Government ...

Came across this quotation today and it's worth pondering.

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, directed, indoctrinated, numbered, estimated, regulated, commanded, controlled, law-driven, preached at, spied upon, censured, checked, valued, enrolled – by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so.

But probably the best quotation is one from an economist -

"The supply of government currently exceeds demand by a considerable margin."

Global Warming ...

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer, and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen , Norway .

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions
report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.

Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.

Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well
known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old Seal fishing grounds.

Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.

I'm sorry, I neglected to mention that this report was from November 2, 1922...as reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post.

Sweet Justice?

You have to love the story from the US where a Bank (Bank of America) fouled up a property purchase which didn't involve a bank loan or mortgage. Somehow the bank 'lost' the homeowners payment - purchase price and fees paid in full on date of purchase - and then, some months later tried to foreclose on the property for non-payment of a non-existent mortgage.

The owner's attorney won the subsequent court case and the court ordered the bank to pay the family's legal costs - as you may imagine, quite a substantial amount. Several months later, the bank had still not paid the fees.

Top marks to the attorney, he foreclosed on the bank ...

What a great advert for a bank to have the bailiffs show up with a court order to seize the banks furniture, fittings and the cash in the cashiers drawers for non-payment of a debt. Apparently the manager was visibly shaken and "felt intimidated" by the experience. I bet. Now I guess he and his superiors have some idea of what they do to the folk they put the squeeze on when they're having a rough time financially.

I'd put this one on the top of my list of "Justice: Seen to be done."

D-Day and all that ...

As I showered this morning I was thinking of the men who disgorged from the LCIs, LCTs and other assorted craft as the sun rose on this date in 1944. The beautiful sunrise here was nothing like what those troops and men experienced as they walked ran and fell along the beaches of Normandy 67 years ago today in a hail of shell fire, bombs, machine gun bullets and booby-traps.

It is to them that we owe our freedom today, not that our current crop of worthless bureaucrats and politicians care, nor have we done with that freedom, what our fathers and mothers fought, died and hoped for.

I commented once before that the Normandy landings were also the beginning of freedom for the German people as well as for Europe. Not all Germans were Nazi supporters and not all French, British and Allies were anti-Nazi. As ever the truth is a somewhat mixed bag and the allies certainly faced an uphill and bloody struggle as they pushed the troops ashore and advanced by inches marked in wounded men and deaths.

It is probably the greatest moment in the history of western civilisation.

Heat and thunder ...

It has been hot today, and the dryness of the last few weeks made the arrival of humid air from down south a little unpleasant until the body adjusted. But now we've had rain, not a lot, but some. It settled the dust, slaked the ground and the thunder was more of the 'promise' of the storm kind.

Still, the weather forecast is for more tomorrow - "Unwetter" in fact. Heavy rain, thunder, lightning and possibly hail. They can keep the last bit ...

Here is food for thought

Affirmative Action
" South Africa is the only country in the world where affirmative action is in the favour of the majority who has complete political control. The fact that the political majority requires affirmative action to protect them against a 9% minority group is testament to a complete failure on their part to build their own wealth making structures, such that their only solution is to take it from others."
London Times

I have argued from the beginning that any form of Affirmative Action is merely a new form of Apartheid "Job Reservation." Yet it is now the preferred tool espoused and enforced by those who, less than a generation ago, where waving placards outside South Africa House to abolish it.

There isn't a lot more I can say.

The Glorious First of June...

Today marks the first great naval victory over Revolutionary France by the Royal Navy. Admiral Lord Howe led a fleet of British ships of war to victory four hundred miles into the Atlantic at roughly the same latitude as Cape Ushant in 1794, making this the 217th anniversary of that battle. While it was, tactically, a resounding defeat for the French, strategically it failed. The French convoy carrying vital grain to stave off a counter revolution stirred by the famine the Revolution had brought, escaped and was successfully unloaded.

As a result the Revolutionary Council remained in power and the war which became known as the Napoleonic Wars continued.

It is always interesting to note, that this and other great sea battles eventually put Britain in possession of the largest empire the world has thus far seen. Even more interesting is the fact that the Navy which created it possessed some 300 - 400 ships at its greatest extent and employed 400,000 men. The Civil Service of the day never exceeded 3,000 office bearers, the majority appointed on a 'friends and favours' basis which nevertheless saw 'Jacks-in-office' swiftly expelled if they failed to deliver what they had been appointed to do. There was certainly corruption and nepotism - but it got things done.

A sharp contrast to the modern Britain, divested of an Empire, its Military pared to the bone and still under threat from the politicians and civil servants, yet boasting the largest Civil Service in existence. 21% of the total UK Workforce of some 20 million people (An ESTIMATED 5 million paper shufflers and paper clip managers) and the Armed Forces no number in total less than 100,000 in all three services - but there are 9 paper shufflers in the MoD for every fighting man and woman.

One has to ask; why?