<< Sep 2009 Crow Goes Hunting Monday, August 17th, 2009 - 12:25 am
Today we're going away for a few days on holiday, so I shan't be posting for a while, away from computers and all that.
Have a great few days away from me, I leave you with a few words from Ted Hughes, whose birthday it is today, and what with him having been born a mile down the road from where I live in Hebden Bridge, I thought it appropriate.
Crow
Decided to try words.
He imagined some words for the job, a lovely pack-
Clear-eyed, resounding, well-trained,
With strong teeth.
You could not find a better bred lot.
He pointed out the hare and away went the words
Resounding.
Crow was Crow without fail, but what is a hare?
*****
Crow gazed after the bounding hare
Speechless with admiration. Scouse humour Sunday, August 16th, 2009 - 8:27 am
Today in 1962, Pete Best was replaced by Ringo Starr as the drummer for The Beatles, which reminds me of my favourite joke to do with the Fab Four.
When asked if Ringo was the best drummer in the world, John Lennon quipped that, "He's not even the best drummer in The Beatles".
Harsh that John la! Jai Hind Saturday, August 15th, 2009 - 7:02 am
I mentioned Pakistan's formation yesterday, and of course today is the day that modern India came into being.
As I quoted the Pakistani National Poet Muhammad Iqbal yesterday, I suppose I can only match it by some of the finest and most stirring words ever written in English.
Jawaharlal Nehru leader of the Indian National Congress and the first Prime Minister of India gave a speech on the eve of independence which beautifully captures the exultation of the end of the century-long struggle against the Raj in India.
With your indulgence, I'd like to quote the first paragraph:
"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity".
It was Nehru's passion for democracy, secularism, and liberalism that made him a champion for the poor and underprivileged not only in India, but across the Third World. Happy Birthday Pakistan Friday, August 14th, 2009 - 9:33 am
Today as many of you will know is the date in 1947 when Pakistan gained independence from the British Indian Empire and joined the Commonwealth.
I know many Pakistani-born and Pakistani-heritage friends in Keighley and beyond will be celebrating later today. My best to you all on this Yom-e-Istiqlal.
A line of Allama Sir Muhammad Iqbal's poetry comes to mind however, "mazhab nahin sikhata apas men bair rakhna" "religion does not teach us to bear ill-will among ourselves".
Pakistan zinda-baad. Tragedy in Handlova Friday, August 14th, 2009 - 9:19 am
Just received an e-mail from a former student at Comenius University in Bratislava about a horrible tragedy in the town of Handlova near Trencin.
Apparently there has been an explosion in the local mine which has killed twenty people and injured a further nine.
My heart goes out to friends and family of all those involved, and to the people of Handlova as a whole. Alan Duncan - 3
"You have to live on rations and are treated like shit". Thursday, August 13th, 2009 - 12:42 am
Dear Alan,
as a History Lecturer, I thought you might like to know what rationing was actually like, at the height of the War the MAXIMUM weekly level for basic foodstuffs was as follows:
Bacon/Ham 8oz
Sugar 16oz
loose Tea 4oz
Meat 1s. 2d.
Cheese 8oz (vegetarians were allowed an extra 3oz)
Preserves 1lb/month
Butter 8oz
Margarine 12oz
Lard 3oz
Sweets 16oz/month
For non-foodstuffs it was as below:
At the start of the War, adults were allocated 66 “points” for clothing per year, by 1945 this had been cut to 24. In 1945, a man's suit "cost" 26 coupons, whilst a woollen dress would set you back 11.
All types of soap were rationed, again coupons were allotted by weight or (if liquid) by quantity. In 1945, the ration gave four coupons each month. A coupon would "buy":
4oz bar hard soap
3oz bar toilet soap
6oz soap powder
and so on.
No wonder the general public are beginning (?) to hold MPs, and indeed ALL politicians, in contempt and to "treat [them] like shit", if a senior member of the "Government in waiting" comes out with asinine comments like you did.
Well done for apologising so quickly, now do the decent thing, and resign.
All the best
Nader Alan Duncan - 2 Thursday, August 13th, 2009 - 12:19 am
No I couldn't resist, the "bantam Tory frontbencher" was at best being crass, and at worse playing straight to type.
After all this was a chap who back in the mid-1990s resigned his ministerial post after it emerged that he had abused the right-to-buy programme to make profits on property deals. According to the Daily Telegraph, Duncan lent his elderly next door neighbour money to buy his 18th century council house at a significant discount, and three years later the neighbour sold it to Duncan.
Nothing illegal admittedly, but surely not in the spirit of the original legislation. Alan Duncan Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 - 11:01 pm
Should I write something, or is it glaringly obvious? Britain has more CCTV cameras than China Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 - 12:14 am
A recent report shows the absolutely mind-bogglingly frightening statistic that Britain has "half as many more CCTV cameras again as the whole of China".
We have a population of 60 million and theirs is twenty times that.
We have more than 4.2 million cameras. That works out as 1 camera for every 14 people, or two for each infant school class.
Whereas China has the equivalent of one camera for the whole of Bradford.
This shows New Labour's worrying obsession with surveillance, and we have created the model "Big Brother" state that the Chinese government, or any 21st century non-democratic regime, would love to have.
Although I am convinced of the argument that CCTV has a role to play in the fight against crime, it is still unclear how well it does this.
An argument against is that it merely moves criminal behaviour from one area that has CCTV to another area that doesn’t.
However, I believe that the money spent on cameras could be better spent on police to solve crimes and patrol the streets. "All 'sizzle' and no substance" Monday, August 10th, 2009 - 7:14 pm
Apparently last year when, then-Presidential candidate, Barack Obama met Blair, Brown, and Cameron, he is reported to have described the Tory leader as a
"lightweight", and all "sizzle" and no substance.
Now while I generally don't like personal attacks on politicians, when it is warranted as in the case of the Tories, who are merely hoping that the great British public will sleepwalk them into power at the next election, I'm all for it.
To quote a US advertising slogan of the 1980s, "Where's the beef" Dave? "Homophobia is merely a propaganda device" Monday, August 10th, 2009 - 12:11 am
Q: Who said this week, "Homophobia is merely a propaganda device designed to denigrate and stigmatise those holding conventional opinions"?
A:
a) Ayatollah Khamenei
b) Pope Benedict XVI
c) Rev. Ian Paisley
d) Roger Helmer, Tory MEP
You knew it was (d) didn't you? That's right the cuddly Tories whose leader has "apologised" for Section 28 in the 1980s.
And yet, and yet... here we are again. Dave may have "moved on" but obviously his party hasn't... much, if at all.
(Incredible? Read the original item!*) Nagasaki should not be forgotten either Sunday, August 9th, 2009 - 12:21 am
I've blogged a couple of times about Hiroshima, but we should not forget Nagasaki which was also bombed on this day 64 years ago.
It's amazing to think that because it had been cloudy at Kokura the planes had been diverted to Nagasaki.
At 11 o'clock, a weapon with about six bags of sugars' weight of plutonium-239, was dropped over the city. Less than a minute later it exploded at about fifteen hundred feet. The explosion was the equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT, and generated heat of about 4,000° Celsius and winds of more than 600 mph. There were an estimated 75,000 dead and another 10,000 died by the end of the year.
However, what was really tragic was that an unknown number of survivors from the Hiroshima bombing who had made their way to Nagasaki, were bombed again.
It is often assumed that it was the dropping of these two evil devices that forced the Japanese to surrender, but the reality is that on this day the USSR also declared war on Japan, and it was this that forced Emperor Hirohito to capitulate to the US rather than risk losing his throne.
Nuclear weapons do not defend, they threaten, and merely threaten to kill tens of thousands, indiscriminately.
They are immoral, and should be banned forthwith, by international agreement if possible, but unilaterally if not. Kon-Tiki Saturday, August 8th, 2009 - 12:05 am
I'm sure that I was not the only schoolboy who was fascinated by reading a copy of Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft in the school library.
I was fascinated by Thor Heyerdahl's account of his 7,000 kilometre journey across the Pacific to Tuamotu in a balsa wood raft to prove that pre-historic peoples could have travelled from South America.
That and the paintings of Paul Gaugin started my fascination with the cultures of the Pacific. "NO MORE HIROSHIMAS" 3 Friday, August 7th, 2009 - 8:54 pm
Well, we had a very well-attended meeting last night, and a lively debate, concerning the role of the military in the 21st century, the role of nuclear weapons within its arsenal, and finally agreed that the only sensible way morally, militarily, and economically was, 'No replacement for Trident.'
Thanks to everyone who attended and participated. "NO MORE HIROSHIMAS" 2 Thursday, August 6th, 2009 - 12:02 am
I forgot to say, probably the best piece of work on Hiroshima is a magazine article written by John Hersey that appeared in The New Yorker magazine in August 1946.
The article was soon made into a book, and I read it as teenager. It described how the bombing affected the lives of six individuals, a doctor, a Methodist minister, a widow, etc. and it's as powerful piece of reportage as you'll ever read. "NO MORE HIROSHIMAS" Thursday, August 6th, 2009 - 12:01 am
Today, 64 years back, the city of Hiroshima was devastated by an atomic explosions killing more than 140,000 people. The horror continued with tens of thousands more injured and thousands more birth defects for years to come.
Whilst mayor of Hebden Royd I signed the Cities Appeal in Support of Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol. This is a practical plan by which governments can achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world by the year 2020 given that the economic and technical means of ridding the world of nuclear weapons before 2020 already exist.
Tonight at 7:30, I'll be giving a talk on Lib Dem Defence Policy at the White Lion in Hebden Bridge, and publicising our total opposition to Trident.
On this fateful anniversary, we should all be determined that the scourge of nuclear weapons is never visited on our planet again. Bercow- what a berk! Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 - 11:01 am
Hello, just as you begin to think that the Tories have learnt the lessons of the MPs' expenses scandal, up pops John Bercow (I know he's technically no longer a Tory and is above party politics as such, but weeelll... something about leopards and spots) to claim £20,000 of public money for refurbishment of his grace-and-favour residence.
I have no problem with him making sure that the new home is child-friendly and indeed child-proof (window locks, etc.) given that he has a young family, but £7,524.30 on a new sofa and window seat cushions for the drawing room. Come on!
Most folk don't spend that on ALL the furniture in their homes. Banking bonuses, 'business as usual'? Monday, August 3rd, 2009 - 10:50 pm
I know that the taxpayer didn't actually rescue HSBC and Barclays, although we did pour 1 trillion pounds into the system globally, but you would've thought that as a tribe they'd have learnt their lesson.
As Vince Cable said earlier today, "It's fine when they make money. But when they lose money they lose big-time and the taxpayer picks up the bill as we did last year".
People's memories aren't that short and the anger that was felt last year can easily resurface, if the banks don't show some restraint on bonuses, which may lead to even greater and tougher regulation. Sunbeds 'raise cancer risk by 75%' Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 - 10:43 am
To use an Americanism, surely this is a "no-brainer". We know that ultra-violet radiation causes skin cancer, and sunbeds tan by emitting UVR, so sunbeds are carcinogenic.
It is high time that the tanning industry was regulated, whether by local or central government. White Rabbits Saturday, August 1st, 2009 - 12:02 am
Does anyone say that anymore? White rabbits on the first of the month? Ho, hum.
Well August is here, and our Focus is nearly ready to go out over the next couple of weeks, we'll be pounding the streets of Keighley with my colleague Cllr Judith Brooksbank, and others to let the good folk know what we've been up to and canvass for support.
I love August there are so many anniversaries to remember and commemorate, one in particular is that in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella drove the Jews out of Spain, which I would argue was to be disastrous in the long-term for Spain, but enriched the rest of Europe by providing an educated and cosmopolitan group of people to help the spread of the Renaissance and eventually the Enlightenment.
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