Where Worlds Collide

Now up at Silflay Hraka! Bigger and better than ever!

The BBC have been running a series called Great Britons, with the aim of choosing the greatest Briton of all time. The original 100 names, chosen by 30,000 of the great British public, had some bizarre choices and some noteable omissions. There were far too many flavour-of-the-month celebrities like Robbie Williams, David Beckham, and, for Cthulhu’s sake, Boy George(!), which goes to show the shallowness of a lot of people’s educations. (Yes I know Andrew Ian Dodge thought Aleister Crowley, possibly the wierdest choice, was a valid inclusion, which perhaps explains why some people think he’s ‘creepy’!)

The BBC whittled this down to a shortlist of 10, each of whom were given a program in which their champion discussed their merits. The ten finalists were:

• Winston Churchill
• Isambad Kingdom Brunel
• Princess Diana
• Isaac Newton
• Charles Darwin
• John Lennon
• William Shakespeare
• Queen Elizabeth I
• Horatio Nelson
• Oliver Cromwell

We’d lost most of the stupid ones, but we still had the Bimbo of Wales, championed by newspaper editor Rosie Boycott. Some people are supposed to have said they would leave the country if she won. Fortunately for the nation’s honour, voters went for Winston Churchill.

After the program my brother-in-law and I speculated as to the 10 greatest of other nations, in the same spirit as the 10 Brits (including some Diana-alikes) - these are some of the suggestions we came up with.

America

• George Washington
• Abraham Lincoln
• Henry Ford
• Walt Disney
• Marilyn Monroe (taking the Diana spot?)
• Elvis Presley (taking the Lennon spot?)

France

• Napoleon
• Charlemagne
• Charles de Gaulle
• Jeanne D’Arc

Italy

• Julius Caesar
• Leonardo de Vinci
• Verdi
• Michaelangelo
• Machiavelli

Germany

• Martin Luther
• Albert Einstein
• J S Bach

American, French, Italian or German readers are invited to complete their country’s lists, and/or throw out any of our suggestions you feel insulting or stupid. If you come from another country entirely you will have to come up with all ten on your own, and I invite you to do so.

Next Microsoft Windows release to be “most irritating ever”. And you didn’t like that stupid animated paper clip? You ain’t seen nothing yet! (Link from la Blogatrice)

It’s not easy being a liberal in these times. Tolerance of other cultures is not a popular concept when there are fanatics out there that have declared war on us. Recent events like the riots in Nigeria over Miss World have lead a lot of bloggers to demonise Islam as a whole with an attitude that smells strongly of racism. I’ve criticised Bigwig of Silflay Hraka for this rant, which I felt crossed the line - that sort of talk gives the green light to the racist troglodytes to come crawling out from the rocks under which they’d been hiding.

On the other hand, it’s impossible to pretend that there’s nothing wrong with large parts of the Islamic world. Body and Soul has posted a lot of food for thought recently, including this.

I read an interview some time back with Kanan Makiya, a professor of Middle East studies at Brandeis and an Iraqi dissident, who said that part of the problem with Islam in much of the Arab world today is that Arab intellectuals abandoned it — and that left religion in the hands of imbeciles. I think there’s something to that. (I also think we’ve got a similar problem in this country — although obviously on a much smaller scale — with the decline of the old mainstream churches and the growth of both dumbed down smiley face religion — the kind you find in a lot of popular religious books — and, well, the imbeciles and thugs, Falwell and worse.)

What’s not so clear is what we should do about it. I’m not at all convinced at the warblogger’s arguments - that we should go in with all guns blazing to make the Arab world safe for western consumerism, and do to Islam what we did to the Aztecs. Nor am I convinced that half-a-dozen different regional conflicts are really part of one big war. On the other hand, to do nothing to defend ourselves against the fanatics isn’t an option.

The trouble with having more than one passionate interest that you have great difficulties deciding what to do when the Warley Model Railway Exhibition, Dragonmeet, and London Classic Rock Festival featuring Uriah Heep are all on the same weekend. I ‘m beginning to wonder if the powers-that-be are doing this on purpose..

A weekend away from blogging! I’ve been in sunny Southend, attending the Shoeburyness MRC exhibition and staying with my sister and family in Southend. First time I’ve seen my nephew and niece’s newly-acquired pet guinea pigs - takes me back a few years to when I was their age, and had a large colony of the creatures. Note to Michele - Guinea pigs are much cuter than hamsters, and aren’t into wife-beating or infanticide.

The Shoeburyness show, held that the Cliffs Pavilion at Leigh-on-Sea is one of the smaller shows, but quite high-quality. Although it pains me to say so, two of the best layouts were American, the HO-scale “Pueblo Falls” and the convoluted N-scale “Bethany Wells”, both based on the Union Pacific, which seems to be the US railroad most favoured by British modellers. Good British layouts included the very simple but effective “Ascott-under-Wychwood”, just three points in a 20-foot length representing the Cotswold village station in the early 1980s, and the highly-detailed “Walker Marine”, a small shunting layout set in the mid-1960s with diesel power on the main line and an assortment of steam locomotives on the industrial sidings.

My nephew is now compiling a long list of train-set wants for Christmas…

Julia notices that she doesn’t have very many of Pitchfork.com’s Top 100 Albums of the 80s.

My CD collection of several hundred albums contains precisely two out of that hundred, King Crimson’s “Discipline”, and the eponymously-titled debut by The Stone Roses. That so-called top 100 list is dominated by the dreary alternative/indie bands that trendy music journalists have always drooled over. None of the unfashionable stuff I liked - no room for anything by Marillion, or for Blue Öyster Cult’s magnificent “Imaginos”. Bah!

I feel obliged to quote this from The Road To Surfdom.

As to Americans lacking irony: well, what could be more ironic than a nation that prides itself on its rugged individualism, its frontier spirit, its can-do resourcefulness and its tolerance of diversity, and that is also the place where every olive on every supermarket shelf is already pitted, where every movie has a happy ending, where hamburgers are produced with communist comformity, and where Paul Wellstone was considered a radical lefty?

You can read the whole article here

Samizdata.net tells use just which British special forces in particular the Merkins need for their invasion of Iraq.

The BBC have now caught up with the woes of Virgin Voyagers, proving that it’s not just us rail anoraks that find “Operation Princess” deeply flawed.

Hugh Dady recalls a typical day in the West of England on the SWRG mailing list

Waiting on platform 5 at Exeter this morning I was comforted to see the monitors were showing FGW’s 0657 service to London as on time while all around the 0712, 0740 and 0812 from a certain other company had the blue line treatment on the indicator (i.e. cancelled). Life is full of little surprises and at that rather unsociable time of the day I had to rub my eyes as 47815 came into view actually 1 minute down at this stage. For those that don’t know, the 0555 Ply - Pdn is an all stations job and since it is timed for an HST it presents quite a challenge to one of Brush’s finest. ‘Abertawe Landore’ put in a commendable performance arriving at platform 2 at Pdn a tad over 5 min late, which considering the train is timed to take 25 min Reading - Pdn alone , I though wasn’t a bad performance. The ecs was taken out by 47813 for the record.

Overrunning business meant that I missed the Golden Hind and was saddled with the 1833 ex-Pdn for my return, not a favourite train as it is another all stations job. The stock was late arriving presumably as they were trying to step up an HST rather than rely on a loco formation again, but an HST finally arrived in platform 9 and we set off some 7 min late. Now at this stage you might wonder how I am going to get Virgin into a trip from Dawlish to Pdn by FGW! Well it goes like this. We had just about pulled back all of the 7 min late start by the time that we drew up at Westbury, when I was startled by a Voyager which scuttled by on the adjacent line. Now Voyagers don’t belong at Westbury do they? What was it doing - to Eastleigh for maintenance perhaps - that was my first though anyway. After 5 min delay we were on our way again with the booked stop at Castle Carry and an unscheduled stop west of Cogload. After a few min. I went to the end of the coach , looked out and beyond our signal were the tail lights of a Voyager. Soon it moved but we didn’t. Eventually we got a green, drew into Taunton where sitting in the island platform were 221108 leading 220006 both apparently collapsed. Passengers were being urged to get off the Voyagers and cross under the subway to join our train. Eventually about 100 very weary looking passengers did so and the debrief of some of them was interesting. For a start the units that had passed us at Westbury were these two! It looks as if the first Voyager coming south to Bristol had suffered brake problems through much of its journey. When it got to Bristol it would apparently only go in one direction and that wasn’t west. It looks as if the service behind it coupled up (both were apparently full and standing at this stage - presumably about 1730/1800 at Bristol so right in the middle of the rush hour) but they could only move in an easterly direction so they were sent via Bath and the Limpley Stoke. The whole lot ground to a halt outside Taunton according to the passengers - they then managed to get into the station where all the lights went out and the units shut down.

We left at 2054 as they were splitting the Voyagers having powered up 221108 again. Very comprehensive announcements were made by FGW on our service to the VT passengers joining us and I was glad to note that the train manager did use the word ‘passengers’. A coach would be laid on at Plymouth for those pass. for Liskeard and Bodmin etc. The news for passengers wanting Truro Redruth Cambourne and Penzance was not however to good as they were hoping to provide a rail service leaving Plymouth at 2305.

While waiting at Exeter for my connection to Dawlish the announcements confirmed that most VT services from the north were either one, one and a half hours late or just cancelled. 220031 came in smartly behind us at 2125, I think forming a service from Darlington but it was hard to tell and it was followed by 221108 (empty from Taunton) which went into platform 5 and within three mins set off back north with no passengers which all seemed pretty odd. Meantime I left on the 2136 for Paignton formed of 153372/305 and very nice they were too, perhaps a little noisier than a Voyager but at least they work. Passengers on the 2132 to Exmouth were in for an even better treat with a sparkling 158816. Mr Green - when are you going to accept that it isn’t working - FGW might even loan you the odd 47 but surely you have enough of your own and Rivera trains could supply you with the coaches? You gave away the finest diesel train in the world bar none (HST) to other operators - don’t say people didn’t warn you that it would be like this.
H.D.