Cute chicks going cheep

In these first happy, warm springtime days of March as we rush to pack away our winter coats and fleeces, our gloves and anti-chapping cream and hurriedly air out shorts and short-sleeved shirts and pull on lightweight summer trousers which seem to have shrunken somewhat around the waist since last year, there’s always the threatening thought at the back of your mind; the sure and certain knowledge that cold, rainy cheerless days will inevitably return again as the world turns and so we’ll have to put everything back again for April, May and June.

   It’s nice therefore to know that in the political world as in the English weather the presence of Nemesis follows our owners and leaders despite their famous PR skills and that acute political knowledge that is superior to the Neanderthal base that the Tories have abandoned in favour of the liberals of both Coalition parties. The Greatest Political Leader of All Time allows his dwindling domestic powers as chief executive of the province of Britain to oversee the design of stamps and to scuttle the Royal Navy to be sold cheaper by the hour than a celebrity performance of hit songs of the Eighties at some Saudi Prince’s private party.

As Melanie Phillips points out:

‘For £50,000 a year, members of the party’s Leader’s Group were invited to “join David Cameron and other senior figures at dinners, post-PMQ [Prime Minister’s Questions] lunches, drinks receptions and important campaign lunches”.

‘The Leader’s Group is the most exclusive of seven Conservative donor clubs. Founded when Mr Cameron was in Opposition…

‘A £25,000 donation earns membership to the “Treasurer’s Group” which offers the chance to meet lesser members of the Tory Cabinet. For £10,000 supporters can join the Renaissance Forum which offers the chance to circulate with “eminent speakers from the world of business”.’

You have to wonder what happens in the lower Bolgias of this, Mrs. Thatcher’s personal hell?

£20,000 will get you into the Championship where amid champagne and truffles public IT and engineering contractors can pledge their support for the mission and infrastructure design of the UK’s new joint Franco-French defence establishment.

For 20,000 Euros industrial leaders can sip schnapps and a variety of pure meat dishes with the Merkel Korps where in return for favourable nod to EU provisioning apparat they can promise their full support to Chris Patten in his ambition to make the BBC the institution that all rational people want it to remain.

£5,000 buys a place at the Legion des Regions where County and Constituency Tory Party Association chairmen dine at leisure with bankers and EU officials to carve out the next plan to snap up a formerly free European county on the cheap and mortgage its children’s lifetimes and its representative democracy to the greater glory of Liquidity and knighthoods.

A couple tons will get you to a posh do of the First Division Club where one of the Conservative Party’s licenced Eurosceptics will raise a laugh a minute over the back-room shenanigans in the House of Commons during the three line whip enforced against voting for a referendum over continued EU membership.

For 25 pounds sterling you can join the Conservative Party. Here you can: be ignored by the leadership forever more; get to buy your own food and throw it down after work before rushing off to spend endless unrewarding hours knocking on doors up and down the length of Britain in all weathers trying to persuade complete strangers that, contrary to all recent evidence, the Tories are the party of nation-state, the family, defence of the realm, free enterprise and law and order, and don’t you worry your pretty, empty little heads about policy. And the best of British luck to you if you do.

All Conservative Party social affiliates follow a strict dress code: Black tie, no casuals and no hope for voters. 

Picture from here.

Now...accursed

Shakespeare put a speech into the mouth of Henry V at the battle of Agincourt on the 25 October 1415.

That particular war was one of dynastic pride and conquest for personal gain – the kind of warfare that our civilisation has come rightly to despise. Now we expect out just wars to be of self-defence, or survival, or liberation. Conquerors are beyond the pale – but their kinder successors are not (or shouldn’t be.)

The Saint Crispin’s Day speech plays another part in our national culture: to express not only pride in martial skill and to recognise courage and service, but to glorify ideas of nationhood: of continuity; of people and institutions coming from somewhere and being made by people to suit their present needs and the results bequeathed to us as treasures – our true heritage.

Shakespeare wrote - and his plays were performed - at a time when the idea of Englishness had emerged from two forms of government: mediaeval inernationalism (the conscious thought and political ideal of a united Christendom in Europe) and the private dominions of the landed magnates. Shakespeare was aware of something that was still informal and that would not be made real until the next royal dynasty: of Britishness. We few, we happy few in these islands of four nations were exemplified by the common soldiers, pub joke-like, with Englishmen, and an Irishman, a Scotsman, and a Welshman. He wrote confidently and proudly in the new-found patriotism of his age, and in some ways gave it its language and some of its lasting form.
He wrote with the editorial approval of the State of the day (he had to, otherwise he would not have been allowed to stage his work).

It is dificult to imagine him being able to write so confidently and unequivocally about arms and the men who bear them, and civil society and civil government’s support if he was writing in today’s deliberately and treasonously equivocal days.



What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
Or feel the curses of Mussleman’s ungrateful scorn
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
For all have been stood down from lack of thrift.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Look in my parliament for such
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
And never work or thank or serve
From idler’s cradle to their public grave
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires,
As toys unmade by such as they; enjoyed
But never earned but wished withal and given from the common purse,
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
(Bar a daughter’s death or sullen injury
As infidel prophet and his clerics teach)
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
As are scribes and clerks aplenty safe at home
Or town criers, players, and priests unmanly made
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And eight weeks on the morrow shall be done
As swift as modern chancery allow
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
Who cares from whence; not ministers civil
Nor philosophers public, sage, and loving by their
Daily, oft proclaimed philanthropy.
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Should he not need to stay in filthy hospital
Or dwell amongst vagabond knaves
My judges have decreed shall live as freemen
As rich in rights as any Duke or armsman true,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
And they will curse him, like as not,
For blood he spilled and ne’er question why
Nor wonder whence their freedom comes
But as a gift from God or bounteous Nature
And never think to pay or count the cost
That bought their still felicity.
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
But likelier in schools my kingdom wide
Will learn other names of sages, clerics;
And foremost slaves; but not of those who struck off
Their chains, or why, or how.
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
If drink be made, or law allow
Its quaffing public or in houses
Where weak and hurtful children dwell.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
Should husbands, fathers, or replacements need
To live with mothers e’er again in
England’s generous, charitable slums,
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
Unless the parish schools go silent
When England’s kings and martial glory
Need to be retold -
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
As raavagers unversed; ignorant, unlettered
And base; cursed as swordmen; killers plain
By those who think of peace as rain but not the work of men.
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,
Which may be true if hospital bed it be;
Unchanged, unwatched, unsanitary
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Tommy schmutter

There's hope for this old country yet.

Despite all the pacifist whining and anti-British, anti-war propaganda of the MSM for their political-class masters most ordinary people in this country are neither against our troops nor against the idea of arms and armies.

Look around you on the street and you will not notice many people: young and not so young and even children wearing this country's desert camouflage but not in any post-ironic, we are all CND now kind of way.

Like the sailor suits and the bomber jackets before them, Desert DPM camouflage is worn unselfconsciously and, I suspect, rather proudly as casual and leisure wear. Trust the rag trade to catch the true heart and spirit of a nation that still likes itself and honours those who wear its uniform.



Not that it's always easy.....


TOMMY

by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!