Churchill in "Only No.4" Shame!

Not really;)...:

Winston Churchill has become the first prime minister to enter the album chart with a record marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

Reach For The Skies, by the RAF's Central Band, featuring Churchill's rousing World War II speeches set to music, was a new entry at four.

You can read more about the album here, purchase it here.

And the original version of the man himself, in all his unexpunged glory, is here:

RAF Benevolent Fund

I received this by email:

The RAF Benevolent Fund invites you to say a ‘heartfelt thanks’

The RAF Benevolent Fund is marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain by expressing our appreciation to all members of the RAF family- past and present. We invite you to join us in by adding your own personal message of thanks to those who have served and those who continue to serve.

The ‘Heartfelt Thanks’ is a nationwide campaign;. As well as the online messages of thanks, we will also be gathering ‘Heartfelt Thanks’ messages at airshows and other events across the country throughout the summer. These, together with the online messages, will be presented to veterans on Battle of Britain Sunday, 19th September 2010.

The RAF Benevolent Fund is the Royal Air Force's leading welfare charity. We spend around £21 million each year helping serving and former RAF personnel and their families deal with a range of issues including: childcare, relationship difficulties, injury, disability, financial hardship, illness and bereavement

You can pass on your "heartfelt thanks" here.

70th anniversary of the start of the Blitz

There is remembrance service today at St Paul's Cathedral to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the Blitz. The date of 7 September has been chosen as it is exactly 70 years to the day since Hitler's war offensive switched to non-military targets. The casualty figures, even to read them now, are truly astonishing and horrifying, with not just London but also cities such as Belfast (900 killed in one night), Coventry (400 killed on the first night of bombing) and Merseyside (4000 in total killed) suffering greatly from the Luftwaffe's onslaught.

All the destruction and mayhem didn't achieve Hitler's main objective though, which was to "soften up" the British population and to destroy morale before the planned invasion".

The BBC today has a set of Blitz photos here.

Watch out Gibraltar...here comes Miliband.

Spain's foreign minister has arrived in Gibraltar for talks with his UK counterpart -the first visit by a Spanish minister for 300 years.

Miguel Angel Moratinos and David Miliband will seek greater maritime, financial and judicial co-operation.

The disputed territory has been a great source of tension between the nations since Britain captured it in 1704.

The UK insists it will not hand over Gibraltar against residents' wishes despite Spanish sovereignty claims.

The "UK", in this case, meaning the British Government.

The talks are going ahead despite a new row over Gibraltar's territorial waters.

You can read about that particular row on which the UK government (surprise, surprise) has so far been silent here.
It'll be interesting to see the results of the tripartite meeting today, although I've got to say if I were a Gibraltarian and worried about my territory's interests, then I would be inclined to invest as much trust in Milliband as I would in one of the Rock's apes.

On this day.

Kind of puts all the recent political nonsense into perspective:

Commemorations began with a parachute drop to mark the airborne phase of the Normandy landings

British veterans are taking part in a series of events in France on the eve of the 65th anniversary of D-Day.

Commemorations began with a parachute drop to mark the airborne phase of the Normandy landings that launched the beginning of the end of World War II.

Update
An apt comment from Paul Evans on Twitter:
"Two days after we have blackshirts on every ballot paper in the country: D-Day Remembrance."

Quote of the day

This is my *Britishness*:

The genius of Britain and Britishness is that it is indeed a multi-cultural state. It has been for more than 300 years. This necessarily involves tensions and, from time to time, may indulge certain animosities but there it is. Britishness is a construct and, as such, something that takes time to take root. It is a layered sense of identity that can be as complex and fragile and contradictory as it can be satisfying.

And it is the better and the more valuable for being that. The Idea of Britishness, difficult and sometimes opaque or mysterious as it can seem, matters precisely because it is so amorphous and capacious. It is open to anyone even, no precisely, because we do not make a fuss and dance over it. Nor, happily, do we make a big deal out of it. That's not the British way. But the Idea of Britain and Britishness is a powerful thing and though we do not, being British, fetishise this, it is open to all. As it has been in the past and as it is now and will be, let's hope, in the future. Regardless of race or creed or colour.

Alex Massie (with thanks to Scottish Unionist)

Churchill's and our good fortune

Alastair Campbell reckons that Winston Churchill "may never have made it to the top if he had lived in modern Britain" as he would have been "stigmatised" because of his depression.

Campbell reckons many others suffering from the same condition also would not have been allowed to achieve what they did because of "today's intense media glare and often unforgiving public scrutiny."

Campbell himself has suffered from both depression and alcoholism and he has been brave in being open about that fact; but, still, I think there is a hint of hyprocrisy here:

Given his own aggressive hounding of political opponents of the New Labour project has he not also been guilty of contributing towards this situation of intense and "unforgiving public scrutiny"?
And given his own well-known ruthlessness, can it honestly be said, notwithstanding the nature of his own problems, that he wouldn't have used similar weaknesses in opponents to his and his government's advantage?

A bit more on the Cregagh Saint

Contrary to the impression given in the comments thread to this post, the connection between Ulster and Scotland doesn't begin and end with the Orange Order and the deluded hordes who go across to support the Mould Firm every weekend:

"Colm Cille can be seen as an intermediatery between heaven and earth, between imagination and reality, between inspiration and the word, between the spoken word and publications, between the church and the temporal authority, and between Ireland and Scotland...."

So runs the introduction by Ciaran Carson to the "Amra Choluim Gille" exhibition" at Cregagh Library which I mentioned last week.

St Columba or Columcille is a symbol of the shared heritage of the two islands of Ireland and Britain. He was born in Donegal into the aristocratic Ui Neill (O'Neill, no relation;)) family and died on Iona, off the Scottish coast in 597. "Colum" is the Latin for "dove", "Columcille" means "Dove of the Church" in Irish.

You can read more of his life and legend here.

The exhibition is well worth an hour of your time, although it turned out to be slightly different from what I expected. My own fault- Amra Choluim Gille is translated as "Elegy for Columba" and was written by the famous blind poet Dallan Forgaill shortly after the saint's death and so the exhibition deals with the reaction to that sad event as opposed to what I expected, ie a straight biography of his life. Although personally I struggled to make sense of the concept behind some of the artwork, the original poem, along with its translations, the paintings of Brian Ferran and calligraphy of the Scottish artist Donald Murray work well together as a unit. A bit of pre-exhibition preparation is recommended and to that end, the library have helpfully supplied a couple of reference books- one specifically on the images of the exhibition, the other a more general work on the life of Columba.

What was interesting is that the poem was written during the so-called "Dark Ages", a time of supposed cultural decline in Western Europe. In fact, Columba and the Celtic Church in general, were responsible for keeping the light of civilisation burning in not only Ulster and Scotland, but also NE England (e.g. the monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by Irish born Saint Aidan, who had been sent from the monastery established by Columba in Iona). Secondly, the legacy of Columba is all over both E.Belfast and N.Down: at Moilla in Newtownards he copied a book of psalms belonging to St Finian; Knock Colmcille Church (located in present day Knockbreda) was associated with a cave which the saint was said to have used for contemplation. On a unconnected sidenote, "Knockbreda" was orginally derived from "Cnoc" ("hill") and "breadach" ("broken land")and actually, despite what you might expect, many placenames in E.Belfast have a very close linguistic connection with the original gaelic language; Cregagh-An Chraegaigh ("the rocky place"), Braniel- Broinngheall ("bright breast"), Castlereagh-An Caislean Riabhach ("the castle of the Grey Peter;)).

According to the nice American(female) librarian working there, the exhibition continues until 27th February, although their website states it finished last Friday! It was commissioned by Colmcille, an organisation promoting links with Gaelic Scotland and by the Ultach Trust, a cross-community Irish language organisation. I should also mention in passing that someone looking suspiciously like that well-known, ahhh...polemicist, Brian Feeney was there having a look the afternoon I popped in- I don't think he recognised me....

Columba and the Cregagh connection

I apologise in advance to any overly sensitive souls reading; one or two of your stereotypes may be questioned in this very short post.
Here we go:

Scotland gave Ireland St Patrick, and Ireland gave Scotland St Columba. My hope for the future is that our young people will discover and share this heritage, and I would like to see young people visiting this exhibition.

Dr Paisley speaking at Leabharlann na Creagaí during the opening of this exhibition, which I'll hopefully be visiting and reviewing next week.

The Beeb's Top 10 British Sports Personalities

The BBC's Sports Personality of the Year contender list has been announced:

It contains the Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington, cycling champions Nicole Cooke, Chris Hoy (both of whom deserve credit for the admirable courage they displayed in speaking of their pride in representing Team GB), Rebecca Romero and Bradley Wiggins, sailor Ben Ainslie,400m gold medallist Christine Ohuruogu, Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, boxer Joe Calzaghe and British (and proud of it) tennis number one Andy Murray.

The event will be held at the European City of Culture (I still can't believe it),Liverpool's Echo Arena and the UK public will be able to vote for their Sports Personality by telephone.

In any normal year, I'd say there were at least 6 of the list would be worthy winners and that's surely a sign of how healthy British sport is at the present moment in time. Also, no candidates from the Big 3 of football, rugby and cricket, although Utd must be in the running with the British Olympic posse for the team prize.

I suspect the public will plump for Lewis Hamilton, which is fair enough I suppose, although I'd maintain a large part of his success is down to the competence of his back-up team; Joe Calzaghe would be a worthy winner of the Lifetime Achievement award.

The show will be on 14th December and coverage will also be available on the BBC Sport website, the Red Button and BBC

Another World Champion!

I’ll admit to not being much of a Grand Prix fan, but even so, it was very exciting and great to see Lewis Hamilton delivering two fingers to the Catalunyan (amongst others) racists and capturing this year’s Formula One Title at the weekend.

What Sunday has already taught us.

When the "Welcome Home" march for the Irish soldiers serving in Afghanistan was first agreed to by Belfast Council, I expressed my wholehearted approval and despite the various Republican planned protests and threats of widespread disorder, I stick by that opinion- if you live in a democracy you have a right to expect that decisions democratically reached (in this case by Belfast Council) are respected and their implementation carried out, even in the face of threatened violence- thuggery (or the threat of) should never be the sole determinant of what we are or are not permitted to celebrate/commemorate in our shared open spaces. However, the only additional proviso I would make now in this case is if the soldiers' families, who after all face the risk of (at the very least) verbal abuse and insults for the crime of wanting to publicly welcome their sons, grandsons and brothers home, decided that they would rather not run the gauntlet of Republican hatred and wished the Homecoming to be cancelled, I would fully understand and respect their right to do so.

Apart from that, no, there is a right, as British citizens, to publicly express our gratitude and relief that our soldiers have returned home safely- by doing so, it is not necessarily agreeing to the wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is not trying to press our "Britishness" (whatever that may be) on anyone forced out of their bed on Sunday morning into Belfast city-centre to be publicly offended.

Even before Sunday takes place, there are two, perhaps intentional, side-effects of the planned Republican protests. The first is that the “devolution of policing and justice” has now been been well-and truly buried and I think we can say that the Republican sham of “Unionist Engagement” has also been put to rest. This episode has proved, once and for all, that the political maturity and tolerance required to trust letting the Toytown Parliament parliament take control of our policing system simply does not exist and I suspect post Sunday the final nail will also have been hammered into the Executive's coffin- Sinn Fein, in the eyes of their own electorate will have been let off the inconvenient hook that they've hoisted themselves up onto.

"Unionist Engagement" was an interesting theoretical concept whilst it lasted; it's all very well having cups of tea and scones with semi-detached COI vicars or loyalist terrorists, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of what defines and is important to us as British (not "Unionist", that's only the way we vote) citizens-there is absolutely no compromise whatsoever-the same old "Brits Out" mantra still applies- and the constant campaign to remove everything that is dear to us as British citizens living on the island of Ireland (eg our desire to publicly commemorate those who laid down their lives for our nation in the fight against fascism in WW2) continues unabated. If doubts previously existed, the events of the last few weeks have surely dispelled any illusions, the "war" continues and while we should be "grateful" it no longer involves our fellow citizens being targeted for the crime of being British in the wrong place at the wrong time, the cultural "war", the ultimate aim of which is a narrow, mono-cultural society where the right to be British has been completely removed, is one we, for the sake of future generations, also can not afford to lose.

Anyway, I've set out my opinion and I won't be commenting or posting any further on the subject here, if you’ve got the stomach for the ongoing "debate" (death-threats et al), I suggest you head over to Slugger o'Toole and join in the fun).

PS I shouldn't really have to say this, normal commenting rules apply.

No, she didn't really say that.....

You need to be very careful Nicole, not reading the script and coming out with these kind of sentiments:

I wear my British cycling jersey with pride the colours Red, White and Blue and the Union Jack Flag give me strength knowing that the British population follows sport very closely and is supporting me in my sporting quest for glory.
Thinking during a race that if I win I will hear the British National Anthem at the end as I stand on the winner’s rostrum is a very motivating feeling and I feel so proud each time our Union Jack is raised amongst the flags of the other medallists. Our flag looks the best, it is bold, easily recognisable through out the world and I feel it stands for the history of our country, when Britain was leading the world in exploration, discovery and fighting World Wars for those who could not defend themselves against the evils of this world.

The Nat-Spinners will not be happy; but like Chris Hoy I'm sure you didn't really mean to say you were actually proud to be British...did you?

Quote of the day

On this day, 21st of October 1805, Lord Horatio Nelson was fatally wounded during the Battle of Trafalgar; this was his diary entry on the eve of the battle:

May the Great God, whom I worship, grant to my Country and for the benefit of Europe in general a great and glorious victory; and may no misconduct in anyone tarnish it; and may humanity after Victory be the predominant feature of the British fleet. For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him who made me, and may His blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my Country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen. Amen. Amen.