The Tank Museum
Published on 23 Sep 2016In 1919 the British Army found itself short of armoured cars when many were needed quickly to police various trouble spots around the world.
In reality it did not make a very good armoured car. It was too big, too unwieldy and slow while the crew got a rough ride on solid tyres. However it was durable and quite a few were still in service when the Second World War began.
http://tankmuseum.org/museum-online/vehicles/object-e1949-321
April 9, 2018
Tank Chats #26 Peerless Armoured Car | The Tank Museum
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April 8, 2018
Brexit: Why Britain Left the European Union
PragerU
Published on 12 Mar 2018Is the European Union good for Europe? Or would Europeans be better off without it? Nigel Farage, a leader of the United Kingdom’s Brexit movement, shares his view.
Script:
If one big government is bad, imagine how much worse two big governments would be. But that’s what people living in Europe have had to deal with: their own nation’s bloated government and the super-national government of Europe, now known as the European Union. Bureaucracy times two! How’s that for a horror show?
Well, actually, you’ve no idea. It’s worse than you think. Believe me — I know, because for seventeen years, I’ve represented South East England as a member of the European Parliament, the EU’s legislative body. I was also leader of the UK Independence Party, or UKIP, where I lead Britain’s efforts to leave the European Union. To their everlasting credit, that’s just what happened on June the 23rd, 2016: The United Kingdom left the European Union. The world knows it as “Brexit.”
Brexit is a statement of national sovereignty. Don’t misunderstand me: I like nations. I like borders. I like the people that live within those borders making their own laws. But I don’t like it when faceless bureaucrats make laws for nations they don’t even live in.
But that’s what they do in the European Union.
Imagine a Belgian telling a Brit how much he can charge his customers — or the reverse. The EU bureaucrats do this in a myriad of different ways, all day, every day. It is a conspiracy of the elites.
Who are those elites? Well, they’re a bunch of self-important, overpaid, social engineers with useless college degrees who have never done a proper day’s work in their lives and have no connection with ordinary, decent people. I’ll take the good sense of an Italian farmer or a French baker over the arid intellectualism of an EU bureaucrat any day.
And I say these things not as an anti-European; I love Europe! It’s a fantastic, exciting, great continent: different peoples, languages, and cultures. But these peoples, with their languages and cultures, have effectively been hijacked by a giant, ever-expanding bureaucracy: the European Union.
People will say, “but isn’t there a parliament, a European parliament, that represents the people of Europe?” Well, yes, but this body has got no real power; it can’t make its own laws. Rather, the power resides with the European Commission. They’re unelected and they can’t be removed, and that’s how absurd the whole thing is.
The European Parliament meets in Brussels. At least, that’s what I thought when I was elected there. But once a month, do you know what happens? They load the contents of our offices and papers into big, plastic trunks, and they put those trunks on lorries, and they drive them nearly 400 miles down Europe’s motorways to a French city called Strasbourg where, for four days, the contents of our offices, and our papers, are put into a new office, and the parliament then sits there. Twelve times a year this back-and-forth happens, and this from an organization who say they want to reduce their level of carbon footprint! This, from an organization whose accounts have not been given a clean bill of health by the auditors for the last twenty years!
This…a parliament? It’s more like a traveling circus.
For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/brexit-why-britain-left-european-union
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April 7, 2018
The Danelaw – Alfred vs. Guthrum – Extra History – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 5 Apr 2018The Vikings moved from Scandinavia to the coasts of Britain, intent on establishing a new kingdom by any blood necessary. What they probably didn’t expect was that one of their own leaders, Guthrum, and the local king, Alfred, would end up cooperating on the creation of a kingdom for the Danes.
Sponsored by Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia! http://store.steampowered.com/app/712100/Total_War_Saga_Thrones_of_Britannia/
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April 6, 2018
Operation Michael Runs Out Of Breath I THE GREAT WAR Week 193
The Great War
Published on 5 Apr 2018Two weeks after the initial success of the German Spring Offensive, Operation Michael loses pace and direction. The German supply situation is dire and when the troops find cattle and food behind the British positions, there is no way for them to ignore that. At the same time, orders for a new German offensive in Flanders are given and the Germans land additional troops in Finland.
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April 3, 2018
HMS Cockchafer: The Epic Voyages, 1915-1949
Thersites the Historian
Published on 12 Feb 2018Recently, I stumbled across the existence of the most oddly named ship that I have ever encountered and I decided to dig into its history. The following is a brief history of a British gunboat which saw action in many of Britain’s most noteworthy military actions during the early 20th Century.
Wikipedia entry on HMS Cockchafer.
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April 2, 2018
Vikings – did they actually exist?
Lindybeige
Published on 9 Oct 2015The term ‘Viking’ is used inaccurately most of the time. Scandinavia was home to many Norse-speaking farmers, fishermen, carpenters, and cheese-makers, who spent between none and very little of their time carrying out sea raids.
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
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April 1, 2018
The Royal Air Force at 100
In The Register, Gareth Corfield notes the amusing detail of the RAF’s birthday happening to fall on April 1st by publishing a couple of days early (so nobody thinks he’s pulling their collective legs):
This Sunday marks the 100th birthday of the Royal Air Force – Britain’s military arm for the skies – as a separate Armed Force in its own right. The RAF has been at the forefront of many technological innovations over the last century, many of which are still in use to this day.
From the earliest days of biplanes (and triplanes), through the invention of radar, the jet engine, vertical takeoff tech, and aircraft designs that were decades ahead of their time.
While traditionally these types of “birthday journalism” articles are published on the actual birthday, we at El Reg still reckon it’s a bit weird that the RAF’s official foundation also takes place on April Fool’s Day, so here it is before smart-arses feel compelled to claim this is some kind of windup.
Going back through the history books, the RAF’s main technological achievements include developments in aerial navigation, aircraft sensing and ground-based control, and, somewhat controversially, the jet engine, though the actual milestones for that one are shared with Germany.
[…]
All in all, the RAF has been an aeronautical force for good, with the service developing the basics for many things that commercial passengers today take for granted. Its technological developments and innovations have contributed to making the world both safer and smaller, as aircraft fly ever faster, building upon the principles established and researched by the Air Force. Even those with grievous injuries have been benefited by the RAF, thanks to the pioneering work of the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine.
Let’s just hope it manages to shrug off the problem of having its birthday on the same day as April Fool’s Day…
Update: Samizdata relates the tale of the 50th anniversary non-celebration.
Today I would like to note one incident in the RAF’s history, which came at the ‘half-way’ mark, when in 1968, (actually on 5th April) after Harold Wilson’s Labour government decided not to commemorate the RAF’s 50th anniversary with a fly-past, and this did not go down well at all. In fact, it went down so badly that one RAF pilot, the heroic Flight Lieutenant Alan Pollock, threw away his career and very nearly his freedom in the ‘Tower Bridge incident‘, when, in protest at the lack of a commemoration, in his Hawker Hunter jet, he ‘buzzed’ the Houses of Parliament. Then on the spur of the moment, going down the Thames towards the sea, he flew under the top span of Tower Bridge at around 400 mph, and also ‘beat up’ a few airfields inverted, before landing, getting arrested but avoiding a court martial after being demobilised on health grounds by superiors eager to avoid the publicity of a trial, which is a weird echo of a similar ruse used in Viktor Suvorov’s ‘The Liberators’ when a Soviet Army soldier’s conduct presented a bureaucratic embarrassment that could not be concealed from higher authority. The jet only just missed hitting the top span of Tower Bridge with its tail, so no harm was done, however, it was close, there was a double-decker bus on the bridge at the time, and a cyclist on the bridge ripped his trousers dismounting in haste. Flt-Lt Pollock gallantly offered to pay for the trousers, but the cyclist declined.
Wikipedia has more detail on the Hawker Hunter Tower Bridge incident.
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Boarding Schools – what are they like?
Lindybeige
Published on 15 Oct 2016For two years, I went to a British public boarding school, and recently, I attended a reunion. I talk about them.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LindybeigeIt was difficult in the edit to achieve the balance I wanted, but this can be redressed in later videos. I recorded a few more pieces to camera and took more shots of the school. I don’t feature the people there because this was a personal project, and it would be unfair to involve them in something they may find expresses opinions and ideas with which they disagree. Besides, I wanted to talk to old friends, not poke a camera in their faces.
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
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March 29, 2018
British Schools Explained – Anglophenia Ep 25
Anglophenia
Published on 5 Mar 2015How much do you know about the U.K.’s education system? Siobhan Thompson teaches you the basics. Study up!
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March 28, 2018
Backs To The Wall – All Eyes On Amiens I THE GREAT WAR Week 192
The Great War
Published on 27 Mar 2018The German Operation Michael continues this week and after some uncertainty, the Germans put their eyes on Amiens. The city is a vital communications and transport hub for the Entente and so Ferdinand Foch decides to mount a defence in front of the city.
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March 25, 2018
March 24, 2018
QotD: Joining “The Firm”
Personally I think Meghan Markle would be a catastrophic addition to The Firm if she does not understand why it is a terrible idea for the Royals to get political. Do that and they stop being symbols (essentially endearing living flags whose job is to wave strangely and act as a navigational datum for flypasts) and become legitimate political targets. There is no surer route to a republic and I would regret that (as I do not share Spiked’s democracy fetish) but not necessarily oppose it if the House of Windsor does indeed go full retard.
Perry de Havilland, “Samizdata quote of the day”, Samizdata, 2018-03-01.
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March 23, 2018
Kaiserschlacht – German Spring Offensive 1918 I THE GREAT WAR Week 191
The Great War
Published on 22 Mar 2018It was all or nothing for the German Army under General Erich Ludendorff now: They unleashed the biggest offensive of the entire war on the Western Front trying to split the British and French Armies, drive the British off the continent and capture Paris.
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The use of the euphemism “grooming”
Mark Steyn from a recent Clubland Q&A session:
If you missed our livestream Clubland Q&A on Tuesday, here’s the action replay. Simply click above for an hour of my answers to questions from Mark Steyn Club members around the planet on various aspects of identity politics, from micro-aggressions at the University of California to macro-aggressions in Telford and Rotherham – with a semantic detour into nano-aggressions and quantum-aggressions. Speaking of semantics, I saw this question after the show ended, from Steyn Club Founding Member Toby Pilling:
If with regard to language, clarity is the remedy (as Orwell would say), shouldn’t the ‘Asian Grooming Gangs’ be re-named ‘Moslem Rape Gangs’? I’ve been trying to make the case that they should at the local council I work for, but over here in the UK one can be hauled in for hate speech at the drop of a hat.
I agree with Messrs Orwell and Pilling on clarity in language, and have never liked the word “grooming”, a bit of social-worker jargonese designed to obscure that what’s going on all over England is mass serial-gang-rape sex-slavery. “Grooming” is, in that sense, a euphemism. An hour or two after yesterday’s show I chanced to stop at the Upper Valley Grill and General Store on an empty strip of road in the middle of the woods in Groton, Vermont, a small town of a thousand souls that feels, if anything, rather smaller than that. And paying at the counter I noticed that they had a can next to the cash register for donations to what the hand-written card called the “Groton Grooming Fund”.
Having just been on the air yakking about Telford, I was momentarily startled. It is, in fact, not a whip-round to enable the gang-rapists to buy more petrol to douse the girls in, but a contribution toward the volunteer group that maintains the local ski and snowmobile trails – ie, they “groom” the snow. Happy the town in which grooming is left to the snowmobile club rather than the Muslim rape gangs. The slogan that greets you on the edge of the village is “Welcome to Groton – Where a Small Town Feels Like a Large Family”, which I always find faintly dispiriting. But it’s better than Telford, where a large town feels like a small prison.
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The Grand Tour James May Running
The Grand Tour Fans
Published on 16 Mar 2018Do you think James May never ran on TV and during the episode of The Grand Tour where Jeremy Clarkson drove the Ford GT was the first time ever?
Well you’re wrong. In the third season of James May Man Lab he ran on public TV. Check out this video and see James Running (twice !!)
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