Quotulatiousness

September 25, 2026

Shock! Horror! Civil servant says SAS troopers are “feral” and “nasty”

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

If you’ve ever met a regular soldier, you’ll have noticed that some of them are not comfortable in ordinary civilian settings for quite some time after they get back from active service … they have to re-adapt and that takes time and effort. Out in the field, the niceties of civil society are contra-survival in many cases. Special forces soldiers, who are much more likely to see the colour of blood (their own, their mates’, or much more likely, the enemy’s) find it even harder to be “nice” around dainty civilians like Monica Grenfell:

EXCLUSIVE: Special forces soldiers believe they are “untouchable” and not all of them are the heroes they think they are, according to a former female civil servant who worked alongside them.

Monica Grenfell, who was employed at the Special Air Service (SAS) headquarters in Credenhill, near Hereford, for three years, said some of the elite troops were “feral” and it was “the nasty characters who really ruled the roost”.

She has given evidence under oath to the Afghan Inquiry and has now been interviewed by @thetimes

During a security briefing, Grenfell claimed that an officer joked about the deaths of three SAS reservists in the Brecon Beacons, saying that “dying on selection is nature’s way of saying you have failed”, to which others laughed

Grenfell described how she was told that soldiers dropped detainees in Afghanistan from forklift trucks “for fun”. She said she asked someone what they did in their spare time in the country and they said they got forklift trucks and “drove really fast then slammed on the brakes so they fell from a height”.

The comments certainly trend a certain way:

Hector Drummond @hector_drummond
·
She should never have been allowed to be around them.

Integral Views @Integral_Views
·
Swearing and ‘being feral’ is actually just normal male behavior in groups, including friendships. All workplaces used to be like this.

Women find this atmosphere to be threatening and have gone about changing every working environment to suit their preferences without a single thought that men might find those new female coded, HR dominated safe space environments uncomfortable.

We do, by the way. We hate them.

Men retreated into gaming and now that’s also been infiltrated by woke game developers. Masculinity is simply no longer acceptable.

I’m sick of what women prefer being the unchallenged yardstick for what’s apparently morally virtuous.

Shine Like Marble @MoscowIn2008
·
The “female civil servant” rather sums up modern Britain. A feminised state obsessed with risk, HR and safeguarding, passing judgement on institutions like the SAS.

Cedric CiphercloΔk @Cycario
·
Which one didn’t text her back the night after the squadron function?

Bea Johanssen @bea_johanssen
·
Grenfell worked as a kitchen assistant and storekeeper between 2015-2018 — why would she be attending security briefings?

The Officers’ Mess @officersmess
.
Cool. Let Monica pass selection & do the grimy shit that affords her the freedom to have opinions.
Opinion she would be denied if not for the folks at the pointy end of the spear who have been protecting it.
If its too much for the Monica’s of the world: Find a new line of work.

QotD: The whole point of imposing tariffs is to raise prices

Filed under: Britain, Government, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

So why would we impose tariffs on an import or three? No, leave aside whether it’s a good idea or not, why would we do so? To increase the price of that item inside those tariff barriers. That’s it, that’s the point, to increase the price.

Think on it. So, those dastardly foreigners are better, or cheaper, or subsidised, or just plain swarthy johnnies who are selling to us and thereby stealing the crust from the mouths of the more expensive (or less good etc) proper British producers. So, we now impose a tax at the border. This makes those products from swarthy johnnies more expensive. So, people will buy fewer swarthy and more good and honest British.

This also enables the good British to raise their prices and so make a profit.

So, what actually happens is that the British consumer gets screwed for the benefit of British capitalists. Not quite what I’d recommend as a policy but that’s the point and the intention. Tariffs raise the domestic price of the thing, that’s the reason why.

Tim Worstall, “But Increasing Prices Is The Very Point Of Tariffs”, It’s all obvious or trivial except …, 2026-06-18.

September 23, 2026

Doctor Who – the early Doctors

Filed under: Britain, History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

One of my earliest memories of television involve a BBC children’s TV show that began in 1963: Doctor Who. My mother claims I watched every episode from behind the settee, but I wouldn’t let her turn it off even though I was clearly terrified. I was young enough that I don’t remember particular stories — I don’t even remember being surprised when the actor portraying the lead character suddenly changed from William Hartnell to Patrick Troughton. After my family came to Canada, I only occasionally caught an episode on TV, and I don’t think I saw anything produced after the late 1980s, so all the modern casting choices (and the controversy) passed me by.

Millennial Woes provides a helpful guide to the show from the first episode through to the late 1980s, which may be of interest to some of you:

Several people have asked me to write a guide to Doctor Who, so here it is. I think most readers will be familiar with the show so I won’t waste time introducing it. Suffice it to say, we’re talking about a somewhat silly family sci-fi show, but one that frequently had soul, style, humour, and a lot of warmth. As with so much contemporaneous TV drama, Doctor Who had charm that seems to be simply impossible to achieve nowadays.

This guide is a difficult one to write because there are simply so many stories to survey, and because the show has multiple eras which are very distinct — almost different TV shows altogether. (Broadly, I would say the eras are 1963-69, 1970-81, 1982-87, and 1988-89.)

[…]

Something you will notice is that I talk about the incidental music almost as much as the stories themselves. I find Doctor Who‘s music, across the various eras, very stimulating and enjoyable in its own right. (This indicates how big a part it must play in the show itself.)

The First Doctor was played by William Hartnell. This was Doctor Who at its very beginnings, in 1963, so it is radically different not only from the modern 2005 show but even from the Pertwee era seven years later, by which time TV production had advanced in leaps and bounds.

I must confess to being barely acquainted with Hartnell’s era, having watched only four or five stories in total. It is too slow-moving for my tastes. However, I can certainly recommend one episode …

“An Unearthly Child”

This is the very first episode. Though it is technically the first of a four-part story, it is really a “standalone” episode to set up the programme. The introduction of now-iconic elements is beautifully done. Everything at this stage seems darker and more mysterious than it will later be. The Doctor is secretive, unfriendly and sinister. The TARDIS is scary and doesn’t seem reliable, its first “flight” being a genuinely unnerving experience.

The atmosphere is terrific throughout. The whole thing is in grainy black & white reminiscent of a 1930s horror film. It is excellent, in my opinion. Had the show continued in this vein it would probably have been much shorter-lived but less lightweight. I guess things are always better while they still have their mystery.

The Second Doctor was played by Patrick Troughton. He was perhaps the most talented — as an actor — of the men who played the role in the classic era. His turn on the character is much more playful and irreverent than Hartnell’s. I am again very unfamiliar with the era, so am somewhat at a loss for recommendations.

“The Three Doctors”

This is a cheat since this story is actually in the Third Doctor’s era, but I think the Second really dominates proceedings so it feels appropriate to cite this story as one of his. You get a strong sense of how different he is from the Third, whom Troughton effortlessly upstages. And it’s a good story.

The Third Doctor was played by Jon Pertwee, then known mostly for comedy work. During most of this era the Doctor is confined to Earth, working as “scientific advisor” to UNIT led by the Brigadier, and battling his Timelord nemesis the Master. A lot of the stories are 6 or 7-parters, formats that work very well; there is more world-building than in the 4-parters, which start to seem slightly lacking by comparison.

The third was perhaps the least “alien” incarnation of the Doctor. You can easily imagine him being a heroic leader in the Empire or a maverick figure in British government or business, up to about 1970 (after which such mavericks were tamed or filtered out by bureaucracy). Aristocratic but still practical and “a man of action”, he is constantly innovating and questioning, and being frustrated by the lack of imagination in the lesser men around him. But he is very much a man, not an alien. That choice was probably dictated by Pertwee’s own personality, and it would be reversed when his successor arrived.

Nevertheless, this era was a peak for Doctor Who. The storytelling is very competent, the production style has real charm and the acting (RP galore!) is consistent and endearing. All of this means the stories bear rewatching, remaining enjoyable time after time.

In terms of choice, you can hardly go wrong with this era. The only bad stories are “Carnival of Monsters” and “The Mutants“, with the rest being uniformly great fun.

September 22, 2026

The Forgotten Scandal Behind Britain’s Favourite Poem

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

The History Chap
Published 14 May 2026

In January 1896, a small column of mounted men rode into the Transvaal — uninvited, unsanctioned, and about to hand the British Empire one of its most embarrassing scandals of the Victorian era. Their leader was Dr. Leander Starr Jameson, trusted fixer of Cecil Rhodes, and a man absolutely certain he was doing the right thing. Within days, he was a prisoner of the Boers. But this is not simply a story of a military disaster. It is the story of how a disgraced Victorian adventurer — stripped of his reputation, imprisoned in Holloway, and abandoned by the powerful men he had protected — became the inspiration for the most famous poem in the English language.

Rudyard Kipling’s “If—” has been quoted by parents, coaches, and prime ministers for over a century. What almost nobody knows is the man Kipling had in mind when he wrote it — and the extraordinary story of how Jameson faced catastrophe with a silence and dignity that left Kipling genuinely moved. In this video, I tell the full story: the Jameson Raid, the cover-up that reached the highest levels of the British government, the parliamentary inquiry that should have destroyed several careers, and the remarkable rehabilitation of the man at the centre of it all.

It is a story about loyalty, resilience, and the gap between a man’s reputation and his character. Which is, when you think about it, exactly what “If—” is about.

0:00 Britain’s Favourite Poem
1:14 Leander Starr Jameson
2:40 Rhodes’s Plot
4:02 Joseph Chamberlain
4:36 Jameson Loses His Head
5:35 The Jameson Raid
6:31 Battle of Doornkop
8:26 Triumph & Disaster
9:26 Jameson on Trial
10:23 Holloway Prison
11:15 Before Parliament
13:46 Redemption
14:11 “If-” Poem
15:10 Jameson’s Death
16:12 “A Man, My Son”

September 21, 2026

“The completion of the Parkinsonian cycle”

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

In The Critic, Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri shows how Parkinson’s Law still applies long after C. Northcote Parkinson’s work:

“Admiralty Arch” by Leonard Bentley is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

In 1958, C. Northcote Parkinson, a prescient observer of bureaucracies, noted how perfection of planned layout is achieved only by public institutions on the point of collapse. Parkinson’s observation is prima facie paradoxical. Yet when an institution is growing during an exciting time of expansion, even adventure, there is little time to design the perfect headquarters. That luxury is afforded later, when all the important work has been completed.

Take St Peter’s Basilica, for example. It was designed only after the political power of the Papacy had been significantly curtailed. Or the Palace of Nations, opened in 1936, when the League of Nations’ failure as an institution was already evident. Even Buckingham Palace was expanded at a time when the monarch had assumed a rather ceremonial role in the constitution.

I’ve written about Parkinson and his sardonic observations in these august pages before, but what brought him to my mind again last week was the sight of the renovated Admiralty Arch. Parkinson might have traced the long arc of decline as far as decay but stopped short of its final stage. We may rejoice, for we have now arrived at the terminus: once a building has become both perfect and symbolic, it is at last available to be sold off for a song or leased out. We might call this the completion of the Parkinsonian cycle.

Admiralty Arch is a familiar fixture of the London landscape. Raised at the initiative of King Edward VII in memory of his mother, it became the home of Britain’s naval command. It was where Sir Winston Churchill designed his not-always-successful naval expeditions. It will soon open its doors again as a new member of the Waldorf Astoria hotel family. Some connection with the past will be at least retained through the Pol Roger champagne served at its bar.

What is happening in the Mall is symbolic of a wider drift. Half a mile down the road, the Old War Office in Whitehall was converted (guess what?) into a luxury hotel. In Covent Garden the old cells of Bow Street are also now a hotel curiosity. The grand County Hall, which continues to stare somewhat antagonistically across the Thames at Parliament, now welcomes not county councillors but visitors as a hotel and, at least more imaginatively, an aquarium.

If luxury hotels are not your cup of tea, fret not, for the tyranny of “adaptive reuse” has a downmarket cousin. The humbler ruins of Middle England have been put to new purposes. A former British Home Stores — that cathedral of the affordable cardigan – in Slough was discovered last year to have been converted into a huge marijuana farm. Seventeen hundred plants thrived under grow-lamps in the same aisle where once school uniforms could be purchased, whilst the cultivators were dozing on a mattress by the fire exit. At least the building was, in the developer’s immortal phrase, “brought back into use”.

September 20, 2026

What Caused the War of 1812?

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

Real Time History
Published 17 Apr 2026

The War of 1812 broke out after a series of escalations between Great Britain and the still young United States. The impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy desperate to crew their ships in the ongoing war against Napoleon, the question if the US could trade with Britain and France at the same time and thus profit of the war, all came to a head after failed negotiations.
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QotD: Brexit – the process is the punishment

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Shortly after the results of the Brexit referendum were declared and Mr. Cameron resigned as Prime Minister, the French newspaper, Le Figaro, published a little cartoon. Two French peasants are looking across the Channel towards England, and one says to the other (or words to this effect), “They do things differently over there. They pay attention to referendum results.”

Well, yes and no. There is little doubt that a large part of the political class, the upper bureaucracy and the intelligentsia did their very best to prevent, or at least obstruct, Britain’s departure from the European Union. The Prime Minister who followed Mr. Cameron, Mrs. May, was herself in favour of remaining, and yet she was put in charge of the negotiations on the British side. This was like putting an ardent pacifist in charge of an army, and indeed she managed to negotiate a deal that (from the British point of view) was the worst of both worlds.

It should have been obvious from the first that Brexit was an existential question for the European Union, as well as for Britain, of course. If Britain prospered, or simply failed to suffer greatly, after Brexit, this would have been a disaster for the European Union, in the populations of which there was significant and growing scepticism of or opposition to the “European Project” (it is the only project I know whose end is never stated, though I suspect it is a superstate in whose administration politics in the normal sense of elections, appeals to public opinion, etc., are not to be allowed to intrude). An example had to be made, and in effect has been made. No other member state will want to go through what Britain has gone through these last four years. The light must not be worth the candle.

Theodore Dalrymple, “European Empire, Fractured”, Law & Liberty, 2020-11-10.

September 19, 2026

CAMRA and the fight to save British beer in the 70s

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

On his Substack, Henry Jeffreys recommends a couple of YouTube videos that beer fans might find interesting:

Every so often I vow that I am going to stop wallowing in nostalgia and engage with some contemporary culture: watch some new films, read a new book, and maybe even listen to some new music. But then I discover a treasure trove of old Jonathan Meades documentaries on Youtube and I’m lost. There’s so much good stuff on there that I am very tempted to cancel my Netflix subscription and take out Youtube premium, which means I won’t have to watch the incredibly irritating adverts. That’s another thing that’s not as good as it used to be.

Here’s a few booze-linked things that I’ve been watching recently.

[…]

The battle for Britain’s pint

I’ve long been a real ale enthusiast, in fact I wrote something for the Daily Telegraph on the subject earlier this month. My father was an early member of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale. Meades refers to the organisation, not altogether negatively, I think, as “anti-metropolitanism, anti-modernism”. There’s something distinctly Hobbity about tilting at progress and, to some extent, winning. Live, unpasteurised beer was becoming a rarity by the 1970s, and now it’s easy to find in almost every town and village that still has a pub. It was described as “the most effective consumer pressure group in Europe”.

This documentary from 1977 looks at the battle to save Britain’s traditional beer. It’s particularly worth watching for the young bearded earnest CAMRA members at their conference. There were also a surprising number of women. It makes you realise that while real ale has a stuffy image today, at the time it was fashionable. It was a youth movement, not a bunch of reactionary old men, but young people seeing a problem and doing something about it. It is inspiring. If it wasn’t for these earnest, bearded young men and women (mainly without beards), then much of what we take for granted about British beer would no longer exist. The movement also inspired American craft beer, which in turn inspired British craft beer. It is hard to overstate how important CAMRA was for beer around the world.

Whicker’s World — Englishmen in New York

If you want to see what the state of American beer was like in the early 1980s, watch Alan Whicker’s documentary about Englishmen living in New York. The star is entrepreneur Mancunian Richard Wrigley, who is behind the Manhattan Brewery Co. He says at one point: “I like good beer and there wasn’t any in the States”, and compares the local brew to Perrier. He has taken over a gigantic derelict industrial building and is trying to turn it into a brewpub with brewing equipment from Germany. He’s even shipped over two dray horses at vast expense. Wrigley is completely unflappable, confident that they will open in two weeks even though the work is nowhere near finished. Whicker is such a great interviewer, warm and avuncular, but he keeps pressing Wrigley about the expense and where the money is coming from.

Amazingly the brewery, which cost over a million dollars, did actually open, but it struggled to make money and eventually closed in 1995. Richard Wrigley, who died in 2022, is a fascinating character. He’d make a great subject for a feature film. There’s something of a chancer about him, slightly slippery but very charming. At one point Wrigley says that he has been described as a “conman”, but the Americans mean it as a compliment. It’s well worth reading up on the story of the Manhattan Brewery Co. While it failed, the head brewer Garrett Oliver would go on to make beer at the Brooklyn Brewery in 1994 — a company that would transform beer in New York. By the time I visited the city for the first time in 2003, good beer was everywhere.

How Britain’s oldest Proof House still tests modern military weapons

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

BFBS Forces News
Published 12 May 2026

For nearly 400 years a succession of Proof Masters have been making sure firearms in the UK are safe, stopping dangerous guns from being used.

Every firearm, whether it’s for military use or not, has to go through something called a proofing process.

This is a series of tests to make sure the weapon is not only made properly, but it can withstand the pressure generated by modern-day ammunition.

September 18, 2026

Worrying about post-combat lawfare will crush initiative and morale

Filed under: Britain, Europe, History, Law, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

As mentioned in Dr. Robert Lyman’s account yesterday, the British government wants to turn back the hands of time to change the rules of engagement under which British Army troops and police conducted themselves during “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. It may be an exciting prospect for law firms, activists, and other anti-military groups, but it would set a terrible precedent for British use of military force from this moment onwards. At The Critic, Alexander Gray explains why this is a dangerous and stupid idea that should be dropped forever:

“British Army working during the Field Training Exercise” by U.S. Army Europe is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0 .

The debate about the hounding of veterans through the courts has long been presented in terms of fairness. This is indeed one side of the story. No decent country should tolerate servicemen being dragged through repeated investigations decades after the events in question, often without new evidence and after previous inquiries have already reached their conclusions.

But focusing only on veterans misses an even more urgent point: this has become a national security threat.

Over the past two decades, the legal framework governing military operations has changed. Courts have increasingly applied standards developed for peacetime to scrutinise wartime situations of uncertainty and danger which often demand split-second judgement. Human rights law, designed principally to regulate relations between the state and individuals, has increasingly been applied to military operations, including to situations already governed by the Law of Armed Conflict.

This is having consequences on the battlefield. Personnel who believe that a lawful decision taken in combat may be reconstructed years later in a civilian courtroom are now incentivised to be more cautious, more process-driven and less willing to exercise initiative. That hesitation can slow decisions in situations where delay may place lives and the success of an operation at risk. The prospect of repeated investigations and prolonged legal uncertainty is also damaging morale and contributing to experienced personnel leaving the service, depriving the Armed Forces of skills and judgement that are difficult to replace.

This is why the Prosperity Institute has published the Military Operations Bill, presented to Parliament this week by Sir David Davis MP. It reasserts the principle that combat operations should be judged primarily by the Law of Armed Conflict. Courts have an important role in punishing wrongdoing, but they should not become alternative command structures reviewing military judgement from the safety of hindsight.

Update, 19 September: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

September 17, 2026

British government seeks to retroactively change the Rules of Engagement during “The Troubles”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, History, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’m old enough to have had lengthy conversations with British soldiers and officers who were serving or had recently served in Northern Ireland at the tail end of “The Troubles”. It was a dangerous situation the troops found themselves in and the Rules of Engagement they worked under at least recognized that it wasn’t a normal day at the office back home. On his Substack, Dr. Robert Lyman explains why the current government’s plan to retroactively change the rules that governed the actions of the British military forces is one of the worst possible things they could do:

Lieutenant Robert Lyman in the Ballymurphy, 1983, in a photograph snapped by Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Elliott, CO of 1LI at the time. He was driving past in his Landrover and spotted a photo opportunity.
Photo via The War Room

For those who know me well, the idea that I might now be encouraging young men and women not to join the Armed Forces might sound that I had lost my marbles. I can assure you that is not the case. I am deadly serious. This government’s determination, building on the surrender of the previous Conservative government to the varying dictats of the ECHR, will drive an impossible moral and legal wedge between the people who the country ask to do its dirty work, and the government that sends them in harms way. It is an intolerable set of affairs that all sensible people in his country should oppose. What sort of perversity might think that this behaviour is acceptable from any government? I despair, yet it seems that this is precisely what our current morally impoverished government seems to desire.

[…]

The central concern is that the proposed changes will expose servicemen and women, many of whom have already undergone judicial scrutiny for actions undertaken during the Troubles, to further litigation and investigation. In practice, this is likely to encourage a new wave of cases brought by individuals seeking to revisit or reinterpret events from a campaign in which terrorist organisations such as the IRA and INLA were ultimately defeated.

The immediate implications are troubling enough. The longer-term precedent, however, is far more serious. If this legislation proceeds, it will send a clear message to today’s servicemen and women, that even after they have acted lawfully, completed investigations, and fulfilled their duty to the State, they may still face renewed legal jeopardy in later decades. It undermines the fundamental bond of trust between those who serve and the government that sends them into harm’s way.

Every member of the British Armed Forces operates within a strict and clearly defined legal framework. These rules, embodied in the Laws of Armed Conflict and implemented through Rules of Engagement (RoE), govern the use of force in military operations. During my own service, I spent countless hours learning these rules, teaching them to my soldiers, and ensuring they were followed in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and elsewhere.

This debate is not about whether soldiers should be above the law. Of course they are not, nor should they be. Rather, it is about whether the rules that governed military operations at the time can be retrospectively reinterpreted after a conflict has ended. The concern is that former adversaries will be able to pursue legal action against veterans for actions that were considered lawful under the Rules of Engagement in force at the time.

Today, Policy Exchange published an excellent report examining this issue in relation to former members of the SAS who served in Northern Ireland. The report sets out the problem clearly and persuasively, concluding that the proposed changes should be abandoned. I agree.

Predictably, some MPs have defended the legislation. Diane Abbott, for example, has argued on X that opposition to the changes amounts to “a call for armed forces personnel to be placed above the law.” That characterisation is deeply misleading. The debate has never been about exempting soldiers from the law. It is about subjecting veterans to repeated investigations and additional layers of judicial scrutiny many years after the events in question, often in ways that were never demanded of those they fought against on behalf of the nation.

At its core, this issue is one of fairness. It raises questions about double standards, retrospective judgment, and the constant shifting of the goalposts. Veterans who served under one set of rules are now being told that those rules may no longer be sufficient protection against further legal action.

The Brutal Life of a Medieval Butcher

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

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 24 Mar 2026

Tender stewed spiced meat and onions with bright yellow saffron sauce

City/Region: England
Time Period: c. 1430

It’s a well-circulated myth that medieval cooks spiced meat heavily in order to hide the fact that the meat had gone bad. And it is, indeed, a myth. Amongst the many reasons why this doesn’t hold up is the fact that in medieval Europe, spices were expensive, and if you could afford to use a lot of them on your meat, you could afford not-spoiled meat. Dishes like this one, which uses five different spices and saffron, which has always been expensive, would be only for the wealthy.

This dish has the classic medieval flavors of warm spices and vinegar, and I really enjoyed it. The meat and onions are tender, the sauce is a beautiful bright yellow, and it’s quite unlike anything we typically eat today.

    Brawn en peuerade
    Take might broth of Beef or Capon, and then take clean fresh meat, and seeth it, but not too much; And if it be fresh meat, roast it, but not too much, and then cut it in pieces, and cast it into the broth; And then take whole onions, and peel them, and then take vinegar thereto, and cinnamon, … then take cloves, mace, and powdered pepper, and cast thereto, and a little saunders, and set it on the fire, and let boil till the onions and the meat be cooked enough, and not too much; then take liquor made with bread and vinegar and wine … and cast thereto saffron to make the color bright, and salt, and serve it forth.
    — Harleian Ms. 279, c. 1430

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QotD: Boris Johnson

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

Some generous souls are claiming it’s not Boris’s fault — which may be true, up to a point, of which more in a moment — but whoever is to blame one thing is abundantly clear: Britain is a failed state, the Sick Man of Europe, and those of us who grew up believing that to have been born British was to have won the lottery in life have now been sorely disabused of the notion.

How can this possibly have happened to the land of Magna Carta and English Common Law, the heroic seafaring nation which coloured the atlas pink and stamped its character on half the world’s nations from Australia and the U.S. to India and South Africa, that invented most of the world’s best sports, produced most of its greatest literature, beat Philip II of Spain, Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler and discovered almost everything worth discovering?

Just when did Britain become so incredibly, embarrassingly shit?

Well, it’s easy to blame Boris, as I have done on occasion, for being a priapic lard-butted lightweight chancer who should never have been given the keys to Number 10. As we’ve learned to our cost, he’s all mouth and no trousers, great for an impromptu bon mot or jolly photo op but perfectly useless in times of crisis, being too easily led, having no opinions of his own, the backbone of sponge and the moral character of a Plecostomus catfish.

James Delingpole, “Britain is now the sick man of Europe”, Breitbart, 2020-08-14.

September 16, 2026

The new front in the British “flag war” – Welsh castles

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

You may have heard that at least one municipal government in England is trying to ban private citizens flying both the Union flag and the St. George’s Cross, yet actively encouraging the use of other national or political flags. On Substack, Paul Embery shows just how far the anti-British/anti-English activists are willing to go … in this case all the way to Wales (where, yes, there’s already some local anti-English sentiment to start with):

Pakistani flags fly over medieval walls in Cardiff.
Photo from X via Paul Embery

SOMETIMES it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Britain’s political elites are engaged in some sort of private game to see just how far they can test the patience of the native population before it snaps.

A people who were, and still are, remarkably tolerant in all sorts of ways, including towards those from minority backgrounds and cultures, seem daily to have their good faith exploited.

Only someone who had been living under a rock for the past couple of decades could have failed to notice the gulf that has emerged between our political institutions and everyday folk living outside of our fashionable cities and university towns.

That gulf – which is widening still – explains why a palpable sense of polarisation exists across many parts of the country today.

The latest attempt to stir the pot comes courtesy of Cardiff council, which recently decided to fly the flag of Pakistan from the city’s castle – one of the Welsh nation’s most historic and iconic sites. The flag was apparently hoisted in celebration of Pakistan’s independence day and stayed there over two days (a similar thing happened in 2024 — see image).

Needless to say, a row swiftly broke out, with Reform voices locally and nationally attacking the decision and in return facing accusations from their political opponents – who seemed to close ranks around the issue very tightly – that they were seeking to incite hatred and division.

Recent history tells us that anyone who expresses even mild disapproval about this type of virtuous ingratiation of foreign nationalities and cultures by our public bodies is likely to face taunts of being some kind of embittered xenophobe or reactionary. And, usually, the condemnation will be accompanied by a lecture trumpeting the merits of living in a diverse and multicultural society.

But those who harbour misgivings surely have a point. Because such acts do rank as a kind of provocation. It’s one thing seeking to foster good relations with other nations and cultures – such an approach is eminently sensible – but it’s another thing entirely indulging those nations and cultures to such a degree that many indigenous citizens begin to feel their own country is losing its historical identity and turning into something resembling a supersized version of the Olympic village. And that is where many Britons feel their country is now.

That Pakistan is a member of the Commonwealth did not appear to be the prompt for Cardiff Council’s decision, for no councillor seems to have cited that justification in defence of it. Moreover, the colours of non-Commonwealth nations, such as Poland, have also been displayed over the castle in recent times.

“Oh, it’s only a flag, and it’s just for two days”, the citizens-of-nowhere will argue. Except that it isn’t only a flag, and it isn’t just two days. What we have seen over the past couple of decades is a subtle but concerted effort on the part of Britain’s elite class to embed the ideology of cosmopolitan universalism across all areas of our public life.

These people are globalists in every sense. They see our country as a shop, not a home.

They believe in permissive migration policies, free trade libertarianism and technocratic supranationalism – all things to which large chunks of the population are hostile.

Update: I’ve heard that it helps to actually include the URL …

Update the second, 17 September: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

WWII British Tank Tech Tree

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

The Tank Museum
Published 8 May 2026

In 1939, the Vickers Light Mark VI formed the backbone of the British tank force. It’s hard to believe that in six years technology evolved from this to the mighty Centurion.

But this journey was no walk in the park. It took blood, sweat, lots of tea and various wrong turns. So, in this video we’re going to walk you through the entire British tank family tree to reveal this process.

This is a family tree organised by type not by chronology. That means Light Tanks, Cruiser tanks, Infantry tanks and Assault tanks.

So, without further ado, this is every British tank of World War II.

00:00 | Intro
01:14 | Light Tanks
03:21 | Cruiser Tanks
12:37 | Infantry Tanks
16:08 | Assault Tanks

This video features archive footage courtesy of British Pathé.

In this film, join Paul Famojuro for the ultimate deep dive into British tanks of WWII. Over six years Britain’s tanks evolved in a number of curious directions. From the light tanks of the early war to the troubled development of the cruiser tanks concept, the slow-moving infantry tank to the hard-hitting assault tanks, each branch of this tech tree was designed to solve specific problems on the battlefield. There were some successes, just as many failures, and a whole lot of weird and wonderful tanks along the way.

Want to learn more about the British tanks of WWII? Here are some of the sources we used to make this film:

British Tanks and Fighting Vehicles 1914-1945, B.T. White. 1970
British Cruiser Tank A13 Mk I & Mk II, Peter Brown. 2015
British Infantry Tank Mk III Valentine, Parts 1 & 2 Dick Taylor. 2010
The Great Tank Scandal, David Fletcher. 2021
The Universal Tank, David Fletcher. 2021
Centurion Owner’s Workshop Manual, Simon Dunstan. 2017
The Tank Museum Guide to Matilda, Dick Taylor. 2024
The Tank Museum Guide to Comet, Dick Taylor. 2025
A13 Cruiser Mk. V Covenanter Tank. A Technical History, P.M. Knight. 2018
A38, Infantry Tank, Valiant, https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/gb…

#tankmuseum #veday

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