Doñe Sophia, Queen of Spain

Word has it that Sophia, Queen of Spain and sister to the exiled King of Greece, has been advised not to go to London to join the British royal family in celebrating Elizabeth II’s sixty years on the throne of Great Britain. The reasons given are political. The essential word has nine letters – Gibraltar.

Here we see a badly mixed cocktail; three parts of royal connection (and very old friendship), plus one part of squabble do not gel into an acceptable and creamy mix. Queen Sophia is Greek, descended from the Danish royal family as well as Queen Victoria. The King of Spain’s grandmother was English. When a group of radically-inclined colonels threw their crowned King Constantine out of his own palace and confiscated his possessions (not very many, but Mother Frederika had left something) the young man and his family went immediately to London, where they have been domiciled to all intents and purposes every since. Doña Sophia is and always has been very close to her exiled brother.

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Montenegro: beauty and independence

On May 16, 2012, in EU History, Today, World History, by Dean Swift

Almost unequalled beauty

This place of almost unequalled beauty used to be the smallest of the constituent republics of the former Yugoslavia. It borders on Serbia in the north/east, Abania to the south, and Bosnia-Herzegovina to the north/west. There is a long coastline, one of its chief contributions to aesthetic pleasure, lying on the Adriatic.

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George Byng, Ist Viscount Torrington, the lucky father

George Byng, Viscount Torrington was born in 1663. After school education he headed straight for the Royal Navy to make his name as a sailor. Having a nose for politics, he made himself agreeable to William of Orange (q.v.) and quickly became an Admiral.

   George Byng’s most prominent successes as a sailor took place during the Wars of the Spanish Succession (q.v.), especially in 1718 at Cape Passaro, where the fleet he commanded managed the extraordinary feat of sinking an entire enemy squadron which had had the intention of making a landfall in Sicily prior to an invasion.

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Indignant crowds at the Puerto del Sol, Madrid

We see on the daily news programmes that ‘Los Indignados’ have returned to the Puerta del Sol and the Plaza de Cataluña in Spain, and various other municipal hot points in Europe, to celebrate an anniversary. It was in May last year that European city-dwellers learned to put up with their plazas and places filled to saturation with the young and the old, of every sex, of every class, of every profession, setting up camp, breaking out the same tired old political cant on badly spelled, cheaply printed placards. These are the ‘Indignants’.

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One of the Chittys and the Count

The suave inventor of James Bond had already suffered a heart attack at the age of 52 when he began writing about a magic motor car with rather a long name. His son Caspar was 8, and dearly loved tales about myth, pretence and mechanical objects. Fleming went to a seaside hotel to recover and write for his son. He remembered a certain Count Sborowski who used to race an auto with an impossibly long bonnet called ‘Chitty’ at Brooklands.

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Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister

Many students are accustomed to using the terms Prime Minister and The Cabinet and even The Cabinet Rooms in their studies and essays, but do not know much more about what these words represent. The term prime minister was first used when it was invented for the first of them, Sir Robert Walpole. He became PM in 1762.

   The phrase did not start as much more than a term of abuse. Cartoonists in the eighteenth century loved it, and got a lot of cynical humour out of it. The position was officially called First Lord of the Treasury, and the British had to wait until 1905 for the term ‘prime minister’ to be used on a Royal Warrant. Funnily enough, it was first employed in the Chequers Estate Act, by which a rich man donated his mansion and its park to the nation, with the nice idea that prime ministers could relax in the country during weekends, not at all a bad idea when you realise that Number 10, Downing Street is little more than a small town house with just enough room to swing a cat. It is quite likely that Chequers has seen more important politicking than Downing Street, as many PMs have preferred to do their world-shaking manoevering in the comfortable and more private atmosphere of an English country house.

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Going Olympic: countries that might

On May 9, 2012, in Today, World History, by Dean Swift

Barcelona's original way with the Olympic flame

Very shortly you will watch the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games. Each country competing in the Games sends its athletes into the grand arena wearing blazers and waving national flags. As is customary, the hugest nations have the hugest number of athletes, while the smallest can only offer a few. It is all up to the economy, size of territory and population and whether or not young people have been fed enough good food to become athletic and not suffer from rickets and malnutrition. The countries are listed alphabetically; the first number shows the size of territory in square kilometres, the second figure shows it in square miles. Bet you haven’t heard of some of these countries; many change their name periodically (and nonsensically), or you don’t know where they are. So I am telling you. Best wishes, especially if YOU are one of the athletes who might . . .

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Comédie-Française: the French Elections

On May 7, 2012, in World History, by Dean Swift

Hollande - 'Mon Dieu, I won!'

Today Monday I see that Monsieur Hollande has won the French presidential elections by 51-49%. How very French. M. Hollande claims to be a Socialist, though he is an intelligent man, and knows that socialism as such was most necessary in the nineteenth century, but redundant after the two world wars. By then the world had invented a solid middle class, obviating the need for socialism. Politicians calling themselves ‘socialist’ after 1945 were after ‘political appeal’ and ‘social resonance’ and useful ‘soundbite’, though they were middle (or upper) class themselves and had never met a single member of the so-called ‘lower-classes’ in their lives, with the violent exception of the trenches There have been prime examples in France before (Mitterand for one) and in Britain we have had our Clement Attlee (educated Winchester) Tony Blair, and our Harold Wilson creatures, none in the least interested in the welfare or well-being of the ‘lower classes’, the second a privileged prefect educated at Scotland’s ‘Eton’ (Fettes) and the third an Oxbridge don.

   M. Hollande is best known for having a beautiful mistress (nothing wrong with that, he is French after all). A decent ineffectual man, he has never achieved anything but public humiliation. The beautiful mistress with whom he had four illegitimate children was Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist party’s presidential candidate, who informed the world that her partner was ineffectual and indecisive. Another loving colleague has said that Hollande unfortunately lacks backbone.

   This is Hollande, whom the French people following Europe’s beloved tradition, have just elected as their President.

Sarkozy: 'Mon Dieu, I lost!'

 By doing so they have removed M. Sarkozy, a loud-mouthed fellow who thought that ordering the instant shooting of a maniac might win him the election. M. Sarkozy is not a Conservative, just as M.Hollande is not a Socialist. But the French people think that M. Hollande is a socialist, and just as night follows day they have voted socialist. It is the same in Spain: when señor Rajoy has put things more or less right, after four years of draconic,  rigid but necessary reforms, when Spanish people are able once again to get a job, spend four hours over Sunday lunch in an expensive restaurant, educate their children privately, buy a third home etc. . . they too will vote Socialist again, because it is the right thing to do. Spanish people are socialist right into their bones, because of centuries of dreadful treatment of them by privileged persons who should have known better. Ask any Spaniard or Frenchman or woman to define Socialism. They will reply that they vote socialist because their parents and grandparents said that they should.

   The Spanish people, and the French people much more recently, have voted for a political group that has never, in any civilized or uncivilized country, succeeded. That is a recorded historical fact. But it is not Socialism’s fault. The basic tenets and philosophies of real Socialism are excellent and unsurpassed. But no ‘Socialist’ government has ever been socialist. All such governments are and were managed by clever clogs who choose the right icon, in this case The Closed Fist. ‘Socialist’ ministers could not give a tinker’s cuss for the working classes.

   Monsieur Hollande has won by 51 to 49 percent. But has France won? Very soon we will see.

 

Canada in orthographic projection

This is the second largest country in the world, and yet there is little mention of her in the media. Unless one of Canada’s great cities holds an Olympic Games, as did Montreal, you never hear about Canada. The same situation abounds with the two great islands of New Zealand. The reason for this lack of newsworthyness is probably that Canada (and New Zealand) are very well governed, exceedingly rich, and both are willing members of the Commonwealth of Nations.

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Though more people travel regularly by air than ever before; while international airports spring up at vast cost though not required (Spain has recently built two particularly pungent examples of this kind of wastage – the new airports at Ciudad Real and on the island of La Gomera – both airports entertaining virtually no air traffic at all); although air travel is considered probably rightly as the safest form of travel; though London/New York (6000 miles) can be achieved effortlessly (it’s the aircraft I’m talking about, not the passengers) in not much more than 6½  hours . . . why the Devil does air travel have to be so uncomfortable, so inefficient (at the airports), so people-unfriendly, so disgustingly unhygienic, so time-wasting (at the airports), so unpredictable, and above all so DISHONEST?

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