Memo, Prime Minister to Minister of Colonies

I say, Cyril. Does this not verify our view on the inadvisability of  self-government by  colonials obviously unready to accept mature resonsibility?  Bearing in mind of course that our own English youth may sometimes over-enthuse about a sporting event. But further bearing in mind that they only rarely riot over shoes which might be worn at sporting venues. 


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More than 100 officers in riot gear were needed to disperse several hundred people who law enforcement officials said became unruly as they waited for the $220 Nike Galaxy Air Foamposite Ones to go on sale.

Gun auction giggle

To be sold tomorrow at an auction near me:

"Hi-Standard USA Model H-D 22 long rifle, practice gun."

I think I'll go and practice bidding; always liked that H-D Military iron, and the "practice" may be a country auctioneer's way of describing a higher-grade target model. 

H-Ds remind me of English automobiles from my youth -- lots of fun, very sporty, just so long as you don't mind  tuning them up every week or so. And they nicely illustrate a British (and French, for that matter) principle of industrial design. "I say, Cyril, why use only one part when three will make it work almost as well."


(This comes to mind because I've been reading more about Obama's passion for EuroSoc economic designs. It's just a revival of the recurring American notion that it's very hip and cool to import horse apples from the Old World and see if they taste better here.) 

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Also a Remington No. 4 in .22. Hmmmm. Don't need one of, course, but...

UPDATE: The High Standard was so-so and brought in the $400s. Out of the question. (No one knew why the "practice" word was used.) The No. 4 was fair. I was the second-highest bidder at something like $275, and, on reflection, I'm glad  not to own it. There's no shortage of wall hangers around here.

Hello, Abdul

On  November 8, 1942, Yanks and  Brits launched Operation Torch. The avowed enemies were Rommel and the Italians

But first we needed to whip some French. It didn't take long, and they turned out to be a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things.

Rommel was tougher, and the green American army carried its butt in its hands in the aftermath of the Kasserine Pass adventure. Eventually all was righted, and six months after the invasion North Africa was no longer Nazi country.

Three significant developments followed the victory in Tunisia:

1. The blimp-scale ego of Bernard Law Montgomery

2. Ditto George F. Patton

3. The war in Sicily where (1) and (2) above, opposed one another in the race for Messina. There was collateral damage, of course; that is, some Nazis got killed.

Vox populi

In riotous London a youth explains his looting:

"We ain't got no jobs, no money. We heard that other people were getting things for free, so why not us?" asked E.Nan, a young man in a baseball cap in Hackney, a multi-ethnic area in east London and one of the worst hit areas.

Not much comment necessary here, although it's hard not to wonder just how deeply  the same thought processes are ingrained in our own folks.

Poor Sean Hoare

The world media tread lightly on the mysterious death of Sean Hoare, the whistle blower who brought down the News of the World and put Rupert in the Commons dock. The eerie hush screams "conspiracy."

I suspect it starts  with Queen Elizabeth who cannot possibly be amused by world's amusement at the sorry state of the media, the police forces, and Her Majesty's entire government in Theme Park England. So the question must be asked: "What did Liz know and when did She know it?" Even if she is eventually found ignorant, it is important to remember that the buck stops at Buckingham.

So far, Scotland Yard is reporting poor Sean's untimely death as merely "unexplained but not suspicious." Quite lame.  This is the same cop shop whose bobbies were known to pocket a few extra pence by selling secrets to Rupert's minions.

Journalist Hoare ratted them out, and who knows what else he might have been ready to spill? A reporter who knew the cops were selling GPS locations of known celebrities is quite likely to have had the inside dope on PUS's and parliamentarians fond of dressing in tiny fragments of  French maids' costumes as they  waited on tables of leather-clad (Dare I use the term?) tarts (!).

The autopsy occurred yesterday, and it will surprise no one when whomever, if anyone, leading the bobbies these days reports that there's nothing to see here, folks; move along.  Further scandal could crush the Empire and, poof, there go the pensions whilst also ending the jolly good sport of flogging wogs from Capetown to Bombay and beyond. Further horror? Think of the collapse of the pound sterling when it is no longer backed by the yuan of a million Chinese persons hooked on English opium.

Whilst my research is ongoing, information from my good friend Travis McGee suggests the method by which Mr. Hoare was murdered, possibly with the connivance of Murdoch himself. The crime was quite possibly  committed with a tiny irradiated pellet which mimics the symptoms of a naturally occurring infectious disease. (cf. The Green Ripper.) 

While I do not yet argue that the dot of death was delivered by a red-haired siren with bad skin, the  possibility cannot be ruled out. As I have proven many times in the past, Travis knew everything.


  

London Report

The neckline didn't plunge all that much.

I have nothing else to say about the Royal wedding.
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Sidney School Buzz Nixed

Go to school in  the state of Victoria? The lessons make you lethargic? Ask Teach for a magic drink to perk you up.  Teach says "Sure, Mate, we'll get right on it; got some grant money,  don't you know?"

Alas for the tykes and compliant bureaucrats,  citizens horse-laughed the idiot idea out of the water.  Sounds like the Aussie masses are still shaking off their English heritage.

La Belle France

Just when things are going less horribly for the better  (I think) guys, the French foreign minister is telling NATO what a bad job it's doing running the Libya war. He is Alain Juppe. He may be best remembered as the politician convicted of felony theft of taxpayers' money.

NATO General Mark Van Uhm, a Hollander,  told him to bugger off. That counts as a score for the Dutch if you ask me.

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Meanwhile, France and Britain are bickering about sending aid to alleviate the misery in Misrata. Wouldn't they just.  Five gets you ten the snit is about who tells Uncle Sam that he's expected to foot the bill.

The HMS Astute

Only men who sailed with the HMS Astute crew are qualified to say much about why Able Seaman Donovan cracked while in possession of the SR80. However:

You really shouldn't shoot your officers.  Sure, once in a dozen voyages you'll be thrown together with one who needs to be enlightened in a physical manner. You still shouldn't. It's prejudicial to good order and discipline.

I never did, but the tragedy aboard the hard-luck Astute reminds me  of Mr. Klem. I once promised myself that, when we were both civilians again, I would invite him  to  discuss his calling me a son-of-a bitch for correcting his line-of-position plot. Never did, but, Ensign Klem, if you happen to be reading...

(That's not to say I was totally revengeless. For the longest time I let him send his unedited course and speed recommendations to the bridge, hee hee. It is my understanding that this resulted in a number of discussions between the young NROTC officer and our captain.)

While we're in a nation-building mood

Some 250,000 British citizens have taken to the streets, protesting the Throne's drive to deprive them of their human rights to free stuff.

It is not time, therefore, for the United States to impose a no-fly zone over Cheapside? I mean, Ho Ho Ho, Liz must go. That Cameron chap, too, probably.

Naturally, President Obama should first request permission of the United Nations. Congress and his subjects can learn about it from the newspapers and teevee.
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We Irish Have Always Known

On this date in 1852, Ireland mourned the passing of Thomas Moore, poet, balladeer, and economist.

All in the Family Way
by Thomas Moore

["The Public Debt is owed from ourselves to ourselves and resolves itself into a Family Account" - Sir Robert Peel's Letter]

My banks are all furnished with rags,
So thick, even Freddy can't thin 'em;
I've torn up my old money-bags,
Having little or nought to put in 'em.
My tradesman are smashing by dozens,
But this is all nothing, they say;
For bankrupts, since Adam, are cousins,
So, it's all in the family way. ...
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Cheerio and Adieu

A few months ago I noted the proposed sale of one of our defense outfits to furriners.

It was a complicated deal for L1 Identity Solutions. CEO Robert LaPenta proved talented over the years at farting away shareholder money, but not making any. He  ran the company into the ground and had to auction it off. To generate any bids at all he found he had to split it up, despite promises to the contrary.

Part of L1 is a spook shop, a set of mercenaries under hire by American "intelligence" agencies.  That sale became final yesterday, to BAE, which answers to London, the professional home of Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five.

That clears the way for peddling the rest of L1, basically the biometrics-related chunk, to Safron which is not only French but partially owned by the rulers of the Fifth Republic, a nation which has still not quite forgiven us for getting their soil all bloody in the summer of 1944.

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Oh well, the Limeys and the Frogs may not do much worse with their new spy toys and telescreens than we did.

Kicking the Duke's Carriage, Oh My!

We sadly note that England has given us a disrespectful lead. It seems that London youth today have been observed kicking the carriage of His Future Royal Majesty. And on Regency Street, no less, even with Mrs. Future Royal Majesty, Camilla, aboard.

The AP determined that this event required a bulletin and a quick subsequent lede  quoting a Charlie factotum that "Their Royal Majesties are quite unharmed."

I, for one, am quite relieved.

And the AP, on it's own, reports that the couple, after speeding off, dismounted at at London Palladium to view a Royal Variety Performance,  (Judge Lynn in "Divorce Court" reruns?)  "looking quite composed."  This, too, is heartening.

The protesters are angry because Parliament, which has recently discovered that the Exchequer is still bare, plans to triple university tuition to 9,000 pounds per annum.

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I probably wouldn't have found this worth a little essay except for one factlet. AP said one protester carried a sign saying "Education is Not For Sale."

Look, you little batty English socialist nincompoop. If it isn't for sale, then what in the Hell have you parents been sweating for all their lives? Where do you think that chunk of their paycheck went every fortnight? Or that confiscatory value-added tax they forked over every time you whined for a for a pretty new waistcoat and the latest pop CD while you were in the lower forms? If it isn't for sale,  where the deuce does it come from? Your Inland Revenue Service is funded with unicorn farts, maybe?

Now, if you had said that your universities are as bloated as ours, that students are getting a bad bargain at almost any tuition level, then I wouldn't be calling you a  stoned-out, smack-brained, collectivist doowhackadoo whose economic understanding is lower than whale excretia.

And if that ain't the ever-loving truth I'll kiss your arse at Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the Guard and give you an hour to alert Fleet Street.

Horse WHAT?

This English guy walks under a conker tree.  A nut falls and conks his head.

Being English, he seeks the assistance of the Authorities. Being English Authorities, they leap into action.


The notice put on the tree in the Abbey Gardens in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, reads: "Beware. Falling Conkers. Please proceed with care."


One resident -- a 77-year-old woman who presumably remembers Britain as a nation rather than a theme park -- ridiculed the Elected Few. The council huffed back that it was simply responding to the legitimate complaint of a concerned conked citizen. 


The final paragraph of  another report says of the village:"Tourism is also a major part of the economy, plus local government." 


No doubt.
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Conker? That's English for the perilous horse chestnut.


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I would be less unchurched  if my clergy person was  the the Reverend Mary Edwards, of Collingbourne Ducis, near Marlborough, on the Plains of Salisbury in Merry Olde.

Something of a scholar, she discovered that her commission included the right to muster her parishioners  for practice with lethal weapons in defense of the realm. And so,  this spring, she did just that.

Mrs Edwards said: "It's an unrepealed law from some time in the middle ages and I can call all the men - but I've extended it to all people - in the parish to archery practice."

And I am here to tell you that this woman knows how to command a militia.

"Residents were rewarded for complying with the law with a bar, a barbecue and live music."


The occasion for the bending of the yew was completion of an indoor loo, the church's first.

The extent of diaper dampening in Parliament is thus far unreported.


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As a descendant of Fearghael of Longford in Leinster, or perhaps Fearghael of the wild Wicklow Mountains,  I find myself suspecting  -- or  perhaps merely hoping -- that  her pedigree begins somewhere in Hibernia.

Speaking of survival

Did you ever wonder why Bear Grylls never seems to slip a Bic lighter into his cargo pants  before he jumps out of the airplane?

No Boy Scouts in Britain when he was wee?

Welfare Queen

A real one, to wit:

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,  Head of the Commonwealth, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Lancaster Lord of Mann and Paramount Chief of Fiji. 




AKA Regina of the Chilly Toes, making us wonder if Phil might not have been behind this. 


Liz applied for The Dole,  heating assistance  to chase the chill from the cold stone of Buckingham Palace. 


That particular fund was designed to pay for warm schools and hospitals. 

Her Majesty's government said, "Sure,"  then, egad, reneged and thwarted Royal Desire.  It seems some spoilsport of a PUS got to thinking about those ever-so-disrespectful cads on Fleet Street.




"I also feel a bit uneasy about the probable adverse press coverage if the palace were given a grant at the expense of, say, a hospital," the official said.




Move to Britain. Apply for welfare. You'll meet such a nice class of people in the queue.

Otherwise at the loophole...

A buddy got a fine deal on a Marlin Model 92 offered as a "parts" gun. It was missing only the butt plate, and you make a mistake to underestimate this man's stock-making and general restoration skills.

I was less lucky and settled for a good Lyman 358495 mold (147 -grain wadcutters), a GI . 1911 magazine, and a funky old .22 gun belt,  solid, but  missing its buscadero style holster. It  looks keen hanging next to the spurs.

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If I ever decide  to reload 9mm Eurowimp,  the  Lyman bullets will let me enter the caliber wars about whether 9mm Parabellum  using 147 grainers is a "good defense load." I will undoubtedly  straddle the fence and prove it is OK in Europe, but not here. Then I'll get to quote Colonel Cooper again. "If you shoot a European he will sit down on the curb and cry. If you shoot an American he will shoot back."

USA! USA!

Now that that my native land is a world soccer power, I suppose it behooves me to become an official fan.

So I'll practice drinking strong beer until I puke on the guy in the bleacher seat in front of me.  I'll learn to yell   "f++k"  a lot. And when my team does very well I'll run naked up and down Temple Lane after breaking things inside the Temple Bar. 

(These lessons were learned in Dublin when I met some English gentlemen in town  for a tournament,)

Anything else I should be working on?

Climate change Down Under

Several dozen Australian climate clowns are getting back into the VW bug. Canberra- mandated cap and trade is dead until at least 2013, and the WSJ offers this tasty lede:

Australian Prime Minister and climate moralist-in-chief Kevin Rudd announced the shelving of cap-and-trade legislation until 2013. He blamed the delay on his political opponents and "slow progress" on a multilateral accord.

Meaning, in plainer terms, "Too many voters are starting to see through this crap."

But Ruddy knows all is not lost in his drive to turn every Australian into a state-dependent thumb sucker. He's continuing his campaign to frighten his subjects into submission with further attacks on smokers and the health industry.

If, 30 years ago, you had told me the moonheadedness of Sidney Webb would catch on so well in Australia, I'd have called you loco.