Author Archives: James Higham

IYE Thursday Theatre

 

Review by one James Waltz:

It’s the film debut of Norman Maine #2 (James Mason), and he’s absolutely phenomenal as a reporter on a newspaper waiting around for his big break, and told by others that you don’t waste time waiting around. A veteran reporter, content with just having a job, shows Mason his prize possession: an umbrella marking 15 years of service, and no glory to show for it.

Breaks happen in the business when least expected, and Mason gets it immediately after thanks to a bank robbery which leads to the death of a cop, and along with fellow novice Virginia Cherrill hunts down his own variation of the story which leads to a twist that involves murder. Boss Alastair Sim gives him cynical encouragement, and the break scores for Mason in a surprising manner.

The break really wouldn’t happen until Mason passed through the quota quickie phase, became a matinee idol in Gainsborough melodramas, and finally hit enough pay dirt through working both in Hollywood and British cinema, and no sad Norman Maine style ending. Quick editing of people reacting to the initial story and responding to knocks on their door gives a glimpse into British culture of the 30s. The creakiness doesn’t get in the way of this being a better than expected film.

Thursday [4 to 10]

(0930) Morning all … if HQ seems tardy at times, apart from lurgy and visitors, it’s probably because I’m somewhere else in our online-land inflicting posts and comments on the unsuspecting, such thoughts which do come back here eventually. (1304)

 

10. Moosh corner


9. Who funds the bstds?


8. Housekeeping at UHC-WP

Just spent an hour and a half trying to work out how WP now does page breaks. It’s one thing discovering it … it’s another applying it, with new obstacles set in the path of each of the nourishing unherdables sites.

Glad to say it’s now done back to before last Christmas, plus a latest posts widget. Between that and posts grouped by patron … what’s left to do next time is a widget with posts grouped by theme … but for now, the site is far more navigable.

With NOWP, unless you note which reader drop number it was at the time, it’s near unnavigable. For example, if I want recovered N.O. posts, I need to have noted that it was around the time of the 18th blog birthday … so archives in the sidebar also helps here.

7. Via Julia


6. Gamergate


5. Over at UHC-WP

4. Delightful Croydon

…London at its finest, as with every major western city now.

Thursday [1 to 3]

(0545)(0812)

 

3. Dontcha juss luv a good rant

Northern Variant on X, on Brummieland HERE:

It’s a shithole. Almost every white British adult recognises it as such. An increasingly dangerous, dirty slum. There are only three groups of people who describe urban slums as vibrant and diverse…

Foreigners, young people and politicians. Foreigners like it regardless because it’s better than whatever shithole they came from, politicians praise it because they could never admit they turned it into a shithole, and young people, students especially enjoy the adventure, the convenience and the nightlife where they can test their mettle.

I certainly enjoyed Leeds in my younger days, and latterly inner city Bristol. But everyone grows out of it eventually. People start to need familiarity, safety, predictability and kinship. That’s why almost everyone moves away from “vibrant” areas when they can.

But then you get perpetual student types like Alice Roberts who never grow up. It’s the liberal Peter Pan syndrome. As we’ve seen from other commentary from her in recent weeks, she peaked intellectually in 2008, and it was not a high peak. She remains, at heart, a wide-eyed lefty teenager, which is almost endearing, but not now she’s knocking on into her fifties.

Our cities are filled with these types. Bristol and Brighton especially. Kidults who don’t really follow politics to any level of sophistication, whose opinions are calibrated for maximum social convenience among other braindead urbanites. They effortlessly drift from one fad to another, be it climate, gender or Palestine.

The Palestine cause is especially valuable social currency to them because it gives them a way to demonstrate to their exotic Uber driver that, though they’re whiter than AC Grayling hair, they’re a true ally to brown people.

Seeing as she’s done quite well for herself, Ms Roberts is largely insulated from the worst aspects of diversity even if she chooses to live among it. The last fifteen years of rapid demographic change hasn’t registered with her, and because she’s programmed to see urban squalor as “vibrant”, she lacks the language to call it what it is.

Deep down, though, she knows it’s a dangerous shithole and will still take all the necessary precautions when going out with her girl pals – but to remain on “the right side of history” she has to pretend the grooming gangs, the knife crime, the organised crime is all just part of the rich fabric of vibrant and diverse modern Britain. Since none of it affects her directly, or is likely to intrude on her life, it’s just the backdrop the exciting simulation she lives in.

As far as she’s concerned as a wealthy urbanite, “diversity” is largely consequence free. What you can be assured of, though, is when it starts to get hairy, Ms Roberts will be the first to cash in her chips and move to a nice leafy white suburb (if she hasn’t already), where she doesn’t have to set eyes on the piles of rotting refuse or see any brown faces.

She’ll never have to wonder if her daughter is being preyed upon by Moslem perverts, and she won’t be worried about her personal safety. When she says Birmingham is “vibrant, diverse and wonderful”, she means… from a distance.

2. An Xer posted this

“The leftist caught encouraging attacks on ICE agents, challenging Trump supporters to physical fights, and threatening tribunals against the current administration is, in fact, a convicted felon who is now a radical left-wing activist online. Meet Jason T. Brooks, a man who was sentenced to 32 years in prison for running a $10 million Ponzi scheme out of Colorado. He ended up serving only 10 years — just enough time to get out and rebrand himself as a leftist digital warrior.”

There’s a post including it at OoL:

https://orphansofliberty.blogspot.com/2025/10/in-plain-sight-in-film.html

1. DAD at 1170

a) The crisis of French politics continues. There has been so much ‘kicking things into the long grass’ that there is not much more room left.The outgoing Prime Minister presented his conclusions to the Head of State. The situation allows Emmanuel Macron to appoint a Prime Minister “within the next 48 hours.”

b) The collapse of the Lecornu government in the French National Assembly, the fourth government to fail in the last year, raises disturbing resonances of the parliamentary chaos of the previous four French republics.

c) The French Republic is lunar and morbid. While more than 250,000 human babies were legally massacred last year under the abortion law….

d) European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has expressed clear frustration with democratic processes that she believes are obstructing her efforts to introduce a central bank digital currency.

MMutR

(1714) All right, so what happened was I tried to put the archive William and it would not … four times. Had a techie here, he went and looked … server not responding, the film archive server. Uh huh. Found this one above, hope it was all right.

Wednesday [11 to 14]

(1114) Not sure for how much longer this morning, things hotting up. (1125)

 

14. Girls cannot be defeated


13. A bit too much swearing by everyone

… thank you very much … we’re genteel at the tavern.


12. I know that sort of gal


11. Rolf at Now and Next

… on alleged climate criminal Mann, plus some goodies. HERE

In 2012 an American climatologist called Michael E Mann instituted a lawsuit against the conservative writer and broadcaster Mark Steyn and ‘rightwing’ blogger (sic Wikipedia) Rand Simberg for defaming him. Mann had allegedly misrepresented climate data to warn of a “hockey stick” leap in atmospheric temperature; the supposed abuse of the truth was compared to the abuse of a child.

Isilme and the harvest

 

… to match the harvest moon two nights ago.

The harvest is coming in thick and fast. We have another very large courgette. It had become detached from the plant and my Beloved found it making its way across the lawn. I shall be stuffing it with chilli con carne with cheese on top. Yum.

I brought in the last of the tomatoes a couple of weeks ago.

Tomato harvest

They were all green, though some have turned red now. I shall set some aside to eat now and the rest I shall bottle. We had a better harvest than I expected. On the way to check the tomatoes, I discovered that we have some late strawberries. Sadly, all but one had been eaten by the woodlice. Beloved and I had the good one between us. 

We haven’t had much time to take full advantage of the lovely raspberries that are still going strong. However, if the rain will let up for a moment I might dash out and get some.

Raspberries

We’ve had stormy weather here just lately, with quite strong winds. I have been amazed that the apples have still remained on the trees! The yew berries from a tree up the street are thickly over the road, but our apples are making us work to get hold of them! We have SO many apples. We took a large bag each to the local cafes, who were over the moon to receive them. And that’s just the cooking apples. The pippin is also overflowing and we must bring those in next time we have a free moment – and a bit of dry weather.

Pippins

We also had a few beans. To be honest, the amount is pitiful. We didn’t plant as many as we normally do, but even so our result was very small. Definitely not enough to see us through the winter!! It’s our own fault. We didn’t collect them in when we should. We did eat a lot of them when we had visitors earlier in the year, but then we got caught up in volunteering for a local charity shop and all our good intentions for the garden went out the window. Or something like that. 

A few beans

We have decided to make apple butter with some of the apples, once I get a moment. Beloved may make cider vinegar which he normally makes with the Bramleys and wants to try with the eating apples this year. We thought about making “Jersey black butter” but the recipe we found had such a huge weight of apples that I doubt we have a pan big enough. So ordinary apple butter it will be (though I suspect they are very similar!) because I don’t need to process the whole apple tree at once!

Late strawberries

Wednesday [4 to 10]

(0830) Here’s the cunning plan, dear reader … post noon is out for much of the afternoon, post 1000 now is deliveries and preparations, not least the Isilme report, which will be the last post until evening.

 

10. Moosh corner


9. 🍿🍿🍿


8. They’re everywhere, they’re everywhere


7. Noted all around the west


6. Would have been fun

… for solitary fishermen.


5. The sort of woman spoken of is a danger to western society


4. Kamikaze loons need stopping