Afternoon music
A la recherche du temps perdu…
I am old enough to remember those little shops. One in particular, in Caversham Heights, near Reading, early 1960s. The sweets were dispensed by the owner, I think an otherwise-retired old fellow, who sold them in small white-paper bags. A wide range, but I either bought small boiled sweets (very small balls of hard candy), or a kind of chewing gum that came with collectable cards depicting (and explaining) battles of the American Civil War of the 1860s. I wanted the cards, not the gum.
Very gory, those cards (as I discovered only when I belatedly read law, 20 years later) were the subject of a legal case (as to whether they counted as “obscene” because of their bloodsoaked content), which case went as high as the House of Lords (House of Lords Judicial Committee, the forerunner of the present UK Supreme Court). That was around 1965, only a couple of years after I used to buy the cards.
I remember that all my friends (who also bought the cards) favoured the Confederate side, but I (alone, I think) favoured the Union. Not sure now, over 60 years later, whether that was because the Union side was more efficient, or more advanced in weaponry, or just because I wanted to go contrary to the views of the mob.
The sweetshop in question was actually made out of the front part of an ordinary late-19thC house, which (I see from Google maps and streetview) has now reverted to being just a house again.
I also remember the little sweetshop because, aged about 7, I sheltered in that tiny shop after I (God knows why, now, but it would have been in self-defence) hit another boy, and then was sought out by the much older, and rather fearsome, brother of the same. In the end, the older boy caught me outside but, after I explained that I had hit his brother in self-defence, he was very reasonable, and let me off. Maybe I had dormant barristerial skills even then (or at least the ability to get out of scrapes)…
Tweets seen
Thangam “Debbonaire”, an ex-MP who uses a fake name (her real or original name was “Singh”, but she changed it by deed poll, presumably wanting to sound less “ethnic”), and who was kicked out by the voters at GE 2024, is invited onto TV to opine about immigration and public order etc. Why? She has no real locus standi any more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thangam_Debbonaire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Central_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2020s
The people instinctively know that the System parties are rubbish, but also feel that, equally, there are no credible non-System parties for which to vote, only the very underwhelming Reform UK. Certainly, there are no credible social-national alternatives.
Look at what “they” are doing in Gaza, in the West Bank, and elsewhere. “They” always do such things when they have power. That is why “they” must never have power and, whenever they do have power, must be removed from having power.
Superficially impressive, but then exercises like that always are. “Qatari Army”? Really?
I have no time for the Gulf Arabs, none at all.
Terrible, but good to see that the lady’s companion animal was also rescued.
(in thousands; in other words about 1.4M in all).
The state of Britain is so frustrating that it is tempting to shout “Full Communism Now!“, but that, of course, is not the answer. I recall that the Dowager Lady Birdwood opined that I was a “national bolshevik” (when I was aged about 18, around 1975)!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Birdwood,_Baroness_Birdwood
True, but the “welfare” bill would be very low were it not for the existence of literally millions of non-white parasites in the UK, both the migrants and the children and grandchildren of migrants and former migrants.
Talking point
More tweets
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alastair_Crooke.
At this point, only idiots or those with no choice are really fighting for the Kiev regime.
Late talking point
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 