Former England cricketer Monty Panesar quits George Galloway's party

 

Monty Panesar

Politically clueless, Monty Panesar, has bailed out of the Workers Party of Britain (WPB) a week after being adopted as their parliamentary candidate for Ealing Southall, in London. The former England spin bowler, says he needs time to mature and to find his political home.

In 2019, Monty wanted to be the Mayor of London and said that he hoped Sadiq Khan would pass the baton to him. He also said that he hoped one day to become UK Prime Minister. When he was recently asked about his party’s position on Gaza and NATO, Monty said foreign policy wasn't his strong point and he passed the baton to George Galloway. He recently announced that he'd never voted before and said, "This is not spin. I expect my politics to played with a straight bat." 

In the past, Panesar has been diagnosed with depression, paranoia and schizophrenia and requires medication to deal with his daily battle against metal illness. In 2013, he was issued with an on the spot fine when he urinated on a night club bouncer in Brighton.

 

Dostoevsky - 'Crime & Punishment'.

 

Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel 'Crime and Punishment,' is a terrific novel and one of the greatest. I don't really like the nihilistic Rodion Raskolnikov and neither did the convicts in the penal settlement. Dostoevsky often chooses a name to indicate something about a character and his name is obviously derived from 'schismatic' or 'dissenter'. The Old Believers or Doukhobors, were known as Raskolnik.

Raskolnikov sees the world as being made up of ordinary and extraordinary individuals like Napoleon. I think the expression 'Napoleon Complex', is used in the novel. For Raskolnikov, the vast majority of people are just passive dupes but, in his mind, there are the exceptional individuals, for whom ordinary laws or moral standards don't apply. They are a law unto themselves. He kills an old woman, a money lender, simply because he can do. He thinks she's worthless and that world would be better off without her. Her sister, who he also kills, just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The examining magistrate, Porfiry Petrovich - the model for the detective Colombo - as him weighed up early on because he's managed to find an article written by Raskolnikov in which he outlines his philosophy of the Napoleon Complex. He never arrests Raskolnikov because he believes that his conscience will eventually get the better of him and he will surrender himself. There's a part in the book where Raskolnikov asks the magistrate if he knows who killed the old woman and he replies, you did it. He also says to Raskolnikov, who in Russia doesn't think he's a Napoleon. Raskolnikov, admits that many do think they're Napoleon, but only a few exceptional people rise to the top.

I wonder if Nietzsche got his idea of the superman from Dostoevsky? He read Dostoevsky and greatly admired him as a psychological writer. When Raskolnikov is sentenced and convicted, I think the judge says that he killed the old woman during a period of illness, when his mind was disturbed. Raskolnikov was hard up and wasn't eating enough food. This is a way of trying to make sense of why a well-educated young law student, acted in the way he did.

Sonya, the street walker, who is an angel and a devout Christian, shows Raskolnikov the way back to redemption, a favourite topic with Dostoevsky. It's Dostoevsky who tells us in the 'The Brothers Karamazov,' that if God didn't exist, everything would be permitted. Sonya sells her body so that her family will have food on the table because her alcoholic father, Marmeladov, squanders all the money on vodka. She goes to live near Raskolnikov so she can visit him in the penal colony. All the convicts love her and call her little mother.

I don't think Raskolnikov was born without a conscience or lacks compassion. He's really far too clever for his own good and he generally thinks the vast majority of people are stupid and docile. Like Nietzsche, he sees the masses as the "bungled and the botched."

 A significant part of that book is the dream that he had, about an event that he witnessed in his childhood. It was when he saw a drunken peasant flog a horse to death with an iron bar when everyone stood about watching this and started laughing at the peasant. This greatly upset young Roddy, but it says a lot about the Russian character. 

'Joy' the English Cocker Spaniel

 

Joy, the last dog of the Romanovs

King George V of Britain did help some of the Romanovs to escape from Russia but he refused asylum to the Tsar and his family. He thought it could be politically damaging to the House of Windsor if they came to stay in Britain. The Tsar wasn't popular and he was married to a German. He sent HMS Marlborough to evacuate his aunt, Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna, the mother of Tsar Nicholas, from the Crimea in April 1919. She left the Crimea with 17 other Romanovs including her daughter, Grand Duchess Xenia and five of Xenia's sons as well as six dogs and a canary.

What happened in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, must have been terrible for the victims. They say the Tsar died instantly shot in the head. Many of the others were shot and bayonetted. The Bolshevik assassination squad didn't only murder the Tsar and his family, they also killed their domestic servants. The court physician, Eugene Botkin, was killed along with their chambermaid Anna Demidova, their cook, Ivan Kharitonov and their footman, Alexei Trupp. The only thing the Bolsheviks spared, was the family's English Cocker Spaniel, called Joy.

The assassination squad was led by the Jewish Chekist (secret policeman), called Yakov Yurovsky. They say that a revolution devours its own. Yurovsky is said to have died, in great pain, following health problems arising from a duodenal or peptic ulcer. He'd been hospitalised and unexpectedly transferred to the Kremlin Hospital, which was off limits to most Soviet citizens. It has been claimed by the Russian historian Edvard Radzinsky, that Yurovsky was poisoned by the NKVD shortly before his death in August 1938. It has also been alleged that he was denied adequate medical treatment. That same year, Yurovsky's daughter Rimma, was arrested for being a Trotskyist and deported to the gulag. Her arrest also had a severe impact on his health. His death and the arrest of his daughter, occurred during what is called Stalin's Great purge, which also saw many of Yurovsky's Ural comrades being arrested and executed. In 1952, Yurovsky's son, Alexander, who was a Real Admiral in the Soviet Navy was also arrested, but was released a year after Joseph Stalin's death.

The deaths of the Romanov family must have weighed heavily on the conscience of King George V and he must have felt a certain amount of guilt. As cousins they were very close and looked almost like identical twins. The Tsar's mother, Maria Feodorovna, the sister of Queen Alexandra, could never accept that her son and his wife and her grandchildren, had died in the Ipatiev House. It was something that she could never come to terms with. 

Joy, the cocker spaniel, was adopted by Colonel Pavel Rodzianko, who moved to England after the defeat of the White Army. He took the dog with him and went to live in Windsor. The dog died in the 1920s and was buried in his garden. Rodzianko wrote: "Every time I pass my garden at Windsor, I think of the small dog's tomb in the bushes with the ironical inscription "Here lies Joy." To me, that little stone marks the end of an empire and a way of life."

The site of the grave has now become a parking lot.

Anarchy, William Morris and St Kilda.

 

St Kilda

The five islands called (St Kilda), were eventually abandoned in August 1930 when the last 36 inhabitants were evacuated to Morvern on the Scottish mainland at their own request. Four years earlier (1926), four men had died from influenza and in January 1930, a young woman called Mary Gillies, died of appendicitis. There had also been a series of crop failures in the 1920s. The islanders cultivated barley and potatoes.

The islands problems stem from depopulation through emigration, natural disasters and contact with tourists and visiting ships, who brought disease. The tourists tended to see the islanders as curiosities. The inhabitants lived mainly on sea birds and their eggs but also had sheep. Although the inhabitants of St Kilda had boats, the seas around St Kilda were said to be far too treacherous for fishing. It must have been hard a life on St Kilda but it's said the islands were inhabited for 2000 years. The inhabitants must have all been related genetically.

Their way of life and the society that they lived in, would have fascinated a social anthropologist like Margaret Mead. There's no such thing as government, lawyers, crime, money, employers, a police force, or social classes. But the islanders did have rules and codes of behaviour. Although fines could be issued for misdemeanours, there is no recorded case of a serious crime occurring on St Kilda in four centuries. The islanders had a daily 'parliament' that was held after prayers, in the street every morning and which was attended by all adult males. By all accounts these meetings could be boisterous but they never led to discord and social division. No one led the meeting and all men had the right to speak. This meeting decided the day's activities.

Although the islands were historically owned by the MacLeod's of Harris, who's steward collected rents in kind, once a year, there's really no private property as such, but there was personal property - possessions. It's not a competitive society but a society based on mutual aid, reciprocity, and co-operation. This is a kind of anarchist society that we're told is impossible to construct because it doesn't accord with human nature.

In 1667, a man called Martin Martin, described a vibrant community and noted that:

"The inhabitants of St Kilda, are much happier than the generality of mankind, as being almost the only people in the world who feel the sweetness of true liberty, simplicity and mutual love and cordial friendship, free from solicitous cares, and anxious covetousness, and the consequences that attend them."

William Morris, wrote about an idealised non-governmental socialistic society in his novel called 'News from Nowhere’, published in serial form in the journal 'Commonweal' in 1890. In the novel, a character called Old Hammond, tells the narrator of the story William Guest, that they've turned the House of Commons into place for storing dung. I couldn't think of a more appropriate use for that building.

Lolita (1997) - A film directed by Adrian Lyne.

 

Jeremy Irons & Dominique Swain - Lolita

I never thought that Melanie Griffith's was a particularly good actress but I'm sure that increasing use of drugs and alcohol, wouldn't have helped her career. She's the daughter of Tippi Hedren and the mother of "Fifty Shades of Grey" star, Dakota Johnson. She played the part of Charlotte Haze in the 1997 film 'Lolita' directed by Adrian Lyne. It was considered a controversial and deeply disturbing film because it deals with the subject of paedophilia. The film also stars Jeremy Irons who plays Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged European professor of English literature.

The film is based on Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel of the same name. Humbert rents a room in the house of a young widow called Charlotte Haze (Melanie Griffith), after seeing her 12-year-old daughter, Dolores Haze, also called "Lo", while touring the house. Dolores is played by the actress Dominique Swain. The professor is attracted to adolescent girls who he calls "nymphets." He becomes obsessed and sexually attracted to Dolores who he nicknames "Lolita." Humbert marries Charlotte so he can be near to her daughter and control and groom her. One day, Charlotte finds Humbert's diary and discovers that her marriage is a sham and that it's her daughter that Humbert is attracted to and not her. In anger she runs out of the house and gets struck by a car and killed. This leaves Humbert free to sexually exploit Dolores.

After her mother's death, Humbert and Dolores travel the country before settling in the college town of Beardsley where Humbert takes a teaching job. There is a creepy character in the film called Clare Quilty, who is played by the actor Frank Langella. Quilty, a playwright, seems to suspect the real nature of the relationship between Delores and Humbert after meeting them in a hotel where Humbert has taken Delores to rape her. He then follows the pair across the country. Delores eventually runs away or escapes with Quilty and Humbert's search for them is unsuccessful.

Several years later, Humbert receives a letter from her asking for money. He discovers that she's married and pregnant. Delores tells him that Quilty had took her to his home to be exploited for the purposes of child pornography, but had abandoned her, when she refused to be in one of his films. Humbert tracks down Quilty and shoots him to death in his home while chasing him around the house. This part of the film is particularly gruesome. Humbert is arrested and sent to prison where he dies. A month after his death, Delores dies from childbirth complication.

The film met with much controversy in Australia and had difficulty finding an American distributor. Some critics did, however, praise the film and in particular Swain and Irons for their performances in the film, which they thought remained faithful to Nabokov's narrative. Dominique Swain was chosen to play the role of Dolores when she auditioned in 1995, with 2,500 other girls, when she was aged 15.

Rowling accuses Starmer of having a "brass neck" over transgenderism.

 

J.K. Rowling

Sir Keir Starmer-oid can turn on a dime. He does a U-turn on everything. The Harry Potter Author, J.K. Rowling, has accused Starmer-oid of having a "brass neck" over the transgender issue.

Starmer-oid criticised the Labour MP, Rosie Duffield, when she said that only women had a cervix. He said it was wrong to say that only women had a cervix and Duffield was forced to apologise. Duffield was accused of 'transphobia' and some critics, including women, said that her comments would "discourage trans men and non-binary people from having cervical smears", even though, trans men, don't have a cervix. In Scotland, tampons and sanitary towels were put in gents' toilets, so trans men wouldn't feel offended, even though trans men don't menstruate. Although Duffield later apologised, she did say that she was going to Stepford to be "reprogrammed."

Rowling wrote on X, "Male politicians who chose to pander to activists issuing violent threats against their own female MPs enabled and emboldened the toxic culture @ Keir_Starmer now claims to deplore. When your part of the cause, you've got some brass neck putting yourself forward as a cure."

Starmer-oid who wants to be Labour's next UK prime minister, does seem to have a problem with comprehending basic biological facts. Not long ago, he said that 99.9% of women didn't have a penis. Most people think the figure is 100% of women. When Starmer-oid was asked if he would be apologising to Rosie Duffield, he said he didn't want to revisit this "toxic issue."

It's hardly surprising that Labour and Starmer-oid have suddenly changed tack on transgender ideology, when having previously, embraced it wholeheartedly. They've seen how this deadly toxic issue has destroyed the political careers of Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf in Scotland and Leo Varadkar, in Ireland.

Humza Yousaf Resigns.

 

Humza Yousaf

I suspect that Humza Yousaf (the SNP's continuity candidate), has contrived this whole situation of his resignation to get out of the job of being First Minister for Scotland. After being Scotland's First Minister, for just over twelve months, he's now decided to abandon a sinking ship. He's no fool. What did he think was likely to happen when he ended the SNP's partnership/coalition with the Greens. As a politician, he must have understood the numbers game.

The SNP have become a laughing stock in the eyes of many Scottish people with their Gender Recognition (Scotland) Bill and their Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act. The British government blocked the Gender Recognition Bill because it would've had an adverse effect on UK-wide, equalities legislation. The Hate Crime Bill, also seems to be unworkable, because the police haven't the time or resources to investigate many of the complaints, that are made by all sorts of cranks and social misfits.

The transgender serial rapist, Isla Bryson, (formerly Adam Graham) - who wanted to be sent to a Scottish women's prison - said he/she was a victim of hate crime. The Harry Potter author, J K. Rowling, said the measure was wide open to abuse and she's quite right. The SNP's obsession with identity politics and in particular, 'transgenderism', has finished them off politically. I also suspect that it has finished off any notions about Scottish independence and the Balkanization of Britain.

Clowns, like Humza Yousaf and Nicola Sturgeon, the Wee Jimmie Krankie of Scottish politics, hardly inspire confidence. Scotland's former First Minister, Alex Salmond, who now leads the Alba Party, has said the SNP needs to abandon its fixation with identity cultural politics and focus on the bread-and-butter issues, that really matter to the Scottish people.

BBC announces that 'genderqueer' Sam Smith will headline BBC Proms.

 

Sam Smith

The BBC have announced that the musically mediocre pop star, Sam Smith, will headline this year's 2024 BBC Proms. Smith, describes himself as "non-binary" and "genderqueer," whatever that means. I believe 'non-binary', means he doesn't regard himself as male or female, but the name Sam, seems to give the game away and he's also biologically male.

However, I'm not sure what relevance somebody's sexual predilections have to do with the performing arts. We admire the artistic work of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini, not because of their sexual preferences, but because we regard them as artistic geniuses. That's what we judge them by.

It seems to me that Smith uses sexual and gender ambiguity as a way of marketing himself. The American rapper, singer and song writer, Azealia Banks, has said that Smith is "Leaning On" sexuality, to "Make Trash Music." She may be right, but I've only heard snippets of his performances and I'm not that impressed. It sounds like garbage to me, but each to their own.

Britain is increasingly beginning to resemble something out of a farce by Gilbert & Sullivan, a topsy-turvy world of disorder and confusion. I bet we're becoming the laughing stock of the world. No wonder children in Britain are growing up confused.

 

Gideon Falter & the Campaign for Antisemitism.

 

Gideon Falter - Head of the Campaign Against Antisemitism

I've watched the footage of this altercation between a London police officer and Gideon Falter, a journalist and Chief Executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). That police officer was trying to prevent a "breach of the peace" and seems to have handled the situation correctly and reasonably. Falter, who was wearing a Kippah skull-cap, said he just wanted to cross the road. Where he wanted to cross, was directly where a pro-Palestinian march was taking place. The police officer told Falter, "You are quite openly Jewish, this is a pro-Palestinian march. I'm not accusing you of anything but I'm worried about the reaction to your presence." He accused Falter of trying to antagonise others by deliberately trying to walk "right into the middle" of the march. He also told him that he was being "disingenuous."

Falter was there to provoke a reaction for political purposes and the police officer suspected that. The police officer threatened to arrest Falter after he tried to push past police officers, but said he preferred not to do so. He then politely offered to escort Falter and his group, to a more appropriate crossing point, but Falter refused his assistance. After the incident, Falter told the BBC that he'd found the experience "frightening" and said he felt like he "was being treated like a criminal for being Jewish." He accused the Met's Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, of "curtailing the rights of law-abiding Londoners including the Jewish community to appease lawless mobs." He told ITV's Good Morning Britain, that his members often attend pro-Palestinian marches to "force the police to make sure these things are safe for Jewish people" - and he would turn up at the next one.

Although the Met have apologised twice to Gideon Falter and have offered to meet with him, he has called on Sir Mark Rowley to resign. A Downing Street spokesman said that the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was "as appalled as everyone else by the officer calling Mr Falter "openly Jewish."

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is understood to have full confidence in the commissioner. The CAA was at the forefront of antisemitism allegations against Labour under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. The organisation Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), which has had dozens of members investigated by Labour for alleged antisemitism, has alleged that the CAA - a registered charity- is a "partisan political campaigning group." JVL have alleged that the CAA engages in "persistent conflation and equating of antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel."

Charity regulations state that "an organisation will not be charitable if it's purposes are political." In 2023, the Charity Commission opened a regulatory compliance case against the CAA, after receiving complaints that the organisation was "politically partisan." The Labour MP, Margaret Hodge, a former CAA patron, tweeted that the charity was "more concerned with undermining Labour than rooting out antisemitism." In 2016, a number of British Jews wrote to the Guardian dissociating themselves from what they described as "the pro-Israel lobbyists of the Campaign Against Antisemitism" after the CAA criticised a report into antisemitism by Shami Chakrabarti.

Gideon Falter, is an Executive Board Member of the Jewish National Fund UK (JNF UK). which is believed to fund the CAA. The Jewish National Fund is Israel's quasi-governmental settler-colonial agency. Honorary Patrons include Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Blaming the "Baby Boomers" As the age war replaced class war?

 

As one of the post-war generation growing up in the 1950s, nobody identified as a "baby boomer" or even used the term. These terms and concepts have been coined by sociologists, journalists, advertising men and generational theorists for their own purposes. The first recorded use of "baby boomer" is said to have be in January 1963 when it was used in a Daily Press article by Leslie J. Nason. He was specifically referring to a "tidal wave of college enrollments."

The term 'Generation X' has been attributed to a book of that name written by June Deverson and Charles Hamblett. Billy Idol, named a band after it. A Canadian journalist called Douglas Coupland is said to have popularized the term. In 1991, the authors Neil Howe and William Strauss wrote 'Generations' which included a discussion about another category called ' Millennials'.

All these catchy terms are used to categorise certain age groups and to try and depict certain historical social trends. I suppose it stems from our need as humans to understand and make sense of the social world in which we live and which we call history. But these classifications are also used in advertising to market consumer products.

Another way of categorising people is by 'social class' and socioeconomic status, which is still the master category for many sociologists and researchers. In a country like Britain, which always has been a very class-based stratified society, 'social class' is often derived from the occupation undertaken by a person and their income. But those that own the most wealth in any society are not necessarily those that earn the most, because they may live off shareholdings, capital and investment income, rather than work for an income. Social class is a useful tool and concept because it looks at how income, wealth, education, social connections and school, determine to a large extent social outcomes and perpetuate an intergenerational elite. For example, only around 7% of the UK population have ever attended a 'public school' or what the Americans more rightly call a private school. Yet, the former pupils of these schools occupy some of the most senior positions in British society. They are to be found in the higher echelons of the legal profession, politics, media and journalism. One school in particular, Eton College, has produced more British prime ministers than any other.

One of those old Etonians, was the former Tory prime minister, David Cameron, who gave us 'Brexit'. He would have us believe that he's got on in life by having 'sharp elbows'. He said he wanted to be the British prime minister because he thought he'd be "rather good at it." He was rather bad at it. He had to resign when he lost the E.U. referendum vote in 2016 which he called for reasons of political expediency. Cameron owes most of his success in life to the social class he was born into and to marriage. Cameron's mother-in-law, Lady Astor, pulled strings to get him a job at Carlton TV where he was director of corporate affairs for seven years. Lady Astor was a personal friend of Michael Green, the then executive chairman of Carlton. She suggested that he hire Cameron and Green complied. According to the Guardian newspaper, he was recruited on a salary of £90,000 a year. It's also claimed that Cameron landed a job with the Conservative Party in 1988, when he was 21, after someone claiming to be from Buckingham Palace, also pulled strings for him.

In one sense, you can't blame Cameron for using his class social connections to get on in life, but he really ought to be a lot more honest about it. As we say in Britain, it's not what you know but who you know, that matters.

It's easy to blame an older generation for the misfortunes of a younger generation, but this is just socially divisive, lazy thinking and wrong. It detracts from the real causes. Government policies which have led to greater inequality and more precarious employment for younger people, are more to blame. I saw the rot set in during the 1980s when it became far more difficult to get work and unemployment increased to 3 million under Margaret Thatcher from 1979 to 1983. There was also more deindustrialization, outsourcing of jobs abroad and privatizations. Thatcher's employment policies paved the way for zero-hour contracts and the gig economy.

The thirty or so years after WWII, are seen as the golden age of modern capitalism and welfarism. There was economic growth after the war in many western European countries and in America. This led to full employment, more opportunities, access to housing and a better standard of living for many people who are now called the "baby boomers." When I left school in 1970, it wasn't difficult to get a job or an apprenticeship, or to access higher grant-funded education. All that changed with the election of the Conservatives and Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

Are Britain's politicians turning politics into a subject of mockery, a kind of Brechtian farce.

 

Jake Austin

I've just received the Election Booklet for the Greater Manchester Mayoral Election 2024 and I pissed myself laughing when I read this.

The Liberal Democrats have nominated a comic strip character called Jake Austin, a Stockport councillor, as their Mayoral candidate. Jake's a 29-year-old 'project manager', whatever that is. He used this picture in his election address. The caption under the photograph reads: "Jake at home with his husband Andy, and their Corgi, Ritchie." Two of Jake's pledges are "tackling the sewage dumping crisis in our rivers" and "protecting everyone in our region (minorities) against harassment." Jake says: "Greater Manchester deserves real leadership" and this clown, with his pet dog Ritchie, believes that he can offer that real leadership. He's certainly not Napoleon. Unbelievable! You couldn't make it up. I wouldn't put him in charge of running a whelk stall. He could be a character straight out of a play by Bertolt Brecht or Monty Python.

In Brecht's 'parable play', called 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui', Arturo, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster, tries to take control of the cauliflower trust (I wouldn't trust Jake to run that properly). The play is a satirical allegory of Hitler's rise to power, his Nationalist Socialist state and the disintegration of democracy in Germany.  Brecht referred to Hitler, as 'der Anstreicher' ("the House painter") and Arturo is a parody of Hitler. When Arturo comes knocking on the door of Mayor Dogsborough (Paul von Hindenburg), to blackmail him, the Mayor tells him, "there's no spoon long enough to sup with you Arturo."  Unfortunately, Hindenburg did sup with Hitler and thought he could control him and so did the German army. The German Communists and Socialists who could have united to defeat Hitler, but didn't do so, seemed to see the Nazi's as a temporary aberration before it was too late to stop them.

Being a Marxist and an opponent of Hitler, and married to a Jewish woman, the Nazis would've murdered Brecht if they could've got their hands on him but he left the country the day after the Reichstag fire. Before Hitler came to power, the Nazi Brownshirts in 1930, were trying to disrupt performances of Brecht's play 'The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny' which they eventually banned in 1933. They denounced it as a Marxist play.

Today, The Alabama-Song, which comes from Mahagonny', is the probably the only thing that most people know about this play. The song was covered by the Doors and David Bowie. It was even covered by Marilyn Manson, but I prefer the version by Jim Morrison and The Doors. 

World's oldest man says fish & chips and hiking are the secret of a long life.

 

The World's Oldest Man -John Tinniswood 

Mr John Tinniswood, from Merseyside, says that fish and chips and hiking are the reason for why he's lived so long. Having reached 111 years and 223 days of age, he's now the world's oldest living man.

John, who now lives in a care home in Southport, says that "exercising the mind" and "moderation" are beneficial to a healthy life. He also says "never over tax your system" and get along with other people.

Nobody really does know the secret of longevity, because it seems to be in the lap of the gods. As Gloucester says in Shakespeare's play King Lear, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport..."  But Mr Tinniswood, might have a good point about the importance of moderation and exercising the mind and getting along with other people.

Adolph Zukor, a founder of Paramount Pictures, was once asked as he approached his hundredth birthday, if looking back there was anything in his life that he would have changed for the better. He replied that if he'd known how long he was going to live; he would have taken better care of himself. Zukor, a poor Hungarian immigrant to the U.S.A., died when he was 103 years of age.

Is Scotland's Hate Crime Act unworkable?

 

Scotland's First Minister -Humza Yousaf

Since Humza Useless brought in his Hate Crime Act, the Scottish police have said they've been inundated with complaints about hate crime and can't cope with the amount of extra work.

In the first week of the Act's introduction, the Scottish police received over 7,000 complaints about hate crime. Just 3.8% of these complaints, were considered legitimate and many were made anonymously.

Like some kind of Stasi, the SNP government have been urging the public to shop anybody they suspect of espousing "hate speech". Critics have said that the measure is likely to curtail free speech and could be weaponised by trans activists, to target gender-critical feminists or what some call, Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF).

The Harry Potter author, J K. Rowling, has stated publicly that the Act is "wide open to abuse" by all sorts of cranks and disgruntled misfits, and she's invited the police to arrest her. The author has come under fire for stating that a "trans woman is not a woman."

 I suspect that the SNP's Hate Crime Act, is yet another nail in the coffin of Scottish independence and the Balkanization of the UK. 

"On Being Sane in Insane Places" - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

 

The 1975 film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is a very interesting film. Randle P McMurphy is sent to prison for battery, gambling and statutory rape. To avoid having to do prison work on a farm he feigns mental illness to get sent to a mental hospital where he's evaluated. Although he's perfectly sane, I think he's diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder. McMurphy thinks he's the only sane patient in the hospital but he finds out the he's the only patient who has been committed and all the rest are voluntary patients. They can leave the hospital at any time.

Nurse Ratched is a control freak and McMurphy is a manipulator and recusant. He doesn't submit to any authority and there is a battle of wills between McMurphy and nurse Ratched. McMurphy attacks nurse Ratched and he's lobotomized and turned into a vegetable.

Psychiatry likes to portray itself as a scientific discipline but it can hardly be an exact science because much of it can't be subjected to scientific scrutiny and method. There have been numerous psychology experiments where psychology students have feigned mental illness to see if they could trick a psychiatrist and get sent to a mental hospital.

The famous Rosenhan or Thud experiment, was conducted to determine the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. The study was conducted by a Stanford professor of psychology called David Rosenhan. Rosenhan and eight other people feigned auditory hallucinations to try and gain admission to 12 psychiatric hospitals in five states in the U.S. The study "On Being Sane in Insane Places", was published by the journal 'Science' in 1973.

Kafka & Humza Yousaf's Hate Crime Act.

 

I read Kafka's 'The Trial' many years ago and wasn't that impressed with the novel. It took a while for the penny to drop and for me to realise just how profoundly important this book was. The utter alienation and despair that Joseph K finds himself facing is deeply shocking. He's arrested by two agents and prosecuted by some remote and vague authority and the nature of his alleged crime, is never revealed to him or to the reader. He's eventually stabbed to death while being strangled and we never really get to know what's going on or who is killing him or for what purpose.

We now talk about being caught up in a 'Kafkaesque' nightmare or experience. You're accused of something you know to be untrue but your denials are not believed and it's difficult to acquit yourself. In a totalitarian society like Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, they encouraged informers who would denounce people. It was unlikely that you would ever be told who'd denounced you. It became a good way of getting your own back on a rival, a person you dislike, a nuisance neighbour or somebody who is chasing you for money. You just denounce them as an "enemy of the people" or the party. Jealousy can be another motive for arousing a person's enmity towards you.

In the first week of Scotland's 'Hate Crime Act', the police received 7,152 complaints and judged that only 3.8% of the complaints were legitimate. I believe that many of the complaints were made anonymously. You can bet your bottom dollar that the Scottish police didn't investigate all these complaints because they don't have either the time or resources to do so, or because they considered many of these complaints to be frivolous and vexatious or motivated by animus.

There are serious concerns that these measures will be become weaponised by trans-rights activists to silence criticism by gender-critical feminist groups and that it will curtail free speech, because people will fear being denounced for 'hate crime'. The act could also be used against others including pro-Palestinian campaigners in Scotland. The Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling has said the act is "wide open to abuse" and she's challenged the police to arrest her.

The Russian human rights campaigner, Sergei Kovalyov, spent seven years in jail under Brezhnev for something spuriously called "anti-Soviet agitation." He says that in the Soviet Union "we had jokes and people were sent to prison for them." He recounted one such joke in which several prisoners meet and begin to discuss their cases. One says, "I'm here for criticising Radik (one of Stalin's adviser's). The second says: "I am here for praising Radik." They ask the third prisoner what he is there for, and he replies: "I am Radik."

What happened in the Soviet Union was a tragedy of monumental proportions.  What is happening in Scotland under the SNP and Humza Yousaf' and his Hate Crime Act, is a farce, but just as ridiculous. 

What's wrong with public transport in Greater Manchester?

 

The bus service in Greater Manchester is atrocious. It must be sub-standard even by Lincolnshire standards.

Waiting for a Stagecoach bus can be like waiting for Godot. Many buses don't turn up or don't run on time. Sometimes two buses turn up at the same time. In the evening, some services are one an hour. I've met bus users who have told me that they've been waiting an hour in a freezing bus shelter to get a bus.

They haven't been able to run an efficient and punctual bus service in Greater Manchester for donkeys' years. In the early 1970s, the buses were as regular as clockwork and the driver didn't have to ask the passengers to direct him along his bus route because he knew where he was going.

I support Andy Burnham's bus reforms but the launch of the Bee Network has been fraught with problems. Bus users have complained of late and missing buses and apps that don't work. There have also been complaints about cancellations due to a shortage of bus drivers. Burnham says these are teething problems which will sort themselves out in the long run. I hope he's right, because at the moment it looks like business as usual.

 

Limerick and Angela's Ashes.

 

Frank McCourt -Angela's Ashes

Limerick is also known as "Stab City." The Irish/American writer, Frank McCourt, who was from Limerick but had been born in the U.S., has often been criticised for portraying the city in a bad light in his novel called 'Angela's Ashes'. The book is cracking read but some people say that McCourt invented things and was inclined to exaggerate the poverty and misery of his childhood growing up in Limerick's lanes.

One of his relatives was a 'Blue Shirt' called Laman Griffin. In his book, McCourt says that all Irish children are taught about how Ireland suffered under 800 years of English oppression. Yet, the miserable Irish childhood that McCourt describes, took place in a country that was an Irish Republic and which was dominated by the Roman Catholic church and the conservative nationalist politics of Fianna Fail and Eamon de Valera. It was a country that banned abortion and contraception and which subjugated women. It was country of Magdalene Laundries where unmarried mothers were incarcerated and their babies sold and then exported to the U.S. and Australia. Many of the "fallen women" who escaped from the laundries, were often returned by the local Gardai.

Sinead O'Conner was sent by her father to the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity laundry in Dublin, when she was just 14 years of age, when she was labelled a "problem child" and started to shoplift and play truant. Sinead claimed that she suffered horrendous physical and emotional abuse from her mother when she was a child, but this seems to have been covered up as was a lot of child sex abuse in Ireland. 

Gerrard Winstanley the Digger.

 

The Digger colony on St. George's Hill in Weybridge, Surrey, is now one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the UK. This is a gated community with a golf course, which is full of multi-millionaires, celebrities, and Russian oligarchs. It has been claimed that Vladimir Putin's daughter bought a house there.

Gerrard Winstanley and many of the others associated with the colony on St George's Hill, referred to themselves as the 'True Levellers' rather than 'Diggers' which was a derogatory term that was used by their detractors. They were agrarian communists. They started to cultivate the land on 1 April 1649 and were there for about 12 months. There were also Ranters among them who seem to have caused Winstanley a number of problems, believing in free sex, the virtues of sinfulness, and indolence. Initially, local people didn't take much notice of the Diggers but later on the colony was attacked by local residents, farmers and soldiers, who beat people up, stole tools and set fire to property. Much of the violence was instigated and coordinated by local landlords like Francis Drake, Lord of the manor of Walton. Court proceedings were also started for trespass and fines and costs were imposed. Some were even sent to prison.

Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, two of the Diggers, appeared before General Fairfax on Friday 20th April 1649. Both men refused to take off their hats to Fairfax and after questioning both of them, Fairfax seems to have thought them harmless individuals and believed the local worthies, were overreacting. He considered Everard, a former soldier, slightly mad. Fairfax met the Diggers again at St George's Hill on the 29th May 1649 and although "he told them off", he seemed satisfied that they were no threat to public order and were for non-violence.

The groups position was one of passive resistance and they believed it was a social duty not to work for the rich. The idea of working for wages was anathema to them. The local property owners saw things differently. They saw the Diggers as a threat to their property and feared their ideas could spread further. The following month (June), the colony was attacked by soldiers who were hired by the local landowners.

The adoption of the name Leveller, by Winstanley and his group of communists, upset the leadership of the Leveller movement. They made it clear in several publications that they were not in favour of the expropriation of private property and didn't believe in the equality of social classes. In fact, they didn't support 'levelling' at all. The communists moved from St George's Hill to nearby Cobham Heath in early 1650.

Other Digger colonies were also established in other areas of the country in Buckinghamshire, Kent and Northamptonshire. In 1657, Winstanley and his wife Susan, were given a gift of property by his father-in-law William King. The property was called Ham Manor in Cobham. In 1659, Winstanley became overseer of the poor and in 1671, he was elected Chief Constable of Elmbridge, Surrey. He died in 1676, aged 66.

Lynching in the American Midwest 1930.

 

The lynching of Thomas Shipp & Abraham Smith

America seems to be full of abandoned and neglected areas like Gary in Indiana. Gary is the birthplace of Michael Jackson and his family. They call it the rust belt which stretches from New York to Chicago. These are areas that were reliant on certain industries such as steel and which suffer economic decline and urban decay because of deindustrialization. Gary's racial population is mainly black and it's 30 miles from Chicago.

The city of Marion, in Indiana, is 147 miles from Gary or a 2-hours, 45 minutes’ car drive. I believe the racial population of Marion is mainly white. It's the birthplace of the actor James Dean, but it's also notable for another incident.

In August 1930, two young black men, Thomas Shipp and Abraham Smith, were lynched by a group of thousands. They were taken from their jail cells, beaten, and hanged from a tree in the county courthouse square. They had been arrested as suspects in a robbery, murder and rape case. No one was ever charged over their deaths which was typical in lynching’s. Police officers in the crowd are known to have cooperated in the lynching. The crowd was estimated at 5,000 including women and children.

We usually associate lynching’s with the southern states of the U.S. but Indiana is in the American Midwest. As Billie Holiday sings in "Strange Fruit": "Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood on the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees..."

The song is said to have been inspired by a poem written as a protest against lynching’s and in particular a photograph taken by Lawrence Beitler of the lynching of Shipp and Smith.

The American singer Paul Robeson tried to get the U.S. President Harry S Truman to take action to stop the lynching’s of black people, but Truman declined to do so, because he felt it would alienate southern voters.

Horatio Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar.

 Horatio Nelson

Nelson had 27 ships at the battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805), against the Franco-Spanish fleet of 33 ships. A total of 22 French and Spanish ships were destroyed but only one British ship. The British lost 1,666 men in battle against 13,781 French and Spanish.

The French Admiral, Villeneuve, was captured at Trafalgar and taken prisoner, but was soon returned to France. He committed suicide in Rennes on 22 April 1806 shortly after being freed on parole. He stabbed himself six times in the chest while staying at an inn.

Nelson's secretary, John Scott, was struck by a cannonball that nearly cut him in two and his body was thrown overboard. Nelson was shot an hour and half later. Thomas Hardy, the captain of the Victory, had urged Nelson to remove his medals from his uniform so he would be less conspicuous to an enemy sniper. Nelson refused to do so. He was hit by a musket ball fired by a French marine, from the mizzen-top of the Redoubtable, which entered his left shoulder, passed through a lung, then his spine at the sixth and seventh thoracic vertebrae. He died three hours later.

The bullet is now part of the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. Many of Nelson's medals and personal artefacts have been stolen since 1900.

Ambivalent Sexism.

 Garrick Club

The exclusive male-only Garrick Club, constantly gets signalled out has a bastion of male elitism because of its rule on male only membership. Some MPs, like the politically correct dipstick, Stella Creasy, have raised questions about it in the House of Commons.

When the Guardian recently criticised the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, and Sir Richard Moore, the head of MI6, for being members of the male only Garrick, they immediately resigned.

Some argue that male only private members’ clubs are unfair, sexist, unacceptable and discriminatory. Yet, there are female only private member’s clubs in London and nobody bats an eyelid about it. The University Women's Club, has been female-only since 1886. The Allbright club in Mayfair is female-only and so are The Sorority, The Trouble Club and The Merit Club.

Why are male-only club’s sexist and unacceptable, but not women-only clubs? Why are women allowed their own private social spaces but not men? Why isn't Stella Creasy demanding a ban on female-only private member’s clubs like The Allbright?

Diane Abbott ignored by Speaker during a debate about herself.

 

Diane Abbott

During prime minister's questions, Dianne Abbot stood 46 times over a period of 35 minutes to try and speak during a debate about herself, and was ignored by the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle.

The Tories biggest financial donor, Frank Hester, is alleged to have said of the black female MP that she made him "want to hate all black women" and that she "should be shot."

While other MPs were discussing Abbot and her personal safety, Hoyle closed the session and didn't allow her to ask a question. A spokesperson for Hoyle said the Speaker had not called Dianne Abbott because there had not been time to do so.

The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, said Hester's alleged remarks were "wrong" and "racist" but told MPs that he had apologised and his "remorse should be accepted." He also confirmed that the Conservative Party would not be returning the £10 million donated by Hester.

Manchester's Dark Underbelly.

 

The Undercroft on Rochdale Canal

There have been reports in the Manchester Evening News of holiday-makers on canal boats complaining of seeing people engaged in sex acts on the canal towpaths in Manchester as they sail past.

People have been lured to parts of the Rochdale canal for sex and then beaten up and robbed. Teenage rent-boys are also known to work in the area. According to the M.E.N., the Undercroft is well publicised as a gay cruising and public sex area on websites. This is the dark underbelly of life in the city of Manchester which under a Labour controlled council, has become identified as a "queer city". Many of its politicians can't see much further than Canal Street and its "gay village."

Although parts of Manchester are known for being areas of social deprivation and child poverty, when he was appointed the Lord Mayor of Manchester in 2016, Carl Austin-Behan, said he would be spending the next twelve months in office to highlight "prejudice towards the trans community" and to make HIV testing more readily available. He was deselected in his Burnage ward in 2017. Some said his deselection was due to his lack of visibility in the ward. He now works as the LGBT adviser to the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.