The Rainbow Bank

Letter to America

2010-01-30T03:49:00.000-08:00

An open letter to all right minded Americans who feel that we are in a period of uncertainty as to the future of the English Speaking Peoples.

Ever since Eisenhower, America has been pushing Britain to form closer ties with mainland Europe, a position that some 70% of the population of this island do not want or agree with.

This has finally lead to us being manipulated into a thing called The Lisbon Treaty, which effectively hands over the vast majority of our sovereignty to Brussels, the Capital of an artificially created state called Belgium.

The European Union is dominated by a Franco-German alliance, which has no love for the English Speaking World.

Originally America's idea was that Britain would prop up the new democracies of Europe, during the cold war.

Successive American Presidents have continued to support the idea of Britain at the heart of Europe, the thinking being that in post Soviet times we would be a platform for the free market and a place where American business could base itself, to do business in the EU.

President Obama wants to take this idea a stage further so that he can deal with one head of state as regards foreign relations.

That head of state will likely be French or German, neither of which have a liking for the Anglo-Saxon view of the World.

At present two English Speaking nations have permanent seats on the UN Security Council, namely Britain and America.

It doesn't take much to realise that this situation could change in a way that is detrimental to the US.

Rather than joining the EU, Winston Churchill had a vision for a global economic bloc consisting of The Commonwealth, Britain and the US.

Churchill was a visionary who was often right and more often than not ignored until our country was in dire peril.

Winston Churchill new the American people very well, after all his own mother was one.

I believe as power shifts away from our world view it is not too late to re-energise the old alliances.

America needs British help in parts of the world where it's influence is not strong and vice versa.

China will become an increasing threat to the prosperity we have enjoyed and we in the West continue to help them secure more and more of our market share and with their vast dollar reserves they can outbid any Western company for mineral resources.

Every week you can read in the press about cyber attacks emanating from China, trying to hack into Western high technology companies and defence contractors.

Rather than support Chinese development, it would be more prudent to support India, the World's largest democracy.

Much of the new technologies being developed require rare metals and rare earths, in this regard China is a major producer and speculation is growing that they will ban exports of these materials, to Western countries.

We have virtually handed over our low tech manufacturing to this country, are we to allow them to monopolise our future?

Americans know that Europe invariably procrastinates in it's support for the US, whereas Britain is stalwart as an ally, even when at times we disagree with you.

A weakened Britain is not in America's interest.

Please encourage your President to support British Sovereignty and the growth of the English Speaking World.

A Tribute to Charlie Simpson

2010-01-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

Wherever you live in the World, you cannot have missed the heart rending stories coming out of Haiti, since the devastating earthquake hit that poor country.

Over 100,000 deaths and many thousands of people homeless and hungry.

The sheer lack of infrastructure, makes the task of helping the population that much harder.

Literally thousands of children have been orphaned and the tragedy continues, with the ever present fear of disease.

Many people have given generously of their time, expertise and money.

One lad in Fulham, West London, was so upset by what he saw on the television, he decided to do something about it.

Charlie Simpson set up a webpage saying he would do a five mile sponsored cycle ride around his local park, hoping to raise £500 for UNICEF.

The response was staggering, to date Charlie has raised £150,000!

He is seven years old.

Akhenaten

2010-01-25T07:54:00.000-08:00

No doubt you are all familiar with the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled during the Eighteenth Dynasty.

Archaeology only knew this king as a myth, until excavations undertaken by Flinders Petrie, the great British Archaeologist in the nineteenth century at Amama, uncovered evidence of his existence.

We are more familiar with his exotic wife, Nefertiti, an enigmatic and beautiful woman.

The reason Akhenaten was obliterated from the list of kings, was because he espoused a new religion.

Akhenaten created monotheism under the guise of Aten, a supreme God, with no imagery!

This caused outrage amongst the Priesthood in Memphis, a body of men who controlled the spiritual wellbeing of Egyptians and controlled the wealth of the country.

Traditionally Memphis accepted that the Pharaoh was a God and that they managed spirituality in this World.

Akhenaten said that he was not a God, but simply his messenger on Earth.

Clearly this was not acceptable to the priesthood and they worked hard to remove him, but did not dare to have him killed.

Certain modern writers have suggested that Akhenaten was Moses, arguing that the Exodus was led by this man.

Prior to Akhenaten ,monotheism did not exist and the timing would be right, to suggest he created it.

We know from the Bible that polytheism was prevalent before Moses.

The disappearance of Akhenaten at the time Moses appeared, might suggest that this theory was correct.

I leave it to you to wonder.

Triumph

2010-01-23T08:12:00.000-08:00

In the nineteen sixties, the British motorcycle industry was utterly decimated by four Japanese companies.Suzuki, Kawasaki, Honda and Yamaha.

They offered the customer a cost effective machine, that was well engineered and reliable.

The great names of British motorcycling disappeared one by one.

BSA, Norton, Greaves, Ariel, HRD , Triumph and many many more.

Growing up in Stevenage, I particularly remember HRD, which manufactured the Vincent Black Shadow, the worlds first 1000cc motorcycle.

It was an HRD machine that broke the 200 mph barrier on Utah salt flats, ridden by a Stevenage lad called George Brown.

In later life George had a motorcycle shop in the town and the bike concerned, called 'nero' was proudly displayed in the shop window.

As we know the industry in Britain died, old fashioned bespoke engineering was replaced by high quality Japanese mass production.

Then in the late 1980's, along came an Englishman, called John Bloor, who bought the rights to the Triumph name.

John had and continues to make a fortune from house building.

He hired ex Triumph engineers and sent them to Japan, to learn how to build high quality machines, in a cost effective way.

His view was that Britain produced amazing engineers, but failed in the production process.

As a result his design team came back with the knowledge to create advanced motorcycles, that would be able to compete with the Japanese.

Little by little the new Triumph company started to encroach on Japanese market share.

Today their market share in Britain has continued to increase and they have recently overtaken Kawasaki.

The company now sells in excess of 50,000 machines worldwide, most of which go to North America and surprisingly Japan.

The iconic brand is going from strength to strength!

Triumph produces the largest and most powerful motorcycle in the World, far outstripping any machine produced by Harley Davidson.

If one remembers the classic movie, Hells Angels, starring Marlon Brando, you will know Triumph Motorcycles.

This iconic product has learnt from the Japanese and is now probably the finest example of motorcycle engineering in the World.

If you are looking for a machine over 500cc, then look no further. It will perform and you have the added benefit of gravitas!

Today Triumph Motorcycles are comparable with Japanese machines, in terms of quality, but exceed them in innovation.

Our Tolerance Tested

2010-01-22T07:12:00.000-08:00

We hear much about the abuse of Western power and the exploitation of Muslim communities around the World.

Whilst one must accept that an accord should be arranged between the Palestinians and the Israelis and indeed this is in the interest of us all, it should also be remembered that Islam is the new kid on the block.

Currently Islam plays the victim and justifies it's violence as the only way of expressing it's view.

Forget the propaganda expressed by Mullahs and Imams, which is excessively emotive.

In the course of it's history, Islam has butchered, millions of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists.Many of the survivors were either forcibly converted or were treated as second class citizens.

In the Islamic World today, Christians are still persecuted, look at Pakistan, Malaysia, Iran, Iraq and Egypt.

Every day you here of Christians being attacked and their churches destroyed.

Saudia Arabia professes to be a friend of the West, but does not permit churches to be built and spends billions of dollars promoting Islam in Europe and America.

The Palestinian Christian community has all but left Palestine because of persecution.

Saudia Arabia promotes an extreme form of Islam, funding all sorts of projects in what appears a benign way, that suggests the faith is humane and considerate.

Just look at how they treat women, Christians, Jews and other faiths.

How many countries have a religious police, which is nothing more than the state security that existed in places like the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany!

Today, in Western Europe and America, Islamic extremists are growing in popularity amongst the ignorant poor.

This religion works well in areas where literacy and intelligence are lacking.

Both in Europe and America we have created, so called Human Rights legislation, which is being abused by lawyers to protect communities who wish to destroy Christianity in the West.

Consider this........will Muslim countries produce the same legislation to protect Christian communities.

What concerns me is this...America supports Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Nigeria and the Gulf States, but does nothing to protect the Christian communities.

I ask you this. Saudia Arabia, do not promote your faith, unless you allow the promotion of Christianity in your country!

We live in dangerous times and if we are not careful, our culture will be destroyed!

So our people are told to keep their mouths shut, because otherwise they are bigoted and you have to accept other peoples views.

In England now, if you express an opinion about Muslims, the chances are that you will be arrested.

Just what Islam wants!

The Advancement of Civilisation

2010-01-21T06:45:00.000-08:00

In 1836, in the County of Yorkshire, was born a man by the name of Thomas Crapper.

At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed as a plumber to a firm in London.

Having learnt his craft, he set up a company in Robert Street, Chelsea, to provide and install, bathroom fittings.

Whilst Thomas did not invent the flushing toilet, this accolade went to a chap called John Harrington, in 1596, he did however gain notoriety in the World of toilets!

Chelsea, fashionable then as now, provided him with customers for his stylish lavatories.

His major breakthrough came in the 1880's when the Prince of Wales, commissioned him to install plumbing and thirty lavatories at Sandringham, in Norfolk. Now the Queens private residence in England.

For this he was rewarded with the first of a number of Royal Warrants.

' Toilets By Appointment to Her Majesty!'.

Thomas Crapper remains part of English folklore, relating to toilet humour and thus he will be forever remembered when we wish to go for a crap!

So the next time you visit the Throne Room, spare a thought for Thomas, he created for us a place of peace and tranquillity!

Northumberland

2010-01-19T06:20:00.000-08:00

Today, I thought I would post an item on the county where I live.

Northumberland is one of England's largest counties and borders that peninsular to the North of England, commonly referred to as Scotland.

It is one of the least populated areas of England, with a total population of around 300,000 hardy souls.

Inhabited since pre-historic times, it has experienced a long and often violent history, involving Celts,Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Normans and of course the Scots.

It first appears in recorded history because of the construction of Hadrians Wall, most of which runs through the Southern part of the county. This is a seventy nine mile wall built during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, as the Northern most frontier of the Roman Empire.

The soldiers who constructed it, came from what is now Syria and to protect themselves from the Northumbrian winter, they would roll naked in stinging nettles, to numb their bodies from the cold.

Even today, if you visit the sites of Fort Houseteads or Vindolanda, you can experience this bleak terrain, which no doubt was not a Centurians favourite posting.

With the fall of the Roman Empire, this part of the country experienced raiding parties from Scotland and influxes of Anglo-Saxons.

Just off the Northeast coast you will come across Holy Island or Lindisfarne in Old English, which was an early centre of Christianity, it's monks being famous for their learning throughout Europe. Another Christian centre in the county at this time was Hexham Abbey, built in the sixth century.

Both of these sites were destroyed on more than one occasion by Viking raiders, who would rip the illuminated manuscripts apart, that were produced by the monks and take only the silver mountings.

The Kingdom of Northumbria was centred on a place called Bamburgh and indeed there is still a massive castle there, to this day.

With the arrival of the Normans after 1066 an extensive programme of castle building got under way, both to defend the territory from invaders whether Scots or Viking, but also to allow the subjugation of the local populous.

Today there are still large castles and ruins at Prudhoe, Newcastle, Morpeth, Alnwick, Warkworth, Dunstanburgh, Bamburgh, Chillingham and Berwick.

From Elizabethan times to the Unification of England and Scotland under James I, Northumberland was a lawless territory, controlled by families referred to as the Border Reivers and their equivalents in Scotland.

Murder and robbery either side of the border was the main occupation of these families and you can still find fortified homes dotted across the region, commonly called Pele Towers, where family and livestock could hole up during an attack.

With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, Northumberland and Newcastle became a centre of activity, initially through coal, lead and silver mining.

Huge industries developed on the banks of the River Tyne, and at one point three quarters of the world's shipping was built on the river.

George Stephenson and his son Robert were both born in the County and established their railway engineering businesses in Newcastle.

Today, with the exception of the Southeast corner of the county, people tend to earn their living in one form or another, from the land, although there is a significant rise in tourist related jobs, which is not surprising considering the wealth of history.

We have miles upon miles of unspoilt coastland, sandy beaches, rugged hills, wildlife and beautiful towns and villages built in the local stone.

Northumbrians are canny folk who will always make you feel welcome.

Perhaps I should get a job with the tourist board myself!

Seriously, if you want to know a little more you can drop by http://www.visitnorthumberland.com

Internet Dad

2010-01-18T10:26:00.000-08:00

My regular readers will know that I am a father and indeed a grandfather.

Being part of the Global Community and spending time reviewing other peoples blogs and websites, I have run across a distressing element within the internetosphere!

What I mean by this, is the large number of young people who appear to be somewhat lost.

They are unsure of themselves and often appear to have experienced unpleasantness in their home environments.

I have not been so presumptuous as to enquire the nature of their problems, but it is evident to me that they suffer considerable insecurity.

As a parent of fairly well adjusted kids, it concerns me that there are so many youngsters out there who appear to have not experienced genuine love, affection and guidance.

They come from all over the World, they are lonely, unsure of themselves and use the internet as a medium to cry out.

Hey! I'm not a social worker, but I do have first hand experience of bringing up children and supporting them when they have problems that they struggle to deal with.

Age has some benefits in this regard, since we have probably gone through some of the issues that these youngsters find difficult to deal with.

My own kids went through tough times and on occasion this involved authority, but I always made sure I was there for them.

The feeling I am getting from these young people is that they feel alone and that should not be allowed to happen.

Youth is a rite of passage and can be tough.

If I can help just one kid through this process, then I am happy to do it.

What is to be done?

2010-01-18T08:35:00.000-08:00

Every time you pick up a newspaper or switch on the television, you are confronted with some form of bad news.

Currently and rightly so, the news is full of the appalling tragedy taking place in that luckless country, Haiti.

President Obama, before the current disaster, had put this country near the top of his list of places that needed some serious support.

History has dealt the Haitians a bad hand, going back to their original declaration of independence from France.

This was achieved through a pretty violent rebellion by the African slaves, before the European powers had got to the point of considering the abolition of slavery.

As a result this little country found itself without friends for the better part of it's first 100 years of existence.

In it's history, it has suffered no less than 32 coups, with each successive administration ripping the heart out of the population.

It may not be politically correct to suggest that the poor people of this land, need maybe fifty years of outside management, a polite way of saying some form of Western rule.

I know I will be shot down in flames for suggesting it, but the corruption that has prevailed, since independence has spoilt any chance that the 98% of the population, who live on $2 a day, can hope to aspire to a better life.

However there is a modern example of how deprived communities can be given security and a chance to rebuild their lives.

Sierra Leone, a former British Colony, collapsed into civil war chaos in the 1990's.

The butchery and bloodshed in that country was beyond belief, with gangs of children running around with Kalashnikovs.

Society had completely collapsed and no-one was safe.

At the request of an embattled government, Britain sent in the Royal Marines and within a relatively short period of time, law and order was re-established.

The local population welcomed these soldiers and a very small UK presence exists in the country today.

As a result of this action, investment is now poring into the country, creating employment and financial security for the people.

Is this neo-colonialism by a white European power? I don't think so, nor do the people of Sierra Leone.

They know that Britain will support their own self determination and indeed this is in Britain's interest.

I believe that Sierra Leone, may be a model for Haiti, if the people of that country are prepared to accept some element of outside control, until such time as institutions have been established, that are resilient enough to withstand corrupt individuals.

The Haitians may have to face some very hard choices and initially find their institutions controlled by foreigners, but if it can be demonstrated to them that a fair society is being created, then they would be foolish to resist it.

Up to now they have been exploited by a gangster elite, who use extreme violence and pocket the aid provided by the UN,US and EU.

It might be ruthless to say,but these entities need to engage with the populace and not the so called politicians and say, you want help? Then we are in charge until such time as proper institutions are in place to ensure your secure future.

I am quite sure that the majority decent people of Haiti, would welcome safety, security and a chance to build a life for themselves and their children.

For far too long this little country has been allowed to go it's own way, to the detriment of it's people.

Political correctness is damaging to the poorest of nations.

Sierra Leone has proved that the people of that country want safety and they do not care if those that provide it are white.

We have a duty to protect the poor and it doesn't matter what colour we are!

Monoatomic Gold

2010-01-16T07:28:00.000-08:00

I am an avid explorer of the internet, as no doubt many of you are as well, I have run across absolutely loads of websites relating to a substance called Monoatomic Gold.

Initially these sites sound incredibly interesting, but me, being me,I like to check things out.

I found that without exception all these sites were what you might call ' New Age '.

So in the course of my investigations, I discovered that the origin of these promoters ,of what they refer to as ORME, is a chap called David Hudson.

Going back to the seventies , David Hudson from Arizona, started to analyse the poor soil on his farm, using various chemical processes, with the initial intention of improving the porosity of his land, he discovered that there were elements in his soil that warranted investigation.

Without being excessively boring, he discovered that his soil contained many of what are referred to by science,as ' Exotic Elements '.

By this he means metals of the Platinum Family.

After many years of investigation, using his own money, he came up with a substance called Monoatomic Gold.

In simple terms, you take 24 carat gold and heat it to the temperature of the Sun and end up with a white powder, which is about 56% of the weight of conventional gold.

What we are dealing with here is Alchemy!

Hudson stated that after a blinding flash, all that was left of the gold, was a white powder, which defied analysis.

Indeed in the crucible that it was produced in, when weighed, it effectively did not exist.

Now step back a moment: According to Hudson, this substance had lost weight, as had the crucible.

David Hudson's assessments of this reaction defied probability.

He says that solid metal heated beyond boiling point, will result in a pure white powder, that is not analysable.

Woo! I think. Sounds amazing!

Definitely interesting! Has Hudson found something here?

As you can imagine conventional science tends to be sceptical of anything that relates to alchemy.

Personally I am excited by what he has found. But then!

David Hudson starts telling the world that this white powder will interact with body systems and cure all diseases by rectifying DNA.

He also states that Monoatomic Gold will enhance our awareness of who we are.

At this point I become a little sceptical.

We are now in a situation where New Age companies are selling this white powder as a solution to medical problems.

Based on what?

Personally, my investigations have shown that neither the FDA , or the British Foods Standards Agency have analysed this product.

I would love to think that this product works, but sadly I think we are again living in a world where gullible people are going to suffer.

I leave it to you, to consider the answer!

The Blackbird

2010-01-11T07:36:00.000-08:00

As long as you are not a shy retiring soul, The BlackbirdMemoirs are worth a visit.

Christina is an abrasive soul who doesn't take prisoners and her posts are often offensive to those of a delicate disposition.

However as an Englishman who has grown up in our native pub environment, she is a lass after my own heart and would be massively popular in England.

Her withering criticisms and social observations are some of the funniest writings I have come across.

Whilst crude at times, she is lucid and original in her thinking.

Her creative mind is astounding, just consider her idea of sitting in a mall and passing loud comment on the people who walk by.

This in itself is dangerous in a country where you have a right to carry arms and on top of this she lives in the South and she is Black!

This kind of natural talent is made for television and certainly I could see her running a TV show in the UK.

I am truly fond of this girl, she has something interesting to say and can express it through humour.

In my view Channel 4 in England, should hire her.

It's people like Christina who make a difference.

World Music

2010-01-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

I have always had an open mind to music.

I guess that growing up in the sixties where you were exposed to new forms of music, whether it be blues, rock, folk or classical, must have had something to do with it.

Today, I will listen to anything, provided it has spirit.

For example tonight I am listening to a compilation called Buddha-Bar, music from all over the World that is played in a bar in Paris.

It is incredible music, Brazilian, Spanish, French, Arab and Indian.

In the West we miss out on the richness of other cultures.

Take some time out to listen to this wonderful musical heritage, it will blow you away!

We live in a wonderful World, with some incredible cultures, enjoy the amazing diversity of music that is available to us.

We are all human and we all have something to offer to this beautiful planet!

Isn't it great to be a human being!

Alanis Morissette

2010-01-09T09:39:00.000-08:00

This Canadian bird can sing!

The power of her songs are self evident, she doesn't just sing, she tells a story in every verse she creates.

This woman sings about love, she sings about sex, in a way that is truly erotic.

The power of her voice and the passion with which she sings, is quite extraordinary.

There are not many artists who express themselves in this way.

Read her lyrics and you will understand where this girl comes from.

It is not some kind of feminism, she talks from the heart, about relationships and how they affect people.

She is highly intelligent and understands relationships between men and women.

I hope you enjoy!

My Kids

2010-01-09T07:44:00.000-08:00

I am honoured to have two beautiful kids, who I am happy to say are my best friends.

Barry is 27 years old, with a little boy called Brooklyn who will be three this month and Justine is 22 years old and will have a baby in the summer.

They both think that their dad is an old fart who is living in the past, but no matter, we are very close.

For those of you who have young children, the good news is that you get closer to them when they get past their teens.

I can remember difficult times when they were going through that decade, but a dad fights for his bairns however stupid they might have been in the growing stage.

They would argue with me and resist my forthright comments on their behaviour, but they always knew that I was there for them, when they got into scrapes, which believe me they did!

As a result I have two beautiful children who are full of love and kindness for those around them.

I guess the lesson I have learned from bringing up kids is that we have no experience before the event, our own parents lived in a different time, so we had to judge our actions by instinct.

This will apply to those of you with young children, you just have to play it by ear and use your own gut feeling as to how you deal with the problems that will no doubt arise.

The only advice I can offer you is that you stand by them, even when they are complete tits!

The Toon

2010-01-08T07:58:00.000-08:00

In todays Daily Mail, I picked up on a heart warming article by David Ginola ( pronounced Daveed), who played for the Toon (Newcastle United Football Club), in the 1990's.

David, a Frenchman, was a striker when Kevin Keegan was manager of the club at the height of it's time in the Premiership.

I remember being at St James's Park (home of the toon), when we had a home game against Manchester United, a team that was virtually unbeatable.

That day I witnessed the greatest game of football I have ever seen!

We beat them five nil!

The best goal of the match was scored by David, from forty yards out, he hit a shot that the ManU goalkeeper did not even see!

We are talking about the best goalkeeper in the Premiership at the time.

That day ManU were trounced and the ToonArmy went wild.

David in todays paper has announced that he is leaving his home town of St Tropez, to move back to Britain.

He says that his kids, who grew up here, want to come home.

As an Englishman I feel a little humble, that a Frenchman would prefer to live here, rather than in the slums of St Tropez!

He says many good things about our little island and perhaps this cantankerous old fart should desist from criticising Gordon's paradise.

You probably know me well enough that I will not do that, because I love this little island and it's strange people.

For a Frenchman to extol it's virtues chastises me somewhat!

Perhaps I should focus on Albions strengths rather than issues that are negative.

And Another Thing!

2010-01-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

My regular readers will know that I can be somewhat tetchy and seriously pissed off with government interference in day to day life.

I am a life long cigarette smoker, I know don't tell me how dangerous my habit is, I know it!,but it is my choice in a free society.

Most western countries have instituted laws to prevent people smoking in public buildings and in Britain this includes pubs and working mens clubs.

If Winston Churchill was still alive, it would never happen in the UK.

The NHS estimates that it costs them £2.8 billion to deal with ailments that are smoking related,whilst the current tax take from smokers is of the order of £9 billion.

If Winston was alive he would simply say that this was not an issue for politicians, but simply a decision that should be made by pub landlords. Some would want smoking in their bars and others wouldn't.

This would satisfy the needs of the community, without the current fascist dictat.

Tell me does your own country interfere in your life in this way?

Snow

2010-01-07T08:37:00.000-08:00

Well people we have snow, with more forecast over the next two weeks.

We don't often get this stuff in Britain, so when it happens, it ends up being a national disaster!

In Alnwick we currently have about 26 centimetres in the town, that's ten inches to you civilised people.

The children love it, no school! Far too dangerous for teachers to go to work.

Back in 1963, when I was a bairn and the snow was seriously deep, we still went to school, but now in PC Britain education takes second place to the needs of public servants.

As a result parents must take time off work to look after their little horrors, compounding the economic results of a little snow.

Now obviously certain professions and trades cannot work during these conditions, and I refer mainly to people in the construction industry.

How is it that schools are shut, when most of the kids live within walking distance?

We have even had two local banks closed because of a bit of snow!

It was forecast long before it happened and these organisations should have made provisions to ensure their institutions remained open.

Post-snow we can expect excuses for failure to deliver services and no doubt increased costs to the community as a result of the weather; a cover for financial incompetence!

However all will be well, Gordon Brown will just print some more money and the problem will go away.Not!

We are living in the madhouse, the Maquis de Sade would be proud!

The Rise of the Right

2010-01-05T10:50:00.000-08:00

A conversation in my local pub recently encouraged me to investigate an organisation called The British National Party.

This political organisation expresses somewhat extreme views, but does so in a subtle way, designed to attract the disaffected in Britain.

What is alarming about them is the way they play on the fears of the working classes, just as the Nazis did in the 1920's.

On the surface their arguments sound plausible, excessive immigration, the danger of Islam, poor policing and the lack of discipline in schools.

Most people in the UK will find something to agree with on these issues, and most people would not consider themselves racists by having those thoughts.

This is the clever approach that this organisation uses, playing on people's worries.

The Nazis did exactly the same thing.

My concern is that Britain is in a political vacuum, caused by a Labour Party that has spent the last decade trying to politicise elements of society, which traditionally never were.

Now the civil service, police, health service and local authorities are more concerned with complying with politically motivated legislation, than ensuring the wellbeing of the communities they serve.

This has resulted in a backlash by those very communities, who see they're ability to control their lives, being removed.

The BNP have been clever in responding to this anger with simplistic statements about what they would do if they gained power.

Tories, Labour and The Liberals are too frightened to address the issues this party tackles and as a result they will lose seats at the next election.

The British people are not by definition extremists, but if the main parties fail to address issues that concern them, then they will suffer at the polls.

If one analyses the full manifesto of the BNP, you will see that it cannot work.

It talks of a repatriation programme of Muslims based on a commitment to non-interference in Muslim countries and British troops coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

At the moment because of the present concern over Islam, their focus is in that direction, but one wonders what their view of other non-white immigrants would be.

Labour has created a poor white dependent society, which they have always considered their core vote.

This group are the one's who experience the results of an uncontrolled immigration policy and feel alienated.

Poor whites are now flocking to the BNP in such numbers that this party may indeed win significant numbers of seats at the next election.

If this happens they will continue to promote policies that emphasise fear in the electorate, and their following will start to include the middle classes.

If this happens, the World will have it's first Facist Nuclear Power.

For Britain to become a facist state, would be a disaster for the entire World, but it might happen!

Excessive legislation and over 3000 new criminal offences created under Labour have brought the British people to the point of the unthinkable.

If the BNP were to announce a radical programme to repeal these laws, they would win a significant majority.

Scary but possible!

John Echohawk

2009-12-28T08:46:00.000-08:00

John Echohawk is a Native American lawyer who is the Executive Director of The Native American Rights Fund.

Until recently I had never heard of this organisation.

What John does is campaign for restitution for the Indian Tribes who over a hundred years plus have been abused by the Federal Government.

When the tribes were ousted from their lands in the mid-nineteen hundreds, a trust was set up for them, to ensure they received income from any exploitation that took place on their new reservations.

This did not take into consideration their forced removal from their traditional homelands, nevertheless on paper it looked quite good.

So when miners, loggers, oil men, started to find exploitable resources on the reservations, it was not surprising to think that the tribes would benefit.

It seems that in most cases the companies honoured their legal requirements and made payments to the funds set up by the Federal Government.

Where it all goes pear shaped is when the funds arrive in accounts controlled by the Government.

A mixture of corruption and incompetence over at least 100 years has meant that the tribes have been abused by the system.

The sums concerned are literally staggering!

We are talking Billions of Dollars.

Successive attempts have been made to ensure justice for these people and they have got nowhere.

John has even attempted a class action and because of the power of central government he is getting delay after delay.

Senators and Congressmen say that this is going to cost the American tax payer a fortune, well so be it!

One must ask the question as to where all the money has gone in the first place.

What is left to the Native American people if they can't achieve restitution?

The simple answer to that, is the Nationalisation of Government assets on their land.

Most of these assets are highly sensitive military installations.

Please visit the North American Rights Fund and make a donation.

If freedom is to survive in the Western World we must start with those who have suffered under our two hundred years of exploitation.

Facebook

2009-12-23T08:40:00.000-08:00

Well the old fart has joined Facebook!

I know what you are thinking, Simon we thought you had a brain!

Well obviously not, but to be honest it is grand to communicate with my kids and their friends, even if I don't understand what they are talking about most of the time.

It will be amusing for me when they visit this blog, where we discuss issues of a Global nature!

I can see it now! Dad why are you so boring!

No matter, the little tinkers will understand when they are a bit older.

I guess the truth is that young people need to express happy feelings with their friends and should not be concerned with the worries of life, that will come soon enough.

One of the reasons I write this blog is to leave a legacy to my kids about my personal thoughts as a man of advancing years, who has made many mistakes in his life, but believes he can still offer a modicum of wisdom to his offspring.

The greatest achievement a person can aspire to, is to love their children.

All else in this World is incidental.

Happy Christmas people!

Christmas in Alnwick

2009-12-22T05:30:00.000-08:00

Well it's finally starting to feel like Christmas in our little town and whilst the lights have been up for nearly a month now, the spirit has been a bit lacking.

I suppose that's because of the on-going recession affecting Britain.

But today for the first time, the local shops are busy and children are starting to get excited.

In England, the shops are only shut on Christmas Day, but that never seems to prevent people from buying enough food to withstand a siege.

This always, for some reason means you cannot get a loaf of bread before Christmas Day and will mean that the landfill sites will be full of the stuff come January.

Christmas Day is always a quiet time for me, Manuela is back in Brasil, with her family, Justine will be in Scotland with Michael, and Barry, my son, is going to his mothers, although we are planning a couple of lunchtime pints at The George, before he goes.

The landlady at my local pub opens for two hours at Christmas lunchtime, just for her regulars, so it would be churlish of me not to attend!

Besides it's tradition to go and laugh at the new jumpers, the dads will have got for Christmas!

Why is it families buy chaps jumpers that you can only look at whilst wearing welding goggles?

I'll then go home to cook lunch for Dad and I.

Dad will be wanting to watch the Queens Speech on the television, which he always enjoys, being a Royalist of the old school.

Then I shall join him to spend the afternoon watching mindless drivel suitably anaesthetized, with vintage port!

Child of the Sixties

2009-12-21T12:18:00.000-08:00

This is a subject that my kids find totally tedious.

The nostalgia that surrounds the 1960's.

OK it was a great time, music, fashion, opinion, design, cars were all revolutionary.

Some months back I joined a hippy forum, just to see how it would develop and I was deeply disappointed.

The members turned out to be folks who were living in the past when it came to all of the above, with the exception of radical thinking, where they seemed to me to be as conservative as the generation they rebelled against.

I still pick up the posts and they sound like a bunch of old duffers who can't move on.

They go on about the anti-social aspects of smoking and drinking but will tell you how many joints they smoked at the weekend.

I think my kids are right, whilst I love the music from that time, it is foolish to live your life in the past, you just end up narrow minded and age that much faster.

My generation now rules the World and have been systematically removing the freedoms they campaigned for!

I think I'll go and live in Tristan da Cunha!

History

2009-12-21T05:38:00.000-08:00

I think it was Henry Ford who said that history was 'bunk', I'm not certain, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Wherever you live history has been, until relatively recently, that which is presented by your own media and the prevailing education system.

Traditionally history was always written by the victors.

Today however we have access to resources around the World, which are helping to give us a more balanced view of specific events.

Two examples are the British Empire and also the history of Native Americans, there are many more, but for this post two will suffice.

When Dad was at school a quarter of the globe was pink, you could travel over land from Alexandria to Cape Town and not step outside the Empire.

School children were taught about the wonderful benefits of being part of the British Empire with it's paternal approach to civilising the natives!

Everybody new their place and all was right in the World.

For my father's generation this teaching has left them not knowing who they are and they are unable to comprehend the massive changes they have witnessed in the World.

This is not their fault, they were fed an institutional form of history which was about population management.

The Second World War changed everything, former colonies realised that their masters were not infallible and so self determination became the new mantra, supported by a now dominant America.

For my generation, we were fed a variation of the above in the creation of what was termed the British Commonwealth of Nations, which still today comprises some 26 countries and has a certain amount of political clout in the World.

The nineteen-sixties saw the first serious attempts to look at history from a different perspective and this was done through the media with film and books.

Film allows you to look at an issue from a human level and thus permits people to reassess particular events.

Books also played a part in this process.

In the U.S. a film came out called Soldier Blue, that publicly admitted atrocities against Native Americans followed by a seminal book called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

These incredible works opened the eyes of a generation to their origins and their culture and encouraged other writers and film makers from around the World to look at history anew.

An Englishman, Sir Richard Attenborough directed the film Gandhi, which exposed some of the less savoury aspects of Empire.

With the advent of the internet, we have got to a situation where we can see other peoples perspectives.

Today many writers of history record events, not at a national level, but rather at the human level and for me this is more powerful.

My friend Meam Wye records Islamic history in just this way.

When you write about individuals and their achievements, it does not matter where they come from.

Their achievements are for the benefit of humankind, wherever they live.

The result one hopes is that we can learn to live together in a way that permits varied opinion and dialogue.

We must teach our leaders to understand that we do not want conflict and that they must find another way to resolve issues.

History shows us that it is mothers who suffer, when their sons are sent to war.

May be it is time for women to run the World.

The Vagueries of English

2009-12-18T10:58:00.000-08:00

Just for the benefit of readers around the World, I will try to clarify some of the expressions that not only I use, but which you might come across when viewing British websites.

My regulars will be aware that I live in the Northeast of England, so to make it easy I will say we are called Geordies. Some useful words and sayings follow:

Whyay pet!:yes

Canny Dia:nice day

The Toon:Newcastle upon Tyne or Newcastle United Football Club

Wor Lass:My wife,my daughter or my sister.

Bairn:my kid

Ha Wey!:Fuck off!

Ar Divnt Na!:I don't know!

Ar man ye feckin blaked:I say old chap you are drunk!

Yea suthern bastad!I take it you are from down south!

In other parts of the country you will experience a different set of expressions.

In London you have cockney rhyming slang, which some of you might have come across watching Guy Ritchie films like Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch.

Simple examples follow:

Sky=sky rocket=pocket

Apples=apples and pears=stairs

Bristols=Bristol Cities=titties

Bottle and Glass=Arse

Mother's Ruin=Gin

In other parts of the country accents are different:

In Yorkshire the lads will say' Aye I sup some stuff!' Meaning I had a few beers!

The West Country Lads will say arr ass roit good beer that is, arr! Meaning the beer is ok!

Oi reckon the sheep round ere are ok. This could mean Welshmen or Norfolk lads who obviously are attracted to sheep, so be careful!

Building an Herbaceous Border

2009-12-18T07:35:00.000-08:00

Shortly after taking up a position to run the garden at Wadhurst Castle in Sussex, I was tasked with the renovation of the south facing herbaceous borders, backed by the old kitchen garden wall.

The border was about 50 metres long by 4 deep and hadn't seen any care since the 1950's.

All that was worth salvaging was an old Magnolia and some ancient climbing roses.

Since the land was pure clay,I wasn't concerned with the roses in the least, perfect ground for them. Just a severe prune and they could be brought back to life.

Magnolias are a little different, they are very slow growing so pruning had to be judicious.

The Lady of the House had an idea of what colour schemes she required and then pretty much left it to me.

Fortunately I was given a reasonable budget to bring the site back to life.

When dealing with clay, it is pointless to dig it, you are simply doing work that you can get nature to do for you.

Having cleared the ground in the Autumn I laid down a bed of spent mushroom compost, to a depth of about four inches and then in the early Winter a six inch layer of well rotted horse manure. 22 ton which I barrowed to the site by hand, I was a fit bugger then!

Simple after that, I just let the weather get at it and was ready for planting in the Spring.

Come that time, I used a mix of perennials and annuals to ensure a strong first year showing, with the intention that year by year perennials would replace annuals, but still achieve the colour combinations that the Lady wanted.

So if you love gardening, but are terrified of the potential work or the poor soil conditions, just think about nature.

Plant for the conditions that exist in your area.

Think about a colour scheme that you want and then find plants that will work in your local conditions, rather than seeing something at the local garden centre, which looks great, but may not work where you live.

I know this is easy for me to say, since I'm a plantsman, but there are any amount of quality gardening books that will tell you where plants come from and what conditions they need to grow in.

I would recommend publications by The Royal Horticultural Society as probably being the best.

Just one final comment, don't be worried about shovelling horse shit! If it's well rotted it has virtually no smell!

Happy Christmas.

I've Been Thinking

2009-12-17T07:57:00.000-08:00

Yes I know, Oh God here he goes again.

Well we now live in this Global community which allows us to express ourselves in a way not possible in the past.

Opinion was traditionally driven by our respective Governments and Cultures.

We now find ourselves in a situation where the Tower of Babel has been rebuilt and we do not always swallow what we are told.

This must be a nightmare for our leaders.

How can they convince us that what they say is true?

The answer to that one is they can't.

Those who wish to influence human opinion are also under threat, simply because we find friends around the World who tell us how it is in their own environment without the need for emotionally charged agendas.

In my travels it seems to me that most people are kind, considerate and open to different opinions, irrespective of their religious or cultural backgrounds.

I'm a Christian with Muslim friends, neither of us are trying to convert the other, and why should we? We both believe in the Great Architect of the Universe.

So to try and maintain some sort of control, the governments of the World focus on issues which they believe they have full control over, namely weapons and global warming.

I will deal with the issues seperately.

Weapons: It's alright if we have them, but if you do,sorry that isn't allowed!

Global Warming:It is probably happening, but I am yet to be convinced that man can do anything about it.

I read an awful lot about this subject and our planet.

We may be heading for what I term as a readjustment which has nothing to do with humanity, just something the planet does from time to time.

In the last 70 million years the poles have shifted 170 times.

If you believe Charles Hapgood, we have never experienced an Ice Age, simply a shift in the crust, which has meant that the poles have moved, thus resulting in a change in polar regions.

This would certainly explain the discovery of a mammoth in Siberia found to have food in it's frozen mouth and stomach which said it lived in sub-tropical areas.

It was instantly frozen, which means the poles shifted instantly, think about that for a minute!

We have this belief that we are infallible but in reality we are just another species.

Our advantage however is this, we are intelligent.

If another cataclysm is to descend upon us, some humans will survive, and who will they be?

Well for sure they will not be accountants and lawyers!

Think of who you are and who your friends are.

To survive we will need people who are experts in the following fields:

Fishing

Hunting

Butchery

Gardening

Herbal Medicine

Leather Workers

Metallurgy

Geology

Stonemasons

Carpenters

Woodsmen

Spirituality

All of what I have mentioned are trades that will help us survive, the final one is about how we rebuild civilisation.

I know it is Christmas and the greenies tell me to be politically correct, but I want a Range Rover Sport, purely and simply because it does 120mph, which I will need to get to the hills when the tidal wave comes!

Heyho have a lovely time!

Why do we call it piles?

2009-12-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

Because we can't spell haemorrhoids!

At one time or another in your life, you will probably experience this ailment.

I don't know if it is the same in your country, but here it often generates a certain amount of hilarity from those around you.

Then again the British have a thing about bottom humour and if it involves you walking in a way that clearly means you are suffering, so much the better!

Even worse your friends will start taking the p*ss which sets you off laughing and thus amplifies the discomfort.

Even the name is ridiculous! It sounds like the name for a Science Fiction movie!

The Invasion of the Haemorrhoids, don't miss the latest James Cameron blockbuster!

After a while it becomes necessary to visit the quack!

Oh dear, on goes the rubber glove and he says,' let me know if you feel any pain!'

Is this man an idiot?

Now don't get me wrong, my body has not been invaded by these aliens since my twenties, at the time I was a young bachelor who lived on beer and curries!

So after the man with the rubber glove had completed his examination he proudly announced that I had piles, well whoopee, clever these Doctors.

Tell me Mr Holmes about your diet,'Well doctor, 14 pints a day, a chicken vindaloo and twenty tabs(cigarettes).

Says he,' It's hardly surprising you have piles Simon,( getting familiar now he has visited my bottom!) with a regime like that!

So being a sensible person I immediately reduced my beer consumption to 7 pints, changed to chicken madras and cured the problem at no cost to the NHS.

Still on the twenty tabs mind!

Happy Days

2009-12-15T04:00:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have noticed, that of late my tone has been a little angry, my friend Al at Publish or Perish pointed this out to me yesterday, and he is right, time to lighten the mood I think.

Well folks this chap is going to be a Grandfather in the New Year,for the second time, my lass Justine has announced that she is expecting!

Wow! I hear you say,' but Simon you are far too young to be a Grandfather!'

Shocking as it may seem but this English hunk is 56 years old!

Yes I know, quite unbelievable isn't it!

The bairn will be born in the month of August and both Justine and her lad Michael are over the moon.

Isn't life wonderful.

Time I think for a pint!

The Black Bird

2009-12-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

Monday is often a pretty dull day, but this week I have enjoyed a visit to the Bank by a lady whose site is called, The Black Bird.

This is one of the best sites I have run across in my travels.

Hilarious is an understatement!

We are dealing with a woman who is highly intelligent, humorous and earthy.

Her picture on her site says it all!

You know immediately who is in charge when you look at that face!

I strongly recommend you all visit The Black Bird, she is going to be a Blogging star!

I am a Christian

2009-12-14T08:26:00.000-08:00

Well there you have it, I've admitted that I follow the teachings of Jesus.

Today in modern Britain I am considered a stupid person who believes in some kind of fantasy.

Well sorry chaps but I view the teacher as a great man.

Being a Gnostic Christian I follow the Nazarenes where the path to God is found within one's self.

This is a life times endeavour to become one with the mind of God.

It is a personal journey that does not involve priests.

Fortunately other Gospels and writings have survived to support our beliefs and analysis of the New Testament has shown that Jesus was married and had children.

To Gnostic Christians we do not have a problem with the humanity of Jesus.

He was for us a teacher and we accept that he was human and not a God.

The Catholic Church has been a lie since it's existence and it knows the fact.

Since Constantine created the official Church as a political tool to control the Empire, the faith has been abused.

However Christians today are waking up to the origins of their faith and realising that the teachings of Jesus are not what have been presented for the last 1500 years.

At last his thoughts are being expressed in their original form.

The Destruction of Freedom

2009-12-13T12:08:00.000-08:00

This is not simply a trait of Britain, it is happening all over the so called advanced world.

The pernicious nature of it is driven by both politicians and unelected government officials.

It covers every facet of your life, from your religious beliefs, who you vote for, whether you drink alcohol or not, smoke, drive a car, own your own home, want to wave a flag outside your house, how you bring up your children, go hunting, believe in aliens, eat meat, support your local fishing community, express a view that uncontrolled immigration is a bad thing, global warming is created by humans, health and safety!

On a personal level I have experienced the change in policing, when making a complaint about anti-social behaviour, the coppers don't accept what you say, noise is acceptable because the law now says people have to smoke outside a pub because of health and safety.

The time has come to name the individuals who create these laws and those who gain from implementing them.

They must suffer the consequences of a reduction in freedom. They must also lose their jobs!

Gordon Brown

2009-12-13T09:48:00.000-08:00

This post may not mean much to you if you are fortunate enough not to be a Briton.

Currently we have an unelected Prime Minister who thinks the way to solve economic problems is to spend borrowed money.

We are now in a position where 65% of GDP is created by the public sector, which basically means we are in the fertiliser.

Our beloved leader who seems to me to have had a personality by-pass, has put Britons in a position where it could take twenty years to pay off the national debt.

When he and his chum the Holy Tony came to power, we did not have a national debt!

What may you ask have they spent the money on?

The simplest way of answering this question is to start at where they haven't spent it.

The transport system could best be described as Pre-Christian.

The military are fighting with bows and arrows.

Christianity is virtually criminalised.

Law and Order has become politically correct and thus requires little Government expenditure because to prosecute criminals is to oppress the poor.

Our beloved Prime Minister has created the biggest national debt in the history of Britain.

Most of this money has gone to pay for quangos, political schemes , local politicians and institutions that will happily continue to promote the Labour Movement.

We now have a system where senior civil servants are paid massive salaries and given incredible bonuses for performance.

Excuse me but why should tax payers money be used to make these idiots wealthy?

Our nation is in trauma and I could see a civil war, unheard of since Cromwell.

If this should happen, it is a major threat to the rest of the World.

To prevent it happening the major powers should force Britain to revert to it's historical roots of freedom.

Not even America can afford for this country to fall apart.

Our current PM is an enemy of liberty and must be removed.

Sir Alan Beith

2009-12-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

This is an open letter to my local MP.

Dear Sir Alan

As the propaganda sheet issued by your local constituency office polluted my doormat this morning, I thought it might be prudent to respond to you.

In this ill considered pamphlet you were foolish enough to mention that you had served this constituency for the better part of thirty years.

In this time you have achieved exactly what?

To date we still do not have a dualled A1, our local hospital is little more than a part time clinic.

We no longer have a full time police station and village schools continue to be closed.

Yes you have been successful in meeting with moaning minnies in your Berwick and Alnwick offices, which has clearly helped you get re-elected.

Your greatest success no doubt has been achieving a knighthood for yourself and getting your former secretary into the House of Lords.

Nice and cosey for the pair of you but it does little for North Northumberland.

Are you seriously considering standing for re-election, because sir you are a complete tit and represent a party that couldn't manage a whelk stall!

I bid you good day!

Our Origins

2009-12-11T09:33:00.000-08:00

Every kid born in the British Isles has been brought up with an incorrect view of both our history and our origins.

We were and are taught that our islands were populated by a series of tribes that, with each phase of invasion effectively ethnically cleansed the country.

With the advent of genetic mapping, we now know that what we have been fed over the years, is complete tosh!

Ethnically there is little difference between the English,Scots,Welsh and Irish.

The first inhabitants of our islands were Basques and to this day we are still predominantly ethnic Basques.

Only a small percentage of our population was ever Celt, Anglo-Saxon, Viking or Norman.

This tends to suggest that those arriving on our shores were in each case an elite, probably escaping some kind of persecution in their homelands.

This of course is intriguing, it means that we are an incredibly ancient race who have lost their heritage.

Our ancestors built Stonehenge and the other megalithic monuments in Britain, for why we don't really know.

The Druids originated in our islands and far from the Roman propaganda which said they practised human sacrifice, we know that their learning was revered throughout the ancient

World, which in itself suggests that Britain was not an island of savages.

The Romans true interest in Britain was it's mineral wealth.

The most important metal of the time was bronze which is an alloy of tin and copper, both of which were in abundance in Britain.

There are legends in the West Country that Jesus came here with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea and that Jesus studied under the druids at Glastonbury.

Obviously there is no material evidence for this but folk tales have often proved to have an element of truth.

We know for sure that Joseph was a wealthy tin merchant and since Cornwall was the biggest producer of this metal in the ancient World, it would not be surprising if he travelled there.

To support this argument, the early church stated that the first Christian church was created in Britain at Glastonbury.

Why would Jesus come here? Our islands have an ancient spirituality involving megaliths, ley lines and of course the druids.

It was well known in ancient times as a mysterious place and a centre of spiritual learning

Many Christians may be horrified by my suggestions, but they should remember that Jesus was not a Christian.

The cult that developed out of his teachings became known as Christianity.

So we Britons live in a mystical place and more and more of us are going back to our roots, this land has a special hold on us that we cannot truly explain.

I believe that we will over the coming years start to re-evaluate our place in the World.

Throughout history these small islands have had an influence out of all proportion to their size and this will continue but in a way based on the knowledge of the ancients.

If your ancestors came from these isles you are probably of Basque origin, either way this is your spiritual home, visit it if you can.

Ludwig van Beethoven

2009-12-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

After the last post I wanted to express something truly personal and truly emotional.

On 16th December 1770 was born for me the greatest composer who ever lived, and even he knew that God had placed him here for a purpose.

I am sitting here listening to Egmont.

As with every note he ever composed, it means something, it has spiritual resonance and you know that God put this man on the planet to express the beauty of life, nature and humanity.

Ludwig's music is the culmination of expression before the devastation of industrialisation.

You feel every note, it is organic and part of you.

Go out and buy the Emperor Concerto and listen to it late at night in the dark and then you will feel the genius of this man.

Every phrase makes sense, nothing is out of place, it just comes together in a way that will make you understand why you are on this planet.

If I have convinced you, which I hope I have, then move on to the Ninth Symphony, the greatest piece of music known to man.

Ludwig attended the premier in Vienna and received a standing ovation at the finish of the Symphony.

He witnessed people clapping their hands and knew that he had created a wonderful piece of music.

It was composed when he was completely deaf, he cut the legs off his piano so he could feel the note vibrations whilst he was lying on the floor.

God created a master who knew his duty to the Lord and he created what was required.

Can you think of an artist today that makes you think of nature, true love, humanity or spirituality?

Nudity and Civilisation

2009-12-10T07:52:00.000-08:00

This post may upset some of my readers, but nevertheless I feel the need to state my views.

There are certain things going on in our World that are pernicious and need to be addressed.

Two types of violence are polluting our children. One is obvious and that is the glorification of weaponry and the other is on-line porn.

Both these demean us as humans.

It should be noted that the biggest purveyors of both these corruptions are The United States of America.

Under the US Constitution these systems are protected, firstly the right to bare arms and secondly the right of free speech.

Why do Senators and Congressmen continue to permit this filth to be exported around the World?

The answer is quite simple, money.

America makes billions of dollars every year from the propagation of the sale of weapons and porn.

Both products degrade humanity and lose America, respect in the World.

Huge corporations such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others, choose to avoid their moral responsibility to society.

The Bill Gates Foundation may spend millions helping poorer countries, but do nothing to prevent the moral collapse in the West.

This is sinister in the extreme.

Secular society says that we should never have censorship, but there are certain subjects where it is in the public interest.

I think most people would prefer that their children were not exposed to either violence or porn in a way that suggests it's normal behaviour.

I titled the post Nudity and Civilisation, for me to pick up a paper and find a half naked girl in it, has got to the point of being tiresome.

She will be admired for nothing more than her body.

This obsession with the body beautiful has become idiotic and the effect on our society means that we think of nothing less than how pretty we are!

The time has come when we say no!

If we do not our civilisation will collapse.

William Adams

2009-12-09T05:54:00.000-08:00

William Adams was born in the Kentish town of Gillingham, England, in the year of our Lord 1564.

At the age of twelve he was apprenticed as a shipwright working in Limehouse, an area of the old London docks.

His apprenticeship lasted twelve years before he gained a position as Master and Pilot with the Worshipful Company of Barbary Merchants, where he spent a further twelve years, including joining a Government funded expedition to the Arctic to try to find the fabled Northwest Passage.

In the year 1598 an opportunity arose to join a small Dutch Merchant fleet as Pilot Major, with the objective of opening trade between Holland and Japan.

The fleet consisting of five merchantmen, sailed that year and headed off for the tip of South America.

Only three vessels made it through the Straits of Magellan, one of which was captured by the Spanish and another was lost in a storm.

The last remaining vessel crossed the Pacific and arrived off Japan in April 1600, with only 20 of the original crew of 100 surviving. The most senior of which was William Adams.

Initially they met with a hostile reception from locals accompanied by Jesuit priests, who wanted them crucified as pirates.

However, word was sent to Tokugawa the Daimyo of Mikawa, the future Shogun of Japan.

He insisted on interrogating Adams over a considerable period of time, on such subjects as his profession, country, religion and England's relationship with Spain and Portugal.

Much to the annoyance of the Jesuits, Tokugawa refused to countenance the execution of people he did not have a quarrel with.

Adams was commissioned by the now Shogun to build Western style sailing vessels, the first of which was used to chart the coast of Japan.

Within a two year time frame Adams became fluent in Japanese and gradually replaced the Jesuits as the advisor to the Shogun on matters covering shipbuilding, trade and diplomacy.

About this time the Shogun presented him with two swords and changed his name to Miura-Anjin, thus he became the first European to be made a Samurai.

Known by most as Anjin-sama, meaning Lord Pilot, he received an estate which included 100 servants and was located at a place called Uraga, near modern day Tokyo.

Adams married a local Japanese girl, by whom he had two children.

Given privileged trading and diplomatic rights, he served Japan until his death in 1620.

His grave can be seen today in Hirado, Nagasaki Prefecture, where it is maintained by local monks.

William Adam's memory is preserved to this day in two places, Anjin-cho, in Nihonbashi and at a village in his former fiefdom called Anjinzuka.

Every year on the 10th August, the city of Ito holds the Miura Anjin Festival.

His story was the inspiration for a novel by James Clavell and also turned into a mini-series called Shogun.

Christmas

2009-12-07T08:27:00.000-08:00

The Christmas season is rapidly approaching when we all should be thinking of family, friends and the happy times ahead.

However for many parents this time of the year can be very stressful as they consider the potential financial cost of the Season of Goodwill.

Retailers the World over manage to encourage children to want want want.

Parents do what they can to make Christmas a special time for their young ones, but sadly the focus is mainly on the fleeting happiness experienced through materialism.

Less and less do people in the developed World pay homage to the true meaning of this festival and as a result it has been usurped by commercialism.

Gone are the days when carollers would knock on your door and sing just for you, expecting a little charity to be distributed to the poor.

Even Christmas decorations are rarely symbolic of this most important Christian festival, they are more often than not ' thematic '.

The season of goodwill has turned into a feast of over indulgence where little time is given over to reflecting on those who will not be experiencing the joys of a family coming together.

Many Christians live in oppressive regimes, have little money to survive let alone celebrate Christmas in a material way.

However they will more likely express their spiritual feelings at this time.

So if you can, take a little time to think of those less fortunate than yourself and give a little charity when someone in need crosses your path.

The Strange Death of Dr Kelly

2009-12-05T07:54:00.000-08:00

You will all remember the aftermath of the Second Gulf War, where politicians in both Britain and the US began to question the reasons for going to war.

The UN was told by Bush and Blair that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and despite concerted efforts, postwar, nothing was ever found to suggest that Iraq possessed WMD's.

In Britain a Parliamentary Inquiry was undertaken to investigate the original claim.

One of the principal witnesses was a chap called Dr David Kelly, a government scientist who was considered to be one of the World's leading experts in this field.

A quiet and unassuming man who was clearly uncomfortable in the media spotlight.

The evidence he gave at the inquiry was to say the least damning for Mr Blair's government.

Shortly afterwards he was found dead, in a local beauty spot, close to where he lived.

His family to this day, say that he was not the suicidal type, but the subsequent inquest stated that he took his own life.

In today's paper a group of six physicians have stated that he was murdered by persons unknown.

Consider this: The Inquest was set up by Lord Falconer, an ex-flat mate of Tony Blair, who appointed Lord Hutton to oversee the inquiry.

The six doctors in question have asked for a judicial review on the basis that certain questions have not been satisfactorily answered by the original inquiry.

I will quote verbatim the six points they wish to have answered:

1.Why was the cause of death found to be a haemorrhage, when hardly any blood was found around the body?

2.Who were the mystery men seen around the time of Dr Kelly's death, near where his body was found?

3.Why were there no fingerprints on the knife that Dr Kelly supposedly used to slit his wrists?

4.Why did the police investigation into Dr Kelly's death apparently begin before he even set off for his final walk, let alone before his body was found?

5.Why were there claims that Dr Kelly took 29 painkillers, when only a fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach?

6.Was Dr Kelly's body moved after death?

Dr David Kelly's family have never believed that he committed suicide and for six eminent physicians to consider that the original enquiry was flawed makes you wonder why the government is reticent to investigate this issue in detail.

Let us look at Tony Blair for a moment.

A public schoolboy whose father was a life long member of the Conservative Party, Blair meets Cherie Booth a rabid socialist.

Blair joins the Labour Party at a time when it is in terminal decline and meets a traditional Labour supporter called Gordon Brown.

Over time a deal is struck, they create a new concept called 'New Labour', which is little more than a Conservative variant.

Blair says to Brown, you get me traditional Labour support and I will win the election, after one term I will hand over to you, OK says Brown and the rest is history.

Not only does Blair betray his original roots, he betrays his relationship with the Labour Party, Gordon Brown and his so called Christian beliefs by converting to the Catholic Church.

What we have here is a man that the World cannot trust and who is ruthless enough to arrange the death of a government scientist who could potentially expose him.

A previous Chief of the General Staff has gone so far as to suggest this man should stand trial for War Crimes.

I leave it to you to make up your own mind.

Copenhagen

2009-12-02T08:46:00.000-08:00

And I don't mean the name of the Duke of Wellington's horse!

You will have read in the news about the latest climate change conference that is taking place in Copenhagen.

Scientists have been telling us for some time that we are experiencing Global Warming, and I think that is self evident from the odd weather that we all know is affecting our World.

However I am not one of those who blindly follows the mantra of science.

A little reading and a little education will show you that the planet has experienced dramatic climate change in the past, long before industrialisation, motor cars and vast herds of farting cattle.

The 'green' industry will tell you that sea levels are going to rise and sink many cities and communities around the World.

What they fail to mention is that an increase in temperature will also result in an increase in evaporation, creating a higher humidity and rainfall.

So vast amounts of this extra moisture will be held in the atmosphere and end up being deposited in places that are currently starved of water.

On the one hand we have the developed World promoting this CO2 emissions mantra, primarily to put pressure on developing countries, by suggesting we monitor the production of all products, based on their carbon footprint,( a spurious form of measurement derived from biased and ill considered calculation.).

Then under developed countries sign up to this principal as a means to extract funds for so called sustainable development.

What we really have here is a post industrial methodology designed to maintain a status quo with regard to advanced economies, ensuring that the new technologies needed to combat the uncombatable are developed by sophisticated countries.

Green scientists are the new priesthood and to question what they say amounts to nothing less than heresy, after all they know, don't they, they went to University and who are we to criticise their findings?

So their mantras are promoted around the World by politicians and pop stars whizzing around in executive jets, travelling in limos and living in huge houses.

Perhaps the public will start to believe what we are being told, when those who promote it start living in a more environmentally friendly way.

For me, as a man who has worked with nature as a plantsman, certainly I see changes, but you would be amazed at how rapidly nature adapts to conditions.

Humanity is beginning to realise that the age of enlightenment is coming to an end and we will revert back to living in tune with nature.

The dinosaurs of our age are scientists who still believe they can change the World by manipulation.

Stop worrying and adapt, the Great Architect of the Universe created our home, which has seen many changes and it will see many more before our Sun becomes a Red Dwarf!

The Commando Raid

2009-11-29T12:12:00.000-08:00

Following on from my post about dad, this is another one about The Home Guard.

The unit throughout the war was controlled by the regular army, who looked upon them as a bunch of old idiots.

Nevertheless orders would be issued from High Command to effect certain actions!

On one occasion Dad's unit was told to lay a communications line from Hitchin to Stevenage, a distance of about six miles.

Dad's commanding officer, who was very similar to Captain Mainwaring, said to the High Command, 'No problem, when are you sending the cable to do the job?'

'Don't be stupid Captain, use your imagination!'.

So, Corporal John Holmes,( My Dad ) and a squad of aged commandos raided the local post office depot in the middle of the night and stole six miles of cable.

Before the event Dad blacked up with boot polish in his mum's kitchen and she said,'what are you doing son?'.' Can't tell you mum, it's a matter of national security!'.

So the upshot was that the military got six miles of communication cable laid and the post office had a problem with their inventory.

The local police were called in to investigate, but since most of them were in the Home Guard, they were stumped as to who might have perpetrated the crime!

A little bit of this kind of behaviour today might help our World.

Dad

2009-11-28T07:27:00.000-08:00

My old Dad is 87 now and lives with me since my Mum died 6 years ago.

He's at that time of life where he spends much of his time reflecting on the past and those of you with elderly relatives will know that they can be somewhat repetitive.

However it is always good to be patient at these times because every now and then he comes out with some little gems.

Dad was born in 1922 in Kensington, which is in West London, his father had been an officer in The Durham Light Infantry during the Great War and was invalided out after the Battle of Passchendaele.

At the age of about six the family moved to Stevenage in Hertfordshire, at the time a small market town on the Great North Road.

At the age of eight Dad had a fall which resulted in him experiencing severe pain.

He was taken to the doctors and after many tests, it was established that he had tuberculosis of the bone and he was despatched to an infirmary in Stamford, Middlesex for what would turn out to be a series of operations over a four year period.

At the time TB was a killer and it was fortunate that it was not in his lungs.

The little laddie grew up fast in that institution, suffering not only personal physical pain, but emotional stress from the loss of friends who were in hospital with him.

He has recounted to me one particularly bad six month period when he was in plaster from his chest to his ankles.

The diseased bone was in his right hip and so a hole was cut in the plaster so that each morning the nurse could put an aluminium spike in the wound, to break up the puss.

This was done every day for six months, without the aid of any pain killer.

The old fella has a permanent tan since in those days they believed the best cure was fresh air, and so he was pushed outside in his bed irrespective of the weather.

In the end they stopped the spread of the disease by grafting bone from his shin into his hip and as a result he has no joint on the right side and his leg is four inches shorter.

All his life he has steadfastly refused to accept disability and he can be more than a little short with people who moan about pain!

During the Second World War he joined a thing called the Home Guard and if any of you have ever seen a BBC comedy series called Dad's Army, the old boy says it was just like that!

He has told me some very funny stories of that time, including one involving the Australian Army.

At the outset of hostilities the Australian Army Pay Corp were billeted at his local golf club and many was the time that Dad played golf with these fellas.

He says they would carry their golf clubs but also have a golf trolley to carry the beer!

One day a sergeant scored a hole in one and that was the end of the round, they had a party in the clubhouse that lasted a week!

Another time Dad was standing guard duty on the top of a water tower close by the main railwayline from London to Edinburgh.

A table was welded onto the top of the tower which had an engraved map of the local terrain as well as profiles of German aircraft.

One night Dad was on duty when a plane appeared from the South and checking the profiles he realised it was a German Ju88.

Armed with his trusty First World War Canadian Ross rifle, he started taking pot shots as the plane was heading towards him.

As it passed, he received a burst of cannon fire, puncturing the water tower, which made him bounce up and down.

To this day he believes the German gunner was simply saying,' don't be a bloody idiot!'

There are many more tales from his younger days that I am collating and I will relate them to you over the coming months.

It's Friday

2009-11-27T10:40:00.000-08:00

The working week has finished and now we are about to embark on the weekend.

I am at home listening to Brazilian music with a fine glass of wine and a cigarette.

What are you doing?

Our masters will be doing the same and contemplating what new laws they might introduce to ensure we continue to perform in a way that meets their requirements.

Democracy requires that you control people by fear, so the press will tell us that Islamism is our current danger and watch out because Sharia law could be introduced.

Oh! please,does anyone seriously think that this is going to happen!

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a government that said we are going to repeal laws for the next term in office.

Over 3000 new laws have been passed since the criminal Blair came to power.

Remove laws and let people live and take responsibility for their lives!

Freedom requires that politicians do not interfere in anything that we do!

An Angry Man

2009-11-26T09:25:00.000-08:00

This is a beautiful World and it is being screwed up by politicians and institutions, that are only interested in serving their own needs.

A bunch of self serving scientists and bureaucrats are in Copenhagen trying to create the next level of ' thou shalt behave' Global legislation.

These people are financed by organisations that directly benefit from creating an apocalyptic

view of the World.

Sure Global warming is probably taking place, but only the dogma of modern science would say that humankind is responsible.

These very same scientists will tell you that the Earth has gone through many such cycles in it's history.Some of which have happened very rapidly.

The very arrogance of science, to suggest that we can cure the problem, as if the World was some machine that they controlled!

Science denies the existence of spirituality, which will result in it's ultimate failure.

The universe will determine the future of our World, which is well beyond the comprehension of our narrow minded scientists.

You do not need to be of a religious persuasion to work out that we are not in tune with nature and that we are abusing the Globe.

The Greenies protest about this and that. Essentially there are too many people using up resources of the Planet.

Each country needs a smaller population and more focus should be on skills that help societies survive.

We need practical skills, spirituality, arts, engineering, mathematics, as was true in ancient times.

We do not need accountants, lawyers, pr consultants, marketing folk, politicians et al.

Old fashioned trades will be what is required in the new age, if man is to survive and rebuild civilisation, because the system is about to collapse.

Those who take the World forward will be those who have already given up a material way of life.

Those who still live with materialism are already dead.

I titled this post ' An Angry Man ' simply because I believe humanity has not yet woken to the fundamental changes we are going through.

The television generation is in danger of dying in the same way that biblical societies collapsed when Noah was asked to build his Ark.

What is Going On?

2009-11-23T07:06:00.000-08:00

This post will have an Anglocentric bent, but I believe the principles still apply in other Western Countries.

I read the other day, that a couple were turned down in their application to adopt a small child, on the basis that they were white and the kiddy was black.

What kind of politically correct madness denies a child a loving home simply because of a colour difference?

This bairn is living in an institution, which by definition will not be capable of providing the most fundamental need of a child, which is love.

Love has no colour and if politicians truly believed in diversity then surely the best way to achieve it would be by ignoring ethnicity.

Would black couples in England, desperate for a child, turn down the opportunity to adopt a white baby, if it was offered to them? I don't think so.

What is more important? Political correctness or a child living in a happy home.

In Britain it seems ok for foster parents to look after kids of different ethnic backgrounds, but not acceptable for them to adopt these kiddies.

To me this is just another form of institutional racism.

I can remember when a couple I know who fostered kids, had a brother and sister from Ethiopia.

The little girl would have been about four years old and would always insist on sitting on my knee at my local cricket club and never stop talking!

She was the most beautiful little girl and very happy with here foster parents who under the law had no chance of actually adopting her.

Not only was this tragic, it was criminal!

Some faceless bureaucrat would say she needs to be with people of her own culture.

Total crap, at that age she needs love and security. When she is an adult she can investigate her origins and make up her own mind about these issues.

When she sat on my knee, she didn't look at me as a white man, but simply as a friend who enjoyed her company.

I started this post by saying ' what is going on?'. In my view the West has lost it's spirituality and is hide bound by rules and regulations which are devoid of humanity.

Children just want to be loved and we could all learn something from them, because they don't see colour!

My Lass

2009-11-22T13:39:00.000-08:00

Well Maria Manuela Gomes has gone back to Belem today for four months and this old fart is on his own for a wee while.

She's gone home to see her old mum, another Maria, to spend time in the humid heat of Amazonia, on a series of flights that mean she won't be home until 1 o'clock lunchtime on Monday.

Poor lass will be starved of a cigarette in all that time because the airline industry says it's bad for your health.

Well we all know that,but let's get real, it really means their cleaning bills are less.

If governments really want to stop people smoking, they would ban it, but they don't do they!

Why? Because they want the tax.

Corrupt politicians across the World pontificate on this subject because the unelected health facists give them the ammunition.

We live in a World where these creeps profess a belief in democracy but institute laws that target groups who either don't support their party or have no political clout.

Real freedom is no longer to be found in western countries, they are now little more than places

controlled by petty bureaucrats and lawyers.

So to get back to Manuela, tomorrow she will be home in a country, whist not perfect, does not persecute it's citizens who want a bloody cigarette in a bar!

Paracelsus

2009-11-21T06:47:00.000-08:00

Phillip von Hohenheim, better known to the World today as Paracelsus, was born in Switzerland in 1493, the son of a physician and chemist.

He commenced his University education at the age of 16, initially at the University of Basel and later completing his Doctorate at the University of Ferrara.

With an insatiable thirst for knowledge, he became a travelling physician, working his way through France,Spain,Germany,Sweden,Russia and Hungary.

Paracelsus was steeped in Hermetic, Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean philosophy and as was common at the time amongst physicians, he was a practising Astrologer.

An experimental practitioner, he was always seeking new ways to treat disease, which sometimes brought him into conflict with accepted methodologies and authorities, both academic and religious.

Often considered arrogant in the way he expressed his views, he lasted less than a year in the Chair of Medicine at the University of Basel, before being run out of town!

Resuming his travels, in pursuit of ancient and hidden knowledge he journeyed throughout Europe, Asia Minor and Africa.

The result of these journeys and the knowledge he acquired, culminated in the publication of 'The Great Surgery Book', the first editions of which appeared in 1536, helping to restore his reputation throughout Europe.

In his lifetime he used Alchemical practises more for experimentation on chemical and mineral elements than for personal development.

Paracelsus believed in treating the whole being, body and spirit as you would expect in a follower of Hermetic philosophies.

He was the first to suggest that many diseases of the human body were caused by outside agents, created the use of Laudanum, an opiate tincture, used up until Victorian times as a pain reliever.

Today he is considered the father of Toxocology and is quoted as saying,' all things are poisonous and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous'.

Modern holistic medical practitioners owe much to the early work of Paracelsus and some would go even further by stating that he initiated the foundations of what would become medicine as we recognise it today. Another three centuries would have to pass before this happened.

What Paracelsus can still teach us today across a wide range of sciences is this. Knowledge is universal and in nature is not narrowed down into specialist fields.

For truly great advances in the understanding of the universe and man's place in it, scientists of many disciplines need to cooperate and collaborate.

A simple example might be the discipline of archaeology which steadfastly refuses to engage with other disciplines which might disagree with pet theories, these being archaeo-astronomy,

geology and anthropology.

These sciences all working together in an open minded way, might yet discover that human civilisation is much older than current convention suggests.

This is merely one example amongst many where the high priests of science will consider anyone not conforming to their view of the World is a heretic, an experience Paracelsus new only too well.

He left this World in 1541 at the age of 47.

Harold Larwood

2009-11-19T09:04:00.000-08:00

Born in Nuncargate, Nottinghamshire on 14th November 1904, to a working class family, Harold left school at the ripe old age of 14, to commence work in the mines.

His father like every miner I have ever known, didn't want his son to go down the pit.

Fortunately, from a young age he showed an aptitude for cricket, playing initially for his village side and showing an ability with both bat and ball.

At the age of eighteen he trialed for Nottinghanshire County Cricket Club and was offered a professional contract.

In those days cricket was very much a two tier game in England, with control and captaincy of clubs invariably run by the upper classes.

Harold would have found it perfectly normal to have to call his captain,sir!

He rapidly built a reputation as not only a very fast bowler, but also a very accurate one.

His compatriot at Nottingham was Frank Tyson an equally fearsome bowler, who later said that attempts to measure the speed of Harold's bowling varied between 90 and 130 mph, which if tested today would make him the fastest bowler, the World has ever known!

He is best known for bowling in Australia during the notorious Bodyline Tour of 1932, under the captaincy of Douglas Jardine.

He was ordered by his captain to bowl a thing called 'leg theory' ,which was not only very dangerous for batsmen, but devastated the Australian batting order.

Leg Theory works on the basis of aiming for the batsman and not the wicket, considered at the time not to be sporting.

Harold is reported as saying,'When you have 50,000 Aussies shouting at you, you know you've got 'em worried!'.

On returning to England, the political fallout of the tour had the governing body of the game insisting he write a letter of apology.

This he refused to do, on the basis that strategy was the captain's decision.

Jardine, a toff, was never asked to apologise.

As a result Harold was never selected to play for his country again and finished his county career at the outbreak of war in 1939.

Ironically he and his wife emigrated to Australia, a country that didn't look down on him for being a working class lad, where he lived quietly in New South Wales.

My Nan

2009-11-17T07:57:00.000-08:00

She was old before her time, but I always knew her for the love she expressed.

Long white hair, right down her back, which each morning, she would brush and then plait.

She had no teeth when I first knew her and would suck barley sugars on her gums, which always made me laugh!

She would giggle that her little grandson found this funny.

An old lady who brought up six children in a two up two down Victorian terraced house, with no bathroom and only an outside toilet.

When I stayed with her, she would wash me in an old tin bath in front of the fire, before going off to bed.

She never owned a washing machine and only ever had a cold tap in the scullery, cooked on a primitive gas cooker, yet her children were always well fed and went to school in clean clothes.

Here name was Florence, but everybody called her Flo.

Never once did she complain about her life, even when she was put in a local asylum for a week because she had had a diabetic fit.

She was the most beautiful woman I have ever known.

22 SAS

2009-11-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

Many of you will have heard of the Special Air Service, probably from your television screens in 1981, when units of the Regiment freed hostages from the Iranian Embassy in London.

The event was televised worldwide, much to the chagrin of the Regiment.

This unit, never comprising more than 500 men, has since it's inception wished to remain in the shadows.

Founded in North Africa by Major David Stirling, it has a history of causing significant damage wherever it operates, using the minimum number of men to cause the maximum carnage.

It works to eliminate problems that conventional military operations struggle to do.

Typically working in teams of four these men will be tasked with surveillance, sabotage, hostage recovery, counter insurgency and assassination.

SAS selection is one of the hardest processes that a member of the British Armed Forces can go through, since you have to be a member of an existing unit even to apply.

Unlike American Special Forces, where upper body strength is important, with the Regiment, the focus is on endurance.

The SAS is also looking for intelligence, an ability to learn languages and initiative.

Conventional military skills are an expected given, but you will also learn how to withstand torture, live off the land and work with native peoples.

The Regiment as it is commonly called in the British Army, has seen action in North Africa, France, Italy, Germany, Borneo, Malaya, Oman, Northern Ireland, Falklands, Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan and places the Ministry of Defence do not want us to know about.

During a coup in the West African Republic of The Gambia, in the 1980's, the deposed President asked for British help.

He was sent a Major and Sergeant from 22 SAS, who with the aid of Senegalise Paratroopers, ousted the insurgents within a week.

Today this unit operates in Afghanistan, often behind enemy lines, in a surveillance role, calling in strikes on targets manned by the Taliban.

At least one man in each unit will be fluent in the local language and another will be a medic who will help local people.

Tonight, when you lie in bed, think about these highly trained soldiers who risk their lives while we sleep, they are discreet in what they do and their deeds are invariably not publicised for many years after the event.

Their Regimental motto is ' Who Dares Wins '.

The Knights Templar

2009-11-16T06:38:00.000-08:00

It doesn't take me to tell you that millions of words have been written on this secret brotherhood of warrior monks, however for this post I want to focus on the mystery surrounding their early years.

The Knights Templar were initiated in Southern France in the year 1113, by one Hugues de Payen and sometime between 1118 and 1120 he journeyed to the Holy Land with eight other knights.

There he met Baldwin II King of the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem and proposed that his new order should protect pilgrims visiting the Holy sites of Palestine.

Quite what persuaded Baldwin to agree to this and provide them with extensive quarters on the Temple Mount, in the Al Aqsa Mosque, is not known.

For nine years these nine knights never left the Temple Mount, but busied themselves digging underneath it.

Conventional wisdom states that in these early years they struggled to recruit new members because of the austerity of their Order.

Their fortunes began to change in the year 1127 when the Abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, wrote the rules of their order, modelling them on his own, The Cistercians.

Highly regarded throughout Christendom for his canonical knowledge, Bernard later wrote to Hugues de Payen, extolling the virtues of the new Order.

This not only opened the floodgates of new recruits from the Nobility, but also for donations of land and valuables, which would lead to The Knights Templar becoming the wealthiest body in Christendom.

About this time the original nine knights completed their searches beneath the Temple Mount.

The mystery that arises, is this, what did they find? Was it treasure, the mysterious Baphomet, thought to be a preserved human head or was it documentation?

Whatever it was, shortly afterwards the Order was given unprecedented power by the then Pope.

They were to be exclusively accountable to the Pope, which made them more powerful than any Monarch in Christendom.

Did they discover something which would shake the very foundations of the Roman Church, which at all costs had to be kept secret.

I will leave you with this thought. During their time in the Outremer they absorbed much knowledge from both Judaism and Islam.

One school of thought suggests that their long term plan was to instigate the unification of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

If this was the case then they must have found something that could unite these faiths, an intriguing thought indeed!

Aliens

2009-11-15T11:25:00.000-08:00

I've just met a very nice lady at Blogcatalog, called Lor, who is a bit of an expert on the subject of aliens and has got me thinking, purely in a mischievous way you understand.

Just suppose a spaceship landed at lunchtime in Alnwick.

Well of course all hell would break loose, there aren't that many parking spaces in the town at the best of times!

The door of the craft opens and out steps this strange looking bi-ped, clad in a shimmering skin tight costume.

The locals are naturally horrified! Can't the BBC film somewhere else?

In perfect English he says,' Greetings Earthlings', Oh God and the scripts crap too!

Up steps Sergeant Mallaburn of Her Majesty's Constabulary.

' Good afternoon sir, very nice costume, now about the spaceship, I'm afraid you can't park it here sir, it's causing an obstruction'.

' Look into my eyes Earthling'.

' Now now sir, you can't catch me with that one, I am a British police officer and by definition a uni- cellular organism that's not responsive to hypnosis'.

' Either you move the spaceship or I will be forced to ask you to accompany me to the Station!'.

With this the alien looks to the heavens, returns to his ship and buggers off!

So when the day finally arrives when the World is invaded, they will probably give England a miss, we can't take anything seriously!

Male Fertility

2009-11-15T06:21:00.001-08:00

Well it seems at long last an American Academic has discovered the reason behind declining male fertility in developed countries!

Dr De-Kun Li of Stanford University says,' I would like to advise couples trying for a baby, to reduce their exposure to electro-magnetic fields'.

Our modern World,with it's array of electronic gadgetry, is to blame.

This seems to mean chaps, that sadly your days of vacuuming around the house, are numbered!

Now I know that you will all be sadden by this news, but in the interests of your fertility, you will just have to make sacrifices.

Your dear lady will need to start pulling her weight and stop going off to football games with the girls.

So put your feet up and rest those cherished balls or buy a lead cod-piece!

The English Public House

2009-11-13T07:56:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite pastimes is enjoying a pint or two in my local pub, The George.

Having travelled to many parts of the World, including North America,Europe,The Gulf States,Singapore and Australia, there is nothing quite like an English pub.

Some of these hostelries are ancient indeed and have always been the hubs of their communities, satisfying the need of the working man to imbibe on the way home from work.

In Alnwick, to service the needs of a thirsty population of some 8000 souls, we have fifteen pubs, not many, I hear you say, but we get by, nonetheless!

Most countries around the World drink a substance we refer to as lager, which is usually served so cold it gives your stomach frostbite!

This stuff appears not to have any noticeable flavour other than a kind of metally taste that reminds me of new fillings!

In the British Isles and I will include Ireland here, you can by draught bitter, which is hand pulled from a beer engine and thus contains no gas, is a warm brown colour and is full of flavour.

I might add that it is served generally at around room temperature and you don't need many of these before you lose control of your bottom jaw!

There are literally hundreds of different brews, all with their own distinct taste.

So getting back to the point, in this country our social life tends to revolve around the pub, rather than in our homes.

The pub is a great leveller, where people from all walks of life congregate and thus it is a microcosm of our little island.

We discuss politics, music, sport, work, sex( although the English are hardly experts on this subject! ), tell irreverent stories and basically put the World to rights.

Every pub has it's philosopher who has an answer for everything, yeh that's him in the corner, the boring bastard!

Towards the latter half of the evening the language degenerates into pure Pre-Shakespearian Anglo-Saxon.

At the finish, a merry time, having been had by all, we wend our circuitous route home and live to fight another day!

Pass the Bomb!

2009-11-12T08:37:00.000-08:00

Today Simon is enraged!

This morning I went into my local W H Smith book store, part of a publicly quoted company.

So angry was I, that I tried to contact the company's corporate website, but to no avail, these executives hide behind layers of departments designed to deflect customer dissatisfaction.

Not deterred, I sent an open letter to The Daily Mail newspaper, the text of which follows:

Stephen Clarke

Managing Director

WH Smith plc

Dear Mr Clarke,

I had occasion to go into your store in Alnwick today. In the course of my browsing for Christmas presents, I came across, what purports to be a game for all the family, during the festive season.

It goes by the name of Pass the Bomb!

What kind of crass idiot do you employ, who considers this to be a good idea, when people and soldiers around the world are being mutilated and killed by such devices.

Since it appears impossible to e.mail you direct, I am using this conduit to contact you.

At the very least I would suggest that you remove this product from sale and issue a statement apologising to families who have suffered the effects of bomb attacks.

Yours sincerely

Simon Holmes

http://wwwrainbowbank.blogspot.com

I would ask you all to express your indignation at a company that sees fit to make profit from such a product.

The Mystery School at Eleusis

2009-11-10T09:49:00.000-08:00

For those of you new to this subject, I will try to outline what I mean by a Mystery School.

They in essence were schools that initiated people into the mysteries and wonders of nature, including dimensions that science today only suspect, exist.

In both Ancient Greece and Egypt, they were dedicated to the Esoteric Arts, and in the case of Egypt, tended to be focused almost exclusively on the Priesthood and the Royal House.

For the Greeks however access to this ancient and secret knowledge was available to all including slaves and latterly the Romans.

The greatest and most famous of all the Greek Mystery Schools was at Eleusis, approximately fourteen miles from Athens.

Eleusis was dedicated to the Goddess Demeter mother of agriculture and vegetation.

A ceremony took place once a year conducted by an hereditary priesthood known as the Eumolpedie.

It is known that anything up to three thousand people at a time attended initiation, involving a procession through sacred Athens, leading to purification in the sea and being sprinkled with pigs blood.

Having partaken of food and drink including a brew made from barley specifically grown, that contained a fungus with hallucinogenic properties, they were then lead to a sacred grove, where, the High Priest, through incantations, would tell them of the illusory nature of their existence and that this life was merely a dream.

The rites that followed, mirrored the growing season, from the planting of seed, nurturing of crops and ultimately the harvest. To divulge the secrets of the mysteries was punishable with death.

The initiated came away from the experience elated in the knowledge that their spirit was immortal.

The Mystery Schools of which there were a significant number were shut down with the advent of state sponsored Christianity and presented as works of Satan.

The good news is that similar beliefs are still held today by adherents of Esoteric thought and of course by native peoples around the world.

A wisdom that is at last coming out of the shadows!

Pirton

2009-11-09T07:20:00.000-08:00

When I was a lad, I lived in a small village in Hertfordshire, called Pirton and as you know, when you remember your childhood, it was always sunny.

We lived in a fourteenth century thatched cottage where the back garden was bounded by the village pond.

I remember it as being quite large since there were thirteen weeping willow trees overhanging the pond.

Come rain or shine, my days were always spent outside.

My best mate was called Pete and he and I used to disappear off into the Pegston Hills on our bikes, each with a bag of sandwiches and pop that our Mums had prepared for us.

Racing down country lanes devoid of cars, lying face upwards in cornfields listening to the skylarks that flew so high, you couldn't see them.

Digging for fossils in an old disused quarry.

Our bags always contained our Observers books, little pocket sized volumes on subjects like native bird species, butterflies and wild flowers.

The hills around the village were of chalk and grazed by sheep, with the woods being mainly of beech.

For sport we used to go scrumping, nicking ( Stealing ) apples from the Vicar's orchard, I'm quite sure he new what we were up to, but we never got caught.

In those days every village had it's characters and ours was an old man called Will, who in his seventies had never been further than the local market town of Hitchin, just five miles away.

The village lads used to tease him, but he was a crack shot with a catapult and would invariably hit them on the backside as they were running away!

Of course you would never tell your parents, otherwise you'd get another crack when you got home!

On Saturday mornings Mum would give me a half crown to go and by some fresh bread from the bakery, it was so hot I had to run all the way home because I could hardly hold it and I can still taste that wonderful flavour that only truly fresh bread has.

Later in life I read Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee, evoking his childhood in the Westcountry and all the memories came flooding back.

The richness of childhood before the advent of technology is something I feel privileged to have experienced, sadly it is lost to the young today.

I Cried Today

2009-11-07T14:05:00.000-08:00

Today I witnessed an old soldier lay a flower on the the grave of a friend who died on the beaches of Normandy in 1944.

I struggle to write this post, my eyes are full of tears, for a man who has lost his friend.

Today after all these years, he can still reflect on the comradeship they had together, the dignity that this old man showed, in expressing his love, for his friend makes it very difficult for me to write this post.

What can I say, soldiers of any nation are required to do their duty, but it is their comrades,friends and families who truly understand their sacrifice and we all cry for them.

Let us hope that one day war will be history.

Human Bondage

2009-11-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

Slavery has been the scourge of humanity since the dawn of time and we are all familiar with the mass transportation of Africans across the Atlantic for the better part of two hundred and fifty years.

Some estimates say that as many as 15 million Africans were transported in that time to North and South America and the Caribbean.

It wasn't until 1807, after 20 years of campaigning that Britain outlawed the importation of slaves to it's colonies and even then the Slavery Abolition Act was not passed into law until 1833.

What is less well known is that a similar trade had been going on at the same time in North Africa, operating along the coast, from as far East as modern day Libya to the Atlantic coast of Morocco, at the time commonly called The Barbary Coast.

From the early 1600's to August 1816, an estimated 1.25 million European Christians were abducted by Barbary pirates.

Operating out of three main centres, Tunis, Algiers and the port of Sale on the Moroccan Atlantic coast, they targeted merchant shipping, fishing fleets and coastal villages.

In the case of the latter records show that on occasion they took whole communities.

Spain suffered the most, not only because of it's proximity to Africa but also in revenge for the expulsion of Muslims after the victories of Ferdinand and Isabella.

In England the coastal villages of Cornwall suffered repeated attacks.

The Corsairs, as they were referred to even captured Icelanders and Americans, all to disappear into the slave markets of North Africa.

Surviving testimonies make harrowing reading, with forced conversion to Islam, the norm.

Those who resisted usually only lasted about six months and in the case of women a matter of weeks.

The Apostates, as they were referred to in Europe were those who succumbed under torture and new that their governments would do nothing to recover them because of their conversion.

Probably one of the most detailed accounts concerns a Cornishman called Thomas Pellow, who was captured when his uncle's merchantman was overrun in the English Channel.

Thomas was eleven years old at the time and along with the rest of the crew was taken to Sale in Morocco, where he suffered six months of hell in the slave pens, before being brought into the service of the son of Sultan Moulay Ismail.

In order to force Thomas to convert to Islam, his new owner subjected him to sustained bouts of torture using a method called the Bastinado, where the boys feet were strapped together and the soles repeatedly beaten with wood.

It is a testament to his character that it took nearly six months before the boy succumbed to this torment.

He was held in captivity suffering many privations for twenty three years, before he finally managed to escape on an Irish merchantman and at long last make his way back home to Penryn in Cornwall.His homecoming makes emotional reading, for his parents were still alive.

Europe seemed totally incapable of dealing with this trade and it wasn't until August 1816, when Admiral Edward Pellew arrived off the coast of Algiers, with a Royal Navy Squadron.

He gave the Dey of Algiers 24 hours to release all slaves and cease the trade forever or he would turn his guns on the city.

Needless to say the Dey refused and thus Admiral Pellew reduced the city to rubble and destroyed the entire Corsair fleet.

The operation took little more than a day, and at the end of which the Dey surrendered unconditionally, releasing the slaves and revoking slavery forever.

Once news of this spread along the coast, all other centres of the trade complied, thus ending the trade in Christians.

It is interesting to note that Admiral Pellew was a direct descendant of the Thomas Pellow who made it back to Cornwall some seventy years earlier.

In the final analysis it would still take Britain another 17 years to outlaw slavery in the Empire and a civil war in America to obliterate the obscenity of human bondage in that country.

Sadly we have still not removed this crime from the World, the United Nations estimates that there are still some 27 million people on the planet living in some form of servitude.

November 5th

2009-11-05T13:20:00.000-08:00

This one will make you laugh!

In England tonight, we celebrate what is referred to as Guy Fawkes Night, by lighting bonfires and letting off fireworks.

For why?

Just in time the Gunpowder Plot was uncovered, with Guy Fawkes about to let off a huge amount of explosives under the Houses of Parliament, when members were sitting.

What a horrible thought!

The little darlings would have been blown to smithereens, which of course was unacceptable, when being perpetrated by Catholics!

So, Guy and his accessories received the sharp end of an axe.

Of course the irony of this, is the state of politics today and the avarice of the present Members of Parliament.

Concerned with their expenses, fancy lifestyles and second mortgages, whilst our young people are dying in Afghanistan.

Every time a coffin comes home from there, every politician should be forced to attend the arrival ceremony and explain themselves.

I thought you would find that funny!

Dear George.......

2009-11-05T06:33:00.000-08:00

From today's press you will probably note that your CIA ex-station chief, in Italy was convicted in abstentia, together with 23 of his chums, for the kidnap and torture of Abu Omar.

Whilst Mr Omar may be in Western terms, called a militant Islamist, your actions suggest that you had no real evidence against the man, other than that he was expressing his views, which he is perfectly entitled to do, in a democracy.

You then took him from a US Airforce Base in Italy, to Cairo, where he was subjected to sustained bouts of torture, which if I am correct is forbidden under the United States Constitution.

These actions were supervised by one Robert Seldon Lady, whom your administration refuses to give up to Italian Authorities, to serve his time for these criminal activities.

Mr Omar, served four years in Egyptian confinement and was finally released without charge.

Freedom, sir, comes at a price. That freedom must be offered to all, including those who do not agree with you.

Your aggressive stance in the Middle East is the legacy you leave ordinary people around the World, who suffer terror attacks and bombings.

Let us hope your successor will realise that military action and inaction on Palestine are no longer acceptable to the vast majority of Global citizens.

When your time comes, George, you will have some very serious explaining to do!

Plastic Entertainment

2009-11-03T10:12:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don't know, I live in a small market town in North Northumberland, called Alnwick.

It is the ancestral seat of the Percy family who live in a bloody great castle, just around the corner from my modest front door.

I am just recovering from the news that Her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland has appointed a Disney trained Frenchman, as Chief Executive of both Alnwick Castle and the famous Alnwick Gardens.

This announcement has been greeted by local people, with a spontaneous burst of indifference, which won't phase the Duchess one iota!

This man, full of irritating enthusiasm,has stated that he wants to bring you the Alnwick Experience, by this stage you can imagine, my heart has vacated my bottom!

'I intend bringing the fantastic local history alive', says he!

Oh God! Bus loads of plastic tourists buying plastic souvenirs,watching plastic historical re-enactments, eating plastic food,all charged at obscene prices by an avaricious Duchess, who will be in Antibe while all this crap is going on!

No doubt this bloody man will be being paid twice the GDP of the entire town and want to hire us serfs as 'The Alnwick Experience' guides.

Well all I can say is, Your Grace, shove it where the sun never shines!

Ram Bahadur Bomjon

2009-11-03T05:49:00.001-08:00

Deep in the forests of Southern Nepal, lives a young man called Ram Bahadur Bomjon, a Buddhist adept who for the last six years, since he was 11 years old, has been meditating.

He is rarely seen and indeed a police investigation was undertaken after he disappeared on one of his forays into the jungle.

At one time he sat for ten months under a tree without taking food or water!

Now modern science would dismiss these claims as being impossible, however film crews and journalists who have visited him, talk of lengthy periods when he did not partake of food or drink.

Whilst in a state of meditation, he has in essence left his body, leaving barely a trace of vital signs.

Some of his followers believe that he is the re-incarnation of the Lord Buddha, however most say that this cannot be so, since the Buddha achieved Nirvanha, a state of enlightenment where re-incarnation is no longer necessary.

Still others believe he is Maitreya Bodhisattva, the predicted successor to the Lord Buddha.

Bomjon, as he is known, says he is meditating for the World, to save us from anger, greed and violence.

Will a seventeen year old lad from Nepal be able to save us from ourselves?

He says he has a further six years of meditation ahead of him, to complete his work.

We can only live in hope that he succeeds!

Being English

2009-11-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

Having recently visited the blog of my Aussie friend Al, I have become motivated to address the strange question of being English.

Those of you not from this Sceptred Isle, will have differing views on your personal experience of the English whether through literature, music, humour, war, marriage, education or invention.

I would suggest that we are an oddball people, who as the Americans would say,punched above their weight on the World stage for quite along time.

We view ourselves as different from other peoples, not in a superior way, just different.

I believe the origins of this go way back into the dim mysteries of our past.

Over the centuries waves of people have come from mainland Europe to live here, most of them trying to escape some form of persecution.

This has created an island race who are fiercely independent, with a great mistrust of Europe, and rightly so, our graveyards are full of young men sent to fight vicious European wars.

We now find ourselves dominated by two European nations who over the centuries have caused us alot of grief, namely the French and the Germans.

Even our country's name can be confusing! To some we are Great Britain, to others The United Kingdom.

Some would have us break up the Union with Scotland and Wales, and whilst we like to banter about our fellow Britons, it has served us well to remain united.

We are in a phase of what I would call navel watching, we have given up our Empire, joined a political union with countries who have only had democracy in our terms for the last ten minutes and find ourselves a little uncertain as to the way forward.

However the English have a long history, built on our ability to adapt and change.

I strongly believe that we must forge our own destiny and no longer continue to implement US foreign policy, which invariably is not in the interests of our people.

We have many friends in the World who have been dismayed by our lack of independent thinking, and they are right, our history shows that by taking our own route, we achieve more for England and other peoples when we stick to our principles.

A recent good example, was the quelling of the civil war in Sierra Leone, an ex-colony where the local people welcomed our soldiers in restoring peace and security.

This is what we are good at, we have fought oppression both at home and abroad for 1000 years!

I still believe that my people have something to offer the World, that is good.

The Druids

2009-11-01T06:46:00.000-08:00

Prior to the Roman invasion of Britain, the religious life of the Celtic tribes was centred around a highly educated elite, called The Druids.

The word itself is thought to derive from a combination of the Greek word Drus, meaning oak and the Indo-European wid, meaning wisdom.

They were tasked with caring for the spiritual life of the tribe, interpreting the law and almost certainly medicine.

Tacitus, the Roman historian recorded that they worshipped oak trees and practised human sacrifice, but this is more likely the propaganda of the victors, since no evidence exists to support such a claim.

Certainly they revered the oak and their religious rites took place in Sacred Oak Groves. They also prized mistletoe, a parasitic plant of the oak.

Kissing under the mistletoe at Christmas may be a remnant of some long lost Druidic ritual.

The Druids were highly educated and their laws and rituals had to be memorised during the course of becoming a priest, involving a secretive heiratic alphabet called Ogham, the meaning of which is lost to us today.

They new Greek and by some it is thought that Pythagoras visited them before establishing his own Mystery School.Certainly the Ancient Greeks had great respect for their wisdom.

Their teachings included the immortality of the spirit and the transmigration of the soul.

Roman Legions annihilated them on The Isle of Anglesey in North Wales shortly after crushing the revolt by Queen Boudicca of the Iceni tribe.

Another historical example of the wisdom of the ancients crushed by a jackboot!

In Praise of Railways

2009-10-29T12:25:00.000-07:00

What man or woman of my generation does not hold fond memories of railway journeys?

The age of steam was in it's death knell when I was a boy, but I can still visualise my first journey on a train going on holiday to Llandudno in North Wales.

Arriving at the station I rushed ahead of my father to see the engine and watch the great man who was to drive this leviathan wiping his oily hands on an old rag, whilst the fireman shovelled coal into a greedy boiler.

The hiss and steam and smell live with me today, and then, the journey began, travelling in comfort, at speed through the English countryside, I was completely captivated and totally forgot that I was taking my first visit to the seaside.

I was blessed, in 1959 there were not many children who went on holiday to the seaside and travelled on a train, I was in heaven!

As a result, I have never lost my love of trains, even as a young man, when I was a compulsory commuter travelling every day in and out of London, I would simply think of the poetry of John Betjeman on the subject of railways.

Now as an older man I have rediscovered the pleasure of railway journeys, from the buying of the ticket to boarding the train,observing your fellow passengers and watching the English countryside go by, the little villages with their Church spires are still there as we whistle past at high speed, pondering the daily lives of the people who live in these timeless communities.

All this is possible because of a man who was barely literate, a man from my home county of Northumberland, called George Stephenson.

Born in 1781 in the village of Wylam, about 10 miles west of Newcastle, to a typically impoverished family, he started work in the mining industry and couldn't afford to teach himself to read and write until he was seventeen, he over the years became an accomplished engineer, working at various collieries in the region.

Waggonways were in common usage in the mines of the time and his growing knowledge of steam locomotion encouraged him to consider using steam for motive power.

Whilst not accredited with the invention of the steam locomotive,this prize goes to a Cornishman, George Stephenson built the Worlds first public railway, known as the Stockton and Darlington.

A twenty five mile track, that was to change the World.

Today most societies could not function without the train. How many commuters travel into Berlin,Paris,London or New York using this method of transport?

So when you next get on a train think of George, he opened our horizons.

The Man who Tastes Words

2009-10-29T06:50:00.000-07:00

I caught an item in the press the other week, which I thought might interest you.

It concerns a man called James Wannerton, from Lancashire in England, who since the age of four, has had the ability to taste words, yes that's right, he actually has the physical sensation of taste.

There are apparently around 2.5 million people in the World with this condition, which is called, Gustatory Auditory Synaesthesia.

He says that it wasn't until later in life that he discovered that he was not alone in having this condition.

For him, specific words, phrases and languages have distinct tastes, not all of them pleasant; indeed his whole life and his selection of friends is determined by this.

He gives some examples:

The Lord's Prayer apparently tastes of bacon!

The French language is eggy!

And German is just pure marmalade!

What drew me to the item in the first place was his assessment of the taste of words spouted by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

He says that budding President of the EU, Tony Blair's words taste of dessicated coconut and that our glorious Prime Minister's words taste of mud and marmite ( a disgusting beef yeast paste spread).

How positively apt!

Bell's Palsy

2009-10-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Those of you that read this blog from time to time will know that I do not normally focus on personal issues.

However last Friday I contracted an ailment called Bell's Palsy, which I have to say I had not heard of before.

It has the effect of diminishing the power of the muscles in the left side of the face, from working properly.

In essence you look like someone who has had a minor stroke.

On Friday night, Manuela (my lady), noticed that I couldn't smile properly and insisted we visit the local casualty department.

After many tests it was decided that I had contracted this condition.

What it means is that the nerves on the left side of the face have stopped providing information to the local muscles.

The result is that your left eye tear duct, eyebrow and the left side of your mouth refuse to function in the normal way.

You still retain feeling so it isn't a stroke!

Being an avid reader, the only part of this condition that bothers me, is the discomfort I feel, through the lack of moisture to my left eye.

It seems more distressful to my children than it does to me, I suppose because of the visual effects of the ailment.

Doctors do not know what causes it, but suspect it is viral.

In most cases it just disappears in two weeks, but can take six months and in odd cases, stays with you forever.

The drug treatment is unpleasant, involving steroids, anti-virals,ointments and eye drops, but I have a full belly, clean water, a nice home and loving children, so not alot to worry about!

At 56 I have become a dribbler, which means that I can be even more outrageous than I was before!

The reason for this post is more to do with who we are.

We live many lives on our way to closeness with the great architect of the universe, and as spirit beings this is nothing more than a modest trial.

Alfred Skeggs

2009-10-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

Your Country Needs You!

At the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, the famous poster of Lord Kitchener, bearing these words, was to be found all over Britain.

A generation of young men joined the call for 'The War to End all Wars'.

One of those young men was a lad from Stevenage in Hertfordshire, called Alfred Skeggs, a trained motor mechanic, when there weren't that many cars on the road, he like his contemporaries considered volunteering as a way of seeking adventure and advancement.

'It will be over by Christmas', was the common cry.

Being mechanically minded he signed up for the new service, The Royal Flying Corp, a division, at that time of the army.

Though not officer material, he nevertheless qualified as a Sergeant Pilot, after eleven hours flight training and one hour solo.

Alfred was then shipped to France to begin his war.

He flew two seater aircraft which were used in the main on reconnaissance missions over enemy territory.

In the early days, his rear gunner consisted of a chap with a rifle and a bag of hand grenades, which were liberally tossed over the side when a likely target was spotted.

As with all army units they were supplied with tin helmets, but the air crews sat on theirs, since the threat came from the ground.

Having survived two years at the front unscathed, he was re-assigned to new recruit flight training duties, where he witnessed far more fatalities than ever over enemy territory.

Alfred was mentioned in despatches, signed by Winston Churchill and was demobbed in 1919.

He was my grandfather.

Feeding our People

2009-10-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

A lady called Amber who has visited this site,has caused me to consider an issue that affects us all; namely hunger.

When you say you are hungry, really you are not, it's merely a mild discomfort and you descend on the fridge and the problem is solved.

Amber tells me that there are around one billion people in the World who suffer from true hunger, not knowing when they will have their next meal.

That meal when it comes, may be simply a bowl of rice or some plant shoots, that have not been destroyed by drought.

In the west we whine on about cancer or heart disease, both problems of an over indulgent society.

Millions are spent on idiots who want to look pretty using cosmetic surgery, to satisfy a passing vanity, whilst in Mali and other parts of the world, people do not even have clean drinking water.

It seems to me that surgeons and doctors who pander to this kind of lifestyle are fundamentally amoral.

The World has the technology to feed these people, just consider the great deserts of the Sahara and the Gobi.

We have the expertise to create de-salination plants, the oil companies have the technology to transport fluids.

They tell us that the seas are going to rise; what better way to alleviate this problem than to irrigate the deserts of the world and allow the hungry to farm for themselves.

This of course would require politicians to permit the movement of peoples to areas where this work could be undertaken.

What prevents this? A market economy that requires farm produce to be of a certain price that ensures farmers in Europe and America receive a subsidised price for their products.

We can as a global society no longer accept this method of doing business, it is not sustainable.

Silver Fish

2009-10-25T14:16:00.003-07:00

Yes I have to admit I have silver fish in my bathroom! A strange name for a creature that is neither a fish nor silver.

These little chaps come out at night, ferreting for tasty morsels no doubt.

We all think of personal hygiene and use a variety of horrendous chemicals in the home to keep the little beasties at bay.

They must have the constitution of Henry VIII, since they seem capable of consuming anything!

But let us look at it from their point of view.

These foraging expeditions must be, not only to feed themselves, but also their young, who are no doubt living under my floorboards, without paying rent!

These little chaps go about their business clearing up the minute particles on my bathroom floor that I cannot even see, thus helping me to maintain a tidy home.

Thats what I call wildlife in action!

The English Longbow

2009-10-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

Sunday will be St Crispin's Day, the 25th October.

On this day in 1415 a small bedraggled English Army defeated a much superior French force at The Battle of Agincourt.

Estimates vary as to the actual size of the French Army but it is known that the English force consisted of approximately 1000 men at arms and 5000 archers.

The French were wary of attacking this force, primarily because of the reputation of English Bowmen.

In these times it was law in England for young men to practice archery, starting at the tender age of seven and regularly attending local tournaments, from which the best were selected for military service.

Through years of constant practice an English Military Archer was not thought competent unless he could fire a minimum of 10 arrows a minute. The average however, was closer to 15.

What makes this even more extraordinary is that todays modern bows have a pulling weight of around 60 pounds.

An English Archer at Agincourt carried a bow with a pulling weight of 150 pounds!

Today very few people would be capable of even pulling such a bow, let alone firing 15 arrows in a minute!

These bows had a range of up to 400 yards and could penetrate any type of armour at up to 200 yards.

Thus it was on St Crispin's Day 1415, this small army suffering from hunger and dysentery, under the command of Henry V, had no option but to take the fight to the French.

The outcome of the day was an English victory, for the loss of less than 500 men, to a French force whose estimated losses are recorded as being somewhere between 7000 and 10,000.

Since most of these losses were Knights, the direct effect on the French aristocracy was appalling and to think that they had been killed by English peasants rather than their aristocratic equals, was too much to bear.

The final humiliation came with the subsequent peace treaty which required that the daughter of the French King should marry Henry and that their first son would be the heir to the French throne.

For a period of approximately 200 years the English Bowman was the most feared fighter in Europe and was not replaced until effective firearms were introduced.

My First Award

2009-10-23T05:58:00.001-07:00

On Having a Vasectomy

2009-10-22T13:21:00.000-07:00

Time again for a little frivolity as long as you are not on the receiving end!

Having had two wonderful children, my former wife suffered medical problems which prevented further healthy births.

Thus we decided that the best way forward was if I had a vasectomy and so,as is required in England, we went to meet the surgeon, who firstly wished to establish that this was a joint decision and that we were both of a mind that this was the way forward.

Once he was comfortable with this,he said,ok and asked me whether I wanted a local or general anaesthetic .

Having experienced a general as a kid, I opted for a local, fine and so the date was set.

The day arrived and I showed up at Alnwick Infirmary and went through preparation including a local injection before lying on the operating table.

I am still relatively calm at this stage, and then I am lying on the table with my tackle exposed to the world,legs spread and my beloved surgeon then says,' my you are brave!','why?',says this idiot.

'You are the first man in Northumberland to opt for a local!'

Now ladies and gentlemen,by this stage the man has hold of my balls! What can you do? Not alot.

So the operation proceeds with two nurses dancing up and down the theatre to the Rolling Stones on the music system and the bloody surgeon telling me how wonderful Newcastle United football Club is!

Finally I waddle out of the hospital looking like a guy who has been riding a horse for a week and my wife falls about laughing!

What we men do for our art!

The Jannisaries

2009-10-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

After the fall of the Roman Empire fighting units both in the Christian and Islamic Worlds were created when conflict was about to erupt. Fighting men fought for their liege Lord.

This situation did not change in the Islamic World until the fourteenth century when Sultan Murad I, created the Jannisaries, as an elite infantry corp of household troops, who were also the Sultan's bodyguard.

Unique at the time in wearing uniforms and being salaried.

The Jannisaries were created by abducting the sons of families from conquered Christian territories. Thus for the first few centuries of their existence they were predominantly Greeks and Albanians.

Since Christians were forbidden to bear arms in the Ottoman Empire, up until the nineteenth century, Jannisaries were required to convert to Islam.

Whilst under training and during their time in the corp, they lived a monastic existence, which required them to be celibate.

Upon retirement however they were permitted to marry.

Well organised and fanatical in battle they reached their peak during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent.

In later times however they declined as a fighting force; they dropped their traditional method of recruitment and this was replaced by a grace and favour system, which became a reflection of the growing corruption within the Ottoman Empire.

Successive Sultans lived in fear of the corp until in 1826, Sultan Mahmud II attacked their barracks with artillery fire, killing 4000 Jannisaries.

The survivors when then executed by decapitation.

They were in short a litmus test for the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Their legacy lives on in their martial music which influenced both Mozart and Beethoven.

On Gnosticism

2009-10-20T06:01:00.000-07:00

I have been asked on a number of occasions to give my definition of Gnosticism, an Esoteric belief system that has it's origins in about the 3rd Century BC and stems from the writings of a sage called Hermes Tresmegistus who wrote the 42 volume Hermetica.

In essence it is about self discovery and seeking the Divine from within.

Many of the early followers of Jesus,were Gnostics who believed that his teachings were not meant to be taken literally,but in an allegorical sense.

Jesus was what we would today call an Adept,seeking to guide people to the Kingdom of God,through self exploration.

Starting by knowing oneself and working through a number of levels to attain closeness with the divine.

We are all part of the mind of God, is one of the fundamentals that must first be grasped and the rest is a personal journey that only you can take.

Gnostics are not specifically Christian.

Other faiths have adherents to the Esoteric path,in Islam they are called Sufis and in Judaism you have the Caballah.

Re-incarnation is one of the principles within the Esoteric,so past lives are important areas of

study for the Gnostic.

I can recommend a good book for those wishing to investigate this subject further,from a laymans point of view.

The Secret History of the World by Jonathan Black

Well I've Got Nothing to Wear!

2009-10-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

This is one for the chaps.

How often gentlemen in your lives has a friend and his partner invited you round for supper? Quite often I suspect.

Great,you think,I can't wait to get home and tell 'she who must be obeyed', the good news! What could be better than a convivial night,with friends over a good meal,and apart from taking a decent bottle of wine it's gonna be free!

Then you get home, and your dear lady greets this marvellous news with,'well I've got nothing to wear!'.

Your mind instantly goes to the house extension you had to build to accommodate her wardrobe!

'Well are we going or not?,I hear you say.'You've said yes,so we'll have to!' the great lady says.'But i'll need a new outfit!'.

So off we go to John Lewis for a new frock. Two hundred and fifty quid later she says,'I'll need some new shoes and a bag to go with them.'

By this stage you could cheerfully murder your pal for the invite!

Thus a free night out costs the better part of four hundred quid,but the lady is happy and I am now planning an extension to the extension.

Sexist unfeeling,inconsiderate git! I hear the ladies say................

Bogeymen

2009-10-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

Today we live in a quasi-globalised society,if you believe the headlines and the pontifications of World Leaders.

To keep us all in check,these people need to have us living in fear.

Just consider some examples from the Twentieth Century,Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Ayatollah Khomeini, HIV, The Swinging Sixties, Pinochet, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism and so it goes on and on.

The truth is that civilisation is but a veneer and our masters are those who truly live in fear,and thus they need to distract us from their psychotic need to control.

There is something fundamentally odd about an individual that needs to control others using fear as the tool.

Let us not forget that it is rarely individuals who have committed heinous crimes against humanity,who were not driven by some leader, who incited them in the first place.

The good news though,is that the internet has allowed people from all over the World to come together,in mutual support, for those that are oppressed.

This is forcing politicians to act in a way that was not possible before.

Consider some of the examples where ordinary people have had an affect.

The Yahua of Peru,overturning legislation that would affect their World, people in Iran using the technology to notify the World of their plight,the people of the UK who exposed the greed and corruption of MP's.

Yes there are still many areas,where we as individuals can do something to highlight an issue,however small it may appear,each step takes us nearer to being better human beings.

The Importance of Robin Hood

2009-10-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

There cannot be a child today in countries that have film and television,who has not heard of Robin Hood and his Merry Men.

Sadly the programmes and films made about this mythical character are in the main abysmal;I recollect seeing one effort by Kevin Costner which looked promising at the start,having our hero returning from the Holy Land with his Muslim chum.

They landed in England,with shots of the White Cliffs of Dover,great!

Then what happens? He and his pal are next seen walking along Hadrian's Wall! Now if the guy is trying to get to Nottingham,he has overshot by 150 miles.

In fact the best part of the film, was when Alan Rickman was on screen,sending up the Sheriff of Nottingham as a seriously stressed out chap!

What however interests me in this English folk tale,is, what is behind it.

After 1066 our country was ruled by a nasty bunch of land grabbing thugs,called the Normans,whose ancestors are the chinless wonders referred to as English Aristocrats.

Now enough of this frivolity,at the time when these events are supposed to have taken place,the country was ruled by Prince John,brother of Richard the Lionheart.

Prince John spent much of his time collecting taxes from a people who could ill afford to pay them.

The Normans used ruthless tactics in extracting revenues from the poor.

Thus the myth of Robin Hood came into existance,an outlaw who lived in the forest with his followers and took from the rich,to give to the poor.

In all honesty,if such a man had really existed,the Saxons would have risen against they're masters.

Since their King was busy in the Holy Land with the fighting elite of the country,this should have been a walkover.

Thus it sadly suggests that the story was more to do with keeping the spirit of freedom alive,than in any basis of fact.

Today the story of Robin Hood still has resonance for peoples across the World oppressed by their masters.

Next week I shall post about the English Longbow and the Battle of Agincourt.........Enjoy your weekend.

The Plantsman

2009-10-16T12:54:00.000-07:00

Well it's time for a more whimsical post.

Prior to quasi retirement I was a professional gardener,managing two gardens in the south of England.One site in Hawkhurst,Kent, and the other Wadhurst Castle in East Sussex.

This was a poorly paid profession,but immensely satisfying.

My employers were in both cases wealthy lawyers working in London.One had a garden that was three acres and the other had a patch that was eleven acres.

My expertise is not in landscaping,but in planting.

I can cheerfully remember creating planting schemes which gave me great pleasure,not only in advising my masters,but also in the outcome.

Since a boy, I have always had a passion for plants and nature and you grow up understanding the landscape.

We sadly live in a World where the value of a lawyer's opinion is more important than a man who understands nature.

If we were to have a major disaster, that meant we went back to a simpler way of life,Where would the lawyers be?

I suggest nowhere,my former employers were completely oblivious of nature and just assumed I provided the outcome.

Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub

2009-10-16T06:45:00.000-07:00

Better known in the West as Saladin,the Muslim leader of Islamic forces who ultimately recaptured the Kingdom of Jerusalem from the Franks.

Born around 1137 in Tikrit,in what is now modern day Iraq,to Kurdish parents,Saladin was to create a vast,but short lived Empire,stretching from the shores of the Mediterranean to Yemen in the south of the Arabian peninsula.

Much of his life was spent in subduing and consolidating Arab territories and only clashing with Crusaders when they were allied with his enemies.

It is clear however that his ultimate ambition was to remove Christian power from the Outremer (The Knight's Templar name for Palestine).

An educated man who could converse on subjects including, Euclid,Arithmetic,Law and the Qur'an,he was also well versed in the military tactics of the day.

He was a pragmatist who would often avoid conflict if the odds were not favourable,occasionally brutal,which was not uncommon in this age of man.

On one occasion he endeared himself to the citizens of a recently conquered town by abolishing taxes imposed by the defeated Emir,saying,' The most miserable rulers are those,whose purses are fat and their people thin'.

He recovered Jerusalem after a long siege on 2nd October 1187,allowing safe passage to Christian Knights and their families. Sadly the poor old foot soldiers were sold into slavery.

His reputation in Europe mainly stems from the short lived Third Crusade, led by Richard the Lionheart, King of England.

Whilst foes in battle they both admired each other.

It is recorded that when Saladin heard that Richard was sick with a fever,he sent his personal physician with medication to cure him.

On another occasion Richard lost his horse under him during battle and Saladin sent him two replacements as a gift.

The legacy of Saladin lived on in Europe,where he was seen as an example of Chivalry and indeed an epic poem was written about him in the Fourteenth Century.

He lies entombed in a simple wooden sarcophagus,for all to see,in Damascus.

Irrespective of your faith, God is Great.

The Albigensian Crusade

2009-10-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

In the early 1200s the Papacy was becoming increasingly alarmed at the rise of a sect in the Languedoc (an area today of Southern France) called The Cathars.

The Cathars were dualists,in other words they believed in the existance of two equally powerful Gods.One good and one evil.

They believed the Good God created our souls and the Universe,whereas the Evil God created our material World and the human body to imprison the soul.Thus a Cathar did not want to be of this World.

Their beliefs also encompassed pacifism, vegetarianism,reincarnation,heaven but no hell in the Catholic sense of the word.

They had no Churches and either held their meetings in a members homes or in the open air,much as the early Christians did.

They found the Old Testament abhorant and considered it the work of the Evil God,followed only the Gospel of John and had only one prayer.'The Lord's Prayer'.

There were two levels within Cathar society,the Credente who were the vast majority of followers and the Parfait who were an initiated elite,consisting of both men and women since they saw no difference, as the soul for them, had no sex and thus the body was irrelevant.

At the time the Languedoc was the centre of culture in Europe and thus also a very prosperous region,more influenced by Northern Spain than by France.

And so it was that Pope Innocent III decreed that the Cathars were heretics and appealed to the King of France to launch a crusade against them.

So began in 1209, yet another chapter in the ignominious history of the Catholic Church.The Pope offered lands,wealth and absolutions to those who would travel South to deal with,what were essentially a peace loving people,in the most brutal episode in the history of that part of the World.

Estimates of the numbers butchered range from 200,000 to 1,000,000 men,women and children.They slaughtered whole towns including people who had sort sanctuary in Churches and if survivors refused to give up their beliefs,which 90% of them did,they were burnt alive.

What infuriated the Church on these occasions was that many Cathars were happy to die,which may explain why it took twenty years to remove the threat they posed to the established order of things.

Their persecution was managed by a monk who later became the founder of the Dominican Order,better known to you as The Inquisition. An ex-soldier, this Spaniard created an organisation responsible for such horror and carnage, I refuse to defile my blog with his name.

However they ultimately did not win,since Gnostics, such as myself, still exist today.

Good Things Do Happen!

2009-10-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

Over the last year or so,the indigenous Yahua people of the Peruvian Amazon jungle have been collectively fighting the Government.

Why?

The Congress had voted through a series of laws that would enable foreign companies to exploit the natural resources of six provinces in Peru,primarily jungle and inhabited by native peoples.

What Congress didn't bargain for,was the reaction of the Tribes.Today these local people are all connected via two way radio.

The people formed The Amazon Indian Federation and blocked roads and rivers in the provinces,which resulted in the Government sending in armed police to disperse their protests.

The Indians were clearly having none of this and violence erupted,with the outcome that 34 people,including 20 policemen lost their lives.

The result of this conflict caused a diplomatic incident with their neighbours,Bolivia, as Presidente Evo Morales sided with the Indians.

I am however happy to report that the Peruvian Congress has seen sense and voted to repeal two laws at the heart of the protest.

Daysi Zapata,Vice Presidente of The Indian Federation has stated that they are pleased with the result and will now call off the blockades.

We in the developed World must learn to temper our lust for material objects which require raw materials from the few unspoilt areas of the Planet,that are still left.

Spiritually we may also learn from the Yahua how best to live with nature,they are a far more valuable resource than any mineral.

What is a Knighthood?

2009-10-11T10:48:00.000-07:00

Indeed what is a knighthood?In today's World they are dished out to Civil Servants,Politicians,Business People,Pop Stars,Scientists,Actors and Sports Personalities.

They are an anachronism of the past!

Francis Drake was knighted by Elizabeth I for stealing treasure from the Spanish,let's be honest whilst still a schoolboy hero of mine,he was a pirate!

Isaac Newton was knighted because an apple fell on his head,ok, he was a very clever man,who amongst other things discovered gravity.I bet most of you didn't know that throughout his life he was a practising alchemist!

It gets even worse,today a shopkeeper,Stuart Rose gets a knighthood because he runs Marks and Spencer.Now don't get me wrong,nice underwear,but does it warrant a knighthood?

The value of this honour has become absurd!

Probably the most important Englishman who ever lived,in terms of a contribution to World culture,never received a knighthood.

William Shakespeare.

An Important Invention of the Twentieth Century

2009-10-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

A provocative title you may think;an important invention of the twentieth century.You may wonder is he talking about penicillin,the cantilever brassiere or nuclear fission?

No,the humble tea bag!

As a boy I always enjoyed the taste of tea,but my dear old mum,God rest her,used loose tea without a tea strainer so I usually ended up with a mouthful of tea leaves,not nice!

Then miraculously the tea bag arrived on the scene in the nineteen sixties and I've never looked back.

An old remedy in England for whatever ails you is a nice cup of tea.

Mr Chamberlain the Germans are about to invade!Have a nice cup of tea sir,you'll feel much better.

You are about to be summarily executed by firing squad,never mind,have a nice cup of tea first,there that wasn't so bad was it?

Extremism the Curse of our Age

2009-10-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

All too often we see in the news stories of bombings and shootings around the World undertaken by radicals in the name of God.

We tend to assume that these acts are undertaken primarily by Muslims and radical Jews,but step back and think a moment.

Do we in the West not abuse the name of God when launching wars on terror?

Who is behind all this anger? The answer in simple terms is a small group of fanatics who want to impose their views on the majority.

These fanatics are Jews,Christians and Muslims.

They all have vested interests in perpetuating violence and hate.What is most appalling is that they do this in the name of God.

These creatures are not respectful of the teachings of God and can therefore only be followers of Satan.

In our three faiths the first law of God is Thou Shalt Not Kill.

God did not lay down any caviats for this law.

The time must come when we all say enough is enough.

Hairy Hats

2009-10-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

What is it about men who wear toupees?How sad is that!If you have lost your hair or are losing it,why not just accept the fact and keep it short!

You can see the join;the colour never matches and in high winds mate,you are in the shit!

The other one of course is the comb over!

Now come on,who do you think you are kidding!

Nobody has a parting that starts by the left ear!

Donald Trump you are a multimillionaire.........visit the barber!

Just get a hair cut boys,you ain't sex on legs!

Old Books

2009-10-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have read my various posts,you will know that my interests spread far and wide.

I've just been looking at some old books of mine that haven't seen the light of day for nearly 30 years,and I came across Folk Song in England by A.L.Lloyd,first published in 1967.

An interest in folk song stems from my deep interest in history and a love of traditional forms of music.The folk song,from whatever country it comes from,tells you a story about real people and the social events that governed their lives,their priorities and beliefs.

In England it was often a vehicle to express oppression by landlords,masters and the law.But it was also a way of letting off steam and being a little risque.

I give you the words of a song collected from the Wigan area of Lancashire;the song is thought to be from the early nineteenth century and is evocative of the feelings of a young working class girl during the Industrial Revolution.

My mother sent me for some water,

For some water for my tea.

My foot slipped and down I tumbled.

Collier lad gat hold of me.

Collier lads get gold and silver.

Factory lads get nobbut brass.

Who'd get married to a two-loom weaver

When there's plenty of collier lads?

Times don't change much do they?Only lasses today want a footballer!

The Island of St Helena

2009-10-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

How many of you would care to live in a sub-tropical paradise 1000 miles from the nearest land mass,where outside supplies only come in once a month by ship?

The island in question is St Helena in the South Atlantic,a British Territory with a population of approximately 5000.

An extinct oceanic volcano with a land mass of around 2000 square kilometres,this island may for the first time be acquiring an airport,so that rich tourists can get away from it all.

Estimates suggest that this endeavour will create employment for 300 islanders,but no doubt the better paid jobs will go to outsiders with the relevant 'skills'.

The British Government seems reasonably keen on the idea,purely and simply on the basis that at the present time this community costs money.

St Helena's only claim to fame is that it was the location of Napoleon's imprisonment until his death in 1821 and now Longwood House, where he lived is a museum owned by the French Government.

Tourism is often seen as the solution to self financing for small island communities around the World,but without exception,the culture and nature of these communities is destroyed.

Today I ask you to think how would you help in creating meaningful employment for the people of St Helena,without the infestation of rich folks money and all that goes with it.

An entire culture is at stake here,so please post your ideas on how economic self determination may be achieved.Thankyou.

The Council of Nicaea

2009-10-04T07:11:00.000-07:00

Today our view of the Christian Faith is determined by what ever Church we were brought up in,whether it be Catholic,Eastern,Anglican or Lutheran.

What all these institutions have in common is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God in the literal sense of the word.

This was not always the case,prior to The Council of Nicaea in AD 325 there were many different groups with varying belief systems.

In simple terms we may seperate them into two distinct groups. 1.The Literalists who believed every word in the Bible was true as written. 2.The Gnostics whose approach to the Bible was one of allegory that required interpretation achieved through the pursuit of personal knowledge leading to enlightenment.

So therefore the battle lines were drawn in AD 325 when Emperor Constantine convened the council of bishops to determine the future of a state sponsored religion.

We all know today the outcome, but many will be unaware of the purges that followed the establishment of the Catholic Church in Rome and the Eastern Church in Constantinople.

With the power of the Empire behind them the early Catholic Bishops systematically destroyed the Gnostic Church by persecuting it's adherents and wherever possible destroying their literature.

This did not succeed in total since Gnosticism reappears in different guises throughout the history of Christendom,often in the form of sects or secret societies.

The Knights Templar,The Cathars and The Bogomils are just three examples where the pursuit of knowledge was paramount in achieving Christian enlightenment.

Gnostics have much to thank Islam for preserving within the Koran their own belief of Jesus as a man,prophet and Messiah in the traditional Jewish sense.

The great period of Islamic culture which coincided with Europe's Dark Ages preserved and indeed enhanced ancient knowledge which was later reintroduced into Europe during the rennaisance.Knowledge and learning were greatly revered in the Caliphate of Baghdad when Rome was busy burning so-called heretics.

Not until the Twentieth Century was evidence found for the existence of other Gospels and even then only fragments remain of the Gospels of Mary Magdalene,Phillip and Judas. But enough to suggest that there were widely differing interpretations on the teachings of Jesus.

Just imagine one day the deserts of the Middle East may give up the actual writings of Jesus,this indeed would be momentous!

Mobile Telephones

2009-10-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

Depending on the part of the World you are from,they are either Mobile Telephones or Cellphones and they are a part of every day life for millions of people.

Until recently I had one,pretty much from their inception as one of the tools of my working career and have seen them reduce in size and become ever more complex in terms of functionality.

Those of you who have read my profile will know that I am not in the first flush of youth and as a consequence not overly obsessed with technology.

My old Nokia having given me loyal and faithful service for many years,finally died three months ago and being a dutiful environmentalist I sent it away for re-cycling,receiving £27 for my trouble.

I have now been without a mobile for three months and feel totally liberated!

I no longer receive incomprehensible texts from people using idiotic dehumanising predictive texting.

I no longer have pointless conversations with people I am going to see in five minutes time.

I can enjoy a pint in my local pub without the bloody thing going off!

So ladies and gentlemen I have come to the conclusion that these objects are certainly irrelevant in my life and I suspect the same applies to the vast majority of people in the World.

Freedom is at hand,join this old dinosaur and liberate yourself today and no longer need you answer your phone to listen to some buffoon asking 'where are you?'.

The Madness of Litigation

2009-10-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

A strange title you may think,but I have just witnessed a woman on TV who has just received £1 million compensation from the Turkish Government because sadly her parents were killed in a terrorist attack in the country,whilst on holiday.

Unfortunately the World we live in today is full of risk,whether you are just crossing the street or going into hospital for a routine operation,things can go wrong.But why should we assume we are entitled to compensation?

Indeed criminals in the UK can expect compensation if they are injured in the course of a burglary!Why?

I read some years ago about a woman in America who sued Toshiba because there was nothing in the instruction booklet for her microwave to say that it was not a good idea to use it to dry her poodle after a bath.As a consequence her dog exploded!Now there's a surprise!
There are two things going on here, 1)Ambulance chasing lawyers are exploiting loopholes in laws,for justice?No,for money.2)The mass of the population in the words of Gore Vidal 'are idiots!'.

Why should a government,local authority,company,compensate you for your own ineptitude.Granted if you worked in a hazardous industry without proper protective equipment,that is different.

In Britain we have people who go climbing what we laughingly call mountains,and if they get into difficulty,RAF helicopters and mountain rescue squads(all unpaid volunteers)risk their own lives to save these self centred fools.

All of this nonsense is paid for by taxpayers in the jurisdictions it occurs in,so the £1 million paid to this lady by the Turkish Government is £1 million less that can be spent on the welfare of the Turkish people.

In America some 8% of GDP goes on legal fees!

If it were possible to personally sue politicians who create laws that adversely affect us,then maybe we would start to return to a situation of personal responsibility for our own actions.

Lawyers are very fond of the term 'conflict of interest'.Next time you get a chance just check how many of your elected representatives are former lawyers,you will know then what conflict of interest means.

The Twin Foxes

2009-10-01T06:17:00.000-07:00

Today in Britain poaching is considered to be nothing much more than a petty crime,the argument being that those who have land enough for game can afford to lose a few pheasants.

But in Victorian and Early Twentieth Century times,when most of the local magistrates were also the landowners,things were considerably different.Indeed in even earlier times it is recorded that poachers were transported to Australia for the offence of taking a pheasant,never to see their loved ones again.

This offence was turned into a fine art by two twin brothers born in 1857 to a Mr & Mrs Henry Fox from the village of Symonds Green near Stevenage in Hertfordshire.Named Albert Ebenezer and Ebenezer Albert after the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Albert Street,Stevenage,they decided at a young age that working their father's small farm was not for them.

They both became crack shots at shooting game in the pitch dark and in the course of their careers they were arrested no less than 150 times,but did not receive their first conviction until 1904 with the advent of finger printing.

How may you ask did they manage to get away with poaching for so long?Their secret lay in never going out together.

One would always be propping up the bar in The Marquis of Lorne,never letting on to the assembled company whether it was Albert or Ebenezer!

They became so notorious they often made national news and indeed an item on their exploits even appeared in The New York Times issue of 9th February 1913.

Both retiring they lived to a healthy old age,one dying in 1926 and the other in 1935.Today they are considered local folk heroes,but at the time the local landowners tried every means possible to catch them and were infuriated that the law could do nothing since it couldn't prove which brother had been arrested!

Sadly today,the World is lacking in such characters.

Le Petomane

2009-09-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

I know it isn't Saturday when the whimsical muse usually takes me,but I thought you might be amused by this item on Joseph Pujol.
In Victorian times France had a reputation for the risque and down right weird,this item comes under that heading.
Joseph Pujol was born in Marseille,the son of a stonemason and at a very early age he discovered he had the strange ability to fart at will!
Local Doctors advised that he had an abnormal ability to control his stomach muscles allowing him to effectively inhale air through his anus.
Whilst in the military he used this rather unusual talent to entertain his comrades in the barracks and upon release from military service began a career in the French entertainment industry,which at the time welcomed acts with a difference!
After touring the provinces he finally appeared at the famous Moulin Rouge for the first time in 1892.
Stage highlights included playing O Sole Mio and La Marseillaise through his bottom causing catatonic fits of giggles amongst the audience.Indeed the theatre management employed nurses in the auditorium to attend to ladies who had collapsed as a result of laughing whilst wearing tight corsets!
His many fans included King Leopold II of Belgium,Edward Prince of Wales and Sigmund Freud.The literal English translation of Le Petomane(his stage name)is The Fartmaniac!
Imagine how the Environmentalists would react today to this emitter of green house gases!

The Captain and The Dictionary

2009-09-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

Today we take for granted The Oxford English Dictionary and just assume it suddenly arrived in it's current 20 odd volumes.The story behind the dictionary is too long for this post,but nevertheless I will try to summarize key elements behind it's creation.
The idea behind the dictionary was postulated at a meeting of the Philological Society in 1857 in London.Prior to this there had not been a truly satisfactory and comprehensive dictionary of the English Language.
Academics not withstanding,work did not actually begin on the creation of the dictionary for some years.The task of collation of words and the coordination of the project was put in the hands of an Oxford academic called Dr James Murray,a Presbyterian Scot from the borders town of Hawick.
It would take some seventy years before the first edition was published in 1928.
To undertake such a vast enterprise Murray advertised throughout the English Speaking World for volunteer lexicographers,to submit regular words together with in depth meanings.
Over time Murray began to be aware of a particular contributor who clearly was extremely well educated and provided him with a considerable amount of contributions,which to this day are more often than not still in the dictionary.
This compiler ultimately became a good friend of Dr Murray.
His name was Dr W.C.Minor,an American who had been an Assistant Surgeon during the Civil War,rising to the rank of Captain in the Union Army.
Dr Minor's contributions were immense over the years,which made Dr Murray wonder how he had so much time to commit to the dictionary.
What Murray was unaware of was that Minor was an inmate at Broadmoor in Berkshire;an institution for the criminally insane.
He had been incarcerated there for the murder of a man in the slums of London and because there was absolutely no motive for his actions,he was certified insane to be retained 'at Her Majesty's pleasure'.
Not being a particularly balanced individual in the first place,joining the Union Army and being attendant at The Battle of the Wilderness,seems to have tipped him over the edge.
Suffice to say that one of the most important contributors to the world's greatest dictionary,was a criminal lunatic!

Listening to Trees

2009-09-24T07:30:00.000-07:00

How often have you stood on a windy day and just listened to the sound in the trees?It has a wonderful calming influence and makes you appreciate these beautiful life forms.
Now an English artist has taken his own passion for trees a step further by creating a device that allows you to listen to what is actually happening inside the tree.
This non-invasive device magnifies the sound of water travelling from the roots to the leaves by a factor of 300.
In the process you can hear pumping through the trunk as like a heartbeat with a deep rumbling in the background as the tree responds to a breeze.
Currently he has an installation at Westonbirt Arboretum in County Durham and he says,"The aim of the installation is to allow people to appreciate what happens inside a tree and to change their perception of a tree as being a static architectural object,to a living entity that is constantly changing".
Wouldn't it be great if this device could be mass produced,so that on our weekends we could all go tree listening!

Violence of the Modern Economy

2009-09-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

A strange title you may think,but we are all victims of it in some way or other.Whether you live in a developing country or a developed one,the dehumanising way that people are manipulated by major corporates continues apace.
Just on a small scale it affects us all;my home is in the small Northumberland market town of Alnwick and when Woolworths closed this directly impacted on ten local families.Loss of any kind of job in Alnwick is a disaster since the local economy is heavily dependent on tourism and agriculture.
What caused the collapse of Woolworths was the banks refusal to reschedule their loans,even though the long term future of the business looked promising.
This brings into play another element that has been much in the news over the past few months.BANKS!
I know we live in what purports to be a free market economy,but there are moral issues at stake here,which bankers and industrialists would do well to remember.The world is becoming a smaller place and greed can no longer be socially acceptable.
Shunting manufacturing to China or India to save on wages,avoid health and safety considerations and then expecting the advanced economies to continue to buy their products,is not sustainable.
When the FarEast becomes too expensive or legislation is put in place to protect their workers,where do these industrialists go then?
Will the banks finance sustainable development in Africa or South America?Their record to date suggests not.
Western tax payers money has been used to bale out banks,which continue to reward overpaid traders who deal in spurious financial instruments.Money is not being released to support growing and new business,but the bankers insist on their bonuses.
Unemployment is a form of violence that should be resisted at all costs,since it affects the family,society and the world as a whole.
On a human level I believe we are coming closer together,thanks in part to the internet and our ability to exchange ideas and form friendships around the world.Politicians are starting to listen to the chatter in the ether;as yet the industrialists and bankers are blind to their own imfamy.They can't all live in Martha's Vineyard or Monaco!
The micro-financing system I mentioned in a previous item may well be a solution to a growing crisis in the West.But it will require ethical banking and sod the industrialists!

A Happy Moment

2009-09-22T07:59:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce that my daughter,Justine,has just become engaged to a very nice lad called Michael.
Now I know that this blog isn't intended to be about my personal life,but there are occasions when a man is entitled to a little drum beating.

Earth Crust Displacement Theory

2009-09-22T03:09:00.000-07:00

We have all heard of various catastrophe theories,from the extinction of the dinosaurs to the biblical flood.
In 1958 an American Professor of History published a tome on the Theory of Earth Crust Displacement,which was greeted by the geological world with a spontaneous burst of indifference.
After all Prof.Hapgood was an historian,not a geologist,so how dare he impinge on another discipline!
Nevertheless I will outline the basis of the theory before you all fall asleep.
In essence what the good professor suggests is that at some time around 10,000 BC the lithosphere shifted as one mass,instantaneously,by a margin of 30 degrees.
Wow,I hear you say,but where is the evidence to suggest that such a cataclysm occurred;in this brief item I will highlight one example.
Evidence has been found in Siberia where significant quantities of mammoth carcasses have been discovered,seemingly instantly frozen.Some even remain in a standing position and the contents of both their mouths and stomachs show their diet was a mixture of plants only to be found in temperate zones.Today these zones are located much further to the south.
To freeze a beast the size of a mammoth instantly would tend to lend creedence to Professor Hapgoods theory.Couple this with global myths of deluges and the curious fact that ancient civilisations in the Indus Valley,Sumeria and Egypt seem to have suddenly appeared fully formed,rather than over a long period of development;
one must come to the conclusion that such myths as Atlantis,may have some basis in truth.The argument being that sophisticated civilisations may have existed in pre-history,but were destroyed in a major global catastrophe,remnants of which survived to build new cultures.
Now just to cheer you up,Global Warming is seeing a rapid decline in the size of the polar ice caps,indeed at such a rate that there is a possibility that the reduction in pressure on the Earth's Crust,caused by this,may result in a repeat of the events of 10,000 BC.
So in the final analysis,if God suggests you build an Ark,It might be a good idea to take his advice!

Dr Muhammad Yunus

2009-09-20T07:25:00.000-07:00

This blog would be remiss if it did not have an item on the great Dr Muhammad Yunus,founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.
Dr Yunus has created a practical vehicle for the concept of micro-finance,initially only operating in Bangladesh The Grameen Bank,under his guidance and inspiration has empowered thousands of poor people in the country,to create small businesses which slowly but surely take them out of poverty.
Discarding conventional credit scoring techniques,which would be utterly useless,he developed a system that looks at the problem first,rather than the solution.
He encouraged the creation of groups of people who would take out loans to start small enterprises,with the groups themselves monitoring the repayment process.If my understanding is right a parallel savings scheme is created.
As a result over $156 million has been loaned with a repayment record of 97%;this in itself is an outstanding achievement and every year the system continues to take people out of poverty.
In 2006 Dr Yunus together with The Grameen Bank were awarded The Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution to innovative solutions in the war on poverty.
Please visit The Grameen Bank site where you will gain a fuller understanding of their aims and methodologies and I highly recommend you becoming a supporter.