Why Trident?
I was always someone who thought we needed a nuclear deterrent.
But not now, as who do we use it against?
So when I read this article in The Times by Cardinal Keith O’Brien, I was more or less in agreement. Read and make your own decision.
A Memory of Denis Thatcher
I never met Denis or Margaret Thatcher, but I do have two stories about Denis. One is in the public domain and the other is not.
I used to work in Ipswich and the Borough Development Officer was a guy called Reg Mayes. I was having lunch with him and another local businessman in about 1981 or so, when the subject of Denis Thatcher came up. The other guy felt that Denis was a bit of a laughing stock. Reg, then told a tale about how some years before Denis had been his boss at I think, ICI Dyestuffs. He told how he was the best boss he ever had and really developed his career, by quiet suggestion and constructive criticism. He was very much of the opinion that Mrs. T’s skills had been criticised and honed by her supposedly idiot husband.
But who believes the media.
The other story was when Neil Kinnock was on Sport on 4, one Saturday morning and he was asked by Cliff Morgan, how with his political differences he got on with Denis Thatcher at political dos, when wives and husbands were present. Kinnock almost got on a high horse and said how could he not like someone who was passionate about rugby and was a first-class rugby referee. You got the impression that those two got on very well.
It just shows how some politicians are rather different than we are led to believe.
President Ahmadinejad’s Personal Hygiene
This is another from PopBitch.
One of the things Iran’s President Ahmadinejad is most known for in political and diplomatic circles is his B.O. He has been described to us as smelling “musty” and “like a billy-goat”. Our drunk Whitehall source this week gave an interesting take on the West’s attitude towards him. The Chinese are said to be appalled by Ahmadinejad’s standards of personal hygiene – it offends their cultural norms. And so, despite everything – democracy, freedom ‘n all that, Britain and the US don’t mind him staying in power. The Chinese are not likely to give political support to somebody so weird/smelly. Which will help delay Iran getting nuclear weapons.
Let’s hope the last bit of the story is right.
On another serious note, someone who treats his countrymen and especially countrywomen, doesn’t deserve to be in power. The sooner he goes and Iran gets a proper non-religious democracy the better.
But I doubt, I’ll see that in my lifetime.
Can anybody name a Muslim country that has moved from a religius dictatorship to something even a little bit better?
Romanians in Belfast
Over the last few days there have been a lot of attacks on Romanians in Belfast. Racist? Of course they are.
But then Northern Ireland they know all about racism and sectarianism! It may have been pushed under the surface between Catholics and Protestants, but it does appear to have come out again, where these Romanians are concerned.
Here’s a report from the BBC explaining the backround.
I get very heated about racism and immigrants being treated very badly.
Read Robert Winder’s excellent book Bloody Foreigners and there is a piece about poor Jews and Germans coming to work in the fur trade in the East End of London.
An 1854 police report estimated that there were two thousand destitute Germans in what Alexander Herzen called ‘the miry bottom’ of London. Von Meysenburg wrote, ‘Poor German families there are by the hundreds. The work is stamping raw pelts at a German fur factory, Imagine a big barrel in a very warm room, filled to the very top with ermine and sable skins. A man climbs into the barrel stark naked and stamps and works with his hands and feet from morning until night.
That could well have been my father’s antecendents, as they are down in the census as fur skin dressers and they lived in the poorest parts of the East End.
Winder’s book also contains a whole chapter on Huguenots. My mother’s family are all descended from these religious refugees from France.
So when I hear stories like this from Belfast, I reach for my disgust hooter. And use it.
The Iranian Basket Case
Many years ago before the fall of the Shah, I was peripherally involved in the selling of a Chieftain tank factory to the Iranians. I was providing software to the project but I left before it all fell apart with the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution.
I’m not sure if I can remember too well, my feeling about the project at the time, but now, I would feel that selling arms to regimes of that nature was not a good idea. In fact, I tend to that a lot of the weaponry we have is next to useless in the sort of wars we’re having to fight at present. But that is something for another topic and I’m not a military expert anyway. But are many politicians?
Anyway over the years, I met quite a few Iranians and I would think that all have been pleasant individuals who really only want to get on with their lives. I remember one Iranian pilot in Hong Kong, who was extremely charming to my late wife and myself, and invited us to see the joys of his country. And there are many, as a friend who visited last year on holiday testified.
And then they have plenty of oil and I believe other resources too!
So why is the country such a basket case?
One could blame the Muslim religion. I could do! But in this case, I’ll blame the religious and political leaders, who will do anything to keep power. And we all know where dictatorships lead too!
I believe strongly, that we should save energy and tax it heavily so that we save precious resources, reduce global warming and return the tax to the people, so that they can decide how it should be spent for the benefit of the people.
Let’s take just one example of their basket case strategies in this area.
Petrol is subsidised and read what happens in the Guardian, that well-known right wing rag!
It’s just a few pence a litre!
No wonder why there has been so much protest about the elections in recent days!
And it’s getting worse, with diplomats being expelled on both sides.
The Anonymous Widower 