1412 days ago
More than 5,000 folks have signed the petition to have the statue pulled down, like that of non slaving Thomas Guy. But who is this beast? Okay i shall give you two clues then a multiple choice.He is a great figure from the history of the British Empire and had Indian links. Who was the alt right beast: a) Winston Churchill, b) Lord Canning, governor general in 1857, c) Gandhi d) Lord Mountbatten? Got it yet?
1697 days ago
Thanks to my cousin H, I stumble across this Pathe News clip from 1946 as three British Cabinet ministers headed to India for talks on partition. Accompanying them was the Foreign Office Press Officer, my great Aunt Eleanor Booker. She is the rather pretty young woman (she would, I think, have been 28) in the third row at the start. Later on that trip she sat in on meetings with Mountbatten, Gandhi, Jinnah etc. She was, I think, the last person alive who was at the partition talks. Another moment she witnessed in her career, about which she rarely talked, was aboard HMS Tiger in 1963. The clip seems so incredibly dated and is below.
2486 days ago
The Mrs goes back to work tomorrow after her maternity leave. So as of Friday i am dealing with nappy shit not AIM shit as my primary job. But Bearcast will return every day in September. Today the Mrs is out with Joshua so I am bored and have a lot to say. I start with MichaelMouse an ADVFN Bulletin Board moron committing market abuse as he shows he understands nothing - he really is a Mickey Mouse figure.. I have harsh words about Telit (TCM) and TrakM8 (TRAK) in that section. Then it is onto what "Strategic Review" means in plain English, ref Entu (ENTU). Finally to the meat of the podcast covering Mercantile Ports & Logistics (MPL), its fellow FRAUD Redcentric (RCN) and the worthless crap Magnolia (MAGP) and what it says about AIM and the failed Nomad system that Messrs Gandhi, Fisher and not so lovely Rita have not been fired. Warning: this bearcast contains some strong language and phrases of a sexual nature.
3007 days ago
There could only be one winner of last week's Bulletin Board Moron of the week. I am not sure if it is the follower of Jabba The Hutt who compares the fat Aussie share ramper to Gandhi or Jabba himself for thinking it is so profound that he retweeted it. Anyhow thanks to Britta for this gem of a tweet:
3737 days ago
Sitting on a train on my way to inflicting misery on my daughter by taking her to Upton Park, I am thinking of last night’s film. But first one I saw the other day: Mandela. As those who have read my articles will know, the man is a hero of mine so I suppose it is hard for me to view the film entirely objectively. But it was wonderful.
There may be some younger readers who forget that Mandela (reluctantly) found himself and the ANC engaging in acts of terror in the early 1960s. There were those on the right who branded Mandela a terrorist as a result. I suppose a Gandhi- style campaign of passive resistance might have been more desirable. However, the Apartheid regime in South Africa was a lot more evil and heavy handed than the British in India. The Mandela defence of “just cause” is not something I feel uncomfortable with. The film begs the question and allows each of us to answer it.
The two things about Mandela which make him truly remarkable were his willingness to admit to his failings as a man and his unbelievable power of forgiveness to those who had locked him up and made his life hell for 30 years. It was the latter that give South Africa a chance to heal its wounds and move forward.
Mandela insisted that his biography, upon which the film was based, did not airbrush out his failings. How many other world leaders would have behaved thus? The lamentable (BBC) aspect to coverage of the death of this great man was that it attempted to portray him as a saint, whiter than the driven snow. Mandela did not view himself in that way which makes him all the more of an amazing human being. It is a subtlety some missed.
As to the forgiveness,
