‘Granny, I met this girl while I was in Afghanistan.’

The words the Queen doesn’t want to hear when Harry gets home.

Shame he wasn’t there for Saint Crispin’s Day.

He could have given a rousing speech on the eve of battle:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
That’s neat, that’s neat, that’s neat, that’s neat
I really love your tiger feet.*

Actually there isn’t a St Crispin’s day: the Catholic Church has demoted them, on the basis that they didn’t exist, or if they did they were Celtic shoemakers, and not saints at all. At all.

*The last two lines were removed  in the second edition on the advice of his editor.

USAF

kindly piss off somewhere you’re needed with your noisy planes.  This is a quiet village when you’re not burning kerosene over it.

Thank you.

News from the Vatican catwalk: a Papal makeover, dahlinks!

More joy from Holy Smoke: the Pope is driving his sharpened crozier into the heart of the liberalism that has wrecked the church by, er, wearing vestments that hark back to the Medici popes. We’re talking Leo X in 1513 when the poor died young and the women in childbirth, when you could burn a heretic or buy a papacy. Those were the days.

OK, I wrote a book about the popes, so let’s flick back and see what this last of the great Medicis did while in office (I did this without checking, and was prepared to be gracious in defeat should Leo X have been a model citizen. Turns out he was just the kind of second-division twat** ideal for these purposes.) I paraphrase and editorialize a mort:

The Leo X files: a Cardinal aged 13 (WTF, you’ve no hair on your balls but you can be a prince of the Church?), nor even ordained a priest when elected pope. Leo liked high living, which he funded by selling indulgences and offices in the church (like Cardinals): ‘pay off part of my debts you can be a prince of the church, no questions asked, mate.’

He was so popular that a bunch of cardinals tried to get him killed, and he fined them heavily by way of punishment. This boy sure loved his cash. He then did the church and the world a great service by foisting on them protestants of every disapproving miserable stamp - he ignored Luther’s reform calls (Martin, not Lex, God had told Leo that Lex was Superman’s problem) then excommunicated him, allowing him to barrel round Europe advocating protestantism, the murder of a revolting peasants and anti semitism.

He then gave Henry VIII of England the title of ‘Defender of the Faith’, giving our already pompous royals a further opportunity to be up themselves while opening shopping malls. Leo X’s death was suspicious, but it may have been that intelligently designed disease malaria.

Sumbitch had a lot to answer for. And this is the gentleman whose heraldic whatnot will be adorning the Pope’s new titfer* and frock come Palm Sunday. Blow your nose (or stuff will come out of it), swallow the coffee, move the children away from the computer and click over for a look.

* Titfer = tit for tat = hat. Cockney rhyming slang. Oh do keep up.

** The first division twats are the popes who murdered people and instituted inquisitions or crusades. And you’d be surprised just how many first division twats became Christ’s vicar on earth.

Peak oil, John Hemming MP and bollocks.

The Times Online Green Central has a piece on Peak Oil, in which I am delighted to see John Hemming MP (Lib Dem) is chair of the all party parliamentary committee for peak oil and gas. Hemming trained as a physicist, is one of ours and prepared to call bollocks when he sees it. The Times relates:

In July last year, Hemming called on the government to review its policies in the light of The International Energy Agency shifting its prediction as to when oil production will peak – from 2030 to just five years from now.

On behalf of the government, the then-chief scientist Sir David King responded. “I am personally not convinced that focusing on the “peak oil” concept is the most helpful approach. The challenge I believe lies in framing policies and in advancing the technologies that will enable the fossil fuel resources to be utilised effectively, economically and sustainably.”

But how can fossil fuels, by definition a finite resource, be used “sustainably”. You either use them, or you don’t.

“I thanked him for his written response,” Hemming tells me. “It was a load of bollocks but I thanked him.”

It’s good when politicians use words we do and in a way we do. John Hemming is a blogger and like me has a issues with social services - his bugbear is forced, irreversible adoptions. Mine is that they put incompetents in change of my former foster sister.

However, one of the academics quoted in piece is less impressed with the breed (politicians): Dr Colin Campbell says: “There is little hope of politicians taking the lead. It’s much easier for them to react to crisis when it happens.”

Dealing with social services.

I have never tried to wrestle a hagfish, but everything I have seen suggests that doing so would be messy and unproductive: like trying to get Social Services to admit that their contracted out agents are not doing a good job of looking after a vulnerable young woman (my former foster sister).

Their tactics in meetings are to completely ignore any big, damaging issues raised and reduce the discussion to symptoms: a systemic failure of management and poor staff recruitment leading to, say spilled cooked food left under a bed for three days, a situation not remedied despite numerous complaints. That’s a call for a cleaning rota.

An untrained member of staff incapable of handling a ‘customer’ with scoloiosis is not a cue for discussions about bringing in ‘assistive technology’, it’s a flag that Avalon (can’t find their site) are putting untrained people in to care with a person with special needs.  A person whose back I don’t want breaking because some lackwit organization hasn’t trained her carer.

I don’t want my little sister to be another of those cases where some solemn high-up is paraded in front of a camera to say ‘lessons will be learned’. But having seen Social Services up close today, I can see how very, very easily it happens when they excuse poor management, lack of training and bad staffing in their contractors. The result is the sort of appaling service we see week in, week out.

A proper organization would recognize the failures, apologize and sack the contracted out agents.

As we say on boats, you can’t polish a turd. And that is just what North Yorkshire County Council Social Services tried to do today.

You have any similar experiences, angryfosterbrother(at)gmail.com is waiting to hear in confidence.

Top man Ed Davey.

About time someone gave our raddled old hag of a Parliament a good bitchslapping.

Now if the Tories and Liberal Democrats could summon up the nerve to ‘empty chamber’ Prime Minister’s Questions over Gordon Brown’s disgraceful refusal to answer a question from the opposition, we’d be gittin’ some place*. In the words of Louis Armstrong. Who, if the accounts of his olympian pot-smoking are true beat Neil to the moon.

* ‘From I love jazz’, with the All Stars, c.1957-ish.

North Yorkshire County Council Social Services (twinned with Havana)

The Communist dictator of Cuba Fidel Castro has just been replaced by his brother Raul.

Nepotism: it couldn’t possibly happen in England (outside the House of Commons, obviously)? That, say, a disabled vulnerable young woman could have two new carers foist on her by NYCC Social Services’ contracted out agents, no adverts for these publicly funded jobs, recruited merely on the basis that they are an existing carer’s daughter and best friend rather than their talent for caring for vulnerable adults. Could it?

Yes.

They’re relief staff, you see. So according to NYCC Social Services it doesn’t matter that there were people out there better qualified to do the job.

angryfosterbrother(at)gmail.com if you have any similar experiences to relate, replace the (at) with @

Finest Kind dinosaur blogging

over at Laelaps.

His post what rules the world? is the story of how palaeontologists and illustrators brought to the bones of dinosaurs to life for the pages of books.  Beautifully researched and written, great pics of dinosaurs (of course) and eminently worth a click and a few minutes of your time this Sunday.

Looking at a grey Yorkshire day

and searching for reasons not to get the bike out and do the miles.  There are none, but sloth.

Ming Campbell’s autobiography

is shortly to hit the shelves, and is being serialised in the asswipe of last resort that is the Daily Mail. I can’t imagine it being very exciting except to some Lib Dem members, party kremlinologists and hacks needing it on their shelves for reference. I certainly shan’t be shelling out full price for it, nor in paperback either. I’m sure it will be on the ‘reduced’ shelves in Whitby Bookshop for £2.99 before long. I’ll give it 4 months from today.

It’s a shame he wrote it at all if, as seems to be the case, it sold on the basis of his proximity to his predecessor’s ousting. I doubt he needs the cash. I worked for an MP in Westminster a while ago and saw, heard and overheard things - including from Ming - that wouldn’t reflect too well on the people concerned. (I’m sure everyone who has been a PA, secretary or researcher in all parties have similar tales of plotting and venality. ) It’s all old news now, but I haven’t blabbed to journalists about them, far less put them in a book or on a blog.

I don’t want to be holier than thou about this (I’ve done my share of gossiping and provided material for some), but it’s one of those things he didn’t have to do, especially since today’s installment in the Mail (no link, fuck ‘em) rakes up the whole painful episode of the previous leader’s drinking habits. Charles Kennedy is a good man battling a serious problem and having its history and conversations (which people assumed would not be repeated) all over the Daily Mail does nothing to help him or, frankly, burnish Ming’s reputation.

Nor that of our party, or of politics. Work your ass off to become an MP in a party with (for a long time past) little serious prospect of power and now are you looking at your colleagues thinking, are my confidential conversations and personal foibles being kept to be used in an autobiography? I’m all in favour of freedom of speech. I’m also in favour of discretion and honour among colleagues. Is it a wonder people are looking at our political classes and thinking they’re not even worth the effort of a walk to the polling station?

Possibly Charles, his wife and family are not hurt by all of this. But I doubt it, and sparing a good man hurt is the kind of thing I’d hope of a man who had Ming’s reputation. And serialising it in the Daily Mail? Oh they just love liberals, don’t they?

Liberal Burblings covers the matter with his usual courtesy and balance.
Other Lib Dem bloggers have so far not pronounced.
Iain Dale (a Conservative blogger)  suggests that far from being ‘explosive’ Ming’s mems may be a damp squib.

PS: Previous Mingblogging showing I’m not a marrow anti-Minger (I think the party improved under his leadership), which makes this all the more disappointing.