British Independence – Part Three

It could be quite exciting. I mean the idea of an independent Great Britain. A new experiment for the British people. Something they have never tried before.

Oh, they’ve been a sovereign nation before…and they’ve wielded sovereignty over many other nations quite cheerfully. Taking food and fibre, oils and minerals, gold, silver, iron and timber from them to supply the things that the British isles cannot grow or mine. They’ve used them as sources of slaves, when that was fashionable…and indentured labourers when the fashion changed. They’ve used them as receptacles for the unwanted poor or religiously inconvenient. Other nations have been jolly useful – even when you have to been forced to trade with them instead of looting them.

But that doesn’t make you independent. Quite the opposite – like Japan, Singapore, the various Arabies, and any number of quasi colonies…if Great Britain cannot do without those other outlying sources of goods and food, they are in a position of strategic dependency. That’s the most frightening one of all, as Japan discovered when the submarine campaign against them ramped up in the mid-forties. Isolated and independent is fine when you are stocked up but you go hungry and cold pretty quick as the pantry clears out.

Still, the British have been hungry before – the Second World War comes to mind. They got thinner and had less tooth decay, so maybe a period of austerity will be good for the people as a whole. Give them three decades and they might well have balanced their population with their arable land ( Mind you, you can only increase the latter by so much before you have to trim the former. The withdrawal of the National Health Scheme should do that. ).

I think they can do themselves a lot of good by trimming the overseas fat off their budget. Not just the EU contributions but the money that is put out to maintain the show of overseas political rule. Haul down the Union Jack from the places where it is a symbol of the 18th century…Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc. and sell off the residences of the various governors that prance and prate therein. Stop pretending to be Queen or King of Someplace Else and concentrate on being Q. or K. of the UK. Let the former colonies elect or appoint their own parasites as heads of state. Then they’ll have to entertain the Q. or K. of the UK when they visit at thethe expense of their own nation.

Or do they do that now…?

 

Pink Is A Girly Colour

And the heading image of the PRU Spitfire should prove that.

The original intention of the pink paint – to hide the photo-reconnaissance aircraft under clouds  over Europe in WW 2 – is somewhat negated by the black and white invasion stripes painted under the fuselage – but they were probably more worried about the jittery Allied AA gunners than the German ones. Or someone in the hangar had had enough of the pink and couldn’t stand it any more.

There was also a colour known as Mountbatten Pink that the Royal Navy used for a number of ships to hide them at dawn or dusk. I’m indebted to the research done by another blogger – ferrebeekeeper – for the pictures  to show the shade of paint and for the story of the paint. Go to https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/mountbatten-pink

As well, here are screen grabs of other girly paint jobs.

With the exception of the Soviet tank in Prague, all the rest are British. Govern yourselves accordingly…

 

It’s All The Fault Of…

San Andreas.

” Wait? What? ”

The San Andreas Fault. The geological crack that is going to split open one day and drop California into the Pacific Ocean. The favoured bogey of the Hollywood disaster movie maker. The sliding magma plate that we have all come to loathe and fear. All the fault of the San Andreas.

” You’re mad. You’ve finally gone mad. How could the San Andreas Fault be responsible for the world’s troubles. It hasn’t even shifted yet. ”

Exactly. By delaying the shift it has condemned us to decades of California. Years of Hollywood. Years of Los Angeles and smog and Watts and Tijuana. Years of San Francisco and drugs and socio-sexual city councils. Years of Mexican migrants and anti-Mexican presidents. Years of Ansel Bloody Adams and boring Sierra Club landscapes.

” But…”

If the blessed thing had shifted fifty years ago the painful sixties could have been devoted to blasting Castro and area-bombing Hanoi and Jane Fonda would have been  Barbarella instead of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gunner. We would likely have been spared LBJ and Nixon. And Whitlam and Abbott for that matter. Though they might have been seen as  purely Australian faults.

” I can see your point. Perhaps if we all go to Santa Barbara and jump up and down we can get the damn thing started. ”

Hang on, I’ll get my shoes.

The Rise Of The On-Line Booster

If you would like to read about ” boosters “, I can suggest no finer book than ” Babbit ” by Sinclair Lewis. It may seem a little dated to some, but then anti-American propaganda never really gets old if you find the right readership. You may be just the fellow traveller who would appreciate it. Paperback versions are readily available, and Dear Old Sinc does get some good lines in there.

I am reminded of it when I get responses via email to these columns. A fair few of them seem to suggest that I can make a fortune by following their formulae for search engine success and/or marketing. I suspect that few of them really have read what I wrote – that this column is not selling anything – nor buying it either.

It almost seems as though they have turned the old saying back to front and are urging me to stick my business in everyone else’s nose…

Fine, if I was trying to market a feel-good book on how to feel good or a successful program on how to be successful…but I am actually operating a personal pillbox from which I can mow down my enemies. When I run out of enemies I mow down friends. Hey, the machine gun bullets are not fussy…

If you have had the misfortune to be attacked and destroyed by this weblog column consider yourself lucky – when you lie down and bleed you will not attract further fire. It is only the heroic that get another fusillade.

Far worse off is the person who I praise. When you put people on a pedestal they are visible to more batteries and will attract heavier ordnance. The spotlight of fame is a merciless one.

 

Shopping For A War – Part Five – The Reader’s Digest…

Or will it be ”  War And Peace “?

You have to decide when you enter a keyboard dogfight whether you want to fight it down to the deck until you all run out of ammunition and are reduced to ramming each other, or whether you just want to make a quick firing pass, zoom up, and fly away.

The first approach – what I like to call the Zeke – is for those who wish to become legends in their own lunchtime. Heros who do not care whether their reputations, bank balances, or underwear are shredded in the fight. People who sacrifice themselves whenever they can – possibly for the pleasure of being hurt. There’s probably a PhD somewhere in there but you’d have to write footnotes to get it.

The indefatigable keyboard fighter never gives up, even when they have passed from being questionable to being wrong – and then gone on to being ludicrous and irrelevant. They cannot quit, as quitting would involve them in the suspicion that they were fools and have been suckered into an intellectual Lufberry Circus by smarter thinkers. They generally die in a blaze of inglorious prose against some hillside.

A second fighting style is know as the Thunderbolt. The writer knows that they have one chance only to drop on their opponent with overwhelming force, let ’em have the whole nine yards, and then use the moment of stunned and horrified silence to zoom away and disappear. It is not a case of cowardice – just judicious use of advantage and tactics. Dodging and weaving whilst making the escape is also not a bad idea. They never have to return to fight that opponent again.

A third approach is to enter unobtrusively, throttle back whilst close to the victim, drop a delayed-action meme, and then slide over the horizon before the thing goes up. Make no mistake – no-one will be in any doubt who dropped it. You will get credit, if only in curses.

Holy Water, Holy Wine, Sacred Biscuits

It has recently come to my attention that there is such a thing as holy water. And it is available in little dishes out the front of certain churches. They are happy to have you wet yourself with it but frown on you decanting it into old pop bottles for use at home.

As soon as I found this out I looked into other holy substances and found that I could obtain holy bread, holy wafers, and holy wine. I was actually hoping for holy ice cream but this seems a little bit ambitious.

Still, I have not given up hope. Apparently there are lots of other holy things; holy cities, holy books, holy orders, and holy people, Surely the thought of a tub of holy Rocky Road could not be that far-fetched. After all, I’ve been hearing about holy cows ever since I was a kid…

I’m a little hazy, though, about the distinction between holy and sacred. Also sanctified and sanctioned. They seem to be used interchangeably in a lot of conversations, including the ones that urge followers to slay everyone else for the good of God…Who is said to be perfect and doesn’t need anything else at all. Except, I guess, slaughter.

I’m also a little nervous about any thing or any place that is regarded as so precious and valuable that you get to beat up on other people for it. I’ve seen Lord Of The Rings and ” precious ” doesn’t seem so good after all.

I guess the real problem I have is getting enthusiastic about folk tales that are designed to control me – tales that have originated in the stone, bronze, or iron ages and have then been codified for now. I also am nervous about the stuff the tech gurus invent for the iAge but at least most of it doesn’t ask me to murder people or avoid bacon.

Note: Apparently ANZAC biscuits ( an Australian cookie ) have been declared sacred by the Federal Department of Veteran’s Affairs and they are set to fine any bakery who makes them with ingredients not approved by that department. This is approval, not on health grounds, but on historic ones. Apparently you are not even allowed to call them cookies, so I may be getting a nasty note in the post.

No, I’m not rooting your leg. This is real. April 25th in Australia is fraught with dangers that other places never see.

Army And Navy Surplus – Retail Clothing Part Seven

I was a child when there was Army and Navy Surplus that meant something. My father bought a bomber engine at an RCAF surplus auction in Airdrie, Alberta and ran it in our basement. He also bought lightweight drafting equipment from the RCAF that used to be on the navigator’s flight table. I aways wanted him to bring home the Fraser-Nash gun turret that was on sale as well, but my mother was a spoil-sport…

I mention this as a preface to gently prime you for a fact of life; there is no army and navy surplus any more. The bomber engine was left over from WW2. The army and navy now need all the stuff they have and are frequently engaged in horse trading amongst themselves to gather enough of it together in one place to operate on. They don’t have any spares to sell.

What is sold in the surplus stores is cheap imports from Pakistan, India, and worse places. If it can be made of bad cotton or brass – if it can be made crudely but with a certain brutal flair – if it can be sold as an aid to camping, or fishing, or genocide – the stores will get a sea container of it in and sell it. Whichever category it fits into and whatever it is, you can find one common thread – it will be overpriced.

Don’t avoid the surplus stores because of this. Go into them, by all means. Education is always expensive and shopping there is no exception. Set yourself a price limit that is painful but not horrifying, and go spend to that number. Who knows – you may need the fake ammunition box or the Pakistani exploding alcohol stove – or the Confederate flag or the 70 cm folding knife – for some legitimate purpose.

Just don’t ask for Fraser-Nash turrets…