Look at the sea of Surriento,
what a treasure it is!
Even who has travelled all over the world,
he has never seen a sea like this one.
Look at these mermaids
that stare, amazed, at you,
that love you so much.
They would like to kiss you,
And you say: “I am leaving, goodbye.”
You go away from my heart,
away from the land of love,
And you have the heart not to come back.
But please do not go away,
do not give me this pain.
Come back to Surriento,
let me live!

We did something romantic for our Ruby Wedding in 2007….all lovers should try to see Sorrento at least once. It’s a fascinating town in itself and there is so much to explore in the surrounding area –a great place to visit…

….you can easily reach the Isle of Capri…

….Naples…

With the warning shadow of Vesuvius always there in the background…

Alternatively you can look down on Naples from the volcano’s summit…

Then look into the crater…

Pompeii reminds us of the power of Vesuvius..look what happened to this Roman…

Perhaps he’d been walking along this street when he was caught by the eruption…

Nearby Herculaneum is even better preserved….

Of course from Sorrento you can also travel south to Amalfi..

Then back to Sorrento to just sit and watch the seagulls…maybe even catch the eye of a mermaid…

Gordon Ramsay went into Brixton Prison to teach inmates how to cook – but he came out astonished at how easy their life was.

Perhaps we could learn a lesson or two from Arizona….

Most of us in Europe, Asia and America are living longer – but not so much of that in Africa. Many people in Africa are dying earlier than us of malaria, typhoid etc….those old fashioned diseases caused by bugs, dirty water and exacerbated by under nourishment.

However few of us will simply die in our sleep – instead we will die of other diseases like cancer or heart/blood pressure problems because these are diseases of old age. Most Africans, for the moment, are spared that.
The diseases that will kill us off are non-communicable diseases, known as NCDs and you’ll be glad to know that the UN is on the case.

On Saturday at the sixty-fifth World Health Assembly – a meeting of the 194 member countries of the World Health Organisation – ‘delegates approved the development of a global monitoring framework for the prevention and control of NCDs, including indicators and a set of global targets.

Don’t rush out into the street proclaiming that the WHO has found a cure for cancer because we’re not talking about SCIENCE. The guys and gals in their white coats are still shaking their test tubes and are still far away from finding a cure. No, we are talking about the only global industry that is in permanent growth mode – public health agitprop or health “education” as the industry prefers to describe itself.

‘The NCD Alliance, a global advocacy organization representing a network of more than 2,000 civil society organizations led a major lobbying campaign, and mobilized its network to ensure this target was secured.’
‘Intense lobbying by NGOs’ : the epitaph of our times. How delightful it is that these organisations think that lobbying and legislation is a substitute for biology and medical science.

You know exactly what sort of people will be implementing these campaigns says Chris Snowdon at Spiked

the puritans, bureaucrats, nannies and headbangers of public health are so keen on the idea of ‘non-communicable diseases’, because it gives them what every trigger-happy army general wants: a war without end.

…and it gives them salaries and funds to spent upon “marketing strategies”…and once in situ they will always be demanding more money for “one last push” and the supply of money will be limitless because it will come from “governments” i.e. taxpayers pockets.

Here’s a novel idea – why not by pass the lobbyists and “civil groups” and marketers with all their high rent offices and glossy leaflets and bustling office staff and give the money to the guys and gals in the research laboratories shaking their test tubes and help them find an actual cure….

Nah – on second thoughts that’s a bit too old fashioned and so not 21st century….and there wouldn’t be any “ambassador” jobs for Hollywood celebrities and their hangers on….

A sob story about long term unemployed jobseekers offered work experience placements as Diamond Jubilee stewards being badly treated was too good to miss for the media elite of the left. Frustrated by the widespread support for the Queen exhibited by millions of ordinary people and uncomfortable with the sight of so many union flags being waved the Guardian and BBC jumped with glee into the issue using anonymous sources to buttress accusations of “slave labour”

Unsurprisingly it was also picked up in the USA by the left wing agitprop website Gawker.

Rather than do some real journalism to find out if other stewards embedded in the scheme shared a similar negative experience the Guardian hacks looked around to see if there was any dim witted pompous windbag who could be wound up and propelled into the media spotlight to give the story political legs.

They needed a pea brained dim-witted has been who would be obtuse enough to pontificate loudly and aggressively without bothering to do any homework

Enter John Prescott

They then needed a highly paid and extremely wealthy member of the soft left media elite to highlight the wages of the people who ran the Jubilee Stewards project and to then try to sandbag one of them on BBC Newsnight.

Enter Kirsty Wark

The trouble with anonymous sources, however, is that it is always difficult to validate the truth of their statements by referencing their backgrounds and checking their claims under hostile cross examination so when several fellow stewards went public with their experiences while offering up their names the BBC/Guardianistas should have been delighted.

Unfortunately these people said their experience had been positive and questioned the accuracy of the Prescott/Wark line.

Isn’t it annoying how facts can so often spoil a good left wing fantasy…

Only cursory mentions over here about the Wisconsin Recall election but the victory of tea party supported Governor Scott Walker has sent a massive bolt of lightning into Washington and President Obama’s palace guard in the US media.

Of course, if you were to believe the BBC’s ludicrous Jonny Dymond you would think that Walker’s victory was all down to big business and a vocal and often vicious union/left coalition from within and outside Wisconsin simply did not exist…

Governor Walker got a lot of support from GOP heavyweights over the last few weeks but in the early months of 2011 when the fight was fiercest and Walker and his supporters were under siege only one GOP voice braved the mob and went to Wisconsin to rally the tea party….

No prize for guessing who that was…

Many came into London early, some even camped out overnight….why? Because were British….and, for once, no pontificating weasel popped up to say that sort of phrase was not allowed because it’s old fashioned, xenophobic and contrary to human rights…

A solemn service at London’s own St Paul’s Cathedral, lunch with the Lord Mayor of the City of London then back to Buckingham Palace where more than a million people stood outside cheering, singing and waving union flags…thus ended an amazing three days when, for once, the voices of the normally silent majority drowned out the shallow posturings of a sneering and patronising “cultural elite”

It was a special day. Despite the rain one million people lined the Thames to cheer the Queen at the Diamond Jubilee River pageant held in her honour….and less than a hundred of sour faced anti monarchists waved a collection of agitprop banners.

The figures tell us all we need to know – this was a day when, for once, the silent majority seized the agenda from the self proclaimed “cultural elite” who are usually telling us what we should be doing/thinking via their media pulpits.

If the emotional resonance of the spectacle tightened the throat yesterday, it was surely this unaffected pride of the people in their Queen and their straightforward but no less deep love of their country that really brought tears to the eye.

This is because there is such an enormous, latent, pent-up feeling of patriotism — that most decent and inspiring of emotions which, in our degraded public discourse, has now become all but forbidden to express for fear of being damned as a racist or xenophobe.

Patriotism is thus sneered at by the kind of people who unfortunately tend to dominate our culture and who lose no opportunity to be sour and mean-spirited about the monarchy and the people it so invaluably serves.

OK Melanie Phillips overgushed a little at the close of her piece but the core premise is rock solid – and backed up, surprisingly, in a confessional from the grand panjandrum of the BBC commentariat Jeremy Paxman himself..

So here’s a toast to our flag and our Queen and a remembrance of the second verse of our National Anthem, rarely sung today but which nevertheless probably echoes the feelings of most ordinary folk in our country.

O Lord our God arise
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix
God save us all

Amen to that, say I….

When you manage to cut through the dross that is pumped out daily by the “music” industry you can sometimes catch the glint of a tiny diamond….

Just listen to Ed Sheeran making us realise that a miscarriage can also be a heartbreaking time for a prospective father..

Lyrics here…

We walked into this field and had one of those moments when you wonder if you are looking at a Claude Monet painting….

Horses in the buttercup field

Quote of the week from “Autoamerican” spotted here…

This is hysterical. The mainstream media boasts teams of Harvard graduates, gleaming, high-rise headquarters in our largest cities, far-flung foreign bureaus streaming information 24/7, and universal coverage via newspaper circulation, channel space and satellite relay. Yet Sarah Palin, sitting in her living room in the middle of the Alaskan tundra – probably with Trig seated on her lap – continues to control America’s political narrative.

The US media is beginning, reluctantly, to acknowledge that fact – but dare they ever ask the key question which is WHY?