Three days late but Burns Suppers are not always held on the day. When I was in Madrid it was usually held on the nearest Friday night to avoid having to stagger into work the following day! So here is a selection which may please for there are literally hundreds to choose from.
"I insist that you shall write whatever comes first, - what you see, what you read, what you hear, what you admire, what you dislike; trifles, bagatelles, nonsense, or, to fill up a corner, e'en put down a laugh at full length."
- Robert Burns.
Translation:
"Good luck to you and your honest, plump face, Great chieftain of the sausage race! Above them all you take your place, Stomach, tripe, or intestines: Well are you worthy of a grace As long as my arm. ~ You powers, who make mankind your care, And dish them out their bill of fare, Old Scotland wants no watery stuff, That splashes in small wooden dishes; But if you wish her grateful prayer, Give her [Scotland] a Haggis!"
Holy Willie's Prayer is a poem that was written about a certain Willie Fisher who was an elder in the Parish church of Mauchline, in Ayrshire. Fisher was a hypocrite and himself a sinner who spied on people and reported them to the minister if he thought they were doing wrong.
The poem is a satire based on Fisher's sickly self-righteousness. The phrase "Holy Willie" have become part of the Scots language for describing someone that is humourless and ultra religious.
Note: Burns was a God fearing man. This poem is not anti-religion. It is stricly a condemnation of religious hypocrisy and self righteousness.
"Many scholars and Robert Burns enthusiasts prefer not to mention his association with the Merry Muses of Caledonia because they don't like him to be associated with this sort of material. Burns allegedly made no secret of his interest in erotic verse and bawdy song but apparently he kept this in a locked drawer at home. Well, you would, wouldn't you?
"It was first published within three or four years of his death and of the original only two copies are known to exist but it has since been published several times in facsimile editions. Burns both wrote and collected this material so there is no knowing how much of it is actually his. While some of it is local and clearly from the hand of the bard he may also have collected other material during his tours around Scotland."
One of the poems in the collection is called 'John Anderson My Jo.'
Two variations are known about the piece: a previous bawdy version contained in “The Merry Muses of Caledonia” and a more intimate version of only two stanzas that speaks of love (or friendship) between two elderly people.
This is the gentler, more wistful version beautifully sung by Eddi Reader
I'm not technical, but techie Karl Denninger says he is detecting cyber activity on his site that suggests sophisticated hackers, quite possibly non-domestic, are probing for vulnerabilities. https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=244966
Commenters are speculating on how easy it might be for foreign state computer experts to disrupt US energy systems, government administration, Electronic Benefit Transfer cards used by the poor to access state benefits and so on.
If this is so then the response of countries that feel threatened by America could be worse than merely regional conventional-military such as artillery and short-range missiles. Imagine the social disruption if for example the benefits system abruptly freezes up.
In a subsequent post, Denninger notes that his geopolitical commentary stands in danger of being suppressed, possibly because it's relevant and plausible. https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=244972
Concerns had been voiced for some time about the shortage of officers in the Metropolitan Police, as in e.g. these queries in Parliament from April and November 1961:
There was a Royal Commission in progress to review policing arragements generally, which produced a final report in May 1962 with 111 recommendations. One suggestion considered was to establish a centralised police force but the Home Secretary told Parliament that 'all the Commissioners except one recognised as even more cogent the advantages of local administration, and they came down firmly against a national police service.'
These criminals are relatively short in stature, perhaps because of their poor diet in childhood, which the postwar Labour government sought to address. In the 1980s a teaching colleague noted the variation in height of a class of young secondary schoolchildren and commented that it was a sign of the decline in the Welfare State.
Giles had a keen eye for detail. Both miscreants are wearing fashionable boots of the time - the one in front sports pointy-toed 'winklepickers' which some said were handy in a fight; the blond wears what look like Chelsea boots with 'Cuban heels' and apparently they have spurs attached - also a fighting asset, perhaps. Their jackets appear to be zip-up 'windcheaters' and both wear 'drainpipe trousers'.
21 January: 'The Organization of American States (OAS) began its Eighth Meeting of Consultation of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in the course of which the United States agreed to resume aid to Haiti in return for its support of sanctions against Cuba. Haiti's participation was essential because the United States was a vote short of having the 2/3rds majority of the 21 member nations.'
22 January: 'The Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS), opposed to the independence of Algeria, bombed the French Foreign Ministry, by placing a time bomb inside a truck that was going into the compound. A mailroom worker was killed, and three people were seriously injured by the shattering of hundreds of windows at the Quai d'Orsay. Gunmen from the OAS also kidnapped a member of Parliament, Dr. Paul Mainguy, who was rescued that afternoon by French police.'
23 January: 'American inventor Thomas Townsend Brown received U.S. Patent 3,018,394 for an "Electro-kinetic Transducer", a means of using an electric field as a means of propulsion of aircraft.'
24 January:
'The East German government instituted conscription into its armed forces, which formerly had been filled by volunteers. Western sources speculated that the East Germans had waited until the completion of the Berlin Wall before announcing the draft.'
'Brian Epstein made a verbal contract with the four members of The Beatles, becoming their manager in return for receiving up to 25 percent of their gross earnings.'
'An attempt by the United States, to launch five satellites into orbit from the same rocket, failed when the final stage of the Thor-Able-Star rocket failed to provide sufficient thrust to break the pull of gravity. Falling into the Gulf of Mexico "well south of Cuba" were the 80 foot rocket and the satellites SR-4, Injun II, Lofti II, Secor and Surcal, worth $3,500,000 altogether.'
25 January: 'Anandyn Amar, who had served twice as Prime Minister of Mongolia (1928–30 and 1936–39) and Chairman of the Presidium of State (1932–36) before becoming a victim of a purge by Joseph Stalin, was posthumously rehabilitated, more than 20 years after his execution by the Soviet Union on July 27, 1941.'
26 January: 'The American space probe Ranger 3 was launched from Cape Canaveral at 3:30 pm local time with the objective of duplicating the Soviet feat of landing a satellite on the Moon. Hours later, NASA announced that the Atlas rocket had hurled Ranger 3 into its trajectory too quickly, and that the probe would miss its target by 22,000 miles. Intersecting the Moon's orbit after 50 hours instead of the planned 66 hours, the spacecraft arrived too soon, got no closer than 22,862 miles from the Moon and went into orbit around the sun.'
27 January:
'With the publication of a January 15 decree of the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Union changed all remaining street names and place names honoring Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Georgi Malenkov, and Kliment Voroshilov two months after the five aides to Joseph Stalin had been denounced by the Soviet Communist Party.[87] The Azerbaijan SSR city of Molotov would become Oktyabrkend, and the city of Perm had reverted to its name after Molotov's ouster in 1957; Voroshilovgrad was renamed Luhansk and Voroshilov in the far east became Ussuriysk.'
'The planned 7:30 am launch of Lt. Col. John H. Glenn, Jr. was postponed after the countdown clock stopped 20 minutes before liftoff. Glenn had been in the capsule since 5:10 am and was prepared to become the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth, while much of the nation watched live coverage. After technical difficulties halted the countdown, the skies became overcast with thick cloud cover, and the mission was scrubbed at 9:20 am.'
'At a major conference in Beijing, Liu Shaoqi, President of the People's Republic of China, criticized the "Great Leap Forward" economic policies of Party Chairman Mao Zedong. "People do not have enough food, clothes or other essentials... agricultural output has dropped tremendously," Liu told the assembly, adding "There is not only no Great Leap Forward, but a great deal of falling backward." Chairman Mao made a rare self-criticism three days later, and eventually took revenge on Liu, who disappeared in 1968 and reportedly died in 1969.'
UK chart hits, week ending 27 January 1962 (tracks in italics have been featured previously)
14 January: 'A Netherlands warship sank an Indonesian torpedo boat after it approached the disputed territory of West Irian, a Netherlands colony claimed by Indonesia.'
15 January: 'After the United Kingdom sought to join the European Economic Community, the Meteorological Office first began using Celsius temperature values in its public weather information, following the Fahrenheit values. In October, the Celsius values were listed first, and by January 1, 1973, when the government entered the EEC and completed its conversion to the metric system, Fahrenheit numbers were only used occasionally.'
Also, 'The Derveni papyrus, written in about 340 BC, was discovered in a cist that had been buried at the site of the Greek city of Derveni, near Thessaloniki. The oldest surviving manuscript in Europe, the papyrus roll contained a commentary on philosophy and religion.'
16 January: 'A military coup in the Dominican Republic, led by General Pedro Rodriguez Echavarria, forced President Joaquín Balaguer to resign and to go into exile. Earlier in the day in Santo Domingo, soldiers fired into a crowd of people protesting against the new regime, killing 8 people and wounding many more. Balaguer had been the leader of a council of state with seven civilians, and had pledged to hold elections on February 27, 1963. The junta consisted of two former state council members, two civilians from the old Trujillo government, and three military officers, but had no presiding leader. The other council members were placed under house arrest.'
17 January: 'United States government workers were given the right of collective bargaining by President Kennedy, in Executive Order 10988.'
18 January: 'Two days after seizing power in the Dominican Republic, General Pedro Rodriguez Echavarria was overthrown in a counter-coup by his own officers, who then freed members of the former council of state who had been under house arrest. The council's first act of business was to accept Balaguer's resignation, with Rafael Filiberto Bonnelly as his successor.'
Also: 'In the lead-up to the opening of negotiations on Ireland's entry to the European Community, Irish Prime Minister Seán Lemass addressed the members of the other EC governments at their headquarters in Brussels.'
19 January: 'KGB agents identified Colonel Oleg Penkovsky as the man who was secretly meeting British national Janet Chisholm in Moscow. The agents, who had been shadowing Mrs. Chisholm, had first seen the two together on December 30, and followed Penkovsky to his apartment. Surveillance determined that Colonel Penkovsky, a high clearance official with the Soviet military intelligence agency GRU, had been bringing home classified material relating to ballistic missiles, photographing it, and giving the film to the British intelligence agency MI-6. Penkovsky, whose information alerted the United States to the placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba, would be arrested on October 22, when the Cuban Missile Crisis began, and would be executed on May 16, 1963 for treason.'
20 January: 'The play Prescription: Murder, by Richard Levinson and William Link, was first presented, with the premiere at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco. Character actor Thomas Mitchell portrayed a disheveled police detective named Lt. Columbo. When the play was made into a TV movie in 1968, Peter Falk portrayed the detective, and then in the title role of Columbo, one of the recurring segments of the NBC Mystery Movie. Columbo had been seen once before, on July 30, 1960, in the presentation "Enough Rope", part of The Chevy Mystery Show.'
UK chart hits, week ending 20 January 1962 (tracks in italics have been featured previously)
Giles cartoon for this week: the UK Professional Footballers' Association Strike
For 60 years in the UK, there had been an earnings cap for professional soccer players - maximum £20 a week in 1961, when the average male manual wage was £14.
Jimmy Hill, a Fulham player about to retire from the game, organised a threatened nationwide players' strike which would have taken effect on Saturday, 21 January; the Football Association caved in on 18 January and so ushered in the modern era of very highly paid footballers.
16 January: 'The United States banned travel by its citizens to Cuba, except in cases where a special endorsement was included on a passport.'
17 January: 'President Dwight Eisenhower gave his farewell address on nationwide television, with the warning, "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex"..We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
Also, 'Patrice Lumumba, 35, former leader of Republic of Congo, was secretly executed by a firing squad.'
19 January: 'In New Zealand, the filling of Lake Ohakuri began. Within two weeks, a reservoir of nearly five square miles was created and a supply of hydroelectric power was created. At the same time, two of the world's largest geysers—the 295-foot-high Minquini and the 180-foot-high Orakeikorako—were covered over and made extinct.'
20 January: 'John F. Kennedy took the oath of office as the 35th president of the United States. For the first time, the event was shown on color television, pioneered by the NBC network.'
21 January: 'Loaded with 16 nuclear tipped Polaris A-1 missiles, the submarine USS George Washington completed its first "deterrent patrol", after having remained submerged for a record 66 consecutive days.'
The moment a man conned the public: Blair appears after winning the election on the steps of No10 wearing a jumper and holding a mug of tea, projecting his ‘man of the people’ image and succeeding. At the time when I saw this it was noticeable that he never actually sipped from that mug, it was just a prop, but the public drank it in; a complete con man but much better at it than the amateur impersonators that followed.
The current debacle over Partygate has revealed two things, the great divide between the so called ruling elite and those who put them in that position, I have never really been interested in what someone wears or the way they speak as long as they show they are good at their job; sadly those afflicted with bad taste and bad prose have failed to prove that they can do the job well, so as far as I am concerned taking the Michael out of the whole population at exactly the same moment further restrictions were announced that put people in the position they could not visit a dying relative but they could knock back Prosecco in No 10's garden is a new low point in people v politicians.
I am not alone in wondering whether in this world of instant capture on mobile phones and social media they are actually that dim to have behaved that way and thinking they would not be found out, or they just don’t care and do it anyway especially as it was a regular occurrence, not a one off.
If it was the latter, they don’t care, then there is really no point to any of them and they all should go. It is the ‘would you buy a used car from this man’ syndrome, and we all know the answer to that one.
In the meantime Boris has had a mysterious relative go down with Covid which gives him a rather lame excuse to isolate at a very convenient time, and plenty of time to gather advisors on how to approach the public when he reappears. This was almost immediately followed by a series of government announcements on popular items in the vague hope all will be forgotten and Boris can rise from the ashes of his creation and lead us into a glorious green future.
The naval aid to stop Channel crossings is hilarious. Anyone believing it is a Dunkirk moment is going to be sadly disappointed as it transpires that the intention is to track boats that land on our beaches with occupants that disappear without trace, it has nothing to do with actually reversing the flow. Still with bigger boats they will be able to hoover up even more illegals to drop off at Dover; should have gone for the roll-on, roll-off ferry option and be done with it.
While on the subject of illegal immigrants arriving in dinghies, though few do as most are brought in on out own vessels, the government has decided not to give out daily figures on those landing here. They are going for a three monthly announcement in the hope all will forget about a problem they have totally failed to get to grips with for years; that is assuming they actually want to get to grips with it, which is hard to believe after years of promises which have resulted in nothing. It is the equivalent of bringing down the safety curtain in a theatre during a play as they discovered there is no ending.
Then the BBC is told its license fee is frozen for two years at least; depends if the Tories stay in power, and maybe, just maybe, the fee will be dropped in ‘27, cheers all round; but will it happen? Answers on a postcard. What will probably happen if the unforgivable act of axing the license fee happens is it will be added to the council tax which will mean a colossal rise for the few who actually pay the full council tax; or it will simply paid out of general taxation - they would like that as no one would be aware of what they actually contributing.
And now Covid plan B is scrapped; it may well have and should have gone anyway, but it's curious that it should happen at the same time as Boris tries to excuse himself in Parliament. Boris as we can see is ’taking responsibility’ for all that has been revealed, except he isn’t; he should understudy for the next version of Now You See Me, though as a magician he is in the Tommy Cooper category.
All this is pure theatre, and a very poor production. As with everything else, governments rarely have a clue as to how to present anything to the public; amateur slogans, amateur adverts, amateur politicians.
The shadow minister for pensions Jonathan Ashworth was being interviewed about the coming energy price rises. Sounding like a male version of ‘crayons’ with the same repeating limited vocabulary and the same lisping voice he had slogans galore: Labour is the party and always was of the working man, whatever the working man is, and we should cut this and that to help the ‘vulnerable’ etc. etc. When asked for a solution there was none, only a furrowed brow at being asked such an awkward question; amateurs, yet they crave power.
The health secretary launches his plan to improve NHS waiting times with some sort of concocted academy hospital that will improve patients' lot, again a timely bone thrown at a popular public groan. With the NHS it will take a nuclear option to change anything in a meaningful way, but this is amateur night, remember, and many will ‘see the light’ and vote Conservative at the next opportunity on the back of these surprising! announcements. There will undoubtedly be more to come. If people cannot see that a Conservative government with a decent majority has done virtually nothing Conservative since it was elected, yet swallow this guff when the PM is threatened with resignation letters from his back benchers, then they deserve all they get. The fact that probably the other lot are even more incompetent is not an excuse, it’s an admission of defeat at the hands of the political class, a political class that doesn’t care as long as those levers of power are in their hands, and while that situation remains they can get away with hamming it up, despite being amateurs.
PMQs is pure theatre, a poor man's City of Variety Leeds without a ringmaster. Leonard Sachs would have been in his element with his gavel and all those ooohs and aaahs. The main difference is that PMQs is for their own consumption, a bubble theatre. We look in, occasionally, to see how ridiculous the whole thing is, yet they persevere with it. The show last Wednesday was pure theatrics, from Boris pretending he was innocent of recent accusations seen on video to David Davis overacting his 'Boris, go' speech to the pointing and hand waving when a Conservative did a theatrical entrance and was shown to a Labour seat behind their leader when he should be seeking re-election.
If it had been an audition for House of Cards none would have been asked back.
