Old Film Found

This story is fantastic. Old film dating back to 1925 has been found in an archive in Worcestershire. For anybody nearby it seems that the films, having been restored, are now being shown to the public in small venues in the Midlands

Mitchell and Kenyon films of pre-WW1 Lancashire also provide a fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary people at that time. M&K used to spend the day filming everyday scenes then would charge people to watch them in a marquee in the evening. Of course they had a tremendous audience of people desperate to actually see themselves on film for the very first time.

Film and TV provide invaluable material for historians and, whether documentary or drama, provide a glimpse of life, values and social behaviour of the era. It's a shame so much old film was lost in the 1960s and earlier when film was so expensive it had to be wiped clean and used again.

Jon Gaunt And Health And Safety Nazis

I'm no great fan of Jon Gaunt and didn't listen to the show that got him suspended from TalkSport Radio, but on what I have read he has my sympathy on this one.

The PC brigade throw the word "Nazi" at anybody who they disagree with, whether they do show sympathies towards the National Socialist German Workers' Party or not. Why such uproar when one of the PC brigade gets it thrown back at them? Let's face it, the word Nazi means bugger all these days it is so overused by most of us.

I wonder if Gaunt, and last week Clarkson, would have copped so much stick if Brand and Woss hadn't been such plonkers. I fear now that any group who dislike a particular broadcaster will be able to organise themselves, fired up with righteous indignation, to make enough complaints to the authorities that the wimps in charge will suspend or fire said broadcaster.

RIP free speech.

In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Happy Hour

Those miserable sods in the House of Commons now want to abolish cheap booze and happy hour in pubs and clubs. I suppose they went us all to be like them which means we will, instead, have to have a misery hour.

I am currently finishing off Through a Glass Darkly, the biography of Patrick Hamilton by Nigel Jones. Hamilton wrote his finest work when hitting the bottle, at one point drinking three bottles of whisky a day. Drinking over £2000 of booze a year before the last war took some doing, quite an admirable feat in my view.

Bruce Robinson writer and director of Withnail and I, and others, got through numerous bottles of red wine a day to get the creative juices flowing. Dylan Thomas and many others were also extremely heavy drinkers and were none the worse for it. Apart from dying young perhaps.

If any of us wants to drink ourselves into an ealy grave that is our choice. Making alcohol more expensive only means that the desperate will cut down on other things, such as the government's dictat to eat 5 bits of fruit and veg a day, and die even earlier in even more squalor.

Lest We Forget

For the Fallen
Laurence Binyon, September 1914

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at the familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Nice Mr Morrissey

It's strange but with Morrissey you either love him or loathe him. I think the man is a genius and my sister, Julia, thinks he's pretty good too. But, being an old hippy, her and Barry's first love is Bob Dylan. Julie, Mrs B, thinks he's a great poet but a crap musician. That's life.

But I find that when life hits you there is usually a Morrissey song that provides a soundtrack. Since my very remote brush with fame yesterday, of which I blogged, the words of 'Paint a Vulgar Picture' have been playing on my mind, one verse in particular. So, as I do occasionally, I am providing you with the words, powerful in themselves but much more so if you listen with the music. These words are from The Smiths' last album, 'Strangeways Here We Come'.

Paint a Vulgar Picture
Lyrics by Stephen Morrissey
Music by Johnny Marr

At the record company meeting
On their hands - a dead star
And oh, the plans they weave
And oh, the sickening greed

At the record company party
On their hands - a dead star
The sycophantic slags all say :
"I knew him first, and I knew him well"

Re-issue ! Re-package ! Re-package !
Re-evaluate the songs
Double-pack with a photograph
Extra Track (and a tacky badge)

A-list, playlist
"Please them , please them !"
"Please them !"
(sadly, THIS was your life)

But you could have said no
If you'd wanted to
You could have said no
If you'd wanted to

BPI, MTV, BBC
"Please them ! Please them !"
(sadly this was your life)

But you could have said no
If you'd wanted to
You could have walked away
...Couldn't you ?

I touched you at the soundcheck
You had no real way of knowing
In my heart I begged "Take me with you ...
I don't care where you're going..."

But to you I was faceless
I was fawning, I was boring
Just a child from those ugly new houses
Who could never begin to know

Who could never really know
Oh ...

Best of ! Most of !
Satiate the need
Slip them into different sleeves !
Buy both, and feel deceived

Climber - new entry, re-entry
World tour ! ("media whore")
"Please the Press in Belgium !"
(THIS was your life...)

And when it fails to recoup ?
Well, maybe :
You just haven't earned it yet, baby

I walked a pace behind you at the soundcheck
You're just the same as I am
What makes most people feel happy
Leads us headlong into harm

So, in my bedroom in those 'ugly new houses'
I danced my legs down to the knees
But me and my 'true love'
Will never meet again ...

At the record company meeting
On their hands - at last ! - a dead star !
But they can never taint you in my eyes
No, they can never touch you now

No, they cannot hurt you, my darling
They cannot touch you now
But me and my 'true love'
Will never meet again

T'Internet

I've had two strange experiences this week. One was when a woman serving me in a shop said how much she enjoyed my letters in the local press, the second just now when I bumped into a neighbour out shopping. The neighbour said how much she had enjoyed my blog this week. It feels strange somehow, even though you obviously want your stuff to be read. Being famous must be very bizarre, I don't think it would suit me.

So t'internet works, to a degree. It took me years to blog, as it did to get into computers to any degree. But my neighbour works in a field that really interests me at the moment and she suggested I join a particular internet forum specialising in that area. Now I have to admit to being a Luddite, still, when it comes to internet fora. I have only ever registered on two, one a football forum for Manchester United fans the other one for Ice Hockey fans, Manchester Phoenix specifically. To be honest they weren't really my cup of tea.

But I might give her suggestion a try, it might be third time lucky and could open up a whole new career. Who knows?

Pass The Sick Bag

The Obama effect continues.

The Labour Party is now "institutionally racist" according to that luvly liberal chappie, Trevor Phillips. But when you look at the likes of David Lammy, Keith Vaz and Shahid Malik who but their own mothers would want them to be Prime Minister?

Ever thought Trevor, that the reason we are unlikely to have a black PM soon, if that is the case, is because unlike a political bandwagon jumping tart like you most blacks are smart enough to see how rotten politics is and avoid it like the plague?

Kenyan Obamas

Now, I don't want to sound churlish, but am I the only one who is tired of the race obsession surrounding Obama's victory? Yes he won, and won convincingly, but black people only seem to have voted for him because he is 'black' and white people only seem to have voted for him because they want to be seen to be progressive and cool. Witness the drooling over him on Question Time last night with Bonnie Greer almost weeping with emotion whenever she mentioned his name, and the other panellists not far behind.

If you were Obama's white family wouldn't you be a little pissed off to have been shunted into the background so utterly completely. He's black, don't mention the white mother any more than you mention Bob Marley's white grandfather. Oh yes, apart from when his white grandmother was dying and he could go for the sympathy vote.

To me Obama is a man whose mother was white and whose father was black, end of story. If a white man became leader of a black country you can bet the world wouldn't be drooling over him just becaue of his colour. And if his father was from Accrington I bet the people of Accrington wouldn't be carrying on like this.

Glenrothes

No real surprise with this result in my opinion.

But I can't wait to see the faces of Cameron, Salmond and Clegg now their smugness should have been wiped off. Though Tories and Lib-Dims weren't expected to do well they did so exceptionally badly it made me smile this morning.

And Salmond, remember, your party is a major protest vote party, nothing more nothing less.

Results in full
Lindsay Roy, Labour: 19,946
Peter Grant, SNP: 13,209
Maurice Golden, Cons: 1,381
Harry Wills, Lib Dem: 947
Jim Parker, SSCUP: 296
Morag Balfour, SSP: 212
Kris Seunarine, UKIP: 117
Louise McLeary, Solidarity: 87

The Bitch Is Back

Here we go with the further rolling out of the government's despised ID card scheme.

Two airports are to introduce ID cards for workers as part of a pilot scheme, pardon the pun. But the link to the BBC website outlines other plans for gradual compulsory/voluntary introduction.

I don't think I've seen such a slappable face as Jacqui Smith's before. Oh, course I have, I forgot Hazel Blears.

The Difference Between Clarkson And Brand

The difference between Clarkson and Brand is that Jeremy Clarkson has a brain. Don't forget the tasteless and tedious Brand wrote a book and called it "My Bookywooky". The brain of a comatose snail obviously.

So this furore about remarks Jeremy Clarkson made about lorry drivers killing postitutes is just puritanical bandwagon jumping.

The big difference is that Clarkson didn't phone a murder victims family gloating. So get off his back.

Honda SS50

Steve Allison's Blog has a post, complete with picture, of a Suzuki moped, the type he had in the 1970s. That got me all dewey eyed and nostalgic for that great summer of 1976, the heatwave. I'd done my 'o'-levels and spent the summer posing around, trying to impress the girls, on my red Honda SS50, just like the one on the left.

Spiteful Britons

Tax exiles should not be called Brits
If Lewis Hamilton wins the F1 Championship the media will be full of headlines about a "Brit" winning something. But remember this, after being brought up and educated at the taxpayers' expense he went to live in Switzerland so that he did not have to become a taxpayer himself.

All tax exiles should be deprived of their British passports.
C S, Harrogate, North Yorkshire

How sad to read the letter above on Teletext. It just goes to show how petty minded and spiteful so many people are. No wonder NuLab is taking us back to the1970s, it seems like swathes of the population still have the small-minded spitefulness of
1970s style socialists. Or perhaps it's just Yorkshiremen.

Pork Sausages And Bacon

I wouldn't apply for a job in abortion clinic so Muslims, if they refuse to touch pork sausages and bacon, shouldn't apply for a catering job like this.

A World Champion

God bless Lewis Hamilton. Back where we belong.

His Dad questioning the lack of sporting decency from the Brazilian spectators was cool too. Good on you lad!

Groundhog Day

Yet another data cock-up by HMG. The good thing about putting sevices out to private companies is that the government can try and hide behind them when personal data is left in a pub car park, like this!

But it doesn't wash. The government screams about ID theft to justify ever more intrusive surveillance of us, then repeatedly does its best to give away our identities, and any personal data it has on us to any old passerby.

So the next time some muppet says, about ID cards, CCTV etc. "nothing to hide nothing to fear" give them a good bollocking and point them in the direction of
No2ID.

The Perils of Poetry Reading

Step forward Elizabeth Bailey, principal environmental health officer for East Cambridgeshire District Council. Now pelt the old bag with rotten eggs, tomatoes and rotting fish.

Here is the story of how this Hitler in skirts has banned a poetry reading group from holding readings in an Ely pub.

Here's what the bureaucratic bitch said:

"We have licences for all sorts of reasons - fire and police need to check it is safe - it is not just us being petty. There need to be certain checks in place."

And here's what the pub landlord had to say:

"It's trivial and pathetic. We've got a licence for 200 burly men to bounce around to whatever music they want, but not for a small number of quiet people to have a talk.

"When they give recitals it's not even amplified. They just get up and speak."

Ms Bailey should be immediately suspended, preferably from the same lamppost as Russell Brand.

Supporting A Team Called City

We often joke that my family have never tolerated mixed marriages. People then point out that I'm a Pape married to a Protestant. That is correct, what my family would never have tolerated would have been one of us marrying a Manchester City fan.

My family, on both sides, have been United fans as far back as anyone knows, probably back to the days when they were known as Newton Heath. So it still feels strange that one of my local teams now is Lancaster City FC, who I am off to support this afternoon. The fact that they too play in blue, as well as being called 'City', doesn't help. You see this tribal thing in us Mancunians runs deep.

But the most important thing is that since 1995, when the Glazers took over Manchester United and we returned our season tickets, we have been watching non-league football, and it has been fantastic. No prima-donnas earning more in a week than I'm likely to earn in a year or more, and not getting ripped off by clubs at every opportunity. Good banter between fans with no segregation or fighting, well very rarely any fighting. The whole thing is honest, down to earth fantastic value and has renewed the faith of many former Premier League supporters in the game itself.

Over the last ten years there has been a steady trickle of supportrs leaving top flight football, disillusioned or just priced way from the game. Non-league is thriving because, like junkies, we really do need a regular fix of football.

So it's off to watch a local derby at the Giant Axe, Lancaster City versus Chorley. Even if it's a bit chilly you just wrap up warm and treat yourself to a cup of Bovril and a hot pie at half time. Heaven!

Police State Further Tightening Its Grip

Here we go again. Grampian police are now testing people for drugs as they enter pubs in Aberdeen. Nice to see that real crime is so non-existent in Scotland that police have the time to mither the odd person who has had a joint before going out for a pint.

Let's just legalise drugs then we could make the all police redundant and save a fortune in taxes. Howard Marks would appreciate that I'm sure.

Interestingly Grampian plod claim the test is voluntary, but if you don't volunteer to be tested you don't get in the pub. Bastards!