(0948)(1009)

 

Maybe don’t specialise too early, all else being equal

I’m in an interesting position vis-a-vis this. My father was a near master of all trades, could build, fit, wire, landscape homes, my mother was a nurse. My state school was an enlightened one … we were taught all sorts … even the boys were taught knitting, crochet, cooking, as well as woodworking and in our spare time, we learnt the 3 Rs and played football and cricket. Plus hand to hand fighting, natch.

I was a classic case in secondary, given an in, via my mother’s contacts, into a “public school” I’ll not name, which then opened doors into tertiary institutions and employment. The education, if anything, broadened until Form 5 (Year 10), at which point we had to specialise … my error being taking the wrong subjects in the next three years, inc. university but it sure broadened my horizons.

Classwise, I’m multiclass in some ways, feeling just as much at home in a drones club or in a pub with lads and lasses. The downside of course is that one can’t get away with it for long … no demographics you run with ever fully accept you.

Once, after I’d built a fence and shed, my father went over it with a keen eye for fault finding and was silent … being a Yorkshireman, any form of praise would stick in his craw of course, plus he wasn’t outlaying that money in school fees for me to become a builder.

Looking at things today in the light of the article above, I still maintain a kid should have the broadest education possible. If his skills set then makes him a builder or in my case for awhile a screenprinter, then so be it. If a savvy business brain, so be it. If a teacher, so be it. An accountant? Well, I’ll pass on that one.

Only thing I’d say again is don’t specialise too early.

 

(0645)(0649)

 

Official lies about Australia

(0455)(0637)

 

5. Vat-pocrisy

4. Watch out for cousins

3. Steve at 1204

• Former Democrat Jillian Michaels: ‘Biggest Political Problem in America Isn’t Extremism. It’s Cowardice.”
• Psychotherapist Confirms TDS is Real and Exploding — Patients Can’t Sleep, Travel, or Function Normal
• In Stunning Development, President Trump Withdraws His Support and Endorsement of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Announces Bill to Completely Eliminate H-1B Program
• Over Hundred Russian Drones And Hypersonic Missiles Hit [The] Ukraine Overnight
• RFK Jr. orders CDC to investigate potential health risks of offshore wind farms
• IEA report admits commitment to climate change is melting away
• Much more.

2. TDS today … you know where the url is

1. DAD at 1204

a) On November 5 I reported on a ramming jihad incident on the Île d’Oléron, an island just off the west coast of France. The suspect in the attack is Jean Guillot, a recent convert to Islam….

b) Shamelessness of the Maire of Paris. Anne Hidalgo benefits from an exemption and bypasses the Paris Council’s control to travel in business class: since the beginning of 2020, 79 trips at a cost of nearly 220,000 euros….

c) US billionaire Elon Musk exposed the core of the European Union’s democratic-deficit debate with a single comment under Ursula von der Leyen’s X post, delivering an embarrassing jab at the Commission president.

d) Just as at the BBC, France Inter lost nearly half a million listeners in one year.

(1610)

 

17. Mike Benz on Rogan

“Mike Benz just dropped a wild bombshell on Joe Rogan’s podcast. During the Obama years, USAID pushed $1.2 BILLION through Cayman Island accounts, pretending it was “aid for Pakistan”… …but the cash actually funded ZunZuneo — a Cuban Twitter-clone built to spark rent-a-riots and topple governments around the world.”

16. Heroine

15. Don’t forget China and Swalwell

14. Yes Sophie

13. Steve and war room

• Christina Bobb: What They’re Trying To Do Is Throw Sand In The Gears Of The Trump Administration To Make Sure It Doesn’t Actually Fulfill Its Mandates
• Christina Bobb On Her New Book ‘Defiant: Inside the Mar-a-Lago Raid and the Left’s Ongoing Lawfare’
• Jack Posobiec And Benny Johnson To Pass Out 3,000 Charlie Kirk ‘Freedom’ T-Shirts Ahead Of UFC 322 Tomorrow In NYC
• Spanish nationalist Gonzalo Martìn warns “legal migration is the most dangerous form of migration”

12. In the light of the Fri/Sat storm

… this was posted yesterday morning:

11. Over at OoL

https://orphansofliberty.blogspot.com/2025/11/who-exactly-caused-these-two-things-to.html

 

Now there’s a reason for this episode, apart from taking us up to the evening posts which I hope to be up to. January 26th, 1969:

Review:

“The suave Simon Templar has encounters with two gorgeous blonde sisters, who make idealistic statements about death.

The Saint tracks down the ladies to a large remote country house, which is owned by a rich entrepreneur named Keith Longman (Clifford Evans). The ladies, Vanessa (Veronica Carlson) and Stella (Jayne Sofiano) are Longman’s daughters.

After he infiltrates Longman’s home, the Saint finds out from the man himself that he is experimenting with cryogenics. Longman has a bad heart, and he is determined to freeze himself into suspended animation until years later, when he assumes that heart transplants operations will improve. Longman’s freezing process has never been tested on humans–and he believes that the Saint will be the perfect subject.

When I first saw this episode I thought I was watching the Avengers, as it’s the kind of story Steed and Co would be involved in, but I guess it was an experiment, or even an ode to the Avengers; whichever it is, it’s an intriguing episode that borders heavily on horror/sci-fi.

The director is Freddie Francis who, of course, done countless hammer films, and here he keeps things watchable, but it is Joyce Sofiano as the eccentric daughter of the equally eccentric Longman who steals the scene.”

From Wiki:

“The Avengers is a British espionage television series that aired from 7 January 1961 to 21 April 1969. It initially focused on David Keel (Ian Hendry), aided by John Steed (Patrick Macnee). Ian Hendry left after the first series; Steed then became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants. His most famous assistants were intelligent, stylish, and assertive women: Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), Emma Peel (Diana Rigg), and Tara King (Linda Thorson). Dresses and suits for the series were made by Pierre Cardin.”

From me:

“I wonder if Hendry of The Avengers was cry-oed by Macnee. Also, I quite liked the insanity of the two females in this … in keeping with most of the girls I’ve known, though the ones I knew had better dress sense. Thank goodness all the ladies I know today are sane … the insane forming the wokerati, no?”

 

“Somewhere in the Night is directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz who also co- adapts the screenplay with Howard Dimsdale from a story by Marvin Browsky. It stars John Hodiak, Nancy Guild, Lloyd Nolan, Richard Conte, Josephine Hutchinson and Fritz Kortner. Music is by David Buttolph and cinematography by Norbert Brodine. 

George Taylor (Hodiak) returns from the war suffering from amnesia and trying to track down his identity by following a trail started by a mysterious man named Larry Cravat. Pretty soon George finds himself thrust into a murder mystery where nothing is ever as it seems. 

The amnesia sufferer is not in short supply in film noir, neither is the returning from the war veteran, but Somewhere in the Night may just be one of the most under appreciated to use these central themes. Amongst film noir writers it has a very mixed reputation, yet the trajectory it follows is quintessential film noir stuff. 

George Taylor (Hodiak assured and rightly playing it as low-key confusion) is very much at the mercy of others, thus he finds himself wandering blindly into a labyrinthine murder mystery. His journey will see him get a beating (no matter he is one tough boy), pulled from one suspicious location to the next and introduce him to dames, a stoic copper, a shifty fortune teller and a “too good to be true?” club owner.

The screenplay is deliberately convoluted, making paying attention essential, and the script blends tongue in cheek nonchalance with spicy oral stings. 

The locations Taylor visits are suitably atmospheric, even macabre at times, which allows Mankiewicz and Brodine (Boomerang/Kiss of Death) to open up some noir visuals. Dr. Oracles’s Crystal Ball parlour really kicks things off, fronted by Anzelmo (Kortner deliciously shady), it’s a room adorned by face masks on the walls and lit eerily by the glow of a crystal ball.

Then there’s Lambeth Sanitorium, with low-lit corridors, many doors that hide mentally troubled patients and the shadow inducing stairs. And finally the docks, with dark corners down by the lapping silver water, a solitary bar at the front, smoky and barely rising above dive status. These all form atmospheric backdrops to enhance the suspicion and confusion of the protagonist. 

Nancy Guild (apparently pronounced as Guyled) didn’t have much of a career, and much of the criticism for the acting in the film landed at her door, but unfairly so. It’s true that she’s more friendly side-kick than sultry femme fatale, but she has a good delivery style that compliments the doubling up with Hodiak. She’s pretty as well, a sort of Bacall/Tierney cross that’s most appealing.

Elsewhere Conte and Nolan offer up the expected enjoyable noirish performances while a host of noir icons flit in and out of the story, making it fun to see who will pop up next? There are undeniably daft coincidences and credulity stretching moments within the plotting, and in true Mankiewicz style the film is often very talky, but it’s never dull and quite often surprising, even having a trick up its sleeve in the finale.”

(1058) Coming up to elevenses folks, back in bed, about to snooze, quite a few jobs done all the same, spirits not bad (single malt, cognac), pleasantly shocked by the energy account balance, shall post this, then crash for a short while. (1146)

 

10. Moosh corner

9. It’s car attacks on the indigenous time again

8. This item some days old now

… just clearing the backlog …

7. Two nice articles imho at The Daily Sceptic (url in blogrolls)

First is this one DAD covers at 1203:

Second involves confessions of a former Beeb man:

“The BBC has always been very Left-wing. But it didn’t used to be biased.

I should know because I was one of those identikit Left-wingers who worked at the BBC for 25 years. Everyone thought the same: Thatcher was mad, the poll tax was evil, immigration was a good thing, the rich should be taxed and nuclear weapons were immoral. These liberal-Left attitudes were shared by the vast majority of the people I worked with in the British Broadcasting Corporation. With a few exceptions.

I remember a quiet young man called Robbie Gibb who appeared in the BBC’s Millbank complex in Westminster in the 1990s when I was presenting BBC political programmes there. He was a Tory, so I was informed, as if he had some affliction which was unfortunate but which should be respected and not mocked.

And on the whole he was respected.”

6. Andy

History doesn’t always repeat itself but often rhymes. Regime change needs a reason in the minds of the proles, in the past it has been either sponsoring terrorists or weapons of mass destruction. This time it’s narco terrorists. I am coming to the conclusion that Mr Prez is not all that he seems to be or is very poorly advised, maybe even compromised.

 

Glad he’s had his tech issues sorted, inc. sound:

(0915) That was a tough night … not just the damage to the roof and the downpour inside but I was having heart recurrence which is always the sign to shut up shop. It was still bad by Saturday [1] externally, wild wind, window blown out and flood inside, so with seven tubs deployed, it was crash time … and here I am now, tubs and old teatowels washed and drying. Abode itself warm enough. Carpet washed and drying.

IYE you can read in situ lower right in sidebar … link here. (0945)

 

5. Justin

I was watching a sort-of-ok interview with Kathryn Porter at DailySceptic, when I was asked a question by a family member. It turned out the answer was in this, for my money better interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgHbCqzQGkc.

TL;DR: KP is an extremely well informed energy expert. Knows how leccy and gas work, at a market/economy level. The 2nd is well worth 90 minutes of your time. Tea and a biccie and learn stuff.

JH: I’m thinking … and don’t quote me on it … but Steve also covered this lady … either way, worth a look.

4. Steve at 1203

• Meet Michigan’s Dead Voters: Several Voted “In-Person,” Others Voted “Absentee” — One Voted 41 Years After He Died
• Is Texas About to Fall to Islam? JH: Under Abbott … yes.
• [Anti]Pope Leo Embraces Transgenderism
• Trump Announces He Will Order Pam Bondi to Investigate … JH: Sounds like a Bondi promise
• Trump DHS Launches Nationwide Operation to Locate Hundreds of Thousands of Migrant Children That the Biden-Harris Regime ‘Lost’
• Explosive Night: Russia and [The] Ukraine Exchange Massive Strikes
• Kiev’s Darkest Day; Zelensky Begs More Missiles After Huge Russian Kiev Strike
• Former MAHA director warns that COVID-19 vaccine issues are intentionally hidden, as RFK Jr. is manoeuvred into compliance … JH: This is the one I ran at OoL and in Sat 1 here
• BBC doesn’t only have a global audience, it also heads the Trusted News Initiative, a global coalition of media to tackle “disinformation”
• Much more.

3. Rolf in Now and Next on the trainwreck PMQs

HERE … excerpt here:

“Despite its Net Zero zaniness Labour is losing voters to the Green Party, the “limes” who are eco-green outside and Pally-green inside – its leader “Zack Polanski” named “calling out the genocide in Gaza” as one of his missions and within a week of taking over got Conference to label Israel “apartheid.” Sir Keir’s paltering over “Palestine” has not stemmed the outflow which has split like the four rivers leaving the Garden of Eden: Greens, Lib Dems, Reform and militant Islamists.”

2. DAD at 1203

a) Ambarès-et-Lagrave (33): Two mosques installed in silence… and the rumor of a third is fueling tensions against the Socialist mayor, Nordine Guendez….

b) Paris: A Sudanese illegal migrant arrested for desecrating the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A 23-year-old man … born in El Fasher, Sudan….

c) Lies, damn lies and statistics… Bar graph of the intention to vote in the Presidential elections in 2027: do you believe this….