08h00-BST Tuesday 13 May 2008-CE

Yesterday, I switched on the system to hear ‘All By Myself’ and the old spirits did not half soar. I did not even ruin it by singing along. I just soaked it all in. Good old music! Well done you song writers and singers. Keep on trucking. What a number! I never got around to telling you this griffy stuff in yesterday’s post. Never mind. Rush out and buy the CD. Actually, I used, when young, to deny that I was ‘lonely’. Only silly sods needed people.

All this vital information for my future biographers is from my purple Rhino RHRN1-6 reporters’ notebook with spellchecker (www.stationary.com) from Wilkinson’s. Now I can tear up the page and pop it directly into the container of my shredder. Further to yesterday’s news, there is an adjacent jotting on the page. It was 08h31 and the DJ was a bloke called Garry something. The station was Gold on the dear old ordinary AM tranny.

I thought of learning shorthand and took it for 15 minutes at the Plymstock place for encouraging the unemployed to improve their skills about 20 years ago. Not having Mister Pitman’s clever speedy note taking ability, I have to scribble in the aforementioned Rhino to the best of my ability. So I did not manage to get who it was yapping on Spotlight with Al Gornov on Russia Today channel. But the guy quoted another guy called maybe George.

I think it was John Laughland and Natalya Naranochnitskaya. Spike Milligan would have loved that dame, sorry name! The thing was that revolutionaries lacking a military or guerrilla edge over established order take a “long march through the institutions”. This is exactly what a certain writer said in a book recently published. The courts, police, schools, churches, politicians, and you name it, in UK, are well on the way to being brain-washed by certain gentlemen.

John and Natalya joined up and wrote an entirely separate but not totally different book. Theirs was about ‘coloured revolutions’ and the start of its name was ‘Orange Revolutions from…’ The accusation is that USA set up camps for training young thugs to hijack genuine people protests against the old Marxist periphery and then take mafia-style power. Look, this post is slops, but given enough time idiots will deem it mystic guru genius.

FIN 05h54

06h49-BST Tuesday 13 May 2008-CE

Roy Greenslade, writing for MEDIA ANALYSIS in the Evening Standard for Wednesday 7 May 2008, has insider insight to bestow under the headline “Alarm bells should be ringing about the future of TV news”. He fears for the future of regional news; I am not all that bothered about that. He seeks in vain for impartiality; I think Fleet Street balances TV. He wrongly accuses Fox News Channel of overt bias; it was my favourite when I could afford it.

START OF QUOTATION

There appears to be a general acceptance that television news on Britain’s main channels is impartial. I say “general acceptance”, but there are plenty of people -academics, journalists and many politicians from each end of the spectrum- who would contest that impartiality is in the eye of the beholder. Not only does it not exist, it is unobtainable, a holy grail that we will forever seek and will never find…

…Now comes a broadside from one of the BBC’s former high-profile employees, Jeff Randall, its business editor for four years. “The job confirmed all my prejudices about the BBC’s management, its bureaucracy and its appalling collective consensus,” he says in an interview in the latest issue of Esquire magazine, due out [8 May 2008]. “It’s not just that there’s a liberal mindset. It’s all about self-preservation. Those creatures of the corridor, whispering and worrying.”

END OF QUOTATION

Roy Greenslade goes on to inform us that Jeff Randall is now editor-at-large (I have the same problem as this damn beer gut just sits there -old joke) with the Daily Telegraph, and that he hosts his own Sky News show. I must have seen him. Jeff Randall apparently thinks that “people like biased TV”. Roy Greenslade says that Rupert Murdoch who owns Fox News Channel & Sky News prefers FNC over Sky. Me too! Sky News is staffed by ex-Beebies.

I hotly contest the allegation by Roy Greenslade that Fox News Channel, as a whole, plays fast and loose with the facts, or that it is ultra-conservative. The critics that Roy Greenslade quotes, who watch Bill O’Reilly, and who “find him at fault”, are not paying attention! Bill O’Reilly does an OPINION piece! His is the ONLY piece on FNC that is not impartial. On other shows, both sane & loony are given. Bill once thought that MI6 was M16. So what?

In the following quotation I grovel in gratitude to Roy Greenslade:

START OF QUOTATION 2

…When TV news bulletins are infected with new to amuse rather than news to use -in order, supposedly, to attract larger audiences- they sacrifice credibility. The result, contradicting the approach, is that people tend to stop watching…”

END OF QUOTATION 2

Hallelujah! Happy New Year! Well done, son! Right on, dude!

FIN 07h50

06h05-BST Tuesday 13 May 2008-CE

Nick Cohen in the Evening Standard for Wednesday 7 May chose to believe that CCTV (security cameras linked to a central surveillance studio, rather than the Chinese central television service) “does not work”. Chief Inspector Mike Neville of the Metropolitan Police service had said that “only 3 per cent of crimes were solved by CCTV”. Nick Cohen took the opportunity to slag off the proposal to bring back identity cards and make them isometric.

I hope we have all read about how schemes under the well-intentioned Blair administration for requiring police (and health) services to meet ‘targets’ of performance and to regularly report statistics on same, have led to dishonest weighting of returns by assigning any given offence to a categories which needs topping up. The ‘norms’ (a Red term) are arbitrarily-set in the first place. In the NHS, easy operations get done quickly; difficult ones wait.

So I do not believe that Mike Neville or Nick Cohen see the whole picture. It includes the awareness of the presence of CCTV standing in for the sight of the bobby on the beat back in the days of compact urban development before sprawling estates of car-owners. I agree that CCTV is no panacea and that “determined police officers and citizens willing to help them” is the basic need. But that only happens when you enact Repeal of Prohibition, son.

END 06h49

06h39-BST 12 Monday May 2008-CE

Neil Midgley is the Daily Telegraph TV & Radio Editor, and on Friday 11 April 2008 he reported suggestions to government by the regulatory body for telecommunications in UK, Ofcom. Go to telegraph.co.uk and find the full story. Neil Midgley reported:

“Internet service providers could face a new tax to help pay for unprofitable programmes shown on ITV and Channel 4, which may in turn lead to higher broadband charges for consumers.

“The levy could be imposed by the Government on the service providers and websites within the next few years, under proposals published yesterday about the future funding of ‘public service’ programmes which make little or no money for commercial broadcasters.”

This perfidious intrusion by fat-cat interests of the broadcasting duopoly into the affairs of the cyber world is outrageous. It reflects the ethos of the criminal culture spawned by the UK model of privatisation in which faux competition is contrived and efficient organisations are artificially fragmented into outfits run by unprincipled thugs.

For my sins, I used to like the idea that money from general taxation be used for high-brow programmes to replace the BBC ‘licence fee’ which grew big once the BBC took it upon itself to compete with, rather than complement, ITV. Collecting the BBC lovies and lefties screw is now sub-contracted, and run like an extortion racket by thugs on the doorstep. Ofcom want to keep it and share it with other high-brow broadcasters so it would have to increase.

I now think that money from private companies should sponsor Arts content on BBC, like Wellington Management amongst others finance npr and an insurance company financed RSC. I would cut BBC to a single TV channel, and a single Radio channel, forcing original frugality on that extravagant fascist canker, allowing no profitable popular programming that advertising could pay for, and repealing the rule that requires IBA to do public service.

Echoing feudal IBA protocol, Ofcom suggests (as reported by Neil Midgley) “commercial broadcasters could be given cheap or free access to Freeview slots, guaranteed prominence on the electronic programme guide, or looser advertising rules in exchange for promising to provide public service programmes.”

So you and your viewers get proper treatment on EPG, and you get income from advertising, only if you suck-up to the BBC masters of FreeView? The BBC fascists use FreeView like they own the spectrum, and like a Hindu landlord abuses folk who lived on the land since before the Aryan invasion!

I have no idea who the man was, on an arty acoustic music program relayed by CFN before I began this post. I switched off the system. There is no big news this morning. If we were sending the special forces in to sort so-called army in Burma (actually just a gang of criminals not fit to wear uniform) or the Darfur genocide, it would be big news. Of course, once we did, the loony always-righteous arty protesting Left would begin to slag off our policy.

No matter what our government of the day do, they are always wrong in the warped minds of the Marxist-fascist and Green-fascist floating scum. The guy on CFN was talking-over-strumming (always irritating in the extreme) about how wonderful Welsh was and how cool to visit UK and hear the news read in it, or in Scots Gaelic. No, it is contrived and loony. Even Cornish has been revived by the arty Left to waste more public money.

FIN 09h53

18h40-BST Sunday 11 May 2008-CE

Doctor Patrick Moore was on the TV a couple of nights ago speaking to some astronomers of the modern kind; they have added maths and particle physics to traditional observation via optical & radio telescopes…

If we left Sol behind until it was a tiny star we would have a dazzle-free view in any of, say, 360 x 360 x 360 directions without waiting for the right time of the clock or calendar.

Modern astronomers say that Big Bang happened just before 13·7 billion years ago, just beyond 13·7 billion lightyears distance away. But in which one of the 360 x 360 x 360 directions do we see the just after?

If matter began expanding just over 13·7 billion years ago from a point just outside the (13·7 + 13·7) 27·4 billion lightyears diameter spherical ‘known universe’, some of it had to instantly teleport to be 27·4 billion lightyears away on the opposite side at the same moment.

I have been convinced by none of the proffered evidence for a Big Bang’s having happened. I think that the Red Shift of far-travelled light is an aspect of deterioration of light over distance, yet to be explained. Another aspect is light’s fading out from visibility at a distance of 13·7 billion lightyears distance, after which it presumably becomes part of the background radiation.

If they still desire to defend Big Bang they will have to time it far earlier and place it far more distant. At the slightest scare, they usually hurry away from Newton and lay it all on what they allege Einstein had in mind.

FIN 21h30

05h42-BST Sunday 11 May 2008-CE

Patrick Gough and Gavin Haines report in Daily Echo for Saturday 10 May 2008 on the latest Rough Guide coverage of Bournemouth which they say is “the nucleus of a vast monotonous conurbation from Lymington to Poole”. I know where Rough Guide are coming from. They take as gospel the posing of architects and preservationists who say that there must be pure country twixt towns which must be a mix of restored primitive and ultra-modern.

It is of no concern to slap-dash Rough Guide know-alls, churning out their slick, self-congratulatory crap, that ordinary people are perfectly, blissfully happy with nice houses, in nice streets, in nice sub-urban areas, filling-in ex-countryside, between the old town centres. They stridently proclaim that nice is not fashionable. Nice is non-U. Nice is plebeian. Nice must not be allowed any peace but must be remorselessly savaged at every opportunity.

Rough Guide jerks do not live in the real world. If they had said that the arty poncing around on Poole Quay, turning it from a genuine historical working location with cobbles and pubs and shipping paraphernalia into a lunatic confrontation of junk labelled ‘street furniture’, then they would be talking sense. I think that we are trapped between two sorts of idiocy: fantasising minimalists of Rough Guide, and fussy accessorizers of Planning.

Mark Smith, Head of Tourism, the Echo reports, has invited the author of the Bournemouth contribution in Rough Guide to come back and be shown “the variety of natural and built attractions” including “award-winning Christchurch and the New Forest National Park, an area of history, culture and activity”. I wish Mark Smith good luck in his defensive efforts. But all I desire to see is the clearing away of the well-meant but insane street clutter.

A Daily Mail Special Advertising Feature on Saturday 10 May 2008 from travelmail.co.uk had nice things to say under the headline “South coast is rocking”. The oddly-processed map at the foot of the feature shows a strip of green smudginess as if viewed from orbit, with a few tiny dottings of grey at the left beyond Weymouth. A weird white affectation goes arty-whoops-ing off the shore like foreign squiggle-writing along the blue right to Hastings.

“Bournemouth shook off its elderly image years ago and is now thoroughly transformed. So today it brims with over 250 restaurants and café bars, as well as stylish spa hotels, theatres, good shopping and trendy nightclubs.” Aint it the truth! “No less than Prince Harry has visited Toko and more recently Prince William had a night out at Elements nightclub.” At the end: “The regenerated South Coast has never looked so cool!” This is all true.

In the same Mail, Sue Reid does a piece on RAD-examination-based false accusation by Doctors Hobs and Skelton which traumatized a couple of good parents and their two formerly-happy kids. I expect dailymail.co.uk will give you the full story. But the point is that:

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS AND HIGH MECHANISTIC INTELLIGENCE IN A PROFESSIONAL PERSON DO NOT GUARANTEE THAT EITHER COMMON SENSE OR GOOD JUDGEMENT WILL ALSO BE PRESENT.

The most paper-qualified person, with a set of letters after his or her name, can be a total conspiracy-theory nutcase. Check out astro-physicists and climatologists.

Writing pieces of self-obsession and shoving them on the CD-RW to take along, by bus or bicycle as the whim dictates, and plonk on this web-log, at different library every day, is my life now. I only miss if I nip away for a day to the smoke or someplace. It has been nearly a fortnight since I had my electric convector room heater on! Cautious sycamores, giant weeds, have finally, defiantly, fully-flourished their green leaves to make a mess later.

FIN 08h16

08h18-BST Saturday 10 May 2008-CE

Stumbling down Commercial Road hill, yesterday, I spotted the Salvation Army man selling War Cry so I put a quid in the plastic round thing. I had passed by a Big Issue seller because the cover had no name I knew. Bruce Tulloch on page 3 of War Cry 10 May 2008 insists (as you would expect) that some guy called ‘God’ made Earth (I correct in this post his error using lower case as in ‘earth’) and that we humans were expected to look after it.

I have long said that the writer of Genesis was correct to see a need to explain why life was both nice and nasty. His explanation (put in the terms of today) was that there must be a hyper-clever guy in the sky who made matter and saw that it was good. That is the nice part explained. But we messed it up by not doing what we were told. Hence the nasty thorns, thistles, and you name what fan-hitting stuff.

But the Genesis writer did not have the microscope and the telescope. Nor had he the scientific method of objective observation and experimental testing of theory. Another missing thing was the scientific approach of regarding all findings as tentative and provisional. If new evidence is found, the old idea is not bound in calf hide and lettered in gold, it is altered, perhaps even swept away.

Gianfranco Girotti, a Church of Rome spokesperson, had said that some sins can have a wide destructive consequence, a social, even global, effect. Was this theist-fascist repenting the Vatican habit of torturing people to death for disagreeing with fatuous crap vomited out from the pulpit? No, he merely approved Green-fascist misanthropy and asserted that Earth is the property of SkyGuy. I agree to espousing Earth, but for OUR good. Bruce Tulloch:

“How much more valid is the concept of stewardship today when our social structure is truly global! Surely few people now need convincing that commercial over-exploitation of the Earth’s resources and careless spoiling of its facilities are genuinely damaging the Earth, maybe even beyond repair! And Bishop Girotti is right -the damage being done to people and their communities across the world makes that a sin.”

Bruce is right if he says that pollution of the air, water, and humus is an act of criminals. I saw it from the age of 10. Since 1970, rising opinion favours saner protocols of raw-material extraction & processing, manufacture of goods, agriculture, distribution, and waste disposal. However, the Green Party, seeking to destroy capitalism, blames humans for climate variation! Let not theists grab this green misanthropy as a secular-age band-wagon.

I love Sally Ann who interpret Yehoshua literally and look after those with no material and intellectual resources. I like Bruce Tulloch for his excellent piece, getting back to Eden-basics from his point of view as a believer in a creator. But there is no respectable evidence for SkyGuy, only traditional superstition. Nor is a guy in the sky necessary in order for a sane human to feel a duty to stop polluting the environment in which we have our being.

Sloping cliff soil, plus garbage dumped from Victorian times to the 1970s, has slid onto the beach at Lyme Regis. Hard rock lower layers give way to sea battering. 1970 seems new; how weird that locals still threw stuff over cliffs! When I was a little kid between 1945 and 1950, we had a holiday four times a year at Filey. I was fascinated to see natural evolution alter the cliff path by Martin’s Ravine. The Brig is 300 metres shorter than Roman times.

I am sick of receiving heavy cartridge paper flyers asking me to take up a Sky package again. They are asking me to undertake to pay for all this junk mail by their moronic public relations and sales department. Not any more!

FIN 10h26

06h19-BST Saturday 10 May 2008-CE

With cup of tea number three, 45 minutes up from bed, I sit down and do the next post. Roger Davis on Big-L played dear old David Cassidy, recorded when he was young and smoochy, asking in song how he could be sure. It sounded exceptionally good. The extra uplift must be the effect of wakening, a function of the freshness of the senses, as night dreams of trying to make something work in some flat, somewhere, some year, give way to day.

Madonna was next with Material Girl. The piece reminds me of ‘California Girls’ from the Beach Boys. You experts in Music will tell me why. Circus Boy of The Monkeys reports that everything he ever thought about fairy-tale love fell away when he saw her face, dear lad. Eric Burdon still wanted to be understood. Fleetwood Mac (as opposed to Whiskey with a drop of ginger wine) was still sleep walking and making a lovely sound.

It was a nice pre-set of records from Roger Davis until the one where Simon and his mate Gar of the Funkle, who are so pleasant when singing “I am such a poor boy”, lose inspiration and start that filler that lasts ten million years. After all these years, I still do not desire to listen to “lai la lai”. It is silly. It is meaningless. It gets on my follicles. It is an insult to my intelligence. I switched to CFN for the news.

At 06h05 David Frost on Al that Era of Jaz began another session of his perfectly harmless nodding act. I checked out his history of The Land from 1947 and it was acceptable except for “driven from or fleeing from”. So sad to watch good luck go bad, as another song might have sung. After Shimon, I deactivated my four screens and turned to the PC…

For a toddler, a day is an age. For a teenager, a 40-minute period of Falstaff and Hal is an eternity. For a person in his (or her?) twenties, a decade is something that has no right to come to an end, and ought to go on forever. For a person who has clocked along day by day (whilst some damn fool keeps mucking about with the calendar, altering the number of the year) and who looks in the mirror with shock to see some old git, 50 years is a flicker.

It was acceptable to watch again the story of Nathaniel Cole on BBC-4 last evening, and before that Peggy Lee. I have accepted that I am forced to watch the Beeb docos on Pop and Rock. The people making, and taking part in, the shows are good guys, fellow rebels back when old fogies ran things. They cannot help the fact that the Beeb is a vast, vile institution of extorting parasites, where it ought to be a noble association of frugal beggars.

I remember reading in a biography of Nat Cole the story of the guy who walked into the studio and offered his song ‘Nature Boy’. A satisfyingly fuller account was given in the doco. Again, I did not manage to memorise or write down the name: Eden Abez or something? I understand that nobody longer allowed to pitch a tent under the HOLLYWOOD sign any more, even if one has the whole Love, Nature, and Seeking-Sky-Guy thing going. Sad.

One of the family-Cole mentioned that Grandma was into class, etiquette, and speaking properly. Quite so! Just like Martin Luther King! This is a reinforcement to my point in an earlier post where I thought a café-au-lait CNN reporter was pink. Given that, these days, the screen is filled with African-Americans and Afro-Brits who mumble and slur, one is no longer expecting an African face when one hears somebody articulating well.

The unfortunate abused people who somehow did not find a way to escape the vile South of USA to the promised land of Chicago break your heart to think of. It was interesting to hear one of the Coles say that the windy city was like Yerushalaim (as I like to write Jerusalem) was to the tribe of Judah. The North of USA is populated by offspring of workers seeking a better life. The South is from non-inheriting sons of gangsters (self-styled ‘gentry’).

I was reminded again last night that the song ‘Butterfly’ (which a Brit Twit covered and made into an instrument of torture to any unfortunate person trapped in bandages in a hospital bed) was a big hit for Andy Williams. I do not slag the guy off for this. We all have shameful youthful sins. And so many stars are forced to begin a career by doing inferior material of the sort that curls your toes so far that you injure yourself in the back of the neck.

FIN 08h08

21h17-BST Friday 09 May 2008-CE

One of the things I might do if I won the pools, or the lottery, neither of which I do, would be to set up a radio station. If it were in Los Angeles I might call it KWIL, know what I like. If the FCC already had one, then it might be WCQL, what Cy Quick likes, water closets quick loo. Using my real name would sound like I was extremely obese.

If anybody wanted to advertise on my Voice of Mindkind, Sol Calling, or Oidar Radio, my own team would do the ads. They would have to be as good as the 1980s Radio Nova from Dublin that I heard in Southport. Cool Geezer told me Chris Carey did it. I forget his other names, but I have a vague idea that Spangles Muldoon may be him, if not I apologise).

I am hearkening to Peggy Lee on BBC 4. Why don’t they do right and keep to that kind of stuff every night? When light entertainment becomes so high classy that it can be the subject of a serious documentary, it is then proper for the Beeb to shove on. There ought to be just the one BBC-TV, supported from general taxation, plus any kind, prestigious company that felt like it.

Mister Leiber has just told the ‘Is-That-All-There-Is?’ song story differently. Peggy now says “If you give that song to anybody else, you are in a lot of trouble, I know a lot of people, that song is mine”. On another doco the partner of Mister Stoller says she said “If you give that song to anybody else, I will have you removed” (from the planet).

What I really want to say is that Peggy Lee first became known to me as name when the song ‘Fever’ was in the charts with a cover on Disc, before it merged with Music Echo. It was monochrome but with cerise blocks. Imagine my affront when I finally learned that an older generation knew here from earlier years with Benny Goodman and who know who all.

But I still liked her because it was not a possibility to dislike her. She had all the sincere communication and none of the slurred, crooning, contrived, wink-wink, non-nod, and toe-curling pretence. I had not heard her quick time ‘Why Don’t You Do Right?’ when I first heard the ultra slow version in ‘Who Killed Roger Rabbit?’ I preferred the slow at first but soon liked both.

FIN 22h08

PS live at the library 11h34 Saturday 10 May

I saw Iron Man, yesterday, and contrary to all three reviews I had read, it was fine. Obviously nobody under 18 should see it (it was certifeid 12 and a half) but I had to wonder what do the critics not like. I can only suppose that the loony-Left Marxist-fascist major faction of Hollywood chattering classes do not like a movie which incorporates arms and USA unless it carries the unequivocal message that Uncle Sam is 100% bad guy. Iron Man is more balanced. It gives the side of good guys against bad guys. Period.

TITLE

09h31-BST Friday 09 May 2008-CE

The approach I follow in this web log is to eschew the whited sepulchre stance and to admit that I am dysfunctional. I committed admittedly minor but no less real offences between 1966 and 1972. Mega-offender, Josef Fritzl, blames childhood environment for his stiff, bullying, & self-righteous attitude, plus his ultra-selfish, callous & perverted actions. But he is both nature and nurture. Faulty product stalks amongst us. Cull it pre-emptively.

A certain government in a certain country is accused by certain gentlemen of declaring war. In fact, a certain government in a certain country is declaring LAW. It is the same old struggle twixt theist-fascism and secular sanity. And the United Nations Organisation, expected at its founding to become an enforcer of all things positive, progressive and constructive, is in the hands of everybody, including faulty product, so that nobody can do anything.

A letter in the Daily Echo 8 May 2008 corrects the impression of Joe Brown (the cover star) that his first job as a fireman on the footplate exists no more. The writer, who is a volunteer driver on Swanage Railway, points out that there are more than 250 independent railways in Britain, doing steam-hauled tours each year. Locomotives 80078 & 80104 from Plaistow shed where Joe was are now active down here. Joe long ago advanced to Rock genius level.

A lady writes (page 16 of Evening Standard for Tuesday 6 May 2008) that she pulled into a pay-&-display bay at a Kentish Town Road deli and went to put money in the meter. There she read that parking was banned during rush hours so back in the car she got and drove off. A camera had recorded her and her car. Camden Council screwed her £120 which she paid. “There is no leeway with policing by CCTV. A camera has no common sense.”

A biz gent left his Daily Telegraph on the train, Tuesday 6 May 2008. I hate the stupid old broadsheet ungainliness of the thing but it is always stuffed with griff. Neil Oliver (‘Amazing Tales For Making Men Out Of Boys’ go to: books.telgraph.co.uk) seems worth reading. He praises Captain Salmond of HMS Birkenhead, 26 February 1852, for saving women and children in the boats. The sharks got the men. Wot, no guns? Heard of Masada…

FIN 09h32

07h31-BST Friday 09 May 2008-CE

Gillian Reynolds, same Telegraph, covering Othello on BBC Radio 3, fatuously burbles: “All those fools who want to take Shakespeare off the national curriculum [myself included] had their rebuttal here. Even those idiots who wonder what Radio 3 is for had their answer. So don’t write to say this is minority stuff, or you don’t see the value of the licence fee…”

Here is a third view. The spear-shaking scribe can be available on the net for any kid advanced enough to dig the dude, as far as I care. But public money ought not to finance any stuff OTHER THAN the Third Programme which would be renamed ‘BBC Radio’ (the ONE-AND-ONLY programme) with Arts and Current Affairs including News. Roger Day (Trafalgar Square 1969, for RFP) said: “The BBC are good at news; let them stick to it.”

The legal extortion racket run by the Beeb ought to be ended, like all such screw-you mechanisms. For people who like Luxy, AFN, Caroline, Big-L and latter-day ILRs, the commercial mechanism produces the goods. The Beeb ought never to have been allowed to try and get with it. It is not their proper job to do Light entertainment. Normandy and such stations ought to have been brought on-shore, not imitated.

FIN 09h39

07h33-BST Thursday 08 May 2008-CE

Will Self in Evening Standard for Tuesday 6 May 2008 desires the “dwellers in the doughnut” (a term he quotes from somewhere to refer to Londoners who dwell not in the inner city) to walk in his shoes because he REALLY has it tough, from car taxes and nuisance crimes, not them. He goes:

“[Boris] Johnson says he will be a mayor for all Londoners but I ask him, how is he going to surmount this paradox: he was elected by the suburbs to enact policies instead aimed squarely at improving the lives of those at the centre. How, when he was elected on the basis of anxieties, will he deal with realities?”

I buy the Daily Echo, Bournemouth, almost all the time. I occasionally buy the Evening Standard (the surviving evening paper for London) in addition. The quality of writing in these evening papers (both for sale in Poole Bay conurbation) is excellent. Just as theatre, cinéma and television all still have their niches, newspapers will survive in this age of the internet. Professional writers deliver focussed griff, like this Will Self work, to ensure it. More:

“And while [Boris Johnson] may be a genius, as his friend Charles Moore claimed on the radio at the weekend, I doubt [whether] he has what I always understood to be its true hallmark: the infinite capacity for taking pains. He can prove me wrong.” (I knew it. I am definitely NOT a genius.)

FIN 08h14

05h43-BST Thursday 08 May 2008

Peter Kelner is the boss of YouGov which is the election pollster of the Evening Standard. YouGov accurately predicted the result of the relative positions of Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson in the election of Lord Mayor of London. The final forecast by YouGov said Boris would win by 53-47 per cent. The other polls attacked YouGov. But both Boris and YouGov won.

In a piece for the Standard on Tuesday 6 May 2008, Peter Kelner told the losers who had been dumping on their now-proven superior what they ought to do if they desired to get their ass in gear in future. Amongst his careful “advice to the traditional polling companies” (well-worth reading in full if you can find it) is a point that reflects social and technological changes:

“…Response rates for telephone polling companies in London are worse than in the rest of Britain. Well under 20 per cent of calls result in an interview. And, because telephone pollsters dial only landline numbers, they question too many people who stay at home, and too few of the many Londoners who lead socially active lives. In contrast, YouGov’s panel members can respond to our surveys at any time from any computer within a 48-hour window.”

It is very generous of Peter Kelner to reveal to his competitors why they are crashing in flames. What we see revealed in this incident is that there is no substitute for brains backed by hard work. The other pollsters perhaps think it is enough to ponce around using old ways whilst making sexy PR and image as in so much of the world of work today. YouGov has a better, perhaps older, idea: get the job right. (Gee, I wish I could do that.)

FIN 06h27

18h31-BST Wednesday 07 May 2008-CE

A most amusing thing just happened. I returned from putting the garbage and the recycs in their respective bins and as I opened my door to get back in, the CNN man said “Welcome back”, dead on time. He was looking at me too. I was glad I had my shorts on and had not gone out in my underpants. They look like swimming trunks but folk can tell the difference you know.

In my pocket, I found the paper napkin that came with my cheese and onion pasty that I bought in Waterloo Station before getting on the return train yesterday. It says “100% pure Nothing artificial added”. Then it has a web address: www.thepastyshop.com but what for I know not. I had looked at the displays on at least half a dozen stalls of various savoury or sweet snacks. They were all tempting, expensive, high quality, and fattening.

As I had first scrutinised the selection on the display at The Pastry Shop the guy said “Yes, sir, next please” or something like that. I waved up my hand and moved on. When I came back having decided that his was indeed my favoured selection from which to choose, he said the same again. But at the same time a stand-around cove who was leaning on the end of the stall goes “Really nice atmosphere in this station innit?”

Either something had happened that I knew nothing about, or he was having a go at me for not making a polite reply to the stall-holder’s first salutation. I was shattered with all that plodding on Exhibition Road and around the parts of the Science Museum. We were once allowed to call them ‘galleries’ but some PR marketer must have decreed that a ‘gallery’ sounds old-fashioned and the term has been dropped from the signage, publicity, and map.

…Here I am, back again after a phone call from Leigh Lady. Life is a struggle these days on the estates trying to keep grandchildren on the right side of the law. The 15-year-old boy has tried suicide three times, but he did not like the stomach pumping last time. He since got voluntary work at an equestrian centre and likes riding. He is getting ever better at his amateur rugby and his grandma has been enrolled to watch him…

The Southern Electric company is private, not the old state-owned ‘Board’. I was persuaded about five years ago by a doorstep sales team to switch to some other lot. But I returned to SE. Now various companies send guys to allege that I will save money with them. I would rather pay more and have no mucking about. The bill was only £63 for January to March inclusive. A note says that they held off raising prices until the warm weather arrived.

We hear about scams, but the greatest scam of all time is the one where creepy perverts in robes terrify the gullible morons amongst us by making them believe that burning alive for ever awaits them if they do not ponce around with potty rituals and put any money they have in the church plate rather than saving it up to use in some way that would better themselves. The scam still goes on in lands that lack Judeo-Protestant-Secular culture.

The decades of yore when I was expecting a nuclear war and wishing it would happen so we could all raid the no-longer-owned supplies and adopt orphans and set up little fortresses (in fact, new gangsters would rule) got me in the habit of needing to know the news. I wish I could drop TV, radio, and newspapers, so as to find peace of mind away from depressing crime news, and just be happy. The TV is off right now. I am missing a quake off Japan.

Talking about the TV made me switch the four screens back on. I have CNN, Sky News, EuroNews and BBC-World up. Gotta go…

FIN 20h27

11h34-BST Wednesday 07 May 2008-CE

Yesterday I took the 07h39 train to Waterloo and the tube to South Kensington. On the Jubilee Line for Westminster, the announcement came that District and Circle lines were badly delayed with signalling failures so I stayed on until Green Park. There I had to board the Piccadilly Line but I got it into my head to be looking for “Victoria Line”. I went one way, and then came back. Probably by pure chance, South Ken found me. I take no credit.

I did that dreadful plod along the long horrible tunnel all the way to the point where the main door of the Science Museum is just up the stairs. (I forgot that it is best to avoid exiting direct from the tube station and to, yes, take the long horrible tunnel at first BUT then exit it tunnel at its first little exit which is actually by Cromwell Road so that half the walk can be in the outside air in Exhibition Road.) I made my way in the lift to the Second Floor and took thorough delight in the Dan Dare & the Building of High-Tec Britain exhibition reviewed in the post before this, below.

Then it was time to have a chocolate cookie and a cup of drinking chocolate in the Revolution Café. I nostalgicized all around the dear old Space Exploration once more. Checking at the IMAX, I found the Space Station 3D movie was not on until 16h45. So I strolled up Exhibition Road to Kensington Gardens for a sit in the sunshine. Then I came back down for a meander around South Ken snack shops and enjoyed a yummy mint choc chip cone.

As I sat in the garden by the Nasty History See’em, right by the aforementioned tube tunnel entry/exit, I heard a car suddenly take off from the lights and I swear he must have been doing 70 (mph) up Cromwell Road. When I got back at 21h00 to my flat in Bournemouth and saw the Chelsea shoot up I wondered whether it had been the same havoc-wreaker. But there are plenty of them to go round so probably not.

I am glad to have finally seen Space Station 3D. The first time I saw only a tiny part of it was through the projection windows at the former IMAX cinéma by Bournemouth Pier. My mate the movie industry technician and re-enactor (specialising in US Civil War) was showing Cool Geezer and myself around. A young projectionist was on duty. My mate had been let go. The Bournemouth IMAX was out of funds because hardly anybody went to see the mostly crap movies they could afford. I was sad when it died.

After my stroll, whilst waiting for the movie, I did the Computing History section. When they let us out of the movie, they streamed us through the Third Floor and the Flight section. I had forgotten those old planes hanging on wires from the ceiling. Getting to Waterloo for the 18h35 homeward, we were tight stuffed on the tube. I find it remarkable that little kids occupy a seat alone whilst adults stand. It uses space most uneconomically.

FIN 12h44

07h42-BST Wednesday 07 May 2008-CE

Dan Dare & the Birth of High-Tec Britain, at the Science Museum in South Kensington, was well-worth taking a good time about. I looked at them with happy approval, the panels reproducing Eagle comic pages from the 1950s of Frank Hampson’s fictional future space heroes, and I read every word of the story continuity panels and text-balloons of the character’s conversation. In any expanded expo: radio’s Jet Morgan from Charles Chiltern maybe?

For myself, as a war-baby and then teenager of the 1950s, there could not have been too much Eagle. For you, as a “future boy” or girl whose young days were spent after many thousands of bomb sites were cleared away, you and I both could still thrill as we saw new, real journeys, both robotic and human, into space (hardly any by Brits of course, mostly by citizens of USA and USSR). I am sure the Eagle comic content in the exhibition is just right.

I had to remove my baseball cap as I looked at the actual panel with two windows that blew out of one of the three failed comet jet airliners. It is there recovered from the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. It is part of UK’s being at the leading edge of technology spun-off from World War 2. We were the ones to cop it in the neck as it was proved that alloys had to be stronger for large, high-flying passenger planes than bombers and fighters.

But there was, I have always felt, one element of loony designer hubris. How else do you explain why the windows on the De Havilland Comet aircraft were square? The corners had a tiny bit of a curve but it was not enough (as my non-engineer lay-mind can easily see) to conduct the stress around supportably. Significantly, cracks led from the corners. Newspapers soon after mentioned it but this presentation does not specifically point to it.

I made my usual skitty self read every word of the texts tracing the birth of hi-tech UK. I thoroughly salute the approach of the exhibition conceivers. Technical progress forced during war is the same mechanism as peaceful Apollo spinoff. I noted the point made that mainland manufacturers raced ahead as they reconstructed. Our housing was mucho-blitzed but many old factories survived to be made an excuse, later, for our plodding decline.

This minor point is not original to me; it was made by Thatcherites. Today, aside from 2008’s post-privatisation woe where profit trumps service to a criminal degree, we suffer same-old, arty-design attitude. Post-war, as UK fell behind both war-tooled USA and recovering Continent, it was not only so-called ‘Contemporary’ artiness; it was surviving class-rooted dislike of speaking up against, not only management, but also State under Labour.

Even if you are not of the Eagle comic era, go to the Second Floor of the Science Museum, defy the offensive assault of the arty work that twitters endlessly from the great lit circle rising up through the mezzanine gulf from far below (being young you probably like it) and dig Dan Dare & the Birth of High-Tec Britain. After all, if you are a kid now, the fictional future of Dan Dare has still not happened; it is your life to take and make!

I spent longer in South Kensington than ever before. It is worth reading every word in the ‘galleries’ that interest one, rather than just seeing the gear. I saw some bad English grammar in the Exploring Space section. And to say that gravity is “diminished in space” is a level-down. Almost as much gravity holds us when we fall around Earth (forward momentum having put us and our spacecraft container in that state) as when on the surface.

History of Computing is just along from Dan Dare & the Birth of High-Tec Britain, on the same level. As I looked at the clunky contraptions, valves and frames, and read about why on Earth they came to be made, I felt love for the geeks-of-their-day who began it all. It made me ashamed to slag off that infuriating cell phone sitting within arm’s reach, and this dratted PC that I must use …and yet, still I muse: come back childhood, most is forgiven…

FIN 11h26

08h58-BST Monday 05 May 2008-CE

I intensely dislike Bank Holidays. I have never liked them even when I was working. But at least, these days, the shops open over the midday. I must buy The Times when I nip out to post this, because the Papers on Sky News have trailed an article about Astro-NERDS wanted by NASA but ‘space cadets’ need not apply. Is the right stuff for 2008 different? I recall reading that fit Edwin Aldrin did vital work on trajectories. Moon guys had it all.

Michelle Henry was the cafe-au-lait lady who was with Eamonn doing the Papers. Mattel are trying to own Brats, as well as their own ugly, skinny, long-tall, Barbie. An ex-employee invented Brats which have more normal limb proportion with an infant-style head which is large in proportion to the body. I say: that fashion models are gruesome. Barbie is an ugly freak. And Mattel are ectomorphic-fascists. Michelle and Eamonn are not too bad.

Watching CCTV9, I loved the way interviewee Xu Kangping turned to fellow interviewee Yang Ning rather than the moderator and interviewer whose name I forget, but he is utterly brilliant. The young man Xu was younger than the young lady Yang. He agreed with one point, and then turned to her to check what else she said. It was so cute. The moderator let things ride. I love that show. It is Dialogue, of course. Watch it!

The Land was declared by the UN in 1947 to be twin states. But since 1882 at least, the theist leadership of both antithetic cousin faiths had been spewing hatred so extremists inside, and circling nations, outside decreed that the tri-faith peace-loving people themselves had no chance. We are in the last chapter as the gangster grabbers of G-land slowly enlighten. I think S ought to be handed to P by E. Size matters. J and S are the heartland of I.

BBC News had a piece on the Grand Design Show in the docklands. It was comical to hear the lady going “…we have a very buoyant market and even if there should be a slight downturn…” This was LIVE today mark you, not a clip from six months ago! What a sales-person! Of course, she may be on it. Up-market residences may be doing as well as ever. As for me, I am happy in my Dave Wells flat in dear old Poole Bay City. Sod Old Father Thames.

Natalie Cronin, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Inspector, was helped beautifully by the lady interviewer (whose name I did not catch) on BBC News 08h20. It was a classic example of the art. Natalie went into a bland generalisation. She did not answer the question. The Beeb lady gave the answer, and led the next question. And so on. Natalie finally lost her preoccupation and got into a good-enough stride. Better next time.

John McDonnell was yapping that he thinks Gordon can be saved from crashing in flames. Hello! Who were the back-seat pilots who got the bloke IN this mess? You back-bench loony-Left Marxist-fascists mate, that is who! Apparently, this bloke JMcD tried to stand for leader last year. I think he is the item I referred to in a previous blog when I called him hard-faced. This time, a twitch of humour came at the end. I quite liked him. Damn!

We are told that it might cost billions of pounds to find, and export, illegal immigrant workers. I am on the side of the workers myself. They must be needed. The business of government would be making sure that these people (who have the initiative and courage to treat Earth as their home, not just their land of birth) are paid well-enough, work in good-enough conditions, and are not exploited slaves. Be part of the solution, HMG!

They idiots are waiting for better weather before running up Everest with a flaming torch. Once again I quote Robert Anson Heinlein (I hope that the late Master of Science Fiction and Space Fantasy is monitoring in agreement that this case applies) “Nothing is harder to believe than human stupidity”. In any case, I hate tectonic damage. All this silly pointy things need to be cut flat and the stuff used to fill the silly fiords. One day people will be like me.

FIN 10h28

09h54-BST Sunday 04 May 2008-CE

A story in the newspaper in the mid 1970s first brought the man to my notice. He was calling a meeting of any citizens who might be concerned about crime. I attended and was bemused to discover that there were two themes. Not only did he have a lot to say on the main subject that I could agree with readily, but also he went on about Buddhism.

I spoke to him after the meeting and opined that he needed to drop the religious-type stuff and concentrate on the condemnation of government weakness on dealing with the criminals. It turned out that he accepted my point because, soon after, he changed the name of the group appropriately. I started going to his public meetings, and private ones at his house.

He had been an East End kid and done his share of taking wooden street paving blocks, whilst the road was dug up, to keep the home fire burning. He had joined the young communists. Then he had moved to the Oswald Moseley group and had risen high on the security side. He had shared a dining table with the leader and various Mitfords.

He had done military service in Palestine under the British Mandate, and served as a police officer in the Channel Isles. Finally, he found Buddhism, but his instinctive desire to be a political leader in his own right remained. He envisaged a balance between the vegetarian pacifism of the prince who found enlightenment under the tree, and war to topple crooks from power over the lives of innocent people.

I attended several of his activities designed to gain publicity and recruit members. Their degree of success was not quite zero, I found myself one evening sitting in a chair at his house, dramatically confronted by the inner circle (him and three others), and questioned up to the point where it would obviously have been either “do not call us, we will not call you” or “come and join us”. I passed and was unceremoniously but soberly sworn in.

I do not recall at which point I ceased to tag-along and became a committed member of the embryonic Party, but it was during a sequence of his events. I attended his Rally in Trafalgar Square. At some point he gave me the job of Security. I have always looked hard, despite being what lanky men call ‘short’. But I knew nothing of the task he assigned me.

I was doorman at his dance where an outstanding citizen was honoured in the Pavilion. I was on the door at his Town Hall Annex concert at which a Polish children’s singing-&-dancing group unsuitably shared the bill with a minor local rock band that whacked up the audio, assaulting the ears of the family audience. I became disillusioned. I achieved physical separation by moving to Blandford with my father who, soon after, moved to BC.

I returned to Bournemouth having blued the proceeds of my house-owning period, and you can read about the incident at the YMCA in Westover Road in a one-post Page of my sidebar ‘Afterlife: natural’. The man is definitely hugely gifted. Sadly, he adds a superstructure of nonsense upon his foundation of basic wisdom and insight. He gave credence to the idea that the Nazi thug in chief was a great leader who was let down by evil sidekicks. No way! I have to say that, as things turned out, I was wrong about taking the political channel to influence. The faith-based group would have had more chance, I now see.

Four years later, my father returned to UK, Southport this time. I moved to be near the place that was looking after him. My father died in Fall of 1985 and I returned to the West Country. I popped around between Hounslow and Cornwall for a few years and finally I landed back in Bournemouth in 1995. I went to Safeway’s on the second day and there he was, shopping. The other members had quit too. There was no pretence that it was not all over.

I met my old friend and former mentor again, by chance, in his beach hut as I rode along the Prom in the Summer of 2006. He admitted “I failed”. In fact, he had an influence on public opinion, along with similar campaigning voices. But crime will grow ever stronger whilst Puritan Prohibition (of mind-altering substances) enriches low life trash, and sabotages efforts to moderate and regulate use of the happy-herbs our ancestors discovered. Search ‘rendering’ on my sidebar for the full case. He could never see that. I failed to convince him on the issue, and also that he should write his autobiography, allowing me to transcribe tapes to WP if need be.

I avoid the Prom as much as possible. I love it, but it is barely ride-able now. The rebuilding (Miami-Beach-style) went way too far. Great wads of sand now make the way arduous for pedestrian and cyclist alike. I tried it again recently and, despite my efforts with Muc-Off chain cleaner, the system of my bicycle sounds like it is getting ground-out again. Silicon grains (unlike silicon chips which are an unmixed blessing?) infiltrate and destroy…

FIN 11h53

08h31-BST Saturday 03 May 2008-CE

Nim’s Island is indeed the title of the movie I saw yesterday. In the previous post I had to call it Nidl Nadl Noo. Oldie folk will recall the dated work of Milligan, Sellers and Seacombe. I needed to see a movie, never expecting stuff as brilliant as the adventures of Nim turned out to be: pets in acceptable snips, events not depending on stupidity, the right-thing being done, people knowing technology and having cool attitude. To miss is to diss …yourself.

A couple of days ago, the Big-L DJ said of the station: “hopefully, soon, bigger and better and brighter”. I SO hope that this is a promise of wider and more powerful signal distribution, like taking over a Beeb-hogged AM frequency, and not a sad warning of take-over by the phoney PR arty-farty design-specialist con-crap comprehensive red-brick generation. Much as the previous paragraph lauds Now Generation, I like my Big-L Sixties-style.

Cool Geezer phoned me with an insight. He was up by a regional Beeb hive and spoke to the lady at the desk. He showed his professional creds hoping to see the duty engineer (on a new tech, as before) but she no-could-do. The poor lady let out the whole maladroit situation. She was depressed with the selling-off because she could no longer contact departments. (Yet the lovies have the legal right to demand we finance expanding narcissistic posturing.)

Doctor Alixe Bovey ‘In Search of Medieval Britain’ seems to get it just right. UK and USA history is common until their UDI, and our going our separate ways. She has every right to seek amongst the ruins here and to remark upon what she finds. I loved the idea of being able to shoot-on-sight anyone legally declared to be an ‘outlaw’. That is JUST what we are asking for. Softies who kiss-up to the crooks are outlaws too. Soon, baby, soon…

I noticed when I popped in to see the elections coverage that NOC Party were doing OK. I had never heard of them but I did somehow get the impression that they were rather a grey lot, I do not know why. Then I twigged that I was looking at an abbreviation for ‘no overall control’. I have no overalls. I am retired. I liked the white ones I had at Cadburys in the early 1960s. All along the high-walk, we white ghosts were walking.

Whenever somebody expresses a willingness to believe in astrology I ask them to tell me my birth, based on their observation of my character during the conversations we have been having. No luck so far. They need to join the National Organisation of C*nts.

FIN 10h37

04h51-BST Friday 02 May 2008-CE

Aldi on Palmerston Road opened yesterday and was packed. It is quite a big store for Aldi. The car park is an awkward shape. There are chaining bars for five bicycles. Lidl in the Sovereign Centre had its balloons, primrose yellow with red and blue logo, filled with helium and tied in triplets to bottles of water placed all around the place. The Lidl offer of £3 off if you spend ten on non-food goods only, seemed to have quite a few takers.

A boy of about seven had just checked out with his mother and he was eyeing the back of the guy in the corner who was inflating more balloons using the helium bottle. He let them float to the ceiling where he could reach the ribbon dangling from each. I was sad that the man did not notice, behind him, the boy and his obvious desire to have a balloon. The boy made several sallies forth in the direction, but eventually off he and his mother went.

After I finished packing my back-pack on that useful shelf that Lidl has (Aldi do them too) a man, with the boy following, came striding into the store. He must have been waiting in the mall getting some sanity whilst the wife and the boy shopped. So the polite little guy got his free promotional balloon. Now he knows the deal. Balloons are available to have. Next time he will be not afraid. He will ask and one shall be given unto him.

Louise Jury in the Evening Standard, Wednesday, did a small piece as Chief Arts Correspondent about the ‘Dan Dare And The Birth Of Hi-Tech Britain’ exhibition running at The Science Museum until 25 October, admission free. I will go by train or coach. It covers the post-war research & development boom. Advance is best driven by threat (Henry #8, US Civil War, WW1 & WW2) but NASA Apollo Program, a peaceful version, giant-leaped us more.

I must see Nim’s Island today if possible. I ate too many well-ripe Kiwi fruit yesterday morning and had the trots. I went and ate some more yester-eve and woke at 03h00 (2½ hours ago) with a touch of the same condition. Labour is riding the pendulum swing away from power, as is to be expected after ten years. A hard-faced, loony-Left Marxist-fascist was doing the “we are being punished by the People for abandoning our roots” usual crap.

FIN 05h48

08h07-BST Thursday 01 May 2008-CE

Seven minutes ago we had the annual siren in The Land to commemorate those of the Tribe of Judah murdered by the Hitler gang of racist-fascists during World War 2. Slavs, intellectuals, Christian evangelicals, gypsies, Communists, homosexuals, and handicapped people were also murdered by the Nazi scum. CNN showed it live, and Euro News came in at the end. The usual scattering of dysfunctionals jerks defied the custom and kept moving.

Ephraim Hardcastle, in Daily Mail yesterday, reported Stu Rose (M&S boss) sneering at Jeremy Paxman, the BBC TV anchor whom I normally find to be a pain in the chest, but it seems he pointed out a situation that I had noticed also. About 3 to 5 years ago I bought a whole set of Marks and Spencer’s underpants and they were superb. When they wore out, I went to replace them, about six months ago. The new ones were crap. Pax is on it for once.

James Whale did the Papers for Sky News this morning. He can be a tiny bit wild, and he can skid off the mark, occasionally. But mostly he nails it as today. When he said “…variation in climate is a natural, normal thing to happen…” joy came to my blood pump wot I have twixt my tits (to put it poetically). Absolutely, Mister Whale! Keep up the good words!

Mark White covered the subject of Brainwashing on Sky News. The ex-victim interviewed explained the power of the brainwashers as “scripture and their charisma”. The professor involved in study of the phenomenon does not desire to curb religion, but governments need to be aware. I DO desire to curb theism, and governments need to act faster against the evil excesses of so-called ‘faith’ which is actually fascism.

It is so satisfying to read good news! A silly lady pet-lover was trampled to death by Simmental cows, naturally alert and defensive with calves. Sandra Pearce had failed to dominate her useless, yapping shit-producers. Dogs look for a firm leader of the pack. They can, and ought to, be made to proceed in quiet order. They were, however, described as being “feisty and boisterous” as they ruined the peace & quiet of South Elmham Farm estate. (Daily Mail)

Brian Masters in Daily Mail yesterday gets it right about Josef Fritzl: “Such men are incapable of feeling whole, as we do when we weep at a funeral. There is a crucial element of humanity missing in them -the [need] to be part of a common ethic or set of moral principles… …disgust would be foreign to him… …priv