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.