In the Second World War much has been said about how unprepared the UK was and how much they didn’t want to fight. As a country this may well be true but then we look at men like Mitchell who went to the fixed wing competitions every year, kept and eye on what the Nazis…
Month: July 2025
European university Institute
‘While many non-Islamic countries in Asia, Latin America, Eastern and Southern Europe, as well as some in sub-Saharan Africa have made important progress, most Islamic countries have stagnated or even moved in a reverse direction. That this divergence has taken shape in the last fifty years indicates that its causes are not intrinsic to the…
It is amazing
That journalists of the New York times can be lead to run a front page with a copped photograph that is not what it purports to be. In fact quite the opposite. Just as it is amazing that the BBC – the international jewel in Britain’s crowns – can run an entire documentary which turns…
Film Acting
Movies are a strange world for actors. You can find there some of the most famous stars were only ever themselves – no matter the part they never changed their mannerisms, their voice or the delivery. Cary Grant a case in point. Some can act in their early movies and then become so iconic for…
The Oddest Thing
People make choices about they believe. Faced with opposing ‘facts’ they opt for one said by someone of their own tribe or they choose the one that most closely follows their existing belief. This isn’t about lying or even lying to oneself. It is about the complete lack of any attempt at objective thinking because…
Meadows
So now we are being told that London will have Barcelona weather in 2050 and we should look to having different plants species in our gardens if we want healthy gardens that don’t wither and die. The British tradition of individual gardens has always been fun to see but people are sheep and all do…
Changing Facts
I always wondered how two people can view the same set of facts and draw different conclusions. At college I learned that you can discern other facts from those presented and some people look deeper. And that process can be brilliant but mostly people view facts from their own perspective. A perspective learned in childhood…
Breadmaking
Breadmaking is an art and I am not sure the Panasonic bread maker qualifies me as a baker just yet. I tried sourdough. making the starter the traditional way was easy but the loaf though it did rise, is split and a bit heavy. However you don’t get anywhere without trying and experimenting so rye…
The Old World
I recently posted a poem by my mother, Shänne Sands, to an ezine. The poem, I am a Collector of Useless Things, is a beautiful rendering on what you go through when you move and have to pack and unpack your entire life. All the memories that flood back, sad and happy, all the mementos…
Genocide
In December 1948 the UN and her agencies and later many countries in their own legal frameworks, adopted a definition of genocide. They did this in the face of WW2 in which 50 million people died. They did not define the entire war as a genocide or the mass murders of 20, million Slavs, or…