Published on 12 Apr 2016
The Falklands War (Guerra de las Malvinas) in 1982 as seen by many as an inevitable defeat for Argentina, but taking a closer look at the preparations or better the lack of preparation on the Argentine side reveals that the British could have faced a far stronger opposition and might even had been defeated at least in their initial attacks. This video could also be seen as a how NOT to guide.
May 29, 2017
Falklands War – Argentine Perspective – An Inevitable Defeat? (Guerra de las Malvinas)
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May 28, 2017
Britain’s general election – “Except for Europe, the contest is between an authoritarian hag and a Fenian scumbag”
Sean Gabb is holding his nose and voting Tory this time around, but he’s not happy about it:
For the avoidance of doubt, I still intend to vote Conservative in this dreadful election. And, if Labour seems to be catching up in the opinion polls, so, I suspect, will enough people to give the Conservatives a decent majority. The general election is a rerun of last year’s Referendum. There is no other consideration that ought to sway anyone who is looking beyond our present circumstances. We vote Conservative. We leave the European Union. We hope and work for a realignment in British politics. Except for this, however, I would be dithering between another vote for UKIP and a spoiled ballot. Except for Europe, the contest is between an authoritarian hag and a Fenian scumbag.
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have made their responses to the Manchester Bombings. According to the BBC,
Theresa May has urged world leaders to do more to combat online extremism, saying the fight against so-called Islamic State is “moving from the battlefield to the internet.”
What she has in mind is outlined in the Conservative Manifesto:
[W]e will establish a regulatory framework in law to underpin our digital charter and to ensure that digital companies, social media platforms and content providers abide by these principles. We will introduce a sanctions regime to ensure compliance, giving regulators the ability to fine or prosecute those companies that fail in their legal duties, and to order the removal of content where it clearly breaches UK law. We will also create a power in law for government to introduce an industry-wide levy from social media companies and communication service providers to support awareness and preventative activity to counter internet harms, just as is already the case with the gambling industry.
If this hardly needs translating into Plain English, I will make the effort. The Conservatives are proposing to censor the Internet. Anyone who, in this country, publishes opinions or alleged facts the authorities dislike will be prosecuted. If these are published abroad, access to the relevant websites will be blocked. Internet companies will be taxed to pay for a Ministry of Propaganda to go beyond anything now provided by the BBC.
We are supposed to think the main targets of censorship will be the radical Moslems. I have no doubt some effort will be made to shut them up. The main targets, however, will be on the nationalist right. These are the ones who will be harried and prosecuted and generally threatened into silence. The only person so far to have lost a job on account of the bombings is the LBC presenter Katie Hopkins. She made a sharp comment on air about the Moslems, and was out. Other than that, we have had a continual spray of propaganda about the Religion of Peace, and how its core texts have nothing to do with suicide bombings or mass-rape or disorder.
In Britain, in Europe, in America, there are powerful interests that are itching to censor the Internet. It is the Internet that has made us cynical. It is the Internet that is giving us the probable truth. It is because of the Internet that the authorities are being held to account. Never let a good atrocity go to waste. Get the people ready for censorship while the bodies are still being reassembled.
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May 27, 2017
Mary Anning – Princess of Paleontology – Extra History
Published on 22 Apr 2017
“She sells seashells by the seashore.” Many have heard this old English rhyme, but few know the true story of the woman who inspired it. Her name was Mary Anning, and she did much more than sell seashells: she discovered some of the very first dinosaur fossils and laid the groundwork for the brand new field of paleontology. But she never got credit for her work.
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May 24, 2017
Will it be more Mourning Sickness, or will it be anger this time?
Brendan O’Neill on the reactions to the Manchester bomb attack on Monday after a pop concert:
After the terror, the platitudes. And the hashtags. And the candlelit vigils. And they always have the same message: ‘Be unified. Feel love. Don’t give in to hate.’ The banalities roll off the national tongue. Vapidity abounds. A shallow fetishisation of ‘togetherness’ takes the place of any articulation of what we should be together for – and against. And so it has been after the barbarism in Manchester. In response to the deaths of more than 20 people at an Ariana Grande gig, in response to the massacre of children enjoying pop music, people effectively say: ‘All you need is love.’ The disparity between these horrors and our response to them, between what happened and what we say, is vast. This has to change.
It is becoming clear that the top-down promotion of a hollow ‘togetherness’ in response to terrorism is about cultivating passivity. It is about suppressing strong public feeling. It’s about reducing us to a line of mourners whose only job is to weep for our fellow citizens, not ask why they died, or rage against their dying. The great fear of both officialdom and the media class in the wake of terror attacks is that the volatile masses will turn wild and hateful. This is why every attack is followed by warnings of an ‘Islamophobic backlash’ and heightened policing of speech on Twitter and gatherings in public: because what they fundamentally fear is public passion, our passion. They want us passive, empathetic, upset, not angry, active, questioning. They prefer us as a lonely crowd of dutiful, disconnected mourners rather than a real collective of citizens demanding to know why our fellow citizens died and how we might prevent others from dying. We should stop playing the role they’ve allotted us.
As part of the post-terror narrative, our emotions are closely policed. Some emotions are celebrated, others demonised. Empathy – good. Grief – good. Sharing your sadness online – great. But hatred? Anger? Fury? These are bad. They are inferior forms of feeling, apparently, and must be discouraged. Because if we green-light anger about terrorism, then people will launch pogroms against Muslims, they say, or even attack Sikhs or the local Hindu-owned cornershop, because that’s how stupid and hateful we apparently are. But there is a strong justification for hate right now. Certainly for anger. For rage, in fact. Twenty-two of our fellow citizens were killed at a pop concert. I hate that, I hate the person who did it, I hate those who will apologise for it, and I hate the ideology that underpins such barbarism. I want to destroy that ideology. I don’t feel sad, I feel apoplectic. Others will feel likewise, but if they express this verboten post-terror emotion they risk being branded as architects of hate, contributors to future terrorist acts, racist, and so on. Their fury is shushed. ‘Just weep. That’s your role.’
The fear about the inevitable backlash on the part of us backward, ignorant, intolerant westerners has been a standing joke for more than a decade, as Mark Steyn noted back in 2006:
I believe the old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between a New York traffic light changing to green and the first honk of a driver behind you. Today, the definition of a nanosecond is the gap between a western terrorist incident and the press release of a Muslim lobby group warning of an impending outbreak of Islamophobia. After the London Tube bombings, Angus Jung sent the Aussie pundit Tim Blair a note-perfect parody of the typical newspaper headline:
British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow’s Train Bombing.
Ace of Spades H.Q. reports on the alleged bomber’s identity:
Manchester Suicide Bomber Named: Gary “The Garester” Eddington
Nah just fuckin wit ya, it’s Salman Abedi, and the keening cries warning against #Backlash! have begun.
Question: Why is there never a warning about Backlash before the suspect is named?
Answer: Because if the suspect turns out to be one of the few the media can claim are “right wing” (Nazis, etc.), then the media does not warn against backlash, but actively crusades in favor of it.
If this guy turned out to be anything that could be plausibly mischaracterized as right wing — tweeted in favor of Brexit, etc. — the media would be blaming this right now on Donald Trump and his supporters, and demanding they take accountability for their hatred.
But, it’s not, so the media set down its “Backlash is Good and Necessary” script and picked up its “Backlash is Bad” script.
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QotD: The evil of political correctness
PC [political correctness] represents, in essence, the institutionalisation of dishonesty, of deception, where people are given carte blanche to behave in an immoral way — ‘erect those fences, release the dogs, deport those people’ — but are encouraged to make it all seem nice and ‘non-hostile’. It brings to mind Wilde’s observation in his essay ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’, that ‘the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it’. So today, the worst people in politics are those who are nice about the individuals they repress, whether it’s British politicians whose policies keep migrants in degrading limbo in Calais yet who insist everybody use nice words when talking about those migrants, or American army officials who kill Afghans yet demand that their soldiers write only PC, gay-friendly messages on the bombs that do the killing (as, remarkably, happened during the Afghan War).
Some apologists for PC describe it as simply ‘being nice’: ‘institutionalised politeness’. There’s nothing remotely nice about PC. It is the friendly slave-owner; it suppresses open, honest discussion; it obfuscates the divisions and tensions in modern society through stymying the expression of certain ideas; it is the ornate lid on a society which, however civil we make our speech, remains fractured, sometimes tense, packed with clashing interests that will never be resolved by niceness. Whether PC is being used as a glossy cover for brutal policies, as in the case of Calais, or is being used to justify anew old racial and gender divisions, as it does when it demands that we recognise and celebrate the alleged differences between blacks and whites and between men (competitive) and women (consensual), PC is a tool of censorship and conservatism, its chief accomplishment being the repression of difficult words and ideas in the name of pacifying public life.
Brendan O’Neill, “The Calais migrants and the moral bankruptcy of PC”, Spiked, 2015-08-03.
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May 22, 2017
Who’s afraid of Mrs. Grundy?
In my family, the name “Mrs. Grundy” was used to describe someone of rigidly conformative taste and judgement (and keenly censorious bent). I’d always assumed it was just a family notion or perhaps a Yorkshire-ism, but the Wikipedia entry makes it clear that Mrs. Grundy has been the bane of many a would-be adventurous or daring spirit for centuries:
Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person, a personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety. A tendency to be overly fearful of what the respectable might think is also referred to as grundyism.
Although she began life as a minor character in Thomas Morton’s play Speed the Plough (1798), Mrs Grundy was eventually so well established in the public imagination that Samuel Butler, in his novel Erewhon, could refer to her in the form of an anagram (as the goddess Ydgrun). As a figure of speech she can be found throughout European literature.
It also discusses a real-life Mrs. Grundy from the early nineteenth century:
During the reign of William IV (reigned 1830-1837) a Mrs Sarah Hannah Grundy (1 January 1804 – 30 December 1863) was employed as Deputy Housekeeper at Hampton Court Palace one of Henry VIII of England’s most famous residences. Her husband, John Grundy (1798/1799 – August 1861), was keeper of the State apartments. Mrs Grundy became Head Housekeeper on 22 April 1838, a year after Queen Victoria ascended to the throne, and she served in that position until 1863 when she retired. Her duties included the care of the chapel at Hampton Court.
Royal families stopped using Hampton Court as a residence in 1737, and from the 1760s onward, it was divided up for “grace-and-favour” residents who were granted rent-free accommodation in return for great service to the Crown or country. These private rooms numbered in the hundreds. Much is revealed about the Victorian ladies living at Hampton Court Palace through their letters, particularly their correspondence to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office as the Ladies attempted to get around the regulations — to exchange their apartments for better ones, to sub-let their apartments for profit, to keep dogs, or other matters of convenience. Equally revealing are the letters from the Housekeepers to the Lord Chamberlain, complaining about the Ladies’ behaviour.
However, a bit of Canadian history indicates that the use of the term “Mrs. Grundy” as I’m familiar with it long predated the lady who policed morals at Hampton Court:
… in a book published in 1836, The Backwoods of Canada Being Letters From The Wife Of An Emigrant Officer, Illustrative Of The Domestic Economy Of British America, by Catharine Parr Traill, she writes: “Now, we bush-settlers are more independent: we do what we like; we dress as we find most suitable and most convenient; we are totally without the fear of any Mr. or Mrs. Grundy; and having shaken off the trammels of Grundyism, we laugh at the absurdity of those who voluntarily forge afresh and hug their chains.” This appears to show that the modern concept of “Mrs. Grundy” was current before the Mrs. Grundy of Hampton Court began her reign.
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QotD: The nanny state’s ever-expanding reach
The Royal Society for Public Health is suggesting that unusual, unhealthy or minority pursuits should be criminalised in order to set a good example to others. They want people to be arrested, fined and possibly even imprisoned for being poor role models. In a liberal society, the only appropriate response can be made with two words or two fingers.
Chris Snowdon, “A smoking ban in pub beer gardens? Stop persecuting smokers”, City A.M., 2015-08-14.
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May 21, 2017
Tank Chats #9 Whippet – Medium A
Published on 31 Aug 2015
The ninth in a series of short films about some of the vehicles in our collection presented by The Tank Museum’s historian David Fletcher MBE.
While the heavy tanks were designed for direct attacks against enemy trenches the Tank Corps also wanted a lighter, faster tank to work with the cavalry over open country. Designed by Sir William Tritton and built by Fosters of Lincoln the Medium A, or Whippet, was the only such tank to see service with the Tank Corps, starting in 1918.
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May 19, 2017
Diana Rigg on Farts, Knickers, Breast Size and Stage Nudity
Published on 6 Nov 2015
Portions of a fun interview with Mr. Cavett (America’s best interviewer) from years gone by.
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May 18, 2017
World of Warships – HMS Hood
Published on 17 May 2017
Look up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No don’t be silly, it’s HMS Hood. Bugger off with your Superman jokes, Jingles.
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The Avengers On Location (1966)
Published on 13 Apr 2014
Beaulieu, Hampshire.
At Lord Montagu’s Motor Museum we see the filming of the ‘tag’ pieces for episodes of The Avengers television series, where Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee drive off in a vintage car – a different one each time.
Several shots of the cast and crew in the grounds of Beaulieu; Patrick Macnee chats to Lord Montagu. Patrick and Diana get into a veteran car; Diana puts on a groovy kind of face/eye shield and they drive off; they stop and the director gives instructions to Diana; as they start off again funny business ensues as Diana puts her feet up, then jumps from the car, leaps back in, clutches her head and so on.
Diana, in an evening outfit of a chiffon over harem pants, has her make-up touched up. Another sequence is shot with a different vintage car; when it doesn’t start, Diana gets from the back seat into the front and prepares to drive while Patrick goes to the rear to push, and ends up with a blackened face from the exhaust. He gets in; Diana drives off.
Commentator says the crew are trying to complete all these end sequences in one day’s shooting. Diana, in a blue cat suit, chews gum while receiving direction. In this sequence, Diana and Patrick start to push the veteran car which zooms off without them as they chase after it.
Note: according to a press release on file, this series was the first in Colour. More details in notes on the clothes worn and the filming of these tag pieces; Diana’s costumes were designed by Alan Hughes; Patrick wore his own suits!
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May 17, 2017
QotD: Britain’s post-Brexit access to the single market
You see, they think they are granting us a privilege by allowing us to sell them things. This is ludicrous of course, it is imports which make us richer, not exports. But let us humour their delusion for a little. The standard EU position is that if the companies and people of a country are to gain access to the Single Market then they must pay for that privilege. This cannot be about the imports that those people gain from the Single Market of course because that is always under their own domestic control. No, the EU’s insistence really is that if Switzerland gets to sell cuckoo clocks into the EU, Norway can ship fermented sharks heads and the like, then this is a privilege. And that access to the Single Market means that Switzerland and Norway must pay the EU for that privilege. And they do.
[…]
If you get to sell things in Europe then you’ve got to pay the tithe to the EU itself. Reminds me rather of Fat Tony and friends running a nice little protection racket but then much of the EU reminds me of that.
OK. But who should be paying that tithe?
Well, actually, the first question is whether that tithe is worth paying. As up above, it’s imports that make us all generally richer and that’s all under our control anyway. Exports do make some people richer – the people who profit from making exports of course. And that’s not us in general, that’s not Britain, nor the British, and it’s most certainly not the taxpayers who are made richer by exports. So, obviously, it should not be the taxpayers paying the tithe in order to gain access to that market for those exports which don’t profit them.
The people who should be paying the tithe are the people who profit from the tithe having been paid. Those very exporters. Which gives us the solution to who should be paying the tithe. And an interesting side effect of this will be that we will find out whether it’s worth paying at all.
The people who should be paying the tithe are the people who profit from the tithe having been paid. Those very exporters. Which gives us the solution to who should be paying the tithe. And an interesting side effect of this will be that we will find out whether it’s worth paying at all.
Actually, we could in fact argue that a payment into the EU budget in return for Single Market access is illegal state aid. And thus not allowed under the usual rules of trade with the EU. Because it is state aid. Exporters will face tariffs if the payment is not made. The payment thus benefits exporters. But the payment is made by taxpayers, this is thus aid from taxpayers to exporters. It’s a subsidy for exports – something that isn’t allowed.
[…]
The crucial point is that the benefits, as far as the UK is concerned, of Single Market access lie with those making the exports. Thus those making the exports should be those paying the cost of Single Market access. If those who benefit think it not worth the cost then no one should be paying such
bribesillegal state aidaccess fees. And simply by applying the costs, correctly, to those who benefit we find out which is the truth.It’s very difficult indeed, nay impossible, to see the down side of this suggestion. If exporters want Single Market access then exporters can pay for it, not taxpayers. If they won’t pay it then it’s not worth it, is it?
Tim Worstall, “Absurd But It Works – Ensure EU Single Market Access Post-Brexit With Export Taxes”, Forbes, 2016-06-27.
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May 15, 2017
Comparing Royal Marine field ration packs
A fascinating insight into the way the Royal Marines take care of the troops in the field, showing both enlisted mens’ and officers’ ration packs:
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QotD: Local government
If, that is, you believe it’s a council’s job to be lecturing takeaways shops, cafes and the like what should and shouldn’t be on the menu. Which personally, I don’t. Surely, if you’re forking out hundreds of pounds every year for your council tax, it ought to be things you actually want and need like regular dustbin collection, not for the services of some nannyish, finger-wagging lecturer treating you like a small child who refuses to eat his Brussels sprouts.
When I read that Rochdale Council employed a Healthier Choices Manager, I assumed at first it was a joke. But no: the job exists and it’s currently held by someone called Clare McNicol. Well I’m sure she’s a nice, caring, well-meaning person and she’s clearly very persuasive to have got all those chippies to participate in this ludicrous scheme. Really, though. Oughtn’t the council to have more urgent priorities than creating such busybodying non-jobs?
For example, three years ago, Rochdale was at the centre of an ugly, grooming gang scandal when a group of Pakistanis were jailed for 30 ‘horrific’ counts of child rape. With its limited budget, wouldn’t the council be better off beefing its apparently lacklustre Children’s Services Department, rather than trying to decide the local fish and chip shop menu? Isn’t the safety of vulnerable girls maybe a bit more important than the danger that someone, somewhere might put on a few more inches as a result of too many ill-advised takeaways?
Councils are always telling us how underfunded they are, how they’re expected to do more and more with less and less money. But I suspect that this is at least partly a problem of their own making. If they stuck to the basics – schools, street-cleaning, lighting and so on – and cut out all the dispensable luxuries like recycling awareness, sustainability, lesbian outreach, diet fascism, and so on, then I’m sure they’d find it much easier to live within their means. I expect most council taxpayers would be a lot happier too.
My fear, though, is that councils, especially those in inner-city Labour strongholds like Rochdale, really aren’t so interested in the dull but essential bread-and-butter stuff. (Let alone in confronting issues like the growth of intolerant Islamism). Rather they see it as their holy mission to mould the whole world in their progressive image. Hence, that multitude of different coloured bags you’re expected to sort your rubbish into, each week: they want to teach you that recycling as an act of religious devotion.
James Delingpole, “I prefer my cod in batter, thanks very much”, James Delingpole, 2015-08-15.
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May 14, 2017
Euthanised For The EU – that’ll reverse the Brexit vote for sure…
On Facebook, Brendan O’Neill responds to an article in the Independent, calling for elderly pro-Brexit voters to just die already:
Ian McEwan says the death of ageing voters, “angry old men”, will help swing Britain back to being pro-EU. Maybe we should hurry them along? Start a “Die for Britain” scheme, where old anti-Brussels bastards could sign up to have themselves put down? Make them feel so guilty for having plunged Britain and their grandchildren’s futures into uncertainty that they will lose the will to live, or certainly to vote? Initiate a cleansing of the demos, giving over-65s the option to croak it for the sake of their grandkids’ right to study in France for six weeks? Create a Euthanised For The EU scheme? We could call it EU-thanasia, perhaps get funding for it from Brussels.
I think we sometimes fail to grasp how nasty elite Remainers are. How misanthropic, anti-old, anti-working-class and of course anti-democratic they can be. Openly fantasising about old people dying is the first step towards helping old people die. It tells old people they are scum and Britain would be better off without them. Just imagine how that makes them feel. The elitist anti-Brexit outlook is the ugliest strain in British politics right now, and the ugliest I can remember in my lifetime.
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