UK: The Clock Tower

Photo: SAS Regimental Association

The clock pictured above stands at Stirling Lines, Hereford, the headquarters of 22 Special Air Services Regiment, part of UK Special Forces. It is a memorial, bearing on it the names of those who died on active service. Also inscribed there is a quotation from James Elroy Flecker:

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

Always a little further...

I came across a passing reference to this in Chris Ryan's 2005 thriller "Blackout" (one with half an eye to younger readers, a trend now being developed more systematically by his former SAS Bravo Two Zero teammate Andy McNab). 

The lines are taken from Flecker's 1913 play "Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand."

Some poetry makes your throat tighten: here is a little more of that scene...

MASTER OF THE CARAVAN

 But who are ye in rags and rotten shoes,

You dirty-bearded, blocking up the way?

ISHAK

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

Always a little further; it may be

Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow

Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave

There lies a prophet who can understand

Why men were born: but surely we are brave,

Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Memories of the Lizard

FRIDAY MUSIC: Richard and Linda Thompson, by JD

Music from Richard and/or Linda Thompson plus a few friends and family:

White rabbits! (First of the month)

http://vintageprintable.com/wordpress/vintage-printable-medieval-mythology-fantasy-monsters-and-various-beings/vintage-printable-medieval-mythology-fantasy-monsters-and-various-beings-4/

http://molcat1.bl.uk/IllImages/BLCD%5Cthm/c666/c6668-05a.jpg

Long-netting hares: http://scheinerman.net/judaism/pesach/hare.html

http://www.bl.uk/learning/images/medieval/women/large96451.html

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (421)

From the comments to my post here of a couple of days ago...

Like most of our age, I can remember the introduction of poll tax. At the time council tax (rates) was going through the roof and had no bearing on demands or ability to pay.

Sadly the poll tax was equally badly implemented, yet if it had been implemented fairly it would have been a much fairer alternative and much better understood. The poor implementation and the "poll tax riots" by all those who never paid bugger all for the services they received scuppered the tax.

We are now faced with council tax that now that the brakes have been taken off go the same way as rates. What is basically wrong with council tax/rates is that only roughly 38% - and that was from the chief accountant in Suffolk twenty years ago - actually pay the tax; the reasons are all there to see but too long-winded to go into now, but in essence there was nothing wrong with the poll tax if it had been properly administered. After all this current tax is to pay for services enjoyed by all but less than half contribute!

The second half is incorrect. I don't know what the collection rates for Council Tax were twenty years ago, but unsurprisingly, collection rates are actually close to 100% and jsut about every home is liable for Council Tax.

He defeats his own argument in favour of a Poll Tax by saying that Domestic Rates had "no bearing on demands or ability to pay". A Poll Tax would have even less correlation with ability to pay. Most low income people own or rent lower value homes and smaller households own or rent smaller homes (or at least could choose to do so), so under Domestic Rates/LVT, the tax payable is nearly always affordable.

As we well know, riots aside, Poll Taxes are very difficult to enforce and collect, there's no way you can "implement it properly", let alone fairly. And they are antithetical to having a welfare system, before we try and collect a separate tax from low income people, it's much easier just to reduce their benefits/old age pension.

But the fundamental misconception is the idea that the government should charge for services provided to 'people' generally, especially if people are compelled to use those services or compelled to pay for something which they might not use. So charging individuals who choose to apply for a passport = OK. But if we had compulsory ID cards, then charging for them = not OK or charging people a fraction of the cost of upkeep of a local park (which they might or might not use) = not OK.

Nope.

The government (or 'the state' or 'society') is the ultimate arbiter on who owns which bits of land and provides the framework within which rents can arise in the first place. So it should charge for benefits accruing to land (or landowners). Who generates the rental value? Everybody and nobody, so to whom does it belong? Everybody and nobody, but short of throwing the proceeds into the North Sea, the government might as well spend it on things which benefit everybody (welfare payments, health, education, whatever), or which benefit the economy in general (education, roads, legal system etc).

It's impossible to spend money in a way which benefits everybody equally because a lot of the benefits of 'good' government spending or action lead to higher rental values (roads benefit or burden some bits of land and leave most others unaffected). But that doesn't matter because that extra value can be recycled back into the system (and the owners of the burdened land get a tax cut to compensate them).

Use Of Gender Neutral Pronouns Discriminates Against First Nation Canadians

The Nuxalk people of British Columbia have no letter "Z" in their language and are therefore unable to confuse each other with gender neutral pronouns such as "zie" and "zir".

Their version of Scrabble has 212 tiles, but not the letters B, D, E, F, G, J, O, R, V and Z:

• 1 point: A ×25, S ×20, T ×12, I ×10, K ×10, LH ×9, M ×9, TS ×8, U ×8
• 2 points: L ×7, N ×7, Q ×6, Qʼ ×6, Y ×6, TLʼ ×5, X ×5
• 3 points: AA ×4, C ×4, CW ×4, Kʼ ×4, KW ×4, P ×4, Tʼ ×4, TSʼ ×4, XW ×4
• 4 points: KWʼ ×4, W ×4, QW ×3, UU ×2
• 5 points: QWʼ ×3, II ×2
• 7 points: Pʼ ×2
• 9 points: H ×2
• 11 points: 7 ×2

It is difficult to describe the agony this has caused them. They must content themselves with the far less zingy alternatives: "sie, hir, hir, hirs, hirself" - omitting the letter "e", of course. Oh, and "r" and "f".

Uck, as doubtless they would say if they were aware of the issue.

Poor things.

And they have the nerve to call their language Bella Coola!

A Gender Neutral Frenchm*n

ZIE (Charles Aznavour)

Zie
May be the face I can't forget
A trace of pleasure or regret
May be my treasure or the price I have to pay
Zie may be the song that summer sings
May be the chill that autumn brings
May be a hundred tearful things
Within the measure of the day.

Zie
May be the beauty or the beast
May be the famine or the feast
May turn each day into heaven or a hell
Zie may be the mirror of my dreams
A smile reflected in a stream
Zie may not be what Zie may seem
Inside a shell

Zie
Who always seems so happy in a crowd
Whose eyes can be so private and so proud
No one's allowed to see them when they cry
Zie may be the love that can and hope to last
May come to me from shadows of the past
That I remember till the day I die

Zie
May be the reason I survive
The why and where for I'm alive
The one I'll care for through the rough and rainy years
Me I'll take zir laughter and zir tears
And make them all my souvenirs
For where zie goes I got to be
The meaning of my life is

Zie, zie, zie