World War Two
Published 18 Feb 2023The Allies bomb the monastery atop Monte Cassino in Italy, but just to the Northwest it’s the Germans attacking them at Anzio this week. In the Soviet Union, the Axis break out of the Korsun Pocket, but at great cost, and in the Pacific comes a major Allied raid on the Japanese base at Truk and landings on Eniwetok Atoll.
(more…)
February 19, 2023
The Destruction of Monte Cassino – Week 234 – February 18, 1944
Comments Off on The Destruction of Monte Cassino – Week 234 – February 18, 1944
Flower-Class Corvettes – WW2 Atlantic Defender
Matsimus
Published 29 Jun 2020The Flower-class corvette (also referred to as the Gladiolus class after the lead ship) was a British class of 294 corvettes used during World War II, specifically with the Allied navies as anti-submarine convoy escorts during the Battle of the Atlantic. Royal Navy ships of this class were named after flowers, hence the name of the class.
The majority served during World War II with the Royal Navy (RN) and Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). Several ships built largely in Canada were transferred from the RN to the United States Navy (USN) under the lend-lease programme, seeing service in both navies. Some corvettes transferred to the USN were manned by the US Coast Guard. The vessels serving with the US Navy were known as Temptress and Action-class patrol gunboats. Other Flower-class corvettes served with the Free French Naval Forces, the Royal Netherlands Navy, the Royal Norwegian Navy, the Royal Indian Navy, the Royal Hellenic Navy, the Royal New Zealand Navy, the Royal Yugoslav Navy, and, immediately post-war, the South African Navy.
After World War II many surplus Flower-class vessels saw worldwide use in other navies, as well as civilian use. HMCS Sackville is the only member of the class to be preserved as a museum ship. Flower Class corvettes were originally intended for coastal escort and mine clearing work. Derived from a whaler design, they were simple, highly seaworthy vessels that could be constructed in secondary yards. The dire lack of ocean escorts early in the war necessitated their being used to screen convoys traversing the North Atlantic between Nova Scotia and the UK. This was a role for which they were ill-designed, and their crews suffered accordingly. The Flowers were wet, highly cramped and impossibly lively. Many sailors could not adjust to the exhausting routine. Compounding the misery was the inexperience of the crews, most of whom had never been to sea. But any escort was better than none at all, so the yards continued to turn out corvettes. 120 were built in Canadian yards, and slightly more in the UK.
(more…)
Comments Off on Flower-Class Corvettes – WW2 Atlantic Defender
February 18, 2023
British Empire Crackdown in South Africa – Boer War 1899-1902
The Great War
Published 17 Feb 2023The 2nd Boer War saw the British Empire bring to bear the entire imperial might to put to rest a dispute with the Boer Republics in South Africa. With scorched earth tactics and the use of concentration camps, the Boer War was a glimpse of what was to come in 20th century warfare.
(more…)
Comments Off on British Empire Crackdown in South Africa – Boer War 1899-1902
George Hudson: Railway King or Prince of Darkness?
Jago Hazzard
Published 20 Dec 2020Entrepreneur, politician, businessman, visionary, benefactor, conman. There’s a lot to unpick with old George.
(more…)
Comments Off on George Hudson: Railway King or Prince of Darkness?
February 15, 2023
QotD: The divine right of kings
The best case for divine right monarchy is the voters’ behavior in a democracy. Unfortunately, the worst case for divine right monarchy is: divine right monarchs.
England’s James I, for instance, was a deeply weird dude. Though he wrote a whole book about his divine right to rule, he kept his weirdness sufficiently in check so as not to alienate his court. Alas, his heir didn’t bother, and we know how that turned out. And so it went with just about any divine right monarch — the more people who actually saw him, the flimsier the theory seemed. History is full of examples of kingdoms “ruled” by insane kings, but not too many of kingdoms thriving when the people knew the king was a lunatic. Feebleminded monarchs are generally kept under lock and key by their courtiers, or they end up Epsteined.
Even democracies once understood this. Pick any 19th century American legislator, for example. As P.J. O’Rourke once said about rock stars, to call one of these guys a drunken, borderline-illiterate pervert just means you’ve read his autobiography. But they knew enough to keep it sufficiently in check around the voters, so that so long as they didn’t actually Chappaquiddick someone, they’d face no repercussions.
Speaking of Chappaquiddick, the Media has always been complicit in the great game of Fool-the-Rubes. They only do it for Democrats now, of course, but that’s the real problem these days: the Media has been doing all this for so long, and so successfully, that they no longer feel the need to bother. Just as Charles I decided to let his freak flag fly because hey, why not, I’m the king, so the Democrat-Media complex went all-in in 2008. You watch these guys — Don Lemon, say, mocking Trump voters as illiterate hicks — and the expression on their face is one of relief. It feels good to finally let it all out, and the more you do it, the better it feels.
Severian, “Rule by Lunatic”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-01-29.
Comments Off on QotD: The divine right of kings
February 14, 2023
QotD: Outrage
Julie Burchill, “The pervert community? Oh please”, Spiked!, 2019-05-08
Comments Off on QotD: Outrage
February 12, 2023
German Desperation in Korsun Pocket – Week 233 – February 11, 1944
World War Two
Published 11 Feb 2023It is crisis mode in the Korsun Pocket this week for the Axis troops surrounded, but they are also losing ground all over the Eastern Front this week, including the big prize of Nikopol. In Italy, it is a different story as the Germans play offense at Anzio, though with only small gains.
(more…)
Comments Off on German Desperation in Korsun Pocket – Week 233 – February 11, 1944
Avro Vulcan: What made the Vulcan the best V bomber?
Imperial War Museums
Published 28 Apr 2021The Avro Vulcan Bomber, the most famous of the British V bombers, is known for its distinctive howl and delta wing. Initially one of the delivery agents of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent during the Cold War, the Vulcan later fulfilled another role, undertaking the longest bombing raid in history for Operation Black Buck in the Falklands Campaign of 1982. One of the first operational RAF aircraft with a delta wing, this impressive Cold War jet has never lost its appeal. In this video, events and experiences coordinator Liam Shaw takes us through the extraordinary history and technological achievements of the Avro Vulcan. We go into the cockpit and hear first-hand from the people who flew this unique machine throughout its long and remarkable history.
(more…)
Comments Off on Avro Vulcan: What made the Vulcan the best V bomber?
QotD: The heyday of Victorian newspapers
Now, the principal quality or characteristic of the sellers of patent medicine has always been effrontery, that is to say the blatant insinuation of the false. Thomas Holloway’s innovation was to insinuate such falsehood on a mass or industrial scale. There was hardly a newspaper in which he did not place a weekly advertisement; moreover, he pioneered the advertisement that masquerades as news story. He would ensure that reports of miracle cures in faraway places, supposedly wrought by his pills and ointment, and written as matter-of-factly as possible, were placed in every newspaper, reports whose veracity no one could possibly check for himself, of course.
As Napoleon once said, repetition is the only rhetorical technique that really works — besides which hope and fear render people susceptible to effrontery. In Thomas Holloway’s time, the fear of illness was often, and the hope of cure rarely, justified; at least Holloway’s preparations were unlikely to do much harm (they contained aloe, myrrh, and saffron), unlike the prescriptions of the orthodox doctors of the time. They allowed for the possibility of natural recovery, whereas orthodox medicine often hurried its consumers into their graves. Nevertheless, the claims Holloway made for his ointment and pills were preposterous, and something is not curative just because it fails to kill.
Holloway made an immense fortune by his effrontery and founded a women’s college in the University of London on the proceeds.
Theodore Dalrymple, “The Way of Che”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-10-28.
Comments Off on QotD: The heyday of Victorian newspapers
February 10, 2023
Hitler’s Jazz Band – WW2 Documentary Special
World War Two
Published 9 Feb 2023Does Adolf Hitler like Duke Ellington? No, and nor do many National Socialists. But the story of the music in the Third Reich is more complicated than you might think. What if we told you that Joseph Goebbels has tried to create a Nazi-approved swing band tasked with bringing the Jazz War to the Allies?
(more…)
Comments Off on Hitler’s Jazz Band – WW2 Documentary Special
QotD: Before Star Wars or the MCU there was … the Arthurian Narrative Universe
The situation is almost exactly the same as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We have a major character named King Arthur, but he was linked to numerous spinoffs and sequels. The other heroes connected to him soon established their own brands — including Lancelot, Merlin, Gawain, Tristan, Percival, and many others. Readers who enjoyed one of the heroes, often became fans of others.
If you make a list, the Arthurian Narrative Universe (ANU) has more than fifty protagonists. Not all of them became major brands, but that’s no different from the movie business, where even Disney can’t keep every superhero on the payroll.
Even more to the point, these stories were business initiatives, expected to enrich their owners. It’s hardly a coincidence that the most influential collection of stories about King Arthur in English, Le Morte d’Arthur published in 1485, originated as a profit-making venture by the earliest commercial publisher in Britain.
William Caxton was not only the first person to set up a printing press in England, but also the first retailer of printed books in the country. He acquired the manuscript of Le Morte d’Arthur from Thomas Malory, the Stan Lee of his day, and turned it into the single most influential secular British book between the time of Chaucer and the rise of Shakespeare.
He didn’t do it because he loved English history. (The painful truth is that very little — in fact next to nothing — in the Arthurian tales comes from documented historical events.) He didn’t even publish the book because he loved a good story. Caxton wanted to make a buck — or a pound sterling, I ought to say. He had identified the right brand franchise, much like the Walt Disney Company in the current day, and would milk it for all it was worth.
But here’s the most amazing thing about his brand franchise: Arthurian stories had been circulating in manuscript for more than 300 years at this point. And many of the details in these narratives are much older than that, reaching back to accounts of knights who fought in the Crusades, if not earlier.
We can trace the story of Lancelot and his adulterous romance with Queen Guinevere at least back to 1180. The story of the knights’ quest for the Holy Grail dates at least back to 1190. The first mention of King Arthur is no later than 828 AD.
Stop and consider the implications. King Arthur was the most popular brand franchise in secular narratives when he was 650 years old!
Of course, it was absurd. Nobody undertook knightly adventures of this sort during the Renaissance, but storytellers pretended otherwise. Everything about these narratives was outdated, unrealistic, and repetitive — the people who read these tales didn’t own suits of armor or compete in jousting tournaments. Those things had disappeared from society. But the audience still wanted these stories, so the same plots and characters got recycled again and again.
Ted Gioia, “Don Quixote Tells Us How the Star Wars Franchise Ends”, The Honest Broker, 2022-11-09.
Comments Off on QotD: Before Star Wars or the MCU there was … the Arthurian Narrative Universe
February 8, 2023
“Smoking has been a net gain for the Treasury ever since King James I started taxing it heavily in the 1600s”
Christopher Snowden asks whether we should believe the consistent claims of public health advocates on how much things they disapprove of (smoking, drinking, etc.) “cost” the taxpayer:
If smoking costs the taxpayers £173 billion, then how much does widespread forced feeding of office pastries cost?
If you say that a certain activity costs society £10 billion a year, most people would assume that if that activity disappears, society will save £10 billion a year.
They might have different ideas of what “society” means. Some will assume that the £10 billion is a cost to taxpayers while others will assume that some of the cost is borne by private individuals and businesses. But the majority will, quite reasonably, assume that the cost is to other people, i.e. those who do not participate in the activity.
And nearly everyone will assume that the £10 billion is money in the conventional sense of cash that can be exchanged for goods and services.
But when it comes to estimates from “public health” campaigners about the cost of drinking/smoking/obesity, all these assumptions would be wrong. Most of the “costs” are to the people engaged in the activity and they are not financial costs. Taxpayers would not pay less tax if they disappeared. In general, they would pay more.
Last month I mentioned an estimate of the “cost” of gambling in the UK and said:
These studies have no merit as economic research. They are purely driven by advocacy. The hope is that the average person will wrongly assume that the costs are to taxpayers and agitate for change.
The main aim of these Big Numbers is to convince the public that heavily-taxed activities place a burden on society that exceeds the tax revenue, thereby justifying yet more taxes and prohibitions.
In the case of smoking, this has become more and more difficult. Smoking has been a net gain for the Treasury ever since King James I started taxing it heavily in the 1600s. Today, as the smoking rate dwindles and tobacco duty rises ever higher, anti-smoking campaigners have got their work cut out duping non-smokers into thinking otherwise.
Tobacco duty brings in about £12 billion a year. For years, groups like Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) used a figure of £13.74 billion as the “cost of smoking”. This came from a flimsy Policy Exchange report which included £5.4 billion as the cost of smoking breaks and £4.8 billion as the cost of lost productivity due to premature mortality. Neither of these are costs to the taxpayer. They are not even external costs, i.e. costs to non-smokers.
Last year, in a review commissioned by the Department of Health, Javed Khan came up with a figure of “around £17 billion” as the “societal cost” of smoking. This included “reduced employment levels” (£5.69 billion) and “reduced wages for smokers” (£6.04 billion). Again, these costs fall on smokers themselves and are not external costs. They are, in other words, none of the government’s business.
Last week, a report commissioned by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) pulled out all the stops and announced that the cost of smoking to Britain was now — wait for it! — £173 billion. Go big or go home, eh?
Comments Off on “Smoking has been a net gain for the Treasury ever since King James I started taxing it heavily in the 1600s”
February 6, 2023
Why Traditional English Cheddar Is Aged In Caves | Regional Eats
Food Insider
Published 9 Oct 2019The earliest record of cheddar anywhere is at Cheddar, in Somerset, in 1170. The land around this village has been at the heart of English cheesemaking since the 15th century. Today, as many Cheddar producers have upscaled and require more land, there is only one traditional cheesemaker left in the village.
(more…)
Comments Off on Why Traditional English Cheddar Is Aged In Caves | Regional Eats
February 5, 2023
Leningrad: NO STEP BACK! – Week 232 – February 4, 1944
World War Two
Published 4 Feb 2023The Allies begin a new operation in the Pacific this week: assaulting the Marshall Islands. They also make big attacks from their beachhead in Italy at Anzio, but these are called off after only a few days in the face of heavy enemy resistance. However, in the USSR there are several successes against the Axis, as they are pushed back both in the far north and the far south of the front, and still surrounded near Korsun.
(more…)
Comments Off on Leningrad: NO STEP BACK! – Week 232 – February 4, 1944
February 4, 2023
Poland’s Descent into Civil War – War Against Humanity 097
World War Two
Published 2 Feb 2023Poland, occupied, abandoned or even threatened by her allies is left to fight her own war. A war that under the influence of internal and external forces looks more and more like a full blown civil war inside the world war.
(more…)
Comments Off on Poland’s Descent into Civil War – War Against Humanity 097
