The Spirit of the Blitz

[Chickenkatsu]

blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/brexit_as_economic/

Fourth, our willingness to “keep calm and carry on” will be much less than was the case in 1939 or 1914. We are not at war. We are divided among ourselves. Our government is representative of an extreme, not of a broad national coalition. Half the country expects Brexit to be painless or quickly beneficial. The other half sees it as a self-inflicted wound. Neither of these constituencies seems likely to put up with much pain for the good of the cause.

Ok jajas. I have said absolutely nothing at all about Putin, but if that’s what you want to believe then fine.
I don’t believe I am an idiot either and it does hurt to see you say that about me.

Anger is pointless though.
Tell that to the suffragettes. Tell it to the Anti Apartheid movement, the Civil Rights Movement, etc etc.
In my opinion, apathy is far more dangerous.

hiwwudufeel

I am being misquoted left right and centre. I was talking about stockpiling of medical goods. Not food, not businesses stockpiling. Government stockpiling of medicines.”

Fair enough. Unfortunately many of the most important life saving medicines can’t be stockpiled. They have very short lives or are highly temperature dependent and there simply isn’t spare, specialist warehousing capacity.
Fresh food is essential to patients undergoing treatment. Good nutrition is a vital part of recovery.

I agree with action and protest.

i appreciate the explanation howud

Thank you Helmet.

*howwudufeel”

Nelson Mandela, etc”

To be fair, he was banged up. Not much point in being angry when it will probably just earn you another beating.

His supporters and activists on the outside, who effected the real change, were very angry indeed.

Anger is important - it’s just dangerous when misdirected or stoked up by lies and fear.

I’m angry and have written to my MP many times and vote at every opportunity.

I’ve not written to him recently and he gave me a shit dismissive response last time, so I’ll be writing again.

I’ll be protesting and making my voice heard at absolutely every opportunity.

The great problem with our age, however is that we feel anger but are unable to express it in a satisfactory way. Mouthing off here/twitter/Facebook does nothing concrete.

You said it a lot better than I did Iggly

The reminscences of how wonderful the Blitz was, reminded me of when I was a student and one year one of my housemates was a Channel Islander. She said there was a woman on the island who was still shunned by many people because she had slept with the Germans during the war. This was more than 25 years after the war had finished.

Oh yes, it was all very jolly.

Peregrina

She said there was a woman on the island who was still shunned by many people because she had slept with the Germans during the war”

What, all of them 😳

(Sorry, trying to lighten the bloody black mood. Infantile I know ....)

The friend did not specify how many Germans the lady in question slept with! Presumably only a handful of the Occupying force.

They don't tell you about the english police and citizens who collaborated with the Nazis to send Channel Island Jews to terrible deaths either?

www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/356209/John-Nettles-Telling-the-truth-about-Channel-Islands-cost-me-my-friends

www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/channelislands.html

It’s hard not to collaborate with someone who is pointing a gun at your head.

All of which demonstrates why war must be avoided at all costs. Even If the EU had done nothing else for the duration of its existence, our membership is more than justified on that basis alone.
I believe it has done a great deal more than that but accept others will have different opinions. They cannot possibly argue against its effectiveness as a peacekeeping force.

howwudufeel

It’s hard not to collaborate with someone who is pointing a gun at your head.”

Indeed. If it was the choice of a stranger or my own children, I think I know what I would do because I’m not that brave.
That’s my fear in our current political climate. People are already frightened to put their head above the parapet and I understand why.
The use of “collaborators” was disgustingly manipulative. Dominic Cummings was behind that very deliberate language. His tactics are basic but extremely effective. Create the “other”.

The Channel Islands occupation was very different on various islands. The Jersey authorities took the view that they should do as much as possible to maintain the local way of life by working with the occupiers. There was little or no resistance activity on Jersey.

Guernsey was another story. The local administration walked out and told the Germans to get on with it. There were several commando recces and raids.

Alderney was evacuated and made into a very sinister slave island. And the Dame of Sark charmed the occupiers with her perfect German and asked them to please leave her alone. Islanders today say the Barclary Brothers have done more to harm the local way of life than the Nazis ever did.

A British intelligence report from August 1945 states:

I knew that there were very few Jews on the Channel Islands.

The most telling bit IMO of the second link posted is this:

When the Germans proposed to put their anti-Jewish measures into force, no protest whatsoever was raised by any of the Guernsey officials and they hastened to give the Germans every assistance. By contrast , when it was proposed to take steps against the Freemasons, of which there are many in Guernsey, the Bailiff [Alexander Coutanche ] made considerable protests and did everything possible to protect the Masons.

Did they teach us about this one too?
Detention camps in Liverpool.

And Churchill's decree to :'collar the lot of them'.
'Them' included exhausted, sick, old grandfather of Maragaret Hodge MP.
In 1940 Winston Churchill issued a directive to “collar the lot”, and around 27,000 “enemy aliens” were rounded up and forced into internment camps

Hollitscher wrote of a police officer knocking at his door and giving him an hour to get ready. A frail old man, he ended up at Huyton camp on Merseyside and hated it

They were badly treated,” said Hodge “There was no food, he slept on straw for the first night and they were mixed up so there were Nazis there … there were fights between the ‘enemy alien’ Jews and the Nazis.

You just think: what on earth were the Brits thinking? At the very end in his diaries he writes about how he thinks the reason they were locked up is because there is antisemitism at the higher echelons of British society. Why would they lock up a 65-year-old sick Jew who has escaped from Vienna

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/aug/08/mp-margaret-hodge-meets-portrait-of-her-grandad-who-fled-nazis

At the very end in his diaries he writes about how he thinks the reason they were locked up is because there is antisemitism at the higher echelons of British society. Why would they lock up a 65-year-old sick Jew who has escaped from Vienna

And this is why I get angry about the way the media has made so much of anti-semitism in the Labour party. I can well believe that it exists, but I am 100% sure that it's just as bad in the Tory party, and there is barely a squeak about that.

But the whole, "wasn't it wonderful during the War" crap is really making me sick. It wasn't - people carried on as best they could but no one in their right minds should want those conditions back again.

That’s interesting woman because this article which contradicts what you are trying to prove appeared in the local newspaper recently.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/german-prisoner-war-who-loved-16624066.amp

I have a feeling when the shit hits the fan that NI and Scotland will not 'just get on with it' and 'live with it'.

I get the impression that he was at Huyton quite a few years later. He must have been if he had been captured in Italy. By then things had changed.

Indeed, when Maggie Thatcher first introduced the Poll Tax in Scotland, they didn't 'just get on with it'. I tend to date the resurgence of the SNP and the desire for Scottish Independence from that date.

I don’t believe I am an idiot either and it does hurt to see you say that about me

Don't write utter rubbish then?

Brexit is not going to bring about any Bull dog, Blitz or any other kind of "spirit" other than have us reaching for the gin?

Mandela helped kill people, ANC supporters had some pretty barbaric practises and his wife... well, she did very well out of it.

I lived in Johannesburg when a NZ elderly couple got lost and ended up in a township, dragged and beaten to their deaths.

Easy to romanticise Mandela, easy to forget he was the head of MK - Spear of the nation.