Jim Webster's Blog, page 41

The belief that dare not speak its name?

  It’s an old story, a very old story. Who rules? The Greek city states were torn by strife between the Aristocracy (a term which comes from the Greek, aristokratía. Aristos means “excellent,” and kratos translates as “power”) the rule of the Excellent, and Democracy, which again is from Greek, demokratia, or “rule by the …

Getting Hacked off

I don’t watch telly any more. At least that way I don’t see the faces of the sanctimonious as they tell us what’s good for us and how we should behave. But believe it or not, I’m worried about this country and the way it’s going. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is …

The road from the Bigoted Woman stops here.

  You cannot say that our chattering classes were not warned. The bigoted woman put a shot across Gordon Brown’s bows, but he ignored it. To be fair some of his MPs did take her points on board and made big strides in combating various unpleasant rightwing parties.   But the problem is that our …

Well are you happy?

For years we’ve had increasing personal attacks on politicians, made by other politicians. No blow has been too low. We’ve seen it all, allegations of child abuse with no evidence to back them up, accusations that this party or that party would destroy the health service or the armed forces or the police or whatever …

They did not grow old…

It’s a funny old world; I went along to a ‘school reunion.’ To cut to the chase, Barrow Boy’s Grammar School had two memorial boards for the old boys and masters who died in the two world wars. When the school was demolished, the boards were saved and today there was a short dedication service …

Careful with that axe Eugine! Drama at the garage: how MTM learns there are two sides to every argument.

Originally posted on M T McGuire Authorholic:
Yesterday, I went to see the Old Dears. As you know Mum has had a stroke and Dad has a kind of dementia. These last few weeks he has had very limited mobility and been close to incontinent. We have newly brought in 24 hour live in care.…

The Potemkin village and post Christian morality.

Grigory Potemkin, the favourite lover of the Russian Empress Catharine the Great built ‘prefabricated’ villages for the Empress Catharine to stay in on her travels. The idea was she would be impressed with the quality of the housing and people (also drafted in from the Potemkin equivalent of central casting) and would think that old …

The high intellectual standards of the white faced breed.

I must confess to wondering, with modest trepidation and not a little anticipation; whether the title of this blog will provoke a twitter storm. Frankly I suspect the answer is a resounding ‘no’ if only because I imagine not enough people will ever see it. But still, on with the motley; I have used the …

Ya Bluidy Auld Witch mk 2

  Yes, it’s that time of year again. Lambing has started for us. We’re a lot later than last year. The reasons are largely economic. Early lambing is expensive. The ewes need more feeding to carry them through the winter, and once they’ve lambed they need more feeding to enable them to milk well enough …

Regularising Easter

  There has been a bit of talk about having a fixed date for Easter, indeed even the Archbishop of Canterbury has joined the discussion. In law, provision has already been made; the Easter Act 1928 has been passed but not implemented. Looked at seriously, there is no reason why the state should not fix …