The One Man Madder Than Rasputin

This chap makes Rowan Williams seem like the Archbishop of Canterbury.

From the top officials who didn't pass on a note from Diana in which she said she feared for her life, to the driver Henri Paul; they were all in the pay of the security services or the "dark forces". The princess's former butler, Paul Burrell, and her sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale were also part of the cover-up, according to Mr Al Fayed. And, as he had maintained for years, Prince Philip and Prince Charles were in charge.

He referred to the royals as the "Dracula family" and called Prince Philip "a Nazi" and "a racist", and even suggested his original surname was something like "Frankenstein". As the list of the co-conspirators expanded to include then-prime minister Tony Blair, the French ambulance service, and the British Ambassador in Paris, the laughs from the public gallery grew longer and louder.

Of course it's all paranoid nonsense. Every normal person knows that Prince Philip and the Royal Family are in fact the secret leaders of a world eco-fascist movement via "front" organisations like the World Wildlife Fund, controlling the appointment of British Prime Ministers while plotting "levels of population genocide that would make Adolf Hitler's crimes pale by comparison".

David Duff has pity on Poor Tom.

This man had a son, and upon this son he built a shimmering palace of hope, ambition and expectation, only to see it dashed and smashed. The ricocheting splinters have pierced his soul and he is now beyond saving. He will spend the rest of his life nursing his bitterness, hugging his hate, muttering his curses even unto his death bed.

About Lee ...

"Former students' union president ..."

You'd never guess.

"Vulnerable Adults"

There's nothing unusual about this story, via Small Town Scribbles - an everyday story of elderly council tenants having their lives made hell by the people the council (or often, some well-intentioned housing association or charity) move in down the road. But the report's unusually revealing in its use of (the officially sanctioned) language.

Coun Reg Corns, (Con: Northfield) said problems had arisen across the city after the city council allowed sheltered housing schemes to accommodate vulnerable adults, who have issues with drugs and alcohol, to live alongside ordinary pensioners.

So the pensioners aren't the vulnerable ones. Oh no. It's the young smackheads and alkies next door who are 'vulnerable'. The medicalisation of deviance is complete. Robert Doody and his mates are probably registered disabled and in receipt of disability benefit - unlike the pensioners next door.

Concerns about Doody included allegations that his guests were drunk, aggressive and abusive, urinated in communal hallways, swore and banged on doors. Doody was issued with an anti-social behaviour order in June 2007. His suspended sentence followed the jailing of one of his guests for four months. He was sent to prison after breaching an anti-social behaviour injunction barring him from visiting Aire Croft and another sheltered housing scheme, Campion House, in Kings Norton.

Doody's neighbour Richard Wilkes, 65, previously told the Sunday Mercury about the problems and said Birmingham City Council had asked him to keep a diary of the troubles. He said: "There's a man in his 80s who lives in the same block as me, and who isn't able to keep diaries like this. He isn't the only one in this position. We have had court injunctions against one man who visits one of the residents, but nothing seems to make any difference. The courts have ordered him not to threaten us, not to enter the block, not to bang on doors or kick windows in, and not to shout or swear, or throw glass bottles."

Fellow Aire Croft resident Rhoda Olsen, 69, said she was sick of the problems caused by Doody and his guests too. "We constantly have to keep the doors of our blocks locked so that they can't get in," she said. "It is the same with the common room. It's only used once a week now for bingo, but we should be able to use it every day to meet with our neighbours and relax."

Stan Andrews, vice chairman of Birmingham Sheltered Housing Liaison Board, said he was aware of similar problems across the city.

The good news is that the full weight of the law has come down on Mr Doody for his breaches of his ASBO. A 28-day suspended sentence.

There'll Be Tears Before Bedtime ...

The Serbian province of Kosovo, mainly populated by ethnic Albanians, has declared unilateral independence - unilateral as in 'with the approval and support of the UK, EU and USA'.

Edwin Greenwood reports that the UK's Albanian and/or Kosovan communities are celebrating in Trafalgar Square.

Strathspey

Another beautiful morning.




Great views from the Ptarmigan lift.



Coire Cas looking towards Loch Morlich. Much narrower than usual due to the big thaw, but still easily wide enough for us. If you've a big family and a limited budget, Scotland's the place for the kids to learn. We may go abroad next year, but there seemed little point until they were all proficient. And if they can ski here, they can ski anywhere.

(A couple of (unpaid) credits. It's still pretty hard to find a rented house with broadband in this neck of the woods. Baztex Computers in Aviemore saved me when I needed to mail a document to work. And our ski hire as usual was from Goodbrand Knitwear in Corgarff on the Donside side of the Lecht - woolly sweaters, tea, cakes and ski hire - what more can you ask ?)

One Hit Wonders ...

They may have been, but Quarterflash singer Rindy Ross played a mean sax. It never did much in the UK, but twenty seven years ago this was all over the US charts. Always had a soft spot for that Mac-y, Heart-y sort of female vocal.

Good Places To Eat If You're Not Hungry

As regular readers will know, I've a bit of an ambivalent relationship (50/50 affection/exasperation) with the Land O'Cakes - and one of my major bugbears is eating out. Scotland invented portion control long before that Mr Forte learned it in Dundee.

Twenty-odd years back Laban was an impecunious trainee programmer in London when British Rail had one of their wonderful special railcard promotions - anywhere in the UK return for £2. It was February, cold even in London ('86 ? '87 ?) so off to the station "return to Mallaig, please" - about as far as you can get from London - grab the skis and boots and be at Euston for the Friday night sleeper. In those days the sleeper had a couple of additional seated carriages - that weekend full of walkers and skiers, all sleeping on the floor.

There's not much greater contrast than Friday night Euston, with its alkies, streetgirls, dossers and assorted ne'er-do-wells, and a crisp Saturday morning on Rannoch station, waiting for another train to pass on the single line, snow-covered hills around and everything sparkling in the frost. From Fort William a bus to Ballachulish, then a walk/hitch to the White Corries ski area at Glencoe.

I'd booked a room in the Clachaig, famed as a climbers pub. After a day skiing I knew I'd be starving, so pushed the boat out and ordered the evening meal, athough it was a bit beyond my budget. At least I'd be full.

I was starving. I don't remember what the evening meal was, but it was something with boiled potatoes. About two of them. I seem to remember wondering exactly how much a few spuds cost, and how much of a problem it would have been to have chucked a few more on. Surely a climbers pub should serve climbers food ? After the meal I was still starved and was forced to fill up on bridies in the bar.

On the Sunday after skiing I hitched down to Bridge of Orchy and had an excellent bar meal at the hotel before catching the overnight train back to London.

Come the summer and Susan and I decided to spend a week or two camping in the Highlands. As we tootled up the A82 I remembered the decent scoff I'd had at the Bridge of Orchy Hotel. Why don't we stop there for lunch ?

To say that lunchtime was a culinary disaster was an understatement. With hindsight, staff must have been hard to come by. Susan had fish and boiled spud - a fairly difficult dish to ruin. But when it arrived the spuds were stone cold. Laban had, perhaps foolishly, ordered chilli. Doubtless Mr YTS chef had read the instructions on the Brake Bros packet, and the chilli and rice had been microwaved to eating temperature. But pitta bread had obviously not yet penetrated that far North (this was 1986/7) and was more of a poser. He solved it by taking the bread out of the packet - still frozen - and adding it to the plate. Laban, ever helpful, wrote "THIS IS COLD" in biro on the pitta bread and sent it back.

By the stir it was obvious that we weren't the only unfortunate diners. All over the room people were showing off their food like medieval beggars exhibiting their sores. Some were at the bar complaining, some were putting on their coats. When a young chap with a shaved head and a chef's jacket appeared in the bar he was greeted by booing and hisses. The punters were getting out of control. I've never seen anything like it before or since.

Soon after a couple of hotel functionaries came in and started moving from table to table. Eventually they got to us.

"Excuse me, did you order a meal ?"

"Yes" (thinks - he's going to offer a refund. Fair enough)

"Have you paid for it"

"Yes" (still thinks - he's going to offer a refund.)

"OK, thank you"

The so-and-sos were just checking who'd paid, due to the large numbers of non-payers/walkers out !

All this ancient history is because I'm smarting again. This week's absence of posts was caused by a last-minute decision to head for Speyside at half-term and get some skiing in. Apologies for the lack of warning, but I only booked the house on the Friday. Anyway, we did two days at the Lecht before they ran out of snow - the snow-cannon have since replenished the nursery areas - and four sunny days at Cairngorm - the first time I've been there when it wasn't windy, cloudy or both.

We had good food at the Boat Hotel in Boat of Garten five years back, and took the kids there this time after a couple of hefty days on the hill.

Alas, all was changed. What was 'bar meals' last time turned out to be the "Osprey Bistro" this time. The quality of the produce - the beef, the lamb, the fish - was fine - although they really need to ask any Chinese takeaway for advice on chips - how they can be simultaneously overdone yet not crisp defeats me. And yet again the portions were just not adequate for people who've been on a hill all day. In my old age and less impecunious state I don't mind paying the money. But I resent paying the money and still being hungry - and more do I resent the kids - eating adult meals - being hungry. It's a good place to eat - provided you're not hungry.

It Should Have Been Me ...

1976 ? The Queens Hotel, Bradford. No relation at all to that posh place in Leeds.

It was a jukebox favourite ... "Somebody call the Po-lice! That woman down there is a doggone thief!"

Hmmm ...

One never quite knows what to make of something like this. After all, an ill-intentioned person or persons could in principle spread the word to create a kind of Googlebomb effect.

He's madder than ever

Rasputin's really gorn and done it now. When even liberals like Ruth Gledhill wonder if you've gone crackers you know you're in trouble.

Has the Archbishop gone bonkers?

Forgive the stark clarity of my headline, but sometimes when writing about the Archbishop of Canterbury, clarity is what is needed. I ask this of readers here, because this is the question put to me time after time this afternoon by incredulous commentators of every variety, stunned into blunt expression by the Archbishop of Canterbury's uncharacteristically clear comments on Sharia in Britain. The Archbishop believes adopting aspects of sharia law into British law would help maintain social cohesion.

The funny thing is that only a few days ago this 'liberal' Archbishop was calling for "thoughtless and, even if unintentionally, cruel styles of speaking and acting” to be made a criminal offence.

Now we may all have an idea of what that would mean in practice. But you can't get much more thoughtless than the Mad Monk's latest. Even John Humphrys might not be too keen on Sharia, though the extra wives might come in handy. What's Hebrew for "chutzpah" again ?




UPDATE - I'm sorry to say that Rasputin is an alumnus of my mother's old school, Dynevor - as was Spencer Davis (this video marking the first recorded appearance of the fuzzbox) - whose mum I think worked in the Lewis Lewis department store. By strange chance, the last I heard of very wonderful singer Steve Winwood - what a voice for a teenager - he was playing the church organ on Sundays not so very far from where I live.

She's At It Again

Yazza in the Evening Standard on Dewsbury MP Sadiq Khan's visit to "his childhood mate and constituent Babar Ahmad" - a visit which turned out to be recorded by the authorities, breaking a convention which has applied since Harold Wilson's time that MPs are non-buggable.

Considering that, I find it hard to believe that the murderous duo of Adams and McGuinness weren't bugged. I certainly hope they were.

Yazza does have an unfortunate way of expressing her conviction that her co-religionists are peaceful, just-like-us-but-without-the-binge-drinking types. It always seems to end with the threat of what will happen if we don't believe her.

"People comfortable in their bicultural skin, like Khan, hold the key to a peaceful future. To his credit Brown has brought in young blood and ministers such as Hazel Blears and David Miliband, who, thankfully, have no problem with assertive Muslims. They actively seek creative, intelligent ideas to break the hold of the fundamentalists.

But after this scandal, they had better do right by Sadiq Khan, otherwise trust will be shaken, suspicion stirred once again that in this land the most upstanding Muslim is still only ever a potential terrorist. And imagine what that could mean for the security of our nation."

(see also the remarkable statement from the secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain).


UPDATE - Brian mails to point out that the Sinn Fein Two failed to take the Oath of Allegiance and so never actually became Members of Parliament.

She's living in a Hibernian World ..

I've written a couple of small pieces on the major changes in Ireland over the last 20 years.

"Strange times in the Irish Republic. The boom years have been on for 20-odd years now, the country's becoming much more secular, immigration and asylum levels are high, the youth/dance/drug culture is widespread - it's starting to feel much more like degenerate, decadent England."

In fact, given their smallish population, immigration is massive - and it's pretty much all been in the last ten years. According to the BBC, one in seven - about 14% - of the Republic's population - were born abroad - the sort of demographic shift that took thirty-five years in the UK crammed into ten.

Ironic really. Traditionally all the problems of Ireland have been seen as the fault of the perfidious English. Murderous republicans have killed English toddlers in Warrington or Pakistani shopkeepers at Canary Wharf, but have avoided blowing up Dundee or Wrexham. Only in the North have they been happy to slaughter people of Scots descent whose forebears emigrated to Ulster 400 years back - and who, ironically, were of Ulster stock.

So while Sinn Fein pledge a rebel's stand against "England's sons with their long-barreled guns", the country is filling up behind them. If one in seven of the Republic's residents were English you can be sure that the petrol bombs now burning Orange halls across the North would be toasting the joists of English-owned homes in the South. Instead Sinn Fein call for immigrants to be welcomed "with open arms" - on the grounds that the nasty Brits gave us such a hard time when we went over there, and we don't want to be like them, do we ?

Some people in Ireland aren't completely happy about what's happening.

Hibernia Girl is one. She's your one-stop shop for all Irish immigration-related news. Very much worth watching, as the changes really are massive. I don't think Ireland yet has the UK's demographic disaster as well - as far as I know they're still having babies - but I'd be grateful if she'd keep an eye on that, too.

She also nominated me as an "Excellent blog", so thanks muchly.

(It's still ironic though. Even on HGs site there are plenty of commenters who think England's the big problem. As they say at the panto "Behind you !")

A Small Postette

At Biased BBC.

James Barlow

Peter Hitchens at his Mail blog is urging his admirers to read Malcolm Bradbury's 'The History Man' - a thinly fictionalised eye-witness account of the cultural revolution at an early 70s university.

One writer who saw it all coming was the thriller writer James Barlow, who attacked the sixties ethos pretty much from the word go - in fact he was attacking it in his first (1956) novel The Protagonists, when it was still struggling to be born.

He wrote pretty much a novel a year through the 60s - The Patriots is probably his best. While I wouldn't call him a great writer, I enjoy his work. Favourite targets of attack were trendy bishops, TV talking heads and chat show hosts - people whose currency was words. I'm sure as an author he appreciated the irony.

He emigrated to New Zealand in the early 70s, leaving with "Goodbye England" - his disgusted (non-fiction) valediction, featuring a much-mocked paragraph about topless girls walking through London with dust and bus-tickets adhering to their mammaries. I must get hold of a copy, as I've never read it.

There's very little about him on the Web and no site devoted to him. If anyone has any information about him I'd love to hear it.

The Maths, the Maths

Around 140 people voted in the Normblog novelists poll. You chose 10 novelists, number 1 being worth 4 points, number 2, 3 points, 3, 2 points and 4-10 only got one.

Here's the Top Ten :

01 (151) - Jane Austen
02 (113) - Charles Dickens
03 (64) - Philip Roth
04 (61) - George Eliot
05 (54) - Evelyn Waugh
06 (48) - Ian McEwan
07 (38) - Graham Greene
08 (37) - P.G. Wodehouse
09 (35) - Vladimir Nabokov
10 (32) - Charlotte Bronte

If only I knew statistics. But one thing stands out - there must have been a huge spread of novelists in the entries. No fewer than 205 novelists only got one point - I'd love to know who they all were.

FYI, Laban's selection. Not the subject of serious reflection, although #1 was a given. I've probably forgotten a favourite or two.


1. Thomas Hardy - self-taught, flawed master. Am I the only person to find Alec D'Urberville a much more sympathetic character than Angel Clare ? At least Alec knew what he wanted - the most desirable heroine in the history of the known universe.
2. Wodehouse
3. Solzhenitsyn
4. Zola
5. HP Lovecraft - dreadful yet strangely compelling
6. W.E. Johns
7. James Barlow - sixties reactionary who saw it all coming
8. A.G. MacDonnell - only one novel of note - but what a novel !
9. Chandler
10. Enid Blyton. Awful style, but her imagination more than compensates. "Magic Faraway Tree" enchanted me as a child and enchanted my kids in their turn.

Creative Defence Lawyer of the Year

I don't know who's defending Mark Dixie, accused of murdering and raping Sally Ann Bowman, but his defence in the face of the DNA evidence - that someone else murdered her and that his client, chancing upon her bloodied corpse in the street, 'took advantage of the situation', shows him to be a pretty optimistic, glass-half-full sort of guy.

UPDATE - how very apt. His name is Anthony Glass.

UPDATE2 - why is Mark Dixie's face pixellated out in all the UK photos ? Not so elsewhere, as the delightfully named Serial Killer Central (a tasteful place with some pretty sick users) shows us.

Note the comments on the Mark Dixie story. The way we live now.

"remember my girlfriend staying over at his house in croydon and she had said to me that mark and Stacy his then girlfriend were having a big argument over who was going to take the last line of coke."

Not a gentleman then.

UPDATE3 - the Aussies may also want a quiet word with the accused.

Primark Pandemonium

I remember the IKEA riot, but I missed this more peaceful event - the opening of Primark's Oxford Street store. Lordy. Talk about the barbarians at the gates - it's worse than the Scout jumble sale.

Let Freedom Ring !

Today Sri Lankans celebrate 60 years of freedom from the colonial Hush Puppy.

Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic country, with a population of 18m people. It is an ancient centre of Buddhism. It also has a significant number of Hindus, Christians and Muslims. There are also a number of smaller communities such as the Burghers and the Veddas.

The civil war has killed about 64,000 people, displaced one million and held back the island's growth and economic development.

The origins of the current violence go back to the island's independence from Britain in 1948.

Although the years immediately following the end of colonial rule were largely peaceful, from the outset there were tensions between the majority Sinhalese community - who are mostly Buddhist - and the Tamil community who are mostly either Hindu or Roman Catholic.

The communities speak different languages - Sinhala and Tamil - and both claim their ancestors were original settlers on the island.

A Victorian Victim of "Moral Panic"

An early exponent of the "crime as class warfare" school of criminology - who, as befits a wealthy, fox-hunting scion of the manufacturing classes, doesn't seem to realise that crime above all impacts the poor and vulnerable.

Friedrich Engels, "The Condition of the Working Class In England".

"with the extension of the proletariat, crime has increased in England, and the British nation has become the most criminal in the world. From the annual criminal tables of the Home Secretary, it is evident that the increase of crime in England has proceeded with incomprehensible rapidity. The numbers of arrests for criminal offences reached in the years: 1805, 4,605, 1810, 5,146; 1815, 7,818; 1820, 13,710; 1825, 14,457; 1830, 18,107; 1835, 20,731; 1840, 27,187; 1841, 27,760; 1842, 31,309 in England and Wales alone. That is to say, they increased sevenfold in thirty-seven years.

... These facts are certainly more than sufficient to bring any one even a bourgeois, to pause and reflect upon the consequences of such a state of things. If demoralisation and crime multiply twenty years longer in this proportion (and if English manufacture in these twenty years should be less prosperous than heretofore, the progressive multiplication of crime can only continue the more rapidly), what will the result be? Society is already in a state of visible dissolution; it is impossible to pick up a newspaper without seeing the most striking evidence of the giving way of all social ties.

I look at random into a heap of English journals lying before me; there is the Manchester Guardian for October 30, 1844, which reports for three days. It no longer takes the trouble to give exact details as to Manchester, and merely relates the most interesting cases: that the workers in a mill have struck for higher wages without giving notice, and been condemned by a Justice of the Peace to resume work; that in Salford a couple of boys had been caught stealing, and a bankrupt tradesman tried to cheat his creditors.

From the neighbouring towns the reports are more detailed: in Ashton, two thefts, one burglary, one suicide; in Bury one theft; in Bolton, two thefts, one revenue fraud; in Leigh, one theft; in Oldham, one strike for wages, one theft, one fight between Irish women, one non-Union hatter assaulted by Union men, one mother beaten by her son, one attack upon the police, one robbery of a church; in Stockport, discontent of working-men with wages, one theft, one fraud, one fight, one wife beaten by her husband; in Warrington, one theft, one fight; in Wigan, one theft, and one robbery of a church.

The reports of the London papers are much worse; frauds, thefts, assaults, family quarrels crowd one another. A Times of September 12, 1844, falls into my hand, which gives a report of a single day, including a theft, an attack upon the police, a sentence upon a father requiring him to support his illegitimate son, the abandonment of a child by its parents, and the poisoning of a man by his wife.

Similar reports are to be found in all the English papers. In this country, social war is under full headway, every one stands for himself, and fights for himself against all comers, and whether or not he shall injure all the others who are his declared foes, depends upon a cynical calculation as to what is most advantageous for himself. It no longer occurs to any one to come to a peaceful understanding with his fellow-man; all differences are settled by threats, violence, or in a law-court. In short, every one sees in his neighbour an enemy to be got out of the way, or, at best, a tool to be used for his own advantage.

And this war grows from year to year, as the criminal tables show, more violent, passionate, irreconcilable. The enemies are dividing gradually into two great camps -- the bourgeoisie on the one hand, the workers on the other. This war of each against all, of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, need cause us no surprise, for it is only the logical sequel of the principle involved in free competition. But it may very well surprise us that the bourgeoisie remains so quiet and composed in the face of the rapidly gathering storm-clouds, that it can read all these things daily in the papers without, we will not say indignation at such a social condition, but fear of its consequences, of a universal outburst of that which manifests itself symptomatically from day to day in the form of crime."

Engels was concerned about 31,000 arrests in 1842. Arrests for 2005/6 stand at 1,429,800.

The stuff that he was horrified by, and that seemed to presage open class warfare, would hardly make a local paper now. The Manchester Guardian in 1844 was far more of a local paper than today. I invite commenters to take a look at the Manchester Evening News a, and see what kind of crimes are now being reported. I think it unlikely that "a couple of boys caught stealing" will feature.


Hat-tip - Norman Dennis.

Boys and Girls

The Pooter of Geek points out what should be the bleeding obvious - but which still apparently needs saying :

When female friends come to me looking for insights into the behaviour of males—which usually means the males they are about to, are currently, or have just been going out with—I point out that most of the ones I know are simpler than Duplo™ and that no imaginative and sensitive interpretation of their actions is necessary.

“He hit me last week . Do you think that it might be because he’s still be upset about his sister dying when he was twelve?”

“No. It’s because he’s a cowardly, bullying ****. Dump him. (And please let me be the one to give him the bad news.)”

We men are as complex and multilayered as any randomly selected dwarf from Snow White. We are so inept at disguising our natures that we might as well have hoardings floating above us saying things like “kind-hearted”, “unreliable”, “generous”, “bastard”, “affectionate”, “bashful”, or “Sneezy”.

Or as Mrs du Toit puts it :

They don’t use words as a way to manipulate others. There is no hidden agenda. They’re just telling you what they are thinking, right at that moment. It wasn’t because they had a run in with a coworker, or something you said three months ago, or they watched a Hallmark Movie of the Week that caused them to reflect on their lives and relationships.

One of the differences twixt chaps and ladies is that when she says something, even the simplest thing, there may be a subtext - which we, being literal, don't pick up on - much to their disgust. The same thing happens in reverse.

"Is (whatever it was) done ?"

"I had to stay over time with patient X and then school called and I had to pick up Y and Z called round because she wanted me to do W"

"Is that no ?"

"Look, don't start blaming me ..."

And he only wanted to know if she'd collected a library book or got the new tyre on the motor. A straight "no" would have done.

"I'm not blaming you - I just want to know if it's done, that's all. If I was cross I'd say so" .

This sentence may optionally be preceded by 'For God's sake !' and succeeded by "I meant 'is X done?', not 'why didn't you do X ?'"

Reverse scenario.

"Is (whatever it was) done ?"

"No. The garage was running late and it was gone four when I got back"

Two somewhat icy hours later, the exact timespan depending on degree of awareness ...

"Is something wrong ?"

"Look, you knew I wanted (whatever it is) done today because ...."

All part of life's rich tapestry I guess.