The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

In yet another woke story we now have the latest which concerns the renaming of The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust after it announced it was renaming itself The Churchill Fellowship and was removing images of the former prime minister from its website.

The charity, which awards grants for Britons to pursue social and community causes denied that it was seeking to disown his legacy although that’s what it looks like to me and I’m sure a lot of other people.

The Trust said many of his views on race were widely seen as unacceptable today and added that they shared this view of Sir Winston who was Conservative prime minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955 and was honoured with a state funeral when he died in 1965.

While he has been celebrated for his wartime leadership he has also been accused of racism over his support for the British Empire and his attitude towards people from India and other races although his views were nothing out of the unusual during his lifetime.

The Prime Minister, a long-time Churchill admirer has appealed to the organisation to rethink the move and believes that Winston Churchill was a hero who helped save this country and the whole of Europe from a fascist and a racist tyranny by leading the defeat of Nazism adding, it is completely absurd, misguided and wrong to airbrush his giant achievements and service to this country, the trust should think again.

The move saw the removal of a lengthy tribute and biography of Sir Winston from the website as well as pictures of the former premier when it was announced that its name was being simplified because the original title was confusing to people and did not explain what they do.

Now call me a sceptical old bugger if you like but I’m not seeing the change from The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to The Churchill Fellowship has greatly assisted in explaining what they do, perhaps they have an ulterior motive for the name change.

I’m wondering what effect this will have on school teachers for if these woke ideas continue, I especially have to feel sorry for the school history teachers who will have nothing left to teach and will be out of a job.

Surprise, surprise the Taliban have unveiled a caretaker government in Afghanistan, with their members dominating key positions, who’d have guessed!

It will be led by Mullah Hasan Akhund, who has been named the acting prime minister and you’ll never guess, he is close to the Taliban’s supreme leader Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada.

Mullah Mohammed Yaqoob has been appointed as acting defence minister and well I never, he is a son of Taliban’s first supreme leader Mullah Omar.

Sirajuddin Haqqani has been named acting interior minister and you thought it couldn’t get any worse, this chap is the leader of the Haqqani Network, which the United States designates as a terrorist organization and he is also on a UN sanctions list and on a wanted list of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation with a price tag of 10 million dollars.

The Taliban’s spokesman for bullshit have said they will form an inclusive government made up of representatives of various groups but the line-up does not include any women and seems to be mainly made up of the old hard line Taliban.

The Ministry for vice and virtue have said they intend to bring in the old vice and virtue laws which are apparently laws which give them the right to beat the living daylights out of anyone they choose in the street, imprison them, stone them to death and generally be pretty beastly all round.

Many people have been trying to flee the country since the Taliban gained control of most of Afghanistan last month, I think that must be the understatement of the day, I wish them luck.

It wasn’t that long ago that Brexit was being blamed for the shortage of lorry drivers and the lack of goods on the supermarket shelves but as they say, a week is a long time in Politics and also it seems in the road haulage business.

Britain is currently facing a shortfall of 100,000 HGV drivers, which retail bosses have partly blamed on changes to migration rules post-Brexit and EU employees returning home, however as with all these things there is more to this story.

Mainland Europe is experiencing an estimated 400,000 lorry driver shortage with Germany missing between 45,000 and 60,000 HGV drivers last year whilst France has faced a shortage of around 43,000 lorry drivers since 2019 and the shortfall in Italy in 2019 was estimated to be around 15,000.

Port closures in China during the pandemic have sparked a supply chain crisis with suggestions that there will be shortages at Christmas time leaving some children disappointed and parents brawling in the toy shops.

Unfortunately we only have ourselves to blame for this situation, for we all sit at home and order everything from Amazon which means vast numbers of HGV drivers are fully employed delivering all the goods to and from the Amazon warehouses, which may be a good thing for the environment as huge numbers of us are not using our cars to go to the shops leaving just one man with a van to deliver to all of us.

The slight flaw in this plan is that virtually everything we buy nowadays comes from China which is the highest polluting country in the world and one which gives poor Greta Thunberg sleepless nights.

The only solution is for us to go to the shops on our bicycles and purchase British made washing machines and wide screen televisions and other goods not made in China thereby freeing up many HGV drivers and eliminating the shortfall.

I suspect the eagle eyed of my readers may have already spotted the weak link in this plan in that absolutely everything is made in China and having just purchased a new fridge freezer which is the size of Yorkshire, I’m having trouble working out the logistics of balancing it on the crossbar of my bicycle and finding a cycle lane wide enough to accommodate it.

The following is part of an article I found from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which as you can see has figures for how much tax we motorists are paying which amounts to £40 billion a year, none of which is coming from the drivers of electric cars.

Taxes on motoring raise around £40 billion a year for the exchequer (around 5% of government revenue), equivalent to about £750 per adult in the UK. Most of this comes from fuel duties, which in 2019–20 are expected to raise £28 billion in their own right plus an additional £5.7 billion from the VAT payable on the duties. Another £6.5 billion comes from vehicle excise duty (VED) and £0.2 billion from the London congestion charge.

Once the production of petrol and diesel cars is halted one assumes eventually the vast majority of people will be left with no option but to drive an electric car which certainly at the moment are vastly overpriced compared to a petrol of diesel alternative, although in their favour the cost is offset by not having to pay petrol or road tax.

This situation will not last, electric cars are considerably heavier and one assumes must do more damage to the roads added to which no Government can afford to lose £40 billion pounds every year in lost taxes.

I’m not sure my calculator on my phone has enough noughts to do the arithmetic but I asked Google to do the maths for me and it appears £40 billion divided by the 32.7 million drivers in the UK means each one should on average pay £1223, do forgive me if the maths is flawed.

Obviously those of us who drive petrol and diesel are already paying our way with fuel duty currently levied at a flat rate of 57.95p per litre for both petrol and diesel, while VAT at 20% is then charged on both the product price and the duty, together with the Road Fund Licence which at the highest rate is a whopping £2245.

These people who drive electric cars should be ashamed of themselves for letting the side down so badly and I suggest perhaps they would like to make a voluntary donation to make up for their tardiness, initially I suggest £1223 each then more as it keeps track of inflation.

I don’t know what others feel about my suggestion but I would be interested to hear your views.

I went with my wife to the Thames traditional Boat Festival which is held on the River Thames at Henley-on Thames and is a gathering of traditional wooden boats together with quite a number of the surviving boats which went over to Dunkirk in 1940 to rescue our troops from the Normandy beaches and are Members of the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships.

We stayed at Leander Club which was founded in 1818 and is a private Members’ club that boasts an unsurpassed record in rowing achievements, the bedrooms of which are all decorated with rowing memorabilia and were joined for dinner by our friends Francis and Tracey which was rather nice as we haven’t seen them for some time.

This is the story of the formation of the Association, in Spring 1964 Raymond Baxter purchased one of the Little Ships and that Summer was flying to France by British Air Ferries for a family holiday. The plane flew over Dunkirk and he pointed the Beaches out to his son, Graham, who was then 13 years old. Graham asked his father if he realised that the next year (1965) it would be 25 years since ‘L’ORAGE’ had been “doing her thing down there so why don’t we take her back?”

​To cut a long story short, Raymond approached the Sunday Times (whose then Editor, Dennis Hamilton, was rescued from the Beaches). A letter from Raymond was published in the Sunday Times in October 1964 saying that he planned to take his Little Ship back the following June, and if any other owners wished to join him would they please write to the newspaper. The Sunday Times had agreed to help with the organisation if they got 12 replies. 43 boats made the crossing from Ramsgate with Royal Naval assistance and support from the RNLI. The BBC provided Radio and Television coverage.

​At a cocktail party given by the Sunday Times in December 1965 to show off their Press coverage, both Commander Charles Lamb and John Knight (who had participated in the Return) separately suggested to Raymond Baxter (who already had similar thoughts) that an Association should be formed.

All of these boats are absolutely stunning but some of them are absolutely Concours and are in far better condition than they would have been when new and are a joy to see, including Raymond Baxter’s boat L’ORANGE.

We went in my 1947 Bentley Mk VI and dressed in our forties outfits and as I had become a Member of the Tames Traditional Boat Festival we had tickets for the Member’s Enclosure and what with a flying display by a Spitfire from the Battle of Britain Memorial flight and a display by two WW1 triplanes, one RAF and one German, all in all a jolly fine weekend was had by all.

I have to admit I have never read the book, The Tiger Who Came to Tea but having checked with my wife and daughter their recollections of the book are of a fairly harmless story of a tiger who came to tea, ate the food and left leaving the father taking his wife and daughter to a café for tea.

The children’s book was written and illustrated by Judith Kerr in 1968 and is causing a hoo-ha after the co-director of a Scottish charity working to end male violence against women claimed that it reinforces dangerous gender stereotypes which in turn reinforce gender inequality.

Rachel Adamson said that books like The Tiger Who Came to Tea may have been published a long time ago, but we are still replicating these harmful gender stereotypes which have been in our society for a very long time.

I have to say I’m fairly certain that the vast majority of people who read this book would enjoy it for exactly what it is, a charming children’s story book and would not for one moment consider the actions of the Tiger as sexist or in any way promoting the rape of women.

One has to wonder where these people get their imagination from that would make the leap from harmless children’s book to one promoting rape and as someone who has written a few children’s books I’m wondering if I should remove the story from them just in case it gives young six year old boys the urge to commit violence against women.

I was stumped for a closing remark on this matter when I suddenly thought of a suitable comment on this story, what a load of bollocks!

My how time flies, in 2001 I was cast as Doctor Paul Knapman who was the Coroner for the original inquiry into the Marchioness river boat disaster, a character who seemed particularly dislikeable and was responsible for the removal of the hands of victims for fingerprinting in an attempt to identify the bodies which later proved to be unnecessary.

Some 20 years later the Director, Lance Steen Anthony Nielsen has produced a book which contains the cast details and a copy of the full play which tells the story of The Marchioness Inquiry, 11 Years Down the River.

On August 20th 1989, a collision on London’s River Thames between the dredging vessel Bowbelle and the pleasure boat, Marchioness, resulted in the loss of 51 lives. It would take eleven years of tireless campaigning before the families were finally given a public inquiry into the disaster. The hearings revealed a culture of individual, corporate and institutional failures to address ongoing safety issues, which could have prevented the disaster.

Based on the revelatory transcripts of the formal investigation into the disaster, this is the text of the dramatic reconstruction of that public inquiry and is available now.

Extinction Rebellion are at it again, how very tedious these irritating people are, but then I suppose that’s what they want.

The group says thousands of people are expected to take part in their “Impossible Rebellion”, which plans to “target the root cause of the climate and ecological crisis” which makes me wonder why they are protesting in London and not in the countries that produce the most pollution.

Should they need some assistance locating the most polluting countries I have managed with a quick search on the interweb found them and they are;

China 30%

USA 15%

India7%

Russia 5%

Japan 4%

Quite how they would get to any of them to protest whilst not using a car or plane or any form of petrol or diesel driven vehicle I have no idea and it’s a hell of a long way to China on a bicycle.

One has to assume that these people have such high principals that they all live in freezing cold garrets as they would not allow themselves to use a gas fired boiler to heat their dwelling, nor to use said boiler to heat water for a quick shower, no wonder they are so miserable and angry.

I must say I get quite angry every time they have one of these protests and the amount of pollution they cause by stopping the traffic for surely this is the way to cause global warming.

There has been a suggestion that schools should scrap the title of Head boy and Head girl, I imagine this is yet more from the woke members of society in an attempt to make everyone equal, although Lord alone knows why you would want to do that.

Personally when I was at school I never aspired to be Head boy nor even a Prefect as I felt more at home with the naughty boys at the back of the bus, although in my school days being naughty never went much further than a crafty fag round the back of the cricket pavilion.

I was quite happy for those at school who desired to be a Prefect and have the privilege of being in the Prefect’s Common room during break time with the added bonus of being allowed to smoke whilst there but as friends of mine were in there I just joined them anyway which gave me all the perks but none of the responsibility.

During my time at school the Prefects were allowed to cane other boys although I have little recollection of the punishment being administered, this of course may have been because of my exemplary good behaviour.

Should they abolish the titles of Head boy and Head Girl with what are they going to replace them with an everybody is equal badge, I certainly hope not for how else will we prepare pupils for the big wide world and the reality that everyone is most definitely not equal.

Harry and Meghan have released a statement which starts

“The world is exceptionally fragile right now.

As we all feel the many layers of pain due to the situation in Afghanistan, we are left speechless.

and continues by stating the bleeding obvious about the current world situation, although what use a statement from Harry and Meghan is with regard to putting things right, I have no idea.

Apparently these two are considered Royalty in America even though they have left the Royal Family and are not thought so in the United Kingdom, perhaps this should be pointed out to those who reside over the pond.

The most amusing thing I heard about their statement was from British news host Simon McCoy who laughed out loud at their statement on air.

The presenter sniggered when his co-presenter Kirsty Gallacher detailed that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had been left speechless by the Taliban takeover.

Kirsty explained that Harry and Meghan have broken their silence to say they are speechless about the situation in Afghanistan, to which, Mr McCoy failed to cover his amusement and giggled on air before apologising.

Quite amusing that two people who in their own words are speechless and seemingly lost for words have managed to produce quite a few, should you have nothing better to do, I have included the full statement for your edification and delight.

“The world is exceptionally fragile right now.

As we all feel the many layers of pain due to the situation in Afghanistan, we are left speechless.

As we all watch the growing humanitarian disaster in Haiti, and the threat of it worsening after last weekend’s earthquake, we are left heartbroken.

And as we all witness the continuing global health crisis, exacerbated by new variants and constant misinformation, we are left scared.

When any person or community suffers, a piece of each of us does so with them, whether we realize it or not. And though we are not meant to live in a state of suffering, we, as a people, are being conditioned to accept it. It’s easy to find ourselves feeling powerless, but we can put our values into action — together.

To start, we encourage you to join us in supporting a number of organizations doing critical work. We also urge those in positions of global influence to rapidly advance the humanitarian dialogues that are expected to take place this fall at multilateral gatherings such as the U.N. General Assembly and the G20 Leaders’ Summit.

As an international community, it is the decisions we make now — to alleviate suffering among those we know and those we may never meet — that will prove our humanity.”– THE DUKE & DUCHESS OF SUSSEX