It's a bit cold for the silly season, but if we're going to bang the patriotic drum let's do it properly, with a round of 'Britons, strike home':
"Following the collapse of the First Coalition, on 10 November 1797, the British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, announced to the House of Commons that his efforts to make peace with Revolutionary France had failed and that he was now determined to fight the war to its conclusion. In response, the whole House rose to its feet and sang Britons, Strike Home!. The result was the War of the Second Coalition."
Britons, strike home!
Revenge, revenge your Country's wrong.
Fight! Fight and record. Fight!
Fight and record yourselves in Druid's Song.
Fight! Fight and record. Fight!
Fight and record yourselves in Druid's Song.
Or perhaps we should sing the full-fat adaptation written during the Napoleonic invasion scare of 1803 - 1805, the chorus to each verse being:
Britons, strike home! avenge your Country's cause.
"O Come All Ye Faithful" (Adeste Fideles) is thought to be a Portuguese hymn for Christmas Day (the earliest manuscript bears the name King John IV and is held in the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa). The English lyrics are attributed to John Francis Wade (1711 - 1786).
The authorship of both the music and the lyrics are open to question. The English lyrics have been changed several times and the Wiki entry goes into some detail but I selected the above interpretation because it suggests that Wade's lyrics were actually subversive.
The words of the hymn have been interpreted as a Jacobite birth ode to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Professor Bennett Zon, head of music at Durham University, has interpreted it this way, claiming that the secret political code was decipherable by the "faithful" (the Jacobites), with "Bethlehem" a common Jacobite cipher for England and Regem Angelorum a pun on Angelorum (Angels) and Anglorum (English).
Wade had fled to France after the Jacobite rising of 1745 was crushed. From the 1740s to 1770s the earliest forms of the carol commonly appeared in English Roman Catholic liturgical books close to prayers for the exiled Old Pretender. In the books by Wade it was often decorated with Jacobite floral imagery, as were other liturgical texts with coded Jacobite meanings.
After the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite rebellions, support for their cause gradually faded and was largely forgotten, to be replaced by an acceptance of Unionism (the Union of the Crowns).
P.S. JD adds: I am not a Jacobite by the way and I don't know of anyone who is. Occasionally the 1745 becomes the quarter to six rebellion in barroom conversations and nobody is offended :)
A recent excursion onto our new but flawed Northern Distributor Road reminded me of the inadequacies of the Highways Department and planning, this built on the cheap, not in a monetarist way I might add - after all this country specialises in overpriced and late infrastructure - but in the final delivered article.
All junctions are roundabouts even when it is obvious a flyover was the answer, but we don’t do flyovers and tunnels as they are too costly despite the fact our near continental neighbours would not dream of building a decent road without either.
The first thing you notice when entering the roundabouts, and they are all the same, is an extra lane appears on your inside before you exit as can be seen in the image below:
Naturally this has caused both confusion and accidents plus a vocal lobby to change the markings, all to no avail as nobody in the Highways Dept would ever want to admit they made a mistake and they speak of ‘safety is at the forefront of all we do’ and drivers will “adjust” there has been quite a lot of adjusting but accidents still happen and here you can see why.
The driver is at fault but you can see the problem coming from two lanes to three and needing to get into the outside lane to exit. What was the Highway Code ruling? You do not change lanes on a roundabout, although here you have to.
Another local gem is this traffic calming scheme that the jobsworth in the video claims is worth the money as they had to spend by the end of the financial year. Shame that someone didn’t bother to see it spent wisely.
The obvious fault and the one causing accidents (something else that is claimed is because it is new to drivers and they will get used to it, though they haven’t) is the fact there is no right of way, no red arrow, white arrow and signage showing who has the right of way, so it becomes a free for all and the speed limit supposedly imposed by the traffic calming goes out of the window as drivers, idiots, speed up to be at the chicane first.
The mini roundabout is another winner at the start of this chicanery. In the video you can see it is so offset as to be almost invisible and impossible to actually negotiate so drivers either cut off part of it or ignore it completely, and no, despite spending more money it hasn’t improved it as they still have no right of way signs. The dept must be run by someone with the foresight of Diane Abbott.
When we lived in Suffolk Colchester was not that far away and exiting the town on the bypass north they decided to put in this little number - I believe Swindon has one as well, known as the ‘magic roundabout’:
Now amazingly it can work rather well. The problem is two fold: not being something that is universally built, for those coming upon it first time it can be daunting to put it mildly, and it also has no obvious right of way so you hesitate, often without reason but with that sense of survival and it also fails when there is a lot of traffic i.e. rush hour using just two exits as the flow is non stop and it is difficult for any other user to get in so to speak. Another complicated solution on the cheap that a flyover would have solved permanently.
You don’t have to go far to find these engineering wonders. Chelmsford solved a problem forty years ago at the Army and Navy roundabout that was a nightmare in the rush hour: you guessed it, they did the right thing and built a flyover crossing it, only this was a cheap one-way alternating temporary structure, like a Bailey bridge, that forty years later is still there and falling apart. In the meantime traffic has increased and the one way at peak times usage no longer works very well; any chance of the permanent structure promised forty years ago? Nah.
I have featured roundabouts but I am sure anyone could do the same with many other worthy road items such as the many badly-marked and -constructed exit lanes; the world is your omelette, as they say.
For example, we have just had a £5.6 million scheme to widen a road near us to twin lanes both ways to make it easier driving into the city. Only they apparently forgot that they had just finished a scheme on the same road nearer to the centre that has been reduced to one lane as a bus lane has been incorporated at great expense. You know it makes sense.
I will finish this rather joyless piece with another miracle of the road designers' art. This is on the A40 at Cheltenham: there are no words needed to describe this piece of failed logic: those that have to circumnavigate it have marked the offending section. Marvellous.
Writing for Briefings for Brexit, Ashley Walsh says the Labour Party should scrap its policy on the EU and abandon its call for voting reform in the form of Proportional Representation.
As a 'former Labour councillor' he is concerned to save the Labour Party. I'm not - and I also loathe the Conservative Party and the 'Liberals.' Political parties are what's wrong with politics. Like flesh-and-blood creatures, organisations have a will to live quite apart from any justification for their existence. The disconnect between Parliament and the people is owing to the absorbing, insular in-fighting in Westminster.
PR would worsen this: it turns voting for a representative into voting for a party, and the latter then decides on who will be your named representative. Many MPs are already too focused on what their Parliamentary bosses and pals want; we really don't need a system that makes the party the unit of political currency.
But as I wrote here long ago, First Past The Post is a terrible arrangement and suits the databank psephologists and strategy managers of the parties, for whom only 'the swing voter in the swing seat' matters. Though I have always voted, throughout my adult life, my vote has had effectively no power at all, with perhaps one exception when the constituency boundaries changed again (and by which time New Labour had thoroughly outworn its welcome) - thanks to the 'safe seat' where I live. The consequence for me and my fellow voters was to be taken for granted.
I suppose Labour likes the idea of PR because according to numbers of votes cast in the latest General Election the Tories would not have gained a majority and Labour would not have had the scale of cull that they have suffered. Result: a hung Parliament, again?
But I'm not convinced that AV would have had the same result. Under AV, you list your preferences so second and third options can come into play if there is not a clear 50%+1 majority in the first count (and two-thirds of seats in the Commons - including the one for my constituency - are gained on a minority of votes cast). The winning candidate is likely to be the one who has tried hardest to win over the centre ground - a centre that will be different in each constituency.
Had AV been the system ten days ago, I think the Conservatives would still have won, thanks to crossover voting from Brexiteers. Let's also not forget that there could be others for whom the Tories might have been a grudging second preference - after all, think of the Northern Labour voters who even held their noses and plumped for Boris as a first choice!
A version of AV is what MPs themselves employ when deciding on a new Speaker - in that case, it's done by a series of rounds in which the lowest scorer is eliminated each time, so the voting behaviour is influenced by who is left in the competition. It doesn't guarantee a great Speaker, but what could?
AV is also the system that the National Government wished to introduce in 1931; the Bill passed the Commons but the government fell before it could pass through all of the other stages. (The Lords wanted PR - why?)
In an extraordinary General Election, we've had the 'second referendum' that the subversatives wanted; perhaps the other second referendum we should have is a rerun of the 2011 one on AV - this time, with balanced media coverage for a change, as we had in 2016 (I still puzzle over how the latter happened). And this time, Labour might go for it.
Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells" is not meant to be a Christmas song but it sounds as though it ought to be so I have included this excellent cover by Sarah Jarosz.
"The Holiday Blues" and "Longfellow's Yuletide Poem" come from Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour - https://www.themetimeradio.com The much maligned BBC used to broadcast this on Radio2 and I enjoyed listening to it; the Beeb is not all bad you know!
It's a ghastly story, Sackers, and very saddening. But my observation is, that the NHS is really only for delivering a broadly-based, rather undifferentiated 'mass average service', which on average will do quite a lot of good - a kind of "hygiene plus" - mass inoculations are a prime example. If what's wrong with you can be (a) recognised fairly easily, and (b) improved or cured with simple measures - drugs for the most part, but other things like re-hydration and rest - then chances are, you'll see the benefit. Anything requiring subtle diagnostic detective-work, or a highly-trained eye, or an ultra-tailored course of treatment ... and you're back in the lap of the gods. Only the Queen is guaranteed to get the very best that medical science has to offer The parallels with education are strong: take an illiterate population and impose compulsory, fairly decent basic schooling, and you'll raise the average level quite markedly - indeed, you'll effect a trnsformation. Will every child get exactly the customised teaching etc that would absolutely maximise their life chances? No. To which I replied:
In principle, agreed; but the f-ups here were down to lack of basic skill (hoist usage), care and attention (reading X-rays, monitoring drug combinations, noticing when the patient isn't sleeping) and not following the sugeon's after-care plan (not the only case I've seen). Ticking boxes is no replacement for vigilant, shop-floor-walking management. Now JD offers his perspective, based on his own experiences: **************
As I understand it from various other references, Willink would have retained the many Cottage hospitals in the country. Most have now been closed in the name of 'efficiency' meaning 'customers' are obliged to travel to the nearest big shiny new hospital. This is an example of the 'bigger is better' approach to health care which in reality is nothing more than an extension of Henry Ford's production line with doctors and nurses instead of car builders. We already see it on a smaller scale with your local GP allocating ten minutes only to each patient.
Now that I am old I have had the opportunity to enjoy(?) the experience of our sanctified NHS. It doesn't work, it serves only to hand out coloured aspirins (my grandfather's phrase for the pills and tablets handed out for anything and everything).
"Candace Pert, Ph.D. is a research professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Dr. Pert is best known for her discovery of opiate receptors in the brain. She was a featured expert in the highly acclaimed Bill Moyers PBS series Healing and the Mind. In addition to her research efforts, Dr. Pert lectures and teaches about how our minds and feelings influence our health and well-being. She is the author of the bestseller Molecules of Emotion."
I read about Dr Pert a long time ago and I have discovered for myself that psychosomatic wellness does work after doing the opposite of what my epilepsy doctor told me to do: instead of increasing my tablets, I reduced them. She was not amused when I told her which is understandable but I have had no seizures since that time. It's all in the mind!
....and yes, it is the management which is in urgent need of reform, starting in Whitehall!
