Chris Whiteside's Blog

The Jewish shopkeeper in this picture from Germany in 1933 is called Richard Stern - and he's wearing an Iron Cross awarded for serving in the German Army in World War One as a Nazi thug stands guard outside his shop as part of a boycott of Jewish businesses. . You can see from the wry smile of Richard Stern's face that the man had incredible guts. It's the brown shirt, not the shopkeeper, whose demeanour radiates fear and tension. This post is taken from a tweet by  Archaeo - Histories on X here  which reprinted an article in the Jewish Observer. After being awarded the prestigious Iron Cross for his service in the German army during World War I, Richard Stern was driven out of his home country by the Nazi regime. MyHeritage’s Research team discovered records of him arriving at Ellis Island at the age of 40 in May 1939 — narrowly escaping the beginning of the war.  In 1942, when Stern was 43 and not yet an American citizen, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to join the war ef...

 

The following is an extract by a piece by Harvey Jones in the Express. Referring to Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, Harvey Jones writes .. . "This is a man who can't even book a taxi without turning it into an international incident. A former foreign secretary whose undiplomatic response   to a malfunctioning cash machine was to curse the "f***ing French" . As justice secretary, he's presiding over our disastrous prison system, where inmates come and go as they please,   and has been called a "coward" by his own ministers . Calamity Lammy commits career suicide every time he steps out in public. Last week, he strode into Parliament without a poppy, then lectured us about the importance of Remembrance Sunday. To cap it all, he covered his embarrassment   by taking a poppy from an actual veteran . He also presided over  what's been called the worst PMQs in living memory , hurling abuse across the chamber, arms flailing, fingers jabbing. Yet even a ...

All around Britain millions of people have been remembering those who died in two terrible world wars and other conflicts since. I have just returned from the ceremony at the Egremont Town Centre war memorial, where I laid a wreath on behalf of the Conservative party. I shall also shortly be going to the 1pm Moor Row ceremony about a hundred yards from my front door. I was struck this morning by how many people came along to pay their respects despite the poor weather - discussing it with other Egremont Town Councillors, we were all agreed that there were even more people present this year than last year, which had already been a good attendance. Postscript - there was also a good turnout at the community event on Moor Row, and I am told alxso in Selby in Yorkshire and at Whitehaven. I think people are ever more determined that the sacrifices of those who died should not be forgotten. In the words of the Kohima Epitaph, " We will remember them. "

  From "For the Fallen" by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), published in The Times newspaper on 21 September 1914. Image posted by the Royal Family in their Remembrance Sunday message.

 

"Don't drag black people into the mess you made of yourself this afternoon. Proud moments come from performance, not pigmentation." Kemi Badenoch responds to a tweet from the Deputy Prime Minister who congratulated himself for being the first black person to answer questions at Prime Minister's Question time on Wednesday.

 

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy took Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) today as "Never here Keir" is abroad. He forgot his poppy and had to borrow one from an RAF veteran, refused five times to answer a question from the Conservative shadow defence minister about whether any more prisoners have been wrongly released (it was revealed shortly afterwards that two had) and looked to be on the verge of losing it for much of the session. This is what former Labour and Trade Union staffer Dan Hodges (now a journalist) had to say about it: "David Lammy could have had a worse PMQs session. But only if he'd fainted at the despatch box, got up, punched the Speaker, then seized the Mace and attacked Angela Rayner with it."

My favourite versions of "Windmills of your mind" are the oscar-winning original sung by Noel Harrison for the film for which it was written, the 1968 Steve McQueen & Faye Dunaway version of "The Thomas Crown Affair," and the King's Singers arrangement which I posted on my blog on Monday. There are a lot of other versions, which range from the pretty good (Petunia Clark, All Angels, Barbra Streisand) to the frankly disappointing. This year the song has been brought back into the public consciousness when it was used in the Season II finale of "Severance." Interestingly, the version they used is a classic which is nearly as old as Harrison's original - it was performed by Mel Torme a year later, in 1969. While I certainly remember hearing "Windmills of your mind " in my childhood, I am not sure which versions I heard at the time, but I only discovered or rediscovered the Mel Torme version as it has begun to reappear recently after bein...

I usually put up a quote about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot on November 5th, but this year I think instead it's more important to repeat an extract from a speech Boris Johnson gave yesterday at the site of the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. ‘When Jews in Western Europe are being berated just for how they look or dress, when synagogues are being vandalised and Jewish worshippers killed: when unmistakably anti Jewish sentiment is spilling from the lips of people who normally think of themselves as kind and decent, and when kefir wearing mobs of middle class intellectuals are taking to the streets of Western capitals to chant that Israel must be wiped out from the river to the sea.  ‘We are being warned again, as humanity has been warned in the past.  ‘And to all those who are still apathetic or so foolish as to think this outbreak of prejudice and hatred will be confined to Jews. I say, look at history.’  

Coined by Kemi Badenoch, referring to the Chancellor's statement: "What we saw from the Chancellor today was a waffle-bomb. Rachel Reeves must stop blaming others & admit she’s made a mess. Fairness means living within our means so our children don’t pay for her mistakes."

I have not always agreed with the Adam Smith Institute but this summary of today's speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer is bang on.

 

 

"Whatever one might think about Rachel Reeves’ misdemeanours, the real scandal is that property owners have to pay off the council to rent out their own homes. Unlike Reeves, who had been tweeting in support of this legislation at the same time she wasn’t complying with it, I’d hardly heard of the landlords licence she should have acquired. It turns out neither had many landlords, who I suspect will be furious to learn that they owe even more money to the state. For what it’s worth, while I do think that deliberately breaking the law is a sackable offence, I don’t think Reeves – or anyone for that matter – should go for a minor accidental infraction such as this. I know we all make mistakes. But I also won’t apologise for pointing out what Keir Starmer used to say. Indeed, I confess to a bit of schadenfreude watching this Prime Minister, who promised a “whiter than white” Government, dealing with sleaze ranging from undeclared freebies to stolen mobile phones and unpaid property t...

From an FT article bv Charlotte Ivers. 

  "If one is remembered by a Friend, one is never truly gone." (Grand Admiral Thrawn: the passage below from which this quote is taken forms the first words of the  the Epilogue of Timothy Zahn's novel "Thrawn." In context these words are clearly about exile, not death. Thrawn himself had been exiled from the Chiss Ascendancy to the Empire: he had written these words in a journal he gave to his friend Eli Vanto who was going into exile in the opposite direction, from the Empire to the Chiss Ascendancy. However, I find the comment to be equally relevant to All Soul's Day. For what is death if it is not an exile from the world of the living?)

 

Today is All Hallow's Eve (the day before All Saints Day) usually shortened to Halloween. Having just arrived home after two weeks on a cruise, I have not had time to check the UK shops but I have no doubt that the items themed for ghosts, witches, monsters and horror will already have started to be replaced in the shops with material themed for Christmas I was told as a child that this time of the year was originally a great Pagan festival which was co-opted by the early Christian church. In medieval times there was an important three-day festival called "Allhallowtide" in the Christian calendar. It would be all too easy to conclude that the only thing from either the pagan festivals which were once held at this time of year or the Christian festivals which co-opted and replaced them which retains any significant impact on the popular consciousness are the name "Halloween" for the first day of that festival and a humorous "celebration" of ghosts,...