Dictum Meum Pactum

Will the Tsarist Bonds, repudiated in 1918 by the Bolshevik Soviet Government, now turn out to be a better investment than the bonds and securities issued by the present Russian government?

Anything could happen and probably will.

The Paras Return To Iraq

Around sixty years ago, at the ungodly hour of 5.00 a.m. I was requested to get out of my stinking pit to go the Parade Ground as a matter of urgency, along with my colleagues.

We attempted to persuade the Sergeant to have a meaningful discussion about this change to our normal arrangements and to take account of our need to be treated as individuals each with his own human rights.

We were not successful, it seemed that the Duty Officer had been roused from his slumbers by an irate Commanding Officer of the battalion next door to us and our Adjutant wanted to have a not so quiet word.

A public house had been damaged in a dispute over differences of opinion between some of us and some of them.  The local police were not happy and asked them what they were up to as the most likely candidates.

However, as some of us were involved they were making the case that we had started by our insults and offensiveness.  Although I had left and signed in at the gate shortly before it all became physical there were suggestions that the origin lay in my views on logistics.

Briefly, I had advised some of them that contrary to their belief that they were superior soldiers they were actually pretty useless.  We were able to make our way about under our own steam, knew where we were going and could read a map.

They, on the other hand, had to be put into lorries with their kit, taken to an airfield and then thrown out in the air at the destination to ensure their safe arrival.  They could not be relied on to do it on foot or driving a vehicle.

They were the 2nd Battalion of The Parachute Regiment, chaps of a sensitive disposition and easily offended.  Since then I have always had an interest in what they were up to.  They seem to have a talent for being there in hot spots.

Now they are off again, back to Iraq, to do what soldiers have to do, although it is not exactly clear what that is to be, for what purpose and why we are putting men in numbers back in places that we should be avoiding, notably if cuts in Defence spending are intended never mind limiting our commitments to what we can do and can afford.

This news I picked up from the Army Rumour Service, one of the more reliable sources of information about government policy and the direction of action and intention.  Some of the more perceptive comments are as follows:

Fred Frog asks "What can possibly go wrong?"

Postman Twit commented "I thought we'd moved beyond the 'send in the Paras' default setting???"

MotorBoat says" Good old mission creep, how come this does not have to be voted on in Parliament?  I thought Dave said no boots on the ground?"

CAARPS says "All the 'experts' that keep telling us that the British Army will be barracks bound for the next 3 decades are remarkably quiet."

With David Cameron in his quest for votes becoming more like Tony Blair than Tony Blair perhaps it was only to be expected.

It can only get worse.

Whiskey Or Whisky In the Jar

You may or may not have noticed that it will be Christmas soon.  It explains a lot of the marketing going on.

One that appeared  in my inbox was from the Laphroaig Distillery on Islay, an ancestral acre, and its products are effective decontaminants.

At least the clip it is different and lasts less than two minutes.

But the contents will not make it into "Carols From Kings".

On the other hand if you like an "e" in the glass, The Dubliner's have their own song to sing at three minutes.

Cheers.

Now Try The Torturers

The squalid, inhuman and vile business of the CIA torture activity was one I preferred to stay away from because anyone who touches it is in effect defiled.

What astonished  me was not simply the degradation of the whole but the incredible incompetence and stupidity of those who were allegedly attempting to extract reliable information.

My reason for this was that what was being done to men could only have the effect, literally, of scrambling their brains.  Such methods could never succeed and only yield material which in effect was useless as real intelligence.

But this item in Zero Hedge by "George Washington" has brought me up short.  If it is correct then what was being done was never intended to be for intelligence that was active and credible.

It was something else entirely and which did rely on destroying the mind and thinking power of those who were tortured.  This does not make it any better, if anything it makes it even worse.

Given that both our present and previous governments are parties to this, if only as knowing spectators then can anyone of the electorate with any sort of human sensibility vote for people like this?

Prizes For Pirates

Lost in the surfeit of stories in the last few days was a choice item about the European Court of Human Rights awarding damages to Somali pirates who attacked French vessels.

In case you think this is an invention by deranged Kippers and other Eurosceptics it is not.

Quote from France 24:

The EU's top human rights court on Thursday ordered France to pay thousands of euros to Somali pirates who attacked French ships for "violating their rights" by holding them an additional 48 hours before taking them before a judge.

The Somali pirate were apprehended on the high seas by the French army on two separate occasions in 2008 and taken back to France for trial.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said that French authorities should have brought the pirates before a judge "without delay" when they arrived on French territory after being held at sea.

The EU’s top human rights court said French authorities were wrong to keep the pirates in custody for an additional 48 hours before bringing them before a judge.

"Nothing justifies such an additional delay," the court said in its verdict, adding that it constituted a "violation of their rights to freedom and security".

France was ordered to pay between €5,000 and €2,000 ($6,100 and $2,500) to each pirate for "moral damages", plus amounts varying from €3,000 to €9,000 ($3,700 and $11,200) to cover legal costs.

In the ruling, published in French, the court nevertheless acknowledged that there were "completely exceptional circumstances" to justify a lengthy detention before seeing a judge, noting that the original arrests took place "more than 6,000 kilometres (4,000 miles) from French territory".

Pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia have declined sharply in recent years, with international fleets now patrolling the Gulf of Aden – previously a hotbed of maritime piracy – and the Indian Ocean, as well as armed guards now being posted aboard many at-risk vessels.

At their peak in January 2011 Somali pirates held 736 hostages, some onshore and others aboard their vessels, as well as 32 seized boats.

The court also noted that the Somali authorities remain "incapable of fighting" the pirates without international help.

Unquote.

One wonders what will happen next.  Will the ECHR order the British Government to pay compensation to all the descendants of those who hanged at Execution Dock?

Given what the Somali pirates were given for a minor delay, the Chancellor of the Exchequer may find a big rise in the deficit.

Teams of lawyers should be trawling the case studies of all those done under the Game Laws of the past looking for potential claims as well.  If they are successful, I will be one of the big winners.

As for all the distant cousins whose forebears were transported to Australia and America what might be their claim?

They are suffering cruel and unusual punishment?

Doing Porridge

When I heard the news about Lady Jenkin's comments on food banks relating to the inability of many  of the poor to cook, it was breakfast time, and I nearly choked on my porridge.  These days one simply does not offer critical advice on lifestyle choices.

That she, a scion of political classes, should be critical of the way many of our current poor live and eat was utterly shocking.  Was it because of the strong element of directing Scots blood in her veins?  Was it because a descent from the Raj of India made her less inclined to tact?

Do the poor live to eat or eat to live?  This has been an issue for a very long time.  In the late 19th Century and for two thirds of the 20th the feeding of the working class and the poor was a central issue for both social reformers and concerned persons across the board.

Imperialists of the Right and Socialists of the Left were united in wanting the people to be fed properly.  The one to provide the men and women for Empire and to improve the breeding stock.  The latter for social justice, morality and to have healthy children.

Teacher training colleges commonly had a Domestic Science or Economics wing and at the top end were specialist colleges operating to high standards in the science of nutrition and diatetics, cooking, home accounting and social welfare.

It was the schools that were going to do the job, teaching girls and in some cases boys how to manage the home and how to cook nourishing and tasty meals using the common and basic foods that were available.

Beginning probably in the 1970's with all the extensive changes in higher education, schools, food production and retailing and changing ideas about marriage, the home and the way lives were lived a lot of this went by the board.

Despite the excess of cooking programmes on TV, most of them doing fancy things on the basis of make your kitchen your own restaurant and the surfeit of goods in the supermarkets we now have burgeoning health problems with bad diets and worse meals being a major cause.

Here at Scoffing Towers we are willing to pay for quality so cannot claim to be at the lower end for spending on food.  But we spend little on much else , rarely eating out and never sending for fast food delivery for various reasons.

But from our large free range chicken at around a tenner, it is possible to get eight to ten portions with then an added stock for other dishes.  One half the price in a supermarket might allow if not the same then quite a number of portions.

So the price per portion could be quite modest compared with eating in a different way, but the way many people do eat at present.  That is if you are willing to take the time and trouble and know how to go about it.

But knowing how to cook is only a part.  You have to give the time to doing it.  I suspect that the problems arise for many of the poor is that they are not poor by historical standards having access to and use of things that are not just distracting but take up a lot of time.

If they have grown up in homes were little cooking has been done, have been taught little or nothing at school or later and the whole culture of their lives involves eating easy access products then to go back to basics, to coin a phrase, is very difficult, if not impossible.

So should the State be allowing higher benefits to allow the poor to eat to live or should it require them by lower benefits to live to eat and to pay the price of that in redirecting their lives and efforts to that effect?

The Eldorado Effect

The human population has greatly increased in most parts of the planet.  Inevitably there has been movement.  Looking at much of this and the longer past at the thinking and hopes of those on the move, one idea comes to mind and that is in all the discussion we do not take full account of what I call "The Eldorado Effect".

The story of this has a long article in Wikipedia.  Essentially, it means the legend and search for gold and riches in faraway places that have inspired or motivated chiefly men to go and seek it out to transform their lives and either their families or groupings.

Great Great Grandfather was affected in 1848 when sailing into New Orleans with his ordinary commercial cargo and finding the harbour full.  It was because the ships could not get out, their crews having deserted to go to the gold fields.

Most of his own crew did and it was only because he had the cash to recruit the few wanting to return to Britain that he made it home.  It was his last voyage.  Having survived thirty years at sea since the age of 12  he had a small property portfolio in public houses.

He was able to retire and leave the rest of them to it.  It meant that he was a lot better off than the vast majority who went to seek the gold and silver.  He lived another thirty years to enjoy it.  Most of prospectors died young and hungry.

The El Dorado that is Europe to many parts of the world offers the reverse incentives.  There may not be any gold or silver but there is the prospect of being fed, housed and cared for in a way and on a scale that is beyond their expectations in their place of origin.

But the effect can exist within Europe.  There has been comment on the numbers given for British now living in Europe.  Yet it is not an even spread, nearly half of them being in Spain.

They were drawn there in the past mostly by ideas that the property boom would make them rich or the cost of living make their money go a lot further or that the sun would make living more easy.

Similarly, the same ideas apply to some of those who went to France in particular the areas more to the South.  As in Spain a great many have been disappointed and others in the UK, in the same way as Great Great Grandfather did a lot better at home.

Quite how many people a year cross national boundaries is a matter of hot debate.  There are many variables, the exact data is hard to find and many are not recorded.  But if it is one per cent of world population, this could be around seventy million and half that thirty five.  Even one tenth of one per cent amounts to seven million.

It is very unlikely that the distribution will be even or that in general inflows and outflows will be matching.  There will be plus ones and minus ones and at either end extremes of inflow and outflow in terms of numbers.  Given the rise in world population as a whole this was predictable in terms of past migration across the globe.

During much of the 19th Century and into the 20th in the UK there was real concern about over population.  In the 1860's, with a total for the Atlantic Isles of 26 million plus, given the poverty, disease and overcrowding in the urban centres there were national emigration societies to assist emigrants to the colonies.

There was the real fear that increasing numbers would mean The Atlantic Isles being unable to feed itself and then food import costs causing the Balance of Trade to go into permanent deficit, if the food was available.  If it was not then starvation beckoned.

For those in the slums or condemned to harsh poverty the simple life of a small farmer in a colony or similar would seem to be almost an El Dorado compared to a short life in the rookeries of London, Liverpool or Manchester.

Given the gold strikes and such like and other opportunities many places in the world did seem to be almost if not El Dorado's and many did not need much encouragement to go, only the cost of a steerage berth.  So they went and in large numbers.

The USA is largely the product of The Eldorado Effect of the past.  The American Dream was an extension of this and it is still a powerful force for many in the world to try their luck either as legal or illegal migrants.  The reality, however, is becoming very different and for very many will be a harsher experience.

The world has changed and now we have the notion that inward migration is necessarily good.  Some of it might well be.  Stripping the undeveloped world of its doctors and nurses has been keeping the NHS in the UK afloat for a little time now.  But there are doubts about just how many is good.

Clearly, The Atlantic Isles can no longer feed itself, so equally clearly the cost of imports has to be covered.  Sadly this is now probably impossible in terms of the Balance of Trade and we are now reliant on financial profiteering and borrowing.  This might not last despite our leaders saying it must.

There is no doubt about the relative attractions of the UK for many people elsewhere.  Many were already on the move here by the early 1990's.   So when the Labour Party went around the world to welcome all they were adding an El Dorado effect for movement to the UK.

We have been here before as this wonderful lyric, "Mountains of Mourne" by Percy French in 1896 suggests.  Scroll down for the words.  Great Great Grandfather, above, had an eldest son, my Great Grandfather who married a girl from a Kilkeel family in the shadow of the Mournes.

As a small child, I remember meeting her youngest brother.  He gave me a sip of his port.  Thirty years later driving down the valley of the Douro with my camping trailer it was tempting to stay for good.