Quotulatiousness

November 14, 2011

Retired Gurkha soldiers changing the face of security services in Britain

Filed under: Asia, Britain, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:14

An interesting article at the BBC website details how many retired Gurkha soldiers have found civilian careers in security a good follow-up to their military service:

It has been suggested that some Gurkhas are struggling to cope with the cost of living in the UK, with the British Gurkha Welfare Society saying about 25,000 of those who retired before 1997 still only receive a third of the pension of their British and Commonwealth former comrades.

But a recent study suggested that Gurkhas of working age are the most economically active and self-reliant social group in Britain.

The University of Kent research found the employment rates among Gurkha men and women are particularly high, at 95% for men under 60 and 93% for women under that age.

It also showed that security is the most popular job for male veterans. Ex-military people joining the security industry is nothing new, but security companies are capitalising on the Gurkhas’ formidable reputation.

G4S set up Gurkha Services in 2007 and it now employs at least 600 people across 27 contracts.

They are involved in guarding the UK’s “critical infrastructure”, such as power stations and railways, from vandals, protesters and thieves. Rarely a day goes by without some story about how cable theft has disrupted a train journey or caused a power outage. Now Gurkhas are the new front line against the crime wave.

“We feel completely and utterly betrayed”

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:37

More on the campaign to grant a specific medal to the veterans of the WW2 Arctic convoys:

They risked their lives again and again on what Churchill described as ‘the worst journey in the world’.

The heroes of the Arctic Convoys ran the gauntlet of German warplanes and U-boats to keep the Soviet Union supplied on the Eastern Front.

Even Russia has awarded commemorative medals to acknowledge its gratitude to the surviving sailors, more than 3,000 of whose comrades were killed.

Yet David Cameron has refused to do the same. Yesterday, as the nation paid tribute to its war dead on Remembrance Sunday, disgusted veterans expressed anger that the Prime Minister had seemingly reneged on a pledge to introduce a specific Arctic Medal.

‘We feel completely and utterly betrayed,’ said Commander Eddie Grenfell, 91, the leader of the Arctic Medal campaign. ‘How can Cameron stand up and support us in public but privately say we don’t deserve a medal? It’s two-faced and wrong.’

In opposition, the Tories pledged to introduce an Arctic Medal if they won power.

Footage from a Russian TV drama series “Konvoi PQ-17”.

November 13, 2011

The report from Greece

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Germany, Greece — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:16

Michael Petrou and Stavroula Logothettis survey the Greek debt crisis in a report that Maclean’s cheekily headlines “Acropolis Now”:

“We are finished as a nation,” says Marko Gjini, a 39-year-old unemployed construction worker in Athens. “The country has been sold off. We have no say in anything anymore. Greece is owned by the Germans.”

Like many Greeks these days, Gjini is bitter and despondent because of his country’s financial mess, and the austerity measures that have been imposed in an effort to contain it. His wife, Aleka, a public hospital nurse, has seen her income drop from 1,200 euros a month to 800 euros. Now, facing more taxes and cuts to public expenditures, the family expects to have a net monthly income of less than 500 euros. Marko and Aleka are investing whatever money they can toward English lessons for their twin eight-year-old boys in the hope that they might have a better future somewhere else. “Let the government fall,” says Gjini, “[German Chancellor Angela] Merkel is the boss now anyway.”

[. . .]

For Vaso Gildizi, a Greek freelance writer, events in Cannes were “a national humiliation for the country.” The Greek prime minister was scolded like a schoolboy and sent home. The incident didn’t sit well with many Greeks who were already sour on the bailout deal and the euro itself.

“We’re bankrupt,” says 44-year-old Vasilia Paneli, owner of Bliss, a trendy café a short walk from Syntagma Square and the parliament in Athens. “We know it. The EU knows it. And yet we continue this Greek tragedy. A referendum would at least give us a voice, a chance to speak up for our future.” Paneli was unmoved by French and German threats that a referendum on the bailout deal would have meant a vote on whether to remain in the eurozone. She’d rather Greece leave it. “It’s self-serving,” she says. “I say let’s go back to the drachma.”

[. . .]

William Antholis, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, likens flirting with a return to the drachma to “threatening suicide to avoid a lynching.” Greece is in for a painful few years whatever happens, he said in an interview with Maclean’s. The austerity measures are going to bite. But leaving the euro, he says, would be disastrous. The costs could include a run on Greek banks, as people sought to withdraw euros before they were changed to drachmas. Some banks would probably collapse. Greece would likely default on its debts, and would be unable to pay pensions and salaries. Some sectors of the economy built on export might benefit from a new, devalued currency, but at the expense of much heavier blows elsewhere.

November 12, 2011

Renewed call for Britain to issue a medal for WWII Arctic convoy veterans

Filed under: Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:36

A video report at the BBC website (no embedding allowed, unfortunately) looks at the campaign on the part of Arctic convoy veterans for a specific medal to recognize their amazing story.

There are calls for recognition for the sailors on the WWII Arctic Convoys who risked their lives to transport crucial supplies and munitions from Scotland to Russia.

Although the bravery of the crews is not disputed, the men who served on the ships have never been officially recognised with a British campaign medal.

The BBC’s Robert Hall reports.

Scottish Conservative Party goes non-conservative with new leader

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:09

It sounds like the set-up to a joke, but it really is true: the new party leader is a lesbian kick-boxer:

The 32-year-old former BBC journalist edged out Murdo Fraser by only 566 votes in the bad-tempered contest after he argued the Tory brand was too mistrusted north of the Border for the party ever to succeed.

But Miss Davidson, who is openly gay and a kick boxer, said she will unite the deeply-divided party and attract new support from sections of Scottish society that have stopped listening to the Conservatives.

The result marks the culmination of a remarkably rapid political ascent. She joined the party two years ago and only won election as a Glasgow MSP in May after the Tories’ first-choice candidate was forced to stand down over his financial history.

She won the endorsement of only two other MSPs during the campaign, with the largest group backing Mr Fraser and his plan to replace the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party with a new organisation.

November 11, 2011

In memorium

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

A simple recognition of some of our family members who served in the First and Second World Wars:

The Great War

  • Private William Penman, Scots Guards, died 1915 at Le Touret, age 25
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)
  • Private David Buller, Highland Light Infantry, died 1915 at Loos, age 35
    (Elizabeth’s great grandfather)
  • Private Walter Porteous, Northumberland Fusiliers, died 1917 at Passchendaele, age 18
    (my great uncle)
  • Corporal John Mulholland, Royal Tank Corps, died 1918 at Harbonnieres, age 24
    (Elizabeth’s great uncle)

The Second World War

  • Flying Officer Richard Porteous, RAF, survived the defeat in Malaya and lived through the war
    (my uncle)
  • Able Seaman John Penman, RN, served in the Defensively Equipped Merchant fleet on the Murmansk Run (and other convoy routes), lived through the war
    (Elizabeth’s father)
  • Private Archie Black (commissioned after the war and retired as a Major), Gordon Highlanders, captured at Singapore (aged 15) and survived a Japanese POW camp
    (Elizabeth’s uncle)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

November 10, 2011

Delingpole’s word of the day: monotesticularity

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:03

He’s talking about Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party:

‘Farage has only got one ball.’ The last time I made reference to the Ukip leader’s monotesticular status, I got a rocket from an outraged reader. But the reader had missed the point entirely. Nigel Farage’s handicap is a strength, not a weakness. He’s open about it, he’s unembarrassed by it and he’s a better man for it. Yes, Farage may have lost a bollock to cancer, but by God he’s got more cojones than almost any Conservative you could name.

Our Nigel is a Conservative himself, of course. Just one who has been temporarily dispossessed by the mainstream party. When you talk to Farage he’s perfectly upfront about what he considers to be Ukip’s role: to act as the Tory party’s conscience. The moment the Conservatives start behaving like proper Conservatives again — Eurosceptical, small government, low tax, etc — that’ll be it. Most of the 7 per cent of voters who are currently Ukip’s will be straight back into the Tory fold and we’ll have a proper, Thatcherite government again doing the Lord’s work.

Seven per cent! That figure — from the latest YouGov poll — is pretty amazing, isn’t it? It puts Ukip only one point away from the ailing Lib Dems, meaning it’s on track to become Britain’s third largest political party. Yet you’d scarcely be aware of this development, the way it has been ignored by most of our mainstream media.

Peter Oborne nailed it in a recent Telegraph column: ‘If a left-wing party had reached Ukip’s size and consequence, the media would be fascinated. But, because of its old-fashioned and decidedly provincial approach, it has been practically ignored. In the 2004 European elections, the party gained a sensational 16 per cent of the vote. Had it been the Greens or the communists that had pulled off this feat, the BBC would have gone crazy. Instead it chose not to mention this event, coolly classifying Ukip as “other”.’

November 9, 2011

Under attack by overwhelming economic forces, French and Germans consider retreat to citadel

Filed under: Economics, Europe, France, Germany — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 14:42

If they’re floating ideas like this, the Euro is done:

German and French officials have discussed plans for a radical overhaul of the European Union that would involve establishing a more integrated and potentially smaller euro zone, EU sources say.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave some flavor of his thinking during an address to students in the eastern French city of Strasbourg on Tuesday, when he said a two-speed Europe — the euro zone moving ahead more rapidly than all 27 countries in the EU — was the only model for the future.

The discussions among senior policymakers in Paris, Berlin and Brussels go further, raising the possibility of one or more countries leaving the euro zone, while the remaining core pushes on toward deeper economic integration, including on tax and fiscal policy.

As in any retreat, some outlying forces (countries) will have to be sacrificed to save the main body (France and Germany). A small retreat may not be enough — but Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal are likely to be left outside the walls.

November 8, 2011

30 minutes of fireworks in 1 minute

Filed under: Britain, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:35

A technical glitch caused the Oban community fireworks display to be a bit more compressed than the original plan:

H/T to Roger Henry, who quipped “I imagine the fireworks guys realized that it was 30 minutes to closing time.”

November 4, 2011

Opening moments of the G20 in Cannes

Filed under: France, Government, Greece, Italy, Media, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:01

From the tone of the article, even the Guardian is finding it hard to take the politicians seriously this time:

The red carpet was drenched and sodden, the palm trees battered by a storm and even the trumpet fanfares of the French Republican Guard were muffled by the wind.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s glittering G20 summit at Cannes was supposed to be a showcase for his skill as the caped crusader: Super Sarko, fighting his way through the markets and eurozone crisis to rescue his personal damsel in distress, France’s endangered AAA-credit rating.

Instead, the opening hours on the French Riviera seemed more like a muted crisis-gathering of head-scratching politicians, some staring into the jaws of political death, fearing being punished at the ballot box or hung out to dry by their own governments.

Even without the specially summoned whipping boy, the Greek prime minister George Papandreou — who had a constantly furrowed brow and clasped hands, as pressure was heaped on him over his resignation-referendum ping-ping — the red-carpet arrivals ceremony often looked like a roll call of doom.

Silvio Berlusconi arrived in the rain with a huge black overcoat perched on his shoulders, shoulder pads visible from space, likened by his own press corps to a mafia boss from the Sopranos.

November 3, 2011

The “Euro-elites now see democracy not so much as a distraction, more as a disaster or even a death-threat”

Filed under: Europe, Greece, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

With the agonized screaming coming from the various offices of the European Union, you’d think Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s announcement of a referendum was the next-best thing to the emergence of the Antichrist. Mick Hume explains that the reason the Eurocrats took it so badly is that, from their point of view, democracy is Kryptonite:

‘If voting changed anything, they would make it illegal.’ So goes the famous old slogan, attributed to the anarchist Emma Goldman, expressing radical cynicism about the capitalist elites’ traditionally contemptuous attitude to political democracy.

In the current Euro-crisis, however, it appears that matters have gone further still. Europe’s political, media and economic elites are now so insecure, isolated and fearful of any hint of popular opposition that even the suggestion of giving Greeks a vote seemed to change everything for them — and some of them would clearly like to make such referendums illegal if they could.

No sooner had Greek premier George Papandreou announced his plan for a referendum on the latest Euro bailout and austerity package than, in two shakes of an imaginary ballot paper, all that the elites hold dear had apparently been destroyed: the ‘historic’ deal to save Europe agreed days earlier was now reportedly ‘in ruins’, the financial markets were sinking like stones, there were warnings that the Euro itself was now in mortal danger and even that the world was heading for a global depression. All this panic and chaos, apparently, because somebody suggested the outrageous idea of giving the Greek people a say on their future? No wonder that many in authority talk as if they really would like to ban voting today.

[. . .]

Papandreou’s announcement of a referendum, described even by the sober BBC as a ‘nightmare’ for Europe, could hardly have caused more shock, anger and revulsion in high places if somebody had placed a bomb under this week’s G20 summit in Cannes. The mood of Europe’s rulers was captured by President Sarkozy’s French regime, which described the Greek prime minister’s dalliance with democratic politics as ‘irrational and dangerous’. Trying to square this disdain for public opinion with his own need to seek re-election by the French people, Sarkozy himself has generously conceded that ‘giving people a voice is always legitimate’ before adding the obligatory ‘but…’: ‘the solidarity of all Eurozone countries is not possible unless each one agrees to measures deemed necessary’. In other words, whatever the Greek or any other electorate wants, their government will have to adopt those ‘measures deemed necessary’ by the Euro-elite, primarily the Germans and the French, if they want to remain members of the club.

So who did write Shakespeare’s plays?

Filed under: Britain, History, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

Jonathan Kay tackles the crank-infested ground of Shakespeare’s works:

‘There are three infallible signs of the crank,” Catholic intellectual Joseph Bottum has written. “The first is that he has a theory about the Jews. The second is that he has a theory about money. And the third is that he has a theory about Shakespeare.”

Very true. Take, for instance, Ignatius Donnelly, perhaps the greatest crank in American history. In the late 19th century, Donnelly wrote books such as Ragnarok, which argued that Atlantis was destroyed by a passing comet and that the contours of our Earth were formed by splatterings of extraterrestrial “gravel.” He also believed the secret identity of the Great Bard could be discovered by counting and multiplying all the different words in his plays. In his crank manifesto, The Great Cryptogram, he claimed to have discovered a secret cipher that proved Francis Bacon was the true author.

[. . .]

And then there was Sigmund Freud, one of the small handful of thinkers whose influence on Western culture arguably can be said to stand alongside Shakespeare’s.

For Freud, it all began in 1898, when a Danish literary critic named George Brandes published a book outlining the connections between Shakespeare’s life and literary works. Hamlet, for instance, was said to grow out of Shakespeare’s grief for his own father’s passing in 1601. Freud became fascinated by this theory at a critical point in his life — his own father had died in 1896. And he incorporated the notion into The Interpretation of Dreams, in which Freud argued that Hamlet “is rooted in the same soil as Oedipus Rex”

Of course, all the back-and-forth among the Marlovians, Baconians, Oxfordians, and Stratfordians misses the point completely: the plays were clearly not written by William Shakespeare, but by a different chap of the same name.

Is the UKIP Britain’s version of the Reform Party?

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:46

Britain’s Conservative Party didn’t suffer quite the electoral humiliation that the Canadian Tories did (dropping from a huge majority to only two seats in parliament), but they did suffer a split. In Canada, the western faction became the Reform Party which eventually took over the “main” party after several elections in the wilderness. The British conservative party didn’t suffer quite so dramatic a death-and-rebirth, but Peter Oborne makes a case for the UK Independence Party as Britain’s equivalent of the Reform Party:

The first manifestation of this split was the creation of the Anti-Federalist League by the distinguished historian Alan Sked in 1991, at just the time that the Maastricht Treaty was signed. The decision to deprive eight Conservative MPs of the whip in the mid-1990s was another significant moment. Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party took the disintegration process one stage further.

Sir James was far more successful than is widely appreciated, and forced the Conservative government to pledge a referendum on future European treaty changes. He also sucked away many Tory activists. When the Referendum Party folded after his death the following year, these activists tended not to return to the Conservatives. Many of them gave their loyalty to Ukip, the protest party led by Nigel Farage which now campaigns for Britain to leave the European Union.

In contrast to the racist BNP, which tends to attract former Labour supporters, Ukip is in reality the Conservative Party in exile. Many of its senior members wear covert coats and trilbies, making them look like off-duty cavalry officers. They are fiercely patriotic and independent.

[. . .]

If a Left-wing party had reached Ukip’s size and consequence, the media would be fascinated. But, because of its old-fashioned and decidedly provincial approach, it has been practically ignored. In the 2004 European elections, the party gained a sensational 16 per cent of the vote. Had it been the Greens or the Communists that had pulled off this feat, the BBC would have gone crazy. Instead it chose not to mention this event, coolly classifying Ukip as “other”.

For the metropolitan elite, the party scarcely exists. This is why last Sunday’s YouGov poll showing that support for Farage’s party had crept up to 7 per cent — just one point fewer than the Liberal Democrats — gained no coverage. But the significance of this is very great. I believe that Ukip is about to take over from the Lib Dems as Britain’s third largest political party.

November 2, 2011

History pop quiz

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Law — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:12

Tim Black wants you to identify how long ago a certain communication to the royal family was written:

‘I write to formally request the consent of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to provisions to be included in the . . . Bill.’

So, history fans, in which democracy-forsaken year did a member of the Houses of Parliament open a letter to an heir to the throne with this line? Not sure? Perhaps this sentence will help: ‘Granted that these proposed changes . . . will apply to . . . contracts entered into by or on behalf of the Duchy of Cornwall, we should be very grateful to receive the consent of the Prince of Wales.’ There are plenty of clues there: the cowering, creeping tone; the excessive, almost fearful formality; and, of course, the sheer palpable deference towards the Crown. Surely this particular parliamentarian’s request must originate from some time before parliament began to forcibly assert its interests against those of the Crown during the seventeenth century? Perhaps it was even earlier: 1590 or maybe even 1565.

This is a follow-up to a post from earlier this week.

October 31, 2011

Brendan O’Neill: Beware of “the poor”

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:05

Not the people who are poor, the imaginary construct of the underclass:

I think we should always be very sceptical whenever we hear the phrase ‘the poor’. And we should be super-sceptical whenever we hear the phrase ‘the underclass’.

Because I can guarantee you that every time you hear those phrases, you will discover far more about the person doing the talking than you will about the people being talked about. You will discover far more about the speaker’s own fears and prejudices than you will about the lived experiences or morality of those cash-strapped sections of society.

In no other area of public life does anecdotage trump evidence as fantastically as it does in discussions about ‘the poor’. In no other area of political debate is it so acceptable to marshal rumour and hearsay to your cause as it is in debates about the underclass or the residuum or whatever we’re calling it these days.

[. . .]

Of course, there is such a thing as ‘poor people’ — people who have less money than you. But there isn’t really such a thing as ‘the poor’, meaning a whole swathe of society who allegedly share the same degraded morality and who are all promiscuous and fond of booze and so on. I think the service that ‘the poor’ provide for the political and chattering classes today is as a kind of fodder for moralism, a kind of endless pit of anecdotes and horror stories that are used to motor moralistic campaigns and moralistic commentary.

[. . .]

Time and again, across the political spectrum, from the conservative right to the radical left, people cite ‘the poor’ and their depraved antics as a way of promoting their own prejudices. ‘The poor’ have become a kind of vast political library for politicians and opinion-formers, who go in, borrow an anecdote or a horrible image, and then use it to push their narrow political agendas.

The unreliability of this library, the fact that it is little more than a gallery of imaginary horrors that the chattering classes pilfer from, was brilliantly summed up in a recent Conservative Party report which claimed the following: ‘In the most deprived areas of England, 54 per cent are likely to fall pregnant before the age of 18.’ Actually, it’s not 54 per cent but 5.4 per cent. But decimal points don’t matter when your aim is simply to paint a picture of doom designed to make you look morally upstanding in contrast to the immoral poor.

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