Image: Rosemary Verey's Making of a Garden
Every year, "when the flowers are just going over and the leaves are still strong", the snow drops are 'dug, divided and replanted, singly or in very small clusters'.
We mentioned below that there are thousands of things people want to do, aside from paying increasingly onerous taxes to their government. One of them is making a garden.
Rosemary Verey OBE, VMH, who died in 2001, was an internationally-known English garden designer, lecturer and prolific garden writer who created her garden at Barnsley House.
I especially liked what she did with her vegetable garden. She was inspired by William Lawson, who lived and gardened in the 17th century, and wrote out appealing rules for gardeners. He thought that 'comely borders with herbs' and 'abundance of roses and lavender [would] yield much profit and comfort to the senses'. Verey took his advice and laid out simple brick paths. lined them with boxwood and planted her beds with vegetables, flowers and fruit trees. It looked beautiful and it grew abundantly.
Ready for shearing, Wales
Image (detail) Howard Maunders, On This Day
Simon Jenkins asks, "Where are the crowds of revenue slaves flocking to London to demand redress for the squandering of their money? Marginal tax is rising to 50%, VAT to 17.5% and state spending towards half the national product. The Treasury has lost control of public finance. So why no furious blue-rinses, bail-out haters, bonus-bleaters and embittered VAT victims storming parliament? Has a corrupt political class reduced the British people to quiescent gerbils?" Or sheeple?
But we repeat, People are working, creating, producing, paying the bills.
They have children to raise. Gardens to dig. Amusements to enjoy. Taxes to pay.
They pay their MPs salaries, which are greater than those they themselves earn, to protect them from incompetent, corrupt, over-regulating, privacy-invading, high-taxing, self-dealing, foreign-dependent, quang-mire governments.
So how's that working out?
It has always taken the people a bit of time before they rise.
A "line of light" shadowed the remains of Hadrian's Wall as several thousand volunteers held beacons at 820-foot intervals. The first torch was lit at Segedunum Roman Fort in Wallsend, North Tyneside, at about 6pm on Saturday.
The final beacon was ignited at Bowness-on-Solway, on Cumbria's west coast, about an hour later, with the entire "line of light" remaining illuminated for about half an hour. Hadrian's Wall Heritage organized the event.
Built by Roman legions and completed in AD 136, Hadrian's Wall ran from the River Tyne to Solway Firth and marked the northern limit of Roman control in Britain. Six feet high, 8 feet thick and 73 and a half miles long, bristling with forts and Roman soldiers, the wall was meant to isolate the islanders of the north who had not surrendered.
But they would not stay put. They broke through the wall, and when a second wall was built, they broke through that. Eventually, with their empire under attack, the Romans abandoned Britain.
Brits never forgot that they loved freedom. Over the next two thousand years they would face invaders at least fifteen times. Even when defeated by Normans, they successfully resurrected their liberties, customs and independence.
Editor Iris Binstead has sent us the latest SOS. Depending on your temperament it will chill you to the bone or kindle a fire in your heart.
SPOTLIGHT ON THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD
WHO BENEFITS? (To name just a few)
Al Gore whose highly controversial documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth (for which he received an Oscar) led to his being awarded a Nobel Prize in 2007.
Governments throughout the world (including ours) for whom Global Warming provides yet another means of exercising control over the lives of their peoples as well as a useful source of taxation.
Global Businesses. Climate change also generates a huge amount of money for international companies who exercise a great deal of influence on governments throughout the world, including the EU.
Energy companies (by means of government subsidies for ‘green’ projects, etc).
Buyers and sellers of carbon credits, including the Chicago Climate Change (see also Dr Rajendra Pachauri who receives large fees for his services to this body).
Investment Bankers. According to Harpers Magazine, carbon trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth. Since 2005 there have been more than $300 billion carbon transactions prompting several investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Barclays, to set up their own carbon trading desks.
Universities with Climate Change departments (e.g. the University of East Anglia, home to the Climate Research Unit (CRU) (director, Professor Phil Jones) which plays a lead role in compiling UN reports. Hackers who got into its computers leaked thousands of private emails and documents which pointed to efforts to ‘massage’ years of temperature data to ‘hide the decline’ in world temperatures.
Pensylvania State University and Michael Mann, the originator of the notorious ‘hockey stick’ graph which formed the centrepiece of an IPCC report on Climate Change in 2001. This graph, later exposed as a ‘statistical illusion’ purported to show during the late twentieth century temperatures had soared to unprecedented levels. (Other inaccuracies in this IPCC report included the potential of wave power to produce electricity and other unsubstantiated information gleaned from press releases, newsletters, students dissertations and environmental pressure groups). Mann is a Professor at Pensylvania and his research brings the university millions of dollars).
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (see also Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs it.)
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) (see also Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, its Director General. This body was originally set up by the massive Indian group, TATA. Dr Syed Hasnain (a senior member of the TERI staff who was the originator of the wildly alarming claim, published in an IPCC report, that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035, a claim the IPCC was later forced to admit had no scientific basis.)
Major banks throughout the world, including Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank (see also Buyers and Sellers of Carbon credits and Dr Pachauri).
TATA, the Indian group which now owns the Redcar plant of former British Steel Company, Corus, now closed down. (see also Dr Rajendra Pachauri).
DR RAJENDRA PACHAURI, Chairman of the IPPC. A highly controversial figure who has been accused (but has denied the charge) of helping TERI (see above) to win a substantial share in a $500,000 grant from a leading American charity and a share in a 3 million euro research study, funded by the EU. Dr Pachauri was awarded a Nobel prize in 2007 at the same time as Al Gore. He is currently involved in a row with the Indian Government after calling a report by a leading Indian glaciologist, Dr V J Raina, “voodoo science”. Dr Raina had dismissed Dr. Hasnain's (see above) report to the Indian government as baseless.
Dr Pachauri is also reported to hold a number of other posts involving the giving of advice on climate change to organisations ranging from major banks such as Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank (see Banks, above) to Toyoto Motors and Chicago Climate Change (see buyers and sellers of carbon credits). Both Dr Pachauri and TERI insist that the large fees received for Dr Pachauri`s services go to TERI but whilst he denies that TERI has any connection with the Indian TATA group which initially set up TERI, a TERI spokesman said that they had not severed their connections with TATA. There are also reports that Dr Pachauri is under pressure to resign as Chairman of the UN`s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change before the public loses all confidence in the organisation.
THE LOSERS
The main loser, throughout the world, is, as always, the taxpayer who is footing the bill for all the money governments are throwing at what is not an established fact, but an unproven theory dismissed by thousands of scientists world-wide.
Electricity customers are paying more than £1 billion a year to subsidise wind farms and other types of renewable energy. The levy is part of a government scheme to force energy suppliers to fund so-called ‘green’ energy and is estimated to have cost the average consumer an extra £13.50 in the past year.
As the costs of the scheme are also passed on to businesses, it could have a significant impact on the economy.
In this connection, the Daily Mail, 9.1.10, reported that there were plans to build, between now and 2026, 6,400 giant turbines which will rise 500 ft above the sea. These plans, expected to cost £75 billion, are driven by EU climate change targets and, according to the government, will supply one quarter of our electricity needs. Critics believe the plans are unrealistic, deeply flawed and will leave the UK dangerously reliant on winds to keep the lights burning. (Cold snaps, when electricity is most needed, are caused by high pressure, when winds fail to blow),
People who lose their jobs, e.g. employees of Corus`s Redcar steel plant in Sheffield whose new owner, TATA, has closed it down. TATA is reported to stand to receive a £90 million allocation of carbon credits to sell on to other firms. (The British government is prevented from intervening due to the same punitive EU Competition Law which led to several thousand British Post Offices, many of them in isolated rural communities, being forced to close. -Ed)
THE VOICES OF REASON – THE CLIMATE CHANGE SCEPTICS
Professor Ian Plimer, Professor of Earth Sciences at Melbourne University, is a leading Climate Change sceptic. He has called man-made climate change a “load of hot air underpinned by fraud” and has said that Governments are treating the public like “fools” and using climate change to increase taxes. “Climates always change”, he told a London audience. They always have and they always will. They are driven by a number of factors that are random and cyclical.” According to Professor Plimer, climate change is caused by natural events such as the shifting of the earth`s orbit, volcanic eruptions and cosmic radiation. He also said that carbon dioxide levels had been up to 1,000 times higher in the past and that CO2 cannot be driving global warming now.
Graham Danton, a former BBC broadcaster with a background in meteorology and oceanography, is also unconvinced. According to Danton, “Volcanoes emit more CO2 each day than we make in two years.”
Dr V J Raina is a leading glaciologist whose report for the Indian Government last November showed that the rate of retreat of Himalayan glaciers had not increased in the last fifty years brought a furious response from Dr Pachauri who is now involved in a row with the Indian government about it.
Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister, is one of the most knowledgeable and assiduous of the global warming sceptics. Lord Monckton has travelled to many countries, including the USA, Canada and Australia, to alert the people told what their governments were really up to at the Copenhagen Conference. (See One World Order) He has appeared on numerous radio and TV programmes.
A number of videos and recordings have been made of these programmes and may be found on the internet.
A link to a video by former Minnesota governor, Jesse Ventura, is worth exploring. Ventura not only interviews Lord Monckton but, along with a team of investigating journalists, follows the global warming paper trail around the world to a former UN official now living in China.
The Oregon Petition, by scientists opposed to the Kyoto protocol and re-circulated in 2007 has the signatures of over 31,000 scientists, including 9,000 PhDs, who believe that anthropogenic global warming has not occurred.
ONE WORLD ORDER
Lord Monckton has also gone on record as stating that the real purpose behind the Copenhagen Conference, as revealed in the draft Copenhagen document, which he has seen, was to establish the nucleus of global government and to set up its institutions.
On 19 November 2009, prior to the Lisbon Treaty being made law, the former EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, speaking on the Britannia Radio programme, Russia Today, confirmed that the basis for global governance was already in place since Latin America and Asian blocs are to be modelled on EU lines. Further confirmation came from Herman Van Rompuy, the recently appointed permanent President of the European Union, who, speaking in Brussels on 9.12.09 said: . . . “2009 is the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of a financial crisis. The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step towards the management of our planet.” North America, Africa and Asia-Australia-New Zealand, have also been mentioned in the global governance context.
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER AND RICHARD NORTH
Christopher Booker, along with his colleague and co-author of many books, Dr Richard North, are undoubtedly the best known, and best informed, writers on climate change as well as on the workings of the European Union, and for anyone interested in either subject, Booker`s weekly column in The Sunday Telegraph is essential reading.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
An Ofgem report on the UK’s energy market is the subject of an editorial in the Financial Times, 5.2.10.
It notes that the UK is bound by an EU directive that requires that 15% of its energy needs come from renewable sources by 2020. The report states that “This is expensive and unnecessary”, and concludes that the UK should renegotiate this commitment. It admits that “Changing a European treaty will not be easy. Britain will need to find allies in other countries similarly hard-pressed by the targets….”
According to a report by Reuters, 12.2.10, the EU Commission has received evidence which casts a negative light on biofuels due to their impact on land use, but have not made this public. The International Herald Tribune of the same date reported that a top civil servant in the Agricultural Department of the Commission, wrote in internal correspondence that the evidence could be used to ‘kill’ subsidised biofuels. The EU plans to achieve most of its 10% renewable energy for transport through biofuels
EUROPEAN PUBLIC PROSECUTOR AND CORPUS JURIS
On 12th December last year, Marta Andreason, UKIP MEP, a member of the EU Budget Control Committee, asked Commissioner-designate Algirdas Semeta, prior to the Budgetary Control Committee, if he planned to establish the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPP) as was provided for by the Lisbon Treaty. He replied that “We should move forward”. Mr Semeta further confirmed that the matter was being discussed by other members of the EU Commission.
According to Marta, this means that it is already Commission policy and will be implemented in due course. Article 86 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) (part of the Lisbon Treaty) provides for the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor (EPP). For the proposal to become law there must be unanimity in the EU Council. This provides the UK with a very strong position to prevent it happening.
Marta believes that the concept of a European Public Prosecutor is repugnant to the British people and in the past the UK Government has signified its dissent to the proposal. It would create a criminal prosecution service at EU level. The European system of law known as ‘Corpus Juris’ threatens to usurp the UK’s 800-year-old Common Law system and does not recognise habeas corpus, trial by jury and innocence until proved guilty. Marta Andreason has written an open letter to David Cameron, the Conservative Leader, asking him if he will undertake now to include in the Conservative Party manifesto for the forthcoming general election an unambiguous pledge to veto any proposal to establish a European Public Prosecutor’s Office if he becomes Prime Minister. To my knowledge, at the time of writing, David Cameron has made no comment.
A solicitor working in Britain, who is also a barrister in New Zealand, has commented: “Any government which allowed the introduction of Corpus Juris would be in the wilderness for a generation. It would mean such a major revolution in the legal system that no existing British lawyers would be able to practise, not to mention the effect on the community. It would mean the entry into the country of a multitude of European lawyers to run it, new judges (European initially) and a complete rejigging of the way the police forces work. The disruption would be akin to, say, requiring all future commercial businesses in England to be negotiated using the French language….”
THE EU COMMISSIONERS
On 9.2.10, the European Parliament approved the appointment of all 27 candidates for the Commission. Speaking in the Parliament on that date, Nigel Farage, UKIP MEP, stated that 10 of the commissioners were ex-communists and the recently re-appointed President of the Commission, Mr Barroso, was an ex-Maoist. Mr Farage also said that Baroness Ashton, the new European Foreign Secretary, when questioned had refused to say whether or not she had received payment from Russia during her tenure as Treasurer of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). These are the people who really govern our country!
IMMIGRATION
Writing in the Spectator on line, 11.2.10, Melanie Phillips reported that Andrew Neather, a former speechwriter for various Labour Cabinet ministers, had let slip the fact that the Labour Government had been involved in a covert act of national sabotage by loosening immigration rules in order to change the ethnic makeup of the UK. This would also ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date’.
Subsequently, Neather tried to deny this but it was confirmed by the publishing in January 2001 of a document entitled ‘RDS Occasional Paper No 67 – Migration: an Economic and Social Analysis’. This focused on the labour market case for immigration, but earlier drafts included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.
The Chairman of Migrationwatch, Sir Andrew Green, has obtained an earlier draft of the document by Andrew Neather. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, 10.2.10, he said that he rubbed his eyes with disbelief when he discovered that mass immigration was a deliberate policy of the Labour Government from late 2000. The policy was shrouded in tight secrecy in case the white working class were alienated, which now appears to have happened. According to research by the Electoral Commission in 2005, the ethnic population votes heavily in favour of Labour.
According to Ashley Mote, a former MEP, the British Home Office’s Intervention Unit was formed to identify radical Islamic individuals and groups in order to divert them from their radical ideology. Evidence has emerged on the web that government departments employ Islamic fundamentalists and their supporters. The head of the Interventions Unit is Asim Hafeez , whose statements suggest that he considers the British government as illegitimate and wants to replace it with the true ‘Constitution’ – the Koran. In reply to a Freedom of Information request, the Home Office replied that Hafeez was cleared by their own security vetting procedures, despite his being a known covert exponent of the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. It would appear that the British Government has chosen a jihadist to divert jihadists from jihadism.
Mr Mote also mentioned a report by the Daily Telegraph earlier this month in which it was stated that another Islamic activist, Azad Ali, now works at the Treasury. He is president of the Civil Service Islamic Society, an active member of the Muslim Council of Great Britain and of the civil rights group Liberty. Not long ago Ali wrote on his blog in favour of a Muslim who argued it was a duty under jihad to kill British and American troops in Iraq.
According to the Sunday Telegaph, 24.1.10, an Iraqi immigrant who stabbed two doctors to death cannot be deported because a judge has ruled that it would be against his human rights.
THE EURO
One good thing that Gordon Brown has done is to keep this country out of the euro. Writing in the Daily Mail, 10.2.10, Andrew Alexander says he does not think the Euro will survive in its present form as it is being continually weakened by short selling. He says it has echoes of 1992 when sterling was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) by George Soros, who made $1 billion by selling pounds.
According to the Daily Telegraph, 12.2.10, the European Finance Ministers at their meeting on 11.2.10 made a general pledge to ‘take determined and co-ordinated action if needed’ to prop up the euro. So far they have not offered any cash and the support is rather vague. Mrs Merkel, the German Chancellor, said: ”Greece is part of the European Union and won’t be left on its own, but there are rules and these rules need to be adhered to”. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, also writing in the Daily Telegraph, 11.2.10, noted that “There was an element of bluff in Thursday’s accord, as if the EU leaders hope to muddle through with ‘constructive ambiguity’, fingers crossed that their vague political pledge will never be tested. Bluff is a valid tool of statesmanship, but in this case their bluff could be called very soon.
According to the Daily Telegraph, 8.2.10, Greece has promised that it would cut its deficit from 12.7% of GDP to the 3% threshold allowed under the European economic stability by 2012. A report in the Daily Express on line, 11.2.10, states that Gordon Brown has repeatedly refused to rule out British cash being used to support the single currency. It is understood that Angela Merkel is to press for all EU states, including Britain, to be ready to provide billions of pounds in emergency aid. It could cost Britain £3.5 billion a year. If the rot spreads to other EU countries, eg Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland, the total cost of the bail-out could cost £320 billion.
The Daily Telegraph, 10.2.10, reports that the EU is seizing on the crisis to push for a radical extension of powers, saying that Greece has exposed some deep flaws in the structure of the monetary union. Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, said that Brussels has powers under the Lisbon Treaty allowing it to take the reins of economic management. According to the Daily Telegraph, 4.2.10, under Article 121 of the Treaty, these powers allow the EU ‘to reshape the structure of pensions, healthcare, labour markets and private commerce’. In the Times, 16.2.10, Ruth Lea, Director of Global Vision and non-executive Director of Arbuthnot Banking Group, argues "for the sake of the long-term viability of the eurozone, it would be far better to evict Greece now and direct the beleaguered country to the IMF for some long overdue economic discipline."
Writing in the Telegraph on Line, 16.2.10, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports that the European Union has shown its righteous wrath by stripping Greece of its vote at a crucial EU meeting next month. He says this is the worst humiliation ever suffered by a member state. At a meeting of EU finance ministers, it was agreed that Greece must comply by 16th March with austerity measures the EU has demanded. Otherwise it will lose control of its own tax and spend policies and the EU will impose severe cuts under Article 126.9 of the Lisbon Treaty. According to Reuters, 16.2.10, Greece has decided to make large cash transactions illegal. From 1.1.11, every transaction above 1,500 euros between people and businesses, or between businesses, will be considered illegal if they are done in cash.
EU BUDGET
The Daily Telegraph, 9.11.09, reported that Tony Blair’s decision to cut the EU rebate by £9.3 billion calculated at 2004 prices, will cost every household in Britain the equivalent of £344. Campaigners said that the axing of the rebate had been bad for the British economy because little had been won in return. In answer to a written question from The Lord Stoddart of Swindon, 24.1.10, the Government has admitted that British contributions to the EU are to increase by nearly £1 billion in 2010. This is because the EU Parliament has approved a massive 6% increase in the EU’s budget for this year which would raise annual British contributions to £11,735,000. According to European Voice, 28.9.10, the European Parliament’s budget committee has voted to increase MEP’s monthly allowance for assistants by £1,500 and to hire 150 extra staff. The Daily Telegraph Business Section, 22.12.09, reports that the cost to this country of EU regulation over the next ten years could be as much as £184 billion.
The EU Commission is going to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to push through a 3.7% pay rise for 45,000 EU staff, including themselves. This pay rise has been opposed by the member states, who have offered a 1.85% increase. In December hundreds of staff in EU institutions went on warning strikes in support of a 3.7% pay rise. (BBC News, 6.1.10) Die Welt, 22.1.10, reports that, despite the financial crisis, members of staff in the European Union are not only getting a pay rise, but a party of their children will go to Northern Italy on a skiing holiday subsidised by EU taxpayers.
According to the Independent, 10.11.09, the EU Commission is proposing that the UK’s budget deficit should be brought down from a prospective 12% of GDP to 3% by 2014-1215, which would require tax increases and spending cuts amounting to £25 billion a year.
The Economist, 10.1.09 notes that the European Court of Auditors has refused, for the 15th year in a row, to sign off the EU accounts for 2008. A report by Open Europe, 22.12,09, suggests that if the British Government ignored some of the more onerous EU regulations, including the working time directive, climate change and energy, it could eliminate its entire budget deficit. The latest report from the Taxpayers Alliance puts the cost of our EU membership at £118 billion a year but it is believed that the Treasury uses the figure of £180 billion.
According to the Daily Telegraph, 4.11.09, the British Government has put £74 billion of taxpayers’ money into banks since the start of the financial crisis. The Conservative Party claims that the latest bail-out was equal to an extra tax liability of £2,000 for all families in the country and comes on top of the £2,350 to which every household is exposed as a result of previous attempts to support the financial system.
EU WASTE
Open Europe has published a list of 50 new examples of EU waste. These include €2,500 in rural development funds for a small estate in Bavaria where the Chairman of Porsche goes hunting, €850,000 for a ‘gender equal’ wood design centre in Sweden and €27,000 farm subsidies for a Spanish duke and the Catholic Church. (www.openeurope.org.uk/research/top50waste.pdf)
SCHENGEN INFORMATION SYSTEM
According to the Guardian on line, 7.2.10, it was revealed in a Council of the European Union document examining proposals to establish a new agency based in France that would manage all member states’ shared data, that 500,000 EU computer terminals could access private British data. The Schengen Information System (SIS) holds information regarding immigration status, arrest warrants, entries on the police national computer and many other personal details. This has caused concerns about privacy of data. Statewatch, a group which monitors civil liberties, cited a case in Belgium where personal information was extracted from the system by an official and sold to an organised criminal gang.
DATA PROTECTION ACT
EurActiv, 22,12,09, reported that Viviane Reding, the new Commissioner for Justice and Fundamental Rights, is planning several reforms, including the introduction of a European Civil Code. It is expected that she will review the Data Protection Directive of 1995. According to the Independent, 10.11.09, the Home Office has shelved plans known as the ‘interception modernisation programme’, which would have allowed up to 653 public organisations to access information regarding ‘phone calls, text messages, emails and internet traffic’. Under the EU Data Retention Directive supported by the British Government and passed through Parliament without debate, telecommunication companies will still be required to hold for a period of 12 months details of the destination of every ‘phone call, text message and email that people send.
BLACK BOXES
According to the Daily Telegraph, 17.11.09, the EU Commission plans for the fitting of aircraft style black boxes to cars and has spent £2.4 million on a study called ‘Project Veronica’ into how these boxes would work. These boxes, which would cost £500 each, would monitor actions of the driver, e.g., speed and braking patterns. Supporters say the boxes could be used to reconstruct collisions, making it easier for insurance companies to apportion blame, but the proposals are likely to cause concern amongst civil liberties organisations.
IDENTITY CARD DATABASE
NO2ID, 7.1.10, reported that the Identity Card database will track National Insurance Numbers. The Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, in answer to a question admitted in Parliament that the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) is collecting the National Insurance number from every person who applies for an ID card and storing them on the National Identity Register – the ID card database. As from next year it will be compulsory to apply for an ID card in order to obtain or renew a passport. Mr Johnson did not mention other categories of information, additional to what is presently recorded on the passport database, that are to be held on the NI Register. Phil Booth, National Coordinator of NO2ID, said that the National Identity Scheme was not about a card but about tracking individuals throughout their lives linking details by the numbers. A full list of the fifty categories of information that may be held on the National Identity Register can be found by reading Schedule I of the Identity Cards Act 2006.
THE WORLD GOVERNMENT DATABASE
According to the Online Journal, 10.12.09, the EU document “Internet of Things” (IoT) states that “… communication potentially concerns 50-70 billion ‘machines’, of which only 1 per cent are connected today….connections can be established in restricted areas (‘Intranet of Things’) or made publicly accessible (‘Internet of Things’)”. There are plans for governments throughout the world to turn the World Wide Web into an interlinked global database, which will then be copied so that world governments can use their global database via an ‘Intranet’ and the public global database. This will be accessed via an ‘Internet’ with certain kinds of data filtered out. The New World Order will have control of the Intranet, Internet and global databases. The UK Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) is a response to the EU directive 2003/98/EC and on page 22 of this OPSI document, at W3C, it states that, “…we want all data in one place, but we also want it to be decentralised”. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is currently made up of 338 organisations. The UK Government membership is listed as ‘The National Archives’, from which OPSI operates.
EQUALITY BILL IS 'AUTHORITARIAN POISON'
On 26th January 2010, the House of Lords defeated the Government on three votes on amendments to this Bill which consolidates a number of anti-discriminatory items from several Acts into one bill. According to Lord Tebbitt, writing in his Telegraph blog, 27.1.10, the Bill was not all bad, but some items within it ‘were prime examples of authoritarian poison and European judicial imperialism’. The amendments concerned the churches and the argument was over the extent to which churches, mosques, synagogues and temples may refuse to employ people whose lifestyles and actions contradict the teaching of the religions concerned.
The problem for the Government is whether to ask the Commons to vote for the EU directive against religion and freedom of conscience, or risk a case being brought against a church or mosque and decided in the European Court of Justice, rather than here in Britain. The amendments were necessary to comply with EU law. Nigel Farage, UKIP MEP, suggested that one effect of this bill, which nobody seems to have noticed, was that the national flags of many EU-captive states could now be declared illegal because they bear the symbol of the cross.
FARMING
Le Monde, 3.2.10, contained several opinion pieces on the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which accounts for 40% of the EU budget. According to Jack Thurston, the co-founder of Farm Subsidy, biodiversity in Europe has been damaged by modern agriculture. He said: “Farming should protect Europe’s environmental resources, not exhaust them”. He believes that a better policy was needed than the one that in 2008 paid €1,583,120 to Prince Hans Adam II of Liechtenstein and €253,987 to Prince Albert of Monaco.
PRISONERS TO VOTE
According to BBC News, 8.2.10, the European Court of Human Rights has stated it is unlawful to deny sentenced prisoners’ voting rights in UK elections. Since then, the Government has had two consultations on voting reforms but it does not appear that any changes will take place before the general election. The Council of Europe (non-EU) has expressed “serious concern” that there was “significant risk” that the election may fail to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights (the EU requires all member states to sign up to the Convention). (The European Convention of Human Rights should not be confused with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which forms part of the Lisbon Treaty.)
THE LISBON TREATY – THE GREAT DECEPTION
The Labour Party lied about the Lisbon Treaty being just a tidying up treaty when in fact it is the EU Constitution in all but name. They therefore reneged on their manifesto promise to give the British people a referendum. They have also swamped our country with immigrants (who usually vote Labour) in the hope that they can remain in office indefinitely. The Liberal Democrats also reneged on their manifesto promise of a referendum on the Constitution and voted it through. They said at the time that an ‘in/out’ referendum was needed to settle the controversial issue of our membership of the European Union, knowing then that the majority of voters would probably have wished to remain ‘in’. They have now changed their minds and said that a referendum is not necessary. No doubt this is because there would be a fair chance of an ‘out’ result. As at least two front bench speakers are former MEPs and several members of the House of Lords have also been employed by the EU, it is likely that they would lose their EU pensions, all or in part, for failing to support the EU’s interests.
The majority of Conservative MPs did vote against the Lisbon Treaty and Mr Cameron gave us a cast iron promise that there would be a referendum on this Treaty if he became Prime Minister. As he has now reneged on that promise, how can we possibly trust the Conservatives any more than the Liberal Democrat or Labour Parties. Their manifestos will not be worth the paper they are written on.
If readers wish to express their disgust at Mr Cameron’s decision, enclosed with the hard copy of this newsletter is a card which you should post to him. Email readers, or those who wish to obtain a supply of these cards for their friends and family to send, can obtain a supply from The Democracy Movement, Kershaw House, 449 Great West Road, Hounslow TW5 0BU, telephone 020 7603 7796. Also enclosed with this newsletter and attached to the email version is a copy of ‘Britain’s Suicide Note’. This is a history of the EU and tells of the appalling damage done to our country by our membership of that organisation. It is a ‘must read’ for all politicians or aspiring politicians.
Thank you, Iris.
SAVE OUR SOVERIGNTY
e-mail: iric.binstead@virgin.net
PLEASE PASS ON
Victoria: A Royal Love Story with political implications
Victoria & Albert: Art & Love opens on March 19th at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. This Sunday the BBC airs Fiona Bruce's documentary, A Royal Love Story.
The documentary reveals intimate details of the love Victoria and Albert held for each other. Somehow we doubt their passionate views on the constitution will receive as much attention, though they are vital to us.
Victoria and Albert were the diametric opposites of previous monarchs who had been by-words for lechery and dalliances with extensive numbers of mistresses. Victoria and Albert liked to do many things together, including viewing exhibitions and buying art.
'Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna is carried in Procession' by Frederic Leighton. National Art Gallery, London. Wikimedia.
The Queen and Prince Albert attended the annual shows of the Royal Academy and bought many works of art. Frederic Leighton’s painting, which depicts Cimabue’s Madonna being carried from his house to a Florentine church, was exhibited in 1855 and was their most spectacular purchase. They wanted to help a promising artist at the beginning of his career.
Interest in the British Constitution
They were also intensely interested in the British Constitution. The Oxford DNB reports -
The constitution, according to Baron Stockmar, gave ‘the Sovereign in his functions a deliberative part’ (Letters, 1st ser., 1.352–3), that is to say, the queen's constitutional role was to reflect on the policies, persons, and practices of her ministers, and after due consideration to give her opinion to her ministers, expecting it to be heard and heeded. Her prerogatives were to be observed rigorously, and in return she would support her ministers publicly and endorse their decisions.
Since the political information which the Queen received came almost entirely from the ministers of whichever political party was in power, Prince Albert became her 'confidential adviser in politics', providing much needed balance. Interestingly, in Albert's and Stockmar's formulation, the monarchy was to be politically neutral.
'Neutrality' meant promoting the interest of Britain and her people
Neutrality meant not taking sides in party-political disputes; it meant considering a question from all sides and promoting the national interest, not the short-term interests of political parties bent on gaining and retaining power. It did not mean forgoing a political function for the monarchy. If anything, it elevated the importance of the monarch's political voice: ‘Is the sovereign not the natural guardian of the honour of his country, is he not necessarily a politician?’, Albert reflected (Connell, 142; Oxford DNB).
'Politics, government, and foreign affairs dominated Victoria's and Albert's official, but largely unobserved, life'. They worked hard to prevent Britain being drawn into a war with Italy, put Britain on firm terms of friendship with France, insisted that when India came under direct British rule a strong message of religious toleration be sent to the people of India and supported Prime Minister Peel's efforts to overturn the Corn Laws. They were never merely defenders of monarchy.
"The royal prerogative of appointing ministers had not yet fallen into abeyance" so Victoria and Albert were involved in the formation of Cabinets. Why did that prerogative fall into abeyance? Surely the capabilities and ethics of Cabinet ministers, their impartial dedication to doing what is best for the country as opposed to what is best for themselves, have seen a decline since the Sovereign is no longer involved in appointing them? And sadly the balance of power has all swung to MPs, eager to get the best 'second house' deals for themselves and to ignore the plight of their country?
As you remember, Elisabeth Beckett believed that the Queen retrained certain prerogatives, which could and should be used to protect her people's liberties.
A real love story
In the 19th century, public perceptions of the royal couple focused on their life as a family. In our century it appears to be their love story, a starry reflection of tabloid romances.
How daring it would be if a documentary showed Victoria's and Albert's passion for defending their country, people and constitution. That would be an exciting love story. We can hope.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him (Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno). Image: Cat in Wells, Howard Maunders, Beautiful Britain
You either walk away from Christopher Smart or, like me, are drawn deep into his life.
In the eyes of his father-in-law and wife, who committed him to an insane asylum, Christopher Smart was embarrassing. He had no head for business, he was extravagant and he was far too enthusiastic about God. In the eyes of his friends, including Dr Johnson, Smart was a scholar and genius, a friend and writer, witty, extravagantly generous, childlike in joy and fragile in health with a golden-haired wife who detested literature and despised him.
'The way to Paradise'
Born in 1722, Christopher Smart wandered the meadows, brooks and hills of his father's small estate until, when he was eleven, his father died 'in embarrassed circumstances'. Lack of embarrassment over bankruptcy seems to be a modern attitude, but when he grew up, Christopher Smart may have shared it.
The house was sold, and Smart went to live with an uncle. There he found another natural Paradise, fell in love at age thirteen and wrote his first verse -
Happy verses! that were pressed
In fair Ethelinda's breast!
Happy Muse, that didst embrace
The sweet the heav'nly-fragrant place!
Tell me, is the omen true,
Shall the bard arrive there too? . . .
'An Eagle Confined in a College-Court'
In fact the young bard arrived at Cambridge. He won scholarships and prizes and "seemed to be on course for a steady university career" (Oxford DNB). Unfortunately he felt like 'an Eagle Confined in a College-Court’.
He began spending time in London, in the company of actors, artists, and musicians. His poems were set to music for London pleasure gardens - William Boyce composed the music for 'Idleness'. He began to drink and spend money. In 1747 when he was 25, he had to go into hiding to avoid arrest for debts. He was briefly reinstalled at university when his college fellows paid tradesmen the money he owed, but soon after Smart left Cambridge for good.
A stroke of insight
The next ten years saw him marry and become the affectionate father of two daughters. He wrote poetry, prize-winning theological essays, the complete translation of Horace's works (a standard schoolbook for two centuries), pieces for magazines, songs and skits for variety shows and rafts of hack work for his father-in-law, a publisher. But Smart could not make ends meet. His wife attacked him for irresponsibility while his health began to break from overwork.
Around the age of thirty-three, he became ill almost to death -
. . .death stood o'er me with his threa'ning lance. . .reason left me in the time of need. . .sense was lost in terror or in trance, my sinking soul was with my blood inflam'd. . .
His near-death experience was followed by a vision of Christ - 'glow, glow, my soul, with pure seraphic fire'. In his regret for past follies he reawakened to faith and spiritual values, and was united with his childhood's love of nature.
He appears to have had what neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor called 'a stroke of insight'. After she experienced the stroke that almost killed her, she woke to the oneness, love and beauty of creation.
Smart took from his experience a simple instruction - 'To love, to praise, to bless, to wonder and adore'. Incensed by his public loving, praising and blessing, his wife and father-in-law had him committed to an asylum.
In Bedlam with his cat
Surrounded by the insane, who constantly mocked him, stared at by gawkers and with almost no privacy, Smart at first had only his cat Jeoffry for comfort and company. Eventually he was allowed to work in the garden, read books and newspapers, write and receive visits from friends, including Dr Johnson and David Garrick.
I should add that he had his faith, which was comfort and consolation and inspiration to him, as it has been to many thousands who have been and who are in prison. With the insight of faith he saw all Earth in the light of the Creator God.
In the asylum Smart wrote Jubilate Agno. It is a strange, original and brilliant work which disappeared for almost two hundred years until it was discovered in a private library in 1939. It has found many modern appreciators, including Benjamin Britten, who set it to music. Smart filled Jubilate with detail about animals in praise of the Creator God and asked for mercy 'for all my brethren and sisters in these houses'.
He also inserted an ode to his cat, now its most famous and popular section -
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his fore-paws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the fore-paws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incompleat without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his fore-paws of any quadrupede.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually - Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in compleat cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in musick.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is affraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroaking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadrupede.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the musick.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.
'The hope of his pilgrimage'
His wife had moved to Dublin and had sent their children to school in France. His friends sprang Smart from the asylum by the simple expedient of taking him out to dinner and not returning him. Once released, his output was "prodigious" (DNB). He wrote librettos, A Song to David and the Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England. But nothing he did made money, and he was committed to prison for debt. He was not unhappy. He remained jubilant.
Friends gave him money for food and for the 'Rules' (freedom to walk in St George's Fields). While in prison he wrote Hymns for the Amusement of Children, including one which begged for their kindness to animals. He died in 1771, either of liver failure or pneumonia, at the age of forty-nine.
For a man cannot have publick spirit, who is void of private benevolence.
. . . God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
Incentives matter. We are offering a £500 cash prize and other goodies to the winner of their 2010 Young Writer on Liberty competition. To win, you have to be under 20 on the entry deadline of April 30, and you need to write three short blog-style articles – up to 400 words each – on the topic 'WAYS TO ADVANCE LIBERTY.' Articles from the top three winners will be published on the Adam Smith Institute blog. Simply email entries to charlotte@adamsmith.org along with contact details and DOB.
Researching Christopher Smart tonight, I discovered he had written a piece called 'Idleness', which William Boyce set to music. Boyce created marvellous music despite being deaf - a fact few of his contemporaries guessed. I couldn't find 'Idleness' online, but here is Trevor Pinnock conducting The English Concert in Boyce's Symphony No. 5 in D Major. A stimulating way to open the morning. How full of hope this music sounds!
Shot between the eyes by the Taliban, RAF helicopter pilot Ian Fortune continued to fly, despite severe bleeding and his copter's damaged stabilisation system. Eight minutes later, he landed his Chinook, bringing casualties safely in to Camp Bastion.
British forces in Afghanistan are courageous on a daily basis. Unfortunately we don't always hear about their bravery.
Robin Hood helps the bankrupt knight with a loan. The knight insists on paying the money back "in a year and a day, either to thee or to the Lord Bishop of Hereford", whose money Robin had taken. Illustration by Howard Pyle
"Brilliant, new" interpretations of Robin Hood make me cross.
20th and 21st century re-distributors of other people's money like to refer to Robin Hood as "stealing from the rich and giving to the poor" when in fact he stole from tax-men - the sheriffs and abbots who despoiled the poor and the middle class, taxing them into penury. Robin gave the money back to their rightful owners.
Does it sound as if taking money back from the tax-men might have application today? Perhaps that's why you don't hear about it in modern interpretations of Robin Hood.
The other day, we were treated to the revisionist notion that Robin Hood was supposed to be a loan shark because he loaned a knight money.
Tim Burton has taken the characters from Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, and mixed them together in a new film. There is something irresistible about Carroll's characters - fabulous, yet utterly realistic and reminiscent of people we know - and some we dread.
In the Burton production, Alice is nineteen. She returns to Wonderland when, fleeing from an unwelcome marriage proposal, she again finds herself hurtling down a rabbit hole. (That Alice could fall into a hole twice cannot be viewed as unlikely in a story of this kind.) She will become involved in an attempt to overthrow the Red Queen and restore the White Queen, but only if she can slay the Jabberwock on the Frabjous Day.
That Burton has decided to direct a film of Alice speaks to the power of words and to Carroll's masterpiece, which has never been out-of-print and has been adapted for theatre and film hundreds of times.
The plot has left some reviewers up in the air. But not the acting. Helena Bonham Carter plays a fierce and petulant Red Queen. Johnny Depp is the Mad Hatter. Stephen Fry is the "charming, witty and surprisingly nonchalant" Cheshire Cat.
Surprisingly, but somehow appropriately, Burton's ending (spoiler alert), is entrepreneurial.
Not so, Carroll's. He was implored by Alice Pleasance Liddell, "seven and a half exactly", to give her a written copy of the story he had related to her and her two sisters while he rowed them upstream on the Thames. Years later, Carroll ended Through A Looking-Glass with an untitled poem whose first letters spell her name -
A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July -
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear -
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream -
Lingering in the golden gleam -
Life, what is it but a dream?
Last year, Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox invited Geert Wilders, of the Dutch Freedom Party, to show his film Fitna in Parliament. When he arrived in London, he was detained at Heathrow and forced to return to Holland.
However, the decision by Jacqui Smith, the then-home secretary, to ban him from the United Kingdom was overturned by the United Kingdom's Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, which noted the vital importance of free speech to society.
Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox are cheerful and persistent defenders of freedom of speech. They again invited Wilders to the House of Lords. On Friday, Wilders showed his film, which compares the teachings of the Koran with Islamist violence.
In a report filed by the BBC, "Lady Cox said the visit was a victory for free speech, saying, 'You don't have to agree but it is important to debate sensibly in a responsible and very democratic way'".
Wilders, who may be the next Dutch Prime Minister, spoke about the attacks on European and British democracy by violent Islamists and the incompatibility of totalitarianism and democracy.
We let St David's Day pass by despite admiring the people of Wales as defenders of freedom - and despite the fact one of us is named David.
In 1212 and 1215, Welsh rebellions helped to undermine the power of King John and establish Magna Carta, which returned to the Welsh their lands and liberties. All those who love Magna Carta owe the Welsh a debt.
In 1284, after a series of bitter winter campaigns, Edward I conquered gallant Prince Llywelyn and Wales.
Over the next seven hundred and fifty years, the Cymry helped to fight and win important battles for Britain and for freedom.
View across Cardiff Bay. Outside London, Cardiff is the United Kingdom's largest media centre.
A remarkable and true story of betrayal, love and grace by the son of the founder of Hamas. Three things changed his life - the horrific violence of Hamas, the words of a British cabbie and the teachings of Jesus Christ.
You may have heard us say that we were working on a book called Share the Inheritance - Gifts of Intangible and Tangible Wealth - and that we were close to finishing it. I have begun to think that finishing a book is a bit like training a puppy.
Just when you think house training is over, it's not.
That was one reason I didn't post yesterday. (David was with patients and on the road.)
Today we are happy to say that Oxford University has published a book about all the books that were successfully completed. Norman Lebrecht, reviewing The Oxford Companion to the Book in the Wall Street Journal, writes -
At a million words, divided into two volumes, the "Companion" sacrifices lightness for a weight of authority more commonly associated with Gothic cathedrals and sumo wrestlers, but there is no mistaking the levity of spirit that went into its making.
It was "a 15-year project, written by 398 scholars from 27 countries", but unusually the scholars and editors "set out to give as much pleasure as knowledge and to have some fun of their own along the way". . .
A personal memory
Before I went to university, I wandered into Oxford dressed in jeans and shirt and without a penny on me. My wallet had been taken by an enterprising rogue, and I was not sure where I was going to sleep or how I was going to eat. Miraculously, an English lady stopped me on the street, and asked me if I were Czech - she saw in my face a resemblance to Czech pilots who had flown with the RAF in the Second World War. I replied that my mother was Czech and was immediately given a place to sleep and dinner.
The next day, still penniless, I wandered into Blackwell's.
In the basement of the bookstore is the largest room of books in Britain and Europe.
Image: Soham Banerjee / Creative Commons
I spent several happy hours looking at books and reading until I was gently interrupted by a salesperson who told me the shop would be closing for the night and did I wish to purchase any books? Oh, yes, I did, but unfortunately I didn't have any money.
That won't be a problem, he said, and swept me up to the register. He added the sums for three books, packaged them, put them in my arms and asked me to send payment 'when it was convenient'.
I left Blackwell's with a warmth of heart that lingers with me still. I would have walked over coals to pay the bill, and posted payment several weeks later.
Those were the days.
Blackstone saves the press
Wikipedia has a fascinating account of jurist and defender of freedom William Blackstone riding to the rescue of Oxford University Press. In the mid-18th century, the press was run by academic Delegates, as it still is today, but after early successes, rot had set in -
The Press suffered from the absence of any figure comparable to Fell, and its history was marked by ineffectual or fractious individuals such as the Architypographus and antiquary Thomas Hearne, and the flawed project of Baskett's first bible, a gorgeously designed volume strewn with misprints, and known as the Vinegar Bible after a glaring typographical error in St. Luke. Other printing during this period included Richard Allestree's contemplative texts, and Thomas Hanmer's 6-volume edition of Shakespeare, (1743-4). In retrospect, these proved relatively minor triumphs. They were products of a university press that had come to embody increasing muddle, decay, and corrupt practice, and which relied more and more on the leasing of its bible and prayer book work to survive.
The business was rescued by the intervention of a single Delegate, William Blackstone. Disgusted by the chaotic state of the Press, and antagonized by the Vice-Chancellor, George Huddesford, Blackstone subjected the print shop to close scrutiny, but his findings on its confused organization and sly procedures met with only "gloomy and contemptuous silence" from his colleagues, or "at best with a languid indifference." In disgust, Blackstone forced the university to confront its responsibilities by publishing a lengthy letter he had written to Huddesford's successor, Thomas Randolph, in May 1757. Here, Blackstone characterized the Press as an inbred institution that had given up all pretence of serving scholarship, "languishing in a lazy obscurity ... a nest of imposing mechanics." To cure this disgraceful state of affairs, Blackstone called for sweeping reforms which would firmly set out the Delegates' powers and obligations, officially record their deliberations and accounting, and put the print shop on an efficient footing. None the less, Randolph ignored this document, and it was not until Blackstone threatened legal action that changes began. The university had moved to adopt all of Blackstone's reforms by 1760.
James Baxendale tells me that today Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world, and has published more books than all the university presses in America, and Cambridge, combined.
Loss and despair followed by a happy ending. That is the kind of story I like.
Winston Churchill was the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill and, like his grandfather, had pursued a career in journalism and politics. As a war correspondent he covered conflicts such as Israel’s Six Day War in 1967. He was a Conservative MP for Manchester (Stretford and later Davyhulme) from 1970 to 1997.
In an echo of his grandfather’s long and sometimes lonely fight against the follies of disarmament and appeasement in the 1930s, he became the founder-President of the United Kingdom National Defence Association in 2007. This group was formed to highlight the state of Britain’s chronically under-funded and over-stretched Armed Forces, and to bring pressure to bear on Parliament to increase the resources available for Defence of the Realm.
United Kingdom National Defence Association
The group was launched in November 2007 at the Churchill Museum in London’s Cabinet War Rooms. Alongside Mr Churchill at the launch were the founder-Patrons: the former Foreign Secretary Lord Owen, and three former Chiefs of the Defence Staff – Admiral Lord Boyce, General Lord Guthrie and Marshal of the RAF Lord Craig.
Under Mr Churchill’s leadership, the UKNDA campaigned vigorously in support of Britain’s hard-pressed Armed Forces and has played a key role in pushing defence and national security higher up the political agenda.
The UKNDA’s Chief Executive, Commander John Muxworthy, paid tribute to the Association’s President, with whom he had worked closely since the UKNDA was formed. Cdr Muxworthy said: "The death of Winston Spencer Churchill after a two-year protracted battle against cancer, bravely and doggedly fought, is a grievous loss to the UKNDA. ‘WSC’, as he used to sign himself, was our very first President. His untimely early death is a greater tragedy for the country which he served devotedly for many years.
"As President of the UKNDA, WSC was generous, hard working, proactive, and an inspirational leader. A true patriot, WSC followed in the steps of his grandfather, Sir Winston, who, in the 1930s campaigned ceaselessly for this country to rearm in the face of the ever-growing threat from Nazi Germany. Eighty years on, ‘our’ Winston has been fighting the same battle."
Shortly before his final illness, Winston Churchill wrote a powerful 'Appeal to the Nation' highlighting the parallels between the UKNDA’s mission today and his grandfather’s crusade for rearmament in the 1930s.
A pinch of prevention
We have written about the soldiers who died because they were poorly equipped by this government to fight in Iraq. We noted below the brewing threats to Falkland Islanders. How will Britain defend them if Argentina invades?
There are many aggressive nations in the world today. They can be prevented from doing harm by well-armed defenders of liberty, not by the vulnerable and unarmed.
Being adequately provisioned does not make us warmongers, but it will send a strong signal to agressors to leave less-powerful nations and peoples alone. Churchill understood that "A pinch of prevention is worth a cartload of cure" and that Britain could not send her sons and daughters into harm's way without giving them the best gear.
a diplomatic coup yesterday in its attempt to force Britain to accept talks on the future of the Falkland Islands, after a two-hour meeting in Buenos Aires between Hillary Clinton and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Her intervention defied Britain's longstanding position that there should be no negotiations unless the islands' 3,000 inhabitants asked for them. It was hailed in Buenos Aires as a major diplomatic victory, but condemned in the Falklands.
Argentina's President is establishing a Socialist dictatorship in her country. Naturally the country is going to pieces economically, and she is going to try to pull a military stunt.
It begins to appear that there is no dictator, no Arab king, no president willing to undermine the constitution (think Honduras) that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama don't like.
Rupert Penry-Jones plays Richard Hannay in the latest 39 steps, a Masterpiece Theatre adventure that gives an admiring nod both to Hitchcock's North by Northwest and to Mr Memory. The setting is Britain just before World War One. Treason lies at the heart of the story.
For the month of March you can view 39 Steps on PBS. It isn't John Buchan's 39 Steps, and it isn't Hitchcock's, but I enjoyed it, particularly the suffragette angle and the increasingly lovely exchanges between the hero and the heroine.
Buchan told a friend he wrote the book because of his "affection for that elemental type of tale which Americans call the 'dime novel' and which we know as the 'shocker' - the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last winter I exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for myself".
In the 19th century Queen Victoria looked out across the loch and made the Queen's View popular. Close by in the Allean Forest, an eighth-century ring fort once commanded the heights.
Remote though it seems, the loch is the site of one of a chain of dams. These, now run by the United Kingdom's largest generator of renewable energy, Scottish and Southern Energy, keep British lights burning.
The whole epic scheme was designed and built by North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board planners, engineers, architects and labourers who successfully met daunting technical challenges beautifully.
We've been writing about Dalrymple lately, a good doctor and terrific writer. His latest book, The New Vichy Syndrome, Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism, has just been published.
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