2017 will be yet worse

[johndon]

All a matter of perspective, I lost my dad in 2014, my wife just 9 months later in 2015 but, so far, haven't lost anyone in 2016 so, compared to the last couple of years, 2016 has been bloody marvellous...

 

John

[rockershovel]

The Guardian, as ever, ploughed its own lonely furrow by exhorting its readers to "forget the metal bikini" and offered a different view of Carrie Fisher. Well, good luck with THAT one..

[wombatofludham]

I was bought up to be a pessimist as my late father used to say "Pessimists are never disappointed".  I therefore never go for the "Happy New Year" cojones because I know every new year people get all excited that the new calendar (for that is all it is) will bring joy unbeholden, world peace, a cure for cancer, multiple lottery wins, etc (depending on how shallow their gene puddle is) yet by January 31st will be metaphorically queueing in the unwanted gift return queue with their New Year which has not lived up to the advertising hype.

 

Remember, life is a sh*te sandwich, on the thinnest wafer-thin bread, with a 50% extra filling offer permanently running.  Then when your favourite z-lister, modestly talented instrumentalist or national treasure succumbs to their previous excesses, dies and falls off their stage into the orchestra pit, you won't be surprised.

 

This message sponsored by Prozac.

[rockershovel]

.... all I can say is, I thought quite hard about what I might realistically achieve in 2016 and concentrated on that. It was quite a good year really, because I did most of what I set out to do, and had a workable set of priorities.

 

Didn't win the lottery, true, but would YOU back a horse at 14,000,000 to 1?

[jjb1970]

The death in public life which was, and remains my benchmark for such things is Sir Winston Churchill. The whole neighbourhood was in mourning between the announcement and the actual funeral. My late father, a war veteran who was an active member of the Labour Party when it WAS the Labour Party, pinned his medals on his overcoat (and I never saw him do this, before or afterwards) and set off with a group of uncles and neighbours to stand all night - and it was a bitter night - to get a good vantage point to watch the cortège pass, and many others did the same.

 

I honestly can't think of a death in public life which has affected me in anything like the same way; I certainly didn't join in the emotional incontinence which surrounded the death of Princess Diana, who seemed to me an insubstantial figure behind the blare of publicity. 

 

 

A couple of years ago (I think) I had a very enlightening conversation with a niece who was taking A Level history. We started discussing history as I'm an avid reader of history and pretty passionate about a range of historical subjects. For some reason it became a conversation about Churchill, she believed that the mourners at his funeral had been paid to attend, that he was deeply unpopular and her only knowledge of his achievements were his less commendable exploits and blunders. I probed her on this and it became apparent that this view came from her studies at school (she isn't an especially political person and is certainly no Dave Spart wannabe). I asked her if she didn't think that perhaps some of the mourners were there out of a genuine sense of grief and to show their respects to a man who had embodied the will to resist one of the most evil regimes of history and whose oratory had lifted the country for a few dark weeks when it was far from certain that Britain would continue to resist Hitler and she was genuinely ignorant of these parts of the Churchill story. I have no objection to children being given a rounded and complete education, and you don't have to probe very far into the story of Churchill to find some rather negative aspects to his life however what she had been taught struck me as being less complete and rounded than politicised re-writing of history and character assassination of a man who whatever his faults deserves his reputation as one of the greatest Briton's. I must admit I found it a deeply disturbing conversation.

[Clearwater]

Churchill was not universally popular at the time of his appointment as PM. To an extent, his reputation has gained significant lustre since the 1940s. For some people in the Labour movement, his acts as Home Secretary in 1910 (iirc) remained controversial where he was alleged to have ordered troops to charge strikers. Equally, the ghosts of his vainglorious plan to end WW1 at Gallipoli remained. Within the Conservative party he was widely mistrusted and seen as a maverick. His defection to and from the Liberal Party from the Conservatives equally made him unpopular with certain elements of the party. There's also his less than successful time as chancellor of the exchequer when he returned Britain to the Gold Standard.

 

Not to decry his role in 1940 but spin has somewhat taken over in analysing his career, particularly the early parts.

 

David

[jjb1970]

The Gallipoli campaign is almost a microcosm of Churchill. The concept was in many ways brilliant but dreadfully executed and was characteristic of his ability to view affairs at a higher level of strategy and to step out of the confines of accepted orthodoxy of the time. That often led him into disasters but often opened up real opportunities. The great Alan Brooke saw one of his most important tasks as being to reign in some of Churchill's wilder ideas. There is that classic comment (FDR?) about Churchill having ten ideas a day, one of which was good. However, even the Dardanelles misadventure (and he took responsibility for some very inept RN planning and execution) shows a positive side to his character in that in the aftermath he resigned from government and re-joined his old regiment at the front. Whatever faults he had, a lack of personal courage was never one of them, somehow you just can't imagine any of the politicians who took us into Iraq and Afghanistan accepting responsibility for the mess created and resigning from government to serve at the front.

[rockershovel]

My late father was no great admirer of Churchill, in many ways. Much of his political isolation was self-inflicted, or at least resulted from things which he need not have done. He was a ruthless careerist in some ways BUT, he was a man of great clarity of thought and firmness of purpose, which was what the nation needed in its greatest crisis of modern times.

 

There's a vignette in one of Evelyn Waugh's wartime novels where one or other of his (mostly rather repellent) upper-class characters offers the opinion in 1940 that "Churchill is the one man who might save us from losing this war". That was his great claim on the British people; to have offered a credible course of action, when their past governments had failed them utterly, when even their monarch had abandoned them out of personal weakness and political folly, when their military leaders looked totally incompetent. He was vindicated when it mattered, about the danger from Europe.

 

He was not universally popular at the time and faced at least one crisis when he might have been ousted during the war. The electorate saw no contradiction in rejecting him as PM in 1945, whatever they thought of the man himself.

[Oldddudders]

"Cometh the hour, cometh the man" is a saying that sums up Churchill's eminent suitability for the job in 1940. The job spec had changed dramatically by 1945 - thank goodness! - and so he was sent on his way.

[Horsetan]

....Didn't win the lottery, true, but would YOU back a horse at 14,000,000 to 1?

Most of us couldn't spot a 5000-1 bet (Leicester City), never mind 14 million.

[2mmMark]

I'm convinced Keith Richards will be the last man standing. He's practically indestructible, though God only knows he's tried....!

 

After the apocalypse, the only things left will be Keith Richards and some cockroaches, driving around in a Nissan K11 Micra.

[jcm@gwr]

After the apocalypse, the only things left will be Keith Richards and some cockroaches, driving around in a Toyota Hi-Lux pick-up.

 

I've corrected it for you!

[Horsetan]

After the apocalypse, the only things left will be Keith Richards and some cockroaches, driving around in a Nissan K11 Micra.

 

The cockroaches will decidedly be the worse for wear though, as will the Micra. Keith, on the other hand, will look much the same as he's always been.....

[coachmann]

 I was shocked in 1959 when my screen hero Errol Flynn died, but it was nothing to losing two very close friends aged 23 in 1963. They were 'real' and life for me suddenly became very very real. Fame can be fleeting but appearance on film or a newsreel makes people immortal. Some 'celebs' earn their crust on popular TV, and act as if they are a cut above the public for watching the crummy stuff that pays their wages. I was only eighteen when I met 'people' at a television studio and at rock gigs. You could talk with Joe Brown or Billy Fury who had worked hard like the rest of us and had actually 'made it', but they still remained one of the lads. You wouldn't have got close to C R....!  One of my dad's brothers routinely entertained 'famous' jazz musicians and well know radio band leaders at his home - It was all taken for granted because at the end of the day they were individuals with all the hang-ups and life's paraphernalia that burden us all. Celebrity worship is in the mind of peasants and it's unhealthy...

[andyram]

And now the rumours concerning the health of Her Majesty have hit the internet! I am sure some mischievous person has seen she has been ill and made 52 out of 2+2.

[Oldddudders]

Having said several days ago that I was not very interested in contemporary popular music, an obituary I sadly missed in October - the month my brother died - was from the heart of pop music.

 

We are told the biggest-selling album of all time is Michael Jackson's Thriller. So writing the title track, as well as a couple of others, among a large oeuvre of songs for many leading artists, would accord Rod Temperton some status, I think.

 

He had been the engine of the group Heatwave - Boogie Nights, anyone? - and not much later was collaborating with Quincy Jones on the Jackson albums. Not bad for a lad from Cleethorpes, who went to skool in Market Raspberry.

[rockershovel]

Writers are often under-credited or pushed aside. Nothing new there.

 

I recently watched Saving Mr Banks on tv. There is little sense there, that the Sherman brothers were just about the biggest lyric and music writing names of the day - they would write Mary Poppins and immediately go on to another big-budget film, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; but of course they weren't Disney staffers, and it's a Disney film..