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Post by CC on Dec 28, 2019 9:55:30 GMT
...about the New Year's Honours list.
Actually, people obviously do care because they are tweeting about it like mad but it's difficult to see what the fuss is about. The list is one of the last vestiges of Empire and matters to the British Establishment, who add a few celebs to try to keep everyone happy, but no-one with any sense of the absurd is going to get excited to see who is or is not included.
Here are just a few well-known names who have refused honours, and so, in their own way, shown themselves to be more honourable than those who accepted them:
Non-Knights
Alan Bennett
David Bowie
Danny Boyle
Francis Crick
EM Forster
Michael Frayn
Graham Greene
David Hockney
Aldous Huxley
Rudyard Kipling
TE Lawrence
LS Lowry
Harold Pinter
JB Priestley
GB Shaw
Peter Tatchell
AJP Taylor
Non-Dames
Dorothy Hodgkin
Glenda Jackson
Doris Lessing
Geraldine McEwan
Non OBE/CBE/MBEs
Martin Amis, Francis Bacon, JG Ballard, Julian Barnes, Honor Blackman, Julie Christie, John Cleese, Brian Eno, Peter Finch, Robert Graves, Trevor Howard, CS Lewis, Ken Livingstone, Malcolm McDowell, George Melly, Mary Midgley, Ben Nicholson, Sean O'Casey, Gareth Peirce, Tony Richardson, Alan Sillitoe, Sue Townsend, Polly Toynbee, Paul Weller, Lindsay Anderson, Stanley Baxter, Jim Broadbent, Eleanor Bron, Peter Capaldi, Andrew Cruikshank, Dawn French, Hattie Jacques, Nigella Lawson, Ken Loach, Kenneth McKellar, Hank Marvin, Craig Murray, Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman, Michael Rosen, Jon Snow, Kenneth Williams, Susannah York, Benjamin Zephaniah, Lynn Faulds Wood, Howard Gayle, John Lydon, Joan Smith.
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don
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Post by don on Dec 29, 2019 10:23:09 GMT
That's a very honourable list of people you've compiled there.
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jud
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Post by jud on Dec 31, 2019 21:00:51 GMT
John Lydon MBE? How in the name of flippery was that ever going to happen?
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lisa
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Post by lisa on Jan 10, 2020 23:27:44 GMT
Just thought I’d throw it out there. Megan and Prince Harry. ? Anyone’s views? I’m getting more leftie as I get older I’m afraid had arguments at work. I said, my view, I have no time for any of the Royal family now. That time of doffing our Caps has long passed. Spoilt little rich boy decide what you want Harry. All the trappings. Big wedding nice home paid for my the tax payers contributions. Or make your own way was and give up you titles, public money and security Paid for again by public money. I don’t dislike them but don’t bleat on about how hard done by you are. There are people sleeping on roads and shop doorways with health problems and no chance of anyway out .
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Post by CC on Jan 11, 2020 9:53:27 GMT
Just thought I’d throw it out there. Megan and Prince Harry. ? Anyone’s views? I’m getting more leftie as I get older I’m afraid had arguments at work. I said, my view, I have no time for any of the Royal family now. That time of doffing our Caps has long passed. Spoilt little rich boy decide what you want Harry. All the trappings. Big wedding nice home paid for my the tax payers contributions. Or make your own way was and give up you titles, public money and security Paid for again by public money. I don’t dislike them but don’t bleat on about how hard done by you are. There are people sleeping on roads and shop doorways with health problems and no chance of anyway out . Thanks, Lisa. I know what I think, and you won't be surprised when I say I agree with you. It would be grand to hear from someone else on the subject as well. |
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Post by CC on Jan 15, 2020 8:36:55 GMT
Naeb'dy in the Church establishment cared about Neil Todd, the poor young lad who wished to train to be a monk and was sexually abused by Bishop Peter Ball, as covered over the last 2 nights by the BBC documentary Exposed: The Church's Darkest Secret. This dreadful tale is probably not the Church's darkest secret but it was a depressing story of how the Establishment genuinely believes its members to have more sensitivity that the rest of us and, consequently, it's acceptable to cover up their crimes. Archbishop of Canterbury considered it "cruel" that Ball should be held to account; Prince Charles said the accusations against him were monstrous, but who cared about poor Neil Todd?
Naeb'dy.
After Ball was given a mere caution for assaulting him, and subsequent accusations that he was a liar and a fantasist, Neil eventually moved to Australia. Many years later, after the cover-up was discovered and the Gloucestershire police opened a new enquiry into the matter, he was so traumatised by the likelihood of having to testify again that he took a drug overdose and died. The police then arrested Ball, only to take him home again after he feigned illness in the car taking him to be interviewed under caution. He spent another 2 years at large while Neil's body mouldered in the ground.
The Bishop of Norwich, Eric Kemp, went so far as to employ a private eye named Brian Tyler who he asked to find dirt on Ball's accusers. Instead, when the Tyler Report was produced it confirmed the accusations and also uncovered more evidence, which the police later used to help send Ball to prison. The C of E employed safeguarding officers, only to ignore their recommendations and accuse them of bad faith when they failed to take part in cover-ups regarding Ball and other paedophile clergymen.
Here's a much happier story. Hamish Henderson was an Upper Class chappie, who turned out to be a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce, although he only discovered that he was an aristocrat late in life when he found out that his real father was brother to the Duke of Atholl. After winning a scholarship he was educated, while living in an orphanage, at Dulwich College, went on to Cambridge University and had a distinguished career in the British Army during the Second World War. He was also a poet and collector of folk tales and songs. This one was based on his wartime experience:
The 51st Highland Division's Farewell to Sicily
The pipie is dozie, the pipie is fey,
He winna come roon’ for his vino the day.
The sky ow’r Messina is unco an’ grey,
An ’a’ the bricht chaulmers are eerie.
Then fare weel ye banks o’ Sicily,
Fare ye weel ye valley and shaw.
There’s nae Jock will mourn the kyles o’ ye,
Puir bliddy swaddies are wearie.
Fare weel, ye banks o’ Sicily,
Fare ye weel, ye valley and shaw.
There’s nae hame can smoor the wiles o’ ye,
Puir bliddy swaddies are wearie.
Then doon the stair and line the waterside,
Wait your turn, the ferry’s awa’.
Then doon the stair and line the waterside,
A’ the bricht chaulmers are eerie.
The drummie is polisht, the drummie is braw
He cannae be seen for his webbin’ ava.
He’s beezed himsel’ up for a photy an a’
Tae leave wi’ his Lola, his dearie.
Sae fare weel, ye dives o’ Sicily
(Fare ye weel, ye shieling an’ ha’),
We’ll a’ mind shebeens and bothies
Whaur kind signorinas were cheerie.
Fare weel, ye banks o’ Sicily
(Fare ye weel, ye shielings an’ ha’);
We’ll a’ mind shebeens and bothies
Whaur Jock made a date wi’ his dearie.
Then tune the pipes and drub the tenor drum
(Leave your kit this side o’ the wa’).
Then tune the pipes and drub the tenor drum
A’ the bricht chaulmers are eerie.
In 1983 Hamish was offered an OBE and rejected it in protest at Margaret Thatcher's pro-nuclear policy, for which action he was named Scot of the Year by listeners to BBC Radio Scotland.
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Post by CC on Jan 15, 2020 13:05:26 GMT
Baftas, Golden Globes, Oscars. Oh for the days when Marlon Brando and George C Scott didn't bother turning up to collect their Academy Awards because they recognised the whole thing as a huge waste of time and money, at which quality counts for very little and hype is everything.
This year's Oscars will not be covered by the Stranraer Observer. The silence regarding the Windsors and their ridiculous anachronistic lives and customs will also continue to be maintained, as a matter of editorial principle.
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Post by CC on Mar 11, 2020 10:21:14 GMT
Coronavirus is dominating the news, and not surprisingly so since it's a frightening prospect for people with heart and respiratory problems who are most at risk of succumbing to it. It's a virus that can attack absolutely anyone; nobody is going to refer to patients as "swirling around in a cess pool of their own making" unless there are one or two cranks out there who believe it's God's revenge on the world for allowing homosexuality, which brings us to the pandemic that Naeb'dy seems to care or talk about anymore.
At the height of the AIDS disaster in 1997 the WHO and Unaids reported that the disease killed 2.3 million people; a million men, 800,000 women and 460,000 children. 30.6 million people were HIV+. The statistics showed that the affected parts of the world were predominantly those with the poorest populations, thus:
Sub-Saharan Africa: 21,000,000
South & SE Asia: 5,800,000
Latin America: 1,300,000
North America: 860,000
Western Europe 480,000
East Asia & Pacific: 420,000
Caribbean: 310,000
North Africa & Middle East: 210,000
Eastern Europe & Central Asia: 190,000
Australia & New Zealand: 12,000
89% of patients lived in Sub-Saharan Africa and South/South East Asia, which together accounted for only 10% of the world's GDP.
That was a terrible time, and one in which patients were treated with anti-retroviral drugs whose only aim was to slow down the progress of the disease rather than cure it or prevent it from killing those who were infected. Things are much better now, in comparison, but imagine if AIDS, like novel COVID-19, were a new phenomenon. It would still be putting the coronavirus in the shade.
Unaids' report at the end of 2018 found the following: 37.9 million people were living with HIV (that's actually more than were infected in 1997,) there were 1.7 million new infections during the year, and 770,000 people died of AIDS during the year. The total number of deaths since the outbreak began had reached 32 million. Every week, even now, 20 years after the pandemic's peak, 6000 girls and women aged between 15 and 24 become infected with HIV.
Could it be the case that the following statistics explain why AIDS is so rarely in the news now?
Men who have sex with men are 22 times more likely to become HIV+
People who inject drugs are 22 times more likely to become HIV+
People who sell sex are 21 times more likely to become HIV+
Transsexuals are 12 times more likely to become HIV+
So, people who are not in one of the above categories are much less likely to be infected by the virus, thereby allowing the more prosperous world to fall back on that cess pool and blame the victims for their own illness regardless of the fact that in many parts of the planet prostitution is the only means of income available to women and that poverty and despair are often associated with young people taking up a drug habit. And although Western Europe may be more tolerant of homosexuality than it was in the 1990s gay men are still a distinct minority, which means that heterosexuals, which is the category in which most people consider themselves, feel it's a problem they themselves don't need to worry about. Ergo: there's no need to panic about it in the papers and on TV. There's no likelihood of any member of the Royal Family becoming HIV+ so it's not going to be an issue for Good Morning Britain or the Mail/Express. It's a pretty big issue for the 37.9 million people who are currently living with the effects, though.
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