Morning music
Saturday quiz
Well, this week brings another victory over political journalist John Rentoul, who scored a very modest 3/10; I trumped that with 5/10. I knew the answers to questions 2, 4, 6, and 9; I literally guessed no. 3 (I think it was in the back of my mind, though; I may have seen it somewhere, somewhen).
Sidelights on English life
A very English murder
“16th century possible murder victim laid to rest at St Mary the Virgin, in South Baddesley, after remains found on Sowley Beach in the New Forest.
A suspected New Forest murder victim was this week buried in a “once-in-a-lifetime” service, some 500 years after he met his end.
The remains of the unknown man were laid to rest about five centuries after he was initially disposed of in a “clandestine” fashion, as revealed by the A&T.
The 25-minute ceremony took place two years after his medieval-era skeleton was found in mysterious circumstances on a beach near South Baddesley.
As reported in the A&T, after a lengthy investigation, archaeologists have since concluded that “foul play” may explain how he came to be there.
Tuesday’s special funeral took place at St Mary the Virgin, in South Baddesley. Around 50 attendees – comprising nearby residents, those who had been involved in research and local historians – came to pay their respects.
Mourners were greeted and handed a leaflet titled ‘The Funeral and Burial of the 16th Century Man Known only to God’.
The Very Rev Gordon Wynne conducted the service, which included a medieval hymn before the handmade wooden casket was buried in the church graveyard.
The funeral comes after police were alerted in May 2022 by local resident Graham Coulter who helped excavate the human remains after half a skull became exposed in the mud near the mouth of Lymington River.
Speaking after the ceremony, the chartered surveyor, who lives in Lymington, said: “I think it’s a nice reflection on Christianity and mankind. “It’s very moving. It’s nice people turned up to give him a proper send-off.”
The rare remains – of which 80% of the body was still present – were recovered from Sowley Beach. They were given a radiocarbon dating estimating them to have been buried in AD1450-1650.
An osteoarchaeologist who studied the 5ft 4in (1.63m) skeleton concluded it was likely to have been a 20 to 25-year-old adult male.“
[New Milton Advertiser & Lymington Times; n.b. I have corrected a few errors of spelling etc]
The full report is a good read, though it is disappointing to see that the senior archaeologist at the local council thinks that 1450-1650 comes within the “mediaeval” period. Either the Renaissance or, just about, the early Enlightenment.
It was amusing somehow to read that a person holidaying in the area, and who attended that religious service, was one Kathryn Tudor! Like something from The Morning of the Magicians [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morning_of_the_Magicians].
Mrs. Tudor, however, is another who seems to imagine that the period in question was “mediaeval” (as does the local newspaper). Our English education must be to blame. G.K. Chesterton expressed a similar irritation to mine via his fictional Father Brown detective-priest, and that was a century ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Brown.
Anyway, a murder case too late for Brother Cadfael [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadfael], and yet far too early for Inspector Morse [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_Morse_(TV_series)], Poirot [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercule_Poirot], or even Sherlock Holmes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes].
Have I identified an historical gap in the market for detectives in literature? 1450 to 1650. I have never heard of a fictional detective operating in those centuries.
Well, that story is a delightful English vignette. Somehow charming, intriguing, and unsullied by contact with too much of England in 2024. More like something out of M.R. James [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._R._James].
A better class of shoplifter?
“A second haul of alcohol has been stolen from a Lymington store, which has now seen more than £1,000 worth taken over the two incidents.
As reported by the A&T yesterday (Thursday) 21 bottles of champagne valued at £717 were taken from Marks & Spencer on St Thomas Street on Tuesday 30th April, and CCTV pictures were released of a pair wanted by police.
Now officers have made a second appeal over an incident at the same store between 1.10pm and 1.40pm on Wednesday 15th May, when the eight bottles of champagne and spirits valued at £326 were taken.“
[New Milton Advertiser & Lymington Times]
A long way indeed from Les Miserables, in which the plot revolves around the theft of a loaf of bread: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables#Hugo’s_sources.
From the newspapers
Interesting-sounding piece by dissident scientist/thinker Rupert Sheldrake; unfortunately, it is behind a paywall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
How time flies. When I first heard of Rupert Sheldrake, in the early 1980s, he was a still-youthful 39 or 40, and I was in my mid-twenties. Now he is 81, nearly 82, incredibly, and I myself am no longer young (67).
Sheldrake was a touchstone for many. The editor of Nature described his work as literal “heresy“, and pretty much said that his books should be burned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake#%22A_book_for_burning?%22. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maddox#Sheldrake_editorial,_1981.
“I think it’s dangerous that people should be allowed by our liberal societies to put that kind of nonsense into currency” [John Maddox].
You can see the kind of thinking that leads to those people who doubt orthodox views, whether re. “climate change” aka “global warming”, or re. the “Covid” scamdemic/panicdemic, or other matters, being pilloried, while others (msm talking heads, scribblers etc) parrot System orthodoxy, and say that the dissidents or freethinkers should be incarcerated, deprived of medical services, bankrupted etc.
Who has contributed more to science and to this country, Sheldrake, or Maddox? I say Sheldrake.
Incidentally, I see that Sheldrake’s wife, Jill Purce, is also an interesting personality (I had not known of her until today): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Purce.
More from the newspapers
“The NHS has today been accused of providing ‘inadequate’ pain relief to women who have suffered agonising childbirths.
Under health service guidance, new mums can be discharged just a day after undergoing a C-section or vaginal birth.
But they are advised to take just paracetamol or ibuprofen to manage symptoms.
Campaigners and doctors slammed the move, claiming it was yet another example of women’s pain issues in healthcare being ignored or underplayed.“
[Daily Mail]
Still clapping?
The fact is that we now have health rationing in the UK. There has always been an element of that but it is now becoming impossible to ignore. It is not OK to simply repeat the old slogans of “our NHS” etc and how the rest of the world supposedly envies it (which is not true in respect of most advanced countries).
I am totally in favour of “free at point of use”, but the existing NHS model is just not working. Resourcing is one factor, but attitude and ethos is another one, and one that must be addressed. Also, pervasive maladministration.
The elephant in the room, though, is mass immigration. A population of 56 million when I was growing up has become one, officially, of 65 million, and probably 70 million in reality, with about a million more coming in every single year. Something has to give. Various things are giving, are cracking. Health provision is one of those.
Tweets seen
What the “Israelis” are doing in Gaza, what they have been doing for the past nearly 8 months, is a form of controlled sadism exercized mainly upon a helpless civilian population, and upon their even more helpless companion animals. This is not war but a kind of cruel and deliberate torture. Gott straf ihnen.
I was told a few years ago that, in the USA, hardly anyone not over 60 watched TV any more. I found it hard to believe, though even when I lived there (1989-1993, on-and-off), and on later visits (1999-2002), it was true that the people I knew watched very little TV, but at that time I think it was more of a class/education/cultural level thing, in those pre-mass Internet days).
When I lived in the USA, I was told (by my first wife, an American) that much of my own TV viewing was of a “redneck” nature. She even told her colleagues all about how I loved Unsolved Mysteries [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_Mysteries] and America’s Most Wanted [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Most_Wanted].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geeta_Nargund#Family
Do you see the way things are going? Labour, once a “socialist”/social democratic party, is now completely signed-up to the transnational finance-capitalist agenda, and to the “great replacement” of Europeans by non-Europeans in Europe, including the UK and Ireland: the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalergi_Plan.
Look at Islington North. Symbolic. The very constituency represented for 41 years by a white man who is also a socialist (like Jack London, though Jack London said “I am a socialist, but a white man first“, unlike Corbyn…) and who was Leader of the Labour Party.
Corbyn’s replacement as Labour candidate— a non-European who is a health profiteer, along with his parents. I bet he is pro-Israel, too.
Now do you see it?
More music
These people should be on our side. Or vice-versa…
More tweets seen
Ha ha! Has the little Indian money-juggler somehow failed to understand that, under “Conservative” misgovernment, immigration is running at about a million a year now, out of which “only” about 50,000 are coming here on small boats (in reality, often ferried in by UK Border Force, RNLI, and Royal Navy)?
Has Sunak not understood that 80% of “asylum-seekers”, even those entering in backs of trucks or on rubber boats, are eventually given “Leave to Remain” under a system and legal framework which came from the 1950s and is now totally ridiculous and out of date ?
No, Sunak knows all that. He just hopes that the British people do not.
Labour, of course, will just do the same but in a different way, by allowing almost all to enter the UK “legally”. Reality? No difference in terms of end-result.
Persons aged 16 are far more likely to vote Labour, at present (about 90%); thus Labour hopes to entrench its likely large majority of 2024 in 2029.
“Man proposes, God disposes“, though. Those 16-18 y-o voters of 2024, and their successors, might go another way completely after 5 years of (as I firmly expect) useless and yet repressive Starmer-Labour government.
On the wider point, if Goodwin is correct and Starmer intends to prevent any real democratic revolt against his planned “woke” tyranny, then he must expect the consequences. As John F. Kennedy said, “those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable“.
Imagine, if you will, Britain in 2034, after 10 years of Starmer-Labour.
A population of about 80 million or more, more non-European than white, at least in the main cities and towns; the country in an irreversible economic slide, with pay very low, and with State benefits equally low and restricted to ever-smaller groups; pensions not keeping pace with inflation; the roads scarcely repaired; the NHS even worse than under the “Conservatives”, and become a world leader in…waiting lists, poor treatment, and negligence; ever-greater numbers of blacks and browns (etc) flooding in, but the numbers officially concealed; Jewish-Zionist supremacism ever-more evident, but any criticism muzzled by even more restrictive and repressive “hate speech” laws.
Needless to say, by 2034, let alone 2044, the central areas of the cities will have become almost no-go areas for real Brits, as crime and disorder take hold. London is already halfway there.
In those circumstances, any measures taken by the British people themselves would be justified.
Starmer and Sunak’s Israeli friends— a history
A bandit state.
https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1397981427522699268
“Typical”…
Migration invasion. Why do the Swedes not fight back? I suppose they would answer us in similar vein…
Late tweets
So that writes off the votes of the tiny minority of the young who might have voted Con. Beyond that, this is not a serious policy idea, more an attempt to shore up the collapsing Con vote among those 70+.
National Service ended over 60 years ago (gradually from 1957, though anyone born after 30 September 1939 was exempted). The last call-up was at the end of 1960; the last conscriptee was discharged in 1963.
In other words, only those (some) people of 85+, and who served under legal compulsion, would still be alive today.
Incidentally, who do you think will be taking all available jobs while the UK-born 18-21 y-o contingent are polishing boots, being beasted on assault courses, or being taught how to shoot hostile targets and not the local farmworkers? That’s right— the recent immigrants.
Just the way to achieve “community cohesion”…
This is some kind of pathetic appeal to misplaced nostalgia, designed (perhaps stupidly) to appeal to the very elderly (most of whom still vote Con anyway).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_Kingdom#After_1945
Quite right. Why should any young British men suffer and die (or live on, crippled) for the interests of Israel and NWO/ZOG?
You will not get much of interest from the likes of that “Akunjee” character.
Only the most awake (not “woke”) people understand that the NWO/ZOG System has chosen Starmer as its puppet to become an “elected” (via rigged selection and election procedures, FPTP voting etc) dictator, casting Britain into the pit of migration invasion, mass race-mixing and mixed breeding, and gigantic repression on free speech, dwarfing anything yet seen.
I still cannot understand why Sunak went out in the pouring rain to announce GE 2024. Was he trying to show the population that he is stoic, or a tough guy of some kind? What it said to me is that he is an absolute idiot, for all his paper qualifications; someone who does not know enough to put on a raincoat when it is raining hard, or at least have someone hold an umbrella over him. Someone such as that has not the basic nous to be Prime Minister.
Actually, what is the point of “National Service” even if the scheme could be enforced? In any serious war with Russia (the scenario constantly being pushed; no other exists), there will probably be a nuclear exchange before very long. The UK would be a, perhaps the, prime target for Russian attack. The “National Service” “chocolate soldiers” would be but pillars of ash long before being deployed anywhere outside the UK.
Come to think of it, how exactly would UK troops on any large scale be deployed? Both the air force and navy are now very small, and the air lift capacity very limited as well. As for the Royal Navy, its new aircraft carrier could carry a large number of troops, but it is not even defended by many naval fighter aircraft. It would probably be sunk long before it got to the Black Sea or Baltic.
This is all nonsense, worthy of some idiot such as Gavin Williamson, that deadhead: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/05/02/deadhead-mps-an-occasional-series-the-gavin-williamson-story/.
I was out early today, before 0700 hrs, and the English countryside was arguably at its best in the fresh breeze and sun of the early summer (though I also very much love the autumn). How terrible if those green trees and sculptured ranks of hedges and topiary were to become a charred and irradiated wasteland, all because of a completely unnecessary and contrived war with Russia…
“Antonov: No one in Washington is thinking about the future of relations between the US and Russia “The American authorities do not think about the future of Russian-American relations and are engaged in destroying them”, said the Russian ambassador to the USA, Anatoly Antonov, commenting on the new American package of military aid to Kiev.“
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 