(0759) morning all! Looking sunny out there, diffuse, wispy cloud in a way. (0839)
11. While IYE has the DJT assass-attempt covered at 807:7
… and I added but one Natalie Winters comment to a few items in the roundup in 10, my thoughts have been on the Ruairidh MGB piece reworked and revisited … as a dedicated ragtop little roadster fan forever, now probably settle on the MX 5, a neat little machine, two things keep coming through quite powerfully to me:
*Just how much a small, convertible roadster really means to lifestyle, to civic life, to the simple enjoyment of life and I point to my “crazy” decision to visit the Cairngorms in midwinter in that car during a cold snap … just how great the renovated ragtop was in that biting wind, just how well the heater had worked.
*Just how bafflingly bad British management was … and is even today … just how bad the political class are … really the pits, the dregs of society.
These thoughts kept coming through as I watched Ruairidh on the whole Healey, MG, BMC, Leyland debacle, esp. that last noncomp of a boss … why on earth can Britain not get actual managers instead of graduates of the up themselves managerial class?
On the other hand, even if the MGB (I was always Healey oriented, not MG) had continued as the MX5 does … incremental tweaks with succeeding models, improvements in suspension and handling, modest engine improvements … would it have survived the total change to society?
This hit me more, say, than the person who largely stayed here through the Blair years, give or take a holiday abroad. I departed a quirky, immediately pre-Blair Britain … and came back to sheer hell … exacerbated by having to go through London itself, which was now no longer the London of a dozen years earlier and now, a dozen years after that in 2024 … now a cesspit, something from a dystopian film.
a) French Prime Minister Michel Barnier has a higher approval rating than President Emmanuel Macron as he works to form a new government, according to a poll by Ipsos.
b) Is the Rassemblement National the New French Kingmaker? The final objective must remain the departure of Emmanuel Macron.
c) The gag on ‘Climate Reporting’ is another French obscenity. A few days prior to the [Olympic] Games, French authorities fined the country’s second most popular news channel 20,000€ for challenging the popular narrative about a purported climate crisis.
4. The reflection of every one of these motifs already
… in film, TV, novels, should be noted by all … I mean, they’re putting it all out there for you, should you care to just notice. There are four major threats and have been for some time:
*Agency or state hits
The Parallax View puts it succinctly … also Three Days of the Condor, Manchurian Candidate, Quantum of Solace … Diamonds are Forever puts the moon hoax, should it be so, Die Another Day puts Icelandic Star Wars.
*Leftist/anarchist groups
Take your pick of films … Die Hard etc.
*The new invaders
Machete world … no one’s yet dared make films of it.
Buying everything up, controlling ports, Fang Fang, Murdoch’s chick etc. any films yet?
Mulholland’s great achievement came when Southern California needed him the most. He is LA’s first water king, the man who brought much-needed Sierra snowmelt to the city by completing the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Finished in 1913, the 233-mile-long aqueduct runs from the Owens Valley in eastern California to the San Fernando Valley and on to countless homes and businesses. Because of Los Angeles’ semiarid Mediterranean climate, Mulholland’s massive public works project enabled dramatic population growth, which in turn fueled the explosive development of the motion picture industry — and LA’s many grass-covered properties.
2. Classic case of my comments here
I appreciated AKH’s and Dearieme’s jazz comments and wanted to get to them quickly … I did not want them to have slipped off the sidebar list already, which would have happened had I replied to that and other people visiting.
Therefore, if regulars know that any response of mine would be in-post unless I have added info to impart … it’s the second best option.
As for the history of the Baehrs name … interesting. Profound, eh?
1. A first look around at what’s what
a. IYE and shots fired at Mar-a-lago
Both the report and Laura Loomer are at 807. To my mind, if Them wanted, they could take out not just DJT but anyone else and the same in reverse … agency heads, inc. Schultz, Blair, Gates. It can be done by dedicated teams … question is … who’s dedicated to which goal?
b. Andy having a second look at Moseley and Enoch at 807
(1618) Including two jazz numbers if I can find two good ones we’ve not had dozens of times.
15. Housekeeping
We were doing security things earlier at HQ and its dash, which meant that in the last hour, the site was down and up, down and up. It’s up again now for me … should be for you too, if you’re still about.
Now, it’s going to have to be looked into again but not for “a few days” according to our techie. I’ll warn you when it’s going to be.
Just reiterating the order of sites for putting up warning/explanatory notes … the rank order of sites is HQ, NOWP, UHC, Jstack, OoL (I’ll try to keep OoL out of it).
So, let’s say it was HQ down (most likely) … notices would go up at NOWP, then UHC (just two, no more). Let’s say it was UHC down … notices would go up at HQ and NOWP … it will always be the first two in the ranking list. Thus, this notice is here and now I’ll post it at NOWP only.
14. Rolf on school fees
The average fees of a British boarding school are £37,000 a year. Adding twenty per cent VAT brings that up to £44,400.
In Portugal the cost would be about 30,000 euro = under £26,000. Children can attend established ‘international schools’ to learn in their own language.
As an ex-prep-school-headmaster, with boarding, I can only concur with this idea, as long as Woke values or EU communism were not being taught.
13. This directly relates to Dearieme, IYE
… and all who comment at this new site. At Blgr, I wrote the script for sidebar “latest comments”, which meant I could stop mine from showing and cluttering up the sidebar. At NOWP, UHC and here, even though HQ here is “indy”, I can’t stop my comments from appearing in the sidebar and so I’m loathe to comment under posts … this plug-in only allows five comments total at a time.
Which leaves me with the thorny question of how to show chaps and chapesses that I saw, read and would like to respond, as AKH does at his site. This way here … commenting as a post item, is one way.
*The first is diversity … worst thing possible for any society, as has been shown time and time again, no exceptions.
*The second is tolerance of wrongdoing, e.g. trying to tear down a traditional culture, hating the people of that land.
One would think that that was apparent to any sane citizen but it seems not.
9. Class 86
8. Kathy Gyngell (TCW … heavily abridged)
a. No, it didn’t come as a surprise me that an independent investigation found the BBC to have breached its rules on impartiality, accuracy, editorial values and public interest more than 1,500 times over the four-month period following the October 7 outrage. Despite identifying 11 cases where it said the BBC Arabic’s coverage had featured reporters who’d previously made public statements in support of terrorism and specifically Hamas, without viewers being informed, the BBC’s response predictably once again was denial.
b. It’s Farage’s sense of justice that the people are listening to and want to hear. Such as that Starmer should deport the 10,000 foreign nationals in our prisons instead of releasing 1,700 dangerous criminals.
From Parliament to GB News to the pages of the Telegraph, the true leader of conservatives in the country didn’t let up. That the public were failed by the official silence over the Southport atrocity is his latest spot-on indictment of Starmer. Again, he is the only political leader to make this point. But the MSM will not give him a fair hearing any more than they will Trump in the US. The left’s vigilantes are always after him.
7. TPA (no url)
For months we’ve been shouting to anyone and everyone we’ve met about the dire state of the national finances, specifically the monstrous levels of debt we’ve accrued as a country – and no doubt some of you might be tired of reading about it.
First up, the House of Lords economic affairs committee published a report which raised a “big red flag” about the state of the finances. Chairman of the committee, Lord Bridges, said: “This report highlights a grim reality: our national debt risks developing on an unsustainable path. This has not received the attention it deserves.” You can say that again.
Just on that second item about the perpetually offended:
3. DAD returns
a) Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) are willing to give France’s new Prime Minister Michel Barnier a chance, an MEP for the party has said.
b) ….but on the left…..
The new government in France is already besieged as leaders of far-left parties are refusing to meet with Prime Minister Michel Barnier
c) A school of political science founded in Lyon by Marion Maréchal MEP has been vandalised by Antifa-style militants
d) Macron’s answer to urban rioting fall flat on its face.
“Unachieved” social diversity objectives, a “forced increase”, a generalization that raises “disciplinary difficulties” … In a report released this Friday, the ‘Wise Men’ of Rue Cambon take stock of the system desired by Emmanuel Macron.
e) Who governs Italy: the Government or the Courts?
Matteo Salvini, Minister of the Interior in a previous government, who has returned to power, faces up to 15 years in prison for “kidnapping” 147 migrants, including minors.
JH: Where do we start?
2. Helen of Troy keeps reappearing
… every few decades, centuries … Guinevere for example … but far from being Semiramises, Jezebels, Cleopatras, Messalinas … bad women … these ones have all the wanted characteristics of the sex, along with all the foibles, plus their size and shape wreck defences while that innocent surprise at the types they attract is not feigned … they’re delighted but then it all goes sour.
Because 90% of females, from the pretty to the unattractive, all want the top 10% alpha males … this has been a known-known for a long time, for eons, it’s the nature of the beast … and almost all of those alpha males are narcissists with glib tongues who, Tiger Woods like, can make a gal feel “special” … they’re players. Combine that in a male with really sick traits and there’s a recipe for disaster … he or she … she in this case … falls into a ring of fire and there’s no escape from the anguish.
The worst handicap Anne Reburn could have is to still look that way at 31 and I bet her mother still looks as if she’s in her 30s … it’s an ever-youthful type with a girlish voice … avoid like the plague I’m afraid. Not because she’s bad … she’s not … coquettish maybe … but that type causes wars, sinks ships, starts fires. In the final analysis … innocently or at least no better nor worse than any normal female.
She goes to Spain as a student, meets a mega-youtuber on the train, with entourage and boy band looks … night follows day, no?
She not only believes she’s super special to him but his talk of polyamory is not what she’s in it for. So she tells all … every bit about the creep … online … across every platform, inc. youtube:
Also, he’s “an avowed atheist”. Silly girl. Or maybe naive … an innocent abroad. Where’s her mother?
1. Springfield, Haiti, the Ukraine and the wider crime
First thing to strike me this pre-dawn was that Ian J’s item 805:5 on IAP was quite up to date at the point it was posted and thankee kindly but things moved on rapidly … Biden simply told Starmer no.
Ian J:
I should have added this para:
“There is a conversation happening in Washington DC alright, but Biden isn’t even in the room and Starmer is just taking notes with sweat running down his platinum-ringed spectacles. He’ll be up all night practising the speech he’ll be obliged to make next week in the House of Commons.”
Different speech now that Biden was in the room.
For a start, how could the walking cadaver do that? Is he still the Evil One or is his Controller in the room or at the end of the phone, directing policy? CFR? If so, what’s this entire Harris show? Also, it keeps coming back to Svali’s comment in 2000 that the Russians were never the enemy, they were just the other side in the endless wars. Ike nailed much of it with the MIC comment at his farewell but we know now this is also about trafficking, deep paedo, deep rendition and one of the hubs is the Ukraine. Why does it keep attracting Holodomors and the like, that sad place? Chernobyl?
Moving on, IYE has, at 805:6:
“Iran plans to deport two million Afghan migrants within six months, as stated by national police head Ahmad-Reza Radan.
The police have begun aggressively detaining Afghans and sending them back to Taliban-controlled areas…”
They all know … every player in the international game knows precisely what these worst elements in the world are like. Ditto in Haiti:
The thing which got me right from the start was that every “man about town”, apart from the police, servants, Chinaman and niece, looked roughly the same, was dressed the same, had the same moustache and wore a hat the same way.
I realise it was central to the plot but was confusing in the darker black and white colouring of 1933. Interesting year, 1933, the start proper of the Depression.
A review:
”In the 1920s and 1930s Philo Vance became a household name with publication of the wildly popular S.S. Van Dine (alias for Willard Huntington Wright) novels featuring the patrician amateur detective.
Though Kennel is one of the better Philo Vance novels, this adaptation of the eponymous book represents the rare case where a film is better than the original story (which would not film well if precisely represented on screen because of (1) the psychological issues which would be hard to depict, and (2) the novel’s culminating violent scene, which the film modifies).
The genius in taking one of the lesser of the canonical Philo Vance novels and making it into a classic is, of course, Michael Curtiz’s direction; Curtiz being an exceptionally talented director who has, perhaps, the misfortune of being eclipsed by the fame of his films (e.g., Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, and The Adventures of Robin Hood) because of lack of a distinctive style.
This film is also a successful example of an early talkie: the sound is fairly good except in some scenes where the boom is obviously too far away, and in one shot (between Robert Barrat and Helen Vinson) we actually see the microphone! Some of the actors are clearly still making the silent-to-sound transition, but the performances are uniformly good.
The key scene stealer is Etienne Giradot, who plays the Coroner, Dr. Doremus. Indeed, his performance is so endearing he reprised the role in other Philo Vance films.
While it becomes fairly easy to guess the culprit, the film doesn’t suffer for this because of the excellent direction, good sets and wardrobe (check out Mary Astor’s chic outfits!), and fine performances. (Though primarily loved for his work as Nick Charles in the Thin Man films, William Powell gives one of the best (and most subtle) performances of his career in Kennel.)
Besides its status as a Hollywood classic, Kennel is an outstanding example of successful story adaptation and early sound film-making. (One can also see some noir hints later fulfilled in Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce.) Highly recommended.”
