Nobody knows the trouble I’ve caused….

Picked up on a piece in AlJazeera about the Botswana Bushmen who have been handed a victory in their long-running court battle to be allowed to return to their ancient hunting lands. In a move which reminded many of the old Apartheid South African Government’s attitude towards their indigenous population, the Bushmen were unceremoniously dumped in re-location camps, mainly because the diamond companies suspected there were a lot more precious stones just sitting exactly where the Bushmen used to hunt their game! The Botswana Government states it will appeal, but in one of the very, very, very few Black African States where the Rule of Law still holds firm, it looks as though the Botswana Government will acknowledge that this is one they’ve lost, and move on!  Now that’s Democracy in action!

So where are the cries of protest about a group totalling some six thousand British citizens who have been deported from the land of their birth, and who, despite many years of protest and legal struggle, remain barred from returning! This fact is true, these people do exist, and they were removed from British soil some thirty years ago, so where are the marches? Where are the daily protests on radio and television? Where are the full page adverts against the vicious treatment of six thousand British citizens? These demonstrations just do not exist! There is just a deafening silence!

Dammit! I forgot to include one word from my second paragraph. That word is “Commonwealth”. The six thousand people do exist, and the British soil was the British Commonwealth territory of Diego Garcia. These people were uprooted from their homes at the dictate of the British authorities and literally “dumped” on the dockside of Mauritius. They were given virtually no help whatsoever during their enforced deportation, no housing assistance, no counselling, hardly any money. Part of the Government’s argument for the continued removal was the fact, or rather their version of the fact, that there was virtually no fresh water sources on the island chain, the community was unsustainable from a long-term viewpoint, and the Diego Garcians, or the Chagos Islanders as the Government calls them, were being given a great favour by their removal and re-location!

The islander’s struggle to return, after a decade or more of complete denial, began in failure, but became complete with a ruling from the British High Court that the actions of the British Government, in both the removal and continued exile, of British Commonwealth citizens was both unjust and illegal! So there’s and end to it; the islanders have been told they can return, the Government has been told that their actions were both illegal and indefensible, Well, not exactly! Not really!

Why? Yes, why indeed? Trouble is, there’s another bunch of people sitting on Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Islands, with the complete approval of the British Government. The Americans are there, along with two B-52 bomber squadrons, four huge military deployment vessels loaded to the gunwales with tanks, guns and artillery; base facilities for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier battle group; consisting of three cruisers, ten destroyers, three nuclear submarines, eighty-four F-18A fighter-bombers and about four thousand base personnel, apart from the crews of the various ships! The base staff wear tee-shirts saying “Paradise Island” and they mean it! The swimming is safe, the beach facilities are superb, U.S. forces have an enviable life style when on the islands. Oh, and one last thing, there is plenty of fresh water!

So why have the protests and legal actions ceased? Why have the islanders not been returned to their ancestral homes, even if they have to share with nuclear-powered warships? Because the British Government, in the name of the British people, prepared a document called an “Order in Council”, a document from which there is NO APPEAL, which permanently bars the islanders from returning to their homes, and this document was signed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, on the morning of the last General Election during a regular meeting of her Privy Council!. The High Court ruled just recently that the ‘Order’ was irrational, but the islanders still face further battles to gain the simple right to go home!

Now that’s also Democracy in action!

I wrote the post above for a blog called A Tangled Web some ten years ago; but I thought I would reprint it under my own name, just as the final nails are slammed into the coffin which holds the forlorn hopes of the Chagos Islanders by the pronouncements of the British Supreme Court, which states that the Islanders can go just about anywhere, but they cannot go home!

Bye, Jamie: you will not be missed!

There is but one small beam of sunshine exiting the morass of comment and uninformed bullshit regarding the British decision to leave the European Union.

That ray of light stems from the absolute promise by Jamie Oliver to leave Great Britain if Boris Johnson is elected by Tory MPs to be Prime Minister.

We can do without the mockney accents of this particular multi-millionaire as he leans down from his elevated position as a tv cook, and pronounces on all the things we, as a Nation, are doing so badly; inclusive of dietary habits, ingesting too much sugar, not eating all his healthy offerings from Sainsburys, as well as telling parents how badly they are doing in raising their children.

A good reason to elect Boris Johnson? As good as any other!

a field of broken dreams

When my buddy posted previously on the comments from the European Parliament’s President, he was just lifting a small corner on the huge cover-up which has lasted as long as the European Project itself, if not longer. When this jumped-up jack-boot hopeful stated that ‘It is not the EU Philosophy that the crowd decides its fate’ he was, of course not only speaking the truth, he was declaring a belief, a foundation stone of that Project. “How can we, a Federal State in embryo, allow one of the mere members of that embryo State to fracture the very progress of that Federal State?”

If the reader goes back into the past, and examines the motives of those who set up the whole IDEA in the first instance, the one thing which they wished is to remove all decisions, all discussions, all the trappings of Government; from the merest scrutiny by ordinary people, the voters who had not even been asked about those decisions in the first place.

When Arthur Salter and Jean Monnet came together , working in accord to hire and lease shipping to feed the monster which was the Allied cause in WW1, to carry the munitions, the food, the weaponry which was needed to back up the millions of fighting men, based all along that blood-glazed trench-strewn border; they were continually so frustrated by the road-blocks placed in their way by both shipowners and Governments that they hatched a plan. Their plan was to create a supra-Government which could override ownership, as well as indeed national Governments, and requisition the ships to carry war materiel. Their initial path was through the League of Nations, but the refusal of America’s Congress to adopt or ratify the League’s proposals left it mortally wounded. Monnet returned after the end of WW2, and hatched out a plan with Henri Spaak, which resulted in the European Coal and Steel Community, morphing into the European Common Market, which title of course was pure window dressing, as the end result was still a Super-State, built and operated by technocrats, with absolutely no allowance for Democracy. The Maastricht Treaty firmed things up, the Constitution which was thrown out by France, was refurbished, given a new name, and the Lisbon Treaty, giving, or rather handing over yet more areas of governance to Europe was signed by all European Leaders, with no ordinary person who had a vote even getting near it. UK Parliament ratified Lisbon, and then we ended up with the one man who counted…….Nigel Farage.
Farage’s UKIP scared Cameron so much he was forced to offer a Referendum, the last thing any politician wants. Why, because it demands a binary response; either ‘Yes’ or ‘Leave’, as against ‘No’ or ‘Remain’. So the intent of two secretive men who despised the very idea of Democracy, wishing instead for control by a benevolent Bureaucracy, which unfortunately had morphed into an autocratic Dictatorship, has been demolished because one nation, pushed into a vote by a Prime Minister shit-scared of what might happen; has voted by a healthy majority to leave the cosy warm hearthrug of the EU, and become, once more, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Just a small difference.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise, 

This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

We here in the British Isles have been through a political wringer in the past few weeks, but, as it should be in a civilised country; the words, the writing, the arguments, the heated discussions, all has been ended in the way that we have developed in this: our Sceptred Isle set in a Silver Sea. In Polling Stations, with secret votes cast and held in sealed ballot boxes; those same boxes opened by trusted people, and the count completed, in the open, under full view; along with postal votes, most of which would also have been completed and sealed by the voter; all in the cause of Democracy. The decisions, great or small, are binding, as they should be. Our practices come from Demos; of the people and by the people, from the Greek, both in their language and the ancient dreams of the first Athenians who decided that the some, trusted by all, should take decisions for the many.  

We have been fairly lucky in our choices, with the fools, the rapacious, the greedy and the stupid discovered and dispossessed of the power they attempted to grab; we have maybe, through the passage of time, not always listened to or chosen those who may have deserved elevation, but we have come to understand our mistakes, and sometimes are given the chance to repair a truly daft decision.

The decision, by millions of Labour voters, to ignore the demands of the metropolitan Labour elite and of the Labour Party itself; stems, I believe, from the decision by the Labour ‘top dogs’ of the Blair era, to literally open the immigration floodgates, not only to the new European states and their restless peoples, only some of whom were truly amongst the poor; but also to the swarms from the sub-continent, from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh: the swarms which truly changed whole boroughs of our major cities forever. All allegedly in the cause of ‘diversity’; but actually to the deeper, hidden aim of changing our very demographic into a hotch-potch of colours, languages and races: to obliterate forever the truth that the British Isles was primarily and predominantly a White, Anglo-Saxon, predominantly Judeo-Christian (in ethos if not in fact) Nation.

The Labour Party forgot that their core voters are not like most of their M.P.s; they are not the wives of High Court Judges, not well-connected journalists, or even the spawn of Labour Apparatchiks who see Islington as their natural habitat: they inhabit the sprawling council estates of major towns and cities across this land, they also live in the terraced rows of the older cities, many live on the leafy suburbs, and some in more rural areas, but but the one thing they possess in large quantities is the ability to finally see and understand how they have been hoodwinked, and who was in charge of the hoodwinking! It wasn’t the Tories, although, or rather perhaps because of their own love-affair with the tentacles and money sloshing through the halls of the EU, they should take their share of the blame; but the overwheening certainty of the Labour and Liberal elite that they, and they alone, knew what is best for this, our own native land. For that arrogance; for that impertinence, which has changed our Country forever, they deserve the punishment which was so liberally doled out by over 17 million British voters.

As an American comment blogsite stated:- Democracy is an ugly thing. Especially for the losers. The people have spoken. The bastards!

They just got fed up of being bloody patronised!

I would begin by copying a comment which I posted on the Conservative Woman blogsite:-

I feel I must extend a heartfelt apology to the Labour voters of the North-East and other areas of Wales and England. I have often accused them of behaving and voting like a large herd of sheep, placidly either grazing or voting as the Labour masters directed. But I read this morning that the herd has revolted, gone against the dictates of everyone from Corbyn downwards; and voted in massive numbers to leave the accursed European Union.

How nice it to awake this morning to the news that we will be, in due and deliberate time, once more an Independent Nation. And even nicer to hear that we shall not be encumbered with the lies and plans of ‘Our Dave’ himself once he realised that the game was up!

I was about to play Beethoven’s Ninth on my music system,but view of that superb piece of music’s association with the EU, decided instead to opt for Judex, from Mors et Vitae. Justice sometimes must be celebrated!

I listened to the BBC Today programme this morning, the broadcast journalist was stationed in Sheffield, bleating with amazement that this staunchly Labour city had plumped, with 16 million more; had actually voted to leave the EU. And that was the theme of her whole broadcast. All the experts had virtually dictated the terrors, the horror which would befall anyone who doubted the ‘received truth’: all the world leaders had, with just one exception, opined that to ‘stay in’ was the sensible 

option: even such individuals of immense sagacity such as Eddie Izzard had solemnly warned the voters that to leave would be just ‘so terrible’: and still they voted to Leave. The Sheffield piece ended with two segments, the first recorded in a pub, with the unmistakable flat accents of Yorkshire stating that they had voted to leave because they were fed up of being lied to; being preached at; of being told that they were literally too bloody thick to understand how difficult it all was. The second segment came from a H.O.M.O., otherwise know in the trade as a House of Multiple Occupancy, and all interviewed were female university students or graduates, all Labour supporters; and with no exception all spoke of their horror, their absolute dismay, at a decision being taken by the ‘plebs’, the ‘lumpen proletariat’, the mob; which disagreed 180 degrees from their own.

A Labour politician put his finger right on the pulse when he said, “A huge turnout from council estates has happened, people who have never, ever, voted before; have turned out, and walked, shuffled, strolled and sauntered along to the Polling Stations: and made their own bit of history!”

 

(edit)

No worries Sam; We’ll walk away with a minimum 65-70% Majority for Remain

You mean you don’t like my Prada handbag and my Christian Louboutin shoes; or was there something else?

Notes for a Novel

The scenes are set in the present, with two partisan sectors, with vastly differing ideas, opinions and motives: both attempting to capture the public’s minds and intentions before a vote, a referendum ballot; finally takes place to determine whether their Country stays within a large group of Nation States: or takes a decision to leave that group forever.

A tiny number of scheming but deeply cynical politicians, of varying political colours but with strongly-held views and ambitions, gather in a smoky room in a Georgian house in Lord North Street: all intent upon one thing and one thing only, to agree on a plan, a single act, which would bring public opinion strongly across towards their viewpoint.

The most cynical man in the group, a former advisor and master-spinner himself, addresses the group seated around the highly-polished table towards the conclusion of their secret debate. No notes were to be kept, all mobile phones had been switched off, batteries ejected, before the conspirators had departed their homes and offices before their separate anonymous journeys to a house which had already been ‘scrubbed’ and tested for electronic and recording devices; for this was one meeting which could not, and would never, be referred to again, once the meeting had concluded its truly terrible purpose. The speaker tapped his pen against the exquisitely-cut and decorated crystal water jug, and the ringing tone sharpened the attentions of the listeners.

“We are agreed, gentlemen, on the proposal which has been discussed. As our plan calls for one, and only one, sacrificial ‘lamb’ for the stewpot, I will now access the names which have been placed in the bowl before us; one candidate from six of the main areas within the Kingdom. All preparations are in place, and the scapegoat ‘patsies’ already seeded and in place, with a formidable team to finally mould his mind, already tormented by his own mental instabilities, once the target has been chosen. The rest of the ‘patsies’ will receive the mental health treatment and medications which those unfortunate people should have received immediately their diagnoses were completed. The back-up evidence; of instability, of threats and of weaponry preparations, are already in place, via the Internet, so we can proceed.” As he finished his sentences, he leant forward, dipped his hand into the bowl, and brought out a single slip of paper, folded over three times. He spoke the name revealed by the paper, and the eldest of the six other men, one who had sat silently for most of the meeting whilst sat around the table flinched, hesitated for maybe five seconds, then slowly nodded his assent to the choice.

The speaker remained standing. “Again, gentlemen, we are agreed, we do this terrible thing, because our opponents are gaining upon us in the race towards the Referendum Vote; we sacrifice this one; so that we might, by inference alone, blame this one death on our opponents: and the fools who follow us will leap upon this tragedy as if it were Manna from Above: and our Colleagues in Brussels, in all the capitals of Europe, will breathe easier because we, above all else, know that might is right!”

The chosen slip of paper, was gathered together with its five fellows, and deposited upon the flames of the wood-fuelled fire burning in the set-back fireplace. The word on the paper, shrivelling fast in the hungry flames, bore a single word; Cox!

A short journey in time, but a giant step for we British.

From this:-

Where a tiny bunch of powerful barons forced an autocratic King to face the limitations of his powers.

to this:-

Where, hopefully through today’s momentous vote, the mists will finally lift to bring back within our own borders and shores; the ability to write our own laws, free of a foreign court’s ability to overrule our own: to establish who runs our Nation, and who, in due course, we can dispossess by means of an unencumbered VOTE!

Let us LEAVE!

and who is stating…..

….that all the news is bad.

These bunches of chippy do-gooding clowns, from Galloway to the so-called People’s Assembly, are nowt but a glad-handing caravan for personal publicity for the weirdos who inhabit their circles.

Just thank our lucky stars that the French have got the right idea, and stopped these sad clowns in their tracks! Refugees; they don’t know what the word means.

These were refugees

This group are nowt else but a bunch of chancers, waiting to grab a glimpse of the effing Promised bloody Land!

Paki scum, level with the con-men of Westminster!

With their hypocrisy emblazoned on their shoulders, and with the comments such as ‘She was taken from us in an act of hatred, in a vile act that killed her, it was an attack on democracy.‘ made without any true knowledge of the killer’s motives, or mental state, or indeed genuine political affiliations, if any; the two most senior politicians in Britain assume that the killer was motivated by hate for an MP because she was a firm supporter of the ‘Remain’ campaign. How could either of these two con-men know anything about the killer, his life and his motive for this killing? He is probably the most carefully-tended captive in the whole of the Justice system, and with the attentions of medical people, both physical and psychiatric ongoing, with his ‘rights’ ever-so-carefully preserved, as they automatically should be according to the PACE; nothing can be determined until he is brought to trial. The police have charged him, because they have to; in order to further detain him; but until they determine if he is actually fit, mentally and physically, to stand trial, nothing further will be known about this man; so all else which is printed, rumoured, alleged, hinted at: all else is pure speculation, and there should be an end of it!

Returning, as we should, to normal politics and not-so-ordinary news, I note that more of the Muslim scum sub-humans have been discovered once more at their favourite pastime, which is the multiple rape and sexual abuse of young WHITE British girls, but am astonished to learn that these criminals are facing jail terms for crimes committed between 2009 and 2011. Which fact means that this bunch of Paki scum have been free to roam the streets of towns in Yorkshire for a further four-odd years before they were finally arrested. 

What is however worse is the simple truth that, without the bravery of two girls upon whom this abuse was perpetrated, these scum would not have been charged; and the further fact remains that there must be hundreds of these rabid gangs of Muslim rapists operating with impunity throughout England, covered by the layers of ‘politically-correct’ policing which pervades our Nation.

When will we learn to accept that Islam, the Muslim religion, is not the ‘religion of peace’ as so widely trumpeted, but a religion which demands of its followers that they deal with unbelievers with a sword; and that female Infidel unbelievers are only useful as victims of rape, because they simply do not count, and because they are unbelievers!

 

(Fill in the space accordingly), we miss you so much!

As I wrote previously:-

We miss you so, so much!

The repetitive use of those particular words, used in one context only, tend to make me heave. There is nothing wrong with remembrance, there is no shame to be attached to recalling the life and memories of a loved one, we are all as one in sadness when a relative or friend dies. The sadness is and should be reduced, as the death of either an acquaintance, or a local hero, happens, mainly because their lives did not impact upon us as individuals. One of the larger funeral services which was held in some years ago in Durham City at the crematorium was not organised, there was no ‘order of service’, there was indeed very little ‘formal’ organisation, apart from the actual operations in the building itself. We all came to honour the service and the friendship, the fact; that a simple unassuming man had touched a great many lives with a simple honesty, a clarity of purpose, and an acceptance that his life was shared amongst many; and we filled the crematorium area to a capacity rarely seen.

There was no breast-beating, no wailing, no hysteria, no fuss; for this was an English farewell to an English gentleman in the truest sense of the word. His was a life of commitment, and this was shown by the number of representatives of all callings who came to give and pay their last respects at the funeral of one who would probably have blanched at the sheer numbers who sat and stood in silence. As for my dead friend, whose funeral was quiet and dignified, there were no adverse comments, because he lived his life by the standards which used to rule us all.

Compare that, if you will, against the outpourings of ‘grief’ for the dead druggie Amy Winehouse. We are informed that Winehouse’s father has been comforted by Keith Vaz in his efforts to start a Foundation in memory of his dead daughter, and has also met the Coalition Minister to push for more money to be targeted at ‘Drug rehabilitation’ clinics, so that other addicts can get the treatment which ‘works’. As I have never consciously listened to the songs or indeed the singing of this dead ‘artiste’, I do not feel qualified to comment upon their artistic integrity, but I do feel eminently qualified to comment upon the false and unctuous commentary upon what seemed to me to be the ending of a wasted and wilful life, despite the many warnings she was alleged to have received from both ‘family’ as well as ‘friends’.

Whilst being totally unfamiliar with the family of the dead ‘pop star’, I along with many, many others, are all too familiar with the outpourings of ‘grief’ from the besotted fans and admirers of this cruelly failed young woman. Time after time, when ‘Slebs’ of whatever calling die or kill themselves, we see and hear the knee-jerk reactions of the ‘mourning brigade’ as they work themselves into paroxysms of fervour for the recent passing of what is surely the most ephemeral of heroines or heroes.

It was not too long ago, after the strange and suspicious death of yet another ‘pop hero’ Stephen Gately that a columnist on the Daily Mail had the temerity to question the hedonistic lifestyle of the dead homosexual in question, and the sheer volume of hatred shovelled upon that unfortunate woman’s head could have been weighed by the vitriolic ton. Quite a number of ‘slebs’, mainly from the world of ‘pop music’ have died early, many as a result of heavy drug use and overdose, and every time, you read or hear the same tunes played on the public’s heartstrings; ‘they never stood a chance’, we tried to warn them’, etc. etc. With ‘friends’ like those, who really needs enemies. The quality and calibre of the ‘grief’ after Winehouse’s death can be judged by the pictures of half-empty glasses, presumably empty bottles of Malibu and cigarettes at the shrine outside her home. Did she kill herself by yet another measure of cocaine or heroin which presumably dulled the ‘noise’ in her mind? We shall no doubt be informed at the inquest. I would end by repeating a few words from one of her ‘lyrics’, so as to gain a measure of what the singer actually thought of the ‘advice’ which was seemingly so generously ladled in her direction:-

‘They tried to make me go to rehab but I said ‘no, no, no’

Once the bunches of flowers commence piling up into the streets, and the false calls of grief echo against the windows, will the knee jerk reactions over the murder of a Yorkshire MP by a mental patient with five screws loose slow down, or will they rebound until she is viewed as the reincarnation of bloody Mother Theresa, or alternatively Princess Diana? We already have the beginnings, with Parliament being recalled. Next, will we view the entire population of Syria be smoothly housed in Islington, or alternatively Middlesborough, as the dead MP wished to bring over 3,000 ‘children’, and the question will surely be asked ‘Why stop there?’ We already have seen the knee-jerk reaction to a phrase ‘Britain First’ which was never uttered, but was re-tweeted by the thousand. What next as a memorial to Jo Cox? World Peace? Remain with the EU because that was what she wished? Hysterical reactions, and public breast-beatings will not bring her back; so why bother?

The message is also the Music

You can’t find a tall building when you really need one!

We are given many different theories, ideas, possibilities; as to the real motive behind the slaughter in the Pulse nightclub. The killer is said to have acted as an outrider to Islamic State, even calling the cops before his killing spree commenced to register his idea; but he is also accused by his wife of mental instability. He is said to have visited the Pulse club regularly, but why, if he was drinking there regularly, did he kill 50 and seriously injure another 49? The only person who really  knew about the motives for the semi-automatic slaughter is dead, killed by a SWAT team who blew a hole in the club’s wall, and then took him down.

But I believe the real reason is disguised behind a statement released by his father, who of course knew absolutely nothing about his son’s desire to enter heaven whilst killing unbelievers. His father said, and I quote; ‘Homosexuals will be punished by God’.  Now this guy, who supports the Afghan Taliban, has got it slightly wrong about the rulings from the religion he professes so devoutly. Sharia Law, according to various imams and other preachers, demands that homosexuals either repent, and take the way of their God, or they should be thrown from a tall building. So Omar Mateen was just following the commands of his bloody religion when he pulled the trigger of his AR-15, and maybe was doing so because he couldn’t find a tall building with a roof as crowded as a night club, and hey, Allah would forgive him for the short cut!

 

One opinion…and One question

For a refreshing change, and admittedly none too soon, a balanced, reflective, common-sense-based Op-Ed piece within the Daily Telegraph. The man makes a great deal of sense, which, again makes a pleasant change from the ranting of oiks like Cameron and all his cohorts, from Obama upwards. In fact, if I might blow my own trumpet just for one or even two notes, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard might have even read my own posting, when searching for inspiration: but I will give him this; he writes more eloquently than I. Read the man’s opinion, and inspect his reasoning; he is worth the trouble.

The Question is, perhaps, the first evidence of at least a semblance of reasoned argument from the Leave.eu bunch. It was posed in a small leaflet which gives the facts, or at least the Leave side of the argument’s opinions and printed possibilities. But, at the very end of the leaflet, comes the Question which is, to my mind at least, the only question which people should be asking themselves in the full light of all that we know, or at least what we are allowed to know; about the behemoth which is the European Union. It smacks of a touch of genius, and should be given a wider audience.

Imagine the vote on the 23rd June is whether we should join the EU; with the Euro crisis, the Migration crisis, the knowledge of the undemocratic manner of the EU itself, new countries like Serbia, Kosovo and Turkey wishing to join, with the vast numbers of extra migrants that move heralds, the question to be voted upon at the Referendum is:-

In the light of the facts so far: Would you vote to join the European Union?

‘Engine Room; make revs. for Dead Slow Ahead’

Semi-silently, excluding all the fuss, the celebrities and the dignitaries, a little bit of history was made on Thursday 10th June, when the first test post-panamax ship made its slow and stately way through the brand new locks on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. The engineers, pilots, tugboat crews and wharf staff have been running computer simulations for over five months as well as checking that all the water retention and lock valves are correctly working; along with the operation of the massive lock gates as they slide in and out of the lock area: but now the time came to, as my Scots friends would say, ‘Mak Siccar’.

I have commissioned many projects in many places, and have always felt that the hours spent in testing and retesting everything, every interlock, every fail-safe were worth it, despite my family’s stated wish that they might see their Dad / Husband for a few more hours in the week. True, the Canal expansion has not been without incident, with leaking lock cills, mammoth cost overruns and claims, most yet to be completely settled. As for the latter, when Bechtel International tendered a cost of $5.35 billions, as against the Italy/Spain/Panama bid of $3.75 billion; all that cost being used up during construction before a single lock was completed, leading to the claims, stoppages and withdrawal of all contractors before the Canal Authority gave way, and authorised the extra cash.

But all that trouble is now safely behind the expanded Canal, and with the opening scheduled for June 26th,  and commercial crossings scheduled for a slow beginning the next day, it looks as though the largest Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering project in South America, although delayed, will give the world of the super-sized ships the smooth passage they deserve!

Beware the Ides of June!

Reading the very tea-leaves of this Referendum roundabout, we can see the dead hand of the ‘Colleagues from Brussels’ behind every negative story, speech and opinion piece. When Cameron, Osborne or any of the other dead tree puppets warns of the latest plague or terrifying bogey-man, whether it is a fall on house prices, costlier mortgages, or no trade deals with anyone; it is becoming more like the chorus of voices soaring through the Berlaymont building like the witches of Macbeth.

But the sounds, proposals and legislative demands emanating from the Brussels mob have been suspiciously muted for some months now, as Cameron has worked out that anything contentious which emanates from the EU mouthpiece would be seized upon with ever-blacker headlines from the MSM newsies, all of which would be shouting, ‘Look at what they propose now! Let us leave this iniquitous place before they grab anything more.’ We have heard very little of the vaunted European Union Renegotiations, supposedly fought through by lickspittle Cameron, mainly because, in terms of legality, they just do not exist. They are not concreted into a Treaty, signed by all Member States, therefore they can, and very likely will, disappear into the mists floating over the Channel. Our Dave might ‘spin’ his achievements as a great leap forward, but without those 27 other signatures, the only leaping will be into thin air, with a long drop below!

But I write in particular to hope that many readers will, if they have the time and the natural curiosity; to visit the blogsite and the writings of one Mary Ellen Synon, formerly of the Daily Mail European desk. Miss Synon, being both an excellent journalist and an inquisitive soul, knows where a great many bodies are buried, as well as who put them there. Take a few minutes, and get her take on the ‘true believers’ of Brussels, and how they stitch up a referendum, a vote or anything which smacks of the dreaded term ‘democracy’, and read how the New Apparatchiks (quite similar to the old communist Apparatchiks but without all the bloodletting) make things work in their way, and to their way!

I would quote a paragraph from her latest posting, to illustrate that of which I write:-

The British people can expect the same kind of fraud if they succeed in voting to leave the EU. They will be patronised, and frightened, by government and EU insistence that they did not know what they were doing. They will be told in effect that the British voters are too dense, too uneducated about the EU, too confused, too much under the influence of what the EU denounces as ‘dangerous nationalism,’ to understand the implications of their own vote.

On this point, I rest my case!

Beware: Zombies on the line!

My thoughts and opinions tend to vary by about 180 degrees from those espoused by the Guardian. That particular left-wing and ultra-lefty organ considers people such as I, who hold trenchant right-wing views and are disinclined to be quiet in the promotion of those views, as dangerously ‘populist’, probably fascist; and definitely worthy of a slow extinction event. But, once in a blue moon, they produce a true gem of fairly impartial reporting, such as when they print this op-ed item which discusses, in incredible detail, the ‘ins-and-outs’ and tortured birth pains of HIGH SPEED TWO, or HS2  as it is commonly known. The article sets out, in great detail, how momentous, expensive and sometimes biased political decisions are actually made, how influence is brought to bear by lobbyists with a financial axe to grind, and how, in the end, the taxpayer is left holding and funding the abortion which resulted from these decisions.

When the Guardian sets out to do a hatchet job, they do it extremely well, and I commend it to readers as a striking example of what British journalism is capable of. Now all we have to do is to persuade the Guardian to repatriate their governance and cash from Jersey, and they can rejoin the MSM without the cant of doing one thing, whilst saying another!

Update:-

Another article from the Guardian which I have just read myself tells of the price paid by betting shop staff through cost-cutting measures; along with the  true scourge of FOBT’s, or Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals,which are rightly regarded as the ‘Crack cocaine’ of the betting industry. Read at your leisure, before wandering down to the ‘betting shop’ to give your hard-earned cash to the bookies!

My D-Day story

My mother had taken myself and my two brothers down the road some quarter-mile to our local Catholic  primary school that breezy June Tuesday morning, and delivered us into the capable hands of the headmistress and teachers. Whilst being uncertain of the lessons taught, from a vantage point of seventy years, I can confirm that there was no talking back to a teacher, no insolence, no backchat. Apart from the truth that we, as somewhat small children were in awe of our teachers, we knew that if word got back to our respective mothers, we would never hear the end of the trouble we would find ourselves in. Readers would note that I stressed ‘mothers’ as the recipients of any disciplinary comment from the school, as just about all our fathers were away, in uniform, serving our King and our Country. We probably played a little in the schoolyard at break time, but we were always aware that we could not leave the school, even for a short while because there was always the possibility of an air-raid warning siren, and the teachers warned that we had to be ready to run for the shelter entrance.
I was four years old, nearly five , and me and my brothers were just schoolkids, but we knew that people all over Newcastle were doing ordinary things, going to school, shopping, writing letters, the normal stuff of everyday life; we did not understand that over 150,000 soldiers; British, Irish, Canadian, American had poured ashore over a twenty-odd mile length of the Normandy coast line, aided by an armada of ships, a veritable cloud of aircraft and a hope that this invasion would be, literally, the beginning of the end. The end of the Nazi’s ‘Thousand year Reich’, the end of the Nazi dream of being ‘JudenFrei’; although we did not understand what that really meant until later in life. We were the victors, that breezy day in June, 1944, and we owe it to ourselves to remember that brave men and women fought and sometimes died so that we might recall a time when politicians had not given much of our freedoms away in an illusory dream of ‘Togetherness!’

Unfortunately, Elvis has left the building!

I would remind readers of a true personality. An entertainer, a singer, a man.

Elvis starred in 33 movies, made history with his television appearances and specials, and knew great acclaim through his many, often record-breaking, live concert performances on tour and in Las Vegas.

Globally, he has sold over one billion records, more than any other artist. His American sales have earned him gold, platinum or multi-platinum awards for 131 different albums and singles, far more than any other artist. Among his many awards and accolades were 14 Grammy nominations (3 wins) from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, which he received at age 36, and his being named One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation for 1970 by the United States Jaycees.

Without any of the special privileges his celebrity status might have afforded him, he honourably served his country in the U.S. Army.

His talent, good looks, sensuality, charisma, and good humour endeared him to millions, as did the humility and human kindness he demonstrated throughout his life. Known the world over by his first name, he is regarded as one of the most important figures of twentieth century popular culture. Elvis died at his Memphis home, Graceland, on August 16, 1977.

His flawed later life and sad death may have been contaminated with prescription drug overdose and addiction, but he was, and remains to many, a symbol of his time, inclusive of the fact that, when called, he served his Country with good humour and distinction; unlike another whose death has been seized upon by the BBC, who literally adored the very ground their flawed hero pranced upon.

Leave the legacy of the old GREY men!

There are many areas, arguments and positions to be taken and discussed when looking at our, repeat OUR decisions regarding the EU referendum; these range from immigration, pressure on services, trade deals or none, regulations and regulators: the list goes on. But there is really only one item which should be at the top of our piles when making our minds up as to answering the question to Leave; or to Remain, and it is this:-
Do we here within the borders of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we proud British people, choose to regain our Sovereignty, our ability to choose who sets out how we are governed, and also regain the ability to kick those politicians out who collectively displease us: or do we stay within the Federalised Super State of the European Union, with no say in how we are governed; in a Super State of unelected and unaccountable Bureaucrats: in a true minority where we never, ever win or alter anything; where we are told what to do, who to allow into our borders, and, worst of all, have to kow-tow to a bunch of arrogant Krauts who literally rule that which they so comprehensively lost in two bloody World Wars?