A PAWN OF DESTINY

CASTLE OF GLENCAIRN

An extract from the book introducing: The Han Dynasty,General Chen Tang. A stocky man of average height, sat dressed in a dark blue silk robe, decorated on the wide cuffs with a gold abstract motive. His dark hair was tied informally while the two sides of his moustache trailed below his chin. He had not eaten his meal, which was minced mutton with a variety of vegetables. He wondered absent-mindedly when the supply wagons would arrive and he could have a portion of rice to eat. Outside he heard the night guard coming on duty. They were his own handpicked men at least he would be safe from his perceived enemies that night. He is planning to lay seige on the stronghold of the rebel barbarian, Zhizhi Chanyu. Following a victory he takes Darquin and his group prisoner …once more their  lives hang by a silken thread ….

Read the novel soon…

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TERROR IN BRITAIN: WHAT DID THE PRIME MINISTER KNOW?

Theresa May says “Enough is enough” Let us not forget that whilst in government she has cut 20 000 police and civilian intelligence analysts. She sacked 1500 HCHQ employees! She left border security in absolute chaos and then sacked thousands more border staff! Sacked Armed response units, explosive sniffer dogs and their handlers units! Those were May’s decisions as much as any other politicians. Time to own up – but they never will. May is right when she says “enough is enough” because “enough is enough” of her calamitous decision making and her Tory party’s never ending cuts and austerity! Which are now harming our security and costing the lives of innocent men, women and children .

According to Harold Pinter,Nobel Laureate, John Pilger, an Australian journalist living in England, “is fearless. He unearths, with steely attention to facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is… I salute him.”

In an article dated 31.05.2017 he writes:

“The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.
Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review”.

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years.
The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organisation which seeks a “hardline Islamic state” in Libya and “is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida”.

The “smoking gun” is that when Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in “battle”: first to remove Mu’ammar Gadaffi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a “terrorist watch list” and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a “political target” in Britain. Why wasn’t he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May?

These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the “lone wolf” spin in the wake of the 22 May attack – thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump’s apology.

The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest weapons customer.

This imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a modern secularism, asserting their independence from the imperial west and controlling their resources. The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is division and conquest. 

In 2011, according to Middle East Eye, the LIFG in Manchester were known as the “Manchester boys”. Implacably opposed to Mu’ammar Gadaffi, they were considered high risk and a number were under Home Office control orders – house arrest – when anti-Gadaffi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.
Suddenly the control orders were lifted. “I was allowed to go, no questions asked,” said one LIFG member. MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.
The overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africa’s largest oil reserves, had been long been planned in Washington and London. According to French intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination attempts on Gadaffi in the 1990s – bank-rolled by British intelligence. In March 2011, France, Britain and the US seized the opportunity of a “humanitarian intervention” and attacked Libya. They were joined by Nato under cover of a UN resolution to “protect civilians”.

Last September, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry concluded that then Prime Minister David Cameron had taken the country to war against Gaddafi on a series of “erroneous assumptions” and that the attack “had led to the rise of Islamic State in North Africa”. The Commons committee quoted what it called Barack Obama’s “pithy” description of Cameron’s role in Libya as a “shit show”.

In fact, Obama was a leading actor in the “shit show”, urged on by his warmongering Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and a media accusing Gaddafi of planning “genocide” against his own people. “We knew… that if we waited one more day,” said Obama, “Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”
The massacre story was fabricated by Salafist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda”. The Commons committee reported, “The proposition that Mu’ammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence”.

Britain, France and the United States effectively destroyed Libya as a modern state. According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties”, of which more than a third hit civilian targets. They included fragmentation bombs and missiles with uranium warheads. The cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. Unicef, the UN children’s organisation, reported a high proportion of the children killed “were under the age of ten”.

More than “giving rise” to Islamic State – ISIS had already taken root in the ruins of Iraq following the Blair and Bush invasion in 2003 – these ultimate medievalists now had all of north Africa as a base. The attack also triggered a stampede of refugees fleeing to Europe.
Cameron was celebrated in Tripoli as a “liberator”, or imagined he was. The crowds cheering him included those  secretly supplied and trained by Britain’s SAS and inspired by Islamic State, such as the “Manchester boys”.

To the Americans and British, Gadaffi’s true crime was his iconoclastic independence and his plan to abandon the petrodollar, a pillar of American imperial power. He had audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would have happened, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to “enter” Africa and bribe African governments with military “partnerships”.
The fallen dictator fled for his life. A Royal Air Force plane spotted his convoy, and in the rubble of Sirte, he was sodomised with a knife by a fanatic described in the news as “a rebel”.
Having plundered Libya’s $30 billion arsenal, the “rebels” advanced south, terrorising towns and villages. Crossing into sub-Saharan Mali, they destroyed that country’s fragile stability. The ever-eager French sent planes and troops to their former colony “to fight al-Qaida”, or the menace they had helped create.

On 14 October, 2011, President Obama announced he was sending special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops were sent to South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent was under way, largely unreported.

In London, one of the world’s biggest arms fairs was staged by the British government.  The buzz in the stands was the “demonstration effect in Libya”. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled “Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies”. The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs, which were used extensively against civilian targets in Libya. The blurb for the bank’s arms party lauded the “unprecedented opportunities for UK defence and security companies.”
Last month, Prime Minister Theresa May was in Saudi Arabia, selling more of the £3 billion worth of British arms which the Saudis have used against Yemen. Based in control rooms in Riyadh, British military advisers assist the Saudi bombing raids, which have killed more than 10,000 civilians. There are now clear signs of famine. A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes from preventable disease, says Unicef.
The Manchester atrocity on 22 May was the product of such unrelenting state violence in faraway places, much of it British sponsored. The lives and names of the victims are almost never known to us.

This truth struggles to be heard, just as it struggled to be heard when the London Underground was bombed on July 7, 2005. Occasionally, a member of the public would break the silence, such as the east Londoner who walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. “Iraq!” he said. “We invaded Iraq. What did we expect? Go on, say it.”
At a large media gathering I attended, many of the important guests uttered “Iraq” and “Blair” as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly.
Yet, before he invaded Iraq, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that “the threat from al-Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq… The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly”.
Just as Blair brought home to Britain the violence of his and George W Bush’s blood-soaked “shit show”, so David Cameron, supported by Theresa May, compounded his crime in Libya and its horrific aftermath, including those killed and maimed in Manchester Arena on 22 May.
The spin is back, not surprisingly. Salman Abedi acted alone. He was a petty criminal, no more. The extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished. But the questions have not.
Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a “political target” in Britain?
In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made a guarded reference to a “war on terror that has failed”. As he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest and subjugation. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Iran is said to be next. Before there is another Manchester, who will have the courage to say that?”

John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger

I do not usually copy whole articles but this is well worth reading. Jeremy Corbyn was ridiculed recently when he suggested that the last two decades or more of international terrorism can be traced back to ill conceived American foreign policy [from Afghanistan to Syria?]  supported by successive British governments. It confirms what I have long suspected.

WHY LAIRD OF GLENCAIRN?

A new friend recently asked if I lived in a castle. This made me realise how many people have disappeared from my list of contacts over the last 12 month’s and how many new friends have entered this domain, knowing little of the writer. This is a rambling explanation I wrote some 3 years ago when I first began this space.

I imagine there is a name for it: defending your own personal space. We walk through the busy shopping precincts, crowded with Christmas shoppers, we queue at the checkouts, each one of us defending that infinite gap of privacy from the people around us, trying to invisibly input our pin numbers! As a single diner, you would smile at the efforts that folk take in not occupying one of the three vacant seats at your table. The village pub, posh restaurant, theatre, soccer match, a moorland walk and most obvious of all, the beach – we huddle alone or in groups ‘defending’ our [dubious] ownership of a table, chair, area of sand and guarded on three sides by a multi coloured, ‘windbreak.’

Then an Englishman, invented the WWW. [Yes folks, another British invention that we have failed to capitalise on!]. The internet was soon available to us all. We could speak to people all over the planet – from our isolated dens/bedrooms. The screen and the electrical impulses, are as near as we allowed anyone to get close to us. I am amazed on reflection that I have been part of this revolution for some ten years now. Sadly, this complete freedom is being sadly eroded, the “system” now provides names to contact! The first rule in the distant past was that you created and sustained your anonymity. My first effort reflected the strange world I was entering – ‘Alien Dream’. In French you are aware they have masculine and feminine words, even in English ‘A D’ was deemed to be ‘feminine’. The problems are obvious!

My hobby is Genealogy, the history of my family. It will be plain to all that history is my favourite subject. History, is usually written by the main players, I find it more interesting to learn about how our ancestors coped with the social and economic problems of their days. The Hymn, ‘All things bright an beautiful’, says: “The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate.” Well my lot were both. All civilisations have protected family, in Barrows, Motte and Baileys and castles.

The Anjovian Empire, extended from the borders of Scotland to the Mediterranean Sea. Strategically placed hills, rivers and on estuaries loomed the power of the invader – Castles. Some large and significant while others were small and now, largely forgotton. Testimony to the rich accomplishments of England and France. They are foreboding structures. Haunted by the spirits of the past. My fascination with castles began when I heard the methods employed during sieges. Two of which were the hurling of rancid meat into the castle for the starving defenders to eat. The catapult like structure, bears the name of one line of ancestors – did they make them? Did they fire them? Another was the idea of the besiegers digging under the castle foundations and shoring the castle up with tarred wood. This was ignited, [later gunpowder was used], and the wall of the castle collapsed.  On school holidays my family would visit places like Conwy and Scarborough. They hung  huge carpets up on the walls to stop the draughts and called them tapestries. Castle stairs apparently spiral to the right almost universally. The reason for this is most people are right handed and hold their sword in this hand. An attacker running up the stairs is therefore hampered by the central supporting column of the staircase. The defenders however did not suffer such problems. They drank and caroused the days away between battles. The castle owner paid for all these festivities and this became a recognised method for the monarch of the day to stop his followers from becoming too rich, and powerful!

Sir William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, in 1766 made an impassioned defence of private homeowners against discretionary government searches. He enunciated on the right of an Englishman to be secure in his home: “The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of that ruined tenement.” In England, law is created by precedent – not a written constitution, so it is that this right, dates back to 1604, the year that Shakespeare presented Othello.            An individual named Semayne complained that his home had been broken into and his assets seized by the sheriff. The judgment that followed declared: ‘The house of everyone is his castle.‘ It went on to say, ‘That if a door is open, a sheriff may enter but that it is not lawful for the sheriff, on request made and denied, at the suit of a common person to break the defendant’s house.’ One 18th-century commentator wrote: ‘The law of England has so particular and tender a regard to the immunity of a man’s house, that it styles it his castle, and will never suffer it to be violated with impunity. For this reason, no doors can in general be broken open to execute any civil process; though, in criminal cases, the public safety supersedes the private.

This right, “Of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,” is enshrined in the constitution of the Commonwealth of United States. [Fourth Amendment]. Written incidentally from the works of French and English philosophers.

The above is a rather convoluted explanation of why my space is named as it is. So yes, I do live in a castle, my home IS my castle. As with most strategic edifices, it is built on a hill, overlooking the Trent Valley in Middle England. Unlike nearby Ashby Castle it has double glazing and the larder is always well stocked. [This latter fact comes from my genes who learnt to hoard during War time rationing!].

Whilst having had the title by document – it seemed that Glencairn was an appropriate name to use on the internet. I do not display a picture of the real Castle Glencairn for obvious reasons. As children we would play, King of the Castle and today I work on my computer and access the internet from my castle. It is the refuge from whence I travel around the world from this book lined room, isolated from, but close to you my friends the world over.

Laird. 2010

pay our anonymous protectors more ….

Behind one dead policeman are thousands of other public servants – all prepared to put their lives on the line to keep you, me and our families safe.

Perhaps those in power should remember, we vote to send our representatives to Westminster. Yet once in the corridors of power they forget. They continue to cut spending on essential services. They walk past the men and women who,as we have seen, are prepared to die to uphold peace and security in our streets.

 

 

Prayers and vigils will not return someone’s husband, wife son or daughter. Recognition of their value should NOT mean government cuts in staff numbers. It should NOT mean a wage freeze or paltry payrises of less than the cost of living .

The prayers should turn into meaningful demands for higher salaries for those who live on the front line every day of their lives.

MOTHERING SUNDAY

 

       March 26th is the fourth Sunday of Lent and traditionally is the day when children give presents, flowers, and homemade cards to their mothers. It has no connection with the Hallmarkian Americanized jamboree of that name where Mother’s Day is now the second Sunday in May and Internationally recognised May Day,has been moved to September.

In common with most of my readers I do not need a special day to remember mine, because later in the month on March 25th is her birthday. It only takes a word overheard or someone’s gesture, as I go about my daily duties, to remind me of both my departed parents.

       Most Sundays in the year churchgoers in England worshipped at their nearest parish or “daughter church”. Centuries ago it was considered important for people to return to their home or “mother” church once a year. So in the middle of Lent, everyone would visit their “mother” church, or the main church or Cathedral of the area. It was the return to the “Mother” church which led to the tradition of children, particularly those working as domestic servants, or as apprentices, being given the day off to visit their mother and family.

       It was quite common in those days for children to leave home for work once they were ten years old. As they walked along the country lanes, children would pick wild flowers or violets to take to church or give to their mother as a small gift.

       With such a richness of strong and vital images of motherhood, we have much to celebrate on Mother’s Day. However it isn’t especially our birth mothers we are celebrating but more spiritually we thank Mother Nature, who sustains us in life and to whom we all eventually return.

       Thanksgiving to Mother has ties to ancient pagan rituals. Prehistoric artefact’s, bare proof of this. The earliest recorded festival in history honoured the Egyptian goddess Nut. She was goddess of the sky and wife of Re, the god of the sun and creator of all, and was known for her incredible beauty and kindness. Her generous and loving nature was apparently extensive, leading her into affairs with Geb, the god of the earth, and Thoth, the god of divine words. Re found out and, understandably, was furious with her, issuing a curse that his pregnant wife would not give birth to the child within her in any month of any year! Filled with sorrow that she would never be a mother, Nut turned to Thoth for comfort. Like most males, he couldn’t stand to see a woman cry and promised to find a solution. Using his divine powers of persuasion, Thoth persuaded the Moon into gambling with him. If he won he would get just a little bit of the Moon’s light. The games went on for months, and at the end Thoth had won enough light to create five complete days. Nut didn’t waste a precious moment of those five days. She gave birth to a different child on each day. From that day forward she was called “Mother of the Gods”. Her firstborn, Osiris, was the son of Re and went on to become the god of all the earth. The Great Goddess Isis, daughter of Thoth, was born on the third day. Later as husband and wife they ruled together, creating the first great nation of Western civilization during the “Golden Age of Egypt”

       Another Mother figure, Eostre a Saxon deity, marked not only the passage of time but also symbolised new life and fertility. We remember her at the timing of the vernal equinox, also known as Ostara. Legend has it that the goddess was saved by a bird whose wings had become frozen by the cold of winter. This process turned the bird into a hare that could also lay eggs. As usual the church borrowed these pagan symbols for Easter, so the egg and bunny became additional symbols for fertility and the resurrection of life.

On a less serious note I leave these memories which most children have of their Mother.

1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.

‘If you’re going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning.’

2. My mother taught me RELIGION.

‘You better pray that this will come out of the carpet.’

3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL

‘If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to knock you into the middle of

next week!’

4. My mother taught me LOGIC.

’Because I said so, that’s why.’

5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC.

‘If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you’re not going

to the store with me.’

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT.

‘Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you’re in an accident.’

7. My mother taught me IRONY.

‘Keep crying and I’ll give you something to cry about.’

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.

‘Shut your mouth and eat your dinner.’

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM.

‘Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck?’

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA

‘You’ll sit there until all those vegetables are eaten up.’

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER…

‘This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it.’

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY

‘If I told you once, I’ve told you a million times. Don’t exaggerate!’

13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE.

’I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.’

14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION.

‘Stop acting like your father!’

15. My mother taught me about ENVY.

‘There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don’t

have wonderful parents like you do….’

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.

‘Just wait until we get home.

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING.

’You are going to get it when you get home!’

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.

’If you don’t stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck

that way.’

19. My mother taught me E.S.P.

‘put your sweater on; don’t you think I know when you are cold?’

20. My mother taught me HUMOUR.

‘When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don’t come running to me….’

21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT.

‘If you don’t eat your vegetables, you’ll never grow up.’

22. My mother taught me GENETICS.

‘You’re just like your father.’

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS.

‘Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?’

24. My mother taught me WISDOM.

‘When you get to be my age, you’ll understand.’

25. And my favourite: My mother taught me about JUSTICE

‘One day you’ll have children, and I hope they turn out just like you’

*_*_*_*_*_*

       In the church calendar this coming Sunday, commemorates the banquet given by Joseph to his brethren and forms the first lesson of the day. The story of the feeding of the five thousand, forms the gospel for the day. For this reason, Simnel Cakes, rich fruit cakes often covered with marzipan, were eaten on Mothering Sunday, a tradition that persists today.

I’ll to thee a Simnell bring

‘Gainst thou go’st a mothering,

So that, when she blesseth thee,

Half that blessing thou’lt give to me.

[Robert Herrick 1648]

This posting, one week in advance will give my reader’s time to prepare this Receipe for baking a Simnel Cake:

INGREDIENTS:

CAKE:

Softened Butter – 225g (8oz);

Castor sugar – 225g (8oz);

Eggs 4;

Self- Raising flour – 225g (8oz);

Sultanas. – 225g (8oz);

Currants. – 110g (4oz);

Glacé Cherries – 110g (4oz), quartered;

Chopped candied peel – 50g (2oz);

Zest of 2 lemons;

Mixed spice – 2 teaspoon

FILLING AND TOPPING:

Almond paste – 450g (1lb);

Apricot jam – 2 Tablespoons;

1 beaten egg (for glaze).

METHOD

1. Pre-heat oven to 150 °C / 300 °F
2. Butter and line the base and sides of a 20 cm (8 inch) deep round cake tin with buttered greaseproof paper. Place all the cake ingredients bowl and beat well. Place half the mixture in the prepared tin.
3. Take one-third of the almond paste and roll it out into a circle the size of the tin. Place it on top of the cake mixture. Spoon the remaining cake mixture over and smooth the surface.
4. Bake for about 2½ hours until well risen and firm. (If the top of the cake is browning too quickly in the oven, cover it with greaseproof paper.) Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
5. When the cake has cooled, brush the top with a little warmed apricot jam and roll out half the remaining almond paste to fit the top. Press firmly on the top and crimp the edges to decorate.
6. Mark a criss-cross pattern on the almond paste with a sharp knife. Roll the remaining almond paste into 11 balls.
7. Brush the almond paste with beaten egg and arrange the balls around the outside. Brush the tops of the balls with egg as well. Place the cake under a hot grill to turn the almond paste golden.
8. Decorate with crystallised flowers if liked.

       Finally,as a genealogist, I dedicate this quotation to all Mothers.

“Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.” ~Aristotle

2016 – That was the year that was.

They were alive once and dwelt among us. Now they are gone. It’s an old story, maybe the oldest there is, and it’s been told many millions of times. The year now ending has been no exception. The departed in 2016 include writers, actors, musicians and other ‘celebrities’.  We know who they were. Their departures, amply covered by the news media and have been marked, applauded or mourned, at length by the public.

The huge obituaries and the blanket media coverage belong primarily to those who became famous, or infamous, in life, or to those whose deaths were sufficiently lurid or shocking that they generated instant fame at the last minute. Some luminaries manage to achieve notoriety on both counts.

 Other lives also ended in 2016. Just as precious, just as loved by those who loved them deeply, and who love them still. Unnoticed unknown. That’s death, of course, and everyone knows it. Most people lead more circumscribed lives, ending in private deaths that are felt directly by only a few. Yet these factors do not diminish the worth of those lives or the pain engendered by their end.

 This time of year brings back thoughts of those who crossed my path and too soon passed on. Whose smile, wise words and affection live on in my memory. These few, and the many others may well be unsung, but that doesn’t mean they lived without song.

 

SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO?

I have listened to people with no view and people with many views. I question the reasoning of many. Particularly those thousands who after months of reminders decided to apply on line to be placed on the electoral register 10 minutes before the deadline. Why I ponder did they not register at the time of the recent local elections? Why were they surprised when the computer programme failed?
I remember the lack of investment in our manufacturing industries after WW2. Not forgetting the vagaries of a 25% tax on ALL our purchases and higher still Income Tax. We had to endure a decade of ‘Stop. Go’ economic’ policies of the 50’s and early 60’s. We even had a Tory Prime Minster who ‘did his sums with matchsticks’ thus he thought, compensated for his lack of financial and economic knowledge. Once Douglas-Home was discarded we suffered from attacks on our currency and investments from the “Gnomes of Zurich.”
I remember the debates before we finally joined the Treaty of Rome. Politicians from all political parties then were more honest and knowledgeable than today’s bunch of expense chasing losers. I have listened to George Osbourne, Britain’s Chancellor, and the Prime Minister but not heard much from Jeremy Corbyn who is apparently the Labour leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. Dennis Skinner at 80+ is more of a firebrand who is not bespoke to speaking the ‘party’ line. Corbyn seems not to know what the policy is, despite the fact HE should be writing it.
Mr Michael Gove was recently sacked from ministerial office. The National Association of Head Teachers, condemned him for ‘the climate of bullying, fear and intimidation’ they said he had created, during his time as Education Secretary. Mr Gove is a spokesman for the, “Get us outta Europe” campaign. He said earlier this week, “I’m not interested in defending the position of those who already have money, power and privilege.’ He continued by actually condemning the European Union as “A job-destroying machine run by sneering elites, and said the EU “is a market rigged in favour of the rich and stacked against the poor.”
His inference is that it is acceptable for the people of Britain to be fleeced by the British aristocracy and their cohorts but not by anyone else, especially Europeans. Basically he wants all the ‘rewards’ for himself and his Tory cronies who will then carve up the wealth of the nation between themselves.
The British establishment clearly supports destroying the environment. Barclay’s Bank for example is giving financial backing to foreign companies in their wonton destruction of OUR countryside The imposition of fracking against growing public opposition is today’s example of the ‘pan calling the kettle black.’ There is no social licence for fracking in Ryedale, North Yorkshire. 99.2% of inhabitants said NO, to Fracking in the area. Whatever happened to democracy in the home of Magna Carta?  One hazard is the potential contamination of the water table. The site at Kirby Misperton is within the catchment area of the river’s Ouse and Fosse and a dozen or so miles from the historic city of York. The same river’s that inundated parts of that city only months ago.
The British Government, despite growing opposition from the people, continues to coerce local planning authorities to allow fracking with what could be described as bribes. The phrases “sneering elites” and “in favour of the rich and stacked against the poor” come readily to mind.
The Trump lookalike Boris, Cameron and Gove’s mentor was ‘Lady’ Thatcher. Every move she made was charged by negativity; she destroyed the British manufacturing industry, she hated the miners, she hated the arts, she hated the English poor and did nothing at all to help them, she hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists, she was the only European political leader who opposed a ban on the Ivory Trade. She was also against equal rights for women.
She was adamant that Socialist aims were power over people with more power to the State. Her policies included selling the people’s stock of ‘social’ housing and auctioning the nation’s utilities to private investors. This in fact removed power from the people and encouraged a generation of credit card spenders and day loan sharks. This fiscal suicide of capitalism, on both sides of the Atlantic, inevitably led to the banking irregularities in America which solely contributed to the financial meltdown from which Europe has yet to recover. She staunchly supported the US-UK ‘Special’ Relationship. This is another name for the ‘master and slave relationship’ of  Transatlanticism’.    Her supporters are the people who believe in an 11^th Century England where peasants and serfs slave away daily, on inadequate recompense, where the ‘rich man in his castle’, [10% of the population whose money resides in off shore hideaways], owns 90% of OUR nation’s wealth.  “Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.” Lucy Parsons wrote a century ago. As it was, is now, and ever shall be?

Cameron is probably her greatest advocate. He may be supporting the IN campaign but then someone has to. We already know he will not be leading the present government at the next General election. Either way IN or OUT of the EU, he will be a winner with the reward of a soccer “star’s” salary on one gravy train or another in London or New York.

     Vote No on June 23rd 2016 and to future historians the decision will be seen as comparable to the fall of the Roman Empire. Our nation will decline further into a footnote in history. Attacks on Rome heralded the end of the ancient world and the onset of the Middle Ages and millennia of war and conflict. Thatcher conned the ‘working classes’. Blair conned the ‘middle classes’. We mustn’t allow the men and women, who for over millennia have fought against the tyranny of crown, church and invasion, to have done so in vain.

     Vote Yes on June 23^rd 2016 for a united Europe with Britain as an active member at its centre. It will be a beginning of the renaissance of the continent for all Europeans. Europe must not be allowed, through our own apathy, or malice of others, to become the vassal to those either to our east or those to our west.

 

 

THE ONLY VALID REASON FOR BRITAIN TO EXIT THE EU..

WHY OBAMA WANTS UK IN EUROPE.
Everybody needs to know the details, such as they are, regarding TTIP…any trade deal that requires the negotiating details to be kept in a vault for 30 years, with only the EU committee responsible for TTIP able to view them, is no trade deal that benefits any EU member state. For all those in the remain camp, they need to be aware that the most isolating move the UK could make, is to Remain in the EU. TTIP is a deal between a country (US) and a union of countries (EU), and once signed, no individual member country can change details of TTIP to suit their own national interests.

The EU, with all of it’s faults, has managed over the years to positively regulate in areas that benefit the consumer, which is why we don’t eat beef that is riddled with growth hormones, why GMO’s are prohibited, the use of certain pesticides prohibited, but this is slowly being reversed as the drip drip of TTIP finds it’s way into the EU…once the deal is signed, EU regulation goes out of the window, as do our consumer choices and rights.

Our present government expect to stay within the EU. This is why the Investigatory Powers Bill is being pushed through…digital data from the activities of UK citizens to be shared with the US’s NSA…why? The Trade Unions Bill, limiting funding of Unions, increasing police powers on picket lines to, essentially, intimidate those who strike. The British Bill of Rights to replace the Human Rights Act. Apparently, to stop those pesky terrorists from being deported, or to stop the prosecution of UK troops who may have abused the human rights of citizens whilst serving abroad…really? No, the Bill is aimed at stopping ordinary citizens from having the ability to hold their governments to account in either human rights cases or employment issues…the Bill effectively stops workers having a voice, as per TTIP demands. It’s prevention in the face of ISDS (Investor State Dispute Settlement)…if a member state introduces public policy which may harm the profits of a corporation operating within that country, under ISDS rules, that corporation can sue the government, not through domestic courts, with tenured judges, but in secret tribunals. Our government are one step ahead, or maybe two or three.

A vote to Remain in the EU is a vote in favour of TTIP, it’s a vote in favour of, by the admission of the European Commission, prolonged and substantial job losses. Why would a multinational corporation hire European workers who have established labour rights and regulated wages, when they can choose states in the US whose workers have neither? The UK has no special status within the EU…the whole point of TTIP is to ensure that no member state has special status…we will be part of a bloc, our needs no more important, we will be a nation of 500 million.
THE ONE REASON WE SHOULD SAY STUFF THE USA & EXIT EUROPE

DOES A 430,000-YEAR-OLD SKULL REVEAL THE SECRETS OF THE FIRST CONFIRMED MURDER IN HUMAN HISTORY?

Scientists pieced together 52 fragments of a skull then used modern forensic techniques to reveal how the person died.

(javier trueba / madrid scientific films/pa) the skull, known as cranium 17)

A 430,000-year-old skull pieced together from 52 fragments may provide evidence of the first confirmed murder in human history. Scientists used modern forensic techniques to reveal the victim met a grisly end and was probably killed by two blows to the head before being thrown down a vertical cave. The skull was recovered from the Sima de los Huesos (Pit of Bones) site in the Atapuerca Mountains, northern Spain, and researchers believe two holes close together in the skull were caused by two separate impacts from the same object. The forensic investigation showed the injuries were sustained at the time of the individuals death and not consistent with an accidental fall down the 13-metre (42.6ft) shaft. We’re not sure which is worse.

Writing in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE, the Spanish and US-led international team concluded: “The type of injuries, their location, the strong similarity of the fractures in shape and size, and the different orientations and implied trajectories of the two fractures suggest they were produced with the same object in face-to-face interpersonal conflict.

“Given that either of the two traumatic events was likely lethal, the presence of multiple blows implies an intention to kill.”

The researchers, led by Dr Nohemi Sala, from the UCM-ISCIII Centre for the Evolution and Human Behaviour in Madrid, added: “This represents the earliest clear case of deliberate, lethal interpersonal aggression in the hominin fossil record, demonstrating that this is an ancient human behaviour.”

The skull, known as Cranium 17, forms part of the skeletal remains of at least 28 individuals dating back around 430,000 years found in a chamber at the foot of the shaft. But although scientists believe they were deliberately put there after death, the only evidence of murder relates to this skull.

The people whose remains fill the “bone pit” belonged to the genus Homo, the family of closely related species to which modern humans belong. But they are too old to have been part of our species, Homo sapiens. The Cranium 17 murder victim may have been an early Neanderthal, or a more ancient human ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis.

Only two other possible cases of murder exist in the fossil record, but the evidence relating to them is unclear. One, a Neanderthal, died several weeks after suffering a penetrating wound to the body. However, it is uncertain whether the final cause of death was related to the injury.

The other, an early modern human from the Upper Palaeolithic period 10,000 to 50,000 years ago experienced a “sharp trauma” at about the time of death, but may have been killed in a hunting accident.

St George’s Day

CASTLE OF GLENCAIRN

St.George was probably made well known in England by Arculpus and Adamnan in the early eighth century. The Acts of St George, which recounted his visits to Caerleon and Glastonbury while on service in England, were translated into Anglo Saxon. Among churches dedicated to St George was one at Doncaster in 1061. George was adopted as the patron saint of soldiers after he was said to have appeared to the Crusader army at the Battle of Antioch in 1098. Many similar stories were transmitted to the West by Crusaders who had heard them from Byzantine troops, and were circulated further by the troubadours. When Richard 1 was campaigning in Palestine in 1191-92 he put the army under the protection of St George. Because of his widespread following, particularly in the Near East, and the many miracles attributed to him, George became universally recognized as a saint sometime after 900. Originally, veneration as a…

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