Voices From The Past

Sometimes the oddest things catch my imagination, in this case it was a sort of conversation from the past.

 James Tappern plays one of the Trumpets 

Tutankhamen's Trumpets.mp3

The first to catch my attention was the BBC replaying a 1939 recording, made with the two trumpets found in Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter. They had got a British soldier, James Tappern, to play them, and the sound is a haunting echo of a music that has not been heard for over 3,000 years!

Learning From Custer?

How do you know the Gaddafi's regime is doomed? Because we are sending in the Apaches!!

Just ask General Custer what happens next .... okay that was the Cheyenne, but 'an Injuns an Injun' as the saying goes .... the effects the same.

Oh hang on, they meant the other Apaches ....

.... Oh well, the effects still the same.

Broken Britain ... Another Tale

Sharon Shoesmith, head of social services at  Haringey Council when "Baby P" was killed, and the woman who was paid the big money to have the buck stop on her desk, has just won a court appeal against getting sacked .... the reasons? The court thought the sacking "procedurally unfair", not morally or ethically, just some i's not dotted, or t's crossed.

As a consequence of this court decision, Ms Shoesmith described herself as "thrilled" .... not ashamed, just "thrilled" ... of course it means that the taxpayers will be left to pay her huge amounts of 'compensation' (She has claimed that she is entitled to her full salary and pension from Haringey up to the present day .... £133,000 pa x 3.5 = £465,500.00), for her being sacked while in charge of a system that allowed a child, that should have been protected by her employees, to be brutally and systematically beaten to death (he had over 50 injuries when he died in 2007).

Haringey are set to appeal against this, but when you take into the account of the lawyers, legal aid, and court time already taken up by her endless round of appeals to tribunals, and you can see that already, her case has probably cost more than the back 'salary and pension' that she wants .... so what is the point of employment laws when it always ends up in court until the claimant 'wins' (as they always seem to do in the end).

You can see why most employers simply 'pay up' even when they are faced with these often frivolous fishing' claims ... its totally wrong, and there are figures which suggest that some 'employees' make repeated claims from every employer they are sacked from. The employment laws, which were meant well, has been subverted by frequent challenges by lawyers and now work against society, and not for it.

This story tells you everything that's wrong with a society, where the laws are set by and controlled by the same lawyers who always make money in these cases.

Only Justice Should Be Blind

The use of injunctions and super injunctions, to allow very rich footballers and celebrities to have a measure of legal protection not available to me or you is very wrong .... its a law being created on the fly by lawyers and judges, and without the say of the UK Parliament. It's actually trying to gag the right to 'Free Speech', in favour of the 'right to a private life'.

This whole ridiculous situation, all stems from the UK's judiciary and legal fraternity, interpreting a provision of the "Human Rights Act" in a perverse manner, one which has once again turned it into nothing more than a charter for terrorists, criminals, illegal immigrants, and now, very rich men who can't keep their trouser zippers up, but want to be able to get away with this infidelity by hiding it from their wives, partners and their children. However if you are caught having an affair, there is no particular protection against the consequences of your actions ... well not unless you have upwards of £50k to spend on lawyers who can 'make it so'. So instead of a storm in chip paper wrapper, we have a fundamental challenge to the UK's (and Europe's) commitment to free speech, which may have implications for everyone.

The current English Law prevents me from even mentioning the names of the two footballers (even though I know one for sure, and the other by speculation), who are currently trying to hide their infidelities behind its highly paid skirts ... but in Scotland, I could now do so, as they are in the public record ....there is also a very thinly disguised picture of one of the footballers on the front of the Sunday Herald newspaper, which anyone with even an once of web savvy could find on Google. He and one of the actors concerned in an earlier injunction, were effectively both outed a week or so ago in an English Newspaper comment article, which ostensibly commented on the actors latest facebook contents, and then referred to the footballer, as a model of the family life the actor should be following .... this farce has been played out across the press, with enough oblique or cryptic clues, for anyone with half an interest to be able to interpret.

There is a simple but fundamental solution ... we must enshrine as absolute, the 'Right To Free Speech' in the UK, in the same manner as in the US ... Nothing else will stop the lawyers from trying to gag first the press, then the Internet, and eventually all of us, to the favour only of 'politicians, celebs, and sportsmen', but to the permanent detriment of an 'open government and society'. We don't need lip service paid to free speech, we need a robust and positive defence .... David Cameron can be the Prime Minister to free us from the threat of the tyranny of the gag, or be the Prime Minister who stands by and sees this 'freedom' extinguished.

In the UK, only justice should be blind .... we the British public shouldn't be.

Post Script: A few hours after I posted this, a Liberal Member of Parliament publicly named one of the footballers - only a few million people knew this name, but, it was about time that the issue was brought into the public sphere so that we can talk about the 'privacy laws' that have been brought in by the back door in the UK. NB:  In more of a joke, The 'Super Injunction' remains in place.

Photo Editing .....

I have been reading XPD by thriller writer Len Deighton as my train book .... 

 

XPD Thriller By Len Deighton

 

..... the premise is that in June 1940, Hitler and Churchill met up near the Belgium border to discuss British surrender terms .... the Nazi papers which described the meeting are on the loose, and the British, Soviets, CIA and a German group are all after them for different reasons.

The Inseminator

Actor and Politician Arnold Schwarzenegger's fame rose on the back of his performances as "The Terminator"

The Terminator

He then reinvented himself as the Governor of California .....

The Governator

Now Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver have separated, after she apparently learned he had fathered a child with a member of their household staff 10 years ago ..... the maid, Mildred Patricia Baena no less. He will no doubt be looking for one final tag ....

The Inseminator

At least the steroids didn't do any lasting damage then ...

Mission Impossible Achieved

There are some rivalries that are not just sporting rivalries, but are much deeper than that. They go to the very DNA of the supporters, the fabric of the competing clubs, cities or participants. Such is the rivalry between two of the football clubs in Liverpool and Manchester.

Some say that the rivalry started between the two cities when Manchester traders felt that goods passing through Liverpool docks were somewhat lighter by the time they left ..... and so they formed a company and built the Manchester ship canal between 1887 and 1894, at a cost of about £15 million (£1.27 billion as of 2011), so that ships were never unloaded in Liverpool again. The Liverpool dockers, deprived of what were colloquially known as 'dockers perks', never forgot this effrontery, and that this rivalry found form in the ethos of the football clubs. However this tale doesn't explain why Manchester City and Everton do not embody the struggle in anything like the manner that Manchester United FC and Liverpool FC do.

Until the 1970's the two clubs were very much on a par at seven titles a piece, and in fact the most successful championship team in 1970/71 were Arsenal FC with eight titles, with Aston Villa on six, Sunderland on Five and even Newcastle FC on four. So in reality, the league title was fairly even split between all the clubs. But the abolition of fixed salaries at football clubs, was slowly having a pernicious effect on this equality of power across the football landscape. The clubs that had the largest revenues (i.e. gate money in those pre-plc days), were slowly attracting the better players by offering higher wages.

The first to combine this fact with a manager, well a series of managers, who could bring title success were Liverpool. They went on a run of title wins from 1972/73 which took their grand total to a record eighteen by season 1989/90 .... none of the other teams could even remotely match this. Arsenal were only on ten titles, Everton had moved to nine, and Manchester United? Well they had not successfully replaced Sir Matt Busby, their manager of the 1950's and 1960's, and the titles had stopped with his retirement ... they were still on seven. 

In fact such was the pressure on every succeeding manager to reverse this apparently terminal stall, that some were broken by the job, others flattered to deceive, with good teams that just were not consistent enough to win that next elusive title (there were just two second places in all this period) .... then along came Alex Ferguson  in November 1986, when Manchester United were once again without a manager and (second from bottom) of the league. 

He was chosen because he had consistently broken the 'Old Firm' grip on Scottish football with Aberdeen FC and taken them to three Scottish Titles, four Cups and two European trophies. It was hoped that at the very least, he would win at least a couple of titles, but catch Liverpool's 'English record' of Eighteen? That seemed too tall an order.


Sir Alex Ferguson : The Dominant Manager Of His Era.

 When he arrived at Old Trafford, the myth is that announced that his mission was to "knock Liverpool from their perch" .... he didn't say that, but is probably happy that this legend has grown, because in an incredible run of title wins, that who knows, may never be surpassed by any one manager, he has won twelve titles, starting with the 1992/3 title and culminating (so far) with the 2010/11 season, and in the process moved Manchester United's number of titles to an new English record of Nineteen League Titles. 

In that same period Liverpool have remained on eighteen, Arsenal have moved to twelve, and the rest are either as they were, or like Chelsea on three, or Manchester City on two, and effectively nowhere. Only Arsenal and Chelsea have in anyway challenged this run of wins, and the fact that this latest EPL title is United's fourth in the last five seasons, shows how dominant he has made the club.

Mission impossible achieved.

Rome Wasn't Built In A Day

Rome Wasn't Built In A Day .... but apparently many Romans this week thought it could be knocked down in one.

In an odd story, it appears that the urban grapevine had created a legend, which was that the late seismologist Raffaele Bendand (who died in 1979), had predicted that the city would be devastated by an earth quake on 11 May 2011. Consequently, and despite special programmes having been run on state TV calling for calm, reports suggested that as many as an additional 18% of city employees planned to stay away from work to avoid the city on that date.

Bendandi, who was knighted by Mussolini in 1927 for his prophetic meteorological skills, after he apparently used his theory that the movement of the planets caused seismic activity, to accurately predict a 1923 quake that killed 1,000 people. He was also banned from making public predictions, on pain of exile .... and he never actually made any further predictions about the future. Paola Lagorio the President of the the foundation that honours Bendandi said "I can say with absolute certainty that in the papers of Raffaele Bendandi there is no provision for an earthquake in Rome on the 11 May 2011". Needless to say, Rome wasn't even ruffled by a tiny tremor on the day .... but oddly, in one of those coincidence that fuel these urban myths, the town of Lorca in Spain was hit by a large earthquake on the day.

So, be prepared for more such stories next year, as the same urban myth suggested two more such catastrophic events in May 2012.

A Rose By Any Other Name?

'Slut Walk' marches are a series of protests by girls in the US and Canada after a Canadian police officer opined the advice that women students should "avoid dressing like sluts" to keep out of trouble ... 

Slut Walks Tackle Misogyny?

..... the walks are intended to highlight a culture in which the victim rather than rapist or abuser is blamed when they are attacked.

Rainbow Dream Corrupted

Each passing month seems to show that the state of South Africa is slowly becoming as corrupt as all the other Black African states ....


Aurora Mine,Orkney South Africa

the latest sign of this is the news that a South African gold mining company has been breaking the labour laws and asset stripping the company while stealing off the workers.

Labours Love Child Comes Of Age

Remember when the New Labour party under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and their strategist Mandelson introduced 'devolution' in to Scotland and Wales, and swore blind that it wouldn't ever lead to 'Scottish Independence' .....


The First Leader Of An Independent Scotland?

.....  in fact they privately laughed, and said the mixed election method they had introduced would ensure that the Scottish National Party, could never get an overall majority.

Henry Cooper - Legend.

A sad story, 'The Legend' that was Henry Cooper died yesterday aged 76. He was 'a lovely fella' (as he used to say about others) .... and although he wasn't quite top draw, he was put down by Floyd Patterson as well as Ali, but for his weak eyebrow tissue, he could have been the 'Great White Hope' heavyweight champion, in an era when there were no other good white heavy weight boxers, and plenty of good black ones.

He famously put the 'Louisville Lip', on his hip, with a blow from 'Enry's 'Ammer'  ..... his mighty Left Hook.

Ali later said on British television that
Cooper "hit me so hard that my ancestors
 in Africa felt it".

Muhammad Ali said last night that he was "at a loss for words" over the death of his friend. "Henry always had a smile for me; a warm and embracing smile", he said. "It was always a pleasure being in Henry's company. I will miss my old friend. He was a great fighter and a gentleman."

Can't follow that ... so I won't. So here's a bit of 'Left Hook' mayhem .....

Hell Has Another Resident ..... Osama Bin Laden Dead

This morning came the news that Osama Bin Laden, leader and mentor of the Al Qaeda terrorist ideology was killed by US Special forces yesterday .....

No doubt Islamists the world over will be mourning 'another martyr', and in Mosques 'sermons' will praise him, which just shows how sick Islamists are .... he was a mass murderer who preached an ideology that stated that 'civilians, including women and children, are legitimate targets of Jihad'.