Why We Didn’t Lose World War II
I have just read this article on the BBC about building a Wellington bomber in under 24 hours. It was not so much that we did it, but how we did it.
This paragraph in the article sums up why we held the fort long enough for the Japanese to attack the Americans at Pearl Harbor.
“Women were absolutely vital – first of all to the war effort as a whole, and to aircraft production,” says historian Sir Max Hastings, author of the book Bomber Command. “They were very good at what they did. Britain mobilised women more efficiently than any other wartime nation, except perhaps the Russians.”
Hitler never mobilised the German women and this was one of his biggest mistakes. But what do you expect from a power-crazed racist idiot? Not sound sense!
Women did virtually everything to support the war effort in the UK. They may not have flown combat missions, but a lot of the delivery of planes to and from front line squadrons was performed by pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary, of whom in one in eight were women. Interestingly, women pilots were paid the same as the men. In fact the Air Transport Auxiliary is another of those organisations we created that made the most of scant resources. When they were disbanded after the war, Lord Beaverbrook said this.
“Without the ATA the days and nights of the Battle of Britain would have been conducted under conditions quite different from the actual events. They carried out the delivery of aircraft from the factories to the RAF, thus relieving countless numbers of RAF pilots for duty in the battle. Just as the Battle of Britain is the accomplishment and achievement of the RAF, likewise it can be declared that the ATA sustained and supported them in the battle. They were soldiers fighting in the struggle just as completely as if they had been engaged on the battlefront.”
I once asked my father, who at some time may have been an aide to Lord Beaverbrook, why women didn’t fly combat in the Second World War. He said it wasn’t about competence, but because if they had and it had been known, it would have had a bad effect on the morale of the population.
But in one story I’ve read, women would have been called upon to fight in the air. If the Germans had landed, one of the lines of defence was what best is described as a immense swarm of Tiger Moths. I read about this in a history of the Mosquito. Hundreds of Tiger Moths were fitted with bomb racks by de Havilland and assigned a pilot and a support truck and personnel. They were to fight tanks from the lanes. The rag-bag collection of pilots would have included women.
As my next door neighbour, a retired British Army Colonel, once said, “in case of war, ignore all the rules!”
We could all do to look closely at the lessons of history!
Are Books Like Buses?
It’s funny, but it must have been some years, since an author sent me a copy of his new book. When I arrived back on Saturday, I didn’t have one new edition in my post, but two from separate authors! And people that I like to think of as friends.
Both look at a first glance to be interesting reads!
Life After Debt
We Are Not Manslaughterers
They must be like buses!
Israel’s Crazy Clocks
I am a great believer in that you put the clocks forward in the summer to gain the greatest economic advantage to as many people as possible.
For instance, in the UK, I’d like to see us go to the same time as most of the EU. Not only would it make it easier for business and travel with the continent, but it would also give us longer leisure evenings for a greater period of the year, so perhaps outdoor activities would benefit. Horse racing would be able to stage many more evening meetings, which properly handled might create a lot of new jobs. But there are lots of other examples.
So what are the Israelis doing. They’re moving the date the clocks go back forward to fit in with religious groups, who have a strong hold in the Knesset. According to The Independent, it’s not very popular. Even the Jewish Chronicle reports that Israelis are angry.
In the report in the Jewish Chronicle this is said.
A campaign against the early end to summertime is being spearheaded by Dr Shimon Eckhouse, chairman of Nasdaq-traded medical device company Syneron. He also wants to adopt the EU norm and has collected over 90,000 signatories on a petition.
Starting winter time before the end of October “will shorten quality time that parents have with their children, increase the chance of road accidents and cost the Israeli economy millions of shekels”, he said.
There are estimates that the 48 days between September 12, when Israel changes its clocks, and October 31, when the UK and the rest of Europe change their clocks, will cost Israel £4.6 million in higher electricity consumption.
“The only reason to end summertime early is because it supposedly shortens the fast on Yom Kippur,” Dr Eckhouse added. “This is warped because either way the fast continues for 25 hours. I am a Jew who observes tradition and fasts on Yom Kippur.”
Let’s hope Dr. Eckhouse’s reasoned approach succeeds. If nothing because it is better for global warming.
My Last Visit to Waterloo
Waterloo Station is not a place that I’ve visited much. Admittedly in the first few years after I started as a freelance programmer, I did use it quite a bit for short journeys to places like Epsom, Cobham and Guildford, but once we moved to Suffolk, I rarely needed to use the station. C and I did go to Paris on Eurostar, but even then we parked in the car park undearneath and sneaked in.
My last visit was in 2001, when I took a thousand Al Stewart CD’s from Bury St. Edmunds to his manager, who’d taken the train up from somewhere like Basingstoke. I was to collect a Banker’s Draft in return after our meeting at around twelve.
I had visited a client in Borough High Street and afterwards I was to see another in London’s Chinatown, just north of Leicester Square. I had actually driven, as there was no Congestion Charge and parking was no problem in any of the areas I was to visit, if you stayed less than an hour on a meter.
I was a little early for my meeting at Waterloo, so I parked the car on an empty meter and decided to fill the time by making a few phone calls. For some reason, the radio in the car had been switched off and as the phone was not hands-free, I couldn’t put it on anyway and use the phone. I needed to phone C about something, but try as I might, I couldn’t remember her mobile number. Even now, after the stroke, I can still remember, every phone number, I’ve ever used regularly. I tried other numbers and even they were blank. I just thought I was having some sort of brain problem, but as all my other functions were correct, I felt it was just a function of getting old.
On time, I arrived at the station and swapped the CD’s dor the draft. Al’s manager had to get back, so quickly and surprisingly for me in a silent car, I set off across the river for my next meeting. I parked in the underground car park in Chinatown and walked to the office to have my meeting.
Only then, when I entered the office and saw everyone clustered in earnest fashion around the television sets did I realise that the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York had happened.
You can argue what you like about this, but once I knew of the ghastly attacks, all of the numbers returned to by mind. Rupert Sheldrake and others have argued that a knowledge field exists. Perhaps, it does!
Saturday, when I ook the train to Portsmouth and like that fateful day in 2001, it was September 11th. Nothing happened in the station, but I did read Robert Fisk’s excellent article in The Independent about our woeful, vile and vengeful reaction to the attack. When someone or something hurts you, you have to fight back in a constructive manner, so that it doesn’t happen again. Loose your rag and be vindictive and you loose your one weapon, your sense of thought, reason and intelligence. As an example,my biggest protection against another stroke, is to change things, so that I reduce the risks and also to question everything I do, to make sure it is right.
Blair and Bush failed to do that! This was profoundly stupid, as they had the sympathy of the whole world after the attacks. But what did they do, they attacked Saddam Husein, who a few years before had been their friend.
And what did a crazy American pastor want to do on Saturday? Burn the Koran! As I’ve said many times, you don’t burn books, you read them! And when you’ve read them as many times as you can, you pass them on to someone who might enjoy them or learn something! Failing that, you may recycle them to make more things to read!
Meera Syal in Shirley Valentine
Finally on Friday night, I got to see Shirley Valentine.
I found it very uplifting and just as Shirley broke out of her old life into her new, it encouraged me to try to do the same.
As I suspected, the play shows that good writing and drama, transcend races and nationalities. It was not wrong in any way, to see an actress of Indian origin playing an archetypal Liverpudlian housewife.
And long may it remain so!
Scrappy Bits of Paper
Buy a paper in some places like W H Smith and they give you all sorts of scraps of paper for things as varied as an on-line shopping voucher or a free bar of non-gluten-free chocolate. Because, I try to travel light and only have one good hand for holding things, I usually refuse the receipt as well.
So why do they not get the point, that they actually annoy the customers with these pointless offers. I’ve got to leaving them on the counter.
I thought it was just me until I saw a cartoon in Private Eye, this week.
It shows a supermarket checkout labelled “5 Irritations Questions or Less”.
We could be so lucky!
A Possible Solution to Nuisance Calls
A couple of days ago, I was plagued by a boiler room scam, that decided to ring me every minute. I reported it in this post.
It is now three days later and they are still trying occasionally, but I might have found the solution to criminals like these.
It is called trueCall and effectively screens every call that it doesn’t recognise. All those Unavailable and International calls that are just a waste of your time are challenged and the caller is asked to identify themselves with their name before they are put through. Obviously, the time wasters don’t do this, so the system hangs up on them and asks them to leave a message. I suspect they never will!
The system did cost £99.99 including VAT, but it was just a plug-in to install, as this picture shows.
trueCall Installation
But it was ever so easy to install and it comes with all sorts of features to be valued.
- It simply learns who your friends and enemies are, if you follow a few set of simple rules.
- It has a fully-functioning built-in answering machine.
- You can look at all your incoming and outcoming calls on the Internet.
I shall certainly keep it in place to innoculate me from scammers and time-wasters.
Areas Worst Placed to Survive the Recession
The BBC has made a list of how areas of the UK can survive the recession.
It would appear that Middlesbrough is at the bottom of the list. And no wonder!
I went there to see Ipswich play their first match of the season and although I enjoyed the visit, I got the impression, that the town was doing little to pull itself up by its bootstraps. I was an occassional tourist and I think that they don’t believe they have anything to offer visitors and that Government must do more to help. As an example, the Tall Ships Race was on at Hartlepool across the river and if I’d known then I’d have stayed another day. But it wasn’t mentioned on either the town or the football club’s website, so I didn’t go! There were no posters either! I suspect that certain football clubs would have got in on the act if it had been local to them, by perhaps introducing some of the foreign sailors before the match. If nothing, it would have been good publicity.
Either they learn to live without subsidy from the rest of the UK, or it will get a lot worse! But how do you wean areas like Middlesbrough off their addiction to subsidy?
If they don’t manage it, then towns like Middlesbrough will suffer the same fate as large parts of the former East Germany. There anybody with skills have moved on and it has got to such a state, that the birth-rate has declined to almost zero, as young women just can’t see any point in bringing up children in such an environment.
Middlesbrough has a lot to offer, but it is doing a very bad job in selling itself to the rest of the UK, except by handing out a begging bowl for more subsidy!
Remember, one man’s subsidy is somebody else’s tax! Certain politician’s will always argue that you can tax the rich, but then many in the higher wealth levels can easily move to other countries to live or work!
My Bet For a Winner is Pamela Stephenson
The BBC has just announced the line-up for this year’s Strictly Come Dancing.
My money is on Pamela Stephenson, who showed she can dance, years ago in Not The Nine O’Clock News But perhaps not in the way required!
Reporting Fraud
I had a bad day yesterday, as someone was trying to get me ensnared in a boiler house fraud, trying to buy some useless shares. I don’t buy shares anyway! After they had phoned four times in as many minutes, I told them to Foxtrot Oscar in no uncertain terms.
They then threatened to make my life hell and phoned every few seconds for the rest of day. BT and the Police could do nothing and eventually, I pulled the phone line out of the wall. As I’d had my Warfarin test yesterday, the hospital would have then been unable to get through, if I’d needed to change the dose.
The calls seem to have stopped today, either because they have got fed up with being connected to a void or because BT have done something I don’t know about!
Now, after some nice calls from friends and family, I feel a lot more rational and felt that I should report what happened properly.
After looking at the SOCA web site, I found a link to Action Fraud, which describes itself as the UK’s national fraud reporting centre. I phoned them on 0300 123 2040. They were very helpful and have reassured me on a couple of subsidiary points. So do phone them to report fraud.
They were certainly very much more clued up than the local Police.
