Prayers Please ...

An online friend has asked for our prayers for his wife. She is being treated for cancer and is having some severe setbacks. He has commended to us all this prayer, usually used at Vespers ...

O GOD, who are the strength of all them that put their trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy, we commend to your
goodness your daughter Julia Prosser who is in sickness and is
suffering that as far as may be expedient for her, 

she may be restored to bodily health and happiness, 

through your Divine Love and Light,AMEN 

Whatchamucallit season ...

The last few years I've been finding myself more and more annoyed by the attempts to banalise everything in Britain, but particularly to secularise anything that might suggest Christianity. Christmas has been an early casualty, the banal "Winterval" title being imposed by at least one City Council alongside bans on Nativity Plays in schools, Christmas decorations in offices, because they might offend people of "other faiths" and even attempts to remove any religious significance from Christmas Cards. I'm afraid cards that read "Happy Holidays" arriving in my mail don't get acknowledged or displayed.

Ironically, my many Muslim and Jewish friends have expressed real distress and horror at this assault on Christianity, perhaps aware that their faiths will be next if this succeeds.

When members of these faiths actually stood up and declared that they found nothing whatever offensive in the celebration of Christmas, the usual 'elf an' Safe'y reasons were trotted out - they're a fire hazard it was declared in one Civil Service office. The truth is somewhat less altruistic. This is really about trying to impose official atheism on everyone. In recent years there have been numerous attempts to re-pagainse Christmas. I have read tracts by supposedly educated people declaring that the "Christians merely took over the Saturnalia" or "imposed their fairy stories on the Druid's winter solstice" and the usual run of blather about how these festivals were 'celebrated' by this or that non-Christian group in the past.

In fact, Christianity did "Christianise" a number of festivals. After all, if people were used to celebrating something at a particular time in the calendar, why not continue it? I was reminded of this by an article by Neil Gaiman in The Independent. Growing up in South Africa (Somehow Christmas associated with snow still hasn't quite sunk into my psyche!) we had friends of different faiths as well, and some of them Jewish and at least one Hindu, all celebrated Christmas enthusiastically. In fact it was usual for Jewish organisations and at least one Muslim one, to arrange for their members to undertake essential services in hospitals, fire and rescue services and so on so that their "Christian" employees could take time off to celebrate with their families. All of that seems to have been submerged now in the UK at least by the tide of anti-religious garbage spewed out in the name of "equality and fairness."

The odd thing is that when you start to investigate the origins of the claims that these festivals - mainly Christmas and Easter - are "Pagan" in their origins you soon discover that the authority for this lies in the inventiveness of some of the more strange "secret societies" that grew up in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Like a lot of other things, these sources are deeply suspect, rely on pure invention and a lot of forgery and really don't stand a lot of scrutiny. Sadly though, like most propaganda, once it has entered the ears of those to idle to look at things for themselves, it becomes the accepted truth - especially when it is woven into the fantasies of Dan Brown's work and others.

Christmas is Christmas, even in Muslim countries. The problem in the West is that we've taken the reason for marking it out of the equation and turned it into a purely commercial event designed only to relieve as many as possible from their savings and to make everyone who can't afford to do so feel guilty about it. But it's not the con-artists in marketing and advertising who are to blame according to our secularisers - its the Churches who want to keep God in it who are responsible for the "guilt."

We won't have a Christmas tree this year, we haven't a place for it, but we will celebrate the feast with church, a great meal with family and possibly a glass or two with our neighbours. There is a star displayed in our window and there will be other decorations once Advent draws to a close.

I live in hope that one day Britain will wake up and realise that those who wish to denigrate everything on the grounds that it "may" be offensive to someone need to be treated with the contempt they deserve and ejected from office and from any public forum. They are nothing but parasites who debilitate our society and will, if allowed to, destroy everything of any value in our culture. It is time to call a halt to their activities.

It is the season of Christmas, and the joy is in the sharing of that celebration, with or without the assault on a credit card.

What is the agenda?

I am amazed at the backslapping and self-congratulation that concluded the Durban "Climate Summit." For one thing, these events seem to be little more than a fresh attempt to sell the whole "the sky is falling we're all gonna die unless the evil west stops using hydro-carbons, reverts to agrarian and hunter-gatherer lifestyles and trashes its entire economic wealth." For another, I really do think that there is a complete absence of common sense among the devotees attending them. The Media have been full of the news that there were 11,000 people attending this jamboree. Did they all walk there? If not, why are they able to tell the rest of us we should ride bicycles, walk or "live locally" and not travel?

A charming and very earnest young woman was on television last night, against the backdrop of the super container ships in Hamburg harbour, explaining why Greenpeace and Oxfam among others, think it is a good idea to impose a 10% tax on all bunker fuel for ships. Parroting the usual Greenpeace line that "shipping accounts for a 'huge' amount of "carbon" emissions she failed to address the fact that such a tax will impact on a very competitive market which is already around five times less polluting than transport by road, rail or air. Fuel efficiency has been improving in ships for years, but the loons in Greenpeace, Fiends of the Earth, WWF, Oxfam and the rest look only at consumption and emissions - not at the quantities each ship carries. Nor do they seem to grasp the fact that increasing the cost of operating the ship increases the cost of the goods carried which impacts on the trader and the user. End result, inflation of costs, which feeds into wages ...

They continue to argue for the replacement of nuclear and coal fired generating stations with more windmills - yet the latest statistics show that even at their best these damned eyesores generate less than 30% of the energy required. Even the great "solar" drive is a fraud, the panels convert only about 13% of the total energy they absorb into heating or electricty - the rest, you've guessed - is radiated back into the atmosphere, no doubt contributing to the "Anthropomorphic Global Warming" they are supposedly combating!

Then there are the demands for the west to hand over huge amounts of money to "developing nations" to build factories to replace ones in the western nations paying to ship their jobs and wealth to someone else. They seem to be unable to make the connection that the public who donate to their "causes" are the very same people they are now trying to put out of work and demanding that they give even more of their hard earned wealth to their replacements.

Oxfam, Christian Aid, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF are all causes and organisations I used to donate to. No longer. I will no longer give one bent brass washer to any of them. Why, put simply they are no longer serving the purpose they were originally set up to do. Now they are massively wealthy "advocacy" organisations who spend vast amounts on publicity and generous salaries for their employees. Greenpeace makes a big thing about not accepting donations from "corporations damaging the earth" but has vast amounts of money invested in companies producing windmills (subsidised by governments) and in the manufacture of solar panels.

As pointed out in this post on Watts up with That, these organisations have been taken over by ideologues who are now using them to achieve their ideological aims which, from where I sit, seem to include the destruction of all Western Economies. No, I'm not signing up to that and I will not be making any further contribution to any of these organisations under any circumstances.

Two Europes?

It seems that the veto on Friday has sparked quite a reaction among the other members of the EU. It has to be said that the UK does need to decide which way it wants to go, certainly, in some sections of the press and media, the only way is 'out.' One is left with the distinct impression that Whitehall/Westminster is playing their usual game when they want to make something fail - brief against it in private while publicly declaring you're 100% behind it.

The real problem here seems to me to be the fact that none of the political parties actually want to admit that they have now tied so much of the UK's economy to Europe they can't simply walk away. For one thing, the cuts in Defence have been made, I'm now very convinced, on the back of a deal pre-Lisbon, to 'share' defence across the EU, thus each country only needs to maintain a proportion of the overall defence need. Take a look at who has what equipment and forces deployed in what areas and you will see what I mean. Britain has now cut Defence to the point of no return. Even if they did rebuild the Fleet and the RAF to an 'independent' force level it would take between 10 and 20 years to do so since we've also closed down and sold off all our ship building facilities bar a small handful. As for building our own aircraft - forget it, all we can now build in the UK are bits for assembly in France or Italy.

I rather think that the lies to the British Public by successive governments are starting to come home to roost. They either have to come clean or put their money on the table now. It was interesting listening to the German Finance Minister, who was genuinely saddened as he acknowledged that it looked as if Britain might leave the EU. He stated the UK had always been reliable, had fought its corner well and fairly, but now seemed to have embarked on a self interested and self serving course to the detriment of everyone including themselves. Equally interesting was the debate later in which political analysts from the full spectrum were essentially saying the same thing, that the banks had abused peoples trust and hard earned money. The profits of their shareholders had become the only focus and the losers were the small depositors and customers who had no other options.

Will there be "two Europes" as Mr Sarkozy says? I doubt it as I think the UK may not entirely withdraw, but assume the same status as Norway. Will that 'repatriate the money' as so many seem to think it will? Again, I doubt it, since the whole thing is extremely complex and may be even further bedeviled if Scotland makes a bid for full independence - and opts to remain in the EU as well ...

I can't escape the feeling that the cost of withdrawal from the EU will far outweigh any supposed benefit even in the long term. As Herr Schauble put it last night, Europe will not shut the door on Britain. One thing the UK does need to do is to put behind it the propaganda of the two World Wars. It is time we found a way forward instead of looking back on a glorious past now well and truly spent.

€uroskeptic, or €urodestructive?

The current round of rejoicing evidenced in some anti-EU sections of the media, politics and blogosphere should concern the various governments involved. As ever, the problem arises because the public are not told the whole truth by the politicians and now that some of their 'omissions' are becoming all to public, they don't really know how to handle the problem.

A part of the problem is that there is a huge amount of anti-French (I know - I'm prejudiced on that one!), anti-German, anti-Italian and general anti-anyone not 'British' swilling around in the UK mindset. It has to be said that there are similar mindsets in other parts of the EU as well. I regularly read comments to reports on various EU matters by, one hopes, intelligent people, saying things like "you can't trust the Germans, they're still trying to rule the world" or the even better one "the Germans are doing secret deals with the Vatican to ..." That last is priceless as the Vatican has a problem with Germany where their congregations are dwindling fast and the remainder are at odds with the bishops and clergy and want more liberalisation, woman priests, married clergy and so on. Yes, I can see the Vatican cuddlying up to the Germans - not.

Again, in various sections of the press and blogosphere one now regularly reads the statement that "the Franco-German ambition is to recreate Charlemagne's Empire..." The authority for this is, apparently, the fact that Napoleon, Louis XIV, Hitler and presumably others have all held this "ambition." I'll concede that certainly Napoleon and the last named dictator may have entertained this ambition, but is this really what has driven the creation of the EU? Somehow I doubt it. I may have missed some tricks somewhere in the debate (Its been going long enough!), but I seem to recall that the whole thing has its origins in Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg, the former "Benelux" countries who had a nice little economic thing going and which others thought they'd like a piece of. Again, from memory, France managed to join and then the European Economic Community grew out of the experiment. Again, it seemed such a good idea, others wanted in and for a while Germany wasn't allowed to join at all if memory serves.

The EEC is what Britain, rather tentatively joined in 1974-75, at a time when Labour overspending, Union militancy and a few other little problems - like massive unemployment, benefit fraud and the like  - had brought the Pound to its knees. The price for joining was high, the UK promptly ditched preferred trade agreements with its Commonwealth which certainly didn't win them any friends there and drove those they had even further beyond the proverbial pale. Right from the start the UK has been the "awkward" squad at the table, often to the despair of others who have had to make all the compromises only to have the UK throw further spanners in the works.

What I now find interesting about all this is that with the €uro in deep trouble, the British, who are not part of it and probably never will be, want a say in its management. In fact, they want it to fail. The reason? It is claimed that surrendering the national budgets of the member currencies to a central "treasury" is "undemocratic." And this is where the propaganda really is running wild. The whole scheme is now proclaimed to be a German "plot" to seize control of Europe by the back door. I read on one report the statement that "until the €uro, the Deutschmark was sinking fast, the German economy was in ruins, moribund and stagnating ..." I presume that would be the DM that was valued at DM3 to the Pound Sterling, then strengthened dramatically thanks to speculators against the Pound and the US Dollar, forcing the UK out of the ERM. That would also be the Deutschmark and the economy it served that provided the bulk of the underpinning capital that launched the €uro.

I have to confess that I am not a fan of the EU in its present form. I do not like the unelected Commission or the vast, expensive and probably utterly incompetent bureaucracy that has grown up around it and seems to be Belgium's only industry. I do not like having an unelected EU President and I particularly don't like the fact that it seems to be neither fish nor fowl when it comes to being any sort of state or power.

I don't want to see the €uro fail. Why? Simply because it will cause enormous hardship for everyone, and not just for the nations using it. It will cost enormous numbers of jobs right across Europe and even in Britain. It will hit the poorest, not those currently screaming for it to be killed off by any means possible, and it will damage trade for and in Europe very badly indeed. It will have a terrible impact on a wide range of things, from European stability, defence, aid to developing nations and on social security for the elderly, the sick and the disabled. An entire raft of subsidies currently rebuilding various depressed areas and countries recovering from the years of communist "socialist" misrule will vanish. Those in the UK who think the money currently paid to Europe will come home to be "redistributed" delude themselves, it will simply vanish into even less productive uses, such as an increase in our own bureaucracy.

Once away from the very parochial and partisan UK media, one quickly realises that there are many other players in this game, one of the largest being the UN and all its "agencies." The "Treaties" signed in the UN should get the same sort of scrutiny the UK currently gives to Europe. They would quickly discover that while Brussels is bad, the UN is a far greater threat to self determination and government. The UN is not at all democratic and is, more and more, run to agendas set by NGOs such as Greenpeace, Oxfam and others.

I never thought I would admit that Napoleon had actually done something good, but I have to confess that his reform and harmonisation of Europe's myriad legal and justice systems was, in the words of 1066 and all that, a "Good Thing." Its a great pity that the UK's wasn't reformed then and its an even greater pity that it is now in the hands of bureaucrats who have little legal training who make use of the ignorance of the politicians to gold plate, duplicate and over burden Britain with laws and regulations they claim "Brussels has imposed."

I suspect that the EU is stood on the edge of a precipice. It isn't a nice place to be for a group of peoples who, for the most part, get along fine, when they are not being mislead, misdirected and threatened. It is not a safe place to be when some of the members are so busy playing to the "home audience" they fail to see the danger for themselves of falling off the edge.

I'm pretty sure that the EU will survive, possibly shedding some of its members and reducing in size. I'm also sure that once it actually decides whether it is a "State" or  wants to remain a loose collection of trading blocs it will have a clearer idea of direction. Frankly, in this day and age, a United States of Europe has a certain appeal, but to achieve that there has to be consensus on the role of the "nation states"and how they manage their internal affairs. I was recently reminded that the USA didn't have that easy a start up either. The Dollar went through some spectacular ups and downs and there were, and I think still are, arguments about the authority and power of individual state legislatures and the Federal Government.

The €uro is ten years old, I think it may well be around for at least another ten and probably longer. I certainly hope so, I have no desire to see Europe and the western world plunged, as it will be, into the sort of economic abyss they faced in the 1920s and 30s.

Buzz Phrases that irk ...

A thought for today! Those who claim to be "Blue skies thinkers" should consider this definition….

"The most important feature of a clear blue sky is that it is clear; in fact it is totally lacking in any interest or feature which distinguishes it. A cloudy sky or a sky which has scattered clouds, now that has features, ever changing, ever moving, growing and developing clouds change the skyscape and move the eye and the mind from one pattern to another. Likening thought patterns to clear skies or blue skies is just another way of saying that the mind is empty, devoid of discernible thought and totally lacking in originality."


Now that is a definition I can live with. In my experience those who claim to be "Blue Sky Thinkers" are generally people without a clue about anything they are supposedly dealing with, call endless meetings they call "Brain storming sessions" and then steal, repackage and promote the ideas of those they have gulled into offering them.

Earth shaking ...

Yesterday there was a tremendous double bang over a large area of the Rhinelands. Given the drama in Koblenz on Sunday, most people here were understandably very edgy. The ground shook, windows rattled and the horses in the paddock behind the Monk and Mausi's home were startled enough to get very nervous and fidgety from some time afterward. Police, Fire and news switchboards were jammed by people calling to know what had happened.

To give some idea of how big the bangs were, it was heard in Köln and in Mainz and everywhere in between - a distance of nearly 200 kilometers. Here in the Taunus it felt like a small earthquake. So what was it?

It was caused by a pair of Belgian F-16s breaking the sound barrier over Rüdesheim, about 15 km from where we live. They were flying at 11,000 metres, roughly 34,000 feet in pursuit of an Oman Air airliner that had broken radio contact in Belgian airspace. Under NATO rules this means the immediate launch of fighters to find the aircraft, make contact, and find out what it is up to. As the incident began in Belgium, it was their aircraft launched to intercept.

It is reported today that the flight was intercepted somewhere over Frankfurt/Darmstadt, the fighter pilots making 'visual contact' with the airliners Captain and then re-establishing radio contact. We are not told what the passengers thought when they looked out of the windows and saw two fully armed F-16's on the wingtips ... I suspect the cleaning crews at their destination may have had to work overtime.

Since the end of the Cold War, the sound of 'sonic booms' has become very rare over Europe, so this event was a sharp reminder of what could happen all to easily. It is reassuring to know that the NATO alert system works and that nothing like this goes unnoticed. There are, apparently, around 30 cases a year where airliners lose radio contact with air traffic control. It is usually due to a 'pilot error' such as setting the wrong frequency or to weather which affects the transmission and reception of VHF and UHF radio signals.

The double bang yesterday was a sharp reminder of the vigilance needed in these uncertain times ...