Final Ultimatum To-day (1945)

Daily Mail dated Thursday August 9th 1945

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On August 6th 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On August 8th 1945 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Later that same day, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the city of Nagasaki. Emperor Hirohito intervened and ordered  Supreme Council for the Direction of the War to accept the terms for ending the war that the Allies had set down in the Potsdam Declaration. 

On August 15th Emperor Hirohito made a radio broadcast across the Empire to announce the surrender of Japan to the Allies.

On August 28th the occupation of Japan by the Allied Powers began and the surrender was signed aboard the USS Missouri on September 2nd 1945

James Bulger Trial Verdict

The Independent dated Thursday November 24^th 1993

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The 20^th anniversary of the murder of toddler James Bulger by 10-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson passed recently and the more serious newspapers marked it by re-opening the great Nature Vs Nurture debate – were these two children born evil or were they products of their environment?

They were both released in 2001 after a parole board decided they were no longer a threat to the Public. In 2010 Venables was sent back to prison after being convicted for possession of child pornography.

The Ulster Volunteer Force was created in 1966 by a former British Soldier with the aim of combating Republican attempts to free Northern Ireland from British rule. 

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When I worked in central London I spent a lot of time on the Tube and dreaded those times when the packed rush hour train slowed to a halt and the lights dimmed. The heat and the body-odour were nothing compared to the uncertainty as to whether the train would ever start again.

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Definitely a case of she who sups with the Devil should have a long spoon. Or, at least, have more sense than to voluntarily spent time alone with a convicted murderer.

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Packard Bell Legend Elite with 170Mb of hard disk space! That’s 0.17 Gb! At the moment I have 48 mpegs on my system, each one larger than that. It may well be a case of rubbish expanding to fill the space provided for it. And don't get me started on the 16MHz processor on the Apple Macintosh. 

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Silvio Berlusconi was born in Milan in 1936 and by 1993 had amassed a fortune as the head of a business empire owning newspapers, publishing, cinema, finance, banking, insurance, sports and more than half of Italy’s TV output.

In 1993 he decided to enter politics and formed the anti-communist Forza Italia Party and by 1994 started his first of three stints as Prime Minister. He has been accused of corruption, neo-fascist sympathies, lying to the Electorate, possible criminal dealings with Vladimir Putin, false accounting, tax evasion, corruption and bribery of police officers and judges, witness bribery, soliciting minors for sex, abuse of Political office and Mafia connections. He also has the diplomatic tact of the Duke of Edinburgh at a meeting of the Ethnic Minorities League.

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Hip-hop artist (whatever that means) Tupak Shakur and others were charged with sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room. At the trial Shakur was convicted of sexual abuse and sentenced to 1½–4½ years in prison. After serving part of his sentence he was released on bail pending appeal. In April 1996 he was sentenced to serve 120 days in jail for violating terms of his bail. On September 13^th 1996 he was murdered in a drive-by shooting.

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If the Anti-gun ownership lobby in the USA want proof that they are right and that strict gun control works, they should look at Japan. They have very strict gun ownership laws and, despite what you might see in Japanese crime films, on average about 12 homicides by shooting a year. 

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‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ was the first of a long list of musicals written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, Richard Stilgoe, Ben Elton etc that I have never seen nor would want to. Oh! – except  ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ as filmed by Norman Jewison.

Japanese Emperor's Funeral

The Daily Mirror dated Tuesday October 1st 1912

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This is the funeral of the Mikado or Emperor of Japan Mutsuhito – known after his death as Emperor Meiji. He'd been born in 1852 and had been Emperor since 1867, ruling Japan during a period of immense political, economic and cultural change from isolated feudal farming country to industrialised World power. Just a year before his death, by natural causes, 12 anarchists were executed for plotting to assassinate him.

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A handy map to tell you where the trouble is and hours of fun for the kids cutting out the pictures of the leaders and sticking them on the right country.

Seriously though this was just one of a series of Balkan crises that culminated in the First World War.

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A nice concise explanation of what was going on. Sort of. If you know which side to believe.

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The Dutch Baroness Charlotte Van Coehoorn had fallen in love with her chauffeur and in August 1912 had tried to elope with him, but she was intercepted at Ostend a few days later and returned to her family who immediately had her sent to an insane asylum (as you do). The family’s action was very unpopular and with the help of sympathisers she escaped and joined her lover who was waiting outside in a car. Unfortunately I can’t find anything about what happened next. A 1922 newspaper article found online mentions a Baroness Van Coehoorn on a World tour, but whether this is the same person or not, I don’t know.

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Florence Alice Bernadette Stiles who went by the stage name of Florence Dudley was shot three times in a taxicab as it pulled up in Farringdon Street. She died later in hospital. Her assailant was her married boyfriend Edward Hopwood and after shooting at a policeman he shot himself. He survived and was arrested for murder. His defence was that Florence was shot accidentally while trying to stop him committing suicide over the end of their affair. He was found guilty and hanged on 1^st February 1913.

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There must be a moral here but I can’t see it. ‘You can’t take it with you so why not have it destroyed by an earthquake’?  ‘A relative in need is a money grabbing good for nothing’?

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These pictures of a deer hunt remind me of Oscar Wilde’s take on fox-hunting – if I may miss-quote ‘The unspeakable chasing the rather quite tasty.’ Leave the deer alone and go and get a MacDonalds. 

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Electric socks!! 

I don’t have rheumatism but I must have a pair of damp-defying electric socks for Christmas.

‘Do not fill up boots’ – with what? Electricity? Uric Acid? Sockiness?

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It’s all lies I tell you! The headline says ‘McGrath's New Hammer Record’; the text says ‘it will not be recognized as a record’.  It’s a pity for the headline writer that the ironic suffix ‘Not!’ had yet to be invented. There is a photo of Matt McGrath here

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For a 1912/13 Arsenal team picture scroll down this page and for Chelsea this page
Arsenal ended the 1912/13 season bottom of the First Division and Chelsea were third from bottom. 

This article manages to make a game of football actually sound exciting. I might even watch a game one day. Are Arsenal and Chelsea still around?

Lord Haw Haw Arrested

Sunday Graphic dated Sunday June 17th 1945

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William Joyce was born in America of Irish-American parents but the family moved to Ireland when he was an infant, and they stayed there until he was about 15 when they moved to England. In 1932 Joyce joined Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and went on to become Deputy leader of the Party. In 1937 Mosley and Joyce fell out and Joyce left to form the National Socialist League.

Just before the War he was tipped off that he was about to be detained as an ‘undesirable’, so he and his wife fled to Germany where they became naturalised German citizens. During the War Joyce, among others, made English language propaganda broadcasts for the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. His became the most familiar of the voices and a Daily Express journalist christened him Lord Haw Haw. The name stuck.

At the end of the War Joyce was arrested, brought back to England and, on the basis that he had an English passport, charged with high treason. Even though the passport was obtained under false pretences and he was born in America and was at the time of the broadcasts a German, he was found guilty and hanged on 3^rd January 1946.

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The period between VE (Victory in Europe) Day in May 1945 and VJ (Victory over Japan) Day in August 1945 was a kind of false Peace. The papers were full of up-beat stories of soldiers coming home and ‘building a better Britain’ but almost ignored the on-going conflict in the Pacific. In this paper for instance the only reference to the Far East is this single column 3” piece on the back page.

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The first General Election since 1935 was due on 5^th July 1945 and Winston Churchill (Conservative) was standing against Clement Attlee (Labour).  That the Sunday Graphic supported the Conservatives is pretty obvious when you read the above article.

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Quoting the other side ‘out of context’ seems to have been fair game in the Election run-up.

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It was just this sort of propaganda that probably lost Churchill the Election. The general public (i.e. the voters) were fed up with the War and just wanted to get it over and done with and then forgotten.

‘The only picture of Churchill in an air-raid shelter. He seldom took cover’ – he just spent a lot of time in the well-protected and fortified War Rooms under Whitehall. Not that I blame him.

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Not exactly a great review for what is now regarded as a ‘classic’.

The phrase that jumped out for me, though, was ‘On the way home in the bus having seen…’ Leaving aside the surprise that the film reviewer of a leading Sunday paper went home on the bus, these words triggered many memories of going to and from local, and not so local, cinemas by good old-fashioned red London double-deckers.

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And we won the War!

Seriously, the last paragraph is misleading. There may have been no queues in Berlin but that was because there was nothing to queue for. German civilians in Berlin were starving.

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More nostalgia! Dripping sandwiches…Mmmmm!

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Britain had been running Palestine since 1922 and by 1945 was anxious to pull out due to the increasing violence between Jewish and Arabic communities, so in 1947 it handed the problem over to the United Nations who decided to partition the country into Israel and the Palestine Territories.

So the lucky recruit who joined the British Section of the Palestine Police Force in 1945 would have been in the middle, hated by Jew and Arab alike. 

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The War in the Far East, Palestine troubles and the General Election  - forget them all – we have cute kittens!!