War and the Big Picture

As we skitter towards another Continental war that may finally see the end of our country let us look back to the start of our ruin. If enough can understand what 1914 cost us then perhaps we can turn back, even now.

There are over 100,000 war memorials in the UK erected in memory of our soldiers killed in WWI. They were paid for by local communities not by the Government.

Each name on the stone cross is someone who might otherwise have lived a humble and productive everyday life. Moreover, someone who was fit enough to fight, which in some places put them in a minority: AI says we discovered how Britain had been failing the people at the call-up for the Second Boer War (1899–1902):

Roughly 30% to 40% of British recruits—and up to 60% to 90% in impoverished industrial cities—were physically unfit for military service due to malnutrition, rickets, and poor health.

Across the nation locally we grieve on Remembrance Sunday and important people lay wreaths on the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Yet one British PM after another bangs the drum for Ukraine - that and abandoning the strategically important Chagos Islands are two of the few early significant commitments made by our current, Brezhnev-eyebrowed Andy Pandy. Who takes our Premiers aside and gives them their starting orders?

What were (some of) the (social) consequences of the Great War?

Over 700,000 British servicemen dead, with another couple of hundred thousand from the wider Empire. Add in the prisoners, wounded and crippled and the toll rises to some three million, for our side alone.

So many widows and bereaved mothers. So many with disabled and disfigured husbands. How many who never even had the opportunity of marriage and family life?

As common soldier Michael Williams tells the incognito King Henry V:

But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all “We died at such a place,” some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

Henry replies that it is for men to sort out their own lives so they can if need be, die with a clear conscience. There, that was easy! You won’t out-talk a politician.

But surely there had to be some compelling reason for us to declare war on Germany in August 1914?

Mmmm… not exactly.

Germany wanted to expand into Russia whose naval/military weakness had been highlighted ten years earlier when beaten in a war with Japan. To avoid having to fight on two fronts the German strategy was first to defeat France within a few weeks before Russia could mobilise sufficiently to resist an invasion by the Kaiser’s armies.

France had been defeated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and fear of France had helped persuade southern Germanic States to join what then became a large unified Germany.

The French were heavily fortified along their common border with Germany, so the latter’s Schlieffen Plan was to cut through Belgium instead and then head for Paris. The French thought they could halt German forces in Belgium and counter-strike through the French-German border with Berlin in their sights.

What did this tussle have to do with us and our global, sea-based empire?

We had to cast around for a justification, a casus belli. We found it in the multinational 1839 Treaty of London that guaranteed majority-Catholic Belgium’s independence from the Protestant Netherlands.

Not all the British Cabinet was aware of the determination of certain parties within and outside the Government to get involved. But the military correspondent of the Times, Colonel Repington was okayed by Lord Esher and Sir George Clarke at the War Office to open negotiations with the French Government, seeking an assurance from the French that France would not be the first to violate Belgian neutrality and telling them that whoever did so would “automatically” bring us into the field in defence of our treaty obligations. This had never previously been officially confirmed.

Nor was the prospect of British assistance initially welcomed by the French. In 1910 the future Marshal of France Ferdinand Foch was asked what minimum size of force we would need to send to help and he replied “A single British soldier - and we will see to it that he will be killed.”

In 1912 Viscount Haldane went to Germany to secure an agreement that they would keep their navy smaller than ours; for that they demanded a guarantee of British neutrality in the event of a Franco-British war, which was not offered. Haldane came away convinced that

“once the German war party had got into the saddle it would be war not merely for the overthrow of France or Russia but for the domination of the world.”

So all our stone crosses mark the consequences of a geopolitical strategy first systematically described by a British geographer in 1904; about which more anon.

………………………

The latter half of this post draws on Chapter Three of Barbara Tuchman’s meticulous study “The Guns of August” - thanks to Peter Hitchens for the lead.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Angels of Venice, by JD

Angels Of Venice is a Californian harp, flute and cello group founded by harpist Carol Tatum in 1993. The group’s core sound is harp, flute and cello but also combines Middle Eastern, medieval and neoclassical styles.

The official members of Angels Of Venice are:
Carol Tatum - harp, composer, producer
Cathy Biagini - cello
Susan Craig Winsberg - flute
Suzanne Tang - flute
Irina Cherkova - cello
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_of_Venice

You can read more about Angels Of Venice on their web page. https://www.angelsofvenice.com/bio

Angels of Venice- Nothing else matters

Angels Of Venice - After The Harvest

Angels of Venice Lionheart

Angels of Venice - Pachelbel’s Canon

Angels Of Venice-China Moon

Modern echoes of Roman Britain

Robin Fleming’s “Britain After Rome” begins with a sketch of our pre-410 AD history as a colony of the Roman Empire.

For a couple of centuries we had a disproportionately large share of Rome’s imperial legions. To support it there were massive imports of basic supplies but also a privately-run trade in luxuries carried (for free?) in the same ships. Towns sprang up, complete with public amenities such as baths and basilica.

Then in the third century the Empire had increasing problems with barbarian tribes on its borders. The armed forces in Britain were scaled back and redeployed on the Continent. Less wine and olive oil here, more beer and butter; less foreign pottery, more locally made Samian ware.

Things stabilised in the fourth century but did not return to the prosperity of old times. Towns withered and their population declined; the baths and basilica available to the better sort of Romano-British ceased to operate.

But disparity in wealth grew. Fine big villas were built, some within the areas vacated in the towns. A fortunate minority had private bathing pools in their mansions, and reception rooms designed to impress visitors and business associates with their classical mosaics, pictures and fabrics. This was the age of bureaucrats and administrators, living in a bubble protected from the great unwashed outside.

Until the Empire fell.

“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” 

Cooking Fat: cats being disgusting

The fat item who has been sponging off us for years has rewarded us with a technicolour yawn not once but twice in recent days.

First I came down to the kitchen to make the morning brew and there along the fortunately wipe-clean floor were what you might call “islands in the stream.” Much kitchen roll and antibac, floor mop after. Perhaps cats were sent to make us houseproud.

Yesterday I’m shaving upstairs and hear a rhythmic hoicking down in the hallway. Shouting from a distance stops nothing. This time the gift was on the mat under the radiator, so a paper towel scoop-up and the mat flung into the washing machine sorted it. That was easy, hey?

This morning it’s tea time again and I am about to check the shower in the garden room so put my feet into the worn old deck shoes I keep under the stairs and use as slippers. Or rather, my right foot. Squelch. Round Two. There it is, inside and outside, on the carpet offcut and a bit on the vacuum cleaner hose. Scoop scoop, wipe wipe, spray spray. Shoes now bumping in the washing machine; we’re still uncertain whether we can launder the offcut.

Isn’t nature wonderful?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Dion DiMucci, part 2, by JD

Yes, we have featured Dion previously from his ‘doo wop’ days in the fifties with The Belmonts. He is now 87 and believe it or not he is still singing and making records. His most recent record is “Rock and Roll Philosopher” released last year (2025). He is singing as well as if not better than ever. So here is another selection, some new and some old but showing how he embraces all styles of American music.

https://diondimucci.com/career/

Dion Dimucci- Written On A Subway Wall

And The Night Stood Still

I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound

Dion - “Abraham, Martin And John” - Official Music Video

King of the New York Streets Live at The Town & Country Club 26 2 1990

I like my nostalgic visits to the golden olden days of melodic music!

War with Russia: before the bullshit tsunami hits

It’s only the other side that does propaganda and our government is stepping up to protect us from it. So PM Burnham has just told the UN that we are setting up a new National Centre for Information Defence.

Already some are dubbing it “Mini Truth” after Orwell’s corporate fountainhead of lies in “1984” and so Defence Secretary Wes Streeting insists that it will not be used for “policing domestic political dissent.” He doesn’t say that we do that already by other means including plodettes rapping your front door merely for viewing a social media post.

That doesn’t go far enough for Paul Richards, Labour commentator, speechwriter, erstwhile Parliamentary candidate and currently the treasurer of the subversive-socialist Fabian Society. Richards says:

“The British will rise to greatness against Russia. We would have to lock a few people up….pro-Russian voices, people who say there isn’t a threat, don’t fight for your country, that don’t go to war for Burnham.“

“Rise to greatness”… authentic meaningless bullshit. But then he’s a speechwriter.

We’re not yet at war with Russia, formally. How, I don’t know, given what we’re already doing for and in Ukraine. Time was we had the decency to declare a war before we started fighting it.

But once it’s “game on” what fun will the Government have with us! Decades of starving our armed forces have left us unable to tackle a paw-shaking kitten abroad but woe unto any placard-waver who protests at home.

Perhaps this is why so many prisoners have been released early; the authorities say it is because of overcrowding and yet we have found space for 38,000 illegal immigrants in the twelve months to June 2026. Make my hotel a three-star, please; no allergies but I prefer not to eat shellfish.

Forewarning: if Burnham, Richards and the rest of our neo-Brownshorts decide to get seriously tough on dissidents and I can’t get to the airport in time, look out for my jingoistic support for any appalling crime HMG chooses to inflict on our people. My codeword to tell you that I don’t mean a word of it will be “Eulalie” meaning “up yours, Spode-Burnham, Spode-Richards…”

… and, tragically, Spode-Rees-Mogg. Surely this sober Catholic Conservative grandee cannot have fallen for the murderous war hysteria - “Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?” But he has:

“In the next few years we may face a war. And if we face a war, we will need people who will join the armed services and who will go out and do their duty (...) people have to die to save their country as they did in the First and Second World Wars.”

Ah now, that opens a can of worms. In each of those cases we were the ones to declare war on Germany and in neither case had the Germans been previously intent on destroying us; their eyes were turned eastwards.

Our twentieth century wars have brought us to our present sorry state, close to collapse even before the “intermittent drizzle of malignant robots” begins. And for why, this inhuman destruction of human happiness and prosperity?

Geopolitics.

I shall trace the history of this cartographers’ slaughter mission in another post.

Unless I am prevented, in which case “Eulalie!”

THE 20MPH SCAM: WHY BIRMINGHAM IS BEING SOLD A PIG IN A POKE. by Rafan Beg

I’ve spent over sixteen years behind the wheel of an HGV. Five, six days a week, up and down this country’s road network. Not tramping, mind, I go home most nights. But I know Britain’s roads better than most people ever will, and I know exactly what a genuine road safety measure looks like versus what gets dressed up as one.

Birmingham’s proposed blanket 20mph plan is the second kind. I’m calling it what it is: the 20mph scam.

A consultation designed not to be found.

Here’s where it starts. Birmingham City Council has a legal duty to consult residents before rolling out significant speed limit changes across the city. Fine. That’s how it should work.

But ask around. Ask your neighbours, your mates on the school run, the bloke at the corner shop, whether they know a consultation is even happening, and where. Most won’t have a clue.

The process has been buried in council documents, spread across different pages, framed in language that reads like it was written to be skimmed past rather than understood.

I don’t think that’s an accident.

A consultation that’s hard to find and harder to follow doesn’t get participation. Low participation then gets quietly read back as public acceptance. That’s not democracy, that’s a tactic, and it’s one we’ve seen before.

Three petitions, one council that won’t listen.

To their credit, politicians across the spectrum have seen this coming and tried to do something about it. Cllr Shehryar Kayani of the Workers Party of Britain has launched his own petition, calling for a balanced approach: proper road maintenance, evidence-led limits assessed road by road, transparent data, and real consultation before anything further gets imposed. Not anti-safety, just anti-blanket-rule-with-no-evidence-behind-it.

The Conservatives have their own petition running. Reform have set one up too. Different parties, different politics, same conclusion: this scheme, as it stands, isn’t right.

Add up the engagement across all three and I’d put money on it outstripping whatever the council’s own official consultation manages to pull in.

And here’s the part that should make every resident furious: it won’t matter. The council will run its process, technically tick the consultation box, and push the scheme through regardless of how loudly residents across the political spectrum reject it.

That’s the real scam.

Not the speed limit itself, the pretence of listening.

Evidence from somewhere else entirely.

Dig into what the council is actually citing to justify this, and here’s the kicker: it isn’t even Birmingham evidence. It’s drawn from studies and data sets from other cities, other road networks, other traffic patterns entirely, dressed up and applied here as if Birmingham’s roads, Birmingham’s traffic, Birmingham’s specific accident data, don’t matter enough to justify the policy on their own terms.

If you’re going to reshape how an entire city drives, the evidence should come from that city. Anything less isn’t evidence-led policy. It’s policy looking for evidence to back it up after the decision’s already been made.

What the Highway Code actually says, from someone who lives by it.

I want to bring some professional experience into this, because I think it gets lost in the shouting on both sides.

The Highway Code sets out a hierarchy of road users. Think of it as a pyramid: those who can do the greatest harm, the biggest vehicles, carry the greatest responsibility to protect those most at risk, pedestrians, cyclists, children.

That’s not up for debate. It’s right, and every HGV driver worth their licence knows it and drives by it every single day.

But here’s the thing about that hierarchy: it already exists. It’s already the law. Every driver on this country’s roads is already bound by it, already held to it, and when something goes wrong, already investigated for it.

When there’s a serious collision, it gets properly investigated. Fault gets established. If a driver is found responsible and survives, they’re punished - licence, courts, the lot.

If a fatality occurs and the driver’s at fault, that detail is not usually published out of respect for the person who died, but make no mistake, it’s known, it’s on record, and consequences follow.

So my question is simple.

If Birmingham genuinely has a serious problem with dangerous driving on its roads, where’s the enforcement? Where are the police?

A blanket speed limit change doesn’t touch the driver doing 50 in a 20 zone, they’ll do 40 in a 20 zone just the same.

What actually stops dangerous driving is dangerous driving being caught, investigated and punished. That’s policing, not paint on a road sign.

Punishing the many for the few.

That’s the heart of why I call this a scam. It takes the failures of a tiny minority of dangerous drivers and uses them to justify restricting every single driver in this city, the overwhelming majority of whom drive carefully, responsibly, and already operate under a legal duty to protect the people around them.

That’s not road safety policy. That’s a blunt instrument being swung at everyone because it’s administratively easier than doing the harder, more targeted work: fixing the roads that are falling apart, funding proper enforcement, and holding the small number of genuinely dangerous drivers to account instead of restricting the many who already drive right.

Birmingham residents, whatever your politics, deserve better than that. This needs fighting, properly, and it needs fighting now, before the council gets to quietly point at a technically-completed consultation and say the decision’s already made.