Sunday 25 December 2016

A nice traditional Christmas

"The Duke of Cambridge broke with tradition by spending Christmas at his wife’s family home in Bucklebury, Berkshire. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended a service in nearby Englefield church with their children George and Charlotte."

Did he? Good for him.

Breaking with tradition that is. 

Perhaps he will stop taking his traditional money from the taxes raised from millions of people who can't afford it.

Nah.

Merry Christmas parasite. Think about wee George. Think about bairns his age who are cold, wet and hungry.

Right now.

I know your father has a flunky to put toothpaste on his brush. Do you?


Friday 11 November 2016

So long Canadian


For Sue, wherever you are now. It was PG Tips and Jaffa Cakes, but that was close enough.

2016 really will go down as an annus horribilis won't it?

Thursday 6 October 2016

October 2016

National Poetry Day is on us, as is the end of the Tory conference. I'm reminded how British arrogance and intransigence worked out last time, one hundred years ago.

I

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

II

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near to my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

III

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of it all.
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

IV

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmer name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse--
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.


Saturday 1 October 2016

Comment is free.

The Guardian.

The last bastion of free speech in what passes for journalism in oor United Kingdom.

Aye. Right.

I have no idea how the Guardian hires its wee moderators; I do know any comments that disparage feminism gets short shrift.

Fair enough.

So; responding to a comment on Edinburgh dialect, a London dialect person called me a 'dinlo*', calling them a 'rajcunt' gets me barred from the Guardian.

Fuck you,**

*No idea either.

**I was going to add such stuff as ' goat-fucker of Alexandria', but I'm sure Boris will get around to it eventually.

Monday 29 August 2016

Fuck's sake. I'm watching a piece of  British propaganda on  TV.

An empty carriage is meant to show how much our monarch loves us.

In one of  the biggest festivals in the country.


They are so stupid.



Thursday 14 July 2016

"Our" new Foreign Minister

He's the one on the right

The Scotch - what a verminous race!
Canny, pushy, chippy, they're all over the place.
Battening off us with false bonhomie;
Polluting our stock, undermining our economy.
Down with sandy hair and knobbly knees!
Suppress the tartan dwarves and the Wee Frees!
Ban the kilt, the skean-dhu and the sporran
As provocatively, offensively foreign!
It's time Hadrian's Wall was refortified
To pen them in a ghetto on the other side.
I would go further. The nation
Deserves not merely isolation
But comprehensive extermination.
We must not flinch from a solution.
(I await legal prosecution.)

TheSpectator in 2004

Friday 24 June 2016

And so it begins again.


Hands up who prefers this to "God save the Queen"?

Tuesday 2 February 2016

God, I don't want to be sued, but....



I once worked for the City of Edinburgh Libraries; about  twenty years ago small branch libraries  were asked to manually delete individual accounts, long overdues, huge fines, etc. to help larger branches, like Morningside.

I got a sheaf of them, as we all did.

One of them stuck out, mainly because of the unusual surname, and the title of the first book on the list.

...Of the six long overdue books,,,

"How to write children's books".

I wonder if ECL has a case to sue this particular author?




Monday 11 January 2016