The great ideas just keep on coming

The Telegraph carried a report on a major new initiative to cut waste. Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, has said that any officials who took over the functions of axed Non Departmental Public Bodies should use up their old letterhead and notepaper to save money.


Mr Maude said he wanted civil servants to “cross out the old name” and write the name of the department instead. He said: “It is a very good idea. It should be an absolute iron rule.”

Mr Maude told the MPs he wanted officials to follow an example set by Margaret Thatcher when she split up the Department of Health Social Security into two departments in 1988.

Mr Maude: “The then-Prime Minister said to Ken Clarke, its new Health secretary: ‘I don’t want you to have any new stationery until the old stuff has been used up…For months afterwards, letters went out with ‘Department of Social Security’ carefully crossed out by Department of Health staff. I would expect the same approach to be taken today.”

Hmm the DHSS was broken up in the late 1980s when desktop computers would have been rare and correspondence was produced in typing pools (or by a secretary if you were very lucky) so there would have been far more pre-printed headed paper than there would be nowadays

Most headers would be stored on a pc and printed directly these days so I can imagine this iron rule will save far less than the value of his sound bite.

Then again if this is the best that Maude has to offer in the first six months of office then I shudder to think what he will be saying when he runs out of ideas!

Governor Moonbeam is back...

Who'd have thought that the first line of this old classic would be topical again

What do you see?

Last view from a dirty window

Something or other

Yes I am

Am I a cat?

Now Galloway name drops Carlos the Jackal

Now I know that there are many people who love to name drop. I’ve done it once or twice myself. But there are limits – If I had gone to tea with Fred West and Harold Shipman, I don’t think that is something I would broadcast to the world.

But then I’m not George Galloway, SS* and I’m not paid good money to write in a Scottish newspaper every Monday (or to at as a cats paw for the Iranian regime).

In today’s Daily Record Galloway, SS**, recounts the details of a telephone conversation he had recently with, of all people, Carlos the Jackal.

“Sitting with my lawyer in Beirut last week, the meeting was interrupted by a call from one of his clients in Paris.

After an interminable conversation in Arabic, the lawyer handed the phone to me.

"It's an honour to talk to you, comrade Galloway. This is Commander Carlos, the political prisoner in Paris," he said.

For it was indeed Carlos the Jackal on the phone to me and appearing in a film of the same name for you in cinemas everywhere right now. Not that Carlos thinks much of the movie.

"It's propaganda," he told me when I tried to change the subject to less dangerous territory. "They make out I am a psychopath, shooting anywhere. They have me as a drug addict, when I have never taken drugs in my life, an alcoholic, a womaniser... "

…Carlos the Jackal, in the 13th year of his sentence, is currently the subject of negotiations between the prisoner's home government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the French authorities.

Who knows, maybe he will be transferred to his homeland? Maybe then I should make the real movie of the life of "Commander Carlos".

I wonder what the real movie of “Commander Carlos” would be?

The tale of a lantern-jawed freedom fighter from the barrios who fought injustice and for the freedom of the oppressed everywhere?

Or perhaps he will be a bit more honest and portray Carlos as the poor little rich kid turned mercenary with a bit of ideology tacked on for good measure(and as mercenaries go he wasn’t all that good given the number of screwed up missions)

Somehow I feel he will go for something close to the former rather than the latter.

Ah well..,



* As stated in previous posts about Galloway SS stands for Stalinist Shithead and is not a reference to Schutzstaffel

** This time it stands for slimy shit-stain. I know that should be SSS but hopefully the hyphen should prevent that…

Not the Witchfinder General’s diary but still interesting

When a recent Telegraph article had the headline Journal of the Witchfinder General opened up I thought that there would be some fascinating information about the life and views of one of Essex’s not so favourite sons, Matthew Hopkins.

Actually not, the journal in question was written by Nehemiah Wallington , a puritan London woodturner who wrote about his life and times and contemporary eventst. Some of his writings have been published and are still available on Amazon

However, a team from The University of Manchester's John Rylands Library are currently photographing and ''digitising'' the diary which is kept at Tatton Hall in Knutsford, Cheshire.

Of particular interest to the Telegraph (and the Mail which talked about it being the Witchfinder Generl’s diary – both used an image of Vincent Price playing Matthew Hopkins in the excellent 60s horror film… although Hopkins himself was consideralbly younger than Price) are the activities of Matthew Hopins in Essex

The journal tells of how young maid Rebecca West confessed to having sex with the Devil and to how she implicated her mother and others in witchcraft - condemning them all to the gallows - but saving herself.

The activities of Hopkins and the Essex Witchfinders took place between 1645 and 1647. and 112 people were hanged for witchcraft - often when they were forced to confess whilst being tortured.
.
In March 1645, he was commissioned by the local magistrates to "question" a suspected witch, Elizabeth Clarke who was also physically examined for ''devil's marks' signs like warts, moles or bits of extra skin that were declared to be "teats" to give suckle to imps.

Under torture Clarke broke down and named several other women including Anne West and her daughter Rebecca. The women were detained and taken to the cells in Colchester Castle for questioning. Rebecca confessed and implicated her mother and others, thus saving herself from hanging.


In the journal Hopkins was referred to as the ''Gentle man'' and Wallington wrote of how Rebecca confessed after seeing flames disappear when she became separated from her mother.
In the passage he wrote: ''Shortly after when she was going to bed the Devil appeared unto her again in the shape of a handsome young man, saying that he came to marry her.

The handwritten notebook is the only copy known in existence. Mansion and Collections Manager Caroline Schofield from Tatton Park said: "Nehemiah Wallington was an intelligent working man who achieved much in the face of such difficulty and exhaustion in daily life.

She added: "The Wallington manuscript are of huge importance to scholars of the period. We hope to use the digitised images in a new interpretive exhibition in the mansion's library.''

In the end this is a bit of a shaggy Dog story with a misleading title. That said anything that makes such manuscripts more accessible is to be lauded

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