Jean Mackenzie says:
August 2 2020 at 1:34 pm
Didn’r one of the Leeward Isles (briefly) ask to rejoin? Although possibly not by referendumReply
Richard Murphy says:
August 2 2020 at 4:09 pm
Nit that I am aware ofReply
Jean Mackenzie says:
August 2 2020 at 1:34 pm
Didn’r one of the Leeward Isles (briefly) ask to rejoin? Although possibly not by referendumReply
Richard Murphy says:
August 2 2020 at 4:09 pm
Nit that I am aware ofReply
Not just ignorant. So arrogant he doesn’t take two minutes to check on Wikipedia.
Anguilla wasn’t it? Given independence from Britain as part of St Kitts & Nevis, but decided they’d rather be ruled by the British than by St Kitts. A referendum and a popular uprising I think.
Newfoundland was a colony, became an independent dominion, was taken on as a colony again, and was finally palmed off on Canada.
Compare Captain Tatty’s economic notions with this part of a report on Newfoundland’s financial emergency in the 1930s:
‘The twelve years 1920–1932, during none of which was the budget balanced, were characterized by an outflow of public funds on a scale as ruinous as it was unprecedented, fostered by a continuous stream of willing lenders. A new era of industrial expansion, easy money, and profitable contact with the American continent was looked for and was deemed in part to having arrived. In the prevailing optimism, the resources of the Exchequer were believed to be limitless. The public debt of the island, accumulated over a century, was in twelve years more than doubled; its assets dissipated by improvident administration; the people misled into the acceptance of false standards, and the country sunk in waste and extravagance. The onset of the world depression found the island with no reserves, its primary industry neglected and its credit exhausted. At the first wind of adversity, its elaborate pretensions collapsed like a house of cards. The glowing visions of a new Utopia were dispelled with cruel suddenness by the cold realities of national insolvency, and today a disillusioned and bewildered people, deprived in many parts of the country of all hopes of earning a livelihood, are haunted by the grim spectres of pauperism and starvation.’
It had turned out that there wasn’t a magic money tree.
I love the way some such people used to write, dearieme.
I’ll bet there were no footnotes, either. It’s as if it was written by Elizabeth David’s economist sister.
For aficionados of this kind of thing, there’s a lovely section in Foley’s biography of Otto Skorzeny in which the author recounts overhearing a woman in a restaurant in (I think) Madrid, and it goes something like this (my copy is not to hand), “one could hear from a nearby a table a remark made by a woman of the type which can always be relied upon to say such things …”.
It’s the casual snobbery, the superimposition of personality on scholarly writing, the willingness to exhibit contempt where contempt was felt to be deserved. All expressed with dispatch and vim, and dottles from pipes, etc.
Ah, well. By way of compensation, there’s probably a section on wiki telling me what a numpty I am for fretting about these things.
Ed Lud
That facility in writing style is out of reach of the grasping hands and aspirations of a mere “man of trade”, such as the Ely Potato with his fist-typing and hackneyed prose.
Ed, Andrew Taylor writes novels set in various periods with dialogue sounding almost as authentic as that of George Macdonald Fraser.
BF – As for Capt. P, I imagine that the paucity of ideas and the impoverished language used to express them are related.
m’Lud – potage de numpty *shudder* à la provençale
…and talking of horrid words, isn’t ‘Expunct’ about as ugly a word as ever slunk from the pages of a dictionary?
@TMB
Yes, negative, unpleasant and off-putting word
Like Exhume, Expel, Execute. Expunct sounds like a word to describe pus draining, spot squeezing
Another is Irish girls name ‘Grainne’ [pronounced Grawn-yah], in 2nd place ‘Orlaith’ [Orla] – yuk
TMB
I guessed expunct was a deliberate choice as a sort of homonym for, you know the UK word for blasting out your seed as in he expuncted all over my face. But maybe that’s just me
Thanks, Rowdy.
To my slight surprise, over the last 15 years I’ve become a fan of historical novels.
You know how it starts. A little Allan Massie here, a smidge of Mcdonald Fraser there. Some Wodehouse to cleanse the wotsit. Then, before you know it, Wheatley and Heyer, Georgette of that Ilk, are commanding one’s living room. And stables. Throw in Alistair Maclean to cleanse the sinews, and wotuvugot?
Search me. I’m off to St Pancras for a very modestly priced £45 steak.
I’ll be nicking it from a supermodel’s doggy bag.
News
Priti Patel Appeals Shamima “ISIS” Badun Returning To UK
She denounced her own citizenship when she became a terrorist. UK ruined by the bleeding heart do gooders and ECHR
Boris Johnson is going to loose the next election if he doesn’t stop this and clear out these people from the hotels and send them all back to their own country. Boris, you are looking weak now. This is disgusting. There are enough English people in this country that are homeless without treating these people like royalty
Where’s the “grooming” [rape] gang report Boris?
Mr Lud,
I have, by chance, just got ordered a handful of said books from Amazon to re-read after many years. I hope they’re as good as I remember them.
Pcar August 3, 2020 at 10:25 pm – “Priti Patel Appeals Shamima “ISIS” Badun Returning To UK She denounced her own citizenship when she became a terrorist. UK ruined by the bleeding heart do gooders and ECHR£
Priti Patel has no intention of keeping Begum out. Or if she does, the lawyers that work for her do not. The Establishment want every single Islamist they can find in the UK and on benefits.
Shamima Begum is going to end up in the House of Lords
2Boris Johnson is going to loose the next election if he doesn’t stop this and clear out these people from the hotels and send them all back to their own country. Boris, you are looking weak now. This is disgusting. There are enough English people in this country that are homeless without treating these people like royalty”
Pcar–by my est–7 million or so people are going to hit the Dole Q by Xmas as a result of Johnson’ s hysteria (or his Agenda 21 capers). Blojob wont last to the next election.
“Blojob wont last to the next election.”
I’m not so sure. She Whom I Will Not Name defied gravity for an eternity thanks to Corbyn being the alternative.
About fifty years after everyone else I’ve just started the Master and Commander novels. They rattle along, are decently supplied with jokes and aperçus, and have a texture I find relaxing, being packed with archaic technical jargon that’s over my head. (There you are, a Jack Aubrey level of wit.)
@Ned Lud: the writer was Lord Amulree, a Scot who had practised at the English bar and was eventually raised, a verb we should surely use no longer, to the Lords.
His son, Sholto Mackenzie, specialised in geriatric medicine. He had a way with words too, judging by the title of his book “Adding life to years”.
dearieme said:
“About fifty years after everyone else I’ve just started the Master and Commander novels.”
Splendid; I was just going to suggest those to Mr Lud. Rattling good stories, and he really gets the period feel, particularly the dialogue.