Approaching

Remembrance Day is approaching.

On the Andrew Marr programme this morning Candy Staten wore a poppy.

Caroline Lucas MP wore two.

Presumably Jon Snow will continue his petulant refusal on Channel 4 News.

Harvest Festival

Preparations for Harvest Festival.

Fresh produce is given away afterwards, tins go to the local Food Bank.


...

A sop to the raucous lefties

Tony Blair has been gone for years now, and New Labour is dead and all but buried.

So is it not time that Silver Stick in Waiting (and Bluemantle Pursuivant and the Gentleman Usher to the Sword of State) are restored to the Royal Procession at the State Opening of Parliament?

They were only dropped by the Blair regime as a sop to the raucous lefties salivating at the prospect of using their "socialist" landslide to abolish the monarchy.

I look forward to a future Conservative government bringing forward legislation to restore the good old days (and before you think I am being frivolous, there is a lot of psychological kudos attached to the idea of turning back the clock - and even more to the idea of snubbing Tony Blair).

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2245&dat=19981016&id=Peg0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=KCEGAAAAIBAJ&pg=6910,5697450

Article about Englishness by Will Self

St George's Day seems an appropriate time to talk about this article about Englishness by Will Self which appeared in the Guardian on 18th January and which I have read several times since then.

It is a review of the article Will Self wrote about Englishness in 1994 and how he got things wrong.

Obviously being Will Self everything he says is suspect, but some interesting points are made.

"...where the ideas and practices of Englishness may have come from..."

"...the banking up of the baby boomer generation into a grey market at the end of the consumerist conveyor belt..."

"...the way ideal Englishness continues to inform and legitimate the real exercise of power."

"...Ireland was put to the sword by Parliament, not the monarch..."

"...London was a whirlpool... sucking in all the raw talent that ventured anywhere near it..."

"...the relationship of the British army to Englishness..."

But it's not an easy read.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/17/how-has-england-changed-will-self

A culture war waged by lefty teachers

Today is, as you must be aware by now, St George's Day.

Above:  here we see the village school in one of my favourite rural settlements (on the high moor, but in the midst of woods).  There is no mistaking the St George theme, with the gable above the main entrance decorated with red roses and shields of the English three lions and the flag of St George.  Pevsner says the building was designed by HG Gamble and put up in 1913 (the school closed in 2006).

Children attending this school would have been enjoined to live up to the patriotic ideals of St George.  There would have been no doubt over their "identity".  Englishness would have meant everything to them.

Above:  nearby is the village hall, designed by Thomas Dixon in a Tudor style and put up in 1910.  A few years later, during the First World War, patriotic plaques and slogans were added, including Britannia and St George.  The hall is still used by the local community.

Yesterday Newsnight broadcast a devastating expose of left-wing infiltration into the National Union of Teachers.  This has been going on for decades.  This is why St George's Day has been suppressed since the 1950s - it has in part been targeted in a culture war waged by lefty teachers (not all teachers are lefties, but a very significant proportion are).

Thank you Michael Gove for taking these people on.

Armistice Day

Today is Armistice Day.

In the office we have just had the two-minute silence.

Writing on 7th November Sunder Katwala, Director of British Future (sic), drew attention to poppy wearing among BME communities in the United Kingdom:  http://www.britishfuture.org/articles/news/million-british-muslims-reject-extremists-on-poppy-wearing/

"Remembrance has become increasingly inclusive" said Mr Katwala, drawing attention to BME "shared participation in its rituals".

"62 per cent of ethnic minorities wear the poppy" research by the latest Ethnic Minority British Election Survey (EMBES) is quoted as saying.

Taken at face value this is very heartening to assimilationists.  What more convincing proof of assimilation of the immigrant communities could be desired than the fact that BME people are commemorating the British participation in the Great War (with all that that implies).  "Mission accomplished" as George W Bush might say.

Except that it doesn't quite ring true.

Is British Future saying that if I went today (Armistice Day) to Leicester or Brixton or Bury Park in Luton I would see sixty per cent of the BME people there wearing poppies?

Not very likely is it.  I might be wrong and doing them an injustice.  But it's not very likely that 60% of the BME population in Southall and similar areas are wearing poppies today and stood respectfully silent at 11 o'clock (did any mosques have displays of poppies in the way that Anglican churches had displays - if so perhaps we could see some photographs?).

Extrapolating from the EMBES research, Mr Katwala tells us that the BME displays of poppy wearing matches "the ethnic composition of the armies which fought the First World War".  This is a disingenuous argument.  British Future have produced no evidence that the BME people who fought on the Western Front were the great grandparents of the BME people in the United Kingdom today, and common sense tells us that they probably are not (the recruitment of the Indian Army pre-1947 tended to be specific).

Just as "Muslim terrorism" cannot be blamed on the Muslim community now resident in the United Kingdom, so Muslim heroism on the Western Front in the Great War cannot be claimed by the Muslim community now resident in the United Kingdom.  The terrorists were responsible for the terrorism and the heroes were responsible for the heroism.  To push either blame or virtue onto the wider Muslim community is bogus.

Bonnie Greer feels the need to sneer

On St George's Day Bonnie Greer feels the need to sneer at St George as "Born in Turkey but a Greek mum from Palestine".

There is a lot wrong with this statement of course.  The legendary birthplace of St George was not Turkey but the Byzantine province of Cappodocia in the area of land that later became Turkey (the Turks did not arrive in the area until a thousand years later).  Palestine did not exist at the time either, it was the Greco-Roman colony of Palaestina (the area did not become "Arab" until the 7th century).

And in any case in the British Isles only the Anglicans regard St George as a valid saint, therefore he can be regarded as conceptually English and Anglican and saintly as his predecessor St Edward the Confessor or indeed (to pick a name at random) Dr Cosmo Gordon Lang - we the English Anglicans will choose which "saints" to honour, not Bonnie Greer or Daniel Trilling or Lee Jasper.

There was a lot of tittering yesterday at the ignorence of EDL supporters in thinking that the Brighton Pavilion was a mosque.

Is not Bonnie Greer's display of ignorence at least equally as bad?

And while the EDL supporters probably have the excuse of being failed by a dumbed-down state education system what excuse does Bonnie Greer have?  This is a person who has been made a Trustee of the British Museum with high-level access to any amount of historical experts.  Her ignorence is presumably entirely voluntary.

But there is a more important point to be made. 

If asked Bonnie Greer would tell you she is just trying to shake English people out of their monocultural complacency. 

In reality she is trying to make people doubt themselves.

Most people will just shrug this off.

But for vulnerable people, those who have no assets other than the communal assets of cultural identity, this is a rotten thing to do.  It will make them feel anxious and unsure about who they are.  It will make them think that even their identity is being taken away from them.

What a spiteful person Bonnie Greer is.

Easter Sunday

I was trying to think of an image that would illustrate Easter Sunday, and I remembered the east window of Christ the Saviour church in Ealing which I looked at earlier this month.

Bomb damage during the Second World War destroyed all the original stained glass, and this window was put in about 1952.

It is by Hugh Easton, who is in my opinion one of the greatest modern stained glass designers.

You can see more of his work at the RAF Chapel in Westminster Abbey.

Good Friday

Today is (of course) Good Friday.

Ritual food for the day includes hot cross buns (which need to be hot, eating them cold is not the same).

Mothers' Day

Today is Mothers' Day, or more properly Mothering Sunday.

Buns with pink icing are a traditional ritual food for Mothering Sunday, and it is interesting to see that Asda supermarket has put cakes with pink icing on the cover of its Mothers' Day magazine.

Within the magazine Asda talks about a "Mother's Day tea" which is says is a "very British tradition".

That families gather on Mothers Day (I am leaving off the apostrophe as it is unclear where it should go) is established, although I am not sure whether dissenting areas such as Scotland and Wales are so keen on the ritual day - it is associated with the Anglican church.

That "tea" (a meal with cakes and tea) is an afternoon ritual is equally established.

What Asda seems to have (very cleverly) done is to merge the English celebration of Mothering Sunday with the British tradition of afternoon tea and repackage it as "a very British tradition" (although a tradition that is new).

From an anthropological point of view this is extremely interesting - this is how ritual behaviour develops.

International Women's Day

It's International Women's Day Hannah Fearn (Guardian journalist) reminds us.

It's International Women's Day Jane Dudman (Guardian journalist) reminds us.

It's International Women's Day Chi Onwurah MP reminds us, highlighting gender imbalance among nerds and techies (women have a right to be geeks also).

It's International Women's Day Seema Malhotra MP reminds us, giving us a list of truly inspirational women.

It's International Women's Day Calum Sherwood (Labour CND Youth Officer) reminds us, demonstrating that IWD-awareness permeates to every sub-classification of the Left.

It's er... International School Meals Day a slightly off-message Sharon Hodgson MP reminds us.

It's International Women's Day right-wing Labour MP Caroline Flint reminds us, bigging up her female parliamentary colleagues.

I suppose there is a sort-of serious point to all this, however silly these lefties might express themselves.

And I suppose it keeps the lefties happy (they have little else to do now they are out of power).

But what have Labour women ever achieved?

Margaret Thatcher did not need International Women's Day to make her look good.  Her sincerity and passion for her beliefs took her to the very summit of power despite the hostility of the "buggins turn" men who thought power was all about wheeling and dealing and compromising your ideals.  She stayed at the top, a woman effectively alone, for over eleven years - a record unmatched by any other Prime Minister in the post-war period (and while she was in power the United Kingdom had both a female head of state and a female head of government - no other nation can match this).

Margaret Thatcher was of course a Conservative.

For all their noise and bluster the achievements of Labour women are puny beside that of Conservative women.

The women of the Labour left might care to consider whether they would ever have got as far as they have without Margaret Thatcher first showing that women could lead and organise and inspire people.

I took this photograph when the Thatcher statue was in the London Guildhall.

Chocolate

We are now well into Lent and I do not miss chocolate at all.

Certainly no cravings.

I can look at chocolate cakes and be indifferent to them.

I spend £6 per week on chocolate

Lent is not just about "giving things up".  You are supposed to do something positive with the time or money you save.  Charity can be translated as love.

I have worked out that I spend £6 per week on chocolate, therefore that is the weekly amount I will be donating to Global Care's Lent Appeal.

The 1970s culture of workshy laziness

Personally I am uncomfortable with New Year's Day being a holiday.  Apparently it only dates from 1975.  To my mind it exemplifies the 1970s culture of workshy laziness to start a new year with a day of idleness.

All Souls Day

Today is All Souls Day, a very solemn holy day (holy meaning "set apart").

Across the county at church services the names of the recent deceased (and some not so recent) will be read out.

A day for eating soul cakes - which are like hot cross buns but harder and flatter and made from oats.  Very few bakers sell them so you will proabaly have to make your own.  If you wanted a short-cut you could soak some Oatibix in milk then form them into round disks about an inch thick, mark them with a cross and cook for 30 mins. (eat hot or cold).

Update:

Ben Bradshaw is MP for Exeter.  Educated at a grammar school.  Formerly a reporter for the BBC's World At One.

War was shamelessly used as an instrument of foreign policy

Discussion on the Today programme this morning on BBC Radio 4 about "poppy fascism".  This is a tendentious description of the undoubted public pressure on public figures to wear commemorative poppies, especially on television, in the period before Remembrance Sunday.  The debate on Remembrance conventions is not new - in the 1970s Labour Leader Michael Foot courted controversy by wearing a green "donkey jacket" at the Cenotaph in Whitehall and was widely condemned for not wearing black.

Given the state of profound disgrace that currently envelopes the BBC, it will be interesting to see whether Newsnight presenter Paul Mason will have the nerve to appear on the programme without a poppy (as he did last year).  In a period of fast-eroding support for the Corporation this might be one provocation too far.  Possibly Newsnight will send Paul Mason abroad somewhere until after 11th November.

On Tuesday 11th November itself I will switch over to Channel 4 News to see Jon Snow make his (by now conventional) annual protest by refusing to wear a poppy.

Note added 25th October:  when Jon Snow interview Chairman of the BBC Trustees Lord Patten on Channel 4 News this evening it was very noticable that Lord Patten was wearing a poppy.

As soon as one starts to consider amending the traditional ways of commemorating "the fallen" all sorts of issues begin to arise.  Presumably Jon Snow deeply disapproved of the settler administration in colonial Rhodesia, and yet the Rhodesian contribution to the war effort was proportionally greater than any other part of the then British Empire and rebel Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith was himself a former Battle of Britain pilot.  Are we to disregard the efforts of people and communities of whom many people disapprove? (Bomber Harris, Jan Smuts, Lord Kitchener etc).  Would a Jon Snow-style sanitisation and historical cleansing of the Remembrance commemorations refocus on aspects of conflict approved of by the left and in a way that the left finds palatable?

Or is it better to leave things as they are?

On the Today programme this morning a Dr Harrison said he wanted to avoid glorification of war.  The most straight-forward way of doing this would presumably be to advise people not to vote Labour.  In the post-war period Labour has been the most bellicose of all the political parties, and under the Blair administration war was shamelessly used as an instrument of foreign policy, including the invasion of Iraq ("the People's War"?), generating thousands of additional casualties and "fallen" to be commemorated annually by their families at least until 2060.

It is ironic that without the Blair wars the vast quasi-imperial ceremony in Whitehall would probably be coming to an end as the last of the Second World War veterans passed away.

National Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day (marked by a bizarre performance of a poem about a sunflower on the Today programme, and a special news-orientated commission on Newsnight).

The poetry I am currently reading is by Thomas Hardy.  I have the complete poems in a Wordsworth edition that cost about £2.  I read one a day, before going to bed, and so far have spent two years on the project with about another year to go, the book handled so much it is almost falling apart.

Melancholy, stylistically varied and innovative, occasionally despairing (if I had known Hardy was an atheist I would never have picked the book up).

The faux-socialist dislocated holiday of May Day

The Occupy movement has never really caught on in Europe in the same way that it has in America.

Possibly because Europe suffered a real occupation within living memory, including the Channel Islands.  As a brand name (for that is what it is, whether acknowledged or not) "Occupy" raises images of the totalitarian imposition of a fanatical ideology.  L'occupation (of France, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Poland etc) for most people in Europe means a dark period of horror.

Just my thoughts for the faux-socialist dislocated holiday of May Day.

The annual cleevers harvest

The recent rain has made this year's crop of Galium aparine lush and plentiful.  Galium aparine is also known as Cleevers or "sticky weed".  It grows everywhere - you probably have some in your garden.

I use the word "crop" as right up until the Second World War local villagers would collect the weed and dry it.  It was then used as sort of primitive beauty aid - young girls would make a daily hot drink by steeping cleevers in boiling water for about five minutes.  The drink was supposed to improve their complexion.

The annual cleevers harvest has long gone.  Hardly anyone remembers it.  Galium aparine is just a weed to most people.

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday.

Easter is a festival of light, with the moon and the sun at an optimum state (this has been explained to me several times, but I still don't entirely understand it).

Earlier today Bach's St John Passion was broadcast in its entirety on BBC Radio 3.

Ritual food on Good Friday includes hot cross buns.  According to Professor Hutton bread baked on Good Friday had miraculous and curative properties - possibly there was a placebo effect from eating this holy bread.  Hot cross buns, marked with a dough cross, are still widely consumed on Good Friday throughout the United Kingdom.