Boxed in: BoJo opposes burqa ban, gets hounded by bien-pensants!

The controversy continues...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/05/denmark-has-got-wrong-yes-burka-oppressive-ridiculous-still/

“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.” 
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

"Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it."
 ― Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides

FRIDAY MUSIC: Two Sisters (Ravi's Daughters), by JD

The late Ravi Shankar is remembered as one of the best-known proponents of the sitar in the second half of the 20th century and he influenced many other musicians throughout the world. He was also the father of two daughters who have also been successful in their very different musical careers:

Norah Jones was born in 1979 and became a jazz singer and pianist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norah_Jones

Anoushka Shankar was born in 1981 and followed her father in learning to play the sitar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoushka_Shankar

I suppose it was inevitable that these two half-sisters would eventually record together and with their father so here is a selection of their music, both individually and together.

A "finest hour": Operation Pedestal

Mortally wounded, the Ohio staggers into Valletta

August 1942: Malta remained a thorn in the side of the enemy, who had been besieging the island since June 1940. Rommel had said in 1941 that unless Malta fell, North Africa would be lost to the Axis.

Disastrously, in September 1941 the US Embassy in Cairo had been secretly burgled by the Italians, who copied the code book; and the "Black Code" had also been cracked by the Germans soon after, so the enemy were reading translations of the American reports within hours of transmission.

In June 1942 two British supply convoys had been sent - Operations Vigorous and Harpoon - and owing in part to the intelligence intercepts were successfully attacked, with heavy losses to our side.

By the August, then, the situation in Malta was desperate, and another large convoy was put together under Operation Pedestal. As well as food and - crucially - fuel, the flotilla carried a squadron of Spitfires that took off once past Gibraltar and headed for the island via a circuitous route to evade trouble. These planes would be key not only to the defence of Malta but to future attacks on Axis forces in North Africa and Sicily.

Young Battle of Britain veteran and Pedestal participant Geoffrey Wellum noted that because of the need to carry extra fuel for the long flight, the Spitfires' ammunition was removed and replaced with rations of cigarettes - good for the defenders' morale!

The squadron got safely to Malta, and waited.

West of them in the Mediterranean, fourteen merchant ships and thirty-eight ships of war including four aircraft carriers came under an intense air and submarine attack that had begun even as the Spitfires were taking off. The Navy lost a carrier (the Eagle), two light cruisers and a destroyer, and nine merchant ships went down also.

But the Ohio* got through, carrying 10,000 tons of fuel oil and saving the island's capacity to defend itself. She only just managed to get into the Grand Harbour, severely damaged and with a destroyer lashed to either side of her, sinking even as her cargo was being pumped out, subsequently breaking into two and having to be towed out to sea and scuttled by naval gunfire.

Fourteen ships sunk, thirty-four aircraft destroyed, hundreds dead. But a gamble that paid off.
_____________________

*Requisitioned from her resentful US owners after reaching the Clyde in Scotland. She had arrived there on 21 June 1942, only three days after the C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet, looking at the recent failures of Operations Vigorous and Harpoon, had cabled Churchill to advise against another attempt to breach the Malta blockade.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tiddely-Prom, by JD

More from the BBC Proms:

This evening, 3rd August, on BBC4 it is the folk music of these islands which is the focus of attention. So a preview of some of the artists taking part, all of them first rate. No doubt there will be others but that is the great joy of the Proms, they always deliver delightful surprises and excellent music.

Starting again

In December 1933, an 18-year-old decided to change his life. He'd been thrown out of school before taking his examinations, was pointed in the direction of the Army but didn't have the money to keep up the expected lifestyle, tried door to door selling half-heartedly, faced the prospect of an office job that would have withered his artistic and inquisitive nature, was getting into bouts of drink and depression, and was toyed with by bohemians and bored upper-class women at London parties.

He set himself a challenge: to walk across Europe to Istanbul.

On the Channel crossing, he couldn't sleep. "It was," says his biographer*, "as if he were sloughing off the skin of his old self."

His name was Patrick "Paddy" Leigh Fermor; but for the next sixteen months he called himself by his middle name, Michael. And now we have all heard of him.

So what had he done? He had changed his social environment, getting away from family and friends  who "knew" him; and he changed himself, breaking out of the accumulating crust of life experience and habits that gradually suffocate one's growth.

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*Artemis Cooper, "Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure", John Murray, 2012

Here comes Mary Jane

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/26/medicinal-cannabis-how-two-heartbreaking-cases-helped-change-law

https://herb.co/marijuana/news/richard-branson-smoke-weed/

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, by Wiggia

The extremes of temperature, because they are so rare in this country, bring out the weird, the eccentric and the downright baffling.

We have all seen the wonderful world of the clothing innovator who manages to convey a sense of the sea in winter trudging the aisles of the local supermarket in full fisherman's regalia, sou'wester and all, and the inventive shorts, hats, sandals and socks - no British white male would wear sandals without socks such as those louche Europeans of questionable stock do, or effete actors. Some years back in Africa a tourist appeared for dinner wearing shorts, an open neck white shirt and a Tweed jacket; only a Brit could have carried it off in 90 degree heat.

Of course this hot weather is a positive boon for the tattooed, all manner of sleeveless, legless and worse garments appear, allowing the inked areas to show in all their awfulness, and the pink people come out - they have no choice of course having burnt themselves the first time they laid in the sun and now can’t bear to have anything on the skin apart from calamine lotion.

On the road open top cars with blonde sunglassed drivers are everywhere trying to give the impression they always drive around like this; a sort of Promenade des Anglais in Peckham. In a normal year you could be forgiven for thinking no one buys convertibles, but we are wrong, it is simply that in a normal year, nine out of ten, no one drives them: they remain tucked up for this very occasion.

Camper vans and caravans abound, seemingly reproducing en route as there are so many of them making a bee line for the same field somewhere on the coast. Today either of these is not enough, many have bicycles, motorbikes attached as well, canoes on the roof and for real oneupmanship you have all that and a small car on a trailer behind, or a yacht or powerboat, in all taking up about sixty foot of our small roads.

I am biased: I have never seen the attraction past the formative years when it was a cheap way to see the world of spending huge sums to sit in a field with others of the same persuasion. There was a motor home show last weekend on the showground near us; not content with looking at the latest models they all came in their motor homes for the weekend and sat in a field - the conversation must have been riveting - and then all went home !

I have a cousin who owns a motor home: his wife puts photos up on Facebook of him having a cup of tea by a pond or feeding ducks or sitting in a deckchair with an inane grin and a glass of wine - does anyone care ?

How do I know? Well I joined Facebook under pressure for a local community page but after three months being asked to be friends with people I had no interest in and having rows with “community members I deleted my account. Facebook has a strange pull for those who like to post gurning photos of themselves and family members all telling each other how wonderful they are, but I digress.

The Met Office is in full flow with yellow and amber warnings, localised flooding, power cuts and travel disruption all included in these warnings, I have been keeping a record of these over the last four weeks and we have had eight; all have disappeared as the moment of doom approaches, or moved to a later time and then deleted. Result, absolutely nothing: clear blue sky and skorchio all the way. Not a single drop since the heat started in June, yet still they persist with the warnings; like a stopped clock, one will eventually be right.

As a finale to all this last, with the windows and doors open the sound, loud, of a man's voice wafted in from the direction of the park alongside our garden. They have now and again a local band that uses the hall and at first I thought that it was them, an aspiring rapper perhaps, but there was little in the way of music to accompany this voice. Where the hell was it coming from? My curiosity got the better of me and as I approached the boundary hedge I could see a few figures the other side and the voice got louder. It was only when I put my head through a hole in the hedge that  the truth dawned: it was the fitness class. They had debunked from the center because of the heat inside and had come over to this side of the field as my tree boundary provides shade. The voice of course was the instructor using his amplifier for his instructions and the accompanying musical beat.

At that moment I should have retreated but the large contingent of ladies of varying ages and shapes were in their tights, shorts, leotards about to spring into action or were supposed to. It has to be said I was getting a rear view of all this and in different circumstances could have been accused of voyeurism or worse, so I slowly retreated to the safety of my garden with the rear view of multiple ladies' bottoms contorting in the heat. The last words I heard from the instructor were "One, two, three, four, you can do it!" - they probably could.