WW's desert island discs #1

The strength of the desert island discs format is candour. Well, near candour anyway. Guests on the show seem to end up giving something away about themselves that you did not know before. Music to me is precious. Faced with the prospect of never hearing music again or losing a leg, I would amputate the leg myself with anything that came to hand and give it over, pronto. Although, to be honest, I have a very reasonable memory for tunes, and usually have one buzzing around my head at all times.

My earliest memories consist of "Val der ree, val der ra" whirling around my head, because, sadly, 1954 was a bad year for music, when I was born. The big hit of that year was the Obernkirchen Children's Choir with "The Happy Wanderer", a phenomenon in the true sense; it was less than a decade since the end of WW2, and the song was in the charts for six months of 1954. It was the best-selling sheet music of the year - and I have a copy!

To do the whole lot of Desert Island Discs in one go would not do the format justice, so for now, here is number one. This does not mean it is my favourite, or even that I like it now particularly, but it contains for me, more memory than a HAL 9000 memory stick. This song takes no choosing, it was the first single I ever bought, or that was bought for me, and cost, I think, 6/8d. For the embryos who read this, that means six shillings and eight old pence, equivalent to about 34p now, but in those days it would buy a small semi-detached house in a nice street, and still leave enough over for a fish supper. Cliff Richard was at one time head and shoulders above his peers. It was Cliff and the rest. While John and Paul were busy listening to Little Richard and Buddy Holly 78's, Cliff's presence in the British music scene of the early sixties more or less blotted out the competition. At least that was the way it seemed to a six-year old Weasel. The highlights of my movie experience were The Young Ones and Summer Holiday. These guys wore the kind of suits that looked as if they had been designed by NASA, out of some weird shiny material. It was in fact mohair and silk, and the suits were known as 40 Guinea suits. When the Shadows moved and did their trademark walk, it was as if a wormhole had appeared in the fabric of the space-time continuum. Everybody had an orgasm. Women had to be mopped up after wetting themselves and men melted with envy. Here first, is a clip that gives a sense of the look, and the energy of the Shadows:


At the age of ten I practised being Hank Marvin in front of mirror. I did not have a Fender Strat or a Burns double six, so made do with a broom handle stuck into a plastic flight bag. But I got the moves. The moves were the important thing.

Pop music is about the moment. It is about that moment when you shiver with anticipation when you get a brand new piece of vinyl in your hand, or some sheet music. It is about yearning to have and share in an identity, which is why it is so immediate and why it is assimilated by youth.

And so it was in 1960, that I got home and put "Nine Times Out of Ten" on my mono, auto-change record player and played it until the metal parts of the player got too hot to work anymore. Years later, I met Cliff and the Shadows and interviewed them for a radio show. There was plenty of time to do it and they were all great. The one and only time I forgot to switch the tape recorder from "pause" to "record".  I had to ask Cliff to do it all again, and he did, and was so courteous and relaxed about it. Meeting Hank and talking with him was probably the only time I nearly lost my professional demeanour. There is nobody in the World who would cause me to gibber like that these days. As I said. It is about the moment, a moment, an individual and personal moment.

Nipples in the Film

How do you know Charlene Spiteri is a veggie? Because she sings "I've never eaten mincemeat" in the Texas hit, "Once in a lifetime".
Did you know, Paul McCartney sang, "She's got a chicken to ride"? You can see a version of that one at www.rathergood.com

Many hours of fun can be had trying to decipher the lyrics of songs. My favourite  one at the moment is this, in which the Dutch chap sings about Nipples in the Film, which I am sure you agree can just tip the judges in favour of an Oscar. The band/singer is called Toontje Lager. "Nipples in the film, they fill it..." Clearly, a lot of nipples, in a film, gets bums on seats.

WW's WWotW

This has been a bit of a high profile week for Wrinkled Weasel's World; the BBC, Conservative Central Office, The United Nations, The House of Commons (several) The Centre for Social Justice, posh Universities to name but a few well known organisations, have weed on my lamp post. It has a lot to do with being linked from Iain Dale in his Daley Dozen three times over a few days. I must then say thank you to Iain for helping to create interest in this blog. By far the biggest hitter this week is the Nigel post. Go figure.

I do however, find this a bit unnerving. I witter on here, like I usually do, fairly oblivious to the outside world, and it comes as a shock if anybody reads it. What is also astonishing is that people all over the world look in. Of course, search engines bring them here and you can increase traffic a bit if you drop in phrases like "big tits" or "banana beard". Searches have brought me people who queried, "how to say ur gay in mandarin".  What a disappointment I must be for them. What is odd is that Google patrols this blog endlessly and these referrals come from way back. I did a piece about Eddie Stobart over a year ago and I get about one referral a week hitting on that article. I also get about one a week for  "Scottish Racism". (Well, if there isn't a perceived problem, nobody would be asking about it would they?) Of course, just dredging up this stuff will perpetuate it.

I would like again to thank all those who commented this week. My demographic seems to be white heterosexual males over 50 like me, for whom the graphic is A la recherche du temps perdu, though there is the occasional lady, which is nice. (That's a guess of course, based upon rant factors, name-checking of obscure sixties bands and general crustyness)

As I write, there is feverish speculation that a General Election is about to be called. If it is, I shall no doubt have something to say. But you can bet that as I write, Gordon Brown is crouched in a fetal position, beset with indecision, screaming at advisors and consigning Nokias to Third World re-cycling schemes and blubbing like the nitwit from Wittenburg, "To be or not to be, that is the question".

I like to give readers of this blog something musical to enjoy, which, by the way you can always "acquire" by by clicking on the divshare logo.
So, here are the Feelgoods with a little recreational Huntin', Shootin', and Fishin'

Doll by Doll

Can you think of a 59 year-old who attended Kirkaldy High School in Fife. Not all of them are famous; some sank into despair and drug dependency and alienated their colleagues. Had Gordon Brown made something of himself like fellow pupil, Jackie Leven, and been a member of Doll by Doll, and the world might have been a better place.

Try this track. It's called Butcher Boy, from Doll by Doll. Give it time, its a slow starter, a bit like Freebird. DBD is an incredible melange of soul, California soft rock and that kind of gritty observation you get with Elbow. All kinds of references came to mind, and they are unique, but check out also Giant Sand, Wishbone Ash and Captain Beyond in this respect.

Boys Toys #2322

Sports cars, even top of the range sports cars, never looked anything other than cars built for the road. They were always firmly within the realms of reality, not fantasy. You would never see Spiderman, for example, driving a Lotus Elise. Even Batman would feel a bit daft bundling his cape into a Gumpert. They just never fulfilled that childhood dream that the future would be filled with things that looked, well, looked as if they were from the future.

Until Now.

This is the Lamborghini Reventon Roadster. Photographing it in Greece is illegal. The Chinese tried to hack into its nine million gigabyte engine management system but only succeeded in downloading its entire collection of Carpenters Albums. Footballers aren't clever enough to unlock the doors and some say it can fake an orgasm. All I know is...I won't be able to buy one anytime soon, since I have just forked out a ton for a new battery.

And did you notice, children? The little dancing people seem to be enjoying the music too!

Nigel Farage is a Hero of the United Kingdom

If only, if only the nasty tit-scratching, arse grabbing grubby troughers who infest Parliament could come anywhere near the stature of Nigel Farage. This is what he told Mr Rumpy Pumpy, and you know, he gets my Hannan Award for tearing a Five Star Plonquer a New Arsehole:

"I don't want to be rude," he began.
"But you know, really, you have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk."
To loud protests, Mr Farage continued: "The question that I want to ask and that we are all going to ask is: who are you? I had never heard of you; nobody in Europe had ever heard of you. I would like to ask you, Mr President: who voted for you? And what mechanism - I know democracy is not popular with you lot - what mechanism do the peoples of Europe have to remove you? Is this European democracy?"
"Sir, you have no legitimacy in this job at all, and I can say with confidence that I can speak on behalf of the majority of the British people in saying: we do not know you, we do not want you, and the sooner you are put out to grass, the better."

Let's make plans for Nigel. Put him in Parliament so that he can make sure some harm comes to his fellow Parliamentarians.
Here's XTC, the poplular beat combo having fun with "Making Plans for Nigel" And did you notice, children, the little dancing people are enjoying it too!

Brown should be sectioned

Let's face it, Brown is Radio Rental. Barking. Two coupons short of a free packet of Quavers.
The News today in the Guardian, following the Rawnsley allegations, confirms what we all knew.

Rawnsley writes: "The chancellor's fury was titanically demented even by his standards. 'You put fucking Milburn up to it,' Brown raged down the phone. 'This is factionalism! This is Trotskyism! It's fucking Trotskyism!' Blair was nonplussed. He had not even seen the article. After the call, he then read it and phoned Milburn to say it was excellent. They laughed about Brown's hysterical reaction."

Don't let Bliar off either. He's the shit who did this to us. So, as we know, this country is being run by somebody who should be in a strait jacket. And all because of the Lobby correspondents who, instead of working for a living, are content to be spoon fed stories and shut up when they are told to, and because of others, like Jack Straw, and Harperson, and Darling, who are clinging on for dear life.

I'd say it was nothing less than Treason.

Why Vote - A new book from Biteback

Iain Dale has published a useful book which sets out to explain the main reasons for voting for different political parties. Except he did not include the BNP or UKIP, though it appears UKIP "failed to deliver a publishable manuscript in time"

All very well, but he has included the Greens, who are not actually doing as well as the BNP and who by the way are a legitimate political party with an elected MEP

I would draw Iain's attention to this:

http://wrinkledweasel.blogspot.com/2009/05/does-bnp-have-more-legitimate-electoral.html

in which I show that in 2007:

The BNP fielded 119 candidates and lost 85 deposits.
Greens fielded 203 candidates and lost 179 deposits.
Percentage of votes in seats contested, Green 3.29, BNP 4.19

And that result comes in spite of the fact that the Greens get blanket coverage explicitly or implicitly on a daily basis in the MSM, they are stagnating as a political force.

Bias by omission? Go figure.

An aged man is but a paltry thing

An aged man is but a paltry thing - a tattered coat upon a stick. (Sailing to Byzantium)

The thing I love about Yeats, his profound and strangely appealing grasp of age and mutability.

When You are Old
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you..

These days, I sit, nodding by the fire, and look over at my darling, and these words are so true and so right and so of this time.

Those Frenchies

The Frogs (whoops, that's a bit ooh, a bit er) have been branded racists. And in other news, the Pope..

According to the Daily Mail, the French Rail company, SNCF, are embroiled in a row over a poster they displayed in stations, warning passengers to look out for Romanians, who may be hanging around waiting to steal from them. Well, that's no way to speak about fellow members of the EU is it? The poster translates thus:

Translated into English, it reads: 'Over the past few weeks there have been worries with Romanians.

‘Indeed, a number of bag thefts have been noted.

‘We ask you to re-double your vigilance. Besides, all sightings of Romanians must be reported.'

How do you spot a Romanian? Actually, it is not as difficult as it looks, at least, it is not difficult to spot all the scum of the earth, particularly people from former East European countries, who congregate around many of the railway stations in France and Switzerland, for the sole purpose of stealing from you, asking for money, or dealing in drugs.

One of the many benefits of our wonderful multicultural Europe.

Life in Labour England, number 45484899

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/21/photographer-films-anti-terror-arrest

There is little to say about this, other than the fact that the police are arresting people, who quite reasonably are going about their business and wish to assert their legal rights.
My son is a documentary film maker. He is clever enough to avoid trouble, hence his smart decision not to film his detention by Maoist separatists in Nepal, or indeed, to take his camera out of the bag. I just wonder when I am going to get a phone call telling me he has been arrested for doing his job, in a British town centre, in broad daylight.

Here is a video of an encounter with City of London Police. I was shaking with anger and also,fear, when I saw this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/dec/11/photographs-police-anti-terrorism-laws

These policemen, whoever they were, were more interested in macho posturing than maintaining the security of our country. They don't like to be recorded either, because then, they cannot fit you up. Bastards.

Council Tax Increases

Councils in England are chirruping that they shall be imposing some of the lowest rises of Council Tax in recent history. Whoopee! The lowest rises. Yes, as if we should give them a big pat on the back. This is a time when public spending should be reeled in, and when people should get back some of the massive contributions they make to profligacy by Local Authorities, who, for some reason, feel they must run every little aspect of our lives.

Some Authorities, such as South Norfolk and Manchester are actually freezing Council Tax this year. There may well be others, but if a huge, Labour controlled metropolitan council such as Manchester can do it, and a modest Tory Controlled rural council can do it, why not all of them? Well, they are just used to spending. Spending more and more of your money.

Me? I am very happy thank you. Since the SNP gained power in Scotland, Council Tax has been frozen across the board, for the last three years. Radical thinking, radical solutions. It can be done.

Of course, there is a reason why Councils have suddenly had an attack of faux parsimony. It is an election year, and the Government has threatened to cap any council that sets their rise to high. Look forward to even bigger rises next year if Labour win the GE.

Another Gay Post

Ok, regulars, you know me. It is impossible to pin me down on this one. Go on, I challenge you. (Google "wrinkled weasel" and "gay") I occasionally do "Gay" stuff. I don't mean in my personal life, of course. But I talk about gay issues. Usually I talk about them because they are relevant to us all and over the years they have affected me weirdly, since I was often mistaken for gay and lived with a raging Queen in a remote cottage in  1971, which, believe me, in those days was not as easy as you think.

Where I stand is this. I have no problem what other people do in private. Indeed, I shall go further than this and state that I prefer not to see it as an issue at all. I cannot say much more, but there are people close to me who may or may not be gay and it makes bugger all difference. In fact, if they are, they will probably need some extra love because they are going to find that not everybody thinks the same way.

What I don't accept is militant gay stuff or people who glory in perversion (gay or straight) and then expect us to treat them like heroes and martyrs. I absolutely hate militancy of all kinds, that in your face you have to accept me crap. I have to accept nobody, unless I want to. I also believe that gays get treated with kid gloves (it is almost impossible not to get into double entendres) in some quarters, and in the interests of true equality, they should be able to take the shit just as much as anybody. (Mark Oaten take note) Personally, I abhor loud outpourings of gayness, or fox-huntingness, or animal rightsness, or blackness, or greenness or indeed party politics and sectarianism. Stonewall and their ilk are to me an anathema, as is the fact the London Gay Men's Choir gets government funding. The idea of men in sequinned jock straps parading through Brighton to "celebrate the LGBT community" is frankly sick making.

And so it is that we come to the news that the good ol' C of E is inching into the 19th Century. According to Ruth Gledhill's report in The Times:

Senior bishops in the Lords have told The Times that they will support an amendment to the Equality Bill next month that will lift the ban on civil partnership ceremonies in religious premises. The amendment would remove the legislative prohibition on blessings of homosexual couples and open the door to the registration of civil partnerships in churches, synagogues, mosques and all other religious premises.

I applaud this move with my whole heart, for there is no such thing as the sin of Love.

Fragments

Speed is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane. Time change. You lose, you gain. Makes no difference so long as you keep taking the pills. But sooner or later you've got to get out because it's crashing, and then all at once the frozen hours melt out through the nervous system and seep out the pores. (Withnail and I)

Time, like a drug seems mutable. As if it was only yesterday. Where were you when Kennedy was shot? Where were you when Princess Diana died? Where were you on 9/11? What were you doing? What were you feeling? What about your friends and family?

To things trapped in time, it is linear, except that hunger, fear, memory, health and myriad sensations are timeless. When Tollund Man was hanged, 300, perhaps 400 years BC, his last conscious thoughts were unlikely much different to you or I would be if we were about to be executed. It may not have been fear. It may have been outrage at his treatment, like Saddam Hussein, or it may have been a quiet acknowledgment of his fate; an offering to appease the gods. He was almost certainly hungry, something we can all understand. But for sure, his feelings and emotions and thoughts were hardly any different to ours. Indeed, there are plenty of written accounts of people - mainly important people - contemporary with Tollund Man, which evince the A to Z of human emotion.

One of my favourite places in the British Isles is Hadrian's Wall. Its remains, sturdy in places, and redolent with the minutiae of Roman Life, down to the latrines and the stuff that we all have, is like looking at the stars, it evokes for me the knowledge of the eternal. There is enough information about The Wall to give us vivid images of life at the time including little, what you might call, text messages from one young girl to another, written almost 2000 years ago:

Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings. On 11 September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present (?). Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send him (?) their greetings.  I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail. To Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of Cerialis, from Severa.

It may have been a 9/11 she did not forget.

Music: Alex Harvey again - Roman Wall Blues. Words by W.H.Auden


And did you notice, children, that the little dancing people are enjoying it too!

What all the Labour Spin Doctors Agree On

All the big hitters, Prescott, Mandy, Screaming Al Campbell, all agree that Gordon Brown is a driven man, with a vision, who "likes to get things done".
 Yeah, like indebting our children personally for £30,000 each and destroying our Education system and our culture. Hitler liked to get things done. So did Churchill and so did Mrs Thatcher. At the end of the day, it is not getting things done that counts, it is the way you do them. The end does not justify the means.

Idiot Woman

I don't normally plough the depths of the Daily Mail, but I did, and came up with this pic. It is Kerry Katona, late of Iceland, pictured here with her child sitting on her lap, and wearing a seatbelt. Is this very stupid woman aware that, in the even of a full on car smash, her lovely child will be de-capitated?

Bullying - "part of the daily experience"

I was bullied at work, more than once, mercilessly, relentlessly. One of the "caring" professions. People often describe that sick feeling when you wake up and have to turn out for work, knowing that there is going to be another day of agony. Some of us are unable to prevent it. There are many reasons. With me, it is an inability to see the signs before it is too late, for the clever bully, covers his or her tracks and can always use the little bit of power they have over you to mask the deed. Bullying is like a slow freezing wind; pernicious, inveigling and ultimately incapacitating. It can take so many forms and is such a long game that it is inherently undectectable until it is too late. 

As for the revelations about Downing Street, the quote that registered with me was a Number Ten insider, discussing Gordon Brown, who told the Guardian:

"His intense bouts of anger are unremarkable to anyone who has worked closely with him. You just have to put up with this stuff. It is part of the daily experience, almost part of the furniture. He would behave in that way constantly. He suffers from a massive paranoia and an inability to accept blame, yet he runs a blame culture that allows him to blame others. He does not seek to win an argument, he just seeks to bully. If you have not worked closely with him before, it is truly shocking"

 These atmospheres normalize very quickly, and anyone coming into such a poisonous situation is bound to be unable to express shock, since not only are they the newbie, they are unlikely to be fearful at that stage since bullying does not reveal itself with a fanfare. No, it is the slow release of vitriol and despair.

The anecdote I find most revealing is that apparently, Brown does not know, and is not minded to know, the names of his bodyguards. So when the time comes to take a bullet for the PM, you ask yourself, "do I really want to die, do I really want it to end this way, for a cunt who never even asked my name?"

For a visual anecdote, and one that backs up truth about the way Gordon Brown treats little people, and the way the head of the most powerful nation on earth treats little people, just watch this clip again:

Cold comfort zone

It has been a long time since I was this cold for this long. In fact, the last time I endured it, I got a massive dose of arthritis and became very ill indeed. That was in the winter of 1978. There have been one or two other times since, but nothing like that. Self neglect did it. I was young and invulnerable.

Right now, we have been burning coal, logs, electricity, spare pets, copies of Asian Babes (I buy it for the "spot the bindi" competition) and anything combustible.  It is not that the house is cold, but everywhere else is. One of the comfort zones of my childhood was my maternal grandparents house, which had central heating, something of a novelty then, and brand new Axminster carpets everywhere. Their house smelled of fresh carpet, warm electrical appliances and coffee and biscuits. And good cooking - cakes and baking kind of cooking. They moved a lot because my grandfather was a senior journalist who seemed to go from one job to another with rapidity and apparent ease including Motor Cycle News, Angling Times and a gardening paper. He was called Gerard, as was one of his sons, and so was I. Their homes were always spotless and fresh.

What follows is something that I believe to be almost certainly true. (memory is a dangerous thing) The family was at the centre of an incredible menage a quatre. In the late fifties, I think it was, there were two couples who were all the best of friends. One of these friends was my great uncle, the other a lifelong colleague of my grandfather. And then one day, they swapped wives. Just like that. Like many things in those days, it was never discussed, but eventually became clear, as these things do, when one is a child. As far as I know they were perfectly happy thereafter.

I do not have the imagination to invent the kind of scenario that had led to this extraordinary affair, but it must have raised a few eyebrows at the time.

One of the four died, at the age of 96, in October 2006. Here is the report of her funeral in the Boston Standard, a paper that my father, my aunt, my uncles, my step uncle, and many other friends and family worked on, and which my grandfather became managing group editor of. I remember Bethia. She was delightful, even to me as a young boy.

BETHIA Periam, 96, whose funeral was on Monday at Lincoln Crematorium, married into a Boston family in 1932 and lived in the county for the rest of her life.

She was married for 28 years to Lionel Robinson, editor-manager of the Lincolnshire Standard for more than 40 years.

During this period she played an active role in the community, being a long-serving committee member of the Boston Blind Society – during which time she translated books into Braille – and a member of the congregation of Fishtoft parish church and an enthusiastic bellringer there.
She later married the late Jack Periam and the couple spent many years managing village shops. They lived variously in Morton, near Bourne, Minting, Alford, Metheringham and finally at Cliff Court, Burton Road, Lincoln.
Bethia's last few years were spent at Canwick House Residential Home.

She is survived by her two sons, Anthony Robinson, of Fulbeck, and Stewart Robinson, of Sutterton, plus seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Just a life. Just me passing by a life I hardly knew. A young boy of say, ten, could never know. People who were big and old and at ease in a world I hardly understood; drinking, smoking, laughing, driving in cars. I missed so much.

Prime Minister's Staff called National Bullying Helpline

This is massive. Messrs Watt and Price can be written off by number Ten as embittered ex employees with an axe to grind. Rawnsley is a journalist with a book to sell. I am not casting doubt on their versions of events, but when the National Bullying helpline, aka ordinary people, reveals it has taken calls from staff at Number Ten Downing Street you can be sure that the Government has lost control of the narrative of deceit.

But Ms Pratt, chief executive of the National Bullying Helpline, said that was sending out "the wrong message" to other chief executives or bosses who are accused of bullying: "Outright denial is just non-credible in today's age".
She told the BBC: "Over recent months we have had several inquiries from staff within Gordon Brown's office.

"Some have downloaded information; some have actually called our helpline directly and I have spoken to staff in his office."

(source, Incredibly! the BBC!)

Mandelson has been doing the rounds today in a traffic calming exercise, but even the Master of the Dark Arts cannot make this go away. Ms Pratt describes his denial as "nonsense and not credible" When the BBC carries this kind of story, the tectonic plates are moving. This has legs, and it will run.

My prediction: Brown is toast

addendum:
I took a look at Nick Robinson's blog, something I have not done for months. It is a heavily moderated blog (I am banned), and on principle I don't touch that kind, but already the Labour spin machine has gone into a two pronged attack, fielding brand new commenters who happen to find this story in some way offensive. The line they are using is to try and link the NBH with the Tories, and the other is to suggest they have breached client confidentiality. Well, what would you do? All they have left is the techniques beloved of the Watergate era, but now apparently quite normal procedure. It's too late boys, the bucket has sprung so many leaks you can take a power shower of shit under it.

Golden Arches Shame

We are sophisticates, we are the elite. We have rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers. So now it is time for confessions. At which exotic locations have you shunned local culture and gone for a Big Mac?

My McDonald's shame began in Lausanne, 30 years ago, when alighting from a train in Switzerland, for my first visit of many, I went straight to the adjacent Golden Arches and quaffed a Fishburger. It was eight in the morning.

Dr Weasel is worse, though there are mitigating circs. Whilst on a freebie (that you pay for) Dr Weasel had a Big Mac and Fries in Helsinki. Bearing in mind that a main meal in Finland is cheese on toast, and a feast is cheese on toast with a dill pickle, she was, by comparison with the local fare, having a blow-out.

Leave your confessions of McShame here. (Or is it just Weasels?)

In search of the Northern Lights

Dr Weasel's next freebie (that you pay for) is in Lake Como in April. She assures me that, rather than go for a pizza, that may include the head of a local hood, she will try and find a Wagamama. And at least there will be no mozzarella contaminated with dioxin, or Mafia-friendly olive oil that is really Duckhams 20/50 with green colouring.

IDS and the Soul of the English People

Peter Ackroyd, writing in his transcendent biography of Charles Dickens asks,

"..can we not say that Dickens captured the soul of the English People, as  much in its brooding melancholy as in its broad humour, in its poetry as well as its fearlessness, in its capacity for outrage and pity as much as its tendency towards irony and diffidence?"

The ability to make each word hit home, to count, to nail the idea, is what writers seek. Dickens did this, and Ackroyd is a worthy biographer of Dickens. These few word seem to me to distill that elusive quality of Englishness.

I shall take just the one phrase; capacity for outrage and pity. How expressive is this of Englishness?

Not only is it at the core of English values, it explains them. Others would call it fairness, but it is much more human than that. Fairness is the glib resort of the Politically Correct. This is personal. A capacity for outrage and pity. It requires not only recognition of others, but empathy; outrage at injustice,  and pity, or compassion, (lest we confuse "pity" with condescension) for those who are not as lucky.

Which brings me to the political part. The standard refrain of the Left is that Tories are uncaring, that they only serve an elite. This is palpable nonsense. True, they are the party of capitalism, which serves those who can work the system, but Conservatism, the fruits of Conservatism can be shared, and are shared. Thinkers on Tory social policy, like Iain Duncan Smith, evince values that demonstrate "Englishness". IDS grabbed the headlines recently, though the headlines had to filter these through the prism of faux moral outrage beloved of sub-editors:

"Broken Homes damage infant brains, says Tory", screamed the headline of last weekend.
IDS's evidence for this is based upon research into brain development and as defined by IDS, he means neglect in the context of a family environment with multiple problems. You can argue all you like whether the research is valid, but the truth stares you in the face. Kids from poor backgrounds are disadvantaged. If he is being reported accurately, he believes:

..the babies’ brains failed to grow because their parents did not offer them “nurture and support”. Dysfunctional parents also failed to bond with their babies, speak to them or read to them. Often the children witnessed violence and angry scenes at home.
He said family breakdown meant that in many cases the children never caught up on their education and tended to become drug addicts, criminals or alcoholics.

What he is not saying is that all broken homes produce drug addicts - much as detractors wish to spin it. And as I say, you either get the drift or not. As someone who came from such a background myself, I can tell you that it fucks you up big time. Nowhere does Iain Duncan Smith suggest this is unique to council house dwellers on benefits either.

The Times managed to get a quote which I suppose sums up the degree of blindness, lethargy and lack of empathy expressed by the Left:

Katherine Rake, chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute*, questioned Duncan Smith’s assertions and accused him of generalising about families from poor backgrounds.
“It is critical not to confuse family dysfunction with family type. Regrettably, poor parenting affects families of all different types — likewise good family relationships exist in all types of families,” she said.
“Families tell us that they want politicians to sort issues such as the economy and housing and not to sit in judgment on the often complex and difficult choices they make about how they live their family lives.” (Times)

Lurking in that miasma of soulless codswallop is the central column of PC, which is that you must not disriminate or judge. My response to this is, well then, how do you begin to attack the problem if you will not allow yourself to make a judgement, and a particlularly sound judgement at that?

But I digress. My point was that you have to be concerned enough to think about these issues and look at the data. IDS does this and can be said to be passionate about it, if you like, a capacity for outrage and pity. You have to be looking, seeking, trying to find solutions to what is a perennial problem, and you do not do this by refusing to consider the information that is as plain as day.

IDS has mooted the fairly uncontroversial idea of encouraging children to do sport. But what is interesting, and exemplifies his agenda is this:

This project is not about finding the next Wayne Rooney. It is about showing that sport has psychological and social benefits that can help rebuild our broken society, and about giving poor children the chances their middle-class counterparts take for granted.(Telegraph)

IDS has not pretended that middle class kids do not do better, of course they do, but instead of attempting to penalise  and persecute the lucky ones, he instead wishes to help those who are not so lucky. A capacity for outrage and pity.

By contrast, New Labour is set on a course of revenge and retribution, driven by what is philosophically a brand of existentialism; they simply refuse to begin by acknowledging the basic inequalities of life, whilst scapegoating those who are lucky.

One is born out of love, the other out of baser motives. Perhaps Dickensian then, but the Soul of Englishness, and those values which express a capacity for outrage and pity.

Perhaps it is time to revive that Soul once again.


*The Chair of the Family and Parenting Institute is one Fiona Millar, better known to you as Mrs Alastair Campbell. The rest of the organisation is stacked with Labour friendlies and gets the majority of its funding from the Government. Funnily enough, The Times does not mention this, their only quote that is negative.

She's distracted

Can any of my wonderfully musical visitors add music to this? It may need a bit of help with the scanning, and the syntax, and the content.

You want a Caeser Salad at the Burger Bar
The Serving Girl wants to be a Star
She's on a chart to impress her mother
She's texting with one thumb and sucking the other

You ask for Guacamole but it's just mushy peas

There's no getting away from a social disease

Chorus:

She's distracted
She's distracted
you can tell by the way she acted
the light is on but there's no one there
You just shed a tear
But she didn't even care
She's on a chart to impress her mother
She's texting with one thumb and sucking the other

©wrinkled weasel 2009

(Please, no references to giving up the day job - I don't have one)

Is this the real feeling among Tories or a double bluff?

Michael Heseltine:

"If I was a betting man, my money would be on the election resulting in a hung parliament with David Cameron as Prime Minister." 

Michael Heseltine has always been pictured, somewhat unfairly, as a figure of fun. Some remember him swinging the ceremonial mace in the Commons. A colleague said of him, "The trouble with Michael is that he had to buy his own furniture" -  a quote wrongly attributed to Alan Clark. Clark only repeated the comment in his diaries and judged it to be "snobby, but cutting".

So OK, he is a Europhile, but he was wise enough (and possibly informed enough) to predict that the Irish "No" vote would be overturned.

"I would guess that some way will be found to enable the treaty to be ratified" 

said Heseltine with the face of a professional poker player who had a Straight Flush in his hand, a full year before the Irish were pursuaded to vote the "right" way.

So this man knows a thing or two. If I was being Machiavellian, what better way to frighten the grass roots in to action than to predict a hung parliament - a sort of double bluff. However, Heseltine is, and always was his own man, and perhaps, there may be a few more nervously twitching apparatchiks at Tory Central tonight.

Relax in a Berkline Chair

For those who need some down time.

What's innit

Thanks to those who did the little poll on the right. Not scientific, I know, but interesting nevertheless. I might do a slightly more probing poll in the future. It seems politics is overwhelmingly popular. Music is not as popular as I thought. Whatever "miscellaneous" is, it is popular, as is "personal stuff". Probably the most useful to me is the reasonably positive vote for "personal stuff" because I cannot be sure how boring or otherwise that is, since it is about me and accordingly just plain subjective. I did not have a "humour" category, but then again, the stuff I think is funny never seems to go down well. Any suggestions here are appreciated. Honest, I don't want strokes, I genuinely have no idea how this blog goes down. I do however, mean to do the stuff I like whatever..and that is what blogging's about. Ye can always get yer own.

Pismronuciation

Why is Retina and Vagina pronounced differently?

A Conservative Future

I visit Iain Dale and Guido perhaps every other day, but never fail to miss The Spectator, beloved of Old Tories. Anyone who has done likewise cannot have failed to see a common thread emerging, and that is that nobody is getting excited about a Tory win, should there be one. Worse, for the Conservatives and Dave in particular, is that with almost one voice, people are asking, quite rightly, "What am I being asked to vote for?" Nobody knows. All we do know is that by voting Tory we can get rid of Labour. Is that it? Has 13 years of Government-heavy, centre politics taught us nothing? We need radical solutions to massive problems and right now, David Cameron is not fielding any. Worse than that, he is avoiding any discussion of the two most pressing issues of our time - Europe and Immigration. He can go on about the economy as much as he likes, it is hardly a controversial hot potato, especially since there is not a fag paper thickness of difference in policies.

The choice in England and Wales is Labour or Not Labour. In Scotland, we have the choice of voting SNP. They do have alternative policies which, by English standards, are radical, such as getting rid of PFI and Nuclear Arms. It does not matter if you agree with them or not. At least it is a real alternative.

There is a danger of sleepwalking into another decade of stagnation. It could mean three decades of stagnation in the end, and by that I mean moral, economic and social stagnation. At a time when the world is turning faster than ever, standing still for that length of time means the death of a once great nation.

What has been happening has been a systemic undermining of what is considered to be a "British" way of life. The examples are many, but take the Law. The law is no longer the servant and protector of the people, it is a tyrant. Our freedom as individuals has been paired to the bone. That is not something which can be addressed in one Parliament. It will take years to change all the Quangos, abolish the Government funded, spurious single interest pressure groups and to bring in a generation of people who think differently. Just look at the pace of change in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement. Twelve years on and they are still bickering and still, there is institutional sectarianism.

Another example is Multiculturalism, the failed social experiment which we now learn was foisted upon us by stealth, for political reasons. It will take nothing short of the kind of policies promulgated by the BNP to reverse the damage done to British values and British culture. In a country where Christians are arrested for offending Muslims, you know it has gone too far.

So, none of this is going to be addressed by David Cameron. We have an indicator of the Conservative future with the latest crop of wafty liberal centre politics types who are currently becoming Prospective Parliamentary Candidates. Granted, many are high calibre candidates with good reason to go for a seat in Parliament, but frankly, as a group, they are deliberately at one end of the Tory spectrum.

Do I have a solution? I doubt there is one that would satisfy you, but I am at heart a Libertarian - I just want to be left alone.

Pete Atkin, John Bellany, and me

There has been some blether about the good old days on some of the blogs I read. Perhaps it is just down to being of a certain age, but there are elements of the past that bring me warm feelings and a knowledge that certain moments can never be re-captured. Since I often associate these memories with music - certain albums - I find that is the best way to encapsulate what I recall of those times.

I listened a lot to the John Peel show throughout the Seventies. John Peel was in my mind a kind of prophet. He resolutely stuck to his principles when it came to encouraging musicians and playing new work. Of the many people he brought to the attention of the cognoscenti was Pete Atkin. Atkin and Australian writer, Clive James, turned out a handful of albums in the Seventies and then left the music business to become a radio producer in Bristol, whilst Clive James, who wrote the lyrics, did rather well. There have been revival tours, but none have propelled the duo to international stardom. The good thing to come out of the modest revival of interest in Pete Atkin is that the albums are once again easily obtained. There were decades when vinyl copies of "The Secret Drinker" were being offered at crazy prices.

About the time Atkin was in Bristol making radio programmes, my efforts in that direction had more or less ground to a halt, though I did do a one off job for BBC radio Bristol. However, when "The Secret Drinker" came out in 1974, my involvement in broadcasting amounted to doing a bit of hospital radio and my glittering career was ahead of me.

By 1974, I had dropped out of art college after a year of a fine art course. I was in no great shape, having more or less fallen to pieces and been put back together again. Among other things, mostly self-inflicted, my tutor, one John Bellany, was a drunken and violent alcoholic and had assaulted me during a class. Had this happened today he would have been arrested and his career as a teacher would have ended. But all I did was scuffle away, having failed to impress myself or the tutors as a painter. Nowadays, I live about five miles from where Bellany was born, in Port Seton. His work hangs in the major art galleries of the world and he has had major surgery to repair the damage done by booze. I was not doing that much better. I arrived for my first day in Croydon College of Art high as a kite, absolutely convinced I was levitating and that people around me were watching me fly.

By the time I had discovered Pete Atkin and bought "Secret Drinker", I had recovered sufficiently to get myself a Vespa and hold down a job in Newcastle. But that's another story.

Here then, is "I see the Joker" from "Secret Drinker" by Pete Atkin and Clive James. Every track on the record is brilliant. I recommend it.


I dedicate this to Clams Linguini.

WW's lost consonants

When I emailed Glen Baxter for permission to reproduce his work on here, I got a nice email back from him giving the go-ahead. I have not heard from Graham Rawle, so here is my homage to his wonderful series.

This is how it should be done:

Gately/Moir - PCC verdict

The Press Complaints Commission has not upheld the complaint made against Jan Moir for her piece in the Daily Mail upon the death of Stephen Gately, when she wrote:

I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy.

The story was ill considered. A young man died.

But to see the gays jumping up and down screaming "homophobia" devalues the word. It now seems to be aimed at anybody who criticizes gays, in any way.

There is a certain type of homosexual who glories in the worst kind of perversions, including some of the high profile activists who are criticizing the PCC. A lot of people are ok with what goes on in private, but would rather not have it thrown in their faces. That is all. When someone writes "the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy" they are writing in the context of a hysterical outpouring of second-hand grief, of the Princess Di kind, not only about someone who is gay, but about someone who is, whether he wanted it or not, a public figure who was instantly made out to be some kind of hero.

This poor young man died while his "civil partner" was having sex with a rent boy. If you can pretend that is not seedy, you are living in la la land, and had this been a heterosexual story, most people would have condemned it as such.

The only thing I can say in favour of this story not appearing, is if we dispensed with the idea that people who are famous for something are remarkably interesting in other aspects of their lives. They are not. They are just like you and me, only they have been extraordinarily lucky. Some have been talented, that is beyond doubt, but Stephen Gately? He was invented!

Weasel certainly understood the dialectic of neo-textual society

The world of Glen Baxter is worth revisiting from time to time. Baxter's retro juxtapositions of genre, with their wonderful camp renditions of 30's boys adventure illustrations and absurd captions always brought a smile to my face. And of course, he is still going strong, and his work is published all over the world.

There are things out there that are real, and possibly dafter, such as this gem, which is apparently quite genuine:

The caption reads "see if you don't make out a pair of wires going down over the edge of the bluff"

(Glenn Baxter images reproduced with permission)

Falklands - the posturing begins

There may be 60 billion barrels of oil lurking in Falkands territorial waters, and recently there has been a bit of rhetoric from the Argies. They are starting what appears to be a diplomatic row, claiming (as usual) that the Malvinas belongs to them and accordingly, any oil they may flush from the ocean floor. So far, this has resulted in Argentina announcing that ships travelling between the country and the Falklands will require a permit. That is all. They are not yet threatening to bomb Port Stanley.

So, what is it all about? First there is the long-standing dispute about who "owns" the Falklands. How you view this depends upon whether you think places like this have the right to self-determination, and since, to all intents and purposes, the Falkland Islanders are British and wish to remain so, having colonised since the early 19th Century.

What are the stakes? Well, 60 billion barrels is a lot more than the 40 billion barrels sucked up so far from the North Sea. So it's enough to run a few Chelsea Tractors with plenty left to keep Gordon Brown in a fantasy world of largesse and grandeur. The trouble is, this is exploration - so far there has been no recovery of commercially viable oil. At the moment, the Falkland Islanders get a lot of revenue from Squid, and there is probably not enough of the slimy invertebrate to satisfy the needs of that slimy invertebrate.

What is the rhetoric? Well, our old friend "Yuman rights" of course. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s president, said she would “work unceasingly for our rights in the Malvinas, for human rights.” A bit of background on Cristina reveals that she could not run a whelk stall, let alone a country. Argentina is perennially a shithole. Economically, it collapsed in 2001 and has still not recovered, having defaulted on Government Bonds and payments to the World Bank. A string of nationalisations has brought in some revenue, with the Government plundering private pension schemes as well.

Trade restrictions, however, are not unusual. The country has upset its neighbour, Brazil, by imposing them. Growth has increased slightly and is projected to continue in 2010, but this is largely due to public spending. (sound familiar) and the massaging of inflation indexes (sound familiar?). My assessment is that the Government of Argentina, and particularly the president (aided and abetted by her husband) are engaging in an increasingly wreckless series of initiatives which are driving the economy further into the poop (ditto?) A fairly prevalent view is that this affair is being trumped up to deflect attention from more pressing and real domestic issues.(see brackets passim)

What happens next is anybody's guess, but wouldn't it be just dandy if it reached a crisis just before a British General election?

The best and worst of Weasel's Hols

I am not great on holidays. That is to say, I am very attached to home comforts and consequently, my ideal holiday is one that replicates the habits and mores of Weasel Hall. The strict requirement for me is sunny, preferably warm, weather. Anything else is a bonus. Some of the best times I had were when I went Interrailing or the time when me and a couple of mates went down to the South of France in a Triumph Herald convertible. That was over 30 years ago, but I remember it in detail, particularly meeting up with the glamorous French friend of a friend with whom I became quite besotted at the time, and still keep in touch with, though that has now faded to a bi-annual exchange of emails.  I think, on balance, the best hols and the worst, were with the young Weasels, who have always added to the fun and made everything an adventure. It even made our camping hols bearable, especially when we had something called a Camplet, and the weather was kind to us.

It is not difficult to remember our worst holiday. We had booked a "luxury" gite in the Rhone Valley in summer. Oh how wonderful it looked in the tiny picture, but it was a nightmare. Nothing worked, after four hours the oven had failed to brown a chicken, the open fire had no source of fuel and it was cold and rainy. We tried to eat out and ended up a a terrible restaurant that served us a chicken leg on a plate of white sauce for about 15 quid. One of the Weasels got a nasty cut from the dishwasher hinge and we had to find a doctor on a Sunday. That was the highlight - the French doctor got up from his lunch, took us into his surgery and examined and treated the cut, and then waved us away with a smile and no bill. I damaged the car whilst reversing after an eight hour journey and on our return, tired and somewhat pissed off, the customs did not like the look of us and had everything out of the car. We were there for hours and had everything up to (but not including) the anal probe.

These days we seem to divide our time between Scottish islands with a few Weasels and just the two of us in Switzerland.

Book reviews

Last year I was in London at the same as Robert Vaughn, (the man from U.N.C.L.E.) who was there to promote his autobiography, which apparently, he had written himself. So yes, this may seem a bit tautologous to the pedants, but of course, most of the celeb books are written by ghost writers, which, I find a bit spooky. (geddit?)

Well, anyway, at the time, I was vaguely tempted to shell out nineteen quid, buy the book and meet the great man as he dutifully dedicated my copy to...me. And of course, this thought flitted through my mind, gaining traction for all of, say two seconds. And I am pleased to say, I am glad I did not buy the book because it's crap, but I have just finished a library copy. Any "Hustle" fans will be disappointed; it gets two lines in the whole rambling book. U.N.C.L.E. fans would be none the wiser either. We get gems such as "all the exotic locations were done on the studio lot at MGM". Yeah, I had figured that one out. It's a desultory, hack job that leaves you none the wiser about anything, with plodding anecdotes that go nowhere and a strange literary tick whereby he writes "I met a bloke. His name was (insert famous name here)" That and Vaughn's obsession with conspiracies. (A lot of the book goes into his theories about he assassination of Bobby Kennedy).He tells us at one point that his FBI file, retrieved under freedom of information laws, concludes that he not a security risk. And neither is he of any interest. A grade A stinker.

Not so the only work of modern fiction I have read in recent times. "The Woman in Black" by Susan Hill - she of the Speccie blog. There is not a lot I can say about this book except that when you have finished it, you will be sorry. But in a good way. It's a ostensibly a ghost story, but it is also the writing of an author who is a master of the craft. It's not D H Lawrence, or even M R James, but it delights in intertextuality; the kind that rewards those who have at least read Dickens or Conan Doyle, and yet is in no way derivative. Enough. Just read it!

Body Scanners and Yuman Rights

Look at the pictures below. Spot the difference. One bunch wants to kill people, randomly, brutally and change this country beyond recognition, the other bunch just want to collect their pensions and try not to freeze to death or end up sitting in their own piss in a cupboard. You my readers, may be bright enough to spot some crucial characteristics which might enable you to pick out the baddies, but the Government does not want to give us that chance.

When the notoriously inept, and aptly named "pants" bomber failed to blow up a US bound airplane, there was yet another round of hand wringing and heart rending debate about human rights and the right to privacy. It now emerges that the introduction of full body scanners may be illegal, though I am buggered if I can find a rational explanation for this.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission says it has “serious doubts” about the Government’s decision to install the devices at terminals across the country...
The watchdog says they might also break discrimination law because Muslim or Arab travellers cannot find out if they are being unfairly targeted by security staff.  (Telegraph)

Now according to a Department of Transport spokesman:

"we are also committed to ensuring that all security measures are used in a way which is legal, proportionate and non-discriminatory."

Well that's just fine and dandy then. So far, all domestic bombers have looked like this

They have all been males under 30, and many of them have worn Islamic beards. Indeed, the latest era of home grown bombing is predicated upon Islamic extremism. So what is all this bullshit about "non-discriminatory"? Of course it should be discriminatory. All those nasty young Muzzies who are thinking about blowing us up should be hunted down, and you are not going to tell me that arresting little old white ladies or indeed white males over 30, is going to do anything more than waste time and money.

It is time for the game to change. We cannot afford Political Correctness. We simply cannot afford it. Fuck community cohesion, most of them should not be here in the first place, since they have no interest whatsoever in integrating or being patriotic. We now learn that immigration has been a massive and deliberate attempt, a political attempt, at social engineering, This is so unbelievably crass and dangerous, that there should be a public inquiry into the assertions made by the former Number 10 man, Andrew Neather:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1222769/Dishonest-Blair-Straw-accused-secret-plan-multicultural-UK.html

Let us make no mistake, we are at war with forces who are winning because of this government's gerrymandering and obsession with political correctness. How many more people are going to die at the hands of young male Asians before this sort of nonsense about "not being discriminatory" is treated with the contempt it deserves.

World Wide Web

I came across this site: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ which is on Jalopy's blogroll.
Sometimes I just have to control my urges. That's all.

Me? The 13th Duke of Wybourne? Here? In a sixth form girl's dormitory? At three o'clock in the morning? With my reputation? What were they thinking of?

The Face of a Killer?

Many years ago, perhaps nearly 17 or 18 years ago, I was coming to the end of a very difficult marriage that was about to end in divorce. I was shattered and broke, but I had taken the opportunity to visit friends, far away and was returning home by train. The carriage was almost full and I sat down at the end, in a seat that was on its own, with only one other facing it. This man sat down opposite me. His name is Ray Gosling.

Gosling was busy making notes in little red note books, the kind you could buy from Woolworths for sixpence, and to be honest I was not sure what was in store, since he looked very determined about something, in the way that determination seems a bit odd. Anyway, after a while, it clicked. I remembered who he was and where I had seen him. Ray Gosling was a very unusual and gifted broadcaster who appeared regularly on TV in the sixties and seventies, in news and current affairs shows, and who was by all accounts arty and bohemian and brilliant at his job. We got talking, and I found that he was easy to talk with and very easy-going altogether. These days, he comes across as a bit curmugeonly, but I did not get that. He was headed for the BBC and offered me a lift in his taxi when we arrived at the station, and since I was on my uppers and looking for work, he gave me a name and in a modest, mumbling way said I could mention him.


We now move forward to the present, Ray Gosling appeared in a programme about mercy killing, in which he admits suffocating someone with a pillow - someone he was close to and who was in pain.

 He says:

“I killed someone, once. He was a young chap, he’d been my lover and he got Aids.
“In a hospital one hot afternoon, the doctor said there’s nothing we can do. He was in terrible, terrible pain.
“I said to the doctor ‘leave me just for a bit’, and he went away, and I picked up the pillow and smothered him till he was dead.
“Doctor came back and I said ‘he’s gone’. Nothing more was ever said.”

Gosling is no stranger to difficulties. A few years ago he was on the verge of bankruptcy and his partner had died.

I know that there are arguments on both sides of this very difficult issue, but it is a measure of this man that he is prepared to go on record, a very public record, with his own views, regardless of the consequences.

PS: Ray Gosling always had a sort of trade mark, a well cut long overcoat which in the early years of Black and White TV appeared black, which made him look mean and moody and slightly out of sync with his surroundings. The BBC clip, shows him in his trademark long wool overcoat, now lighter and mellower, to go with his age maybe, and perhaps this short piece will give you a sense of the man and his motives. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/8516499.stm

Desperation Cocktails #2 The Full Brazilian

Dr Weasel is having the week off and has predictably gotten a bad case of Alice - the same thing that Christopher Robin went down with. I am poorly too (sympathy accepted) and have therefore declined to get in the car, go to the offy and get some gin.

And so, out of sheer desperation, he is the "what's left on the drinks shelf cocktail". I call it a Full Brazilian - since it includes the national spirit of Brazil and something peachy.
Equal Measures of

Cachaça
Creme de Peches
Triple Sec
juice of half a lemon per person
Build
loads of ice in a highball glass and top with soda.

By now, you may be wondering, "Why does the Weasel have such a comprehensive collection of odd beverages?" Well, it is all down to Lotte Von Madhaus, who donated her extraordinarily large cocktail kit to us when she went to live down south. Lotte currently lives in Knightsbridge, with someone who used to be in Dr Who.

BNP - de ja vu

This is the picture being  hawked around the papers today. It depicts Times journalist, Dominic Kennedy being ejected, with some force, from a BNP press conference where, apparently, he was deemed to be persona non grata. Matthew d'Ancona, writing about the incident declares: "the party represents a clear and present danger"

And the righteous are queuing up to condemn this as "the real face of the BNP" Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't, but it says no more (or everything) about the British National Party than the ejection of Walter Wolfgang from the Labour Party Conference says about New Labour. Not to mention his subsequent arrest under terrorist legislation, whereby the police were used as a blatant political tool.

 It seems to me you are merely being offered a choice of which Police State you wish to live in. If there is a difference, it's subtlety is beyond my comprehension. The soft left just about manage to get hysterical about a party that stands no chance of ever running this country, but which dares to say what cannot be any longer said. If you are looking for clear and present danger, Mr d'Ancona, you need look no further than the Labour Party.