rockershovel

"You can horsewhip your Gascony archers/you can torture your Picardy spears/but don't try that game on the Saxon/you'll have the whole brood round your ears". The point about Magna Carta was, and remains that it set the precedent that Monarchs ruled by the consent of their subjects. It really wasn't about democracy, but about individual rights. The Cromwellian revolution and subsequent Glorious Revolution finalised that, definitively ending the concept of Divine Rule. These were not European concepts. The French underwent a revolution and subsequent period if warfare and terror as extreme a anything displayed by the Soviets, not much more than two hundred years ago. More recently, I was working in Former East Germany in 2010/11 and it occurred to me that this was an area which had held its first free, democratic election as recently as 1993

Hence Marxism and Fascism both being of European origin, since both arise from the concept that the law and civil rights are the State's to grant or withold as it sees fit. Likewise the concept that European politicians can be exempted from prosecution, a refinement we have yet to adopt. Americans used to say that "God created men, but Sam Colt made them equal" - but this is really only an updating of the medieval English expression "no man may take the law of a grey goose", goose feathers being used for arrow Fletching. The concept that an English man may do as he pleases in his own home is also if great antiquity.

I've just been watching "Rango".

We did have this, it being a feature of English Common Law that any given thing was legal unless specifically demonstrated not to be. We had no law by which a man (or indeed, woman) could be taken to court for his (or indeed, her) opinions, however eccentric they might appear. Then we were told we needed laws to ensure these things and so, by degrees we came to the present pass.

Doesn't come much more "High Church" than the Cathedral. I did invite him to stay for afternoon service but he departed for his last point of call and airport Hotel

My wife had such in November and it turned out well. I recommend one of those water heater things instead of a kettle

It's been an odd sort of Easter this year. I was quite surprised to receive a lengthy piece about Easter in my inbox at work. I did notice that a number of places were attempting to popularise the giving of chocolate for Eid, apparently trying to capitalise on the fortuitous coincidence of Easter and Eid this year. I'd quite forgotten that Sunni Moslems don't observe Novruz, having spent my later offshore years around the Caspian. I've been making the acquaintance of an American cousin-of-sorts-by-marriage who has been in UK for a family funeral and stayed for one of those "finding your roots" trips Americans go in for. He was near us on Easter Sunday and wanted to go to Church, so I took him to Communion and Choral Matins at the Cathedral. Not what he expected, being of the "American Baptist" persuasion.

Post on twitter. Several will come to your door, I'm told

My granddaughter was given a "unicorn" Easter Egg. Pink chocolate is quite foul.

I have a speculative venture of that sort playing out now... as we won't see any of our grandkids till after Easter weekend, we are off to see what is on offer...

The Boat Race!

Significant changes coming for 2024. Football has to do something, and be seen to do something, about concussion risks. For 2024, players will line up 5 yards apart at the defending 35 yard line, with two receivers on the defending 20. Kicker kicks from the 35 as before. No-one else can move until the receiver touches it. Receiver cannot now call for a "fair catch", he must either ground the ball or try to run. Onside kicks, who knows? New restrictions on those.

The magnolia at the bottom of the garden is starting to drop a bit, but it had a really good show for a short while. The cherry blossom out the front is in bloom. Travelling around, the hedges are a blaze of white hawthorn and blackthorn flowers.... Daffs are everywhere. The house is redolent of hyacinths. You are nearer God's peace in a garden, than anywhere else on Earth...

I recommend you to read Barbara Tuchman's quite excellent "The Guns Of August" - quite the best study of this period - and particularly, the role of Sir Henry Wilson, a notable Francophile and member of the Imperial General Staff. Lord Kitchener also realised from the very outset that regardless of the notional Treaty obligations of the British government, the German plan was most unlikely to conform to them and called for "an army of a million men, for a war lasting three years" If the British had intended to defend Belgian neutrality, they must surely have occupied positions on the Belgian - German border, not left the tiny Belgian army to be over-run. The British Army was placed in the path of the right wing of the Schlieffen Plan. This was hardly a secret, having been the main tenet of German military thinking for almost forty years. French revanchism led that nation to focus upon the Loraine area, leading to a plan fundamentally mismatched to the German strategy and depending upon the British to hold the German right wing and prevent an enveloping movement in front of Paris.

But the British military have "previous" here. One of the reasons the causes of World War One are even now a matter of dispute, is that the Army Command had involved itself far beyond its remit in the defence of France. The French, remember, had been swiftly and unequivocally defeated in 1870.

It's a tax on a specific service or supply, paid by those who use it. The problem with taxing electric vehicles is that the purchase cost is so high, that neither sale nor lease models can be made to work without significant subsidy.

You cannot bribe or twist / thank God, the British journalist / but seeing what the man will do / unbribed, there's no occasion to

Sitting in the early spring sunshine eating a steak sandwich and filter coffee, at the sandwich bar near the A10 roundabout, Thetford Forest

I would. A late flourish is very much the Welsh style, and Italy still haven't quite grasped that rugby matches last 80 minutes, not 60

The same can be said for the Italy game. England conceded two soft tries in quick succession through repeating a similar error, and gave away a try at the last by a schoolboy error - not killing the ball, as France demonstrated yesterday.

As to the lapses of concentration, they are an "England thing". Most teams line up to face conversions; England gather in a sort of "mothers meeting" and take no interest in the proceedings. You don't need to watch very long to see Ford or Mitchell shouting to players who are clearly out of position and don't realise it.

Well, exactly. The SA game plan is essentially very similar to England's, but executed to a higher standard. The whole point of the "blitz defence" is that was designed by an RL player (Shaun Edwards) for teams playing 15-man rugby league, as a lot of early professional sides did, more or less. The defender MUST make his tackle, because he has no back-up. If the attackers close up to create a mismatch in numbers, in conjunction with forming a passing combination (largely unknown in RL) or just kicks the ball over, or through the defensive line, it all comes unstuck. SA know how to consistently produce world class teams, because they consistently produce world class players. England, on the evidence have yet to master either of these things.

England have 2 bonus points.

Memo to England - don't do stupid things, particularly in a 1-point game. That includes bonkers tackles and wild overthrows when none of the jumpers are paying attention. - scrap the "blitz" defence. France and Ireland both showed its weaknesses and the players clearly don't understand it - the selectors have 18 months maximum to find 3 new props, because Cole and Marler won't be at the next RWC and Stuart clearly isn't up to it -

offer cegin cyffredin .... Given some of the ABE nonsense I had to put up with in my later days in the Caspian, I'm never sorry to see the Sweaty Socks land on their sporrans either; but they put up a serious challenge for the Triple Crown, didn't they?