from The Spectator

The following is a short extract from the editorial in this week's Spectator, dated 30th January 2010, entitled Lies, and damned lies:

"Tony Blair's absence has not made the heart grow any fonder.   On the not-rare-enough occasions when he returns to our television screens, one feels an instinctive revulsion.   Here is the Prime Minister who was as uninterested in economics as he was in the conduct of warfare.   He ceded domestic power to an incompetent and reckless Chancellor and he is now accepting £200,000-a-year jobs with the banks with whom his government worked hand-in-glove.   No, there is no pleasure in seeing him again.   Especially as Britain starts to focus on the mess which he bequeathed."

My sentiments exactly!

"Mere numbers do not do justice to the financial crisis produced by the Blair-Brown era, or the economic quagmire from which Britain is still trying to escape".

Later in the editorial it is pointed out that "The national debt - which was £350 billion when Mr. Brown and Mr. Blair moved into Downing Street - will break through £1 trillion soon and is likely never to fall below this level.   The cost of this will be felt by generations.   The Conservatives should never let the public forget whose legacy this is".

London Snow

LONDON SNOW
by Robert Bridges

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
   In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
   Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
    Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
   Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
   All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
   The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
   Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled – marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
   The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
   And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
   They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
   Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,
   “O look at the trees!” they cried, “O look at the trees!”
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
   Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
   When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul’s high dome, spread forth below
   The sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
   And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
   But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
   The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

How Indeed?

Extract from article by Jeff Randall in today's Daily Telegraph:

"It would be fair to say that the views of the Daily Mirror and this column rarely travel in the same direction.   Yesterday, however, the Labour Party's staunchest supporter in the mainstream press got it absolutely right.

Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, it said, are "bumbling" failures, "dozy" rebels, whose "botched" plot to oust Gordon Brown was the "small-minded" treachery of two "famously self-important" but "washed-up" cowards.

In the playground of British politics, boomed the Mirror, Mr. Hoon is a blundering dunce and Miss Hewitt a hectoring nanny.   They are "stupid", "mad", "bonkers" and "crazy", Westminster's Dumb and Dumber.

No quibbles there - that just about sums them up.   Unfortunately it also prompts a question:  how did these clowns manage to secure top jobs at the heart of government for an entire decade?

Having demonstrated incompetence and perfidy, they are unfit to polish the Cabinet table, much less sit around it.   Yet while Mr. Hoon was running Defence (1999-2005) and Transport (2008-09), Miss Hewitt was in charge of Trade and Industry (2001-05) and the NHS (2005-07).  

No wonder we're in such a mess.

Let's Talk About the Weather

"When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather".    So wrote Dr. Johnson in the 18th century, and it remains true today.   The weather is a topic of permanent interest to the English, and we discuss it endlessly, partly because our weather is so varied and unpredictable and partly because it is such a conversational ice-breaker.   If we want to be friendly to the girl at the supermarket check-out, or the woman at the bus-stop, or the man who comes to read the meter, there is no better subject for a short chat, without getting too deeply into anything.   It can cover awkward moments, or give us an excuse for entering into a longer conversation.   And when we are going through the current conditions, it is genuinely interesting to know how people are getting on in other parts of the country.
 
W. S. Gilbert knew all about the English and the weather when he wrote the lyric in The Pirates of Penzance:   "How beautifully blue the sky!".

Foreigners think it odd that we are so obsessed - but foreigners on the whole don't have our weather!   Where would we be without it?

Twenty-First Century Christmas

We are lucky enough in this country to have a caring Government, which is keen to ensure that we all enjoy Christmas (or the Winter Holiday, as I expect they prefer to call it). Just to make sure that you will all have a risk-free time, here are some of the pointers they have given us:

DON’T:

Eat too much, especially anything high in sugar or fat (you are on the road to obesity!)
Drink more than half a glass of wine (that is your recommended quota)
Put up decorations or lights (you might fall off the ladder)
Ring the church bells (noise pollution)
Sing carols in the middle of the road (you have been warned!)
Mention the birth of Jesus (you might offend a minority)
Give extravagant Christmas presents (you can’t afford it)
Make jokes (they will probably be politically incorrect)
Put a piece of silver in the Christmas pudding (someone might swallow it)
Set fire to the pudding (an obvious hazard)
Pull crackers (again, clearly dangerous)
Let off fireworks (too obvious for comment)
Kiss under the mistletoe (you might exchange a deadly virus)
Play silly games (you could injure yourself or others)
Attend a Boxing Day Meet (definitely not a government-approved activity)
Drive to see friends and relations (what about your carbon footprint?)
Put your rubbish in the wrong bin

My advice is to spend Christmas alone in a darkened room with an apple and a glass of water – but make sure you wipe that apple before eating it, and the water – surely not bottled?

Suspension of Service

With everything that goes on at this time of year, and all there is to do, I am not going to post anything more until the New Year - unless there is anything that cries out to be noticed, or something I truly want to say.

So to all my faithful followers, all 12 of you (although since I seem to have inadvertently got myself on to the list and don't know how to get off it, it is really only 11), I wish a very, very happy Christmas, and a New Year full of hope for us all, and particularly the hope that we might get a new government that will put England back on the right path to contentment and prosperity.

Did You Notice.....?

Did you notice that among the provisions of the Chancellor's shamelessly political mini-Budget yesterday it was reported that the UK's net contribution to the European Union will increase next year to £6 billion?   This is an increase of £1.2 billion over this year, and means that our contribution will have doubled in three years.

Margaret Thatcher negotiated a rebate for us in 1984, to counteract smaller benefits in farming payments.   Tony Blair and Gordon Brown agreed to abandon this rebate in stages, in return for a promise to review EU farming subsidies, but while we have kept our side of the bargain, the EU has signally failed to keep any of their promises to us. 

We are ruled by people who have no idea about standing up for Britain's interests.   As long as they keep their jobs, and can make vast amounts in lecture tours and directorships after they retire, the country can go hang.

England's Griefs

from The Deserted Village
by Oliver Goldsmith

Ill fares the land, to hast’ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroy’d, can never be supplied.

A time there was, ere England’s griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintained its man;
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more:
His best companions, innocence and health,
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

But times are alter’d; trade’s unfeeling train
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain;
Along the lawn, where scatter’d hamlets rose,
Unwieldy wealth and cumb’rous pomp repose:
And every want to luxury allied,
And every pang that folly pays to pride.
Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,
Those calm desires that ask’d but little room,
Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene,
Lived in each look, and brighten’d all the green;
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore,
And rural mirth and manners are no more.

Sir John Soane's Museum

This eclectic and unusual museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, was the house of Sir John Soane, one of the greatest of English architects.    Soane was born in Berkshire in 1753 and came to London at an early age to study architecture at the Royal Academy.   He travelled extensively in Italy and on his return to England in 1780 became well-known as an architect, in 1788 winning the important commission of designing the Bank of England, as well as the dining rooms of both 10 and 11 Downing Street, Aynho Park in Oxfordshire and Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire, among many other fine buildings.

No 12 Lincoln's Inn Fields was his family house, and in 1813 he rebuilt No. 13 as a new home and a museum, adding No. 14 in 1823.   Here he displayed his remarkable collection of art, opening the museum to the public, while refusing to admit visitors in 'wet or dirty weather', something with which we can all sympathise.   Soane died a widower, estranged from and disappointed in his two worthless sons.   Until his death in 1837 he was constantly adding to and rearranging the displays in his museum, and today the rooms remain almost exactly as he left them.

It is hard to describe this extraordinary museum, crammed with works of art of all kinds:  hundreds of paintings, ingeniously displayed on pull-out hinged screens of Soane' own design, drawings, marble sculptures, bronzes, urns and sarcophagi,  furniture, architectural models, something like 7,000 books, all set out apparently higgledy-piggledy in a series of rooms on several floors.   Among the great treasures are the two series of pictures by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and An Election (the original paintings which Hogarth displayed in his studio to encourage the sale of sets of engravings), and three stunning Canalettos.

Nowadays they let you in even if it is raining, and admission is free.   It is an unforgettable experience.

Miss Lloyd

Miss Lloyd was my English Literature mistress. For five years she taught us Chaucer, Shakespeare, Thackeray, Eliot (both George and T. S.), the Brontes, Jane Austen and the War Poets. She was a tall, beaky woman, with fiery black eyes, her hair looped up and always escaping from its pins. She wore tweed suits, and over the top a tattered academic gown which fluttered from her shoulders like black wings. She would sweep into the room and quell us with a single look, before launching into a lesson guaranteed to absorb and enthral us – well most of us, anyway. If one of us produced a howler, which happened quite frequently, she would cry out in distress: “Child of the wilderness, prairie flower!! How can you??” I still remember her horror when we had been told to read one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Sophie Comyns-Carr, always known to Miss Lloyd as “Sophie Tucker”, (where are you now, Sophie, I wonder?), chose to read The Miller’s Tale. Anyone who knows Chaucer knows that The Miller’s Tale is not suitable for young ladies, but we didn’t then and were fascinated when Sophie started to describe the action, to be rapidly cut short by Miss Lloyd.

She was not the first person to instil in me my love of poetry and English literature – that was my father. But she certainly encouraged and nurtured it and presided over those all-important years of reading and learning by heart.  Dear Miss Lloyd!   She died only a few years ago, and I remember her with great affection. She was an inspiration.

Where Our Money Goes (3)

Open Europe, a Eurosceptic think tank, recently published a list of bizarre and wasteful schemes funded by the European Union.   Here are some of them:

£760,000 for a "gender equal" cultural centre, which was never built.
£358,000 for a Marathon for a United Europe
£358,000 for a project to get children to draw pictures of each other "to develop active European citizenship"
£155,000 for a top Portuguese golf resort
£89,000 for a Spanish hotel chain
£72,000 to create a virtual version of the city of Malmo in the online fantasy world, Second Life.   Only 40 people watched the opening of this.

and £6.3 million for a cultural scheme "to encourage people to think about European identities".   This last included a donkey called Asino, who was trotted around Holland to be shown to primary school children.   The donkey apparently wrote a blog, which included a description of him waking up under a tree to find other animals staring at him.   It read:  " I was embarrassed!   Now I understand a little how people from different cultures may feel in the Netherlands".

And yes, that was £6.3 million.

Churchill's English

In his book, My Early Life, Winston Churchill wrote:

"As I remained in the Third Fourth three times as long as anyone else, I had three times as much of it [English Analysis under Mr. Somervell].   I learned it thoroughly.   Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence - which is a noble thing.   And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage.   Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English.   I would make them all learn English; and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat"

The Royal Society

In the last few weeks I have written about several English icons that are "the oldest in the world" of their kind - a peal of bells in Suffolk, the Lord Mayor's Procession, the Ashmolean Museum.   Today I am writing about another such, the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, always known as The Royal Society, which is the oldest scientific institution in the world, and which in 2009/2010 is celebrating the 350th anniversary of its founding.

The Royal Society, the oldest and greatest of our learned societies, was founded by Charles II in 1660, and the reigning monarch has always been its Patron ever since.   To be elected a Fellow is a great honour, since the main criterion for election is "scientific excellence", though since 2000 there has been a category for Honorary Fellows, and previous Prime Ministers have also had the honour of election - recently Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher.   It is currently based in Carlton House Terrace in London.

The Society awards medals, prizes and lectureships, it funds scientific research and publishes scientific books.   It funds young scientists early in their careers and encourages foreign collaboration.   It provides science policy advice to the Government and generally promotes public interest in and understanding of science.

To mark its 350th anniversary, the Royal Society has made available online some of its published papers.   The site is called 'Trailblazing', and the current president of the Society, Lord Rees, says:  "The scientific papers on Trailblazing represent a ceaseless quest by scientists over the centuries, many of them Fellows of the Royal Society, to test and build on our knowledge of humankind and the universe".

http://trailblazing.royalsociety.org/

Did You Know........?

Did you know that we are paying Child Benefit to 37,900 children who live in Poland?   These are children who have remained behind while one or both of their parents is working in this country.   Because our handouts are much higher than in other countries - particularly eastern Europe - Britain is a very attractive country to foreign workers.   In Poland the equivalent of Child Benefit is £5 a week;  here it is £20 for the first child and £13.20 for others.

The total cost of Britain supporting Polish children is estimated at £24 million a year.

This is the result of regulations of the European Union, in the false belief that all member economies are at the same level, which they are clearly not.   All these regulations do is to encourage people from poorer EU countries to go and work in richer ones.

Why are we handing our taxpayers' money to Poles who live in Poland?

Advent

Tomorrow is Advent Sunday, the beginning of the true season of preparation for Christmas.   Now that it has all become so relentlessly commercial, the shops start pushing Christmas in September, or even earlier, but strictly speaking, carols should not be sung, nor decorations hung, until after this weekend, when we can all legitimately throw ourselves into getting ready for the big day.

Here is a poem which perfectly evokes the season :

Christmas 
by John Betjeman

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hooker’s Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.

Provincial public houses blaze
And Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad,
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true? And is it true?
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single truth compare –
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

A Definition of Englishness

In April 2004 the Daily Telegraph ran a competition for the best definition of Englishness.   This was the winning entry:

He views the Channel as a trench,

Laughs at the Germans, hates the French.

Though docile on his starchy diet

He'll rush abroad to quell a riot.

He hates a fuss, seldom complains,

Accepts poor service and late trains.

But full of ale, there's hell to pay -

Remember that on St. George's Day!

How Many More?

When I was born there were fewer than 50 million people in this country.   Today there are 61 million - and the number is rising steadily.   It is forecast that there will be 71 million people by 2031 and 85 million by 2081.   We are already the fifth most densely populated country in the world. 

One reason is that we are living longer and that child mortality rates are at an all-time low, both Good Things.   But the main reason is immigration.   Every year hundreds of thousands of people arrive here to swell our numbers, both by their own presence and by the fact that the birth rate is much higher among first- and second-generation foreign mothers.    All these people need houses, proper sanitation, education, health-care, jobs, pensions.   The impact on our society and our culture cannot be denied, whether or not we are happy about the situation.

Can we sustain it?   Roger Martin, the Chairman of the Optimum Population Trust does not think so.   He says:  "Britain's population increase is out of control and we are on course for a high-density, low-quality future where overcrowding and congestion are the norm and resource shortages, particularly of vital commodities like water and energy, are ever more pressing.   Every addition to the population pushes this country further from sustainability and nearer to a position of extreme environmental precariousness.   This is a future nobody wants".

We owe to it to our children and grandchildren to halt this frightening process, and we look to our politicians to do so.   However, it is a fact that we can, and probably will, be forced by Europe to take MORE immigrants.   Our own politicians, hampered by political correctness and lack of power, can do little.   We have lost control of our borders and a bleak future awaits.

Salad Days

Last night we went to see Salad Days at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.   This marvellous and quintessentially English musical, by Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds, is much loved for its joyous innocence and fun.   During the 1950s it ran in London for three years, 2,288 performances, and held the record until Oliver came along.   An attempt to take it to Broadway in 1959 failed badly, as the Americans just could not 'get it', and since then it has rarely been revived.

The present production, which is by a small company called Tête-à-Tête, sticks faithfully to the original, not attempting to update it, rework it or send it up, and the result is an evening of unalloyed sunshine and pleasure, full of sparkling songs, happy and unihibited dancing, laughter and jokes.   The young and talented cast all were clearly enjoying themselves, and the audience, many of whom, like us, were revisiting their youth, responded in kind.   Truly a treat.

Pyrland Hall, Somerset

In 1943 James Lees-Milne, visiting on behalf of the fledgling National Trust, wrote this:

"I had a horrible day with Colonel Pemberton at Pyrland Hall, near Taunton.   He is a fiendish old imbecile with a grotesque white moustache.   When I first saw him he was pirouetting on his toes in the road.   He has an inordinate opinion of himself and his own judgement.   He is absolutely convinced that Pyrland is the finest house in Somerset and he is doing the Trust a great service in bequeathing it.   The truth is the property does not comprise land of outstanding natural beauty and is of insignificant size.   Moreover the house, though large and basically eighteenth century, has been thoroughly Victorianised as to windows and rendering. ..........  I was drawn into several acrimonious arguments with the old man, whom I cordially disliked, for he insisted on contradicting whatever I said.   He gave me an exiguous lunch of bread and cheese, both hard as wood, a baked potato in its skin, dry as sawdust, and a watery apple pie with Bird's custard.   Ugh!   He expected me to return and waste the following day in discussion.   But I had already made up my mind after the first half-hour of my visit.   I could not have borne him or Pyrland an hour longer.   Having hated me like poison, he was nevertheless furious when I left at 4."

Canterbury Cathedral

I suppose today I should be writing on yesterday's non-election of an EU president and the surprise selection of a Labour nonentity to fill the post of High Representative for Foreign Affairs.   However, my heart simply isn't in it, the whole thing is too depressing.

Instead, and much more pleasant to contemplate, here is a photograph of the oldest stained-glass window in Canterbury Cathedral.   It shows Adam Delving and dates back to 1176.

It says in Isaiah 54, vv. 11-12:

“I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay their foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.”

Canterbury is of course where St. Augustine brought Christianity to England, and the Cathedral, along with St. Augustine's Abbey and St. Martin's Church is one of the UK's 28 World Heritage Sites.