Quotulatiousness

November 28, 2021

SA80 History: XL70 Series Final Prototypes (Individual Weapon and LSW)

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 May 2017

Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:

http://armamentresearch.com/british-e…

By 1980, the scheduled deadline for adopting the L85 and L86 was rapidly approaching, and the weapons should have been in the last stages of fine-tuning before production began. This was not the case, however — testing was still uncovering critical problems in the guns.

The goal for these weapons was 8000 MRBF (Mean Rounds Between Failure) for the LSW and 2500 MRBF for the IW. As real testing began, the numbers were actually 100-300 MRBF. In many cases, the guns could not run three magazines in a row without a malfunction, and this was literally an order of magnitude below the requirements. But what truly led to the massive problems with the L85/86 was that RSAF Enfield did not fix these problems. Instead, they moved the goalposts. With so many problems, it was decided to only count malfunctions that occurred in the endurance testing (ie, when the guns were not put under any environmental stress at all) and to only count “critical” malfunctions in the tally. A “critical” failure was one which could not be resolved by the shooter, such as a split barrel. Simple feed or ejection failures were not counted, nor were malfunctions that required gun disassembly to correct. Even under this new paradigm, MRBF over 3000 could not be achieved.

In addition, the LSW was showing a problem that would become endemic; split groups. The weapon shot very good groups in semiautomatic, but in full auto fire it would produce two discreet groups. The first shot in each burst would land about 6 minutes of angle low and right compared to the remaining rounds in the group. This would be the subject of significant work, and was never fully rectified.

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November 27, 2021

Armored Vehicles of Operation Torch Pt. 2: America and Britain (and France) – by the Chieftain

Filed under: Africa, Britain, France, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 26 Nov 2021

Part two of Chieftain’s return to the North African campaign. Here he looks at the armored fighting vehicles of the British and Americans with a small bit on the French as well. We see the introduction of the iconic Sherman and the varied fortunes of British designs.
(more…)

King James I and his hatred of tobacco smoking — “so vile and stinking a custom”

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Health, History — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Anton Howes recounts some stories he uncovered while researching English patent and monopoly policies during the Elizabethan and Stuart eras:

… some of the most interesting proclamations to catch my eye were about tobacco. Whereas tobacco was famously a New World crop, it is actually very easy to grow in England. Yet what the proclamations reveal is that the planting of tobacco in England and Wales was purposefully suppressed, and for some very interesting reasons.

James I was an anti-tobacco king. He even published his own tract on the subject, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, just a year after his succession to the English throne. Yet as a result of his hatred of “so vile and stinking a custom”, imports of tobacco were heavily taxed and became a major source of revenue. Somewhat ironically, the cash-strapped king became increasingly financially dependent on the weed he never smoked. The emergence of a domestic growth of tobacco was thus not only offensive to the king on the grounds that he thought it a horrid, stinking, and unhealthy habit — it was also a threat to his income.

What I was most surprised to see, however, was just how explicitly the king admitted this. It’s usual, when reading official proclamations, to have to read between the lines, or to have to track down the more private correspondence of his ministers. Very often James’s proclamations would have an official justification for the public good, while in the background you’ll find it originated in a proposal from an official about how much money it was likely to raise. There was money to be made in making things illegal and then collecting the fines.

Yet the 1619 proclamation against growing tobacco in England and Wales had both. The legendary Francis Bacon, by this stage Lord High Chancellor, privately noted that the policy might raise an additional £3,000 per year in customs revenue. And the proclamation itself noted that growing tobacco in England “does manifestly tend to the diminution of our customs”. Although the proclamation notes that the loss of customs revenue was not usually a grounds for banning things, as manufactures and necessary commodities were better made at home than abroad, “yet where it shall be taken from us, and no good but rather hurt thereby redound to our people, we have reason to preserve”. Fair enough.

And that’s not all. James in his proclamation expressed all sorts of other worries about domestic tobacco. Imported tobacco, he claimed, was at least only a vice restricted to the richer city sorts, where it was already an apparent source of unrest (presumably because people liked to smoke socially, gathering into what seemed like disorderly crowds). With tobacco being grown domestically, however, it was “begun to be taken in every mean village, even amongst the basest people” — an even greater apparent threat to social order. James certainly wasn’t wrong about this wider adoption. Just a few decades later, a Dutch visitor to England reported that even in relatively far-flung Cornwall “everyone, men and women, young and old, puffing tobacco, which is here so common that the young children get it in the morning instead of breakfast, and almost prefer it to bread.”

[…]

Indeed, policymakers thought that the domestic production of tobacco would actively harm one of their key economic projects: the development of the colonies of Virginia and the Somers Isles (today known as Bermuda). Although James I hoped that their growth of tobacco would be only a temporary economic stop-gap, “until our said colonies may grow to yield better and more solid commodities”, he believed that without tobacco the nascent colonial economies would never survive. Banning the domestic growth of tobacco thus became an essential part of official colonial policy — one that was continued by James’s successors, who did not always share his more general hatred of smoking. Although the other justifications for banning domestic tobacco would soon fall away, that of maintaining the colonies — backed by an increasingly wealthy colonial lobby — was the one that prevailed.

Making a Medieval TART DE BRY (Brie Tart) | Brie: The King of Cheese

Filed under: Britain, Food, France, History, Humour — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 28 Apr 2020

This Tart de Bry, or Brie Tart, comes from The Forme of Cury and was served at the table of King Richard II (1367 – 1400). Its flavor is nearly as rich as the history of the cheese that goes into it, and in this episode I will explore both.

Help Support the Channel with Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tastinghistory

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Episodes mentioned in this video:
Medieval Cheesecake (for tart dough) – https://youtu.be/GCCJ2Qpr1nM
Medieval Cheese (for straining cheese) – https://youtu.be/vlQZ3NPnoLk
Rapé Fig Spread: https://youtu.be/_o7Oq-OjKu8

LINK TO INGREDIENTS & TOOLS**
SAFFRON THREADS – https://amzn.to/2yTwoPS
PIE SHIELD – https://amzn.to/2YeTnjh
TART TIN – https://amzn.to/2yPbUrC

LINK TO SOURCE:
The Forme of Cury: https://amzn.to/31frAAy

**Amazon offers a small commission on products sold through their affiliate links, so each purchase made from this link, whether this product or another, will help to support this channel with no additional cost to you.

TART DE BRY
RECIPE (1390 – The Forme of Cury)
Take a crust ynch depe in a trape. Take yolkes of ayren rawe and chese ruayn and medle it and the yolkes together. And do thereto powdor gynger, sugar, safron and salt. Do it in a trape, bake it, and serve it forth.

MODERN RECIPE (Based on Lorna J Sass’s adaptation from To The King’s Taste – https://amzn.to/3bNg2XE)
INGREDIENTS
– 1 pound of Brie cheese, the younger the better
– 6 egg yolks
– ⅛ tsp saffron (about 10 threads ground up)
– ¾ tsp light brown sugar or more if you want a sweeter tart.
– ⅜ teaspoon powdered ginger
– A pinch of salt
– A sprinkle of nutmeg or cinnamon (optional)

METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 425°F / 220°C.
2. Roll out your tart dough to about an ⅛ inch thick and line your tin. Add pie weights and set in the oven to blind bake for 10 minutes. Remove the crust and remove the pie weights. If the bottom of the crust is not fully cooked, return it to the oven without the weights for 5 minutes. Once out of the oven, press down the bottom of the crust if it has risen. Allow crust to cool completely and reduce the oven temperature to 350°F / 175°C.
3. Remove the rind from the brie saving some to the side. Then cut the brie into small pieces and place in a blender with the egg yolks. Blend together. Then add the saffron, brown sugar, ginger, and salt and blend to combine.
4. Place a bit of the rind on the bottom of the tart and add the cheese mixture and smooth the top. If you are using cinnamon or nutmeg, sprinkle a bit on top now.
5. Bake at 350°F / 175°C for 30 to 40 minutes or until the top is set and begins to brown. Serve warm or at room temperature.

SOURCES
The Forme of Cury – By Samuel Pegge – https://amzn.to/3cXBycA
To The King’s Taste – Lorna J. Sass – https://amzn.to/3bNg2XE
The Course of History: 10 Meals that Changed the World – https://amzn.to/2yWuIoL
Brie Cheese History – https://www.thespruceeats.com/history…

PHOTOS
Abbaye Notre-Dame-de-Jouarre – Fredlesles CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
By J. Chéreau – Musée de la Révolution française, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index…
A carriage underside has broken sending the occupants flying Wellcome / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Blue Stilton – Coyau / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
Limberger Cheese – Original photo by John Sullivan
Gruyere – © Rolf Krahl / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Stracchino – Cvezzoli / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Brie cheese with fresh thyme on black background – Marco Verch / CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://flickr.com/photos/160866001@N…)

#brie #cheese #medieval #medievalfood #tastinghistory #medievalrecipes

November 26, 2021

Look at Life — Air Umbrella (1961)

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, France, Germany, History, Italy, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

PauliosVids
Published 20 Nov 2018

A look at NATO’s international squadrons, with footage of the F104 Starfighter.

QotD: English working class culture

Filed under: Britain, History, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… in all societies the common people must live to some extent against the existing order. The genuinely popular culture of England is something that goes on beneath the surface, unofficially and more or less frowned on by the authorities. One thing one notices if one looks directly at the common people, especially in the big towns, is that they are not puritanical. They are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer as their wages will permit, are devoted to bawdy jokes, and use probably the foulest language in the world. They have to satisfy these tastes in the face of astonishing, hypocritical laws (licensing laws, lottery acts, etc., etc.) which are designed to interfere with everybody but in practice allow everything to happen. Also, the common people are without definite religious belief, and have been so for centuries. The Anglican Church never had a real hold on them, it was simply a preserve of the landed gentry, and the Nonconformist sects only influenced minorities. And yet they have retained a deep tinge of Christian feeling, while almost forgetting the name of Christ. The power-worship which is the new religion of Europe, and which has infected the English intelligentsia, has never touched the common people. They have never caught up with power politics. The “realism” which is preached in Japanese and Italian newspapers would horrify them. One can learn a good deal about the spirit of England from the comic coloured postcards that you see in the windows of cheap stationers’ shops. These things are a sort of diary upon which the English people have unconsciously recorded themselves. Their old-fashioned outlook, their graded snobberies, their mixture of bawdiness and hypocrisy, their extreme gentleness, their deeply moral attitude to life, are all mirrored there.

The gentleness of the English civilization is perhaps its most marked characteristic. You notice it the instant you set foot on English soil. It is a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen carry no revolvers. In no country inhabited by white men is it easier to shove people off the pavement. And with this goes something that is always written off by European observers as “decadence” or hypocrisy, the English hatred of war and militarism. It is rooted deep in history, and it is strong in the lower-middle class as well as the working class. Successive wars have shaken it but not destroyed it. Well within living memory it was common for “the redcoats” to be booed at in the streets and for the landlords of respectable public-houses to refuse to allow soldiers on the premises. In peace-time, even when there are two million unemployed, it is difficult to fill the ranks of the tiny standing army, which is officered by the country gentry and a specialized stratum of the middle class, and manned by farm labourers and slum proletarians. The mass of the people are without military knowledge or tradition, and their attitude towards war is invariably defensive. No politician could rise to power by promising them conquests or military “glory”, no Hymn of Hate has ever made any appeal to them. In the last war the songs which the soldiers made up and sang of their own accord were not vengeful but humorous and mock-defeatist. The only enemy they ever named was the sergeant-major.

George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.

November 23, 2021

Canadian Army Newsreel – Baby Flat-Tops Protect Convoys

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

canmildoc
Published 18 Nov 2012

Newsreels shot between 1940 and 1946 by the Canadian Army Film Unit for presentation to servicemen and women. A unique document of Canada’s role in the war on the front lines as well as on the home front.

Tags: Canadian Army Film Unit, Canadian Army, war, World War II, front lines, home front, servicemen, servicewomen, newsreel, military, WWII

November 22, 2021

A new study may show that “Justinian’s plague” reached Britain before Constantinople

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Health, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Instapundit linked to a news release on a recent Cambridge study on the plague which devastated the Byzantine Empire during the reign of Justinian I, but which may have come through an as-yet undiscovered northern European path that reached the British Isles well before appearing within the Eastern Roman territories:

Illustration of the Hagia Sophia from European History: An outline of its development by George Burton Adams, 1899.
Wikimedia Commons

“Plague sceptics” are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6th–8th centuries CE, argues a new study based on ancient texts and recent genetic discoveries.

The same study suggests that bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded case in the Mediterranean via a currently unknown route, possibly involving the Baltic and Scandinavia.

The Justinianic Plague is the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in west Eurasian history and struck the Mediterranean world at a pivotal moment in its historical development, when the Emperor Justinian was trying to restore Roman imperial power.

For decades, historians have argued about the lethality of the disease; its social and economic impact; and the routes by which it spread. In 2019-20, several studies, widely publicised in the media, argued that historians had massively exaggerated the impact of the Justinianic Plague and described it as an “inconsequential pandemic”. In a subsequent piece of journalism, written just before COVID-19 took hold in the West, two researchers suggested that the Justinianic Plague was “not unlike our flu outbreaks”.

In a new study, published in Past & Present, Cambridge historian Professor Peter Sarris argues that these studies ignored or downplayed new genetic findings, offered misleading statistical analysis and misrepresented the evidence provided by ancient texts.

Sarris says: “Some historians remain deeply hostile to regarding external factors such as disease as having a major impact on the development of human society, and ‘plague scepticism’ has had a lot of attention in recent years.”

Sarris, a Fellow of Trinity College, is critical of the way that some studies have used search engines to calculate that only a small percentage of ancient literature discusses the plague and then crudely argue that this proves the disease was considered insignificant at the time.

Sarris says: “Witnessing the plague first-hand obliged the contemporary historian Procopius to break away from his vast military narrative to write a harrowing account of the arrival of the plague in Constantinople that would leave a deep impression on subsequent generations of Byzantine readers. That is far more telling than the number of plague-related words he wrote. Different authors, writing different types of text, concentrated on different themes, and their works must be read accordingly.”

November 21, 2021

The Red Army Kicks Ass – Operation Uranus! – WW2 – 169 – November 20th, 1942

Filed under: Africa, Australia, Britain, France, Germany, History, Japan, Military, Pacific, Russia, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 20 Nov 2021

After months of stubborn defense the time has finally come for the Soviet counterstroke, but is it in time to save Stalingrad? And can the Allies reach Tunis and take all of North Africa before the Axis can reinforce?
(more…)

SA80 History: XL60 Series in 4.85mm

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 May 2017

Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:

http://armamentresearch.com/british-e…

Once the basic configuration of the new British rifle was determined, the next step was to build a series of prototypes. The design that took form was basically a bullpup copy of the Armalite AR-18. The design team at Enfield were mostly senior draftsmen, with virtually no firearms experience among them. To make things worse, most of the design team was regularly rotated onto other projects, preventing them from developing any project experience on the rifle.

Several prototype batches were made (typically of a dozen guns each, both IWs and LSWs), all in the unique British 4.85x49mm cartridge, with a variety of different feature sets. Through the different patterns, configurations would change on the safety (push button vs lever) fire selector (push button vs lever), and magazine catch (straight-in side lever vs rock-in side lever vs rock-in rear paddle). At this time, plans still existed to make both left- and right-handed versions of the final gun, so prototypes of both were manufactured.

Because cost-cutting measures had not yet been forced on the project, these XL-60 series guns were generally reliable, at least in normal conditions. They are quite comfortable to fire, with a cartridge very similar to the 5.56mm NATO in practical terms. There is nothing particularly wrong with that cartridge, but it would be dropped when it lost NATO trials to the Belgian SS109 … but we will address that in the next episode of the SA80 history.

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QotD: Britain’s middle class after WW1

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Business, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One of the most important developments in England during the past twenty years has been the upward and downward extension of the middle class. It has happened on such a scale as to make the old classification of society into capitalists, proletarians and petit bourgeois (small property-owners) almost obsolete.

England is a country in which property and financial power are concentrated in very few hands. Few people in modern England own anything at all, except clothes, furniture and possibly a house. The peasantry have long since disappeared, the independent shopkeeper is being destroyed, the small business-man is diminishing in numbers. But at the same time modern industry is so complicated that it cannot get along without great numbers of managers, salesmen, engineers, chemists and technicians of all kinds, drawing fairly large salaries. And these in turn call into being a professional class of doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, etc., etc. The tendency of advanced capitalism has therefore been to enlarge the middle class and not to wipe it out as it once seemed likely to do.

But much more important than this is the spread of middle-class ideas and habits among the working class. The British working class are now better off in almost all ways than they were thirty years ago. This is partly due to the efforts of the Trade Unions, but partly to the mere advance of physical science. It is not always realized that within rather narrow limits the standard of life of a country can rise without a corresponding rise in real-wages. Up to a point, civilization can lift itself up by its boot-tags. However unjustly society is organized, certain technical advances are bound to benefit the whole community, because certain kinds of goods are necessarily held in common. A millionaire cannot, for example, light the streets for himself while darkening them for other people. Nearly all citizens of civilized countries now enjoy the use of good roads, germ-free water, police protection, free libraries and probably free education of a kind. Public education in England has been meanly starved of money, but it has nevertheless improved, largely owing to the devoted efforts of the teachers, and the habit of reading has become enormously more widespread. To an increasing extent the rich and the poor read the same books, and they also see the same films and listen to the same radio programmes. And the differences in their way of life have been diminished by the mass-production of cheap clothes and improvements in housing. So far as outward appearance goes, the clothes of rich and poor, especially in the case of women, differ far less than they did thirty or even fifteen years ago. As to housing, England still has slums which are a blot on civilization, but much building has been done during the past ten years, largely by the local authorities. The modern council house, with its bathroom and electric light, is smaller than the stockbroker’s villa, but it is recognizably the same kind of house, which the farm labourer’s cottage is not. A person who has grown up in a council housing estate is likely to be – indeed, visibly is – more middle class in outlook than a person who has grown up in a slum.

George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.

November 20, 2021

Modern navigation aids compared

Filed under: Britain, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In common with most people in this age of pandemic, I don’t travel very much these days. Back when I did manage to get out and about on the roads, I had an early Garmin GPS device in my vehicle and when I eventually updated the sound system in my truck to a new device, it included a built-in GPS (that constantly “loses” satellite fixes and loudly informs me, even when I’m not using the mapping function). I’ve had both good and bad experiences with these devices, but Alistair Dabbs is much more entertaining with his story:

“Sat Nav FAIL” by J-o-n-o is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Turn left. Turn right. At the roundabout, take the fourth exit.

Nobody enjoys being told what to do all the time but in the case of Google Maps I will make an exception. What I like about it best is that I can ignore her directions – should dissent take my fancy – and she doesn’t get cross.

This is in sharp contrast with all the classic sat-navs I have ever used, including the one embedded permanently into my current vehicle. Not only does it have a penchant for taking me on pointlessly circuitous routes, the wrong way up one-way streets, and along shortcuts too narrow for a bicycle, it grows angrier by the second when I refuse its orders.

“Turn right, turn right, turn right, turn left,” it would yell at increasing volume, trying to browbeat me into making a U-turn. Well no, I don’t want to drive through that building site or weave between those ambulances and fire engines dealing with that overturned lorry. Can’t you take me on an alternative route?

“Recalculating …” it would bark like a sulking dalek, but never accomplishing such. “Recalculating … Recalculating …”

Clearly I am not the only reluctant motorist to have given up on traditional sat-navs: not a single ad for one of these has turned up in my Black Friday spam deluge this year. And good riddance. Of the £3m per minute spent by Brits on their Black Friday shopping, roughly £0 will be spent on in-car nags.

Google Maps is more chilled. It’s as if she has resigned herself to my penchant for taking the wrong exits and missing turns. This is a habit I acquired by trying too hard not to drive like my father, who would obey every instruction from his sat-nav with military immediacy. As soon as he heard the words “Turn left”, he’d turn hard on the steering wheel straight away and we’d find ourselves heading up someone’s front drive, into an underground office car park or across a pedestrianised shopping walkway.

Me, I prefer to wait a bit – maybe a bit too long. Google Maps doesn’t mind and gives me no grief. Perhaps she also recognises her own faults in occasionally trying to direct me to drive through bricked-up entrances and children’s playgrounds. “Pff, whatever,” she probably thinks. “He’s too thick to follow the normal route. Let’s try a longer one.”

The odd thing is that she talks to Mme D in a very different way. On her smartphone, Google Maps is, well, chatty.

While all I get is a functional “Turn left/right” or “In 300 metres take the slip-road,” Mme D is treated to a tirade of verbosity. “Move into the filter lane and turn left at the next traffic lights heading north-northwest into B3496 Lower High Street but keep to the right to avoid the turnoff, mind the pedestrian crossing and wave hello to the butcher on the corner …” it spews, one directive tumbling into the next in a single continuous description of the journey and all its finest details.

DicKtionary – M is for Mathematics – Newton and Hooke

Filed under: Britain, History, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 19 Nov 2021

Today we turn away from killers and sociopathic rulers and look at two men from the world of science. Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke were certainly very intelligent and creative, but were they dicks as well?
(more…)

Meet The Last Artisans Making Traditional Bagpipes By Hand In Scotland’s Capital | Still Standing

Filed under: Britain, History, Media, Woodworking — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Business Insider
Published 2 Jul 2021

Bagpipes have been a symbol of Scottish heritage for centuries, but traditional artisans have faced stiff competition with the rise of mass manufacturing. Kilberry Bagpipes is now the last workshop in the capital city of Edinburgh where they still make them by hand.

For more information, visit:
https://kilberrybagpipes.com/

——————————————————

#Bagpipes #Scotland #BusinessInsider

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Meet The Last Artisans Making Traditional Bagpipes By Hand In Scotland’s Capital | Still Standing

From the comments:

Kilberry Bagpipes
1 month ago
It was a pleasure having you guys in to film with us! Thank you for putting together such a fantastic video illustrating what we do and why we do it! If anyone has any further questions or is keen to learn to play then please feel free to email us where we will be happy to help!

All the best,
Dave and Ruari
The Kilberry Team

November 19, 2021

Viewing-with-alarm … from afar

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Spiked, Simon Evans explains why he finds British commentary on US hot-button issues like guns and race to be frequently uninformed but remarkably certain of itself:

What many Brits believe every American carries in their pickup trucks or on their persons, probably.

As a Brit, there are few things less edifying, nor more unintentionally hilarious, than an American newspaper reporting on any very English scandal. A breach of some obscure royal protocol, perhaps, or an aspect of parliamentary procedure, often involving Black Rod, which despite the capital B, the Washington Post will have to explain, is not a racial epithet, or an ill-advised tribute act.

A personal favourite is when a provincial dietary preference has caught the New York Times‘ eye, having unexpectedly “caught on” nationwide. It is an innocent enough pleasure, watching Americans trying to distinguish black pudding from haggis, or indeed gravy from “chippy sauce”. Like watching the Dutch discuss the morality of bullfighting, or Korea debate a proposed rule change in top flight Buzkashi.

Yet put the sneaker on the other foot and watch British commentators angrily contend the moral and legal thrust of a case in which an American is on trial for using lethal force with a firearm, and we suffer something very like Gell-Mann Amnesia by proxy. We forget how important a little local knowledge might be, and our seasoned, tolerant, bemused respect for tradition and culture and specialist knowledge are gone within moments. Watching the Kyle Rittenhouse case approach a verdict, British commentators are a-froth with indignation at the palpable miscarriages of justice seemingly running unchecked only five short hours away across the globe. My God, he had a gun ! What more is there to say? And – do I have this right? – he crossed state lines ! The man’s a monster.

Not since the proroguing of parliament two years ago have so many people become acquainted so quickly with something so arcane as the crossing of state lines with intent to do mischief. Putting aside the fact that the weapon itself did not cross this fabled demarcation, what is striking is the evident lack of enthusiasm for certain other state lines, such as the one somewhat further to America’s south, or indeed the one etched around the British Isles, that currently seem to get crossed on a pretty frequent basis, with who knows what intent? Drawing attention to those lines is clearly racist.

It was GB Shaw who first made the observation that GB’s shores were separated from the US’s by an ocean of incomprehension, concealed by our sharing a common language.

Rather like urban Canadians, most British readers and viewers tend to agree with the opinions expressed in US mainstream media based largely in urban coastal areas:

So, we don’t get the full spectrum argument. Instead, we gratefully share the apparent horror and shame of the coastal elite, with their tertiary education and their teeth that meet in the middle, when confronted with their inland, inbred in-laws. We deplore the multi-decade epidemic of what seems, if you read the Washington Post and the NYT, to be the largely white, Wild West assassination culture that 2A concedes. Bullets sprayed around schools. Shopping malls, synagogues and mosques running with blood. A death toll out of all control. Murder, cold-blooded and cruel – and largely in the service of a bigotry, as often as not a racial bigotry, as old as the Appalachians hills.

This is, to put it as mildly as one can without choking, not quite the whole story. Do your own due diligence, it isn’t hard. The editors of the NYT can’t stop you acquainting yourself with the FBI crime statistics, and they put some of the more notorious outbreaks of flying lead into useful perspective.

But generally, we instead swallow like sugary cough syrup (believing it good for us, no matter how delicious it also is) the narrative that guns are largely in the hands and lovingly tended racks of homicidal white supremacists, paranoid death-spiral redneck survivalists, and a police force that is barely superior in discipline, racial enlightenment or legitimacy to a rounded-up posse of ad hoc lynch-happy vigilantes.

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