America
Victory or Surrender?
“You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.” Winston Churchill. I love a lot of Winston Churchill’s sayings, but the one above fits the subject of this blog today pretty [more…]
Blog
Hobbies
Crossword No. 173
First correct entry out of ‘the hat’ wins a GP mug. Email entries to me by 6.00 pm Sunday, subject ‘Crossword’. Contact here on email Winner of Crossword 172 and a GP mug Popeye (Do [more…]
20th Century
A History of Pop Music Albums – 1994
A History of Pop Music Albums – 1994 Featured Album: Definitely Maybe This is a series of articles looking at albums from 1960 to 1999. Just cannot go on that much longer with the drivel [more…]
Fiction
Jinnie’s Story, Chapter Twenty
Colour Sergeant Jones and his troop now had full fuel tanks on their Challenger 2s, thanks to the friendly farmer. Looking at his GPS navigation computer it told him that he had enough, not just [more…]
Arts
Always Worth Saying’s Question Time Review
Question Time 3rd June 2021 Panel: Lucy Frazer (Conservative) Peter Kyle (Labour) Heather McGregor (Academic) Anthony Costello (Independant sage) Jenni Murray (Broadcaster) Venue: London & Edinburgh First question. Only £1.4 billion extra for school funding? [more…]
Hobbies
The Clay is the Thing, Part Three
Okay, I’ve skirted around the issue long enough, it’s time to tackle the complex subject of lead or forward allowance. To an experienced shooter, it is literally second nature, an unconscious calculation that is already [more…]
America
Notes from a briefing paper discussed under Chatham Rule
Chatham Rule Named after Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), which introduced the rule in 1927: “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to [more…]
20th Century
Exocet – the missile that almost cost Britain the Falklands War
Exocet is the French word for a flying fish. It is also an anti-shipping missile that can be launched from submarines, surface ships, helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. The Exocet designed and built by Aerospatiale [more…]
Biography
My Time in Parliament
Having left for an idyllic childhood in a Leicestershire village at the age of 18 months, I returned to London in 1968 when I was posted to the MoD’s Army Contracts HQ in Southwark as [more…]