Retsdon

For anyone who's interested in that period of naval history I can highly recommend a book called A Line Upon The Wind . It's a very well researched book about the minutiae of the naval war , but what I most took most from it was that duty and honour were not just words in those days. Rather, they were the underpinning code and motivating force which drove decisions and actions and which everyone at sea - from the Admiral of the Fleet down to the lowest powder-monkey -lived by. When was the last time you heard anyone say 'Its the honourable thing to do?' Or - outside of some jobsworth or other using it as an excuse to do something they know in their hearts is morally wrong (I'm just doing my duty)..... when was the last time you heard anyone talk about 'duty' in the sense of a moral obligation to the greater good - part of a code of honour? Here's to you Henry, and everyone who has served in Her Majesties Navy.

She didn't do a runner. She was basically ordered onto a plane by her government. And for anyone who has never shifted from left to right, or right to left hand drive, go and try it for a bit and then come back and moan about sometimes getting it wrong. Did she make a mistake -sure. But this witch hunt is disgusting to behold.

Wonderful picture!

It was worse in the past. During the Blitz my mother was a 16 year old trainee nurse in Great Ormond's Street children's hospital in London, and I can remember her telling me that one night when she was on duty, in the course of a particularly heavy air raid a bomb fell in the street next to the hospital. She was carrying a full china bed pan at the time, and the shock of the explosion caused her to drop it. For that, she had a dressing down from the Matron for being far too nervous, and the price of the broken bed pan was stopped from her wage! I don't think that would happen today....

I'm a very big precious metals fan but while I still hold a core position, last week I sold most of my mining ETFs and bought protective puts on what I've kept that I plan to sell when the metals (gold and silver) bounce off medium term support. My GLD position that I'd written covered calls on was called away on Friday, and I'm not planning on buying more just yet. Basically I've had a fantastic run for a few months but short- term I can only see more downside than up right now. A 20+% correction is on the cards. Gold, for the last few years anyway, has run up through spring and peaked in the last week of August before falling back in the autumn by more or less that amount. Ok, this year we have Covid but the pattern on the charts looks the same, if a little exaggerated. It seems this year the peak might have come a couple of weeks early. But we're either at or very close to what is a fairly predictable seasonal high. Also the US$ looks like it might have hit a bottom and be turning up....a bearish signal for gold. On the bright side, the metals are, imho for what it's worth, two years into what will be a massive multi-year bull run and there'll be a lot of money to be made. But right now they're very overbought and a decent correction is not only probable but, to keep the bull running, desirable too. Whatever. But in short, I'd bet money that there'll be a better time to buy later this year or early next year after the correction and before the next leg up. Keep your powder dry, better.

This was where I was fishing. A cracking piece of water, if a bit low and 'technical' just now. I didn't know there was a campsite there before I drove up for the day. But it's beautiful and I'd definitely consider using it as a base for a holiday if I had the family with me. There's loads to do in the area. http://www.penpont.com/page/camping/

Well, I've travelled the world. And earlier this week I was fishing a beat on the Usk that has a campsite right on the river, down from the big house. And I can categorically say that you'd struggle to find a more beautiful place on the planet to spend a week or so. You can swim in a river flowing with drinkable water; you have red kites, kingfishers, otters, ...and the stars overhead at night. A nice small town a couple of miles down the road, and a good golf course or two within 15 minutes drive. And world class trout fishing literally at your feet. What more could any sensible person ask for? 🙂

😄

The quarantine thing is a joke anyway. I flew in three weeks ago from Saudi. On arrival at Heathrow everyone was supposed to enter details of where they'd come from where they were staying, etc, etc. It would have been possible to do this stuff in advance, but Saudia hadn't bothered to tell its passengers, so I had to do it on arrival.There were about 5 iPads on stands for probably 50-60 people, and one harassed offical trying to help everyone, most of whom only had the most rudimentary English language skills. To speed things up, I offered to help the three young men in front of me, who it turned out were illiterate Afghans coming in on a Turkish Airlines flight. Their contact address and phone number was some kind of hostel in New Cross, and they apparently had plans to stay indefinitely. (I put 3 months on their forms because ’forever’ seemed a bit extreme). Anyway, after getting them sorted, I filled out my own form only to subequently discover that I could have put anything at all on it because nobody took the slightest bit of notice of the content on my way out of the airport and nobody has contacted me at all since. The whole exercise was a complete waste of almost two hours. As for ’self-isolation’, I complied with the guidelines, but really there would have been nothing whatsoever from stopping me going out and about from day one after my arrival. Having gone through the whole thing, I can only conclude that the ’quarantine’ story is really just a box-ticking / window-dressing sop to public opinion and not really much to do with public health. If it was about public health you'd expect something far more organized and formal.

Dogs are like horses - you have to desentitize them to the point that they just metaphorically shrug their shoulders at thing they don't cant' explain to themselves. If it were me and I'd bought a dog that had been kennelled most of its life and was half scared of its own shadow (and I've done exactly that in the past) - I'd just take it everywhere with me. Shops, cars, buses even, town, whatever. Eventually the dog will get accustomed to (and tired of) being startled by new stuff, and become philosophical about it. The key is variation. What you don't want to do is to fixate any one thing in its mind as being scary. When everything is worrying, eventually nothing becomes worrying. So the goal is to expose the dog to everything.

HRH the Duke of Edinburgh: 'if it's got four legs and it's not a piece of furniture, they'll eat it'. (commenting on a visit to China)

Seemingly her father used to keep a series of instruments for corporal punishment and at the age of 9 would make her choose the poison. I'm not making excuses for her, but I think that she grew up as damaged goods.

Under UK law cousins can legally marry.

I've nothing against British workers, people in the UK work very hard. I was quoting the authors of Brittania Unchained - Raab, Truscott, Patel, etc, - who called the British the worst idlers in the world - statistically nonsense btw. But they're the people who want to bring 3 million Chinese immigrants in.

It's not about responsibility. The Brittania Unchained mob wants Britain to be like the 'Asian Tigers' - Hong Kong, South Korea, etc. It's in the book. - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-19300051... Most controversially, they suggest "poor productivity" is due in part to attitudes to work in the UK - which they compare unfavourably with countries such as Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong. "Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world," they write. "We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor." So if your aim is make the country into Hong Kong, what better way to ginger up the idling locals than by importing 3 million hard-grafting Hong Kong Chinese? It's a no brainer.

Not just have details - actually pay it monthly....

Years ago I did too. These days it's not so easy. Last year they wouldn't even renew my driving license, even though I was requesting it be sent to the same address they'd sent the previous one to 10 years earlier. It's all cross referenced on a national database and I came up, for national insurance purposes, down as resident in Saudi. That was enough for the DVLC. No licence. So pretty sure the NHS is the same now. But we'll see. I'm going to walk in and try and register for fun and see what happens.

There's no free medical care unless you are a resident. If I get sick in the UK next week my health insurance will be getting the bill. I had a friend a few years ago who was visiting his son in the UK and had to fly back to Bahrain to get treatment for a circulatory condition that flared up (he subsequently died). The local hospital basically refused to treat him. It's a fallacy that anyone can come to the UK and get free treatment. In real life it doesn't work like that.

He sounds a very sensible person.

My pension is going to be worthless if that makes you happier.

Wait until the Brexit crash and the complete and utter shambles that's going to follow it. When it comes to practical matters, every job this government touches gets bungled and the practicalities of managing a disorganized no-deal Brexit will be no different at all. They're a pack of incompetent chancers who are going to bankrupt the country - and I'll stand by my prediction of £ to $ parity or less within 3 years. When half the country is in the poorhouse, people won't be so keen to vote for the party that put them there. So come back in 2 years and call my post ridiculous and if my prediction above has proven to be incorrect, I'll happily concede I was mistaken. Or do you think that Cummings and friends have such a cult following that in the eyes of the voters they'll be forgiven anything? Perhaps on here maybe......

I suppose the one bonus in all this is that when it's finally all over there won't be another Tory government for a generation - if the Conservative Party even survives. You've got a cuckoo in the nest and it's going to destroy your family.

Who the hell is Cummings to hire and fire members of Her Majesties civil service because they're not enthusiastic about his crackpot schemes?

Well, we're on the same side then. Cummings is not spelt with a small c. The man and his coterie are revolutionaries who want to tear down the country and rebuild it - although quite what they're proposing to build is a bit hazy at this point. All I know is that, regardless of whether they come from the left or right, history hasn't been at all kind to these kind of people. They nearly always do terrible damage. I don't trust them one little bit. https://twitter.com/JohnBuck_3/status/1208818957500768256?s=09

What does 'neutral' mean? The civil service is traditionally conservative with a small 'c'. Nothing wrong with that, IMHO. In other words the civil service is not going to enthuse about the new People's Democratic Kingdom of Britain because they'll be the ones to have to pick up the pieces and try and put it all back together again.