I want to write about sport and some good things but instead I feel duty to record the new horrors in Iraq which appear to have arisen directly from the withdrawal of USA forces to their basis and handing over responsibility for internal security to the Iraq government. Thus the US, the British and the rest of world that is opposed to terrorist states and terrorist religions have been outmanoeuvred again through a combination of media and public ignorance and sentiment. Of course it is horrible that young American and British soldiers are dying in a foreign land where a percentage of the population does not want them there. and it is no more horrible that the slaughter of Iraqi by Iraqi and the deaths of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi non combatants who have died during the former regime and a direct consequence of the USA British intervention.
However as I head one young sounding Muslim woman say on the radio while I got myself ready for the day, we are in the era of the Muslim inquisition such as was experienced by Catholics over the world until some enlightenment came to the Catholic church and to the countries where it had become the dominant force in government and society. There will be some Catholics who even today would welcome the return of the Inquisition in relation to their faith, just as there are closet racists and white supremacists who will hold and pas on their prejudices what action government take. Intervention in Iraq may have been motivated by oil interests, perhaps capitalist interests, or political gesturing abroad to cover political inadequacy and incompetence at home and such like reasons but for me it was about opposition the religions and political inquisition.
Once the British and USA troops were restricted to a presence behind bases, the religious and political fanatics of Iran and Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world saw the green light to organise terror in their efforts to achieve their aim of a fanatical Muslim state. There was an added problem because according one expert on the situation. the US government had been paying up to 100000 individuals around $300 dollars a month to provide them with information and keep on their side, that is $30 million month and $360 million a year.
I have started to read a history of the CND movement in Great Britain and the work commences with a chapter about what are nuclear weapons and what happened followed the detonation of two atomic bombs on the civilian population of Japan in 1945. It shortened the war and significantly reduced the number of allied casualties fighting an enemy that saw death in battle as honour and surrender and defeat as meriting suicide. It was the Japanese that made honourable the suicide bomber.
The insurance company who provided replacement money for the lost glasses asked if I had a criminal conviction so I said I had and they asked for an explanation which I then had to repeat to a senior officer so that it could be accurately noted to the database which is shared by insurers world wide. I explained what I did, the element of choice and that while I hated every moment of being in prison I did not regret having expressed my opposition to the use of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and such like whether aimed exclusively at a battlefield army or indiscriminately at a population. There is no moral justification, as there was no moral justification with sending millions of men over the trenches in the First World War knowing that the majority would be slaughtered or injured for life, or fore the bombing by the allies of German cities out of revenge. I accept that there no such thing as honourable combat and I have always accepted that Governments have duties and obligations and that these will cause them to do all kinds of things which are morally unacceptable. This does not negate my belief that ends and means are synonymous and that the majority of those who live by the sword also die by it.
I was also interest by the proposal, I am not sure where, that those writing on the internet about political, religious and such similar matters should be required to put all sides of any argument is much the same way as public broadcaster are required in the UK or at least signal that the writing is biased in favour of one religion or anti religion one party or against one political party. I am in favour of the latter but only if it applies to everyone all the time. This means that the media should also disclose on the internet the original piece of writing or script and the editorial changes made and the political and religious affiliations of all those contributing to the final work published. It is all very well having principles and policies but applying them effectively every day is more an art.
So to sport and Durham Cricket and weather permitting the game against Warwickshire at the Riverside could be the one that effectively settles the championship for Durham. The day did not look promising weather wise until after lunch when the sun came out in long burst and the temperature was hot. I had unintentionally timed my arrival to coincide with the umpires coming to the wicket and the news that Warwickshire had elected to bat.
After two overs Smith changed the bowling bringing on Thorp for Davies. In the early afternoon I was standing at the boundary fence when I was joined by a regular member just as Davies was coming over and who he greeted obviously having spoken to him before, he explained that her had a problem with his bat and although he could bowl again, he was not required given the performance of his colleagues. Thorpe took five wickets for 49 runs an amazingly former captain Dale Beckenstein who came on when the third pair had put on close to 70 and looked if they were settling in had Ar Botha caught when he was 23 and followed this up with Frost for 19 and Surrey for 0. Warwickshire were quickly doomed and despite some resistance by Tahir for 10 were all out for 135 with Sussex who followed Surrey in the batting order. Getting top score of 35.
Durham did not have it all there own way in their first innings with Di Venuto going with Stoneman when the score was 43, Di Venuto was looking exceptionally dangerous having thumped the first three balls on the innings for 4 and was 40 when dismissed with Stoneman getting the other 3. Smith went the score was 87, and Chanderpaul who still one of the great batsmen in the world playing today still finds the English County Game difficult and after scratching around was out for a zero thus taking Durham to 97 for four. It was at this point Benkenstein took on his main role as a batsman and took the score past that of Warwickshire before the day closed, He was joined by Ian Blackwell and both reached their fifties the following morning. The game started 45 minutes late because of rain and there was only about 40 minutes with lunch taken early. Durham had progressed the score to 219 for six with both Beckenstein and Blackwell out. It will be surprising if the lead does not progress beyond 100 so with Warwickshire unlikely to get over 200 in their second innings, only continuing bad weather will prevent Durham having their 7th victory of season getting 18 or 19 points and taken them to 185 points. Hampshire, second from bottom in the table are going exceptionally well at second from the top Notts so even if Notts get a draw this will widen the gap with Durham further. Sussex are nearly 500 for three weeks against Somerset so that game looks like a draw given the pitch or a Sussex win who are again no threat to Durham whereas Somerset are presently third. This only leaves Lancs with outside chance against Yorkshire savouring their first win batting carefully to reach 236 for 7 by this morning when rain has stopped play, so a another draw looks the likely outcome leaving Durham almost impossible to catch up. However I still remember the 12 point lead of Newcastle at the top of the Premiership which Manchester United overcame to take the title.
Newcastle also had a win at home the previous evening. Shola Ameobi scored his fourth goal of the season early on and but for goalkeeper would have had two more. However Newcastle’s frailties are still there and they were lucky to avoid an equalizer for as the second half progressed Sheff Wednesday looked more and more likely to gain the honours from the match, Newcastle held on and finished the evening equal 1st with 7 points and fourth because of goal differences. The interesting fact is that there was a bigger crowd at Newcastle over 43000 than at Sunderland to watch their defeat against Chelsea 41000. This confirms my belief that the people appreciate it is better to watch a team fighting for the Championship than trying to avoid relegation in the Premiership.
The event of the night was Burnley beating Manchester United 1,0 at their first home game at Turf Moor for over three decades. I think I shall say that again. Burnley beat the champions Manchester United by one goal to nil last night. There was dancing in the Kings Road.
I have watched one film, The Human Jungle made in 1954. A policeman passes his law exams and looks forward to spending more time with his wife and avoiding the periods of his job. He is persuaded with little difficulty to take over a precinct where the force has become inward looking allowing the local crime organisation to flourish. The death of one of the girls from the local strip joint 50’s style is the focus of the film and it is inevitable that the police solves the crime, despite the efforts to blacken the name oft he force by the crime boss and obtain his removal.
I enjoyed a previous edition of Torchwood having been interested by the recent series called the Children and which is a cross between the X files and Dr Who. In this episode a number of children are time and dimension disappeared into a rift, it was not explained why it was children and not all ages who disappeared in this way. The female member of the team discovers that her boss knows what has happened and is caring for those who have returned. The focus is the son of a woman that the Torchwood woman is asked by her policeman friend to investigate . The former children are being cared for in an old dilapidated underground wartime facility on an island. Although the boy has only been missing for months he has aged 40 years and is grossly disfigured. Against advice the Torchwood member brings the mother to meet her son who at first cannot cope with his appearance but then realises it is her child and wants to take him to look after him. Then the two realise the impossibility as the former child lets out an ear shattering scream which continues for the greater part of each day. The mother presses the girl not to put other parents in the same position. The truth is not always the best solution for everyone.
There was an element of this about the final Do you Think you are? Present series. Martin Freeman is an actor who starred in the comedy series the Office which brought fame to Rickey Gervais. I did not think he or the series was funny, amusing or entertaining. I can understand why the investigation of the paternal background of Martin Freeman is included in this series but not as the final episode unless it is to give a further warning to family historians that there are skeletons in more family cupboards than heroes and heroines.
The interest was his great grandfather and mother. His grandfather had died at Dunkirk as part of the Ambulance service and Martin was moved to find a plaque at the regimental Headquarters as well as documentation on the incident which caused the death. He was interested how the great grandparents came to Hull and discovered that the great grandfather had been an Organist and blind from birth and attended one of the national schools placed their by his parents who wanted him to have a better life than they could give him and their other children.
The programme revealed that after this education he had become a piano tuner in the Worthing area and played the organ at a local church, He had also become a supplier of piano and organs, married and had a large family of seven children. For some unstated reason it appeared he had been asked to leave the church although the implication was some kind of scandal. There was a gap in what then happened to him although it is then established that he was married two further times, having a child by the second wife and then a dozen children by his third wife six of whom had died in early infancy in succession. This led to the revelation that his wife had inherited a sexually transmitted disease from her father and that one consequence is that it affects the birth of children with miscarriages, followed by death in infancy and then early childhood from inability to thrive. This explained that the couple then had six more children. The great grandmother outlives her husband by several decades being twenty years younger than he on their marriage and she went on to marry twice. To reassure that the revelation was not as special as might be considered, the programme was at pains to point out that in Victorian days one in ten of the population were believed to be carriers of the disease which tends to raise questions about the emphasise suggesting that people had become more promiscuous and prone to sexually transmitted diseases as one outcome of the swing sixties.
I cannot end this piece without also mentioning that there was a lack of appropriate concern on the part of officialdom about the abuse of female blind young people in specialist institutions in the past and by specialist workers in the community. Hopefully the failures of the past have been remedied.
However as I head one young sounding Muslim woman say on the radio while I got myself ready for the day, we are in the era of the Muslim inquisition such as was experienced by Catholics over the world until some enlightenment came to the Catholic church and to the countries where it had become the dominant force in government and society. There will be some Catholics who even today would welcome the return of the Inquisition in relation to their faith, just as there are closet racists and white supremacists who will hold and pas on their prejudices what action government take. Intervention in Iraq may have been motivated by oil interests, perhaps capitalist interests, or political gesturing abroad to cover political inadequacy and incompetence at home and such like reasons but for me it was about opposition the religions and political inquisition.
Once the British and USA troops were restricted to a presence behind bases, the religious and political fanatics of Iran and Pakistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world saw the green light to organise terror in their efforts to achieve their aim of a fanatical Muslim state. There was an added problem because according one expert on the situation. the US government had been paying up to 100000 individuals around $300 dollars a month to provide them with information and keep on their side, that is $30 million month and $360 million a year.
I have started to read a history of the CND movement in Great Britain and the work commences with a chapter about what are nuclear weapons and what happened followed the detonation of two atomic bombs on the civilian population of Japan in 1945. It shortened the war and significantly reduced the number of allied casualties fighting an enemy that saw death in battle as honour and surrender and defeat as meriting suicide. It was the Japanese that made honourable the suicide bomber.
The insurance company who provided replacement money for the lost glasses asked if I had a criminal conviction so I said I had and they asked for an explanation which I then had to repeat to a senior officer so that it could be accurately noted to the database which is shared by insurers world wide. I explained what I did, the element of choice and that while I hated every moment of being in prison I did not regret having expressed my opposition to the use of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and such like whether aimed exclusively at a battlefield army or indiscriminately at a population. There is no moral justification, as there was no moral justification with sending millions of men over the trenches in the First World War knowing that the majority would be slaughtered or injured for life, or fore the bombing by the allies of German cities out of revenge. I accept that there no such thing as honourable combat and I have always accepted that Governments have duties and obligations and that these will cause them to do all kinds of things which are morally unacceptable. This does not negate my belief that ends and means are synonymous and that the majority of those who live by the sword also die by it.
I was also interest by the proposal, I am not sure where, that those writing on the internet about political, religious and such similar matters should be required to put all sides of any argument is much the same way as public broadcaster are required in the UK or at least signal that the writing is biased in favour of one religion or anti religion one party or against one political party. I am in favour of the latter but only if it applies to everyone all the time. This means that the media should also disclose on the internet the original piece of writing or script and the editorial changes made and the political and religious affiliations of all those contributing to the final work published. It is all very well having principles and policies but applying them effectively every day is more an art.
So to sport and Durham Cricket and weather permitting the game against Warwickshire at the Riverside could be the one that effectively settles the championship for Durham. The day did not look promising weather wise until after lunch when the sun came out in long burst and the temperature was hot. I had unintentionally timed my arrival to coincide with the umpires coming to the wicket and the news that Warwickshire had elected to bat.
After two overs Smith changed the bowling bringing on Thorp for Davies. In the early afternoon I was standing at the boundary fence when I was joined by a regular member just as Davies was coming over and who he greeted obviously having spoken to him before, he explained that her had a problem with his bat and although he could bowl again, he was not required given the performance of his colleagues. Thorpe took five wickets for 49 runs an amazingly former captain Dale Beckenstein who came on when the third pair had put on close to 70 and looked if they were settling in had Ar Botha caught when he was 23 and followed this up with Frost for 19 and Surrey for 0. Warwickshire were quickly doomed and despite some resistance by Tahir for 10 were all out for 135 with Sussex who followed Surrey in the batting order. Getting top score of 35.
Durham did not have it all there own way in their first innings with Di Venuto going with Stoneman when the score was 43, Di Venuto was looking exceptionally dangerous having thumped the first three balls on the innings for 4 and was 40 when dismissed with Stoneman getting the other 3. Smith went the score was 87, and Chanderpaul who still one of the great batsmen in the world playing today still finds the English County Game difficult and after scratching around was out for a zero thus taking Durham to 97 for four. It was at this point Benkenstein took on his main role as a batsman and took the score past that of Warwickshire before the day closed, He was joined by Ian Blackwell and both reached their fifties the following morning. The game started 45 minutes late because of rain and there was only about 40 minutes with lunch taken early. Durham had progressed the score to 219 for six with both Beckenstein and Blackwell out. It will be surprising if the lead does not progress beyond 100 so with Warwickshire unlikely to get over 200 in their second innings, only continuing bad weather will prevent Durham having their 7th victory of season getting 18 or 19 points and taken them to 185 points. Hampshire, second from bottom in the table are going exceptionally well at second from the top Notts so even if Notts get a draw this will widen the gap with Durham further. Sussex are nearly 500 for three weeks against Somerset so that game looks like a draw given the pitch or a Sussex win who are again no threat to Durham whereas Somerset are presently third. This only leaves Lancs with outside chance against Yorkshire savouring their first win batting carefully to reach 236 for 7 by this morning when rain has stopped play, so a another draw looks the likely outcome leaving Durham almost impossible to catch up. However I still remember the 12 point lead of Newcastle at the top of the Premiership which Manchester United overcame to take the title.
Newcastle also had a win at home the previous evening. Shola Ameobi scored his fourth goal of the season early on and but for goalkeeper would have had two more. However Newcastle’s frailties are still there and they were lucky to avoid an equalizer for as the second half progressed Sheff Wednesday looked more and more likely to gain the honours from the match, Newcastle held on and finished the evening equal 1st with 7 points and fourth because of goal differences. The interesting fact is that there was a bigger crowd at Newcastle over 43000 than at Sunderland to watch their defeat against Chelsea 41000. This confirms my belief that the people appreciate it is better to watch a team fighting for the Championship than trying to avoid relegation in the Premiership.
The event of the night was Burnley beating Manchester United 1,0 at their first home game at Turf Moor for over three decades. I think I shall say that again. Burnley beat the champions Manchester United by one goal to nil last night. There was dancing in the Kings Road.
I have watched one film, The Human Jungle made in 1954. A policeman passes his law exams and looks forward to spending more time with his wife and avoiding the periods of his job. He is persuaded with little difficulty to take over a precinct where the force has become inward looking allowing the local crime organisation to flourish. The death of one of the girls from the local strip joint 50’s style is the focus of the film and it is inevitable that the police solves the crime, despite the efforts to blacken the name oft he force by the crime boss and obtain his removal.
I enjoyed a previous edition of Torchwood having been interested by the recent series called the Children and which is a cross between the X files and Dr Who. In this episode a number of children are time and dimension disappeared into a rift, it was not explained why it was children and not all ages who disappeared in this way. The female member of the team discovers that her boss knows what has happened and is caring for those who have returned. The focus is the son of a woman that the Torchwood woman is asked by her policeman friend to investigate . The former children are being cared for in an old dilapidated underground wartime facility on an island. Although the boy has only been missing for months he has aged 40 years and is grossly disfigured. Against advice the Torchwood member brings the mother to meet her son who at first cannot cope with his appearance but then realises it is her child and wants to take him to look after him. Then the two realise the impossibility as the former child lets out an ear shattering scream which continues for the greater part of each day. The mother presses the girl not to put other parents in the same position. The truth is not always the best solution for everyone.
There was an element of this about the final Do you Think you are? Present series. Martin Freeman is an actor who starred in the comedy series the Office which brought fame to Rickey Gervais. I did not think he or the series was funny, amusing or entertaining. I can understand why the investigation of the paternal background of Martin Freeman is included in this series but not as the final episode unless it is to give a further warning to family historians that there are skeletons in more family cupboards than heroes and heroines.
The interest was his great grandfather and mother. His grandfather had died at Dunkirk as part of the Ambulance service and Martin was moved to find a plaque at the regimental Headquarters as well as documentation on the incident which caused the death. He was interested how the great grandparents came to Hull and discovered that the great grandfather had been an Organist and blind from birth and attended one of the national schools placed their by his parents who wanted him to have a better life than they could give him and their other children.
The programme revealed that after this education he had become a piano tuner in the Worthing area and played the organ at a local church, He had also become a supplier of piano and organs, married and had a large family of seven children. For some unstated reason it appeared he had been asked to leave the church although the implication was some kind of scandal. There was a gap in what then happened to him although it is then established that he was married two further times, having a child by the second wife and then a dozen children by his third wife six of whom had died in early infancy in succession. This led to the revelation that his wife had inherited a sexually transmitted disease from her father and that one consequence is that it affects the birth of children with miscarriages, followed by death in infancy and then early childhood from inability to thrive. This explained that the couple then had six more children. The great grandmother outlives her husband by several decades being twenty years younger than he on their marriage and she went on to marry twice. To reassure that the revelation was not as special as might be considered, the programme was at pains to point out that in Victorian days one in ten of the population were believed to be carriers of the disease which tends to raise questions about the emphasise suggesting that people had become more promiscuous and prone to sexually transmitted diseases as one outcome of the swing sixties.
I cannot end this piece without also mentioning that there was a lack of appropriate concern on the part of officialdom about the abuse of female blind young people in specialist institutions in the past and by specialist workers in the community. Hopefully the failures of the past have been remedied.
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