BUDGET

Twas brillig and the slithy tives

Did gyre and gimble in the grove ;       

All mimsey was the borogrove

And the mome  rathe outgraved.

Good nonsense verse is hard to write and I shall turn my attention to the tedious subject of the budget as I can't remember any more of the Jabberwocky.

Well it was the sort of budget you would expect from a coalition - dull and disappointing. I have always hated the idea of a coalition where each side has a veto on the other. It is not surprising that nothing definite ever gets done.

Boy George did his best but that was not much good - something for pensioners and penalties for drinkers and smokers but I am not sure that our masters in Brussels will allow all that he has tried to

do. "We're all in this together" was always a silly slogan from a very rich man who would never feel the pinch himself especially when he was fronted by a front bench of millionaires.  No wonder the leader of the opposition asked the front bench to stand up if they would not be worse off and the Beast of Bolsover  made his usual cracks about millionaires' row. 

Actually most coalitions fall out and we have to have one of our General Elections which I really rather like.  In one year we had three of them,  and one of these heralded in the demise of Jeremy Thorpe.    I miss him.  Who will take that wit and humour into the House of Commons which it  badly needs? At the moment they are a very dull lot.

A Book of Secrets

What to read? So many books that have been praised to the skies by each man's or woman's buddy - (John's another Thackeray, Jane's another Chaucer; Jennifer is clearly a Trollope only coarser) - that one does not know where to begin.  The current number of The New York Review of Books is helpful, praising "A Book of Secrets" by Michael Holroyd.
It tells the story of a man called 'Becket' who was born at the end of the nineteenth century, inherited money, inherited even more money (this time from an uncle whom he hardly knew) and went off to live, very comfortably, in Italy. There he seduced a girl who called the daughter of this liaison 'Violet' before becoming in later life Mrs Alice Keppel - the mistress of Edward VII. Violet is chiefly known for her affaire with Vita Sackville-West now so well recorded.  And there they all there! Isn't that Lytton? And Virginia? And Duncan  and Carrington and the whole Bloomsbury lot who were so influential in the inter-war years? Those years which were one long cocktail party between World Wars; nobody knew how the first one began but everyone knew that it never properly ended and that a second one was bound to follow in spite of Morgan saying that he would choose to lay down his life for his friend rather than his country. (What did he mean by saying "Only connect"? Perhaps he was thinking of the gay friendships which they all indulged and extoling homosexual love.  I shall never understand how it was that once they had put themselves outside the law for one "crime" they thought that everything was available. And here come Burgess and McLean and all the Cambridge spies. No wonder Hitler was convinced that the young men of England would not fight for King and Country. Part biography part fiiction it is all here in "A Book of Secrets". Read it with pleasure.

What is more it is all done in 285 easy to hold pages.






      

A Book of Secrets

So many books - so many books that may be worth reading.  How shall we know what is worth while?
The New York Review of Books occasionally comes to our aid.  Here is their latest choice coming in

Ride Him, Cowboy

A spokesman for Dave denied on Tuesday 28th of February that the Prime Minister had ridden a former Metroplitan Police horse owned by Rebekah Brooks.  On Friday March 2nd, the Prime Minister admitted he had ridden Raisa.

Dave, Dave how can you have done it? I mean how can you have spent three days dithering over whether or not you could get away with ambiguous statements about that horse?  You ought to have known in three seconds that, after the expenses scandal and the setting up of the Press inquiry, the truth was bound to come out and delay could only make matters worse.  This goes to show how far you have got from the real life of the country.  You must send Lord Loosen-up away. (For the correct pronounciation of Leverson see my previous blog. "Leveson - Gower" should be pronounced "Loosen - Gore"), send them all packing and let anyone publish whatever they like. After all when the Prime Minister thinks that he is immune from making an open statement about this important matter it is reason to think that there must be something more than we have told.  And that is why the Press is there  and plays such an importanr part  in defending the ordinary citizen from the depredations of the Government.  If that upsets an actor with floppy hair who has not been scene in professional life for some time  he will have put up with it.

We are on good terms with our binmen. "Get well soon from the National Union of the General and Municipal Boilermakers by 13 votes to 12."

Kings and Queens

A couple of weeks in hospital is the ideal background for blog production. The  "blogeur" is free to range over the vacnt lot that his heart is rapidly becoming and lets him speculate freely and allow  an inpressive pile of of discards.  What is left?.  Here's one .....
The English Monarch.....
England  became the country it used to be shortly before it was conquered by the French.  After a couple of centuries of buggering about it packed up having English kings and left it to the Welsh for a couple more centuries when it changed to borrowing a king from Scotland. After the Scots we had a woman  who was married to a Dutchman and finally settled on a German.
Germans have occupied the throne ever since and have made a jolly good job of it. But why have we never had an Englishman in charge?  Probably because we are all much too nice......                        

Soldiers

What strange thoughts swim into the mind after midnight whenn the unconscience part of the brain takes charge:

We're the soldiers of the Queen my lads,

And what they ask us what we've seen, my lads,

And they ask us why we've always won,

Its because we're the soldiers of the queen...

or something like that.  This patriotic song started me thinking about the empire and how it was that we came to loose it. My own view is that we are better off without it, but how did it all go?  Clearly it was something to do with the second world war when the countries of the empire came in on our side as we stood alone against Hitler who was then at the height of his power.  (He achieved a much more successful European union than our so-called colleagues have managed to do.  "Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.") So I suppose that we must have promised them all independance as the colonists were fed up with us despising them.

In the colonies, dominions and protectorates,

It isn't true that everyone expectorates....

now that's more like it.  The problem has been solved.  No need to be worried about it any more.  Sleep beckons.



Football Fangs

What is all this fuss about one footballer insulting another footballer?

Sticks and stones can break my bones

But words will never hurt me.

 Apparently they can hurt these sensitive little flowers who are millionaires and who help to fill acres of newsprint with their doings and their boring sex lives, not to mention their secret injunctions in courts to which we have no access.

And that raises another question i.e. why are there any courts which are closed to the general public?  Everything that happens in court ought to be availsble to anyone who has an interest inm it even if it is only inquisitive curiosity.  This is especially so for courts which deal with the custody of children who are often pawns in a game played by social workers and the police.  An explanation is needed by me if not by anyone else. Open up Clarke! I want to know what is going on behind closed doors. 

That's enough thinking for one night. 







Stately Homes

Thanks to Google I now know that the phrase "The Stately Homes of England" was first used by a hitherto unknown poet called Felicia Hemans (d. 1835).
(Judged by this effort she was not much good.  No need for further study of her work I am glad to say).
This was brought on by thinking about how there was really no one in Parliament who had any ideas or experience of business and thus to Dave's background which may be okay for economising but not for the practical affairs of life:

But still we won't be beaten;

We'll scrimp and scrape and save;

The playing fields of Eton

Have made us frightfully brave.

We know how Caesar conquered Gaul

And how to whack a cricket ball;

Apart from this our education

Lacks co-ordination.....

Quite so.  With this in mind I get really scared when Dave goes off to yet another summit meeting and does not know what he is talking about, though I am sure that he tries to stick to the brief his aides have given him. Please come back without having given everything away.



Message to Boy George

Okay, boy George, this could be your finest hour as a blanket of pessimism falls over the western world. 
You've had your cuts and now you want growth.  Here's how.  First raise the threshold of income tax to £10,000 - that will shut up little Cleggy.  Then abolish that silly tax rate of fifty per cent which it makes it more profitable to save on tax than to earn more money. (And incidentally deters people from coming here to do business.)  The minimum earnings rule must go.  If we raise the bottom rung on the ladder of opportunity how how can the young unemployed climb to the deck of that great ship of state which is sailing to the broad sunlit uplands?  Thirdly, abolish differential rates of income tax and replace it with a flat rate - say 25%  with the aim of reducing it to 20%.  Then everyone would work for the state for one day a week and could keep all the money earned in the next four days.  There's fairness for you.  Now let's get on with it,
This will not happen in our sclerotic country where change is anathema to our politicians and most other people.  How sad.

Tears are round; the sea is deep;

Roll them overboard and sleep. 

A Three Pipe Problem

The moment I saw the thick white envelope I knew that it was from the Diogenes Club.  Inside  was a plain sheet of the very best paper on which, in a hand that I knew so well, were the words "Come at Once". The signature too was not unknown to me.  There it was in the strong male hand of a man - and what a man!  "Sherlock"  As ever the word sent an agreeable frisson down the back of my neck.  The man I had admired for so many years was back.  Did I write "admired"?  Nay you might almost say "loved" for so closely had I lived with him under Mrs. Hudson's hospitable roof - perhaps so much as to make my wife forget my first name.  Sometimes she called me "James" and at other times I was "John".  (Such forgetfulness is common among the fair sex)
Fog swirled about me as I knocked on the door of 221b in Baker Street.  I hurried up the stairs and there I saw him - my oldest and best friend - Sherlock Holmes. We exchanged greetings and then he said "We have a problem,Watson.  The game's afoot." "But Holmes, how can this be?  You were last scene lying on the pavement with blood streaming from your lifeless body after falling from a very tall building."
"Precisely, Watson.  That is the problem and a three pipe one at that."
Then he lit his pipe and vanished in a puff of smoke.......

Now I find that Yvette Cooper got a first in PPE at Oxford.  That makes four of them - Cameron, Osborne and Milliband - now it's Mrs Balls as well. Hmmm......

Scotland the not very Brave?

After decades of neglect G K Chesterton has come back into favour and his words come back to me from schooldays:

Smile at us, pay us, pass us but do not quite forget;

For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.

Well we are not to be given a chance to speak and are most likely to see Scotland sail away from the United Kingdom with a compromise of partial  independance - we are good at compromise - as we retain some powers that are too expensive for a small country.  Defence springs to mind and this has become specially expensive for us since Tony invaded Iraq and Dave and the schoolboys carried on the bad work of strutting around on the world stage instead of staying at home to save ourselves from financial ruin.  But then Foreign affairs have always been more fun than Home affairs where people keep on asking awkward questions.  The Scots' position is quite simple - they want to eat their haggis and have it too.  Let's hope they don't get away with it.  A|nd so to sleep

Playing Trains

What fun . it is for the Government to be playing trains.  Such a diversion from hearing about austerity all the time.  So we are to have a new high speed train from London to Birmingham on a new high  speed track.  It will only cost £32 billion pounds (make that £64 billion to go on the record of past rail improvements) and work will start very very soon i.e. in 2016 after we have awarded the contract to build it to the Chinese who are ever so good at building railways.
Max Beerbohm left Zuleika Dobson looking at Bradshaw's to get a train to Cambridge.  It was then and probably still is a notoriously difficult journey  from Oxford.  She may be still stuck in a siding in Bletchley.
If we must have a really fast rail link we ought to have it from Oxford to Cambridge even though we can now exchange ideas without getting on a train at all.  It will show how keen we are on science and technology.Never mind  - boys will be boys.

Hamlet

"To be or not to be; that is the question."  No dear  that is not the question.  The question is "How am I going to avenge the murder of my father and secure the revenge against my uncle the murderer?"  Nevertheless the great author has stuck this soliloquy - splendid though it is - into the play on which it has no bearing.  But that is just one of the problems which make the tragedy so endlessly fascinating and gives employment to scholars.  The Shakespeare industry shall never die.

Dave and the schoolboys are not doing very well and only the weakness of the opposition makes them look good.  The plan if you remember was to follow the "Cuts" with growth fuelled by the export of manufactured goods.  But the goods we have developed  are being made abroad while we have let a flood of immigrants into the country.  We have imported lots of workers and exported lots of work.  Well done, boys.  Keep up the good work.