Majorityrights Central > Category: Oh Tempora, Oh Mores

The Village of the Year competition is a celebration of English middle-class rural life, a world of civility, kindnesses freely given,  roses around the door and perfectly trimmed privet.  But even this harmless throwback to 1930’s England is not insulated from the winds of the culture wars.

... In 2005 outsiders of a different kind are influencing the decision-making process.

As entry forms drop through letter boxes, parishes around Britain have reacted with anger and indignation after discovering that the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has added its own set of questions.

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While mooching around the net for images of lovely Cumbernauld, the Scottish town that is so ill-favoured the population want it all knocked down, I came across this touching portrayal:-

Having only a weak grasp of reality and a brief attention span I quickly lost interest in the freezing north.  I was charmed instead by these wry and gentle images of the real, perennially failing but perennially plucky, urban England shot by the same opportunistic, amateur camaraman.

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We at Memorial-Spaulding are committed to the creation of a fully inclusive school in which each and every child succeeds and each is challenged. We believe we have the opportunity to create, in Claude Steele’s words, a “wise school,” a school that is rigorous and satisfying for all of our children and for all of us. We continue to work as our children’s village of support to create a school in which all of the adults - parents and teachers, secretary and principal, custodian and nurse, crossing guard and lunch mother, aide and psychologist - genuinely believe in all of our children, and actively work to see that “smart” comes in many shapes and forms, and resides within each and every human being. We know that the context for optimal learning is a school which has passion for children and for democracy, an intolerance for racism and for prejudice, a commitment to the creation of an anti-racist, prejudice-free learning environment, and a genuine desire to turn the concept of “just society” into reality. We hope to be that school.

Ms Barbara Meyer, Principal, Memorial Spaulding Elementary School,  Newton, MA - demonstrating why we have to win.

Acknowledgements to the Birdman.

John Ray left a comment on Mark’s “A disappointed liberal” post which, as John’s comments often do, piqued my fancy.  He wrote:-

The pervasive power of advertising is a favourite Leftist theme but it is a crock.  Ask anybody in the ad game and they will tell you that they only wish they had such power.  Brand-shifting is all they usually can do - NOT “create demand”.  Read up about the Edsel if you doubt it.

Now, John is a man who has studied the human mind.  I am merely mindful of my lack of study.  So in response to his, of course, properly researched and, if required, extensively referenced point of view I will offer that scientifically useless device: personal experience.

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A new study by a team of psychologists from Florida has revealed an alarming aspect to the modern Ms when she gets behind the wheel.  And before you run away with the not improbable notion that interviewing four hundred female twenty-somethings and late teens in America and Japan might have had an ulterior motive, these girls are something else.  They could, it seems, frighten the crap out of anyone.

“We need to recognise that male drivers aren’t necessarily the biggest threat on the road,” says John Houston (no, not the Late Great - one of the psychologists), “Women don’t seem to be following the rules any more. They may have been more cautious drivers in the past, but that no longer holds. We were very surprised by our findings.”

The study is due to be published shortly in the American scientific press.  Its subjects revealed high levels of hostility, sensation seeking, susceptibility to boredom, and competitiveness.  American women were particularly hostile.  “I’m in a hurry. Move it or lose it,” was the typical attitude.

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As our cocaine maker in Peru happily told us: ‘People want our cocaine because it is good and, for a while at least, makes them happy.’

So ends an interesting account in today’s Observer by Angus Macqueen  of a journey through the drug-growing badlands of South America.

There is no respectability whatever in drugs trafficking and only pathos or tragedy in drug-taking.  But the intellectual argument for drug liberalisation is becoming increasingly respectable because the alternative of prohibition has so manifestly failed.  Macqueen worries chiefly about the warfare and violence that drug moneys fuel in grower countries.  But he then makes what has become the standard case for liberalisation:-

This journey has left me thinking the politically unthinkable. With an election looming, the Blair government has made the war on drugs a populist law-and-order priority, once again conflating the taking of drugs with the crime and violence that surrounds them. But it is the war itself that is the problem. The politicians rightly warn that demand will go up if it is legalised. Not good but not the nightmare they summon up. Neither cocaine or heroin is a cancer. In quantities it destroys your nose and is bad for your brain, but it very rarely kills - unlike that other addictive plant we can use legally: tobacco.

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My recent piece, No native voices, kicked off with a hat-tip to John Ray for a link to a Charles Bremner article in The Times.  Now Mark Richardson has posted a link to the same article.

Bremner drew attention to the remarkable law passing through the French lower house, prohibiting “defaming a person or a group of persons on account of their sex or their sexual orientation.” The punishment is a prison sentence of up to six months or a £15,000 fine.

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Possessing, as I do, a modest interest in the history of aviation warfare I frequently find myself checking the obits for another sad passing.  These days almost all of those astonishingly gallant young men who survived their tour of bombing sorties to Germany and occupied Europe are over eighty.  The obituaries, inevitably, are becoming rarer. 

Today, however, the Telegraph carried the obituary of one such man, David Jackson Penman,  OBE, DSO, DFC who died on November 27th at the age of 85.  The article concentrates largely on his part in the low-level, daylight raid on a diesil engine factory in Augsburg on April 17th, 1942.  Twelve aircraft, six Lancasters apiece from 44 and 97 Squadron, were sent to bomb the M.A.N factory, which made diesel engines for submarines.  Five returned, all damaged.  Militarily, nothing was achieved.  Production of the diesels was inconvenienced, no more.

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