Chris Whiteside's Blog

Wishing all Christians in the UK and everywhere - and anyone else reading this and celebrating this great festival - a happy and peaceful Easter.

From the late Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Basil Hume;

"It is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when the costs of being wrong are paid by others." Thomas Sowell

On 1st April, the UK Defence Journal website published a satirical article claiming that the Royal Navy was building a new supercarrier to be called " HMS Prince Andrew. "  The obviously tongue-in-cheek article said the carrier would be armed with Cold War-era Harriers or “naval Typhoons” launched via six catapults, and cost the taxpayer a modest £987.6 billion. The author of the original joke piece George Allison said  “ As part of our usual April Fools’ Day tradition, we published a clearly satirical piece about a fictional third aircraft carrier —HMS Prince Andrew— complete with absurd details like ‘go faster stripes’ and ‘crayons’. It was meant to be obviously fake, and it was written to make people laugh. ” However, Allison said the intention of the piece was also to see if outlets “ eager to undermine the UK ” would pick up the story without fact checking it. And boy oh boy, didn't they just. Russian state media outlet RT, formerly Russia Today, republished the st...

 Kemi Badenoch: "A 78 per cent tax rate on UK oil and gas is not a strategy. It is economic vandalism. Mark my words, when investment leaves, jobs go with it. And when production falls, we end up at the mercy of foreign suppliers who do not share our values, our standards or our interests. Labour simply do not get it. Their choices weaken Britain and the consequences are unforgivable. Conservatives will scrap this levy, back British workers and protect our energy security with competence and common sense."

The Gesualdo six perform J. S. Bach's " O sacred head, sore wounded. "

‘ God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ’ Wishing everyone who commemorates today as such a solemn and reflective Good Friday.

 

 

To all who are celebrating the feast of the Passover: Jesus also celebrated Passover just before he was betrayed, and he said of the bread and wine, " Do this as often as you eat it, in remembrance of me. "  May Jesus be with all who celebrate Easter this year. Whether you celebrate Passover, Easter, both or neither, may you have a peaceful and happy time this weekend.

 

There were some very good ones, some a lot better than my little effort. (Yes, of course "Latest U-turns" was an April fool - unfortunately.) I think probably the best one came from Count Binface, who tweeted: " I’m delighted to announce that this morning I have joined Reform UK. Nigel Farage is a principled politician, and his team are ready for government. " A close second was from Brian Spuzuki @BrianSpanner1  who tweeted:· "The office of Prime Minister requires the incumbent to make decisions that must weigh heavily on his conscience. One of the first jobs of every PM is to write a letter to the Captains of the UK nuclear submarine fleet warning them about Joani Reid."

"My message to all British Jews this Passover Why is this year different from all other years? Because in other years we haven’t seen Jews murdered in a synagogue here in the UK. Because in other years we haven’t seen Hatzola ambulances torched in the middle of Golders Green. And because in no other year have I met so many Jews asking me whether it’s safe for them to stay in the UK. This year I can’t write the usual sort of Passover message. I am tired of reading platitudes and warm words, expressions of solidarity which ring hollow when we can all see what is happening around us. I did not learn about Passover from reading the Haggadah or even in church, but from watching The Ten Commandments over and over again. Even as a young child in Nigeria, growing up in a Christian home, the story of liberation from slavery in ancient Egypt – a journey from oppression to freedom, from exile to homeland – was singularly inspiring. It was only as an adult that I learned the deepest message o...

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In his seventeenth major U-turn, Sir Keir Starmer announced that he will not be giving the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which has never owned them,  but to the native Chagossians instead. In other news Energy secretary Ed Miliband has acknowledged the need to strike a balance between the need to protect the environment and not inflicting and unfair and unreasonable burden of costs on British consumers, and announced a review of many of his policies. Green Party Leader Zack Polansky has invited the Equalities Commission to assist in carrying out a review into Anti-Semitism in the Green party, saying " I am not going to allow the people who created a huge problem with Anti-Semitism in the Labour party to do the same thing to mine. " Lib/Dem leader Ed Davey announced that he would not be doing any stunts during this year's council election campaign. "These elections are about electing serious local leaders to address the issues local people face," he said, "an...

"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions." Robert Lynd

“In engineering, you are peer reviewed by reality”.  From Rory Sutherland, quoting the engineer Guru Madhavan, in this week’s Spectator.

I have argued for sixteen years that Britain should stop allowing new marriages between first cousins. I firs wrote about the subject here:  Time to outlaw new first cousin marriages My reason for thinking this is nothing to do with social cohesion or religion, indeed, I would argue against using these arguments to reduce the risk that people from particular communities may fear that the policy is directed against them. My argument is entirely based on the strong and increasing body of hard scientific evidence that "consanguineous marriage" between people who are to a significant degree related is a material risk to the health of the potential children of such marriages. As I wrote in 2010, sometimes new scientific knowledge means that the case against a practice which has previously been regarded as acceptable, perhaps even normal, reaches the point where society is justified in discouraging or banning that practice. This can be hugely controversial, particularly in communit...

A priest, a minister and a rabbit walk into a blood bank to donate. Possible punchline one : The nurse asked the rabbit, " What is your blood type ?" The rabbit replied, " I think I might be a Type O ." Possible punchline two : The receptionist looked at them and said, " I think there may be a clerical error. " Possible punchline three : "The rabbit said " I'm only here because of auto-correct ." Any preference or other suggestions?

David Ford, once Bradford's first Green Party councillor, can no longer support the direction the party has taken ... 

The clocks having gone forward in the early hours of this morning, my phones and computers have automatically adjusted but I had to spend a bit of time manually adjusting all the clocks in my home. Ironically, the ones which caused the most difficulty are the ones which should not have needed any manual adjustment as they are supposedly radio controlled.  As always happens at the equinox when clocks go forward in the spring or back in the autumn, there ha been a fair amount of debate this weekend on social media about whether changing between time systems like " Greenwich Mean Time " and " British Summer Time " makes any sense. Sometimes these arguments are based on the practical issue of whether the change is actually convenient or helpful. All time zone systems being artificial intellectual constructs which inevitably contain compromises, such arguments are equally inevitable and may well make perfect sense. Some arguments, however, are based on the idea that chan...

"I won't ride my horse into the city into which my Lord rode a donkey." General Allonby , who walked into Jerusalem on foot after local Ottoman forces surrendered. (My grandfather, John Whiteside Senior,  was serving in Allonby's forces as part of the RAMC detachment at the time.)

Clocks in Britain and much of Europe go forward an hour tonight as Britain and many other countries change to Summer time. 

Whitehaven and Workington Conservatives were out campaigning this morning in St Bees and had a great session. So for something to relax to after a good morning's work ... Last night I posted the theme music for the original 1963 "Pink Panther film." So here is the other exceptional music clip from that film: " Meglio Stasera, " performed by Fran Jeffries, a wonderfully cheerful song with some great singing and dancing from Fran and some great comic acting too by the rest of the cast, especially Peter Sellers.  (David Niven performed his part as the nominal lead actor in the film to perfection, but he's usually regarded as having been completely eclipsed by Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, who became the main character in the rest of the films in the series.)  This song is also sometimes performed in English as " It had better be tonight. " If you've never heard or watched this, you're missing out. Click on the box below for a treat.