D L Sayers describes the author of a book on Carlyle:
"No research at all ... and no effort at critical judgment. She has reproduced all the old gossip without troubling to verify anything. Slipshod, showy, and catchpenny ... But I believe, poor thing, she is very hard up."
Reminds me of Boris Johnson's book on Churchill. His motive for writing it appears to have been a desire to go down in History as Churchill Mark II who by Getting Brexit Done saved us from those villains across the Channel. And, d'you think, to pay for his wallpaper?
We've just had the Conservative Party Conference. Ms Patel being incredibly muscular about keeping illegal migrants out. But ... I'm sure I remember ... one of the main points of Brexit was that we would be in control of our own borders. So what is now the problem? And "Lord" Frost ranting about how the Northern Ireland Protocol we signed was totally unfair and if Johnny Foreigner doesn't agree to a radical revision, there are all sorts of things we can do to give JF a Bloody Nose.
Going back to Boris and his hero W S Churchill: I do rather enjoy Alternative Histories. If the Chrysanthemum Throne had not saved our bacon by doing a nastiness in Pearl Harbour and thus getting Uncle Sam off his backside, I wonder what the end of the European War would have been.
A stalemated peace biased in Hitler's favour, sealed by the Fuehrer making a State Visit to Buck House? Extermination camps on the Isle of Man?
I forget why you so dislike Sir Winston - could you remind me again?
ReplyDeleteWith the direction of the demographics, the fact that Northern Ireland voted against Brexit, that the border is now effectively on the Irish Sea, the time is now appropriate for the ending of the last vestige of the British occupation of Ireland.
ReplyDeleteBy the summer of 1941, with an invasion of Britain no longer on the cards, and with Hitler poised to invade the Soviet Union, the defeat of which he saw as the best way of knocking Britain out of the war, any realistic analysis would have suggested a peace treaty with Germany which could have been negotiated on reasonable terms. Without allies, Britain could not have won the war.
ReplyDeleteThe Anglo-Japanese alliance, abandoned in 1922 on the insistence of the Americans whose main aim at the Washington conference was to end British naval supremacy at the least cost, could have been re-activated. The result would have been a European Union dominated by Germany, but Britain would have kept its empire.
Churchill, surely correctly, was convinced that any treaty with Hitler would not have been worth the paper it was written on. Churchill's other great achievement was to persuade the Americans to commit to the war against Nazi Germany; after all, it wasn't their war.
Life is so full of ironies. Despite my own 32 County mindset, I have come to the conclusion that re-unification is obsolete, because the Irish state represents a rejection of everything that the Irish people always yearned for. It represents a greater tyranny than Cromwell of King Billy ever did, and is, in fact, hostile to the Irish Race. Its EU membership is beyond Poyning's law as an example of foreign dominance.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Ireland has been recognized by the UK as one of the historic nations of Europe, albeit one with two political allegiances is not in any way strange. What is strange is the laughable insistence of the Orange Unionists in saying that they are British, when they do not come from Britain, and the even funnier habit of calling the Six Counties "Ulster" huge parts of which are not part of it.
It does not strike me as strange, or amusing that there should be Irish Unionists, especially given the spectacular failure of the Irish State to EVER do anything that was not an abject failure. Given the course of modern Irish history, Northern Ireland will remain part of the UK until the Unionists no longer want to stay. Winston & Co. ensured that at the time of the treaty- foolishly signed by people who should never have been trusted with the task of negotiating it.
But what about the irony that I spoke of? It is this: That a man, attempting to assume the mantle of Sir Winston Churchill should consent to a customs border WITHIN "Her Majesty's Realm" and that he did so in order to maintain an open border with the "Republic" Clearly, what Johnson should have done was to refuse to establish a customs barrier between Britain and Northern Ireland (dividing the UK,) and to leave it ENTIRELY up to the Republic whether to establish a hard border between North and South.
That would have put real pressure on the EU! Instead, he was beat at negotiating BREXIT as Collins was in negotiating THE Treaty!
But, Johnson is no Churchill. For all his faults, Churchill could at least show some backbone, and sometimes "got it right" so to speak, and was a good negotiator. And, besides, was a very, very good speaker. (Taught by that great Irishman Bourke Cochrane!)
Well, Michael, the problem is this. There is no longer British occupying NI. The thing is that the Northern Irish wish to stay in the Union. And so long as that is the case (and who can blame them) then democracy wins, OK?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of slipshod and shoddy research, I see that rumours are emerging that the contents of the survey of bishops about the Usus Antiquior differed markedly from the account of them in certain motu proprio issued in July.
ReplyDeleteIf those rumours are indeed baseless, the surest way of scotching them would be to release the responses to the survey. I wonder ....
Robert Harris' thriller Fatherland is set in an alternative Europe in which Hitler won the second world war.
ReplyDeleteshame on you.You have used the word incredibly
ReplyDeleteLife is so full of ironies. Despite my own 32 County mindset, I have come to the conclusion that re-unification is obsolete, because the Irish state represents a rejection of everything that the Irish people always yearned for. It represents a greater tyranny than Cromwell of King Billy ever did, and is, in fact, hostile to the Irish Race. Its EU membership is beyond Poyning's law as an example of foreign dominance.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, when my Irish Catholic friends are holding forth about the iniquities of British rule, I point out that Ireland under British rule was one of the most Catholic nations on earth, whereas under Irish rule it has become one of the most anti-Catholic.
Cherub, I don't disagree with what you say, so let us have a Border Poll, as provided for in the Good Friday Agreement, which, armyarty, I believe supersedes Churchill's Treaty and removes the Unionist Veto. Then democracy will win. I actually think these staunch members of the Unionist Community would provide an excellent counter-weight to the woke liberals who currently dominate the South.
ReplyDeleteGaius: You could at least read what I said.
ReplyDeleteMichael Leahy,
ReplyDeleteIn terms of political reality, the Union will last until the Unionists no longer care. Probably to the disgust of the people they want to remain in union with. Sometimes, once something has been done, there is no un-doing it.
Armyarty, we'll have to find some way of squaring the circle, because an Irish nationalist majority is imminent and maintaining a minority veto presents a lot of difficulties. Brexit, opposed by a strong majority in Northern Ireland, has exacerbated the situation, because those of the Irish side who tolerated the Union, at least temporarily, will not tolerate leaving the EU simply to satisfy some in the Unionist community.
ReplyDeleteI, personally, don't agree with those who deem the EU as the chief corrupter of the Irish. I think most cultural influence in Ireland comes from Britain and the US and I consider that, in voting for Brexit, the British have opted for a far more 'woke' and totalitarian future than had previously been the case.
Michael Leahy,
ReplyDeleteIrish nationalism is dead.
What we all believed years ago, has now become quaint. There is no more Christian culture, or ethos, no more sense of history, no national feeling. It is all gone. A 32 County Ireland, that is just another part of the EU is meaningless. A "multicultural" Ireland is an abomination. Yet unlike the Welsh, or the Basques, or say, even the Shwabs, we have totally lost our identity. Its all "gone with the wind", which is appropriate. Just as Katie Scarlett O'Hara, as we are poised to finally get what we thought we had always wanted, we discover that we don't really want it after all. I do not fancy a post-Christian Ireland, where snobbish leftists send their children to be educated at a Gaelscoil, to learn political correctness, and a bastardized form of Gealic. It is all too terribly sad.
Armyarty, I'm still an old-fashioned nationalist, but I also still cling to my Catholicism, so maybe I'm one of the last of the Mohicans. You might well be right, and most of the people have lost even that part of their old spirit. At least the harder-line unionists have retained much of their old spirit, which might explain their laudable willingness to oppose abortion and perverted quasi-marriage, unlike their 'sophisticated' Catholic counterparts. I had rather looked forward to the option of voting for the pro-life DUP! Thanks for your astute analysis of the state of our nation-sadly it is hard to find any cause for disagreement.
ReplyDelete