I just got finished clearing up after the Derecho, now I will have to start again.
The Royalist with all his talk of Westcentricity has caused Sandy to take an unprecedented turn to the left. There she was heading harmlessly out to sea and now look, that last blue dot is ten miles from my house
Let One explain. One was born fantastically superior to, well, anyone else One can think of. No, except Mama and Papa and Nanny and Spike Milligan; oh, and that Dutch-sounding guru chappie I knew for a while, who would be a teeny bit miffed if One didn’t recognise their status. Goodness knows what Nanny would have done to me. But One digresses, as so often. The thing is, One gets rather bored with all this waiting for kingship. Unlike the rest of you ordinary mortals, One has done Oneself out of so many actual things to do Oneself – like dressing, shopping, driving, digging holes for plants, visiting the cash-machine – that One has had to write letters, longhand – yes, Oneself! – to some of Mama’s ministers about things that really, really matter. One thinks immediately of architecture. It’s obvious to any man of unparallelled culture like Oneself that Britain should be exclusively populated by buildings in the neo-Tudor style. Get rid of everything else. And One has told them so. It’s not political, is it? It’s sound advice from the High Ground Highgrove perspective. And what’s more, it’s a salutary experience for those ministers to spend their time responding to One. And that Judge chappie had the affrontery to suggest that One’s correspondence with them was training for One to become King. On the contrary, One is training ministers in preparation for One’s accession. But the Judge did get something right in this case: One’s private letters are none of the plebs lower classes One’s subjects’ damn business. And when One accedes, One will rule. Rule, One says! (sounds of smashing china, screaming and soothing words from minions)
I don’t know about you but I am an immigrant (invandrer to the locals). And it is not a term of affection, I’m afraid. Not that I look like one. My lived-in, Aryan features are a snare and a delusion for the unwary; they offer comfort – until I open my mouth. Then I suddenly receive the looks of fear, boredom or disapproval reserved for that class of human beings called immigrants.
But I am not.
Representative Paul Broun (R) Georgia came out recently with this gem “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell” he is running UNOPPOSED for re-election. Better yet he is a medical doctor and to cap it all he sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Believe it or not Broun is joined on that committee by Todd Akin (R) Missouri, his most recent claim to fame is that he is telling people that doctors are performing abortions on women who are NOT pregnant.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/02/todd-akin-abortion-providers_n_1934305.html
Where do we find these people?
Why do others vote for them?
But most of all why are THEY put in positions of authority over science and technology?
Yes, this is the Chariot’s Law Week! And this time, Auntie Beeb is getting it in the neck! She’s paying some staff via their own private companies rather than direct, which means they can pay substantially less income tax. The Public Accounts Committee reckons that’s morally, if not legally wrong, having already forced a couple of thousand civil servants to give up a similar arrangement.
Now this strikes me a something of a conundrum. Either it is legal to employ people in this way (as I have been during one of my incarnations) or it isn’t. The Gordian Knot is the gubmint’s to cut, but what it cannot do, imho, is to play the morality card whenever they suffer PR problems. It would be like giving special tax breaks to, say, married couples and then implying that such couples were exploiting the system.
Of course the Dept. of Envy is quick to point out that some of the Beeb’s beneficiaries are famous names. So what? Does that somehow validate their gripe?
What do you think? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9587937/BBC-complicit-in-tax-avoidance-for-household-names-say-MPs.html
I’m surprised if anybody of my advanced years hadn’t already heard of the DJ’s disgusting practices during the ’60s and ’70s. As a family man with a Yorkshire spouse, based oop narth and inevitably aware of ‘pop’ culture, not least from my children’s conversations, I certainly knew that he had a ‘dodgy’ reputation among teenage girls. For all his much-vaunted good deeds as an unpaid porter at Leeds Infirmary, he was widely reputed to have ‘unusual’ sexual preferences. The fact that he was never nailed for them was probably due to the laissez faire attitude surrounding the whole entertainment industry at the time – and before the social media even existed to report what was really going on. It is a moot point whether the higher echelons of the BBC were aware of Savile’s activities or even considered them their business. Weird was (and still is) very good for audience ratings.
Everybody I know (except my sister who is only just starting to use the remote for her telly) has a mobile thingy somewhere about their person. And the younger they are, the more complex their devices. Something to do with apps and uploads – whatever they may be. So as I was noticing yet another Rolex ad on t’telly the other day, I thought, “Why do people bother? ‘Cos I don’t.” OK, I’ll modify that. I realise that fashion victims have to display bejewelled time-pieces as a mark of their wealth/coolness/superiority, but normal people really don’t need one, do they, even if they work at two hundred fathoms? Just nudge your ikit and check the time in every time-zone imaginable. And the same goes of course for alarm clocks, grandfather clocks and Big Ben himself. Surplus to requirements, redundant, as useful as a chocolate teapot, if Christopher will allow me.
My little wordplay with Greek origins is prompted by the latest royal brouhaha, which was itself prompted by the Windsors’ proclivities for baring their privates. They make natural victims of the digitally-enhanced mass media. But both parties suffer from strains of photomania – albeit with somewhat different aims. Might I recommend the Windsors repair to Osborne for the hols and make use of the local facilities?
I like Christina. While I do not endorse every thing she has to say, (I am not as enthusiastic about plants and pets as she is, for example) she strikes me as being somebody who is sincere, industrious, intelligent, considerate and is honest enough to speak her mind and is refreshingly free of hypocrisy. Further, she has the courtesy to respond in full to comments addressed to her and does so with clarity and reasoning. Would that more people possessed those qualities.
I only mention Greig, Lamb and Pietersen because they represent the latest example of sporting plasticity – in cricket, as it happens. But shouldn’t I include Strauss? At what age or after how long ‘on probation’ should an immigrant become eligible for national honours? This is a general question about all nationalities – although I don’t suppose many countries want former Brits to represent them (corrections please on high-value negotiable instruments).
Backside reckons under the age of ten would be about right. More than six years in a British school should remove any stubborn veneer of foreignness – you know, unsporting behaviour, a tendency to rat on mates, re-emigrating to the Antipodes – that kind of thing.
Such a rule would mean we could keep Mo Farah too – but have you noticed? We soon forget their roots when they really please us?
Boadicea's Chariot 
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