Author Archives: johnengland55

Abusive Politicians

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As the European Union Referendum campaign gains momentum the rhetoric has predictably become more emotional and abusive. Still, that’s politicians for you, never that far away from the kindergarten or school playground.

Much of the talk has been of economics, with each side wheeling out their financial “experts” peddling scare-mongering theories as to how much it will cost us if we stay or leave.

It would be naïve to hope that the majority of voters would look to how their votes would affect the country as a whole (and future generations) rather than the short-term impact on their pockets, but that’s human nature, I suppose.

Perhaps it was ever thus and perhaps people really can be bought or sold. If that is the case then they can hardly complain if things don’t turn out quite the way they’d planned.

Mods and Rockers

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Last Sunday I was witness to the wonderful sight of groups of scooter riders heading along the highway to some reunion or other. There must have been well over a hundred of them, nearly all dressed in the traditional Parkas adorned with Union Flags, RAF roundels, The Who stickers and other memorabilia from the 1960s. These were the descendants of the 1960s Mods, proudly carrying the mantle handed down to them by parents and grandparents.

I remember, as a child, the Mods and Rockers on the seafront on hot 1960s sunny Bank Holiday Mondays. Bank Holidays were always hot and sunny in the ‘60s, weren’t they? Or do our memories play tricks with us as the years advance, causing us to remember only that which we wish to remember, forgetting about the bad?

Well, I remember those days well enough and remember too, the parental warnings to stay away from the Lambretta-riding Mods, dressed in the latest ‘60s fashion and their rivals, the scruffier Rockers, on their Triumphs, Nortons and BSA motorbikes. There was certainly no love lost between the two who seemed intent on knocking seven shades of whatever out of each other whenever they met up!

The question always remained though, and I thought of this as I watched those Mods last weekend, “Are you a Mod or a Rocker?” Both had their attractions and maybe it was best to reply, as Ringo Starr once famously did, “I’m a Mocker!” meaning neither one nor the other or both!

However, yesterday I saw a pristine black and silver Triumph Bonneville, a truly beautiful English machine, gleaming in the sunshine and, like an epiphany, I knew instantly which one I would have chosen – had I been old enough, of course!

Triple Tragedy

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Over the weekend a 22 year old man stripped his clothes off and then, fully naked, threw himself into the lions’ enclosure at a zoo in Santiago, Chile. The lions responded in a predictable manner and as a result two of them, a male and a female, were shot dead. The man, who had left a suicide note with his clothes, is being treated in hospital for “serious injuries”.

This is so sad on a number of levels. Firstly, that a human being (particularly a young human being) felt so desperate that he attempted to take his own life.

Secondly, that he did it in such a way that two magnificent beasts were killed because of the method he chose.

Thirdly, why do we continue to keep animals in captivity, depriving them of a natural life, just so that we can look at them from behind bars?

American Irony

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In April, 1775, American colonists rebelled against the British Crown, declaring independence on July 4th, 1776 and freeing themselves of the shackles of empire.

When the war was finally over in 1783, hundreds of thousands, of the estimated one-third of colonists who had remained loyal to the Crown, fled the new country with many crossing the border to Canada.

Without doubt, the War of Independence proved to be an inspired success, with the USA developing into the most powerful, important and influential nation in the world.

How ironic that, nearly 240 years later, some American citizens, according to reports in the US media, are considering emigrating to Canada (thus submitting themselves once more to the British Crown!) so disenchanted are they by next November’s candidates in the Presidential election.

George Washington would be turning in his grave!

 

 

Un Pervert

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The French Finance Minister, Michel Sapin, is at the centre of a storm for allegedly twanging a female journalist’s knicker elastic in public – a bit like an over-excited 11 year old schoolboy might do to a female classmate at junior school.

Apparently, the late-middle aged Monsieur Sapin has a bit of a reputation as “un pervert” and the received wisdom among lady journalists is “Don’t dare pick up a pen in front of him”. In this particular instance a female journalist did just that, prompting Old Sappy to say (and this is probably best imagined as spoken in a Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau voice) “Ah, but what have we here?” before he leaned forward and pulled on the exposed under garment.

He initially denied it all, as he would, threatening claims for libel against anybody who dared print the allegations, but then mysteriously changed his tune stating “I made a comment to a female journalist about her clothing while placing my hand on her back”. Ah, right.

He went on to add, “There was no sexist or aggressive intent in my action”, and he was sorry. Really? So if it wasn’t sexist does that mean that he would behave in a similar fashion if a male journalist bent down in front of him exposing the top of his boxer shorts?

What a jerk and what a coward to boot. Like any politician, whether he’s caught with his hand in the till or in somebody’s underwear he is only sorry for the fact that he’s been caught out and nothing else.

If you’re going to behave like a crook or a pervert and you are caught out bang to rights at least have the guts to hold your hands up and admit to it rather than dig yourself an even deeper hole by coming out with an explanation so ridiculous that even the aforementioned 11 year old schoolboy would find laughable.

Unfair Stereotype?

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Greater Manchester Police were forced to make a formal apology earlier this week after carrying out a realistic training exercise designed to protect its citizens against the threat of terrorist attack. Now before you read any further just pause and ask yourself where the threat of terrorist attack is likely to come from. Yes, I know, silly question, the answer is more than obvious. Though not to some, evidently.

During the exercise the role-playing terrorist shouted out “Allahu Akbar”, as those real-life deranged fanatics tend to do before they open fire indiscriminately and blow themselves up, killing all around them.

According to Dr Erinma Bell, described as a “Peace Activist” the police were guilty of unfair stereotyping since, as she said, a terrorist could come from any group. True, a terrorist could come from any group but from where does the average person in the street think a terrorist attack is most likely to come?

As this blog has said before, not all Muslims are terrorists; of course they’re not. That would be a ludicrous and grossly unfair thing to say but nobody can deny that, at the present time, the majority of terrorists are Muslims.

If we cannot, or refuse to, identify our potential enemies we make it a lot harder to eventually defeat them. Our hard-pressed (and no-doubt demoralised) police and security forces need all the help they can get in keeping us all safe. Making their training exercises as realistic as possible with no detail spared is an obvious priority and no more than common sense. Political correctness and liberal sensibilities should have nothing to do with it.

Dirty Politics

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Politics is a dirty old game sure enough and our Government and the Prime Minister are past masters, not that it always does them much good. In fact both need to understand that the British people don’t take kindly to being patronised and tend to react contrarily when faced by scare tactics.

In the 2014 Scottish referendum, the Chancellor of the Exchequer travelled north to tell the Scots that if they voted to leave the UK they wouldn’t be able to keep the pound. This perceived arrogance and negative campaigning almost had the opposite effect since many undecided Scots, outraged at being treated like naughty school kids, evidently voted to leave, making an almost certain Stay vote a lot closer than it need have been.

During the recent contest to choose the new London Mayor the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, and his backers conducted a smear campaign against Goldsmith’s Labour opponent, Sadiq Khan (a Muslim human rights lawyer) by alleging that he had links with Islamic terrorists. I have no idea whether or not the allegations have any substance but the tactics failed and the electorate, clearly less than impressed by this negative campaigning duly elected Khan to office last week.

Now, our Prime Minister, in a sure sign that he feels he might be losing the EU referendum argument, is trying to scare the British people by telling us that if we leave the EU it could be a threat to peace in Europe and therefore to us in the UK, conveniently ignoring the facts that we are members of NATO, hold a seat on the UN Security Council and boast a nuclear deterrent.

It almost beggars belief that he and his fellow pro-European Union supporters are prepared to sink so low. Perhaps they should be equally prepared for defeat in June’s referendum when the nation sends out the message that, actually we are not all complete idiots.

Europe’s Official Language

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To encourage a positive vote in the forthcoming referendum the European Commission recently announced that English will be the official language of the European Union. The UK Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year plan to gradually convert to “Euro-English”.

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will please the sivil servants. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the awkward “ph” will be replaced with “f”. Fotograf is far more logikal than photograph.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. The EU will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always been a deterent to akurate speling.  Also, the silent “e” in the languag is troublesom and will also be removed. By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords   kontaining “ou” and after zis ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu unterstand ech uzer.

Ze drem of a united europ vil finaly be relized und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vanted us to do in ze furst plas. Zank ze Lord und Angela Merkel!

(NB. Furst sen on ze internet about 5 yers ago. Amended und adapted fur zis blog)

Small World

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I’ve been working in New York the last few days (lucky me, I know) and was eager, on my Sunday morning time off, to find a bar showing the football game between Manchester United and Leicester City.

And so it was, that at 9.15am, I walked into the inevitable (as in every couple of hundred yards and no less impressive or hospitable for that!) Irish bar showing an English football game broadcast from Manchester between two teams composed of players from Britain, Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. I was served a cold beer by a Russian bartender (it’s never too early for a Budweiser!) and sat at the bar flanked by two Norwegians, who like me were rooting for little old Leicester City, the ultimate in underdogs!

Eventually, a party of young Englishmen arrived for a late, or was it an early, breakfast? It was difficult to tell but a couple of them looked like they’d been drinking all night, as you can when you’re in your twenties. I wondered if they knew how lucky they are.

Some locals breezed in too but they were not interested in the “Saccer” and chatted amongst themselves, possibly enquiring into the health of their respective parents or maybe concluding a drug deal, I don’t know. I wasn’t paying any attention to them or anybody else for that matter, wrapped up as I was in the game, which ended in an entertainingly hard fought and fair draw.

We all went our separate ways at about 11am and, as I wandered down the street dodging the yellow taxis (most of which are driven, incidentally by Eastern Europeans and Asians boasting a smattering of English), I couldn’t help but think what a small – and wonderfully diverse – world we live in!

Zip it Up!

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Today is the anniversary of the patent of one of the most important inventions of the last century, an invention that would completely revolutionise our everyday lives.

We probably give subconscious thanks several times a day to this particular inventor; every time we pack and unpack our bags, every time we dress and undress and every time we pay a visit to the little boy’s (or girl’s) room. We undoubtedly curse him too on the painful occasions we snag ourselves on the teeth of his invention – don’t think about it!

The inventor was Gideon Sundback, a Swedish-born US engineer who, on April 29th 1913, patented the zip-fastener, an invention that would gradually reduce reliance on buttons, clasps, pins and bits of old string!

So, next time you get caught short and, fiddling with your clothing, only just make it to the bathroom in time, spare a thought for old Gideon. Whatever would we do without him!