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.