I read the news today oh boy! Page 2,049

D-Day

The celebrations have been a bit a bit paltry so far as this site is concerned if I may be so bold.

My uncle Charlie (1916-2003) who was my godfather and my surrogate granddad because my actual grandfather died in 1939 and I never met him was 5 foot 6, thin, very mouthy and a joker in a Sarf London way. He was on those beaches putting down the communication lines and then having to drag them up again to remove traces so he was among the last out. He did his duty, He only stayed alive because he got into the local village, found a bike against the wall, immediately nicked it and rapidly rode away.

I am not sure how much time went by between that moment and what happened next. Certainly he wasn't told he could put his feet up and retire for the rest of his life. Instead, they stuck him in with the group who had to free Belsen with all of the dead and the emaciated in there. Anyone who is a holocaust denier should be shot literally.

He never told me any of this because he rarely spoke about it all. Instead, he stayed living in a grotty rented house off the Walworth Road, trapped until the age of 65. Low income. A maintenance man for the Church Commissioners who he thought were crooks. He also believed that the Tories. Labour and the Lib Dems were equally rubbish so in that respect he was well ahead of his time .

He wasn't right about everything. Just before he retired to his idea of heaven - Norfolk where he enjoyed his allotment and tipping softer relatives out of boats while fishing just for a laugh - we fell out. He had a bit of a dubious generational angle on black immigration which I found difficult and I was never keen on the way he pinged birds off his washing line. But all the time he was in London he had a great love of the countryside and was especially keen to ensure that children in the free world were happy so he would drive any one of us regularly out to greenery.

There are a lot of photos of him and me aged about six or eight rowing together and hiking and walking up and down Mount Snowdon which I did with consummate ease when also being afraid of walking from the kitchen to the lounge in my house. That influence meant that my tendency to retreat to my blanket all of a quiver was counterbalanced by entirely incompatible leaps towards wild adventure pursuits like kayaking and gliding.

This wasn't the only area in which he thankfully did my head in. I developed an utter disdain for the white collared when I was one myself thereby ensuring I never got promoted and an aspiration to be crap at writing which I am delighted to say I have finally manage to achieve. Did you see Theresa May today? Pure poetry. Really beautiful. Sorry, I really love that woman. She is not at all a cold fish as unkind people say and could have been brilliant for this country in different circumstances. Support the Millwall indeed.

I was there and in the front row:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4edwbmjLokY

My father inlaw was an RAF pilot during the war.
He flew Stirling bombers. You don't hear much about those planes.
They were nicknamed the flying coffin.

His job on D Day was to drop supplies for the troops as they advanced.
And drop bombs on enemy positions.
He said he never got the plane back once without half of it missing.

He later dropped supplies for the French resistance and there is a museum in the South of France that honours him and the raf for their efforts.
He wore a caliper on his left leg for the rest of his life after being hunted by German fighter planes and shot many times. His leg bones were shattered and he told me his sheepskin boots stopped him from bleeding to death.
He was gravely injured but managed to fly his crew back to England and land on the cliffs of Dover before passing out.
He was awarded the CGM(raf) medal and it was presented to him (still on crutches) by the king at Buckingham palace.

Quote: Stephen Goodlad @ 6th June 2019, 11:20 PM

My father inlaw was an RAF pilot during the war.
He flew Stirling bombers. You don't hear much about those planes.
They were nicknamed the flying coffin.

His job on D Day was to drop supplies for the troops as they advanced.
And drop bombs on enemy positions.
He said he never got the plane back once without half of it missing.

He later dropped supplies for the French resistance and there is a museum in the South of France that honours him and the raf for their efforts.
He wore a caliper on his left leg for the rest of his life after being hunted by German fighter planes and shot many times. His leg bones were shattered and he told me his sheepskin boots stopped him from bleeding to death.
He was gravely injured but managed to fly his crew back to England and land on the cliffs of Dover before passing out.
He was awarded the CGM(raf) medal and it was presented to him (still on crutches) by the king at Buckingham palace.

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Excellent - I enjoyed that - thank you.

D-Day was followed by a six month campaign. What a lot of people don't know is that there was a greater chance of being killed there in that period than being killed in the trenches of WW1. Which is staggering.

I regularly moan about LBC on this site - it's one of my favourite petty hobbies - and that twat Iain Dale is not immune from this but he and they were brilliant today on D-Day and did radio proud. Thank you Iain.

Quote: Stephen Goodlad @ 6th June 2019, 11:20 PM

My father inlaw was an RAF pilot during the war.
He flew Stirling bombers. You don't hear much about those planes.
They were nicknamed the flying coffin.

His job on D Day was to drop supplies for the troops as they advanced.
And drop bombs on enemy positions.
He said he never got the plane back once without half of it missing.

He later dropped supplies for the French resistance and there is a museum in the South of France that honours him and the raf for their efforts.
He wore a caliper on his left leg for the rest of his life after being hunted by German fighter planes and shot many times. His leg bones were shattered and he told me his sheepskin boots stopped him from bleeding to death.
He was gravely injured but managed to fly his crew back to England and land on the cliffs of Dover before passing out.
He was awarded the CGM(raf) medal and it was presented to him (still on crutches) by the king at Buckingham palace.

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Don't want to take anything away from the army, but I do feel the Air Force and the Navy have been a bit neglected. My father served on MTBs throughout the war, but never spoke aboug it, except when he was at home dying of cancer, we heard him having nightmares about German planes flying over him. How I wish he could have told me about his experiences.

Quote: A Horseradish @ 28th May 2019, 2:22 PM

On Mick Monkhouse's point,

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It's a weird one. I've been accused of sexism when all I do is point out the reality. What I object to is that people (men AND women) wanna have their cack and eat it: they wanna act like animals but reserve the right to be offended when you tell them. If a female gives 2-Euro blow jobs to minors outside a church I can call her a 'slapper' without being considered a misogynist - just as she can call me a 'strikingly unattractive, sad lonely pathetic, humourless stylelss soulless, bespectacled balding overweight, socially inept icompetent impotent, foul-mouthed, cynical, geeky nerdy turdy, moaning-groaning-griping-whingeing-whining, fashion-unconscious, stinky-armpitty, alcoholic total and utter f**king wanker who never achieved anything except a degree in Latin, LATIN ffs, even I think it's about as useful as a Razzle at a feminist convention, an infantile pitiable obsession with officially the most overpaid undertalented girl group ever that went out of fashion 20 years ago and even then they were f**king shit and called the Spice Girls, and let's not forget only one friend and that's only on Facebook and it's next door's Labrador and it's only using you for food and still won't shag you' without being considered a man-hater. I believe in the equality of the sexes, and I also believe that respect is something you have to earn, but these days that's not enuff.
Years ago I used to go to a stand-up night and there was this ''''comedienne'''' who was ALWAYS ripping men to shreds - exes, dates, sextings etc. I can take a joke as well as anyone, but this was getting venomous and morbid, and with all due respect, she was hardly a dreamboat herself. In the middle of her 890687544th 'men are all shit' rants, my mate shouted, 'Looked in the mirror lately, Megan F**king Fox?' The room went silent and he was banned for being 'disrespectful'. Sexual equality, eh?

Quote: Michael Monkhouse @ 7th June 2019, 9:30 AM

It's a weird one. I've been accused of sexism when all I do is point out the reality. What I object to is that people (men AND women) wanna have their cack and eat it: they wanna act like animals but reserve the right to be offended when you tell them. If a female gives 2-Euro blow jobs to minors outside a church I can call her a 'slapper' without being considered a misogynist - just as she can call me a 'strikingly unattractive, sad lonely pathetic, humourless stylelss soulless, bespectacled balding overweight, socially inept icompetent impotent, foul-mouthed, cynical, geeky nerdy turdy, moaning-groaning-griping-whingeing-whining, fashion-unconscious, stinky-armpitty, alcoholic total and utter f**king wanker who never achieved anything except a degree in Latin, LATIN ffs, even I think it's about as useful as a Razzle at a feminist convention, an infantile pitiable obsession with officially the most overpaid undertalented girl group ever that went out of fashion 20 years ago and even then they were f**king shit and called the Spice Girls, and let's not forget only one friend and that's only on Facebook and it's next door's Labrador and it's only using you for food and still won't shag you' without being considered a man-hater. I believe in the equality of the sexes, and I also believe that respect is something you have to earn, but these days that's not enuff.
Years ago I used to go to a stand-up night and there was this ''''comedienne'''' who was ALWAYS ripping men to shreds - exes, dates, sextings etc. I can take a joke as well as anyone, but this was getting venomous and morbid, and with all due respect, she was hardly a dreamboat herself. In the middle of her 890687544th 'men are all shit' rants, my mate shouted, 'Looked in the mirror lately, Megan F**king Fox?' The room went silent and he was banned for being 'disrespectful'. Sexual equality, eh?

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It took a few days but when it arrived it is more than worth the wait. You have to say what you really think in this world.

I couldn't wear a "this is what a feminist looks like" t-shirt because I couldn't wear a "this is what a menininst looks like" t-shirt.

Just as blokes with tattoos all over their neck and legs say to me "he will look stupidly powerless with those on his personage as soon as he is on his death bed", women who drive black people carriers say "she wants to kill me on the school run and her vehicle is my funeral car".

There was a time when I could support female fringe antics like burning bras and women playing tennis but when it went across to all of the fairer sex kickboxing and burning underpants I couldn't come on board.

You knew where you were in the old days. Skinheads were geezers whose boyhoods had gone so seriously wrong that they only ever wanted to be adult psychopaths. Now that they have all buggered off to Bulgaria and Poland, it's the female equivalent of that - wearing hair in a tight bun while jogging and being dressed bust-to-toe in pink - that is the best indicator of "knife alley, the street all good people will want to avoid at all cost".

I see the World Health Organisation today has decided that single men and women of whatever persuasion are disabled if they haven't got a partner and should be given the opportunity for IVF. This has already brought the feminist and gay lobbies out in force, bleating that it is absolutely ridiculous.

The reason is obvious. For the past 40 years, they have enjoyed being able to say that heterosexual men are no longer needed. With this, the boot is firmly on the other foot. And all that "I will walk off with your money if you don't give me sex I can consent to but only when I feel like it" flies completely out of the window. Their bits become as irrelevant as in truth they always were along with their egos.

It's too late for me to have children but we were all put on this planet for a reason. Mine is simply to write to very well known people in powerful positions on a daily basis making them see themselves as three year olds and signing my letters "yours sincerely and with all due fatherly respect, God".

Quote: A Horseradish @ 7th June 2019, 10:36 AM

heterosexual men are no longer needed.

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Speak for yourself.

Quote: Michael Monkhouse @ 7th June 2019, 9:30 AM

It's a weird one. I've been accused of sexism when all I do is point out the reality.

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Your view of reality. Which in some cases is different to actual reality.

With regard to various comments above about women stand-up comedians, there's something about centuries of oppression (based on gender, ethnicity or religion) that can bring out the comedy in people.

The strange thing is that, although it brings out stellar-quality comedy in historically-oppressed North American people, what it brings out in their British counterparts is the realisation that there is money to be made and fame to be achieved by standing behind a microphone and trying to be funny because, no matter how bad you are at the job, there are very few British stand-up comedians in your particular historically-oppressed category that are any better than you are.

Labour have held the Peterborough seat.

I think that as more people voted against Labour than for them that we should have a new vote.

According to the Guardian, two local Labour Muslim councillors said that they believed the Muslim vote swung it to a Labour victory. One of the two said that a relative of his was a politician in Kashmir who was well known to many in the Kashmiri Peterborough population and flew in especially on 31 May to give a big boost to the Labour campaign.

I checked it out so far as I could. He seems on Facebook to be as he says, political in Kashmir, with a team of supporters. But the same name which is not especially the Kashmiri equivalent to John Smith also crops up for someone living in Peterborough who runs an East Anglian dairy. It is difficult to ascertain whether these two people are in fact one person.

Everyone's getting all smug and clever-little-me over Trump's Wales gaffe, but as always, the joke's on you. 'Cos -a- the fact you're surprised means you had faith in him in the first place, and -b- you are now acting as Trump's unpaid publicists. No publicity is bad publicity. 'Yerse, one expected so much more from Donnie...'

The Wales thing could have been purposeful. Trump has a habit of indirectly putting those around him down to elevate his position. As Michael pointed out he's a great self publisher. I also wonder if walking in front of the Queen or all the awkward hand shakes where part of the same. Interestingly Merkle seems to be Trump's kryptonite. She was also Time Magazine's person of the year and lauded as the leader of the free world, just as Trump's predecessor was.

The 60th murder victim of the year in London has just been announced.

Knife-murders are at an all-time high in Britain and yet stop-and-search procedures have plummeted over the last 10 years because lefty liberals feel it's not appropriate to search people just because a copper has a feeling the search might produce something of interest.

The police are hamstrung by left-wing politicians and, even when they do manage to arrest somebody carrying a knife, judges are putting these people right back out onto the streets.

Perhaps we need a dictator to take over this country and sort it out - good and proper?

I mean, civil liberties are a wonderful thing but they won't be much use when we're all lying dead in the gutter, will they?

It's a dreadful situation from a moral perspective but, looked at from a purely practical standpoint, it seems that a large proportion of knife and gun murders in our cities are gang-related and so it might be thought a good idea for the police and the law-abiding public to sit back and let these people dispose of themselves without interference.

Makes sense when you think about it.

And . . . relax!