Dáithaí C

Year of the Whores

2014-02-03T05:03:00.000-08:00

Friday saw the start of the Chinese new year, with this being the year of the horse. Unfortunately, we have all had problems with predictive text but how much worse was it that the BBC News’ subtitle system logic didn’t cope with the phrase and instead declared this to be ‘year of the whores,’ much to the embarrassment of the channel. “Welcome to the year of the whores. People around the globe celebrate,” read the subtitles. Noticing the blunder, a number of eagle eyed viewers were able to quickly grab a screenshot and post it on Twitter.

This isn't the first time the BBC’s subtitles have had somewhat of a malfunction, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been referred to as the “Arch bitch of Canterbury”, while during coverage of the Queen Mother’s funeral there was a call for “a moment’s violence”.

Here is what actually happens in London on Chinese New Year, somewhat more mundane than the BBC's version I'm afraid!

http://www.skibbereeneagle.ie/?p=277

Chinese New Year Celebrations 2014, Trafalgar Square London

Pete Seeger

2014-01-28T05:24:00.004-08:00

In memory of the great Pete Seeger who has died at the age of 94. A great Pacifist, a great Humanitarian and a Great American.

In a career that’s spanned over 70 years Pete Seeger has embodied the idealism that once defined the American spirit. A tireless crusader for social justice, world harmony and environmental causes, Seeger was even called, at the height of his activism, “America’s tuning fork.” A New Yorker, he was born and died in that great city and in his later years he was the driving force behind the Clearwater Movement campaigning tirelessly to clean up the Hudson River.

The trajectory of Seeger’s life is amazing. Born May 3, 1919, he first wanted to become a journalist. Music beckoned, however, and following a period where he assisted folk-song archivist Alan Lomax, he teamed with legendary songwriter Woody Guthrie to form the politically oriented Almanac Singers. Drafted into the Army in 1942, Seeger served out his duty and then co-founded the folk group, the Weavers. In addition to popularizing the Guthrie classic “This Land Is Your Land,” the Weavers topped the charts in 1950 with their version of Leadbelly’s “Goodnight, Irene.”

Blacklisted during the McCarthy era, the Weavers disbanded in 1953. Informally banned from TV programs and radio shows—as well as from many concert stages—Seeger began performing at high schools and on college campuses. How shameful this turn of events was and how it betrayed the American spirit can be gauged from the fact in the 1940's he campaigned with Eleanor Roosevelt against racial segregation in a still segregated Washington DC. Concurrent with the folk revival of the early ’60s, his songs became better known to the public at large. Thanks to hit versions by the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, and the Byrds, the Seeger-written songs “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” have become part of the American lexicon.

He was a young lad of 74 when he performed this paean to the waste of war, based on the Russian folk tune "Koloda Duda" and quoting lines from the Cossack folk song "Tovchu, tovchu mak", referenced in the Mikhail Sholokhov novel "And Quiet Flows the Don."

There is a great difference between people who sing folk songs and folk singers. Pete Seeger was a folk singer. RIP.

Pete Seeger. May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014

The World's finest Police: An Update

2014-01-08T16:45:00.000-08:00

Rioting in Tottenham, London in August 2011 after Mark Duggan was shot nearby

The inquest on the shooting dead of Mark Duggan in London in August 2011 has concluded that he was lawfully killed by the Police. His family have said they will fight for justice after an inquest jury concluded by a majority of 8 to 2 that he was lawfully killed by police. Mr Duggan was shot dead by armed officers in August 2011 in Tottenham, sparking riots across England. Following the inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice, his aunt Carole Duggan said he had been "executed". Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has asked for a meeting with local community leaders.

Mark Duggan (deceased)

Let us remind ourselves of the original lie told by the Police about the Mark Duggan shooting repeated verbatim in The Daily Telegraph in August 2011 after a Police briefing;

"A policeman's life was saved by his radio last night after gunman Mark Duggan opened fire on him and the bullet hit the device."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8682655/Mark-Duggan-killed-in-shooting-incident-involving-police-officer.html

A remarkable assertion by the Police repeated across the media containing not a single word of truth designed to justify in the public mind Mark Duggan's death. There were angry scenes outside the court, with supporters of Mr Duggan's family chanting "murderers" at Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley as he read a statement. Jurors concluded Mr Duggan did not have a gun when he was shot by officers who surrounded a minicab he was travelling in. But the jury said it was more likely than not that Mr Duggan had thrown a gun from the vehicle just before he was killed. The weapon was found about 20ft (6m) away from the scene but there was no DNA evidence presented to link it to Mr. Duggan.

Mark Duggan is one of over 400 people who have died after "contact" with the Police in the UK in the past 10 years. They include an unarmed naked man shot in bed with his girlfriend, Ian Tomlinson a news vendor trying to walk home and avoid a protest, Harry Stanley shot carrying a chair leg in East London, a Brazilian electrician shot in the head on a Tube train and numerous deaths in Police Custody.

It must be a great comfort to the corpses (if not their families) to know in the past 10 years not one person was murdered by the Police and no Police Officer has even been convicted of Manslaughter, a truly remarkable record which shows there is at least one crime figure the Police don't need to lie about!!

They do however lie about everything else to do with crime which means that reported Crime Figures in the UK are totally meaningless. On the same day as the Mark Duggan verdict the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe had to tell a Parliamentary Committee there is a "truth" to allegations by a police whistleblower that crime statistics were massaged.

Metropolitan Police officer James Patrick has alleged rape and sexual offences were being under-reported by as much as a quarter. PC Patrick, who is currently subject to disciplinary proceedings by the force, told the committee in November that crimes had been reclassified to get them "off the books". Massaging figures to hit performance targets had become "an engrained part of policing culture", he said. The officer had found disparities between the numbers of burglary reports and those finally recorded while working in a specialist role looking at the recording of crime. He had also found that "the Met had effectively been under-recording rape and serious sexual offences by between 22% and 25%".

Ian Tomlinson being treated by Paramedics before he died - Scotland Yard

wrongly claimed on their website that police were pelted with

rocks and glass as he was being treated - They later took down the claim

It means, in effect, that there is not a single UK Crime statistic which can be trusted and the industry of over 300 people producing them is effectively worthless. Former commissioner Lord Stevens has said "fiddling of figures" has been going on since he joined the police. He told the Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday that officers had warned him the massaging of crime statistics was the "biggest scandal coming our way", the Daily Telegraph reported. In addition many people in the UK have simply given up reporting minor crimes as over 60% of those reported are flagged as "no action" by our outstanding Police Service.

Even if they do get to court figures also released today show that in England over 50% of those convicted of violent or sexual crimes do not receive a custodial sentence. The "Crime Fighting" experts refer to this as "The Justice Gap" in an attempt to present this as something normal. The Public on the other hand who pay for this farce with their taxes probably see this as a Justice Chasm and a complete betrayal of their trust by the Justice system they pay for?

Here is what they teach apprentice Cops in the UK on their first day in Cop School:

"In the British model of policing, police officers are citizens in uniform. They exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with the implicit consent of their fellow citizens. Policing by consent is the phrase used to describe this. It denotes that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a general consensus of support that follows from transparency about their powers, demonstrating integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for doing so"

That's what they are taught on their first day, after that they move rapidly onto Advanced Policing.

Marina Ginestà - “No pasarán!”

2014-01-07T15:22:00.000-08:00

Anti-fascist fighter Marina Ginestà, age 17, on the roof of Hotel Colon, Barcelona, July 1936.

Anti-fascist fighter Marina Ginestà (29 January 1919 – 6 January 2014) who died yesterday aged 94 was a French veteran of the Spanish Civil War, who was a member of the International Brigades. She became famous due to the photo taken by German Hans Gutmann (later Juan Guzmán) on the rooftop of Hotel Colón in Barcelona. It is one of the most iconic photographs of the Spanish Civil War.

Ginestà was born in Toulouse, France, and moved to Barcelona with her parents at the age of 11. Ginestà later joined the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia. As the war broke out, she served in the International Brigades as a reporter and a translator assisting Mikhail Koltsov, a correspondent of the Soviet newspaper Pravda. Before the end of the war, Ginestà was wounded and evacuated to Montpellier. As France was occupied by the Nazis, she fled to Mexico and later to the Dominican Republic where Ginestà got married. In 1946 she was forced to leave the country because of the persecution of dictator Rafael Trujillo. In 1960 Ginestà got married to a Belgian diplomat and returned to Barcelona. She moved to Paris in the early 1970s. Marina Ginestà died there at the age of 94 in January 2014.

Marina Ginestà in later life

The slogan of the resistance to Franco's Fascists was “No pasarán!" They shall not pass! Credit for the Spanish version of the slogan goes to the fiery Spanish Communist party leader Dolores Ibárruri (1895-1989), whose popular nickname was “La Pasionaria” (“The Passion Flower”). On July 18, 1936, mutinous Spanish Army troops led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco invaded the Spanish mainland from Morocco, with the goal of overthrowing Spain’s elected Republican government. This was the beginning of the bloody Spanish Civil War.

The next day, July 19, 1936, Ibárruri made a brief but eloquent speech on Radio-Madrid. She urged her fellow citizens to put aside their other political differences and join together to fight against Franco’s Fascist forces. “Young men, prepare for combat!,” she said. “Women…fight alongside your men in order to defend the lives and freedom of your sons…All workers, all anti-fascists must now look upon each other as brothers in arms.” Ibárruri ended her speech with the famous words:

“The fascists shall not pass! THEY SHALL NOT PASS!”

(“Los fascistas no pasarán! NO PASARÁN !”)

Dolores Ibárruri “La Pasionaria”

“No pasarán” became the motto of the anti-Fascist side during the Spanish Civil War. It is still used as a slogan for other causes today. Ultimately, the Spanish Fascists did pass and took over the country in 1939, starting a long era of dictatorship by Franco. Ibárruri survived and continued on as a fervent supporter of Communism in other countries, first in France and later in the Soviet Union.

In 1977, two years after Franco died, “La Pasionaria” returned to Spain. She remained active in politics there as a member of parliament and honorary president of the Spanish Communist party until her death at age 93 in 1989.

Best Newspaper Headline of 2013

2014-01-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

My nomination for best Newspaper Headline of 2013 is .......

The Argus is the paper for Brighton & Hove where the majority on the Council are Green Party and Conservative. Just saying! This is a bitter disappointment to me as I assumed the headline might refer to FibDems trying to look both ways on TwoFacebook!

The Argus is (rightly) famous for its headline boards. There are Flickr groups and entire blogs just for their better ones. Unfortunately (or fortunately for humours sake) these stories are all true reinforcing Brighton & Hove's place as Britain's most interesting city with a glorious seaside location which has attracted bohemian's since the Prince Regent first built the famed Brighton Pavilion in 1787.

The Argus is a UK local newspaper based in Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, with editions serving the city of Brighton and Hove and the other parts of both East and West Sussex.

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/

https://twitter.com/brightonargus

Brighton Pavilion

Fares Up, Wages Flat

2014-01-03T16:53:00.002-08:00

The Great British Rail Rip Off continues as 2014 Rail fares in the UK went up yesterday. Strange timing as some season tickets are now so expensive it's enough to make even Santa weep. A Reading to London season ticket, a journey of 43 miles, now costs £4,088 per year a rise of £128. A Maidstone to London season ticket, a journey of 37 miles has smashed through the £4k mark and now costs £4,080. Fares are still rising THREE times faster than wages are. We need Fair Fares Now.

Regulated fares are up by an average 3.1% and as usual, the private rail operators are free to raise unregulated fares by much more. It's a world away from the 'fares freeze' we were promised before Christmas. In fact, as new research from the TUC shows, Britain's railways remain the most expensive in Europe, and by some way. Here, commuters spend three times more of our salaries on rail fares compared to other rail passengers in Europe. Action for Rail, a trade union-backed campaign, said workers on an average UK salary would spend nearly 14% of their wages on a monthly season ticket commute from St Albans to London, whereas a commuter making comparable journeys in Germany and France would spend about 4%. The figures in Spain and Italy were 3% and 1% respectively, said the group. Which? said its analysis showed that the average household now spent 14% of its income on transport.

Take St Albans to London, for example. A monthly season ticket costs £299, but a comparable ticket in Germany costs £107, in France £96 and in Italy just £28!

The situation has prompted Frances O'Grady from the TUC to remark:

“Rail passengers and taxpayers are being poorly served by a privatised rail service that has failed to deliver any of the efficiency, investment and cost savings that privatisation cheerleaders promised."

Jason Torrance, policy director of sustainable transport organisation Sustrans, said commuters would still feel the effects of the rise. "The chancellor's move to bring an end to the inflation-busting fare rises we've seen over the last decade shows a recognition that rising transport costs are a barrier to economic recovery," he said. "But commuters will still feel the pinch this new year because salaries aren't increasing by anywhere near the level of inflation. If transport remains so prohibitively expensive, we will continue to restrict travel choices and opportunities to access essential services and employment."

Rail campaigners were at London King's Cross station on Thursday, alongside Aslef train drivers' union leader Mick Whelan and RMT transport union head Bob Crow, calling for public ownership of the railways. More than 50 Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green, Plaid Cymru and SNP MPs have signed a parliamentary motion calling for the renationalisation of the UK's railways.

You can also go to http://actionforrail.org/

to tell your local MP exactly what you think about the fares increase. If you can take just two minutes, it will make a big difference.

It is time that the #hardworkingpeople so touted by the Conservatives rebelled against this pernicious tax on employment and economic opportunity in Britain.

Sherlock's mysterious Underground

2014-01-02T16:14:00.002-08:00

Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman
as Dr. Watson in front of 221B, Baker Street

Sherlock Holmes adventures have been reworked for the 21st Century in the in the first episode of "The Empty Hearse" which aired on New Year's Day starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as his sidekick, Dr. John Watson. Described as a thrilling, funny, fast-paced contemporary reimagining of the Arthur Conan Doyle classic in modern London Town it lead to some confusion as they dashed across the Tube network in a reworking of the geography of London Underground and indeed of London.

Now I am not a great fan for I really don't enjoy the constant reworking of the Sherlock Holmes stories - for me while I'm happy with an honourable mention for Jeremy Brett I always thought Peter Cushing had the look, voice and presence of the "Consulting Detective." I did however give into the lure of geekdom and traced their journey around the system. However I don't take the "outrage" at the strange geography seriously as the Underground is merely a prop for the action but one which in this tale of "The Empty Hearse" really adds to the story and atmospherics. We can't really complain if Sherlock's travel planner works better than TfL's!! So here is a guide to where Holmes and Watson really roamed on this new outing for The Tube has always been somewhat central to the story of ace detective Sherlock.

Sherlock Holmes is the creation of the Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess and is renowned for his skillful use of astute observation, deductive reasoning (though in reality, he uses abductive reasoning) and forensic skills to solve difficult cases. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John H. Watson lived at 221b Baker Street between 1881-1904, according to the stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, London was the first Museum in the world to be dedicated to a fictional character. There is one small difficulty however, the stretch of Baker Street where it is situated was not built until 1925 in tandem with the station redevelopment and well after the times in which the novels are set. Still, as Holmes might have said, let us not ruin a good story Watson! His statue now graces the front of Baker Street Station.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.html

Aldwych Tube Station with the tiling showing

the original name "Strand." This is entirely appropriate as

the Sherlock Holmes character grew tremendously in

popularity with the first series of short stories published

in The Strand Magazine, beginning with "A Scandal in Bohemia"

in 1891; further series of short stories and two novels published

in serial form appeared between then and 1927.

The stories cover a period from around 1880 up to 1914.

The New Year's Day episode of Sherlock included a plot line about abandoned London Underground stations. The eerie empty platforms and booking offices of these stations have long enthralled photographers. The detective drama referenced the many stations beneath London's streets that have been closed but not demolished. Such is the allure of the mothballed stations that occasional tours of their tiled platforms, which have been left with their posters to rot, are popular with photographers, transport enthusiasts and people who are fascinated by these ghostly places below the capital. Prominently featured was Aldwych Station which operated from 1907 to 1994 and which has doubled as other Tube stations in a number of films.

The show starts with Watson on the Jubilee line - but actually on a Victoria Line train, showing off his new moustache.

He then zooms along the District line.

And pops out by Euston Square station, which is on the Circle (which is no longer a Circle!) Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines. As Drummond Street which he is heading to is famous for its Indian Restaurants maybe Watson, who was modelled on a British Army doctor who was the only survivor of an Afghan expedition had a craving for a quick curry!

Once Watson is reunited with Sherlock, the pair look at a strange video. It shows a suspicious man attempting to travel one stop on the District line from Westminster by using a Jubilee line train.

But the man has vanished by the time his Jubilee line train reaches St James’s Park. Which isn’t that surprising, since St James’s Park is only on the District line but does feature London Underground's wonderful HQ, 55, Broadway which is built in the airspace above it.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/give-my-regards-to-55-broadway.html

He’s probably been diverted to the Jubilee Line's northern terminus at Stanmore. In reality, this was probably filmed on the unused Jubilee line platform at Charing Cross station. Confused by the fact that London Underground trains are pulling into stations on completely different lines, Sherlock and Watson rewatch the footage.

And Sherlock concludes that the “five minute” journey between Westminster and St James’s Park must have somehow been made to last ten minutes. In reality it takes less than two minutes and at peak times there’s 28 trains an hour running along the route, leaving little room for delays. But who are we to question Sherlock? They discover the train has stopped at a half-finished Tube stop between the two called "Sumatra Road". In fact, there is no such station. It's a sly reference to the "giant rat of Sumatra", which is mentioned in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire. The fearless investigators decide to get involved and avert a disaster. So they pop into Westminster station on the Jubilee and District lines.

Then there’s a sign for the Northern Line in the background.

And then they’re in the abandoned Jubilee line station at Charing Cross, where Sherlock and Watson climb down a ventilation shaft, as you do?

Which they use to access a District line train with a bomb on it …

…by running along a disused section of the Piccadilly line…

…from the former Aldwych station.

Aldwych is an abandoned station on a branch line to Holborn that was also used in many films including "V for Vendetta" and in Stanley Kubrick's "Sliding Doors." Ultimately, the shape-shifting London Underground network is an even bigger mystery than working out how Sherlock survived his fall.

London Underground doesn't pin down the exact number of disused underground stations, but says there are "in the region of 40". Some of these were relocated so their names live on, but 20 on the list won't be found on a current Tube map as they are on Lines which are either closed or not part of The Tube, as this ghost map of the London Underground shows.

Click for a larger view: Map courtesy of USvsTH3M.
Stills from Sherlock Holmes courtesy of BBC Productions.

For a short guide to these see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/ghost-tubes.html

King William Street disused station, original terminus of the
South London Railway, now part of the Northern Line

If you want to explore London's hidden Underground in detail Hywel William's Underground History site is an invaluable resource;

http://underground-history.co.uk/front.php

If you want to explore the subterranean world of London's rivers this Blog is an invaluable resource!

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/flow-gently-sweet-fleet.html

Meanwhile enjoy your romp around London with Holmes and Watson or as Arthur Conan Doyle described it "London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."

Busking Bono

2013-12-26T16:53:00.001-08:00

Bono and Glen Hansard continued their Christmas Eve tradition of singing on the streets of Dublin to raise money to help Dublin's homeless. This video was recorded on Christmas Eve 2013 in Grafton Street in Dublin's City Centre. Dublin’s fashionable shopping street, Grafton Street, was immortalised in Noel Purcell’s “Dublin Saunter” where he sang:

"Grafton Street's a wonderland with magic in the air . . ."

Well it certainly it was a wonderland on Christmas Eve with some magic in the air when you could have witnessed Bono, Glen Hansard, Lisa Hanigan and Liam Ó Maonlaí busking for Dublin’s Simon Community, a homeless charity. Grafton Street is close to Paul’s heart (Paul Hewson aka Bono) as it was in McDonnell’s that the U2 members and the Virgin Prunes (Gavin and Guggi) used to meet up on a Saturday as part of their imaginary world “Lipton Village” before wandering down (as we all did) to the Dandelion Market, a colourful splash of stalls which thrived in a covered car park which had been bought for a stalled property development.

Paul and Gavin grew up in an area of Dublin 11 known as Cedarwood and I lived in the adjoining area of Willow Park. You would often see Paul waiting at the next bustop for the 19A into town wearing his hat and with a carrier bag full of LPs. There has been a lot of ill-informed knocking copy about him and his tax affairs which slightly ignores the fact that U2 actually earn 95% + of their income outside Ireland but have all actively kept up their connection to the country and have made very significant contributions to it and their home town of Dublin.

Bono and Glen Hansard busking
on Christmas Eve in Dublin

Grafton Street is Dublin's principal shopping street, running from St. Stephen's Green in the south to College Green in the north. The street was named after Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, and the illegitimate son of Charles II of England, who owned land in the area. As Brendan Behan once remarked it was an honour to have our most fashionable Street named after a “Right Royal Bastard.” It was developed from an existing country lane by the Dawson family in 1708, after whom the parallel Dawson Street is named. Street entertainers such as buskers, poets and mime artists commonly perform to the shopping crowds. It is mentioned in Paddy Kavanagh’s famous allegorical poem of unrequited love “Raglan Road”;

“On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge"

To read about Raglan Road and Paddy Kavanagh see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/07/on-raglan-roag.html

Bono was joined by Oscar-winning musician Glen Hansard and singer Liam Ó Maonlaí of the Hothouse Flowers, to raise money for homeless charities. Glen conceived the Christmas Eve busk for charity back in 2009 when he invited musicians to Busk for charity on this night. Glen has done this annually since and it's become something of a new era tradition.

For the movie which featured Glen's Oscar winning song see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/once.html

Many well know singers have joined him over the years and Bono has lent his support every year since its inception. It has become something of a tradition for young Dubliner’s who revel in the musicians keeping it real.

Grafton Street, Dublin

Bono busked for donations to the Simon Community and indulged the appreciative audience. The crowds were alert to the possibility of Ireland’s greatest rock star showing up and the U2 frontman did not disappoint. There were wild cheers when he made his appearance and pushed through the crowd to join Hansard whose song “Once” has become the basis of a smash hit Broadway musical. After briefly conferring the two led off with “Here it is Merry Christmas” a 1973 hit by the British group Slade.

See “Dublin Homecoming”

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/dublin-homecoming.html

To see and support the work of the Dublin Simon Community;

http://www.dubsimon.ie

See “Silent Night – Stille Nacht”

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/silent-night-stille-nacht.html

Christmas 2013 at Castle Caldwell

2013-12-24T15:45:00.002-08:00

Jo, David and Billy (The Cat) are wish you a Jolly Holly and a Cool Yule and all the best in 2014. Inspired by a certain TV programme we have put together our own Macarena Dance routine – Have a look, we can’t imagine you won’t be impressed!

Here are some photos of Xmas at Castle Caldwell.

The Great Tree of Castle Caldwell has been erected and decorated to widespread acclaim from both the indoor and outdoor staff. In honour of George Osborne's economic illiteracy this year in common with 99% of the nation we are celebrating a Downturn Christmas in 2013.

The Great rotating candle powered
crib of Castle Caldwell

The Great Crib of Castle Caldwell being serenaded by the traditional Choir Mice.

The Xmas Russian dolls come out once a year to add light relief to the

Great Library of Castle Caldwell

The Romanov's (Mikhail 1613 to Nicholas II 1917) are not impressed with the new neighbours

Murty the Moose ready to welcome visitors to Castle

Caldwell. Hopefully this year we can pawn off more of our back lot of Czech

liquors on unsuspecting ~~victims~~ visitors!

The Xmas Table at Castle Caldwell

The Master of Castle Caldwell is noted for his tasteful
range of Seasonal garb

And here is what Xmas looks like where we live;

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/white-xmas-in-chilterns.html

Billy, the Castle Cat, wondering
what is going on?

The local "Mr Big"

Nollaig Shona agus Athbhliain faoi Mhaise Duit!

Sadly, not Castle Caldwell, but Ashford Castle, Cong, on the Galway / Mayo border,
originally the home of Benjamin Guinness, Lord Ardilaun now a luxury hotel.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/tale-of-two-parks.html

Stoke Mandeville Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin

Bigging up Ronnie Biggs

2013-12-18T06:19:00.003-08:00

The 1963 robbery which took place near where I live at Cheddington in Buckinghamshire has become known as "The Great Train Robbery" and was tried at Aylesbury Crown Court where the members of the gang received what were thought of as draconian sentences. None of them subsequently had happy lives but achieved further notoriety by escaping from prison, especially Ronnie Biggs who seemed to live a playboy life in Brazil openly laughing at British justice.

The crime scene at Cheddington Buckinghamshire on
the West Coast Main Line

Ronnie Biggs was a low life bit player in a robbery which was bigged up by the media and the 30 year sentences given out convinced criminals that in future they might just as well use guns - at the time murder generally attracted a 15 year sentence. According to Biggs his main role was as a first hand witness to the Great Train Robbery as he actually did very little.

Biggs was part of the gang which escaped with £2.6m from the Glasgow to London mail train on 8 August 1963. Biggs, Reynolds, Ronald 'Buster' Edwards and the other gang members wore helmets and ski masks to carry out their crime, which took place near Cheddington, Buckinghamshire. He was given a 30-year sentence but escaped from Wandsworth prison in 1965. They made off with 120 bags of money totalling £2.6m - the equivalent of £40m in today's money. Biggs share was £147,000 which he burned through within his first three years on the run.

In 2001, he returned to the UK from Brazil seeking medical help but was sent to prison. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after contracting pneumonia. Train driver Jack Mills was struck over the head during the robbery and never worked again. He died in 1970. Three members of the gang, including the criminal who coshed Jack Mills were never caught or brought to justice.

Biggs with his wife Charmain on Copacabana beach in Rio

The thing which is forgotten about Biggs and the 60's criminal underworld is that it only existed because of widespread police corruption. In some ways the crooks were more honest than the coppers, at least they weren't pretending to be honest!

As for Biggs, he stayed true to his low life origins and did not deserve either the notoriety nor fame bestowed on him. Move along, nothing to see here.

Wot a Geezer!

Peter O'Toole

2013-12-15T15:41:00.000-08:00

It was a great privilege some years ago to see Peter O'Toole in Keith Waterhouse's stage play "Jeffrey Barnard is Unwell" especially as I had been in the Coach and Horses, the pub in Soho which provides the play's setting, on occasion and seen Norman Balon in action. For me, Lawrence of Arabia remains THE MOVIE - if I had a desert island request I would just play it on a continuous loop. Amazing that this wonderful actor never received an Oscar despite eight nominations. Such is his stature it is the Oscars which are devalued.

He received an honorary Oscar in 2003, having initially turned it down. In a letter the actor asked the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to delay it until he was 80, saying he was "still in the game and might win the bugger outright". But when he finally clasped his statuette, he said: "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, my foot."

Peter O'Toole's wonderful portrayal of an unwell Jeffrey Barnard

Actor Peter O'Toole, who starred in Sir David Lean's 1962 film classic Lawrence of Arabia, died on Saturday aged 81 at London's Wellington Hospital having been ill for some years. His friend broadcaster Michael Parkinson told Sky News it was hard to be too sad about the news of his passing, and smiled as he said: "Peter didn't leave much of life unlived, did he?"

He hit international stardom when Sir David cast him as British adventurer T E Lawrence, the World War I soldier and scholar who led an Arab rebellion against the Turks. Playwright Noel Coward once said that if O'Toole had been any prettier, they would have had to call the film "Florence of Arabia". Lawrence of Arabia earned him the first of eight Oscar nominations, with his second coming for 1964's Becket, in which he played King Henry II to Richard Burton's Thomas Becket.

Burton and O'Toole's shared love of drinking garnered many headlines along with their performances. O'Toole played Henry again in 1968 in The Lion in Winter, for which he received his third Oscar nod, opposite Katharine Hepburn. His five other nominations were for Goodbye, Mr Chips in 1968, The Ruling Class in 1971, 1980's The Stunt Man, My Favorite Year [1982] and finally for Venus in 2006.

Peter Seamus Lorcan O'Toole was born in Connemara, Ireland and grew up in Yorkshire. In later years he used to holiday in Connemara and was often seen at the famous horse fair. David Lean's 1962 masterpiece "Lawrence of Arabia" is a wonderful panoramic cinematic retelling of the story of one of history's most enigmatic figures Captain T.E. Lawrence and his part in the Arab Revolt and his relationship with Faisal bin Hussein, another undoubtedly heroic figure in the history of the 20th Century. With superb acting and characterisation from O'Toole, Sam Spiegel's moneybags, a stellar cast of acting heavyweights, Lean's sure direction, Maurice Jarre's wonderful Oscar winning score and the expansive panorama's of Wadi Rum in Jordan it is a wonderful cinematic experience. It begs to be seen on the Big Screen, especially the digitally restored and remastered version released this year. The scenes depicting Cairo and Jerusalem were actually shot in Seville in Spain. His portrayal of T.E. Lawrence as an egotistical attention seeker is not historically accurate, he was in fact a short man who went to great lengths to avoid attracting attention.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/virgen-de-las-aguas-el-divino-salvador.html

Based on Lawrence's own account of the Arab Revolt "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" it depicts Lawrence's experiences in Arabia during World War I, in particular his attacks on Aqaba and Damascus and his involvement in the Arab National Council. Its themes include Lawrence's emotional struggles with the personal violence inherent in war, his own identity, and his divided allegiance between his native Britain and its army and his new found comrades within the Arabian desert tribes. Like most great war films it does not glorify war and leaves the viewer with unanswered questions. It is a great pity Tony Blair and George W. Bush did not try to answer some of these questions before blundering into Iraq.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/britain-in-iraq.html

It is also great pity that of the 8 Oscar nominations received by this wonderful movie the 5 it won did not include one for Peter O'Toole although great thespian that he was I'm sure he didn't begrudge Burt Lancaster winning the honour that year for Birdman of Alcatraz.

Peter O'Toole, 1932-2013

Eileen Gray @ IMMA

2013-11-27T16:45:00.003-08:00

Eileen Gray

It was wonderful at the weekend to see one of Dublin's hidden treasures which is little known at the moment to visitors and an exhibition it is hosting curated by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, on Ireland's greatest designer Eileen Gray. On an elevated site at Kilmainham commanding views of the Liffey and the Phoenix Park on the north bank is the Remarkable Royal Hospital which is on the same scale but two years older than its counterpart in Chelsea, London.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is housed in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, the finest 17th-century building in Ireland. The Royal Hospital was founded in 1684 by James Butler, Duke of Ormonde and Viceroy to Charles II, as a home for retired soldiers and continued in that use for almost 250 years. The Royal Hospital is a striking location for displaying modern art. Like the Royal Hospital, Chelsea it is modelled on Les Invalides in Paris. Charles II had spent his exile in France under the protection of the French King and upon his Restoration in 1660 he was anxious that soldiers who stood by the Royalist cause should be looked after in their old age and infirmity. Magnificent in scale and position the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham is arranged around a courtyard and the interior has long corridors running along series of modest interlocking rooms and houses the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in some style.

North Facade, Royal Hospital, Kilmainham

The architect for Kilmainham was William Robinson, official State Surveyor General. Of his many other buildings only Marsh's Library, Dublin and Charles Fort, Kinsale, still stand. The Royal Hospital in Chelsea was completed two years later and contains many similarities of style to Kilmainham. The Duke of Ormonde wanted the Royal Hospital to be on a grand scale, classical in layout and continental in style. He needed a home for his pensioner soldiers but equally he wanted a building of distinction that would, he hoped, mark the starting point of Dublin's development into a city of European standing. The site selected for the Hospital was once part of the Phoenix Park. A large hospital, founded by Strongbow and under the care of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, was sited in this exact place but was demolished in 1670. Dr. Steeven's Hospital, built nearby in 1720, is a small architectural replica of the Royal Hospital. Incidentally, Sir Patrick Dun was the first Medical Officer to the Royal Hospital.

The Royal Hospital remained an old soldiers' home until 1927. In the 19th-century the building had gradually grown in military significance - becoming the residence and headquarters of the Commander in Chief of the army, who combined this role with that of Governor (or Master) of the Hospital. Queen Victoria paid two visits to the building, which was eventually handed over to the Free State in 1922. It was used as Garda Headquarters from 1930 to 1950. The building comprises a North Wing containing the Master's Quarters, the Great Hall, the Chapel and the Vaulted Cellar with the 19th-century kitchen and the South, East and West Wings which provided accommodation for the pensioners.

The Royal Hospital Kilmainham was restored by the Government in 1984 and opened as the Irish Museum of Modern Art in May 1991. After a closure of three years for further restoration it has reopened its main building with a major retrospective of the work of Eileen Gray one of the most celebrated and influential designers and architects of the 20th-century. Designed and produced by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in collaboration with IMMA, this exhibition is a tribute to Gray’s career as a leading member of the modern design movement. The exhibition at IMMA celebrates Gray’s Irish roots and presents a number of previously unseen works that offer new insights into Gray’s extraordinary career.

Francis Johnston's castellated gateway to the Royal Hospital.
Originally a gateway to the Guinness Brewery it was relocated
here at the end of the C19

Eileen Gray is regarded as one of the most important furniture designers and architects of the early 20th century and the most influential woman in those fields. Her work inspired both modernism and Art Deco. Her design style was as distinctive as her way of working, and Gray developed an opulent, luxuriant take on the geometric forms and industrially produced materials used by the International Style designers, such as Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and Mies Van Der Rohe, who shared many of her ideals. Her voluptuous leather and tubular steel Bibendum Chair, and clinically chic E-1027 glass and tubular steel table are now as familiar as icons of the International Style as Le Corbusier and Perriands classic Grand Confort club chairs, yet for most of her career she was relegated to obscurity by the same proud singularity that makes her work so prized today.

Eileen Gray 1906

Gray’s work has often been split into two parts by critics, with decorative arts on the one hand and architectural modernism on the other. This exhibition approaches Gray’s work as a whole, engaging, as she did, in drawing, painting, lacquering, interior decorating, architecture and photography. Renowned in France during the early decades of the 20th-century as a designer in lacquer furniture and interiors, Gray began to experiment with architecture in the late 1920s. The exhibition includes lacquer work, several of her carpet designs, samples from her Paris shop Jean Désert and key items of furniture from her work on the apartment of Madame Mathieu Levy and Gray’s own home, Tempe à Pailla.

Sans Titre - Collage and Gouache 1930

FAUTEUIL 'TRANSAT', c. 1926-1930

Fauteuil aux Serpents

Significant focus is given to her landmark piece of modernist architecture the French villa E-1027 , built in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in 1926-1929, in close collaboration with Romanian architect Jean Badovici. The exhibition includes examples of furniture for E-1027, including the tubular steel designs with which Gray’s name has become synonymous.

E-1027, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin

Le Corbusier, his wife Yvonne and Jean Badovici in E-1027 in front of
one of the murals Corbusier painted which infuriated Eileen Gray

Table d'appoint pour E-1027

Bibendum Chair FAUTEUIL 'BIBENDUM', c. 1926-1929

Eileen Gray (1878-1976) was born near Enniscorthy, Co Wexford and spent most of her childhood between Ireland and London. In 1902 Gray moved to Paris. She died in France at the age of 98. This extensive exhibition presents a unique opportunity for Irish audiences to experience a large group of work by one of Ireland’s most important cultural figures.

The exhibition at IMMA was hugely satisfying for me as someone who has both admired and championed Eileen Gray for many years. This retrospective provides an opportunity to consider her other rarely seen work such as her unrealised buildings, her prototype furniture and her personal creative practices of painting, drawing and photography. It presents a well rounded portrait of the person and her work as an Architect, Designer and Painter and never before have so many of her artefacts been brought together from multiple owners to explore the person and her works. Particularly satisfying for me was the logical chronology of her amazing output over a long career until she died at the age of 98 in 1976. Indeed it was only in retrospect that the importance of her contribution was fully understood.

I was delighted to see there were separate displays on the three summer houses she built on the Riviera with the furniture, carpets and fittings shown in the context of these remarkable buildings, E-1027 at Roquebrune Cap-Martin, Tempe a Pailla at Menton and Lou Perou (named after a trip she made to Peru in 1929) at Chapelle Sainte-Anne, south of St. Tropez. Her architectural work suffered in WW11. After she left E.1027 to Jean Badovici in 1932 she built a house inland from Menton, Tempa a Pailla, at Castellar. After the war she discovered that her apartment in Saint-Tropez had been looted and her house in Tempe a Pailla had been blown up by the Nazis. She constructed her last house, Lou Pérou (1954-61) in the vineyards of Chappelle-Ste-Anne. She transformed a dilapidated agricultural shed outside Saint-Tropez into a summer home and soon moved there to continue her work.

Lou Perou, Chapelle St. Anne, St. Tropez

Lampe d'ambiance. modèle créé vers 1922-25

St. Tropez Rug

Le Corbusier, arguably the greatest architect of the 20th century, was obsessed and haunted by E-1027, the seaside villa Eileen Gray built at Roquebrune Cap Martin in 1929. Over the decades, he sought to possess her "maison en bord de mer" in a multitude of ways. It may have been the last thing he saw before dying of a heart attack while swimming off the rocks beneath E-1027 in 1965. After he died, the footpath serving the area was designated Promenade Le Corbusier. In time, as Gray's reputation faded, some would even credit him with the design of her villa.

A remarkable women and a remarkably productive long life which is done justice by this wonderfully comprehensive and well curated exhibition in one of Ireland's greatest buildings. The furniture from her Paris apartment now forms the centrepiece of the Eileen Gray exhibition at the National Museum, Collins Barracks in Dublin. It is good that this most famous Irish designer’s great talent is recognised in her own country and in the extraordinary prices her works achieve in the salerooms.

Eileen Gray 12 October 2013 - 19 January 2014

Irish Museum of Modern Art

Royal Hospital, Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin, 8. IRELAND

http://www.imma.ie

For more on her remarkable Villa at Roquebrune Cap-Martin see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/e-1027-roquebrune-cap-martin.html

For her chair Fauteuil aux Serpents which achieved a world record price of almost €22m, the highest price ever paid for a piece of 20th Century furniture see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/eileen-grays-armchair.html

For her laquer screen which sold for €1.3m see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/eileen-gray-screen-sells-for-13m.html

Bianca Jagger - 12th Longford Lecture

2013-11-21T18:29:00.000-08:00

Bianca Jagger

Bianca Jagger: 'Ending Violence Against Women and Girls, and the Culture of Impunity: achieving the missing Millennium Development Goal target'

Once again he Longford Trust, the charity founded in memory of Frank Pakenham (Lord Longford) held its annual Longford lecture on Thursday 21st November in the splendid surroundings of Church House, Westminster.

The Longford Trust organizes an annual Longford Lecture on questions of social and penal reform. Past speakers have included President Mary McAleese of Ireland, Clive Stafford Smith, Sir Hugh Orde, Lady (Brenda) Hale, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Lord (Ian) Blair, Cherie Booth QC, Archbishop John Sentamu and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It also awards an annual Longford Prize to an outstanding individual or organization working in the field of prison and social reform. It funds Longford Scholarships for ex-prisoners who want to rebuild their lives through education. And it offers financial support to Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners.

This year's lecture was delivered by the international Human Rights activist and campaigner Bianca Jagger who demonstrated she has what it takes to be a Street Fightin' Women. Her long credentials as a civil rights activist were emphasised by the journalist Jon Snow who pointed out he first met her in the Intercontinental Hotel in Managua, the capital of her home country of Nicaragua in 1983 in the uneasy days after the fall of Somoza and the Sandinista Revolution. Since then she has been a fearless and active campaigner against abuse of Human Rights and is the founder and chair of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation. She is a Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador, a member of the Executive Director's Leadership Council of Amnesty International, USA, a IUCN Plant A Pledge Ambassador, a member of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, and a trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust.

For over three decades she has been a voice for the most vulnerable members of society, campaigning for human rights, civil liberties, peace, social justice and environmental protection throughout the world. Her work has been recognised by the 2004 Right Livelihood Award, the 1998 American Civil Liberties Union Award, the 1997 Amnesty International USA Media Spotlight Award for Leadership, and the 1994 United Nations Earth Day International Award. She has been willing to go to trouble spots. She has faced down Serb soldiers in Kosovo and a death squad in Honduras. She visited Iraq as part of a fact-finding mission during the row over WMDs.

Bianca Jagger

She was born Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias in 1950, in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. After her parents’ divorce, she was raised by her mother. Witnessing the discrimination of a patriarchal society against a single working woman inspired the young Bianca to become an instrument of change in the world. She was determined never to be regarded as a second-class citizen because of her gender. As a girl of 10, Bianca Jagger noticed how differently family friends in her native Nicaragua treated her mother to her father, Carlos Perez-Mora. He, a successful businessman, enjoyed deference and respect. Not so his ex-wife.

After their divorce Dora Macias Somarriba, a beautiful thirty-something, was forced to support her three young children by going out to work. It was not something middle-class ladies did in 1950s Managua. But Dora ignored the snide comments; she opened a health-food restaurant – conveniently located near La Imaculata convent school, where Bianca studied. But her daughter never forgot her mother’s hardship. “I promised myself I was never going to suffer that fate.”

As a teenager, she participated in student demonstrations against the terrors inflicted by President Anastasio Somoza's National Guard. This inspired her to pursue her interest in politics. She received a scholarship to study political science in France at the Paris Institute of Political Science. It was there that she discovered the value of freedom and democracy, the rule of law, judicial review, habeas corpus and respect for human rights - concepts she had only dreamt about in Nicaragua.

Her 1971 wedding to Mick Jagger

Best known in the popular imagination for her 9 year marriage to Mick Jagger she was 4 months pregnant with Jade Jagger when they wed in a Catholic ceremony in St. Tropez, France in 1971. Now her daughter Jade has two grown-up daughters, Assisi and Amba. Assisi, 21, is about to make Bianca Jagger a great grandmother. She was also a close friend of Andy Warhol and she added to the New Year's festivities at the famous Club 54 by riding into the party on a horse. The horse's thoughts have not been preserved for posterity.

Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol

Bianca and her daughter, Jade Jagger

She outlined with dismal certainty and forcefulness the extent of this violence and how deeply it was ingrained and how pervasive was the impunity for those who conduct it. She singled out Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia who maintain capital punishment against women who commit "adultery." There are over 8,300 recorded bride burnings in India, a horrible cruel death and no doubt a figure which does not fully reflect the reality. For the reality in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China is that women are regarded as a burden and there is widespread violence and murder, a mass infanticide. In India the figures are dramatic for the cumulative effect of this on population with an estimated 50 million women "missing" in the population due to the cumulative effects of abortion on the grounds of sex, infanticide and neglect. India now has 914 females for every 1,000 males.

Tonight though, we saw the steel of a women who inspired by her mother's example has been fighting the good fight for many years for the oppressed and downtrodden Trenchantly and systematically she set out the climate of violence against women throughout the world and the toleration and acceptance which allows this to continue with impunity. She was a passionate advocate for a better more respectful world free from gender based violence. She saw this campaign to end violence against women and girls as part of the march of Human Rights, the struggle in the 19th century was against slavery, in the 20th century against Totalitarianism and in the 21st century devoted to eradicating violence against women.

She outlined her experience in war zones where rape was used as a weapon of war. This point was graphically emphasised in the Q & A session afterwards by a Syrian journalist emphasising the effect of 41 years of totalitarianism on her country and the murder and sexual abuse of females in the conflict over the past three years. Bianca Jagger's Longford Lecture was a sobering reminder of how much needs to be done to make equality and the realising of women's potential a reality. It was also a reminder of what a powerful advocate she is for decency and respect in a world where women are too often the victims of systemic violence.

Ms Jagger argued that “embedded deep in our cultures still lurks an institutional belief that women are inferior”. She appealed to the world leaders to adopt what she called “the missing Millennium Development Goal” of eliminating violence against women and described ending violence against women and achieving gender equality as “the paramount moral challenge of our century”.

She highlighted shocking statistics that revealed 60,000 women were raped and 400,000 women were sexually assaulted in the UK last year, while a massive 1.2million suffered some form of domestic abuse. In contrast there were just 5,651 rape prosecutions and only 111,891 for domestic violence. She said “It’s common misconception that sexual violence on this scale happens only in the developing world. I’m afraid to say that sexual violence against women is a global crisis and the developed world is not exempt. There is a culture of silence and shame surrounding sexual assault – only one in 10 is reported in the UK."

Look on her trust's website to see (and admire) the full extent of her advocacy and campaigning:

http://www.biancajagger.org/

The Longford Trust takes seriously its mission to continue Frank Pakenham's work and to encourage organisations to persevere with the often unpopular cause of penal reform. One of the ways it does this is through the annual Longford Prize for work in this area. This year it was presented to The Prison Radio Association (PRA) and collected by its co-founder Roma Hooper.

Prison Radio

The Prison Radio Association (PRA) aims to change the lives of serving prisoners through the power of radio. An award-winning education charity, the PRA runs National Prison Radio (NPR) in partnership with the National Offender Management Service (NOMS). The service is available to prisoners across England and Wales directly in their cells. The PRA also provides support, guidance and expertise to existing prison radio projects and advises prisons interested in setting up radio projects and radio training facilities. The PRA was established as a charity in 2006 in response to a growing demand from prisons to engage in prison radio.

http://www.prisonradioassociation.org/

The Longford Trust was established in 2002 by friends, family and admirers of Lord Longford (1905-2001) to celebrate his achievements and to further the goals he pursued in the fields of social and prison reform

Founded in Frank Pakenham's memory and run by writer Peter Stanford, the Longford Trust has three aims. Firstly, the annual lecture; secondly, a programme of scholarships for ex-prisoners who are taking on further education and thirdly, awards for an individual or organisation that has done outstanding work in penal or social areas. Generous tribute was rightly paid by Jon Snow to the writer and former editor of the Catholic Herald Peter Stanford who has headed up the Trust since its inception and been responsible for Trojan work in expanding its scope and its fundraising. His biography of Lord Longford was the basis for Channel 4's 2006 multi-award winning drama, Longford.

For once the needs of Justice have been served by Trial and sentencing then the needs of Society are only served afterwards by stopping re-offending and that is the area where the UK’s Prison System is an expensive failure. Is a prison sentence the only way to tackle criminality or do we need to change the emphasis to rehabilitation? As Peter Stanford points out on the Longford Trust’s site;

“The benefit of such a dual approach (punishment and rehabilitation) is that it delivers what society really wants – released in-mates who do not offend against the rest of us again. Instead what the present overcrowded, punishment-obsessed prison system turns out is 80 per cent of under-21 years who reoffend within two years of release and nigh on 70 per cent of over 21s. It is a pitiful result that costs us all a fortune. We spend around £40,000 a year on each prison place.”

To learn more about the work of the Longford Trust and how to support it see the website;

www.longfordtrust.org

Frank Longford said often during his life that he would like his epitaph to be ‘the outcasts' outcast’. It summed up a long career as a politician, writer and campaigner on social and prison policy which was all about standing up for the unpopular, the unloved, the underdog and those on the margins of society. He was first a minister in Clement Attlee’s post Second World War Labour government, where as Deputy Foreign Secretary he played a pivotal role in the reconstruction of West Germany. From 1964 to 1968, he was a member of Harold Wilson’s Cabinet.

He started visiting prisoners in 1930 and continued until his death. He was assistant to Sir William Beveridge on his landmark report of 1942 which laid the basis for the Welfare State. In 1956 he founded New Bridge, one of the first organisations in Britain seeking to create links between prisoners and the community, and in 1963 chaired the committee on crime whose recommendations led to the establishment of the parole system. On leaving the government, he launched New Horizon, a charity for young people in need.

The Pakenham Family have roots in both Ireland and England and have influenced both countries over the years. In Dublin they are commemorated in Longford and Aungier Streets and the former Pakenham Hall near Castlepollard in Co. Meath was renamed Tullynally (The Gaelic name) by Tom Pakenham (The current Lord Longford, although he does not use his titles) when he took it over in 1961. Tom Pakenham is himself an author and historian of note as are his sisters, Lady Antonia Fraser, Rachel Billington and Judith Kazantzis.

As Jon Snow remarked somewhat wryly it was Frank Pakenham's genius that so many people assembled in Church House tonight were still working for him and his causes so many years after his death.

John Tavener

2013-11-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

Sir John Tavener with the choir of Clare College, Cambridge

Saddened to hear of the death today of Sir John Tavener at the age of 69 after many years of illness. A composer of great talent and integrity even if some of his later work is a tad dark and Byzantine for even my tastes.

He was one of the country's most celebrated contemporary composers and in the late 1960s signed to The Beatles' record label Apple. His music publishers said he died "peacefully at home" in Child Okeford, Dorset, earlier today. In a somewhat historic coincidence and cause of confusion he shared his name with an English compose, John Taverner (c. 1490 – 18 October 1545) was an English composer and organist, regarded as one of the most important English composers of his era.

He had suffered ill health for much of his life, including a heart attack in 2007 that caused him to spend four months in intensive care. He had a stroke in 1979, and in 1990 was diagnosed with Marfan Syndrome, a hereditary condition that can cause heart defects.

In 1992, The Protecting Veil topped the classical charts for several months and in 1997 his Song For Athene was played at the funeral of Princess Diana. His other well-known works included A New Beginning, which was chosen to see in the new century at the end of 1999 in the Millennium Dome in London, The Whale and The Veil of the Temple.

James Rushton, managing director publisher Chester Music, described him as "one of the unique and most inspired voices in music of the last 50 years". "His large body of work... is one of the most significant contributions to classical music in our times," he said."For all of those fortunate enough to have known him, John was a man of strong beliefs, huge personal warmth, loyalty and humour. He will be much missed."

In paradisum deducant angeli;

in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyrus

et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.

Sir John Tavener - 1944 - 12 November 2013

"Song for Athene is another elegiac tribute, not, to the mythological goddess Athene, but to a young family friend, Athene Hariades, half Greek, a talented actress who was tragically killed in a cycling accident. "Her beauty," write Tavener, "both outward and inner, was reflected in her love of acting, poetry, music and of the Orthodox Church." Tavener had heard Athene reading Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey and, rather as in the case of the Little Requiem, conceived the piece after her funeral, lighting on the effective ideas, so touchingly realized, of combining words from the Orthodox liturgy with lines from Hamlet. Between each is a monodic "Alleluia", and, following the example of traditional Byzantine music, the whole piece unfolds over a continuous "ison" or drone.

Happy birthday, Hedy Lamarr

2013-11-10T09:13:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday today to Hedy Lamarr, a mathematician, Hollywood actress, a Jew, a principled opponent of Fascism and an advocate for female education and empowerment. She was the Co-Inventor of Spread Spectrum (frequency hopping) Technology - The basis of mobile phone technology and much more. In 1936 Hedy Lamarr became the first woman to grace the silver screen in a feature film wearing nothing but her birthday suit.

Five years later, at a Hollywood dinner party, she engaged in a passionate discussion with an avant-garde composer about protecting U.S. radio-guided torpedoes from enemy interference. She scrawled her phone number in lipstick on the windshield of his car so they could develop their ideas further. In 1942, unbeknownst to her adoring public, the unlikely duo secured a patent and gave it to the United States government for a "Secret Communications System" expressly constructed to assist in the defeat of Germany as she was staunchly opposed to the Nazis and wanted to help the war effort. The science presented in this patent serves as the basis for the technology we use today in cell phones, pagers, wireless Internet, defence satellites, and a plethora of other spread-spectrum devices.

Born in Vienna to a prosperous Jewish family, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, made a literal and metaphorical splash with her role in Ecstasy, a 1933 Gustav Machat´y film which featured close-ups of the nineteen-year-old's face in the throes of orgasm (according to Hedy simulated with the aid of the director jabbing a safety pin in her behind!). The film was equally notorious for showing its youthful star swimming naked - this time most assuredly not simulated. Its Full frontal nudity at a time when, in the USA, the Hays Code was coming into force was bound to cause a stir and was the first nude scene in a mainstream movie. Perhaps the other amazing thing is that the "scandal" did not prevent her becoming a Hollywood star.

Although better known for her Silver Screen exploits, Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) also became a pioneer in the field of wireless communications She fled her country and husband Fritz Mandl (Austria's leading arms manufacturer) in 1937. On the voyage to America she was signed to a $500 a week contract by MGM's Louis B. Mayer. She also took on the new last name "Lamarr," meaning "the sea" (La Mar) but also in homage to a beautiful film star of the silent era, Barbara La Marr, who had died in 1926 from a drug overdose. The new Hedy Lamarr became one of the most successful actresses of the late '30s and early '40s. In a career that lasted into the late '50s, Lamarr acted in more than 25 films with the likes of Clark Gable, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy and Judy Garland. Lamarr enjoyed her biggest box-office success in 1949 with Samson & Delilah, her favourite and first colour film, produced by Cecil B. DeMille.

The international beauty icon, along with co-inventor George Anthiel, developed a "Secret Communications System" to help combat the Nazis in World War II. By manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception, the invention formed an unbreakable code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel.

Lamarr and Antheil's 1941 patent application

Following the outbreak of World War II, Lamarr, a passionate opponent of the Nazis, wanted to contribute more to the allied effort. As Mrs. Fritz Mandl, she had closely observed the planning and discussions that went into attempting to design remote-controlled torpedoes. These never went into production, because the radio-controlled guidance system was too susceptible to disruption. She got the idea of distributing the torpedo guidance signal over several frequencies, thus protecting it from enemy jamming. The only weak point was how to employ the synchronization of the signal's transmitter and receiver.

In 1940, Lamarr met the American avant-garde composer George Antheil of "ballet mécanique" fame. She described her idea to him, and asked him to help her construct a device that would enable this signal to be synchronized. Antheil laid out a system based on 88 frequencies, corresponding to the number of keys on a piano, using perforated paper rolls which would turn in sync with one another, transmitting and receiving ever-changing frequencies, preventing interception and jamming. In December of 1940, the "frequency hopping" device developed by Lamarr and Antheil was submitted to the national inventors council, a semi-military inventors' association. Lamarr and Antheil went on to file for a patent application for the "Secret Communication System," June 10, 1941. The patent was granted by the United States patent office on august 11, 1942.

The enormous significance of their invention was not realized until decades later. It was first implemented on naval ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequently emerged in numerous military applications. But most importantly, the "spread spectrum" technology that Lamarr helped to invent would galvanize the digital communications boom, forming the technical backbone that makes cellular phones, fax machines and other wireless operations such as Bluetooth possible.

As is the case with many of the famous women inventors, Lamarr received very little recognition of her innovative talent at the time, but recently she has been showered with praise for her groundbreaking invention. In 1997, she and George Anthiel were honoured with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award. And later in the same year, Lamarr became the first female recipient of the BULBIE™ Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, a prestigious lifetime accomplishment prize for inventors that is dubbed "The Oscar™ of Inventing."

Proving she was much more than just another pretty face, Lamarr shattered stereotypes and earned a place among the 20th century's most important women inventors. Hedy Lamarr was a phenomenally beautiful, intelligent, creative, witty, opinionated, passionate woman who believed strongly in cultivating inner strength. In addition to being a world famous movie star, wife and mother, she was a visionary inventor twenty years ahead of her time. Unfortunately, Hedy cannot be with us today for what would have been her 99th Birthday but she left the Hedy Lamarr Foundation behind to continue her good work.

http://www.hedylamarr.org/

Evil Belgian Communist kills kitten

2013-11-07T16:18:00.001-08:00

The weakness of Labour and Ed Miliband's political opponents can be found in the nature of the arguments, or lack of them, with lots of personal abuse. Some of it from the swivel eyed loons (Downing Street's description of the dwindling band of Tory activists) is risible with frequent references to "Champagne, millionaire, Socialist Red Ed" who knifed his brother in the back, yada, yada, yada.

Winston the Cat in 1944 (the end)

That for the son of a penniless Jewish refugee who fled ahead of the approaching Nazis in fear of his life and arrived penniless and without being able to speak a word of English in Britain at the age of 15. When Ralph (born Adolphe) died in 1994 he was a Professor at the London School of Economics and Britain's leading Marxist academic. What money the Miliband's had was due to increasing property values as Margaret Thatcher got rid of exchange controls and London Property became a reserve currency for dodgy international figures. Surely the Tories would applaud a high achieving meritocrat and note his two sons were in the same "you get what you work for" mould?

Not a bit of it, with the scurrilous Daily Heil running a two page attempted hatchet job on Miliband Senior under the headline "The Man who hated Britain". A profile of Mr Miliband’s father in the right-wing tabloid described Miliband senior as “the man who hated Britain” on the basis of remarks the academic made about the nationalism of the English when he was 17 and his well-known hard-left socialism and criticism of the establishment. Given his influence on his son, this “should disturb anybody who loves Britain”, the newspaper opined. Well, the article disturbed many people including the Tory Leader, David Cameron. Ed Miliband responded furiously. His father, he said, was proud to have fought for Britain, loved his country and had taught his children to do the same.

For the record the Daily Mail is better known over here as the Daily Heil as its proprietor was a "friend" of Herr Hitler and wrote an infamous "Stand up for the Blackshirts" article. He died in Bermuda where the Rothermere Family Trusts live and his son and his grandson, who happens to be Cameron's best mate, are tax dodgers - Tories too patriotic to pay Great British Taxes.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-daily-heil.html

But now even the vitriol of the Daily Heil has been eclipsed by the story of the week in the Sunday Sport. The Sunday Sport describes itself as a Newspaper but nobody else shares this opinion. Here is their ground breaking journalism.

“Devastating evidence emerged last night that Ed Miliband’s Marxist father WAS evil. For Ralph Miliband stands accused of SLAUGHTERING a little girl’s innocent KITTEN in a DRUNKEN rampage… For Eunice Clark alleges that Miliband Senior RAN OVER and KILLED her dear bundle of joy Winston, while drunkenly pedalling his bicycle on a dark January night in 1944.”

Poor old Eunice will never forget:

“Only a Belgian – a Belgian communist – could have killed a kitten in cold blood like that. The Red b*****d!”

Ed Milband reacted to these dreadful revelations in fine form while collecting an award from the Spectator Magazine for Best Parliamentary speech. He gave a brilliant speech via the medium of video. He was funny, he was relaxed and he told the hilarious story about his father being accused of running over a cat on his bike during the war. Miliband Senior was riding the bike, not the cat. The audience of politicians and hacks loved it.

No doubt the swivel eyed Loons of the ToryKipper Party will be upset at Red Ed not living up to his caricature so here is a pre-fabricated comment for them;

"Ed Multimillionaireband killed my hamster. I showed my hamster a picture of Ed Multimillionaireband and he just jumped in the air then keeled over and died. That’s what Socialists are good at, killing things and Countries."

Ed Miliband

Here’s Ed Miliband’s (quite funny) acceptance video from the Spectator Parliamentarian of the year awards:

REMEMBER, REMEMBER THE 5TH OF NOVEMBER

2013-11-05T16:18:00.004-08:00

It's over the hills and far away. Margaret Major and John Minor

Today we mark the anniversary of two significant events in British history.

A day when some crazed ideologues, led by a deranged individual, entered the Houses of Parliament determined to do great damage to our nation.

Still, enough about John Major and the Railways Act 1993.

Also today Britain joyously celebrates the sectarian evisceration of a War Veteran disillusioned by broken promises.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/guy-fawkes-night.html

A re-enactment of Guido Fawkes receiving the King's Mercy

Happy Bonfire Night.

The Billion Pounds a year extra in wasted Taxpayer's money which has gone up in smoke every year in the 20 years since rail Privatisation

Mr. Beck's Locomotive

2013-11-05T04:44:00.002-08:00

GB Railfreight Class 66 Diesel Locomotive 66721 'Harry Beck' at London, Victoria

The Tube Map is an iconic design and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery by any standards the world’s most flattered mapmaker must be Harry Beck who devised the famous diagrammatic London Underground Tube Map. Harry Beck's contribution to cartography was belatedly recognised after his death with one of the most satisfying memorials being the naming of a Class 66 Diesel Locomotive 66721 'Harry Beck' after him. This was acquired by one of the Private Infrastructure Companies under the ill fated PPP scheme and decked out in Metronet Livery with the Harry Beck nameplate. Metronet collapsed in 2007 but strangely the loco which was acquired by GB Railfreight has been going around the UK rail system as the ghost of Metronet past in the livery of a company which no longer exists.

This omission has now been rectified and Loco "Harry Beck" has now been decked out in a smart new livery featuring the updated version of Mr. Beck's famous map as the photo above taken this week at London Victoria Station shows.

Traveller's on London's Underground who rely on the system’s map to get around would be amazed to discover the blueprint was rejected at first as ‘too radical’. However, common sense eventually prevailed and after a few modifications to the simple design by Harry Beck, a trial pocket version was published in 1933. The reaction of the travelling public was overwhelming, with all 700,000 copies snapped up within a month.

Metronet - Renewing the Tube and Working in Partnership? - Not really!

He apparently worked on the design in his own time and was only paid five guineas (£5.25). Last week, 80 years on, an English Heritage blue plaque was unveiled in Leyton to commemorate his map. The plaque was placed on the building Harry was born in at 14 Wesley Road. Sadly, for much of his lifetime Harry did not receive any recognition, leaving London Underground to teach typography and colour design at the London School of Printing and Kindred Trades.

The blue plaque in Leyton recognising Harry Beck

A plaque near Harry Beck's home in Finchley

However, in recent years the importance of his design has been celebrated. Voted the second favourite British design of the 20th Century, the series of coloured lines are as iconic a symbol of London as Tower Bridge or Big Ben. There is now a ‘Beck Gallery’ at the London Transport Museum, a stamp was produced to commemorate the Tube map and Harry even has a locomotive named after him. Harry worked as an engineering draughtsman at the London Underground Signals Office and his career was relatively unremarkable until in 1931, when he proposed a radical new design to illustrate the rapidly expanding underground system.

For the story of this British design icon and the man behind it see Mr. Beck's Map;

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/mr-becks-map.html

War Crimes against the Tamil People

2013-11-03T16:54:00.002-08:00

Channel 4's "No Fire Zone" has presented shocking and irrefutable evidence of War Crimes and Genocide against the Tamil Community in Sri Lanka in 2009, a culmination of many years of repression. It also shows a gross dereliction of duty by the UN and the International Community who have been so anxious to intervene "To protect civilian life" elsewhere in Kosovo and Libya. Where is the International Criminal Court which has been so active elsewhere but seems to turn a blind eye to Western Allies? How can Prince Charles, David Cameron and @WilliamJHague go to Colombo from 15 to 17 November 2013 and shake the hands of War Criminals who are continuing to repress democracy and free speech in Sri Lanka. The Canadian Prime Minister is boycotting the event citing the impeachment of the country's Chief Justice and the execution and imprisonment of journalists and political opponents of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

In 2009, following a 26 year civil war, the government of Sri Lanka launched a major offensive against the rebel forces of the Tamil Tigers or LTTE. It was supposed to be a war without witness. But there were witnesses and they filmed the appalling events as they unfolded. These witnesses included victims and government soldiers themselves.

No Fire Zone represents the culmination of three years of journalistic investigation and contains deeply disturbing new evidence, powerful eyewitness testimony and compelling personal stories of survival in a war zone - including eyewitness interviews from: Vany Viji, a Tamil civilian, Benjamin Dix, a former UN worker, Sir John Holmes, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary, UK and Peter Mckay, former staffer UNOPS, with a title soundtrack by Tamil singer, M.I.A.

Carefully evidenced and powerfully measured, the film uses eyewitness accounts, expert opinion, and translated mobile phone and camera footage from both the victims and the perpetrators of violence. This footage enables the filmmakers, in a way almost never done before, to piece together the day-to-day horror of this war.

Viscerally powerful actuality from the battlefield, from inside the crudely dug civilian bunkers and from over-crowded makeshift hospitals, records evidence of war crimes, summary execution, torture and sexual violence. The film also addresses the culpability of the Tamil Tigers, themselves responsible for committing war crimes and for preventing civilians from trying to escape the carnage.

Since 2009 there has been no independent judicial investigation into what happened and the Government of Sri Lanka continues to say the video evidence of war crimes is faked.

http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/no-fire-zone-app-and-film-free-to-download

Channel 4's "No Fire Zone" leaves no doubt and no wiggle room over the terrible and murderous war crimes committed by the Rajapaksa Regime in 2009. They should be hauled off to account for their crimes before the International Court in the Hague and not be legitimised by Prince Charles, David Cameron and William Hague and other leaders of a Commonwealth supposedly committed to human rights and democracy. Even International hypocrisy must have its limits?

New video showing the fate of a Tamil propagandist & TV presenter is a stark reminder of Sri Lankan government cruelty. Until now they insisted Is Aipriya died in combat. Warning: distressing images.

HSBC - The world's money laundering Banksters

2013-11-02T17:38:00.001-07:00

Bill Oddie discusses one of the world's most unique species which has managed to rewrite the rules of evolution but may be the first modern species to engage in self-extinction?

The comedian-presenter has made a video for Global Witness which sheds light on HSBC's loans to companies that are illegally destroying rainforest habitats and committing human rights abuses in Borneo.

It's all done in a wonderful 'Springwatch' style - with Oddie making comments like "Is he going to charge? The fact is: he's a banker. Of course he's going to charge!" just before he's thrown out of HSBC's London headquarters.

Click play on the video above to enjoy this special edition of 'Bankwatch'. And to help the campaign to stop HSBC's destruction of the rainforests, sign the Global Witness petition here.

HSBC - Money launder's to the world! Don't take my word for it speak to the US Department of Justice where HSBC paid a £1.9 Billion settlement for money laundering for Mexican Drug Cartels!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18880269

Standard Lies

2013-10-31T17:59:00.000-07:00

Frequently the UK Press runs stories these days which demonstrates the false economy of getting rid of sub-editors. Take the amazing piece in today's London Evening Standard headlined:

"Saatchi 'won't sue Nigella' over fallout from restaurant pictures that led to break-up"

The Evening Standard, it is worth mentioning, is owned by a Russian Oligarch, is given away free in London which means nobody else can compete, and is used by the Russians to procure influence. This included hysterically supporting Boris Johnson for Mayor with six page spreads every night for three weeks before the Mayoral election in May 2012 and banners on their website. Strangely the cash value of these Banners and the implication of the Evening Standard largely being distributed in London at Tube Stations in a commercial arrangement with Transport for London (controlled by the same Mayor) did not figure in Boris's Election Returns. In his defence Boris had little to do with his own election as the expensive Australian immigrant Lynton Crosby ran a campaign which bore no relation to what BoJo had done before or has done since. As part of a Local Authority TfL and its employees have a legal duty to remain strictly neutral during an election period. This duty of neutrality in an election for its controlling authority did not stop them distributing pro-Boris electoral material in the "free" Evening Standard and Metro every day at over 300 outlets in London and leaking of an internal TfL memo ostensibly rubbishing Ken Livingston's Fare Freeze as unaffordable.

Within months of his re-election Boris broke his election promise and imposed another (his fifth) above inflation fare increase for his publicly owned monopoly which ended the year with a £900 million surplus. In America, by contrast, the Lebedev's would not be allowed to own American newspapers and would be obliged to register and file financial returns as "Agents of a Foreign Power."

This is the type of polling story just before an election which is forbidden by
electoral law in Lynton Crosby's native Australia. In the end Ken
lost by 64,000 votes of the over 2 Million votes cast but this is a
classic spoiling tactic to discourage undecided voters from voting
for Ken Livingstone

My contemporary thoughts on Ken's Campaign are here in The Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/may/02/ken-livingstone-fare-cut-affordable

Now back to the cringe worthy Saatchi story where his "friends" (Charles Saatchi has friends??) say Charles Saatchi has now decided he was not going to sue Nigella for £500k for not defending him!! No, seriously, I quote:

"He had considered going to court for the chance to tell his side of the story behind the photographs and the couple’s subsequent split. However, the friend said today: “He has decided he is happier getting on with his own life and wants to put the past behind him.”"

I can see why this is posted by the Standard's "Arts" correspondent and not their legal correspondent as this is a story without legs from start to finish. Man assaults (and is pictured doing so) wife in restaurant. Man accepts Police "Caution" which is an admission that the offence happened. Period.

Charles emphasising a point. The scallops with chorizo are
always excellent at Scott's Restaurant in Mayfair

Wife, who is cut off by man behaves entirely honourably by making ABSOLUTELY no public comment about her private life. Man (who was once an advertising mogul who could even sell an unattractive product like the Tories) shows how much he has lost his touch by issuing utterly cringe worthy statement. Rest of the world looks away in embarrassment. Evening Standard runs absolutely baseless story attributed to PR Man's "friends" - but actually based on letters his lawyers sent to her lawyers according to reports in The Telegraph and Daily Mirror. Suggests PR Man has some grounds for action against abused Wife which don't exist in English Statute or Common Law for not "Defending" Man who has signed a caution admitting assault - "The Wife has a clear duty from Time Immemorial to defend her Master's reputation, M'Lud"? There is also the small, little, technical issue M'Lud that for their "Quickie Divorce" in the High Court both parties had to file affidavits confirming they had no further claims against each other?

Consider the reality. A third party takes and publishes undoctored photos which lead directly to Charles Saatchi admitting an offence of assault and accepting a Police Caution. Charles Saatchi now suggests that the person who was wronged failing to publish a statement that the image was misleading constitutes an actionable Tort? I can only assume his "friends" told him to stop being an even bigger Charlie than he has been. He should be eternally grateful for Nigella's silence. that the image was misleading does not equal defamation or any other actionable tort.that the image was misleading does not equal defamation or any other actionable tort.that the image was misleading does not equal defamation or any other actionable tort.that the image was misleading does not equal defamation or any other actionable tort.

Do the Police not have enough to do investigating
crimes by the so-called Working Classes?

Two questions remain;

#1 Is PR Man's inflated ego permanently in a place where the sun don't shine?

#2 How many expensive lunches does it take for an "Arts" correspondent to run a story which goes way beyond Lord Northcliffe's definition of "Non-news about non-people."

I'm glad the Evening Standard is now given away free, people wouldn't pay for this fluff?

The article is on this link for those who enjoy the surreal!

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/saatchi-wont-sue-nigella-over-fallout-from-restaurant-pictures-that-led-to-breakup-8915281.html

Dublin - Lepers, Lock and Clap

2013-10-29T17:35:00.001-07:00

Westmoreland Lock Hospital, Lazar's Hill, Dublin

Two fascinating sites on Dublin history and lore have reawakened a certain nostalgia for my hometown and its somewhat colourful history. That history included squalor and disease as with the Act of Union in 1800 Dublin lost its Parliament and with it much of the aristocratic residents and trade. By the end of the 19th Century Dublin was said to have the worst slums and largest Red Light District (the infamous Monto) in Europe. The abolition of the parliament in 1800 had a major economic impact on the life of the city. Within a decade, many of the finest mansions (Leinster House, Powerscourt House, Aldborough House, etc) had been sold, often to government agencies. Though parliament itself was based on the exclusion of Irish Catholics, many catholic nationalist historians and writers blamed the absence of parliament for the increased impoverishment of Dublin, with many of the large mansions in areas like Henrietta Street sold to unscrupulous property developers and landlords who reduced them to tenements.

The story is told here;

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/irish-parliament-building.html

What prompted these musings was a the fine picture of the Westmoreland Lock Hospital which once stood in Dublin's Townsend Street. A lovely picture and what a fine building, one of the many lost to the Philistines having been let run down when we got our freedom and demolished in 1949. Townsend Street was originally called Lazar's Hill after a leprosy hospital built outside the city - there was another Leprosy Hospital called St. Stephens in Clarendon Street and St. Stephens Green is named after it.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/tale-of-two-parks.html

This was known as the Westmoreland Lock Hospital after the Viceroy of Ireland who opened it in 1792. The name dates back to the earlier leprosy hospitals (as does Lazar), which came to be known as lock hospitals after the "locks", or rags, which covered the lepers' lesions. After 1820 with the decrease in leprosy it mainly treated female suffers of venereal diseases and had about 200 inmates, mainly prostitutes from Monto, a consequence of Dublin having a large garrison and port with estimates of 2,000 + prostitutes in the city most of who would have their lives shortened by disease for which there was no effective treatment.

From the 1856 survey of Dublin

Monto, Dublin

Initially the hospital treated 300 people of both sexes. This was later reduced to 150 beds and from 1820 only women were admitted (males were sent to Dr Steevens' Hospital and the Richmond Hospital). It was supported by the state from the outset. Catholics and Protestants were segregated. In the 19th century most of the patients were prostitutes, a consequence of the large military presence in the city - Dublin having the "largest garrison of the British army at home or in the colonies" (Under-Secretary Thomas Larcom). It became part of the objectives of the hospital governors to prevent the transmission of venereal disease to troops stationed in the city, and the hospital was provided with a grant from the government to effect this.

Monto was the nickname for the one-time red light district in the north city centre of Dublin centred on the Gloucester Diamond. Monto was roughly the area bounded by Talbot Street, Amiens Street, Gardiner Street and Seán McDermott Street (formerly Gloucester Street). The name is derived from Montgomery Street (now called Foley Street), which runs parallel to the lower end of Talbot Street towards what is now Connolly Station. It was immortalised as "Nighttown" in the "Circe" chapter of James Joyce's famous work, Ulysses, where the central protagonists Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus together visit a brothel. I have a certain interest as this is the part of the City Centre I lived and grew up in until the age of five, known then as Summerhill. It was no longer a red light district (as far as a five year old could tell!) but I do remember the definite atmosphere of the fine tall Georgian Houses in the area which had been converted (probably badly) into local authority flats, their height accentuated by a natural fall in the area towards the River Liffey. These were in turn swept away by redevelopment at the end of the 1970's.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/james-joyce-and-me.html

The "Tall Houses" of Summerhill

Colm Henry's picture of U2 playing in the ruins of Summerhill
before the Georgian houses were demolished

In its heyday from the 1860s - 1920s, there were anything up to 2,000 prostitutes working there at any one time, with all classes of customers catered for. It was reputed to be the biggest red light district in Europe at the time. Its financial viability was aided by the number of British Army barracks and hence soldiers in the city, notably the Royal Barracks (later Collins Barracks and now one of the locations of Ireland's National Museum).

A postcard from the early 1900's showing the parade ground
at the Royal Barracks, Dublin, Ireland.

After Ireland became independent in 1922 it became a target for cleanup by Catholic organisations keen to impose their Taliban like stamp on the new Irish Free State between 1923 and 1925. Religious missions led by Frank Duff of the Legion of Mary, an aggressive evangelical Catholic organisation, and Fr. R.S. Devane worked to close down the brothels. They received the co-operation of Dublin Police Commissioner, General William Murphy, and the campaign ended with 120 arrests and the closure of the brothels following a police raid on 12 March 1925, its financial viability having already been seriously undermined by the withdrawal of soldiers from the city following the Anglo-Irish Treaty (December 1921) and the establishment of the Irish Free State (6 December 1922). The "fallen women" were consigned to Magdalen Laundries, but that as they say is another story.

Magdalen Laundry

The area is commemorated in the folk tune Monto (Take Her Up To Monto) written by George Hodnett, music critic of the Irish Times, and popularised by the Dubliners. Some have mistakenly attributed the song to James Joyce as George used slang and phraseology from Joyce in the song. This makes it somewhat undecipherable to anybody other than native Dubliners. The opening lines illustrate this well:

"Well, if you've got a wing-o,

Take her up to Ring-o

Where the waxies sing-o all the day;"

These words make no sense unless you know Dublin slang. A "wing-o" was a girl friend because you walked out with her on the "wing", "Ring-o" is Ringsend, a dockside area of Dublin where the River Dodder joins the Liffey, and the "Waxies" were the Cobblers who used waxed thread to sew boots. Their guild organised a picnic each year to Ringsend which was satirised as the "Waxies Dargle", the title of another folk song, as the Dargle River in Co. Wicklow was a picnic area for the well off as you had to rent a horse and trap at Bray Railway Station to make the journey, something too expensive for poorer families.

In 1794 the Lock penitentiary opened, which catered for women who had been discharged from the hospital. Other destinations for those discharged were the Lying-in hospital (now the Rotunda Hospital), the work-house, or the Cork Street Fever Hospital, Dublin. The hospital never had power to hold women against their will.

A number of broadside ballads were printed in Britain and Ireland in the 19th century referring to the Lock Hospital or a similar institution, and the downfall of a young man or soldier (and later, woman). An early mention of a hospital is on early 19th broadsides, referring to The Lock Hospital established in 1746 at Hyde Park Corner, London. A song was called The Unfortunate Rake in Ireland and was sung in Dublin in the 1790s. A tune with this name was printed in Crosby's Irish Musical Repository in 1808. In America, the song has been adapted to the cattle range (The Cowboy's Lament or The Streets of Laredo) and the gambling hall (St. James' Infirmary). Christy Moore recorded the Locke Hospital on "Prosperous" (1972).

Another feature was that Protestant and Catholic inmates at The Westmoreland Lock Hospital were separated presumably the presumption being they had come from a different "station" in life and should not mix, this being one area where the Catholics were professional and the Protestants were amateurs? There was also a de facto separation of religions in all the other city hospitals something which continued well into the 20th Century under our very own Archbishop of Bling, John Charles McQuaid, who objected to a new children's hospital being built at St. Ultan's in Charlemont Street as Protestants would be on the Board of Management. Despite the land having been already acquired at public expense after World War II (or "The Emergency" as it was called in Ireland) the project was scrapped and "Our Lady's" Hospital was built in an awkward out of city site at Crumlin under the control of the Archbishop and reflecting the famous "Catholic Ethos" imposed on the fertile by the infertile. The surplus land acquired at the more convenient central site was utilised for the Charlemont St. Corporation flats.

St. Patricks Hospital

I saw another side of this religious segregation in the early '80s visiting a friend who was being treated in St. Patrick's Psychiatric Hospital in James Street. I knew the Hospital Secretary and its history as one of the first dedicated psychiatric hospitals as it had been founded and endowed by Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral and author of "Gulliver's Travels" and much more. He left the bulk (£12,000) of his will to the hospital originally known as St Patrick’s Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757 to, as he put it:

"He gave the little Wealth he had,

To build a House for Fools and Mad:

And shew'd by one satyric Touch,

No Nation wanted it so much:"

The hospital in those days still had a "Protestant" Board of Management. Imagine then my astonishment when visiting my friend to find the place was full of Catholic Clergy, Priests and Nuns, who were having problems with "drink" and their "nerves." Presumably they were stashed away in this "Protestant" hospital rather than the Catholic equivalent, St. John of God, so the simple minded "Faithful" would not see them and be scandalised by the sight of these frazzled celibates who were having such difficulty coping with the same reality they were so happy to advise their "flocks" on?

Jonathan Swift's Epitaph, St. Patrick's Cathedral Dublin where he was Dean

'Here is laid the body of
Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Divinity,
Dean of this cathedral Church,
Where fierce indignation can no longer
Rend his heart.
Go, traveller, and imitate if you can
This earnest and dedicated
Champion of Liberty'

Leper Hospitals were common features in Europe until after the 1940's when an effective cure for the disease was developed by a Norwegian physician and many cities had "Leper Colonies" on the outskirts, in London "Spitalfields" denotes one such, Spital being incorporated into our modern word, hospital. One of the last Leper colonies in Europe was on the Island of Spinalonga in Crete, apt in a way as the disease is reputed to have been brought to Europe from India by Alexander the Great's returning troops.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.il/2012/05/spinalonga-island.html

For more on Dublin sights and lore see DUBLIN IN THE RARE OLD TIMES on Facebook and the wonderful "Come here to me" site http://comeheretome.com/ which also features on my Blogroll on the Blog sidebar è

Halloween - another great Irish Pagan Festival!

2013-10-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

We are less than a week away from Halloween on next Thursday the 31st October but how many realise as the go around "Trick and Treating" that they are paying homage to the Celtic Pagan Festival of Samhain?

Hallowe’en seems to have grown around the ancient Gaelic festival of Samhain, marking the end of the light half of the year and the beginning of the dark half. All Hallows' Eve, has over the years moved from the Celtic Festival of Samhain to trick-or-treat. Samhain was the time of the final harvest of the beasts of the field, and the crops, in preparation of winter provisions, the eve of Winter's first day, and the beginning of the next Wheel of the Year.

The Celts lived in pre-Roman Ireland, Britain, and parts of greater Northern Europe. On November 1st (of our calendar - the Celts used a lunar calendar) the Celtic Wheel of the Year turned. Samhain was the night prior - the day the old year died. On this day, the Celts believed the veil between this world and the "other side" thinned. This had several important effects. The otherworldly spirits, in all their omniscience, could aid in divination rituals. "Magic" was a daily fact of life for the Celts, and these predictions were no fortune cookie curiosities - they were an important source of drive and comfort, helping them get through the long winter. In addition to this, there were less-desirable spirits from the Otherworld that could cross over to meddle with the villagers and destroy crops. In order to dispel these angry spirits, the Celts would light sacred bonfires - usually two, as they would walk between them to cleanse their bodies and spirits of the bad energies of the past year - and wear costumes of animal skins and blue or black dye in order to look more like a spirit, and thus not attract attention. Crops and animals would often be cast into the fires as sacrifices to the Celtic deities in thanks for a bountiful harvest, and in hopes that the goddesses and gods would protect the remaining crops from the angry otherworld spirits. Other animals would be slaughtered, their bones cast into the fire, and the meat cooked in order to store for the winter. At the end of the night of festivities, they carried home coals of the sacred fire in hollowed-out turnips to light the new years' flame in the hearth that had been extinguished

To the Celts Samhain marked one of the two great doorways of the Pagan Year, the other being Beltane on May 1. They held a 'dumb' or 'silent' supper in remembrance of those who passed over, placing a setting of food and drink for them at the family dinner table, or just simple cakes and wine.

Celtic sites in Ireland

In medieval Ireland, Samhain became the principal festival, celebrated with a great assembly at the royal court in Tara, lasting for three days. After being ritually started on the Hill of Tlachtga, a bonfire was set alight on the Hill of Tara, which served as a beacon, signalling to people gathered atop hills all across Ireland to light their ritual bonfires. The custom has survived to some extent, and recent years have seen resurgence in participation in the festival.

Hill of Tara

The name Hallowe’en is a shortening of All Hallows’ Even, or All Hallows’ Evening. All Hallows is an old term for All Saints’ Day (Hallow, from the Old English “halig”, or holy, compared with Saint, from the Latin “Sanctus”, also meaning holy, or consecrated). In the original Old English, it was known as Eallra Hālgena aefen. This comes from a Christian move by Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV to end the pagan Samhain festivals, by moving the feast of All Saints from May to 1 November.

There is a long tradition of the Christian Church taking other’s iconography and calling it their own! They even took the History of the Jewish People and called it the Old Testament. They took over the Basilicas of the Cult of Mithras which, like Christianity, had at its centre redemption through blood sacrifice. When they took over the Roman Basilicas after Constantine the Great made it the state religion of the Roman Empire they replaced the statues of Jupiter with those of Christos (The anointed one – a title used by the Pharaohs of Egypt as in Ptolemy VI Eucharistos on the Rosetta Stone) and changed the inscription from “J.O.M.” (Jovis Omnia Maximus) to “D.O.M.” (Deo Omnia Maximus). They even kept the gold disc behind Jupiter which represented his position as the Sun God (Helios) and depicted their images with the “Halo” as a sign of sanctity. So the Nazarenes have some form in this area, indeed after celebrating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in early summer for the first 400 years or so they then purloined the Roman Feast of Saturnalia on the 25th December near to the Winter solstice which was associated with feasting and merriment. Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 AD) recorded that some Christians of the time placed his birth date in April (see Stromata I:21). Hippolytus (d. 236 AD) may have believed that Jesus was born on April 2nd.

Halloween in Ireland

The celebration of Halloween survived most strongly in Ireland. It was an end of summer festival, and was often celebrated in each community with a bonfire to ward off the evil spirits. Children would go from door to door in disguise as creatures from the underworld to collect treats, mainly fruit, nuts and the like for the festivities. These were used for playing traditional games like eating an apple on a string or bobbing for apples and other gifts in a basin of water, without using your hands. Salt might be sprinkled on the visiting children to ward off evil spirits. Carving turnips as ghoulish faces to hold candles became a popular part of the festival, which has been adapted to carving pumpkins in America.

The classic Hallowe’en jack-o’-lantern, a carved grinning pumpkin, is both a new and an ancient practice. Originally, it seems to have come from an old Irish legend of a man called Stingy Jack, a miserly farmer who played a trick on the devil and as punishment was cursed to wander the earth, lighting his way with a candle inside a hollowed-out turnip. When the tradition moved to America pumpkins were used instead of turnips, as they were both more available and easier to carve.

So this Halloween, as we Trick and Treat, let us acknowledge the contribution of the Pagans of Ireland to popular culture not to mention 100s of terrible Halloween B Movies!! Watch out for the Ghosties and Ghoulies and ‘tings which go bump in the night!

For more about the rituals of the Celts and the great Celtic sites of Newgrange and Brú na Bóinne see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/in-darkest-mid-winter.html

Archbishop Ussher and the age of the Earth

2013-10-24T16:44:00.000-07:00

According to Archbishop Ussher the world was 6017 years old yesterday which is as good an introduction as any to my townsman who was one of the 17th Century's most influential churchmen and intellectuals.

James Ussher (1581-1656) was a Dubliner, Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland, and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College in Dublin who was highly regarded in his day as a churchman and as a scholar. Of his many works, his treatise on chronology has proved the most durable. Based on an intricate correlation of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean histories and Holy writ, it was incorporated into an authorised version of the Bible printed in 1701, and thus came to be regarded with almost as much unquestioning reverence as the Bible itself. Having established the first day of creation as Sunday 23 October 4004 BC, by reference to the Books of Genesis, Ussher calculated the dates of other biblical events, concluding, for example, that Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise on Monday 10 November 4004 BC, and that the ark touched down on Mt Ararat on 5 May 2348 BC `on a Wednesday'.

While his date of creation was disproved by the finds in Egypt when the hieroglyphs were decrypted which showed the Egyptian Civilization was over 7,000 years old he did in the process succeed in establishing much of the accepted chronology of our history. His calculation of how many angels could fit on a pinhead (I jest not!) has not endured as much. Such was the respect he was held in when he died as an Anglican Primate the puritan Oliver Cromwell insisted he be buried will full ceremony in the Paul Chapel of Westminster Cathedral.

Apropos nothing in particular Usher's Quay and Island in Dublin is named after him and in a house there James Joyce set his long short story "The Dead"

Ushers Quay, Dublin

http://www.joycesdublin.ie/

Back to my townsman James Ussher and his Chronology. The Ussher chronology is a 17th-century chronology of the history of the world formulated from a literal reading of the Bible. The chronology is sometimes associated with young Earth creationism, which holds that the universe was created only a few millennia ago by God as described in the first two chapters of the Biblical book of Genesis.

The full title of Ussher's work is "Annales Veteris Testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti, una cum rerum Asiaticarum et Aegyptiacarum chronico, a temporis historici principio usque ad Maccabaicorum initia producto." ("Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world, the chronicle of Asiatic and Egyptian matters together produced from the beginning of historical time up to the beginnings of Maccabes")

Ussher's work was his contribution to the long-running theological debate on the age of the Earth. This was a major concern of many Christian scholars over the centuries.

By the end of the 19th century, Ussher's chronology came under increasing attack from supporters of uniformitarianism, who argued that Ussher's "young Earth" was incompatible with the increasingly accepted view of an Earth much more ancient than Ussher's. It became generally accepted that the Earth was tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of years old. Ussher fell into disrepute among theologians as well; in 1890, Princeton professor William Henry Green wrote a highly influential article in Bibliotheca Sacra entitled "Primeval Chronology" in which he strongly criticised Ussher. He concluded:

"We conclude that the Scriptures furnish no data for a chronological computation prior to the life of Abraham; and that the Mosaic records do not fix and were not intended to fix the precise date either of the Flood or of the creation of the world."

Ussher's life reflected the turbulent years in Ireland and he had to flee during the rebellion of 1641 which saw Kilkenny becoming the capital of Ireland under the Catholic Confederation which allied itself with Charles II and the Royalist cause during the English Civil War. For eight years until the Cromwellian invasion of 1649 Ireland was effectively independent of England. Ussher spent his years in exile first in London and then Oxford where he died living with his daughter who married Dr. Luke Challoner.

Archbishop Ussher

Such was the regard he was held in when he died in 1656 it was Oliver Cromwell who ordered his burial in the chapel of St Paul in Westminster Abbey and paid the funeral expenses. It is thought that this was the only occasion at which the Anglican funeral service was read in the Abbey during the Commonwealth period. The present Irish marble gravestone, with brass lettering, was not put in place until 1904 and the Latin inscription was written by Dr Gwynn (Regius Professor at Trinity College) and others. It can be translated:

"In pious memory of JAMES USSHER who was born in Dublin in 1581, entered among the first students of Trinity College, promoted to the archiepiscopal see of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the hundredth heir of St Patrick the apostle of Ireland, historian, critic, theologian, most learned among the holy, most holy among the learned, exiled from his own in this city of Westminster, he fell asleep in Christ in 1656. He was expelled from his sacred see and country by those same seditions which went on to grant him burial in this church among the most honoured. This stone was placed by George Salmon, Provost of the same college, 1904"

Ussher's basic error was to treat the Bible as a literal work whereas it is a transcription by many writers of the oral history of the Jewish people over many years. He also tried to use the genealogy in the Bible to extrapolate dates in history back to the "Great Flood" which amplified his error. However, the great irony is that by addressing the core question of Biblical Scholarship, The Creation, he also stimulated others to ask how old is the Earth, a quest which laid the intellectual basis for the Theory of Evolution. He was undoubtedly a great scholar and a great Dubliner who due to the vagaries of history ended up being a prophet not without honour, save in his own country.

For more about James Joyce and "The Dead" house on Usher's Island (today's spelling) in Dublin see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/06/james-joyce-and-me.html

Diagram showing the Age of the Earth

Where is Jimmy the Dodger?

2013-10-24T12:14:00.001-07:00

Jimmy "The Dodger" Ratcliffe in front of Ineos' former HQ in Lyndhurst, Hampshire

This is the question being asked in Scotland as they search high and low for Jimmy Ratcliffe who owns 70% of Ineos which has closed Grangemouth refinery and petro-chemical plant, where is Jimmy?

Don't let appearances fool you! This is the Hampshire estate
where Jimmy doesn't live although he keeps his lawnmower
collection here!

Union leaders are to meet managers at the giant Grangemouth site in a bid to save thousands of jobs following the shock decision to close the petrochemical side of the business. Unite said it had made a number of recommendations to owner Ineos, which yesterday announced the closure of the petrochemical plant with the loss of 800 jobs and potential 2,000 more among contractors. A union spokesman said: "Unite has made recommendations to Ineos as way to save jobs and prevent needless harm to this plant and the local community. "We meet with the company today and will hear then if they share these objectives." The company insisted it had no alternative but to close the business after it failed to persuade its staff to accept a survival plan, which included a pay freeze, ending of a final salary pension scheme and other changes to terms and conditions. The Grangemouth conflict with the Trade Union Unite is entirely engineered by Ratcliffe no doubt encouraged by Cameron and Osborne who he has met. Wages are less than 2% of the total cost at Grangemouth and the supposed unprofitable petrochemical plant there posted profits of £7M last year! Organ Grinder and Monkeys are the key words here?

Rolle, Switzerland where Jimmy and de Ineos Massive
really live.

Ineos Group Limited is a privately owned multinational chemicals company consisting of 15 standalone business units, headquartered in Rolle, in Switzerland, and with its registered office in Lyndhurst, in the United Kingdom, near which "non-resident" Jim Ratcliffe has a £6 M mansion. Refused VAT deferrals by the UK government during the credit crunch, he already moved Ineos’s headquarters to Switzerland where he and 80 key executives transferred to Rolle on Lake Geneva. Can I just run that past you again. He had collected VAT as agent of HMRC to the tune of £340 million from other UK customers of his operation and because he was not allowed to hold onto other people's money at great risk to the public purse for over a year he spent a spiteful fortune buggering off to Switzerland and paid his top management substantial relocation costs to do the same.

Hey!! 600 Banks own this!

It gets worse; The move to Switzerland was designed to dodge £100 M of British taxes a year and was approved by a consortium of banks who were owed £6 Billion ( yes, billion) by Ineos. Lead banks in that consortium included RBS (81% owned by the British taxpayer) and Lloyds Banking Group (41% owned by the British taxpayer). Now, I think we understand the first principles here - Free Marketer wanted to use taxes he had collected on behalf of you and me to float his boat. When he was refused permission to do this he spitefully pulled out of Britain. To do this he had to get permission from British Banks bailed out by British taxpayer who have guaranteed the loans Ratcliffe's over leveraged group needed to survive. Oh, did I mention when Ratcliffe's company took over ICI's Chlorine operation in Cheshire it received subsidies from the British taxpayer he so assiduously shuns of £50 million?

Grangemouth Refinery

Perhaps Jim Ratcliffe could now come out of hiding in his tax exile in Switzerland (another Tory too patriotic to pay British Taxes) or from his yacht Hampshire II and explain himself instead of hiding behind the hired help. As he owns 70% of the indebted financial House of Cards called Ineos he could explain how in his greed and arrogance he feels he can blackmail Scotland - a place which has comprehensively rejected the Tories and their toxic policies. One further point, this indebted swashbucklers plans for Grangemouth if it stays open call for £150 million of UK and Scottish Government aid and £9 million of employment subsidies to adapt the complex to import Shale Gas from America. Jim Ratcliffe is an experienced Chemical Engineer which is a respected profession. He then went on to devalue this by doing an MBA. Now these are the magic letters you find behind most spectacular business failures as they breed arrogant overconfidence and an unreasonable belief in the alchemy of Financial Engineering, or trying to make a silk purse out of a pigs ear, as we used to say in old money.

The gun Ratcliffe is able to hold to hold to Scotland's head

Many Tories understand tax very well and know that it pays for the common goals, welfare and defence of the people of Britain and for the critical infrastructure our country needs which the private sector time and time again has demonstrated its inability to provide. Because they understand this so well, whilst keeping their British passports and privileges, they feck off abroad, mainly to the 23 British controlled tax havens, or even more ridiculous on a contrived pretext they become Non-Doms a fiction originally invented in 1799 to facilitate Slave Plantation owners and White Nawabs returning laden with stolen treasure from India. In the past, the German-born Tiny Rowland, the Czech-born Robert Maxwell and the Cypriot Asil Nadir were all entitled to this enormous break.

The workers who don't matter

Today, the UK accepts non-domicile status for Greek shipping magnates, Saudi princes, American corporate heirs, Mohamed Al Fayed, the controversial owner of Harrods, Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian steel magnate and an assortment of foreign business executives. Apart from the Republic of Ireland, which inherited the rule, there is no other country in the world which allows any of its residents to claim that their real home is elsewhere. The United States says it does not matter where you were born, if you qualify as a resident of the US, you must pay US tax on all your income and capital gains all over the world. If you are a US Passport holder you pay US Federal taxes, period, so there are no US "Tax Exiles." Give up your US passport (US does not recognise dual-citizenship for those born in the US) and you can only get it back if you pay the taxes you would have paid.

So these tax-dodging sybarites can stick their snouts deeper in the trough whilst displaying their business end to the rest of us aka "The Suckers". Tories, too patriotic to pay British Taxes: eg; PR Dave's Dad and Grandad, Lord "Belize" Ashcroft, Phil "I trousered a Billion" Green, Union Jack Hayward, Jim Ratcliffe, Jonathan Harmsworth ("Patriotic" owner of the Daily Mail and PR Dave's Bestie), etc; etc;

The Tories, founded by the 1% for the 1%!

Jim Ratcliffe's £130 M yacht "Hampshire II" from which he engineers conflicts with his
skilled Grangemouth workforce for his hired help to put into action.
It's a Feadship for those who know about such things, just the best Dutch quality you can buy.

For an insight to where Jim Ratcliffe dreams up these wizzy schemes to exploit the workers here is a promo video for his £130 M yacht "Hampshire II", the name no doubt an ironic tribute to where he and his company used to live?

Yacht Hampshire II (PS; Jimmy also owns Hampshire I)