One kind Christmas gift was Churchill’s Wit: The Definitive Collection. I am particularly savouring this gem (1906):
For my own part I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities which he excites among his opponents. I have always set myself not merely to relish but to deserve thoroughly their censure.
I expect that will keep me going through the heat of the fires of unreason of the statist left.
A friend recently sent me this celebrated letter on the absurdity of bureaucracy. If you have not seen it, enjoy:
Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Secretary of State.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR16 July 2009
Dear Secretary of State,
My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs.. I would now like to join the “not rearing pigs” business.
In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.
I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?
As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven’t reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?
My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is – until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.
If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?
Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don’t rear?
I am also considering the “not milking cows” business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?
In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.
Yours faithfully,
Nigel Johnson-Hill
I am delighted to report our most successful year ever. We made more progress to achieving our twin goals of increasing our losses and building up our levels of debt than ever before. Indeed, I am especially proud to be able to announce that in just two years we will be able to borrow more than all the previous managements of UK PLC and its predecessor companies over 1000 years. I think you will agree with me that this is a magnificent result.
Read more at John Redwood MP » The Finance Director of UK PLC sends out the annual figures.
An explanation of the financial crisis for everyone:
Linda is the proprietor of a bar in Cork. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers – most of whom are unemployed alcoholics – to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).
Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers (still mostly unemployed alcoholics) flood into Linda’s bar. Taking advantage of her customers’ freedom from immediate payment constraints, Linda increases her prices for wine and beer, the most popular drinks. Her sales volumes and profits increase massively.
… read on: You’re having a laugh ….. seriously?: The Credit Crunch Explained.
Three themes appear often in explanations of the crisis:
Evoking “Who is John Galt?” a phrase popularised by the cult novel “Atlas Shrugged”, Tory Bear makes available a new T-shirt: “Who is Dan Han?”: Tory Bear – right-wing political gossip: Who is Dan Han?.
Get yours here.
The Guardian reports on the poster sweeping the nation in these difficult times:
Nowadays, of course, it would be farmed out to an expensive communications agency. Back in the spring of 1939, it was an anonymous civil servant who was entrusted with finding the slogan for a propaganda poster intended to comfort and inspire the populace should, heaven forbid, the massed armies of Nazi Germany ever cross the Channel.
This was the third in a series. The first, designed to stiffen public resolve ahead of likely gas attacks and bombing raids, was printed in a run of more than a million and read: Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory. The second, identically styled, stated: Freedom Is In Peril.
You can buy merchandise here.
Everyone expects release later this year. A leaked briefing paper for OEM vendors suggests that the date when buyers of Windows Vista machines qualify for a free upgrade begins “for planning purposes” on July 1, 2009.
via First Windows 7 beta puts fresh face on Vista • The Register.
Sarah Kennedy cheered us this morning with Noel Coward’s “There are Bad Times Just Around The Corner“:
There are bad times just around the corner
And the outlook’s absolutely vile,
You can take this from us
That when they Atom bomb us
We are NOT going to tighten our belts and smile smile smile,
We are in such a mess
It couldn’t matter less
If a world revolution is just ahead,
We’d better all learn the lyrics of the old ‘Red Flag’
And wait until we drop down dead.
A likely story
Land of Hope and Glory,
Wait until we drop down dead.
Still it could be worse: at least today we know socialism is dead.
From the Times Online:
Rick Wagoner, the chief executive of General Motors, today expressed remorse for asking for a $18 billion hand-out from Washington but warned that without immediate assistance the car maker would run out of money by Christmas.
And from my spam filter:
As Gordon Brown condemns free markets and therefore by extension freedom itself, I learn of Alistair Darling’s early days as the ‘bearded Trot’ who ‘wanted to nationalise the banks’.
Despite having read Boris Johnson’s cheering Have I Got Views for You, I feel the only solution is to throw myself from an aeroplane repeatedly tomorrow, two and a half miles above the Spanish plains, and hope for the best.
We can turn this around, but it’s going to take some work!
Still “despair is the conclusion of fools”.
Time for a five-year plan?
For the fighter pilot:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.– John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
And for the skydiver:
Woody: Buzz! You’re flying!
Buzz: This isn’t flying. This is falling with style!
– Toy Story
A car is bought for restoration as a cheap runaround but it is beyond economical repair. It’s declared SORN, but parked with a small corner off a private drive. The busybodies turn up and clamp it, so the owner chops it in half to make the point brilliantly: how else would this nonsense have come to national prominence?
And to think we are paying for this ludicrous enforcement.
I heard a journalist complaining that Boris just gets “stooges” to do all the work.
Isn’t that the whole point? Have a vision and line up enough competent people to do what you want?
I listened this morning to a Today Programme podcast concerning rural France. An Englishman resident in Normandy was explaining how the villagers scurry around protecting themselves from the “EU gestapo”.
To avoid the condemnation of much that is sold to the satisfaction of all concerned, the villagers monitor the train station, watch car numberplates and keep an eye out for strangers. They have to hide cheeses and chickens when these over-eager busybodies emerge.
This episode probably speaks for itself.
The BBC report Pong in the air is ‘Euro-whiff’:
A foul smell hanging over southern England is being blamed on easterly winds bringing either farming or industrial smells across the Channel.
Has British Euro-scepticism been reduced to “Europe smells”?
Found this old joke. Posted for posterity:
Socialism: You have two cows; you give one to your neighbour.
Communism: You have tow cows; the government takes both and gives you the milk.
Fascism: You have two cows; the government takes both and sells you the milk.
Nazism: You have two cows; the government takes both and shoots you.
Bureaucratism: You have two cows; the government takes both, shoots one, milks
the other and throws the milk away.Capitalism: You have two cows; you sell one and buy a bull.
Hague paints a picture of Brown’s reaction to Blair appointed President of Europe:
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