The Nelson Touch

Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson lost his eye during the bombardment of Calvi on Corsica and his right arm at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands in 1797. He then had to learn to write with his left hand. He was an excellent leader, sympathetic to his men and able to inspire initiative, courage and great loyalty in his men from the lowliest Jack Tar to his captains. Indeed, when news of his death broke after the Battle of Trafalgar, hardened salts who had been fighting the enemy fleets at close quarters a few hours earlier, broke down in inconsolable floods of tears. Nelson's style of leadership became known as the "Nelson Touch".
So I have no sympathy for ""the clunking fists" of our over-promoted, sociopathic, inadequate Prime Minister. Why doesn't he make proper use of the secretariat staff at 10 Downing Street? A handwritten message of sympathy on the death of a son must be right first time so it must be checked and double-checked before posting. In a way it's the closest, an MP will get to making safe a booby-trap, except that if he gets it wrong there's only a day or so of embarrassment.

Good News

Repellent Labour Luvvie Millionaire, Ben Elton, is reported in today's Daily Mail as being on his way to live in Australia. Good! Type F*** Off into your satnav for directions. Apparently he has grown tired of the increasingly crap and restrictive Labour regime here. So why did you ever vote for them, Smartarse? Pace Jeremy Clarkson, he won't be stung bitten or poisoned by all the nasty creatures in Oz (apparently even PM Kevin Rudd, like a good socialist, has a short fuse with underlings) because of professional courtesy.

The quote from the Daily Mail article that made me chortle was:

"'My problem with the Australian economy is I earn all my salary in sterling and the Australian dollar has gone crazy,' he said.
'It's (worth) 55p. It was 38p a couple of years ago. As someone earning sterling living in Australia, I'm b*****ed."

Ben, Ben, Ben. If the Aus$ bought 38p a couple of years ago and now buys 55p, that means that the Aus$ has appreciated against the £ by about 50% or the £ has fallen by about 30%. O Level economics before Nulab dumbed it down. How could that happen to the currency of the economy best suited to weather and recover from the Global Recession? Answer, because Gordon Brown ran deficits and John Howard ran surpluses, And no Australian bank failed, was nationalised or needed funny money from the Bank of Taxpayers.
Your name's Ben Elton. Good Riddance!

PS Is today's Times headline connected?

Apache and Chinook Helicopters Over Coventry

Yesterday afternoon I spotted a pair of Westland Apaches flying in a westerly direction from the general area of Baginton Airport and this afternon I saw a Boeing Chinook fly south from the same part of the sky.

To the best of my knowledge, the AAC bases its Apaches at Wattisham in Suffolk and the RAF homes its Chinooks at Odiham in Hampshire. The nearest military heli base is RAF Shawbury in the wild west of Shropshire. I wonder what they were doing as I've never spotted these types locally before. I'm pretty sure neither heli type was being used to chauffeur our esteemed Defence Minister to his Coventry North East constituency. Any ideas?

Are plans being made to fight the War on Terror in the Midlands to save on travel costs and reduce the carbon footprint by moving it from Afghanistan? Our wonderful Nulab government imported plenty of Afghans and others as part of its now regretted (now the votes are vanishing) policy of bulk delivery multiculturalism.

Non-Expert Drugs Advice

Never take a sleeping tablet and a laxative the same night.

I'm An Aviation Anorak

Peter Brooke's cartoons for The Times are excellent. However, I have a few nits to pick from this one purporting to show a Fokker DXXI fighter. The camouflage scheme is 1940 standard Luchtvaartbrigade (Dutch Army Aviation Brigade) rather like this excellently preserved example:

However, the swastika in a white circle on the fuselage indicates a Finnish Ilmavoimat aircraft in the Winter War/Continuation War but the swastika should be light blue and the camouflage scheme olive green uppersurfaces and light blue undersurfaces. The blue swastika symbol was a hat-tip to the Swedish Count Eric von Rosen who helped Finland in 1918 and 1939 as it was his personal emblem.

And why is the Dutch Fokker company funnier than the German Focke-Wulf concern? Here's the prototype Focke-Wulf FW190V1:

And how about this SPAD aircraft flown by the American volunteer Escadrille Lafayette in WWI?

Or this Siemens Schuckert flown by German Ace Fritz Beckhardt?

Given the BNP's attempt to link itself with the Spitfire,I reckon this famous clip from "The Battle of Britain" is very apt:

Pub Bores

I've blogged before that one should never argue with an idiot as bystanders might not be able to tell the difference. Why politicians are debating amongst themselves about the rights and wrongs of appearing on the Question Time panel with Nick Griffin MEP is beyond me. I don't like the man nor his party's policies and don't feel a need to beat him in an intellectual argument because his politics do not function on an intellectual level. If I was in a pub and someone began spouting BNP nonsense I would take my drink elsewhere. No point rebutting his claims other than directing him to this website. Thank you for your service and sacrifice.

Now these chaps are worth listening to - and buying a drink!

A Couple of Musings

Why didn't Our Dear Leader get the Nobel Economics Prize for saving the world instead of Oliver E. Williamson and Elinor Ostrom?
Did Barack Obama get the Nobel Peace Prize for having Roman Polanski arrested? That's reasonable as far as I'm concerned because it's annoyed the Frogs. By the way, why don't the pro-Polanski chatterati support another guilty sex-offender and film-maker? Please could someone brighter explain the difference.