Today is Walpurgis night, the end of winter. The evil spirits of darkness will be banished as summer comes in tomorrow, Beltane, May 1st.
Today is also the day, 74 years ago, when one particularly evil spirit left this earth.
Adolf Hitler took his own life, as his Third Empire of a Thousand Years crumbled around him after barely a dozen years in existence.
It is one thing going on a spree of military conquest. There are no words to describe the industrialised murder of over 6 million people, purely on account of their faith, creed, provenance or disability. It is them I remember today. Hitler gained the ascendency through circumstances, not of his own making. We should take heed, as similar circumstances exist today.
Tuesday 30 April 2019
Sunday 14 April 2019
Titanic - 107 years on
107 years ago tonight, RMS Titanic met its much publicised doom. 1,500 passengers lost their lives, 700 were saved. If the recommendations of the sinking of the SS Norge, 8 years previous, had been made law, the number of lifeboats on the Titanic would have been sufficient for every man, woman and child on board. Titanic would still have sunk, but the loss of life would possibly have been much lower.
Survivors from the Norge were put ashore in Stornoway a few days after the sinking in June 1904. Nine did not survive the ordeal and lie buried in Sandwick Cemetery, just over a mile from Stornoway. 700 others perished in the sinking of the Norge. Nobody has heard of that tragedy. They were dirt poor migrants, forced out of hearth and home in Russia, Poland and Ukraine by pogroms. Anti-semitic raids on Jewish neighbourhoods. But who cared about them, back in 1904?
The Titanic is one of thousands of ships to have fallen peril to the sea over the millennia that man has sailed the seven seas. She's no special case. Ships have sunk with far greater loss of life. Nonetheless, my thoughts tonight are with her hapless passengers, as they steamed to their fate, that cold night in the North Atlantic, 107 years ago.
Survivors from the Norge were put ashore in Stornoway a few days after the sinking in June 1904. Nine did not survive the ordeal and lie buried in Sandwick Cemetery, just over a mile from Stornoway. 700 others perished in the sinking of the Norge. Nobody has heard of that tragedy. They were dirt poor migrants, forced out of hearth and home in Russia, Poland and Ukraine by pogroms. Anti-semitic raids on Jewish neighbourhoods. But who cared about them, back in 1904?
The Titanic is one of thousands of ships to have fallen peril to the sea over the millennia that man has sailed the seven seas. She's no special case. Ships have sunk with far greater loss of life. Nonetheless, my thoughts tonight are with her hapless passengers, as they steamed to their fate, that cold night in the North Atlantic, 107 years ago.
Friday 12 April 2019
The Brexit mess in a nutshell
In 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union by 52% to 48%. The govt has reached an agreement with the EU, but is unable to get the House of Commons (compare to your House of Representatives) to pass it, three times running. The date for leaving the EU has been put back from 29 March to 12 April, and now to 31 October. Without this agreement, people and goods moving between the UK and EU would attract tariffs and stricter border controls. An added problem is the only land border between UK and EU, between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. This would ordinarily revert to a border with barriers and checks - but on account of the history of civil war with N Ireland (between 1968 and 1998), that is not desirable. A separate agreement, the Backstop, is designed to prevent that, but has run into stiff opposition in the House of Commons as well. The EU has bent over backwards (in my humble opinion) to accommodate the UK government's failure to secure passage in Parliament, but to the outside world it has degenerated into a farce.
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