OneGuyFromBarlick

It's late but continuing the theme -
This reminds me old my old auntie who died last year aged 99 and 3/4 . I think it's Irish - very rhythmic

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watchdogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and grey
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with the music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of fig-leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hillside,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn trees
For my pleasure, here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!
William Allingham

That brings back memories! My kids taught it to me in the days when they still learned poems by rote at school. My indelible one is Young Lochinvar.

In election week. . .

"Politicians and nappies need to be changed regularly - and for the same reason.

I like it David.

Peter Hennessy, pointing out the `howling gap' between extremes of left and right.

And in that 'howling gap' lies hope. Nature and history teach us that such a situation is untenable. The stress built up forces a readjustment.

Seen on the BBC...
The Daily Telegraph's main cartoon shows dozens of the world's elite scrambling from their private jets at the local airport, with one of them shouting to the others: "Hurry, we don't want to miss Greta Thunberg."

(..and Trump arrived with a huge convoy of jeeps, a jet and seven helicopters!)

I've seen the Presidential hardware from the air and it includes two Starlifters or similar to carry all the vehicles and helicopters. It's like a full scale military operation. By the way, I think I am right in saying that Boeing are due to deliver two new US Ones this year....

From the Cambridge Evening News -
Clearly shows the value of a degree in criminology in modern policing. What would PC Dixon have made of it all.

"Our position is clear; where a crime is reported to us, we will centrally apply our triage principles to identify not only hypothetical solvability, but also the proportionality of the enquiries necessary to achieve a positive outcome. Inevitably, crimes with solvability dependent on CCTV do represent a significant investment of officer time and wider technological resources versus a very slim chance of a positive outcome.

Lovely example of the management speak (gobbledegook) made standard by McKinsey et al. I had a friend who was an inspector in Moss Side when things were bad there. Like many old bobbies his criterion when judging a fellow officer was whether they were a good 'thief taker'. From what I have seen of the latest crime figures we would do well to go back to old fashioned principles like that.
(Coincidentally, there is a good piece in PE this week about the failure of the degree apprenticeship scheme imposed on the police and the way it is hampering recruitment and funding of training for the mythical 20,000 new bobbies....)

Stanley wrote: ↑26 Jan 2020, 04:07 Like many old bobbies his criterion when judging a fellow officer was whether they were a good 'thief taker'.

Reminds me strongly of The Beiderbecke Affair which may have been ahead of its time. I rate the trilogy amongst the best things that's ever been on TV.

The quote is pure Sgt Hobson (BA), whilst your copper is Ch Supt Forrest.

I agree with you. Magnificent series......

A friend of mine was the crime scene photograph officer in the Toronto police. He said the defendants lawyers would try to get you to express opinions rather than sticking to the facts. An example.
Lawyer. How many police were at the crime scene?
Friend. I don't know.
Lawyer. You were there and you don't know. said with sarcasm .
Friend. My job was to take photographs. Its the crime scene officer's job to record everything else.
Lawyer. No more questions.

David. I was once in the witness box for three hours at Bradford Crown Court and luckily had enough native common sense to keep my answers dead simple, no opinions, just facts. It got to the point where the prosecuting barrister was being laughed at and the judge called him to the bench for a quick word. I don't know what he was told but he modified his behaviour and we all got on much better. (But we lost the case!)
An interesting experience, all part of life's rich pattern....

In the reports of journalists being banned from press events by Johnson's advisers I noticed one of the advisers was quoted as saying `We are welcome' to choose who will attend. Since when has `We are welcome' been an acceptable phrase? `You are welcome' is OK but `We are welcome' is nonsense.

Tizer wrote: ↑04 Feb 2020, 10:19 We are welcome' is nonsense.

So is most of the drivel that comes out of Downing Street lately.

I'm thinking of the phrase 'you're welcome' used in response to someone thanking you for an action etc. I hear it almost every day. I always thought it was part of the (sometimes) excessive American politeness. Example - 'Have a nice rest of the day' which particularly irritates me.

Don't tell me what sort of day to have. . .

So, rather than saying you're welcome he's turned it around and said we're welcome.

Does that make sense? Another phrase I don't like.

Yes, but the spad was referring to himself and colleagues, not to us. If it had been just himself perhaps he would have said `I am welcome to decide who attends' which sounds even more nonsensical.

Let's just recognise that much of the Westminster Village and Downing Street in particular is functioning in a parallel universe. They really do think that they are omnipotent and omniscient. I rather like the phrase 'you're welcome' and yes the first time I came across it was in the States.

From a discussion of Cummings and Gove when they were attacking the education “establishment” (in the BBC article I linked to on the Politics thread)...
`One admirer at the time said that in delivering this vision Cummings was heavily influenced by Lenin, who famously argued that “you cannot make a revolution in white gloves”. “Dom is a much more successful Leninist than any of the Leninists around Corbyn,” the friend says.'

And in a Cummings blog, citing Thucydides writing of the Battle of Salamis in 480BC: “A man harms his foes thus: those things they most dread he discovers, carefully investigates, then inflicts upon them.”

Interesting. What strikes me is that regardless of efficacy, is this the best way to run a debate or a government?
I get the feeling that such people have a problem with control and I hate their methods.
I always remember something Richard Drinkall once told me about cattle dealing. I had watched him buy beasts and sell them to customers at a loss and asked him why. He told me that it was a matter of clearance and turnover, an occasional loss didn't matter as long as the overall tally showed a profit. Then he said something that I think applies here; "Remember, you have always got to be able to go back and do another deal. You can't do that if you have damaged a man's sense of worth and dignity". That was the reason he had customers who stayed loyal to him all their lives.
How many people feel that about Cummings? What is he storing up for the future in the men he humiliates? Very bad man-management!

I heard a snatch of the BH programme this morning. A man with a voice a bit like that of Alan Bennett telling us how he went to a small local school and grew up to be a schools inspector. He returned to the school and said: `The same old smell lingered, as did my teacher, Mrs Greenhalgh. She said, "Stand up straight, don't crouch", then "You have done well, you've got more degrees than a thermometer!" He also described another of his teachers who had `bulletproof stockings'.

The Yorkshire School Inspector Tiz. Gervase Phinn. See THIS link. Very funny books, a good light read at any time. Full of good stories.

Thanks, I could do with a bit more of that type of humour!