John (Milton) Howard - Prime Minister Of Paradise Lost

One of the things that has most upset me in the time I have lived here in Germany, is the way in which my home country of Australia has changed in the eyes of the world, forever. I was always happy to go forth into the world and state my nationality with pride and the certain knowledge that we, Australians, were the most eclectic mix of race, religion and politics on the face of the planet. We were a nation built on the cultural foundation of every other nationality on the planet. We have never shown reluctance to accept the ways of others, no matter their background, until the spin doctors in Canberra started the fear and loathing propaganda. A campaign which to my mind was responsible for setting off the race riots in Bondi.

The world was welcome to share our land and our lives once upon a time.

Since my departure from Australia I have watched in mute anger and desperation as dentention camps sprung up in the deserts, people being detained without chance of reprieve for years on end. I have watched in disbelief as an anti-terrorism bill, which was defeated in the British parliament due to infringements of the Human Rights Act, was swept in to law in Australia. Our constitution had never needed or required a Human Rights Act before yet the failure to instigate one has enabled the Howard government to push this bill into law virtually without opposition. A large smoke screen was also thrown up at the time of its instigation by making sweeping reforms in the Industrial Relations laws that dramatically affected every working Australian.

Did it ever occur to you Mr Howard, the type of legacy that you leave behind you for your children's children? I think not. Paradise lost! Paranoia found!

I came across the excerpt below recently and felt it really said just so much about our current political and social direction in recent times. I will let you the reader draw your own conclusions.


“What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider…the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think…for people who did not want to think anyway, gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about…and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crisis’ and so fascinated…by the machinations of the ‘national enemies’, without and within, that wehad no time to thinkabout these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us…

“Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted’, that unless one understood that the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’…must one day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer sees the corn growing…Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

“You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone…you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble’. But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.

“That’s the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.

“You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father…could never have imagined.”

From Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (University of Chicago Press, 1955)

What It Means To Be British

One of the British national daily newspapers is asking readers
"What it means to be British?". Some of the emails are hilarious,. This is one from a chap in Switzerland ...

Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for
a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a
Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch
American shows on a Japanese TV and when they are overseas, in trying to be popular, they pretend to be Irish.
And the most British thing of all?
Suspicion of anything foreign.

Good Wine And Cheese Don’t Go Together?

Oh my god, it’s the end of the world as I know it! All is lost! My senses are numb with shock and my lips tremble in despair. My darkest hour is upon me as it would seem that one of favourite past times is under assult by the boffins.

The New Scientist Magazine recently reported the following findings:

Don’t waste good wine if you are eating cheese. The magazine shows the wine buff’s favourite accompaniment masks the complex flavours of wine.

Researchers at the department of viticulture and oenology at the University of California asked a team of wine tatsters to evaluate cheap and expensive versions of four different red wines.

After cheese, the wines were judged to taste flatter, with pinot noir, shiraz and cabernet sauvignon all deemed to have lost flavour.

The scientists believe proteins in cheese might bind to flavour compounds in wineand make them harder to taste. "


Hmmmmmm!

Cheese has presented many dilemmas in its time even to leaders of the free world:

“How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese? “
--Charles De Gaulle

Personally I think the wine has little choice in my world but to continue to suffer, as nothing in this world gives me more happiness than a big chunk of Rocquefort or Mimolette washed down with a glass of vintage 1997 Barolo or 2000 Margaux. I’ll drink to that!

Wine all Wine!

You must be very patient to reap the rewards of aged wine. Use anything and everything you must to avoid drinking it too soon. I've had 6 trips to the Betty Ford clinic whilst waiting.

Cellar 1

Banal Humour

Some more banal humour for your inevitable titillation:

· I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my Grandfather. Not kicking and screaming like the passengers in his car.

· Two atoms are walking down the road. One turns to the other and says, "I think I've lost a neutron". There other one says, "Are you sure?" He feels himself up and down and says, "Yes, I'm positive."

· A priest, a rabbi and a vicar walk into a bar The barman says, "Is this some kind of joke?"

· Two hungry goats are walking around Hollywood when one of them finds a discarded reel of film and gobbles it up. The other goat asks: 'What was it like?' to which his mate replies: 'Not bad. Not as good as the book.'

· What do you get if you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter?
· Pumpkin Pi

· My grandmother started walking 5 miles a day when she was 60. She is now 97 and we don't know where she is.

· "Hey," says one musician to another, "who was that piccolo I saw you out with last night?" "That was no piccolo," he replied, "that was my fife."