Fortunately, he is now with his 72 virgins’; his wife, well; I dunno what she was looking forward to, but can probably make an educated guess (batteries not included).

As I have maybe written before, the Fifth Column is now firmly amongst us; and it is just a matter of time before we reap the whirlwind of our politicians’ stupidity, cupidity and greed!

A Bridge too Far: or Forth?

When I state that our forebears, in terms of the last 250-odd years, produced THE finest engineers the world has ever known; I believe that to be a fact. The simple genius of a Humphrey Davy, a man who single-handedly saved thousands of underground workers, miners, tunnellers, from a fiery death through methane explosion by his invention of a ‘safety lamp’; the matter-of-fact convictions of Abraham Darby who gave us the Ironbridge, The mind of Robert Stephenson knew that the simple steam boiler which powered a locomotive could be changed, and made ten times more efficient: his tubed boiler, which gave thirty times more surface area to heat the water from the same fire, gave us the Rocket, which changed the world forever. We have the inspiration and examples of many Victorian Engineers to guide us, and we should always remember that their way of working, which was not necessarily backed up with pages of calculations; but instead of a gut feeling that ‘so much’ was right, and ‘not enough’ was wrong with a design, or a building, or a railway; was the only way to proceed.

So I am more than slightly puzzled by the news that the Forth Road Bridge has been closed for at least two months so that inch-wide cracks in the bridge support steelwork could be investigated and repaired. Now this bridge, completed in 1964, was and had to be designed with all the latest construction safety techniques. The finest Civil Engineering minds in Britain worked on that bridge, and now it is closed for repairs.

I have just two comments on so-called British Workmanship.

  • I just hope that the Forth Road Bridge was not built by colleagues of the bunch which I unfortunately had to supervise while a small but complex building was being constructed,(see my comments towards the end of my post).
  • The Forth Road Bridge has been closed before for safety and repair concerns, as well as over fears that the bridge is being stressed by too much heavy traffic. The Forth Rail Bridge, completed in 1890; designed under Victorian engineering principles and strict supervisory standards: has never closed, has never been subject to extra safety regulations, and has performed magnificently for 125 years!

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H/t Colin Ruffel

Fruitcakes; and other ‘Sympathisers’

When David Cameron last insulted me, along with 11,571 others of similar minds and beliefs, I knew it couldn’t make that much difference. After all, I am a living reminder that ‘Sticks and stones; etc’, and UKIP have pretty broad shoulders themselves: but that tone, that sneering statement about people who hold to a strikingly different philosophy than his and his Party, did make a difference in many people’s minds.

But to call Labour MPs ‘Terrorist Sympathisers’ because they intend to vote against his desire to go to War against ISIL? I do hope and trust that many of the Labour MPs which have been beguiled by Cameron’s rhetoric, will stop, remember that Cameron just cannot be trusted, and vote to keep us out of his lunatic and stupid Religious war!

Men of Harlech; stand ye steady

For those readers whose memories do not go back as far as mine do, or alternatively whose knowledge of our own world’s political history is not as clear-cut as it should possibly be; I can, I believe, state one fact, one certainty without fear of demur or derision. Stalin, and Stalin’s Soviet Russian empire was as evil as it was exhaustively complete. The Communist Party rule was complete, all-pervasive, and very, very thorough. The organs by which Stalin’s rule of terror was arranged went by titles such as the NKVD, MVD, KGB, GRU; and this rule continued long after the death of possibly the greatest mass-murderer in our more-than-bloody history. All of these organisations had total power, the power of life or death over Soviet Russian citizens; and all this power was utilized under the idea, the belief, that the State owned you. The reasoning was quite simple: the State nourished you from birth, the State fed you, educated you, employed you, and therefore the State, in its ultimate beneficence, could determine how you lived, or died. If you were a Jew, for example, and you protested because visas for travel and emigration to Israel were routinely denied; you were immediately a threat to the Rule of the State; if you were a threat, you were arrested, and if you were very lucky, you were slung into a Siberian gulag for arguing with a State decision. As one of my literary heroes, George Orwell, wrote in ‘1984’ his masterpiece commentary upon the Soviets;  ‘If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.’

The reader might, at this point, be wondering what I am actually writing about. Well folks, it is the statement, by the Welsh government, that from today, all Welshmen and women, or rather their mortal bodies, are the property of the State, to be used, or abused, as their minions see fit. If a Welsh person is deemed to be mortally ill and is believed to be on the point of death, anywhere within the Principality, whether in hospital, at home, or even on the street as a result of accident, the medical people will not do anything to sustain or prevent that death, but will in fact prepare to sustain the very lifeblood coursing through the arteries, veins and capillaries of that unfortunate person so that the ORGANS may be retained, HARVESTED,  and utilised in transplant surgery.

If that Welshman has not specifically opted out, in writing or on line, of the organ theft process, his viable organs will be removed, and utilised, on so-called life-saving transplant operations on others.

It is said that organ donation is, on the whole, a fair and impartial system. I do not believe in it myself, except on procedures which can be achieved without the death of the donor. I talk about kidney transplants, where one selfless person donates one of his or her healthy kidneys to a recipient who may be existing on dialysis: I talk about bone marrow transplants, a procedure which, if it had been discovered some twenty years before it actually was, might well have saved my beloved sister from a tragically-early death. I also talk about the terrible pressures placed upon grief-stricken relatives when, instead of letting them slowly come to terms with their loss, are verbally-battered in agreeing to the HARVESTING to begin. I wrote of the so-called parents, who gave permission for donor material to be taken from a three year-old boy so that that same material be used on his seven year-old brother.

What the transplant industry does not state, and will never state; is that the only viable organs for transplant come from living bodies. ‘Brain-dead’ they may be, but the blood still circulates through the veins, and the transplant vultures, hovering nearby but still close enough, know that the viability of organs decreases by the minute after death occurs, and their cohorts in the Welsh Government have now ensured that the lists will decrease, because they have stated, in their own Assembly, that the State, or at least the Welsh version, owns every body in that once green and pleasant land!
A donation is a gift. A seizure, by the State, by a surgeon or anyone else, is theft, and a crime!