Morning music
On this day a year ago
On the blog 5 years ago
Saturday quiz
Only just beat political journalist John Rentoul this week. He scored “5 and a half“, he says, while I managed 6/10. I did not know the answers to questions 3, 4, 7, and 10. In fact, I had read about no.7 a while ago but forgot about it, and also should really have guessed no.10.
The destruction of beauty, and the creeping growth of housing
Earlier this week, I blogged about the horrible destruction of trees in Armada Way, Plymouth by a corrupt local council. Now, while reading a report about the recent suicide of a headmistress of a school attended by me 60 years ago, I saw something equally unpleasant about Emmer Green, just north of Reading.
Northwest and north of Reading, across the Thames, there are two basically suburban areas abutting the open woods and fields of Oxfordshire: Caversham Heights (where I lived at times as a child) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caversham_Heights], and Emmer Green [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmer_Green]. About two or three miles of more or less open country separates the two. Within that couple of miles there was, inter alia, a golf course, Reading Golf Club, which in the 1960s and 1970s was the only golf course on that side of the Thames and that close to Reading.
I myself was a junior member of Reading Golf Club for a year or so around 1972, when I was 15-16. My golfing equipment was old and rudimentary, given to me by family friends, I think: one or two woods (drivers), an oddly-short no.3 iron, an ancient and wood-shafted mashie niblick (no.7 iron)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsolete_golf_clubs#20th_century_wood-shafted_irons], and a putter (also wood-shafted). Out of date even then.
That golf course was rather beautiful, I thought, with plenty of majestic trees framing the fairways of the 18 holes, and even a very small valley, from which one drove from the tee on one side to the hole on the other. A very unusual par as well— 2 par, if I recall aright.
That hole must have been some kind of anomaly, because 3-par is the lowest par usually designated: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Par_(score). Maybe I just remembered wrongly, and it was 3-par; no matter.
I managed (by luck, really) to get a hole-in-one on that, though it hardly counts, arguably, not being a more typical sort of hole.
Be that as it may, I was discomfited to read yesterday that not only has that golf course now closed (and been subsumed, as a club, into a new golf club with a course a few miles away) but the area of the old course has been designated for housing— 223 new houses. There is strong local opposition from nearby residents calling their protest group Keep Emmer Green: https://www.keepemmergreen.org/.
We see this all the time now, especially in southern England: “infilling” of green areas around or in towns and cities, usually so that housing can be built for profit. Mass immigration, births to existing UK residents, the collapse of the traditional family. Overall result— pressure to build more housing.
In the end, will there actually be an England worth saving or defending? A question members of the armed forces, and the intelligence and security services, might pose to themselves in a lucid moment.
Incidentally, since the early 1970s, I have rarely played golf, and own no golf clubs (both my younger brothers are keen players, though).
Tweets seen
Whatever the logical reasons behind the policy, Jeremy Hunt must have a political cloth ear to introduce such a measure at such a time.
“Covid” “panicdemic” nonsense, migration-invasion nonsense (fake “refugees” put up in hotels etc), general “Ukraine” nonsense (arms, ammunition, medical supplies, and hard cash, all being funnelled to the corrupt and dictatorial regime of the Jew Zelensky). Etc.
Prediction of the result of a general election not due to be held for possibly 20 months is a fool’s game, of course, but at present it certainly looks like a shoo-in for Labour, and most policy announced by the “Conservatives” seems to play into Labour’s hands despite Labour itself being so lacklustre.
Seems to be useful public health advice. I myself have no liver problem, but am posting those tweets as a general warning to anyone who, or who knows someone who, is in that situation.
Better pay than being “His Excellency” the Ambassador to [somewhere]. While a few British ambassadors get nearly Β£150,000, most are below Β£100,000, and some receive as little as Β£60,000, though they do get reasonably-nice, sometimes very nice, ambassadorial residences, and there are a number of perks. Also, diplomatic immunity. I should have appreciated that a few times myself, when working overseas. Very convenient.
I believe that Murray was appointed to Tashkent (Uzbekistan) in 2002.
Murray seems to be someone highly principled (according to his own lights), and a bit awkward, like one or two Quakers I encountered several decades ago. The Diplomatic Service was almost certainly the wrong career for him.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Murray
In fact, if Wikipedia is accurate, Murray is not wholly reliant on his online donors, but also has a number of business activities: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Murray#Entrepreneurial_activities.
More tweets
God… and most of those people have so little anyway, and amid such wealth. The USA in some ways is “the Great Satan“, as the Islamic crazies sometimes claim. Not in every way, but in some. I myself have experienced a little of both the more comfortable and less comfortable sides of American life. The USA needs radical reform.
So much for “Biden the great humanitarian”. Not that he has invented such hypocrisy— Clinton was there first.
Incidentally, the (typically labyrinthine) American bureaucracy pays out to people in need (those that can get it at all), a very modest amount, in many cases just a few hundred dollars a month: see https://en.as.com/en/2022/01/22/latest_news/1642820139_262174.html.
(that’s cash; other programmes exist in parallel, such as Medicare, Medicaid etc).
Of course, tweeting (or blogging, or vlogging, or writing articles, or even launching doomed public law claims) does not frighten MPs. What does? Well, I am not going to say anything, but think back over the past decade…
Ukraine situation
True. Brutal. However, it seems that some fighters on both sides might be termed “cannon-fodder“. In fact, we in the West, subjected to the usual msm lies and spin, are not getting the true measure of the Ukrainian/Kiev-regime losses. Massive.
A maverick officer, too honest for his notional superiors. Every army has a few. General Lebed, a Soviet and, later, Russian Army commander, was like that. He would have made a good President of the Russian Federation but, like others before him and since, he died in an apparent “accident” (in his case, a helicopter crash). Maybe it was an accident. Maybe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Lebed; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Lebed#Political_views.
There must be room for compassion and active help for the animals in war zones. None of them volunteered for this.
Late tweets seen
Of course, over the years quite a few Jews have actually been exposed and/or arrested for attacking Jewish graveyards, with the aim of inciting other Jews (via newspaper reports) to get excited about “antisemitism”, as well as the aim of goading the authorities to crack down on so-called “far right” (social-national) people or parties and groups, as well as repressing freedom of expression.
I have never understood why any social-national people would attack Jewish or any other graveyards. What is the aim? To kill dead Jews? Very strange.
Obviously, I agree with the 95%…
If only the UK could have that level of economic and social development.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 