Of course I am paraphrasing Goering’s famous quote about “culture” – and I also recognise that in a personal capacity I am usually willing to trust the doctor who repairs my hernia or the plumber who fixes my boiler because the chances are they know more about hernias and boilers than I do for they are dealing with them every day.

No, the “experts” I would love to threaten are the ones beloved of the media because they need a gap filled in the programme or on the page. Moreover the “expert” is usually produced to push an agenda favoured by the editorial team – to pimp a company or a political viewpoint or a questionable scientific “theory”.

The “experts” usually dress up their presentation with an impressive display of certainty buttressed with “facts” which on the surface appear ultra convincing. These “facts” are then often machine gunned out with a degree of rapidity that discourages in depth analysis. Certainly the host or editor rarely has the time or inclination to find someone who could present a contrary view.

The result? An initially rather shaky position is offered a framework of reinforcement by inertia and becomes an accepted wisdom. Very often the purpose is to agitate to change something that has worked efficiently and effectively, often for centuries with a view to provide opportunities for a whole tribe of leeches who cannot find gainful employment in the normal world.

Fortunately the “experts” are frequently proved wrong by subsequent events. Unfortunately so often a large amount of time and money has already been wasted in a fruitless search for each specific unicorn.

So – bring on the “experts”……

Less than two weeks ago our UK “experts” were saying this

contingency plans are being drawn up as the Environment Agency confirmed the drought is likely to last until Christmas.

Today they were saying this

The Environment Agency issued flood warnings in the South West and South East as drivers battled torrential rain on the motorways.

Why do we even listen to them. Switch on any TV news programme and there will almost certainly be an “expert” droning on about some topic and usually blaming us, the ordinary everyday folk, for being ignorant.

Remember which company was being singled out for praise by financial guru Gary Hamel in 2000?

extraordinaryaspirations, a willingness to listen to new points of view, flexible organizational boundaries. The managers of —- concentrated on the growth of new markets and industries, andindividual entrepreneurship is highly encouraged

You guessed it…Enron…yes that Enron….and he wasn’t alone in pimping it…

At roughly the same time a certain UK banker was being lauded as a business superman but a few years later the media changed their tune

Remember all the great and the good who really did think money grew on trees….until the recession? I wonder why they got it wrong?

And those brilliant minds who were telling us that those who opposed the Euro were Neanderthal doomsayers totally out of step with the times?

Well now James Lovelock, who as a “scientist”was always treated with due reverence as a top level “expert”, says he got it wrong about global warming when he issued dire warnings in 2006.

There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now … The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time

Thanks a bunch, you silly old fool – can I have my taxes back, please?

Don’t get me wrong. Every man and woman is entitled to express an opinion and, being human, will sometimes be mistaken. But for self proclaimed “experts” it is never sufficient to “express”…..they must PRONOUNCE as if they have descended from Mount Sinai with tablets of stone. They exude authority and turn a fierce and disapproving eye on any who dare question the validity of their utterances…and we fall for it every time. Even when they are proved wrong “experts” shamelessly slough off their mistakes as a snake sheds it’s skin. Like whores they are forever turning new tricks.

So next time you are watching TV and an “expert” is wheeled in to pontificate on some burning issue remember

1. He/she is getting paid for it and traffic will expand earning potential…everyone will want to go Al Gore

2. So many “experts” have got things wrong every future pronouncement should be accompanied with a large dose of salt

Somebody once defined the etymology of the word “expert”

In mathematics X is an unknown and in plumbing a spurt is a drip under pressure

Sounds good to me…..now, where is my Smith & Wesson?

h/t for violin cartoon

Last weekend we went down to Somerset to stay with our son and his family in their cottage and I helped him with his new toy.

We went to the lovely city of Bath on Saturday afternoon. It has some quaint, old fashioned shops…

Though I suspect this shop won’t be around for much longer..

..and how long before this pub sign is declared politically incorrect?

But we all enjoyed a meal at Jamie Oliver’s Italian in Bath. The Italian style food was good (we regularly go to Italy so we we have tasted the real thing), the service was fine considering the place was packed out and there was an Italian style kid’s menu for our grandchildren plus crayons and colouring in sheets to keep them occupied. At £30 a head for three courses I’d say it was not overly expensive and, as a bonus, they served Birra Moretti…

Ian & Vicky

Oliver & Evie

Us....

All in all a nice family outing…

Binyavanga Wainaina – you are so right

Let us imagine that Africa was really like it is shown in the international media.
Africa would be a country. Its largest province would be Somalia.
Bono, Angelina Jolie and Madonna would be joint presidents, appointed by the United Nations.
European aid workers would run the Foreign Affairs Office, gap year students from the UK the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Culture would be run by the makers of the Kony2012 videos.

Mocking the image of Africa constantly pimped by the western media – especially the BBC – Wainaina, a leading Kenyan writer pleads for a more sophisticated and nuanced approach to Africa.

Africa’s image in the West, and Africa’s image to itself, are often crude, childish drawings of reality.

He wants us to dilute the image of the mud hut and tribal dance with roads, railways, cables, factories and offices.

Fat chance, Mr Wainaina – the British Guardian reading, BBC watching middle class want mud huts and tribal dances because they need to feel superior. Not in the old Imperial way of keeping the restless natives down with a Gatling gun but because they want to trade pity for gratitude. They lust for famines, droughts, massacres so that they can distribute largesse and feel good about themselves. They have spawned a vast network of NGOs, staffed by their own children just to show Africans that they cannot be trusted to look after themselves.

If they had their way Africa would be one vast national park where the mud huts and tribal dances would be “managed” in the same way as the big game. No cables or smoking factories would desecrate the landscape because the chattering classes need Africa as a background for the frenetic pace of their own lives.

Where would all those “caring” celebs go on Red Nose day if Africa became like India and China, thrusting vigorous economies that were challenging our own sclerotic bureaucracies? Where would Madonna go for her next trophy adoption? What would Oxfam do with all those blankets and condoms?

More power to your elbow, Mr Wainaina – and the next time a rather turgid BBC left wing “comedian” arrives in some “African” village with a fleet of Range Rovers and accompanied by a bevy of mini skirted “production assistants” carrying a football so that he can be filmed for 35 seconds surrounded by grinning young “natives” why not shove his red nose right up his anterior orifice and bundle him on his way….

When you’re my age you get to go to quite a few 70th birthday celebrations. The other day we went to one where the lady in question is part of a large Scottish Catholic family so we had a ceilidh with lots of reels and jigs. The Lovely Mrs P is a keen dancer whereas I have two left feet but a ceilidh is designed for family fun so the dances were easy to follow.

The food was good and the beer and wine free flowing but eventually one of the lady’s sons presented the toast with a loving speech interlaced with wry humour. The lady herself responded with gracious thanks and then said she was going to read out “Grandma’s Letter of Love”

Now although she does have a sense of humour she is also a deeply religious lady so we were expecting something fairly anodyne. Imagine our surprise when she came out with this…

Dear Friend,

The other day I went up to a local Christian bookstore and saw a “Honk If You Love Jesus“ car sticker. I was feeling particularly excited that day because I had just come from a thrilling choir performance, followed by a thunderous prayer meeting, so I bought the sticker and put it in the corner of my rear window.

Am I glad I did! What an uplifting experience followed!

I was stopped at a red light at some road works, just lost in thought about the Lord and how good He is…and I didn’t notice that the light had changed. It is a good thing someone else loves Jesus because if he hadn’t honked, I’d never have noticed! I found that LOTS of people love Jesus! While I was sitting there, the guy behind started honking like crazy, and then he leaned out of his window and screamed, “For the love of GOD! GO! GO! Jesus Christ, GO!”

What an exuberant cheerleader he was for Jesus! Everyone started honking! I just leaned out of my window and started waving and smiling at all these loving people. I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love. One man obviously mistook me for a lady friend because he called me “Millie Rich”….

I saw another man waving in a funny way with two fingers stuck up in the air. When I asked my teenage grandson in the back seat what that meant, he said that it was a Hawaiian good luck sign or something. Well, I’ve never met anyone from Hawaii, so I leaned out the window and gave him the good luck sign back.

My grandson burst out laughing; why even he was enjoying this religious experience.

A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and started walking towards me.
I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church I attended, but this is when I noticed the light had changed so I waved and smiled to all my sisters and brothers and drove on through the roadworks.

I noticed I was the only car that got through before the light changed again, and I felt kind of sad that I had to leave them after all the love we had shared, so I slowed the car down, leaned out of the window, and gave them all the Hawaiian good luck sign one last time as I drove away.

Praise the Lord for such wonderful folks!

Love

Grandma

No need to worry – it went down a storm and I immediately ordered another pint of Spitfire to continue the toast….

Pubs, by their very nature, can be lively, noisy, boisterous places especially as the evening moves on and the alcohol keeps flowing. Some, of course, because of their clientele, project an atmosphere of potential violence where a word or even a glance can generate a challenge. My father, who had been brought up in one of the tougher parts of South London and then, as a soldier, became a frequent patron of pubs throughout Britain and bars around the Mediterranean, took great pains, when I came of drinking age, to induct me into the self preservation strategies that allow a drinker to sense trouble a half minute or so before it breaks out and head towards the most appropriate exit.

So I doubt that, if I had lived in Bolton, I would have gone within a quarter mile of “The Flying Shuttle”, described by the Daily Mail as probably the “toughest pub” in Britain. It appeared to be open all the time, in defiance of the licensing laws, not because the landlord held an open house but simply because the bar staff were too frightened to call time. In the end it took thirteen police officers to close it down and even then there was a mini riot.

But in the midst of even the most terrifying indictment of human degradation something can sometimes sparkle through the darkest gloom. Although the patrons of the Shuttle appear to be a mixture of drug dealers, thieves, gangsters and whores there is at least one person who seems to have not only a rather dry sense of self deprecating humour but also (very rare amongst the denizens of our underclass) a grasp of the English language and an ability to spell…….for he or she could turn The Flying Shuttle

….into The Lying Slut…

What’s that sound? It’s Will Shakespeare chuckling up there in the big library in the sky……

h/t UK Daily Mail

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Barker insisted that the Conservatives should not be tempted to adopt a more Eurosceptic stance to win an outright majority at the next election…….we don’t need to follow UKIP into swivel-eyed rhetoric. People expect grown up statesman-like leadership on Europe, and with David Cameron, that is what they get.”

A very smooth (and rich) chap the Energy Minister is said to be a close chum of David Cameron and George Osborne and one of the key figures planning the Tory strategy for the next election. His view is that the Conservatives need to capture the “fertile ground” where 21st century elections will be won.

Mr Barker said the Tories had to attract more voters from ethnic minorities as well as homosexual and lesbians. He said: “Absolutely – it is policy for the whole country.”

Ah yes – that’s “Greg” Barker, who in the past has faced questions about his links to Russian oligarchs and who also had his own starring role in the MP’s expenses scandal.

In December 2006, Mr Barker briefly moved the second home allowance back to Cheyne Row, where he claimed a further £3,492 for his mortgage interest. He also claimed £4,400 in food allowances – 11 months-worth in one go.
He moved house after leaving his wife Celeste in October 2006 following an affair with William Banks-Blaney, an interior designer, but he still claims the house he shares with her and their three children in Peasmarsh, East Sussex, as his main home.

Nice to know that Barker and his friends are still addicted to the myth of the centre ground and pimping the electoral genius of team Cameron/Osborne. Problem is that team Cameron/Osborne were unable to deliver a crushing victory over what was possibly one of the most unpopular and discredited governments of all time even though they were aiming for Barker’s “fertile ground”

As for “Greg” I suspect his “swivel eyed” rhetoric jibe had a slightly personal edge to it for it must be so irritating to see a man he and his pals in the Tory establishment had believed to be consigned to the “dustbin of history” in East Sussex in 2001 leading what was once seen as a “fringe”party (UKIP) which is now gaining considerable momentum in current opinion polls.

Keep on digging that hole you are already in, Greg, just don’t blame anyone else when you find you are stuck in it…..

OK – Fowey in Cornwall has quaint little streets.

There are delightfully quirky coffee shops (Pinky Murphys and the Red Herring) and a superb deli (Kittows)….and if you stay at Duchy Cottage as we regularly do you can pop next door to The Safe Harbour and drink as much St Austell Tribute as you want without having to worry about being breath tested.

But, above all, the surrounding countryside is….perfect….

A few years ago a lady in the small Cornish town of Fowey felt that a local bus stop shelter needed smartening up……….but instead of just sitting around and moaning she and her neighbours did something about it…

It was scruffy and horrible and the seat was broken and it is one of the first things people see when they arrive here.
All the bits of furniture and paintings have been donated by lots of different people who all wanted to see the bus stop improved

So you can wait for the bus in proper comfort – now that is what I call real community action. Moreover the shelter has an annual makeover. We took the photo above last year (we go to Fowey quite often because it is my wife’s home town) but this year, as our grandaughter discovered) it has gone all modern.

What a difference when ordinary people decide to do things themselves…..

More evidence of the official media spinning the Zimmerman/Martin shooting incident in Florida before any proper evidence has appeared,

Blogger William A Jacobson at Legal Insurrection (who also doubles up as a law professor) does simple fact check that US media (and the UK Daily Mail) failed to do on the “Armed American White Supremacists Patrolling Sanford, Florida” story…and finds out that it is an unfounded rumour (aka a “lie”)

Mind you he used a very unusual method..he rang the local police. Maybe those highly trained, highly paid “journalists” could learn a thing or two from that….

A belated and timely reassessment of John Major’s premiership from Peter Oborne at the Daily Telegraph.

His administration has enjoyed a terrible reputation and remains associated with sleaze, incompetence, drift and weakness. But as time has passed this verdict has started to look unfair. History may yet be much kinder to John Major than many would have thought.

Yet a closer look at the facts (those oh so inconvenient nuggets of truth that undermine the seductive charm of wishful thinking) Major’s government had a good record of solid achievement in Northern Ireland, public service reform, education and pensions. The benefits of the Maastricht monetary union opt out, though widely derided at the time by the great and the good from the left have kept us out of the current Euro quicksand. Above all, after the (admittedly self inflicted) trauma of Black Wednesday in 1992, within five years the economy had been turned around.

By 1997 employment was rising, growth stable, and the deficit was well under control, meaning that Gordon Brown as chancellor inherited the most benign economic scenario for any British government of the last century. The situation was so fundamentally strong that it took three successive Labour administrations to wreck it.

But at the time, as Oborne guiltily admits, he and his fellow journalists waged an unrelenting campaign of contemptuous denigration against Major.

Yet during the later stages of his premiership, Major was treated with almost universal, vicious derision. Calumny after calumny was heaped upon him, and though this campaign of laceration was led in Parliament by Blair’s brilliant New Labour opposition, the newspapers were all too happy to join in.

His humble origins were viciously mocked. His ordinary, untheatrical bank manager demeanour was constantly compared unfavourably with the flashy showmanship of Tony Blair’s car salesman – and the charge was orchestrated, not so much from the natural enemies of the right at the BBC and Guardian but from that so called bastion of conservatism at the Daily Telegraph. Day in, day out vicious barbs were penned by the likes of Simon Heffer and Boris Johnson (yes, that Boris) deliberately aimed at undermining Major and preparing the way for their chosen messiah….Michael Portillo….

Don’t laugh – the saviour of the Tories was going to be a shallow, etch-a-sketch glamour boy, a trimmer who played to whichever gallery was making the most noise. Somehow (only the gods know why) the Telegraph fell madly in love with Portillo and so successfully tarnished Major’s reputation that in 1997 Labour swept back to power with a massive majority of parliamentary seats. Hundreds of Tories failed to win their constituencies – including (to the laughter of the gods) Portillo, the Telegraph’s “man of destiny”

By the way, this month, twenty years ago, saw the last Tory victory in a General Election. Against the prophesies of the pundits and the prognostications of the pollsters John Major was returned to Downing Street.

Right up to the BBC exit polls, it was assumed that Neil Kinnock’s Labour would win. But John Major, always underestimated by a sneering metropolitan media class, triumphed against the odds.
He won more votes – 14 million – than any other British prime minister has ever done. In popular terms, the margin of victory was immense. No less than 42 per cent of the voters came out for Major, 34 per cent for Kinnock. But the bias of the British electoral system hit the Conservatives hard.
Had Labour enjoyed that 8 per cent lead in the popular vote, it would have secured a parliamentary majority of more than 100. Unlucky Major ended up with a majority of just 21, which was whittled away over the coming years until his government ended in ignominy and defeat

That’s right – the disdained John Major managed to achieve something that has eluded David Cameron (AKA Michael Portillo Mk II)….a decisive Tory victory in terms of popular voter support…

…and, partially thanks to the Daily Telegraph it might possibly be the last…..