THE DAILY ISHMAEL.
ON ALL PAGES.
How I never listened to him.
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How I never watched him.
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How I despise all the other cheesy broadcasters basking in his reflected, dubious glory, now that he's croaked.
Dara O Briain tweeted:
"Terribly sad news about Terry Wogan dying. Hard to quantify what he achieved, not just in broadcasting but for the Irish in Britain.
"Hard to separate what he achieved & the accent he did it in, from the times in which he did it. And opened to the door to all who followed."
Sure and he means himself, so he does.
Dara O Briain tweeted:
"Terribly sad news about Terry Wogan dying. Hard to quantify what he achieved, not just in broadcasting but for the Irish in Britain.
"Hard to separate what he achieved & the accent he did it in, from the times in which he did it. And opened to the door to all who followed."
Sure and he means himself, so he does.
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"He had a great sense of perspective, he made sure that his priority was the people he really cared about", she said.
Himself.
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How I never thoughT he had the smoothest voice on radio.
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Himself.
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How I never thoughT he had the smoothest voice on radio.
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How I never found him interesting, funny, witty, ironic or entertaining.
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How I never married anyone who loved Wogan just as much as I did.
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How I never thought he was my friend behind the microphone.
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How I won't miss his cheery, anodyne banter
on account of how I never listened to him.
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How I never watched Terry In Need.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act disclose that while his co-presenters give their time for free, 68-year-old Sir Terry receives £1,300 an hour to front the charity television extravaganza.
Sir Terry has been paid for his efforts since the appeal - described by the BBC as the most important event on its calendar - began in 1980.
In 2005, the Irishman - who earns £800,000 a year from his Radio 2 show - picked up £9,065 for his seven-hour stint as Children In Need's main presenter.
Yet his co-stars Natasha Kaplinsky, Eamonn Holmes and Fearne Cotton do not receive a penny. All the musical acts that appear also waive appearance fees.
There is no suggestion that Sir Terry, who owns a mansion near Windsor and a house in France, receives any money intended for charity projects, nor that he has ever claimed to be hosting the show for free.
In the past, Sir Terry has made a show of donating personal items, such as his tie, to highest bidders.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act disclose that while his co-presenters give their time for free, 68-year-old Sir Terry receives £1,300 an hour to front the charity television extravaganza.
Sir Terry has been paid for his efforts since the appeal - described by the BBC as the most important event on its calendar - began in 1980.
In 2005, the Irishman - who earns £800,000 a year from his Radio 2 show - picked up £9,065 for his seven-hour stint as Children In Need's main presenter.
Yet his co-stars Natasha Kaplinsky, Eamonn Holmes and Fearne Cotton do not receive a penny. All the musical acts that appear also waive appearance fees.
There is no suggestion that Sir Terry, who owns a mansion near Windsor and a house in France, receives any money intended for charity projects, nor that he has ever claimed to be hosting the show for free.
In the past, Sir Terry has made a show of donating personal items, such as his tie, to highest bidders.
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How he didn't transform the Eurovision Song Contest.
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How I thought Blankety-Blank was shit.
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Just because large numbers of people like something doesn't make it bad.
Doesn't make it good, either.
National treasure, Wogan?
God fucking help us.
At least Gracie Fields could sing
IN OTHER NEWS.
LOSER ANDY MURRAY AND HIS LEGENDARY PREGNANT WIFE.
How I don't care about Andy Murray, his legendarY father-in-law, his legendary pregnant wife or his legendary mutant mummy.
HOW I DON'T CARE ABOUT DAVID CAMERON'S PRETEND NEGOTIATIONS.
HOW I DON'T CARE ABOUT DAVID CAMERON'S PRETEND NEGOTIATIONS.
Worthless lying bastards, both of them.
Up against the wall, motherfuckers.
Wogan, though, a fortune of £20 million, Christ, that's worth pretending to be nice to everyone for an hour or two a day.
What irks, though, is the utter banality of his output, a stage Irishman, running the gamut from self-deprecation to self-deprecation, whist fawning over any number of showbiz filthsters, worse at that than Mike Funerals Parkinson, and that's saying something.
It is part of the national decline, the prominence of the BBC disc jockey, a man, generally, twittering in-between other people's recordings, about nothing. There was a case to be made for disc-jockery back when there was a difference between teenagers and their parents, when listening to rock'n'roll or punk was temporary rebellion's demarcation line, John Peel and Johnny Walker defining an ethereal barricade. Now that the land is awash with worthless multi-generational celebrity voted for by consumerised families, now that people don't buy singles or LPs, don't listen, together, to the latest thing, now that music is atomised, ubiquitous and purposeless the role of the deejay seems as relevant as that of the lamplighter. A clebrity personality, though, a cynical confection, reflecting yourself back at you, cleverer, wittier and warmer, that's something else.
I can't remember one such whom I considered worthy, useful, a voice welcome to the public discourse. Mark Tulley, the BBC's sacked India correspondent, used, on Sunday night, to do a compendium show, his thoughts, some readings and some bits of music from everywhere, it was a delight. Alexis Korner, away back, on Radio One, played a blues/roots selection, again, on Sunday night, which made me smile at his almost scholarly enthusiasms - that was Delbert McLinton, there, Oh, dropkick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of Life. Unlike so many, Korner was a musician himself, and not a member of the band of gobby nobodies which BBC promoted, and is still promoting. Even in his death, the dreadful old crow, Esther Rantzen, is milking Wogan, like she was masturbating a dead man - he raised millions, hundreds of millions for Children in Need. And I started ChildLine, even though I had romanced a paedo, myself, and simply adored Jimmy Savile, who also raised tens of millions, hundreds of millions, Oh, thousands of millions, we've all raised thousands of millions, millions of millions, for those less fortunate than myself.
Across the board, many adults are Woganised, infantilised, unable to bear their own silences, unable to entertain, comfort, amuse or stimulate themselves, millions addicted to the children's programme, Dr Who, pretending to watch it because it is challenging, philosophical, science fictional, tackling difficult issues, when all they are doing is lusting after whichever character
is the current Dr's current jailbait cyber-minx,
IS he gonna fuck her?
Harry Potter, tens of millions of middle-aged people, desperate for the next instalment of a children's book/film franchise, because it is encouraging boys to read books again, yeah, old boys, and old girls, who ought to know better. Kleptocrats robbing and raping us, angry millions on the move in our direction, ice-caps melting and we lose ourselves in spells and wands and wizards; in Time lords and Daleks; in retreaded galactic wars of empire; and we sit at home, doddery, frightened, listening to a highly-paid, low-brow entertainer, chuntering away, like he gives a fuck.
Up against the wall, motherfuckers.
Wogan, though, a fortune of £20 million, Christ, that's worth pretending to be nice to everyone for an hour or two a day.
What irks, though, is the utter banality of his output, a stage Irishman, running the gamut from self-deprecation to self-deprecation, whist fawning over any number of showbiz filthsters, worse at that than Mike Funerals Parkinson, and that's saying something.
It is part of the national decline, the prominence of the BBC disc jockey, a man, generally, twittering in-between other people's recordings, about nothing. There was a case to be made for disc-jockery back when there was a difference between teenagers and their parents, when listening to rock'n'roll or punk was temporary rebellion's demarcation line, John Peel and Johnny Walker defining an ethereal barricade. Now that the land is awash with worthless multi-generational celebrity voted for by consumerised families, now that people don't buy singles or LPs, don't listen, together, to the latest thing, now that music is atomised, ubiquitous and purposeless the role of the deejay seems as relevant as that of the lamplighter. A clebrity personality, though, a cynical confection, reflecting yourself back at you, cleverer, wittier and warmer, that's something else.
I can't remember one such whom I considered worthy, useful, a voice welcome to the public discourse. Mark Tulley, the BBC's sacked India correspondent, used, on Sunday night, to do a compendium show, his thoughts, some readings and some bits of music from everywhere, it was a delight. Alexis Korner, away back, on Radio One, played a blues/roots selection, again, on Sunday night, which made me smile at his almost scholarly enthusiasms - that was Delbert McLinton, there, Oh, dropkick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of Life. Unlike so many, Korner was a musician himself, and not a member of the band of gobby nobodies which BBC promoted, and is still promoting. Even in his death, the dreadful old crow, Esther Rantzen, is milking Wogan, like she was masturbating a dead man - he raised millions, hundreds of millions for Children in Need. And I started ChildLine, even though I had romanced a paedo, myself, and simply adored Jimmy Savile, who also raised tens of millions, hundreds of millions, Oh, thousands of millions, we've all raised thousands of millions, millions of millions, for those less fortunate than myself.
Across the board, many adults are Woganised, infantilised, unable to bear their own silences, unable to entertain, comfort, amuse or stimulate themselves, millions addicted to the children's programme, Dr Who, pretending to watch it because it is challenging, philosophical, science fictional, tackling difficult issues, when all they are doing is lusting after whichever character
IS he gonna fuck her?
Harry Potter, tens of millions of middle-aged people, desperate for the next instalment of a children's book/film franchise, because it is encouraging boys to read books again, yeah, old boys, and old girls, who ought to know better. Kleptocrats robbing and raping us, angry millions on the move in our direction, ice-caps melting and we lose ourselves in spells and wands and wizards; in Time lords and Daleks; in retreaded galactic wars of empire; and we sit at home, doddery, frightened, listening to a highly-paid, low-brow entertainer, chuntering away, like he gives a fuck.
54 comments:
Absent a royal wedding or similar, the BBC is becoming the national funeral broadcaster. It came horribly unstuck with the Savile product and it did not own Bowie, so it will have to make do with Wogan.
It stops people thinking about the war. On no account is anyone to mention the war. I mentioned it once (please God, stop me now) but since then I have revised my estimates. Germany will split within 3 years, and that is optimistic. It is like waiting for a sandcastle to collapse. Arrogant as ever, expect about 60m Hermans to try to exercise their right of free movement. Again.
I have been pondering all this month and I think what it is, is the curtain down on our own past. It does not matter whether you like any of them; they function like an indicator strip. The post-war party is definitely over. The lights are coming up and it is like being in a theme pub the morning after a gypsy wedding.
I should also have said my thoughts are with Mr DtP and that the Bowie piece is the best ever, although the competition is fierce.
Good to see you, mrs woar, and a happy new year. I posted that, above, too early, the finished one echoing, in advance, some of your own comments. I have bought the tickets for Yorkminster. I'll be the one in the stanislav houesbricks of wrath tee-shirt.
Theme 'pub after a gipsy wedding. A bit too near the mark.
I never really noticed Wogan; just another gobby PBC presenter.
He was celebrity, though still worth a few mill more even in death. I'm sure someone out there is pondering how they can make money out of this.
The 'papers are feasting, just now, with thanking the dead one, mr mike, although I'm sure it won't be lomg until we hear of the Real Sir Terry, miser/cheat/bully or worse. And soon, here in the greatest, fifth richesest country in the world the poor, sick, battered and beasted children will have none to protect them, save Dame Esther Teeth.
"What is suspicious, Inspector" said Miss Marbles, "is that these departures are announced on Sunday. That facilitates as easy a Monday newsgrid as possible. Why, even the most economical papers keep an obiturary file because they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that one day they will be able to run the material".
The inspector glared thoughtfully at a wrapped pork pie which sat coldly in his clammy hand.
"An overnight edit to make sure it is up to date, visit the photo library, peruse the youtube to see if anybody else has put up a clip of them when young, or perhaps posing with royalty" he mused.
The inspector ceased rustling the paper on his handy snack. The glue was proving more difficult than he expected, so his next plan was to snick a hole and tear it open from the top. Waving the savory pastry to his left hand, he commenced patting his pockets with his right. Miss Marbles snapped open her Callard and Bowser steel framed handbag, rummaged, and produced a pair of curved nail scissors which she customarily used for snipping evidence without permission. She offered them to the inspector. He briefly wondered is this was hygenic, given the handkerchiefs, money, spectacles, keys, railway timetables, folding umbrellas, novellas, miniature steam engines, coffee tables, and monkey bikes which lurked down there. Then he considered this was a pork pie on yellow sticker, so what the hell. He accepted the scissors and acknowledged Miss Marbles' foresight.
"And we know that there is something suspicious about the Sunday rates in hospitals, but we put it down to weekend staffing" Miss Marbles contintued, wiping the pie juice off her nail scissors and dropping them back down the satin-lined chute to nip at the fingers of any dips unwise enough to stick their hands down it.
"You think I should talk to some of these editor chappies?"
"Oh, would you", she sighed.
Thanks Mrs WoaR - greatly appreciated. We're all done now - had the 'celebration' on Saturday where about 100 kids turned up which was lovely; it was funny seeing the difference between the boys who were acting normally, trying to kill each other and the girls who were crying and hugging each other and being so wonderfully affectionate. There’s nothing about it that hasn’t been horrific. As a mild point of reference to maintain ‘on thread action’ – my brother and sister in law could no more do what Andy Murray did than fly to the moon – the dignity and poise with which they held themselves has been remarkable. I guess we’re in a peculiar position in that talking about stuff is totally irrelevant but the way they’ve allowed their grief to be made public so that the kids feel able to talk about it has really blown me away. I totally agree about the Bowie blog being beautiful but the one redeeming thing that I thought Bowie did well was his Lidl funeral – quick crematorium action, no invites – sorted. Can’t do it for kids, natch, but adults – well, good death admin there!
I remember watching Blankety Blank as a kid and thought it was alright but then Les Dawson took over and it became marvellous. Always had a soft spot for the Dawson although his books were rather disjointed – using words for the sake of it rather than for any reason. The BBC really is starting to take the Mickey – Wogan was even in the World Service 5 minute news bulletin yesterday…err…..slow news day?
I always got the feeling that Wogan was trying to be nice because it was his job but I was never convinced. He seemed always incincere.
Plus he made fun of David Icke, shooting rats in a barrel when he (Icke) was clearly mentally unwell. And he charged a fortune to present that cash-for-louts red nose crap. It was one of the few things that me and my dad, when I was a lad, had in conmon - a deep dislike of Terry Wogan. Sympathy to his family but otherwise - "so fuck?"
-richard
Ireland is full of the reasonably articulate. By which we mean folk who can witter on without actually saying anything but with the odd indication that they may just be taking the mickey. Anyway, never he did me any harm over there on Radio 2. I did though hear earlier the opening "tribute" that the Ginger Evans paid him and I thought we would need yet another radio. And so we see that an anodyne and everyday competence has its place when the alternative is so dire.
The european conversation, Mrs Raft, looks to be turning to one of how to arrange the lifeboats and organise a statesmanlike abandoning of the ship. Although we must say that even yet.
Not. Not say that...
I always thought Wogan had just enough accent to sound Irish and therefore possibly book learned and interesting but still palatable to middle England.
There was a falseness about him and he was just a fraction above the cruelty teevee that was being pioneered by bbc and Rantzen and her ilk.
Tax exempt/forestry land deals, the birdy song or whatever it was called, along with some other utter fucking shite aside, it seemed as if he knew he didn’t belong there.
Hence the remuneration for appearing on charity red nose….get it while you can…might be rumbled later.
It takes iron self-regard to carry on with your Red Nose once you've been rumbled as a disgusting old cashgrabber like the Wigmeister. It's a towering legacy.
As for the Dame, I'm convinced she'll be there at the End of Times, simpering and gurning. Truly one of Old Nick's indestructibles.
We have Radio 2 on at work so you can guess what it was like today. Fuck; you`d have thought someone important had died. No sooner had Jeremy Vine finished blarting his eyeballs out over Bowie then Wiggy snuffs it so its back to Square One. Bumped into the Bald One`s former accountant back in the nineties, heard stories about his tax 'efficiency' schemes.
And I had to endure Sir Toupee Wogan growling his way through The Floral Dance fucking twice. Or at least I would have if I hadn't legged to elsewhere in the warehouse sharpish.
"angry millions on the move..."
Have you come across JG Ballard's "The Garden of Time", Mr. Ishmael? It is a quick, chilling read:
"At first glance, the long ranks seemed to be progressing in orderly lines, but on closer inspection, it was apparent that, like the obscured detail of a Goya landscape, the army was composed of a vast throng of people, men and women, interspersed with a few soldiers in ragged uniforms, pressing forward in a disorganized tide. Some laboured under heavy loads suspended from crude yokes around their necks, others struggled with cumbersome wooden carts, their hands wrenching at the wheel spokes, a few trudged on alone, but all moved on at the same pace, bowed backs illuminated in the fleeting sun."
The efforts of Count Axel to avoid the certain destruction of his home, his wife and his privileged, beautiful life by the vast throng of people, inevitably fail. Time cannot be reversed. Nor should it be. Why should Axel enjoy his music, gardens, pictures, cleanliness and space when millions are denied it?
JG Ballard published the story in 1962 and I read it as a teenager. For several years, I identified with sad, doomed Axel and his elitist, beautiful life. As I have grown older, however, the plight of the "angry millions on the move" seems to far outweigh that of the endangered aristocrat and the High Arts.
I'm sure you'll find the full text of the story on your i-thing. I think you'll like it.
And have you tried Christopher Priest's "Fugue for a Darkening Island", Ms Agatha? '72 to the Ballard story's '62, I think. British SF has had its moments, to be sure.
I've not read all of Ballard by any means but I don't remember anything else he wrote that had the outright (dark, oldschool) fairytale feel of the story you mention. Maybe he was possessed by Angela Carter at the time (in a good way of course - we should all be so lucky.)
verge.//
(possessed in advance of course, as I don't think AC had published much in 1962.)
v.//
In the skies over the German Sea I have been twice battered about, today, my rusting Saab 340 leaping and jerking through the air, stuttering and corkscrewing as though it must surely break in bits, crabbing and hicupping ifs way down windy runways, held together only by a small forest of clamped white knuckles. But at least, mr yardarm, I didn't have to listen to Jeremy Vine on the Death of Sir Terry Syrup. I'd burn down the fucking warehouse, me.
Looks like Terry had a ferret down his trousers in that top pic.
The Drowned World is the Ballard which I remember, ms agatha, a damper apocalypse. Whichever dark future one imagines, however, I would not, being, myself, one of the world's accidental pampered aristocrats, voluntarily cede my position to the angry millions on the move, but shoot them and stab them and set fire to them, and I suspect you would, too.
I thought there was something, mr mike, a roll of banknotes, maybe.
She looks poxed in her soul, mr bungalow bill, diseased by greed and vanity, Satan must soon call her home.
Too liberal, with respect, mr mongoose, by half; the institutionalised charity bandits do do harm, at Wembley Stadium or on Radio Two, thwarting and diluting righteous anger and resolve with showy, feelgood ostentation; Geldof, Bono, Rantzen, Wogan, surely, if they were a fraction as effective as they claim there would be no need for Children in Need. mr verge has cited Bono stagily snapping his fingers, saying, Everytime I do this a child dies and an audience member yelling at him, Well stop fucking doing it, then.......We must hope for a cessation of eulogy and a sharper appraisal of the true purpose of charity-as-showbiz.
Sorry to see Frank Finlay has shook a 7 today. He had talent, unlike Wogan. The Casanova series by the PBC, when they were in the mood for doing good stuff, made me a confirmed hetro. I can't find it on Youtube (please help if anyone has a link); now looking for a boxed set.
Must be a golfism, a shaking seven. Yes, he was a good playactor, television has groomed many such, over the years, skilled and versatile, as well as unfortunately turning many into mere series vehicles, Martin Shaw's Judge John Deed being one such dreadful load of tosh, Suchet's Poirot another. I guess the best of it, the golden drama years, has been on the PBC, a shame, therefore, to see its current output, much of it music hall cruelty for the NewPeople.
They're cheap enough, anyway, radios, mr mongoose, to be stomped on, and probably quite a therapeutic event, that. I live in an Evans-free world, having just been horrified by his ascent to wealth and taste, his vulgarity and his personal conduct, when he first appeared. You should just never be tuned to any medium in which he is likely to appear. AlJay, Russia Today, Radio Three, Classic FM, BBC Four, Quest, Yesterday, you'll never encounter him there, or Jonafun Woss and Graham Norton, brilliant broadcasters, it is said, both of them.
Old Sheffield saying, Mr I. Its a dice - only 1 to 6.
Ah, so, desu ka, mr mike san.
The madness was that the Evans Radio2 tribute to the Wogan was reported as news in itself on the BBC News TV channel. (I have long since given up wondering why radio shows are broadcast with pictures on the web. It was just too hard for my poor bear brain. WTF?, as the children ask.) The thought that the inheritor of a radio show might have the webcast of his audio tribute to his dead predecessor rebroadcast as TV news leaves me fucking dumbfounded.
On the subject of 'charadees', Mr I, they are, for the most part, nothing of the sort (as, indeed, your goodself has pointed out countless times). It seems the MSM may be catching up. Mr Hodges, not generally my 'cup of tea', has been busy reading some audit reports:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12134804/Too-many-of-our-charities-are-nothing-of-the-sort.html
That said, I'm tempted to say 'move along - nothing to see here - business as usual...'. The Batman-Jelly woman features large, of course, and still dressed as an African Dictator's wife. Ironic, all the focus on street corner 'chuggers' (surely worse than drug peddlers who at least give you something for your money) and telephone borne sales people relieving the elderly and vulnerable of what little they have to feed the likes of Batman-Jelly when they've already had your donation before it even reaches your wallet via PAYE!
Interesting thoughts, Mr Ishmael. I would not cede my position either. Concern, anger and fear may well turn to hatred: and wrath. If I had been in in Frankie Hollande`s place after the Paris shootings I`d have been tempted to drop the Big One on Raqqaa. Out of wrath. And saying " You think cutting loose with an AK47 is terrorism ? Nah. THIS is terror. Oh, didn`t you realize ? Big boys games, big boys rules ".
And I can`t help thinking if a gang of Achmeds crashed a Chipping Norton bash, groped the likes of Boris Johnson`s sister and Samantha Cameron then the official reaction might not be as complacent as it was in Cologne.
As for the Batman Woman; a cross between a fruit salad and a burst sofa; only nincompoops like Cameron and Letwin would be daft enough to fund her. " Oh, you must be down with the kids, what what, anyone seen my top hat ? " Clearly a fucking fraudster. Perhaps the money could be recovered from Alan Botney`s pension, useless fucking bastard; should be fined down to his underpants and fucked off to the jobcentre.
It is one of the gripes of commercial TeeVee, mr mongoise, and rightly so, that the PBC makes news of adverts for itself. If there was a governorship worth the name it would act against this. Drives me fucking mental, seeing those newsreader fuckwits saying Hey, we are the news, again. Not as mental, though, as when the PBC news becomes an advert for Disney, or whichever gang of pimps and freaks dug-up Harrison Wood, recently.
I read that, mr sg, briefly, I don't like Hodges, either his thinking or his writing and this is recycled stuff but I suppose it is encouraging to see it in the Filth-O-Graph. I am sure, however, that still hopeful of a knighthood, all there would shrink from exploding the Royals' charity scams.
Been thinking that interesting thought for a while, now, mr yardarm. Be it by the prelatry itself or by the Islamite horde, I don't want European civilisation - Christendom - turned into some watered-down love, some meaningless, homogenous faithism.
I watched, today, Mozart's Mass in C minor, in St Peter's Basilica, 1985, starring Herbert von Karajan, the Vienna Phil, supported by God and Pope Saint John Paul and a cast of thousands of worshippers and I wondered if Islam had such music, such ritual, so open to all and guessed that it doesn't, and yet we welcome and encourage the creation of unnumbered, angry, barefoot, women-forbidden mosques, in which Mozart and Bach and Byrd can be damned as Infidel
Sharp sticks dipped in pork fat, should it come to that.
Alas! But I think you are probably right about that Mr I, the Royal Charity thing... I'm not keen on the Republican model but maybe we need a new Monarch around here, after all its been done before. I think that His Excellency, President, Field Marshall, Dr. Idi Amin Dada VC, conquerer of the British Empire, would be ideal. After all, he ticked a lot of diversity boxes emiently suiting him for the contemporary socio-cultural-political context- African heritage, Moslem, from a deprived background, overweight, with military experience and previous experience of Kingship in Scotland to boot + a uniform for every occasion - what's not to like? Except ain't he dead too? What is it with all these folks dying? Whose next?...
Thank you, Mr. Verge, I hadn't come across Fugue for a Darkening Island, but having read the review and an extract on Pechorin's Journal (https://pechorinsjournal.wordpress.com/about/) I have ordered a copy from my favourite on-line tax avoiding retailer and look forward to reading it. At first sight, it seems Priest was very prescient. The version I've ordered is his revised edition, as he felt the changing mores over 4 decades since first publication had led to his being misinterpreted as a racist.
Mr. Ishmael "I would not voluntarily cede my position to the angry millions on the move, but shoot them and stab them and set fire to them, and I suspect you would, too."
Of course I would. It takes a rare slave owner to relinquish his property and an unusual turkey to vote for Christmas. Understanding the inequity of it all wouldn't stop me clinging to my privilege. And the privilege is relative.
His Excellency was also frugal with his defence budget, using one bullet to transit as many opponents' skulls as possible. It was not Private Eye's greatest coverage, that of Idi Amin's brutality, mr sg. Ingrams certainly had his moments but he and his public school chums fell short over Amin, making him, for their readership, a figure of fun, long after he should've been ousted.
I believe he went to live and die in Libya, didn't he, Amin, not Ingrams.
I had a soft spot for Amin. He had a sense of humour. I think it was when there was a dockers strike, he offered to send a ship load of oranges so the kids of England wouldn't get scurvy. Wasn't he also army boxing champion when he was in the British Army? He certainly did his best to take the piss out of the British establishment.
I thought he ended up in Saudi Arabia?
I seem to recall that his 'Excellency's' retirement was in Saudi Arabia Mr I... I wouldn't wish that on anyone - not even him! Worst bolt-hole in the World, especially for a drinking man like Amin - then again he may have been permitted a ration or two on 'medical' grounds being one of the Umma and all that...
Ha! You beat me to it Mr Mike!
Even as bad guys go, mr mike, Idi Amin Dada was what the NewPeople call gross. Although I do remember chortling at him sittin aroun' in de royal hut, wid de four royal wives.
OK, so he killed a few. But nothing on the scale of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, or I would bet not as many innocents as Dave has killed. At least keeping the heads in the fridge reminds one of the act, rather than droning weddings an hospitals from 10,000 miles away like some sick game.
I watched this 2005 documentary.
How We Fell for Europe
https://youtu.be/3wqAONXOxSk?list=PLfwHTgB_edZ5_N45pdvAmSvTQ4eqTgE7Q
It opens with Alistair McAlpine gloating about his budget and how he ran the In campaign in 1975.
I had felt a twinge of sympathy for him when he died, knowing his last years had been made miserable by being thought a sex offender. Acutally, I don't think he was, but wrong identification and a couple of bad paintings made him look compromised. Although he handled this like a manipulative git, which I took for just bad advice.
Karma; if he didn't care what lies he told to enslave the nation, it was symmetry if the nation did not care what lies were told about him.
Mrs WOAR: I watched that; quite sickening. Soon Britain will have its last chance - most certainly there won't be another. I fear it will fail the test, and then it deserves all that will unfold, as night follows day.
My advice would be to get out now before they close the borders (for emigrants not immigrants), or more likely put capital controls on exporting your hard earned.
McAlpine may have been innocent, but he was a horrible little shit.
Yet it is our European culture which informs and shapes you still, mr mike, even down there, in the promised land, until the day you die you will be European, Cambridge is a European institution, celebrating European art and culture, latin and greek, Judaeo-Christian, medicine and mathematics, poetry and philosophy, speech, song and dance. This is not a rebuke but a lament; most now think of Europe in terms of tolerable or intolerable levels of bureacracy, of Mandelson and the Kinnocks, of Clegg and Cameron, and not of Ulysses and Sophocles, not of Pallestrina and Mozart, not of Titian and Turner but of tarrifs and directives, of vulgar men in shiny suits, cheating, conniving and stealing, people like McAlpine, filth made noble, singing not Gloria in excelsis Deo, but Gimme money, that's what I want, that's what I want, the Council of Ministers looking like an episode of the Sopranos, spiv EuroUndertakers sidling out of Downing Street, carrying-away our national corpse.
You are correct, this is a last chance to resist, but you were correct, also, in your recent assessment of street-Sheffieldians as cheap, stupid and lazy, the men crass, loud and vulgar, their women wobbling, pissed in public, like tattooed Sumo wrestlers; the sky will fall before such folk learn to think.
Those who can betrouble themselves enough to comment on the opinion threads seem overwhelmingly to support your view but we would be mistaken to consider them a majority.
Never sure where I stand with karma, mrs woar; the older I grow, the more sacred music I absorb, the more I fear a Marchmain moment, my performing an act of faith or contrition, just in case - and the more I feel mr bungalow bill's chill, empty loneliness of existence and death and find it expressed in that early music, and not just the early music, I have been listening to Mozart's Coronation Mass for a couple of days, now, feeling speechless, alone and terrified. The idea, therefore, of a self-contained ethical jurisprudence, activated by our own wrong action, of their being karmic reaction, triggered, in some fashion. by ourselves, is not entirely lost on me, although the celebritisation of Eastern beliefs by gobby nitwits like Beatle George has made me sceptical about its public promotion.
Of course you are correct, Mr I. I'm born a European and will die one. Its a lament I'm trying to voice, as you identify.
I do respect the culture and history of Europe; but not what it has become. On my grand tour last year this was starkly obvious. We traveled with a genuine desire to scout out a second home in southern Europe - possibly in Andalucia. But I'm afraid such hopes were rudely dashed - not by the places themselves but by the people now occupying the lands. The great cities of Florence and Venice, for example, are overrun by black Africans trying to sell cheap shit. And I've recounted before our brush with the migrant wave on a train to Pisa. No thanks. And as you rightly point out, if one lived in Europe it would mean holding ones nose and turning a blind eye to the rotten filth that mascarades as government and politicians; England is totally a lost cause, I'm sorry to say.
Only today I was discussing this very subject with the Memsahib, and we were both of one mind that we have witnessed first hand a great civilisation now turned to shit. Very sad.
We decided, irrevocably, our future is in SE Asia. In 2 weeks (its my birthday) we are off to Thailand and then Cambodia to visit the ancient temples in Ankor Wat and Phnom Kulem - civilisations older than Europe, just as rich in history, and more accommodating today.
It is because of such forces that I live here, in the North Sea, mr mike, and for their fertilising and strengthening I blame Thatcher and the first set of spivs, the likes of the ghastly crook, Tebbit, in his grubby pinstripes, insisting that Greed was all that mattered, their deregulation of filth, their fellating of gangsters like Black and Murdoch, and they were correct, they made Blair and Campbell possible, made Andrew Neil possible and made the eternal paedo cover-up inevitable. I simply do not understand how men who should know better read Tebbit's drivel in the Filth-O-Graph and genuflect, blind to the fact that he is the co-architect of the Ruin which they rue and that he defended the beast against the child. This is the true failure of our civilisation, the spiv as sage.
It is much older a malaise than that. For example.
I don't understand what that graph purports to represent, mr mongoose; might you elaborate, please?
What I do remember from statistics, as part of a Business Studies course, is that the left - upright - line can easily skew the visual towards a desired impact, we see that all the time on TeeVee, where, because of the truncated, disproportionate and unrepresentative scale of the upright a relatively tiny series of annual movements can be made to appear massive, in other words, how high would be the 100 per cent of the upright in relation to the horizontal and what, in such an accurate portrayal, would the graph lines look like?
I am not saying that the link is inaccurate, just that I do not understand it.
Another thought for you. Scientists, your gang, are increasingly speaking of a new Earth age - Cambrian, Devonian, Silurian, Carboniferous and so on - calling it the Anthropocene, dating its start either from the Industrial revolution's belching coal smoke or from the first nukes, in the 'forties
Scientists, real ones anyway, don't do gangs, Mr Ishmael, and are never certain of anything. Did you know for instance that the past is getting cooler faster than the present is getting warmer? No, I don't suppose that you did - because not many do. Now there is a clever trick. What can it all possibly mean? The notion of an anthropocene is risible drivel, and it has been tried before by a scoundrel. Politics and cant and not science. Don't concern yourself. Engineers don't count as scientists anyway. We are humble tradesmen.
I am versed in the dark arts of cheating with graphs btw. One can mess with it, and trim and choose one's terms, smooth and finesse, and one can be clever but the more one gets away from the data in an effort to prove one's case, the more one becomes what one detests. Oh. So the vertical axis starts at zero in the first picture, and is not manipulated. It is just a pictorial representation of the frequency with which certain words appear in the great digitised Library of Google. As such, it might reasonably be held to represent - even ever so loosely - the degree to which such concepts concern us, or have concerned us in times past.
Endless geeky fun... Don't tell Mick.
As far as I'm concerned anyone with O level maths is a fucking scientist.
The current debate about anthropocene, what little I know of it from the New Scientist, comcerns scientists wanting to own the debate and exclude politics from the actions which the concept, if proved, demands, and politicians - in the sense of people such as ourselves - being required to posit remedies which cannot be purely scientific, things like, for instance, the dubious notion of carbon exchange and the proposed global ownership of rain forests, with which I would wholeheartedly agree.
May I suggest anthropoBScene? With the tocks ticking from around the time of the Old Testament.
verge.//
I actually lime the idea of a whole age, named after you and I, mr verge, even though the idea contains the glaring truth that it will be brief to vanishing point, and that after its passing there will be none to read periodic tables, or owt else. Like it says, in the Baghavadghita, we are become Death, anthropobscene, therefore, entirely apt.
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