Poetry Sunday 21 July 2013

The Windhover
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).  Poems.  1918.

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

 Editors comments
By “Windhover’ Hopkins means the common kestrel.The poem attempts to evoke in words the bird’s extraordinary capacity to absolutely command the air. The bird swoops, dives and kills, hovers and hangs as if gravity counted for nothing and it does this with such grace and elegance as to leave the watcher breathless.
Read this poem slowly, with your mind fixed on the kestrel’s effortless grace in the air, it’s astonishing standstill hovering and you’ll feel Hopkin’s words themselves attempt to express his mind’s reaction to this magnificent display. He is attempting the impossible; to express the inexpressible. He very nearly succeeds.
An extraordinarily accomplished poem.
Ira Maine, Poetry Editor

MDFF 20 July 2013 Kerala

This Dispatch is was first published on 8 February 2011

In Kerala (India) many things are labelled MG, such as the MG Road in Ernakulam.  It took us a while to realise that MG is Mahatma Gandhi.  Hopefully the times will change, and the day will come for Warlpiri to once again be proud and free to be themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjc6bH9OTm4

Assimilationists and Interventionists take note: “…and don’t criticise what you don’t understand…”

The beggars we encountered in Kerala can be counted on the fingers of my hands.  The population density is nothing like that portrayed for other parts of India, most families we saw had one or two (beautifully dressed) children.  No sight of very young mothers.  Very few tourists away from Fort Kochi.  Very little “hang-over” from the British Raj (we met only one overt “Anglophile”).  No “cultural cringe”. Several times we were told with modest pride that Kerala is “fully literate”.  Whether this “literacy” is in “our” alphabet or the ornate syllabic Malayalam script or both wasn’t specified, I suspect the latter, as all we asked for help wrote down directions in our alphabet yet most signs use their script.  The English sign “Do not Pass on Bridge” is routinely ignored, yet the “Sound Horn” signs on the back of trucks and busses are enthusiastically and frequently obeyed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB8buBmAfzU

On the few occasions we met Indians whose mother tongue was not Malayalam, they agreed with my proposition that Malayalam is probably the fastest spoken of the many Indian languages.

Malayalam is a language of Shibboleths, it is virtually unpronounceable to non-Indians.  It is in no danger of disappearing.  In a Hindi Times (English Language) newspaper article we noted that Malayalam is about to be made compulsory in Kerala schools (of which there are many).  Our miniscule amateur attempts at saying something in Malayalam, invariably elicited a big smile and enthusiastic response, and often a friendly correction of our pronunciation

Our most used phrase was “Valareh nanai junta” which we used to say “the food is delicious”, because it was.

Kerala is about to have elections.  Everywhere there were posters of smiling slick looking candidates and vehicles with loudspeakers cruised around shouting “vote for me” messages.  The messages sounded as sincere as those we get at our election times.  Kerala was the first place in the world to have a democratically elected Communist Government.  The CPI (Communist Party of India) are in power now but, according to our guide on the Backwater boat tour we went on, won’t be for the next five years:  “After the election we won’t see the politicians for the next five years (sound familiar?) and at every election we vote out the Government” (this with one of those magnificent Kerala smiles).

On our last day in Kerala we watched a Communist procession from the balcony of our riverside hotel.  An endless stream of drummers, flag wavers, slogan shouting men and women in red/white saris crossed the one way bridge to a rally on the other side.  I somehow can’t see that Intervention fellow traveller MP Warren Snowdon (that I like to remind people had a 65% swing against him in Yuendumu at the last election) summoning similar support.  Apart from the marchers, we got the impression that Keralans are thoroughly underwhelmed by their politicians (join the club!).

Petty thievery seems to be non-existent.  On a few occasions Wendy was told that it was OK to leave her bag or purchases unguarded, and so it was.  Everywhere people left their bicycles or motorbikes unlocked and unattended.  Corruption by high officials on the other hand is a national obsession if the television news and newspapers are anything to go by.  At the time we were there, a prominent case was the “Ice Cream Parlour” affair by which some high officials are alleged to be tainted.  The Ice Cream Parlour apparently was a front for sexual shenanigans (I wonder if Berlusconi ever went there?) as well as having international criminal money laundering connections.  Another high profile matter was that a highly placed monk in the Dalai Lama’s organisation was found to have a large stash of cash, including Chinese currency, which the Dalai Lama claims is from worldwide contributions.

We in Australia of course don’t have corruption.  The Howard Government was telling the truth when it claimed it knew nothing about the proposed training of ex-SAS personnel as wharfies in Dubai.  Neither did the Government know anything about that AWB business.  Jenny Macklin is sincere and honest when she tells all and sundry that Income Management is working (Aboriginal Children putting on weight) and that it is a good idea to roll it out to the rest of Australia, and yes, she relies more on her research department than on her PR- Media Spin mob to make such pronouncements.

Just a thought: retrench 50 GBMs (Ginger Bread Men) to save the ATP (Australian Tax Payer) around $15M per annum.  I think this is a sacrifice many remote communities would be prepared to make.

Put $3M aside for the re-establishment of bilingual programmes in remote Aboriginal communities and donate $12M to the Flood/cyclone victims of Queensland.

Quelle bonne idée!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZfc4OL8L3o

A bientot

François

pastedGraphic.pdf

 

The Shipping News

The Shipping News.
by Ira Maine.

Reports are filtering through from our Rockall, Malin, Forties and Dogger branch of the Weather Bureau, (Hello to you, Fiona! And… what’s that? how’s your… y’don’t say?  I hear you had a drop too much…what?… at the Ceilidhe, the dance …?  Is that so?  You don’t say!  The twins as well…?  Is it codding me you are?  You never…. God, I can hardly believe it… the parish priest as well… no, surely not… what’s that?  Wait a minute, now Fiona, steady on, remember where we are…what!?… for God’s sake, Fiona, anyone could be listening! FIONA!!)

We interrupt this broadcast with news of a strong low pressure system out in the Atlantic.  This system is expected to move inland rapidly bringing with it gale force winds and waves in excess of three metres…..SIGNAL FADES…

‘Is that you, Father O’Kelly?… yes, Fiona told me, God, this line is shockingly bad, isn’t it?  I could hear a couple of men talking in Gaelic a minute ago…a madhouse, I agree… no, not Gallic, Gaelic… yes I’m sure…what?  do you think I don’t know my own…?  Sorry Father, I’m a bit on edge… hang on, the other phone’s going…  Hello, hello… what…what?…are you sure?…hang on there for a minute, don’t hang up… hello, Father O’Kelly?…Father O’Kelly!  are you still there?.. what do you mean ‘of course’?…what do you mean by that?  You could just as well have got sick of it and gone home… how was I to know?  I apologise for appearing to be a bit short, especially with a man of the cloth, but there is a limit you know…resources are very stretched, as you know, and I’m doing all in my power to hold the thing together, keep a lid on…what?  WHAT?… what do you mean, Father,’wasting your time’??…. WASTING YOUR TIME?  What about wasting my time, what about that?  Precious resources being locked up, important weather details, crucial to the safety of international shipping, put on hold, diverted to accommodate the wishes of our local cleric, and to make him aware that Mrs Sinclair, the Reverend’s cleaning lady, has just rung to apprise the Holy Father that the same Holy Father left the vestry door open, and his donkey and his goat, so necessary to the annual Christmas celebrations, are presently inside the vestry, reducing the holy vestments to flitters!!

I’m sorry …what was that, Father O’Kelly?…oh, charming, I must say, an absolutely charming rejoinder from the Holy Father…an elegant riposte, so expressively framed… AND YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF, AS WELL!!

No, no, Mrs Sinclair, not you!  Oh my God, I forgot all about you!… that you should hear this…Oh my God….

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a news flash.  The Weather Monitoring Station on Inishdove has been hit by a succession of lightning strikes which have temporarily disabled it.  Repair crews are already on the scene, and we would like to assure the public that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.  The operator has been taken to hospital in a traumatised condition where he is being attended by his family and his local parish priest, Fr O’Kelly.  The Reverend Father, wearing a permanent broad smile, seems just the man to help the poor traumatised victim pull through his terrible ordeal.

 

Cigarettes

Cigarettes in France by Quentin Cockburn

He was little, really small.  He wore his beret like an artist, all floppy and obviously too big for him.  But he wore it with such panache I thought if they ever want to do a small version of Yves Montand this bloke’s got the goods.  CigarettesThe other striking thing about him was that he wasn’t old.  He was well dressed, snappily, and as he climbed up (scaled, in point of fact) onto the bar stool I realised that this contemporary version of Asterix the Gaul was probably only half my age.  A young bloke, and before I could think of a role for him to take in my imaginary avante-garde film, he lit up, just like that.  And then, with the lady behind the counter polishing glasses and serving other guests, (all locals assembled within a tight cordon of distinctive French cafe tables) he ordered a packet of fags….. should I nudge him and offer the warning, “Quit the fags mate, they’ll stunt your growth!”

Somewhere in this scene is my reflective self, awkwardly enjoying my stodgy hot chocolate, – passport to mediocrity.  It was only then that I realised what we were missing out on.  All Frenchmen, and women, (and I know this is a generalisation), seem to enjoy a good smoke.

And to augment the richness seductively packaged, so colourfully and aesthetically arranged it urged me to buy one just as a measure of empathetic cultural conditioning.  Cigarettes!!!  No health warnings to admonish, nor the steel shuttered doors as in Australia (more secure than most gun cabinets) to hide the vile, detestable habit from the “vulnerable” – that is, us all.

In France, the cigarettes form an integral part of interior decoration.  Behind the bar they proclaim themselves, “WE ARE!! accept us’.  Beautifully designed, an exquisite mosaic of deep turquoise, brilliant white, and royal blue.  The once familiar reds of the Marlboros and Craven A’s nestled comfortably with the local Gauloises, the Gitanes, and any other props borrowed courtesy Jean Paul Belmondo.  All confidence, self assuredness and the unmistakable ‘whiff’ of Gallic Pride.

No wonder smoking in this context is so cool, so chic, so conversational, so French.  If you don’t inhabit that “space” defined by your private realm of jacuzzis, jet ski’s and swimming pools, if your obsession is not designed to impress ‘the people you don’t know with the things you don’t need’, then smoking is an acceptance that the street in which you live is the public realm you share, and what better way to express that sharing than with the shared infusion of aromatic french tobacco.  The packets, more gaily emblazoned than fireworks emphasize one simple point.  I am French, therefore I smoke. And I smoke because I enjoy it.

‘C’est la vie’.

(For a little story on dying with emphysema visit our post of 24 May 2013 Here)

 

 

 

 

Whose Art is it?

Today’s posting comes from the Orcadian writer and poet George Mackay Brown.  This passage is from his posthumously published autobiography “For the Islands I sing” (John Murray, London. 1996)  It resonates with Passive Complicity understandings.

When I was a boy I was intrigued by the name “Anon” at the end of some poems in our verse-books.  Anonymous, I was told – the name of the poet is lost.  I have the feeling that not one person made those great ballads; in a real sense they are the work of an entire tribe or community.  One illiterate person might indeed have rough hewn them with their voice; thereafter being vividly uttered and remembered, they are part of the inheritance of a community.  Words and phrases, whole quatrains are changed over generations to conform to the life of this market-village or that hillside farming community.  The wandering minstrels are abroad – a few of them poets to – and now and then a crude phrase gets touched to felicity or purest magic.  Time flows over the ballads, and wears them to this shape or that.  Such ballads as Lord Randal which has variations even inside Scotland, were carried across the Atlantic and now have American accents and images.

One phrase of Thomas Mann struck me, that art is somehow ‘anonymous and communal’.  Over the past four centuries there has been to much emphasis on the life and personality of authors – great streams of reminiscence, biography and autobiography.  In fact the lives of authors are not greatly different from the lives of plumbers; except that, in the romantic age, writers struck poses and behaved in wild eccentric ways – not so much because those aberrations were part of their nature as because the public expected it of them: ‘true genius is to madness near allied’.  In the late nineteenth century no poet or artist was genuine unless they broke most of the social rules, steeped themselves in drink and laudanum, got syphilis or consumption, fled to wild barren places of the earth, manned barricades, was alternately in a trough or on the crest of the spirit, flirted with demons or the angelic (or both).

It seems to me that under all the masks, the lives of artists are as boring and also as uniquely fascinating as any other or very other life.  They put their name and copyright to every novel, poem, sonata, or painting; but in fact the works are not theirs only but have come from the whole community in which they live.  Tolstoy understood this and acted on it.

Weekly Wrap 15 July 2013

What a week!  Before I explain lets here from Errol:
“I have a genius for living, but I turn many things into crap.”
From My Wicked Wicked Ways, by Errol Flynn 1959.

What embarrassment! What shame!  Is there nowhere to hide?  Defeated by technology! Friday’s post Rolls-Royce by TARQUIN O’FLAHERTY (here) included the most distressing typos.  Where I had sought to correct and standardise RollsRoyce, Rolls Royce, RR and Rools Ryste, and with all but RR successfully changed them to the correct Rolls-Royce, with RR in multiple places I singularly failed. Carriage became CaRolls-Royceiage.  I acknowledge with all humility that this obscured meaning, causing confusion among readers and angst in the author.  For that I humbly apologize.  Still the piece remains uncorrected as a reminder to the publisher to take more care in future.  AND it is still a remarkable work.

Monday’s posting Fermentations (here) by Ira Maine.   “We apologise for this posting, we had asked for something of substance, yet are left, at the last moment with only this.  Trite and inaccurate as it is.”

Tuesday saw an agricultural piece by Quentin Cockburn on days, shearing and governors.  I have no idea what it really meant.  Perhaps you’ll work it out and let me know by reading here.

Wednesday brought us to Monet, a subject we had some fun with.  In fact our embittered illustrator, Sir Bertram Postule, penned a rather lovely poem to accompany it.  REad about art here
ButtressHouse2From art we moved to architecture, with Quentin’s great illustrated article on a strange
“house within the Butresses” of a fifteenth century French church.   Read the story here

In this weeks Musical Dispatch from the Front we hear mention of Hunter S Thompson, Edmund Muskie and George McGovern.  It is interesting to see how these names relate to the ongoing subjugation of indigenous Australians – here.

And Poetry Sunday this week brought the exceptional work of Lionel Fogarty (whose use of language reminds me of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange) with Saints are Homeless  Here

Thanks for reading, hopefully next week’s wrap will be more timely

Regards
Cecil and Quentin
Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club, Lowestoft, UK.

 

Plonque

Plonque. by TARQUIN O’FLAHERTY

Way back in 1938, during that time when we all believed every single word that issued from the radio, the actor Orson Welles frightened the life out of his fellow Americans.  He adapted H.G.Wells’ 1898 novel ‘War of the Worlds’ for CBS radio.  Trouble was, it was so lifelike, so professionally done, newsreel style, that his listeners were taken in, hook, line and sinker.  People believed America had been invaded by Martians!  There was absolute panic, bedlam reigned and Welles had to go back on radio to assure people that it was just a hoax.

At the same time the lunatic Hitler was convincing radio audiences that the Germans were the master race and anybody who didn’t come up to the ‘Aryan’ standard should be bumped off.  Unlike now, people of the time believed what the radio told them, except, of course, those sub-standard people who couldn’t believe their ears.  Whilst they stood there, in sub-standard disbelief, Hitler killed them.  Herr Hitler, Europe told us,in the papers and on the radio, was an economic genius, a man of powerful vision, and we should look to his economic model as a guide to the future.  After he had invaded a few more countries and killed a few more people, we still thought he was a good chap.  Eventually, his economic interests threatened ours to the point where we had to bump him off.

Both Orson Welles and Hitler used radio to an astonishingly effective degree.  At the time people believed that the radio told the truth.  There was no reason to suspect otherwise.

You may, then, have begun to wonder why this piece is entitled ‘Plonque’?.

Propaganda, the art of manipulating opinion, is what we’re concerned about here.

A Californian winemaker, Robert Hodgson, through the California State Fair’s  long established Wine Competition, proposed a long term tasting experiment. With the approval of the State Fair Wine Committee he has been entering his own wines for tasting since 2005. His test is a simple one; each group of judges would be presented with the same wine, from the same bottle, several times, without their knowledge.

The results have rocked the American wine industry. Hodgson, with a background in statistics, discovered that of the cream of US wine judges, only about ten per cent were consistent, and then only for one particular year. Next year the same ten per cent would be indifferent.

Astonishingly, when presented with what the judges believed to be a better quality wine, their comments were, almost always favourable. But when presented with the same wine as ‘plonque’ their judgements were consistently negative!

In 2001, Frederick Brochet, of Bordeaux University took a some red and some white wine, and presented it to 54 French wine experts. Not one of the experts realised that it was the same wine, fifty percent of which had a tasteless food dye added!

The Guardian Weekly, 5.7.13. Discovery. has all of the above information, in a splendid article by David Derbyshire.

And for years, I believed the propaganda, all of the knowledgeable blokes who commanded my attention with all that ‘left side of the vineyard’ and ‘terroir’ tosh. Insidious stuff that convinced me years ago that I lacked the ‘palate’ to understand the refinement, the subtleties involved in all this.

To hell with it. I’m off to to Aldi for a dozen of the best and to hell with the ‘bouquet’, the ‘blackcurrants’ and the bullshit!

As Legend has it

As Legend has it by Ira Maine

Legend has it,when Francis Drake, on the rain puddled road, saw Queen Elizabeth approach, he gallantly swept off his cloak and placed it over a big puddle. Liz stepped daintily dry on the proffered garment, and was, as a consequence, not only dry, but forever in the pirate’s debt.  This is the romantic legend and is, not to put too fine a point on it, exquisite codswallop.

Try putting a coat over a puddle, and then stepping on it. The result is invariably a boot full of freezing water and permanently wet socks. This is why, and don’t look because it’s not recorded in the Annals, this is why Queen Elizabeth boxed Drake’s ears and had him executed.

No, the reality was that, if the cloak was to succeed, then it needed something substantial underneath it to keep the Royal size elevens out of the water.  What on earth was to be done? Courtiers could hardly be expected to carry a finely wrought wooden platform wherever they went, on the off chance that they might meet up with Her Madge.  And even if they did, what if the sun was splitting the trees and there wasn’t a puddle for miles?  What to do then?  Carry a bucket of water?

An Elizabethan scullion, of whom more shall be heard later, came up with the answer; it became hugely fashionable, overnight for courtiers to have a small dog, fluffed and flounced and bedecked with ribbons, whose sole function was to prevent the Royal Personage’s toes from encountering the distasteful effluent of the streets.

The scullion, seeing an opportunity, and prescient as all get out, began to breed and train a bigger dog, a dog trained to kneel and provide a low platform for a lady’s foot as she made to mount her pony.As the training increased, the dog was taught to rise, taking the lady’s weight and hoisting her elegantly into the saddle.  It was a simple matter then, especially in the cold of Winter, to hire the dog out as a foot warmer for the journey.

Well, once off the ground, there was no stopping this movement.  Due to the new agricultural developments, horses got bigger causing the scullion and his sons to breed bigger and stronger dogs.  These bigger dogs were wildly successful, particularly amongst the men, although there was one less than elegant result of the heavier weight; as the dogs got bigger, their kneeling knees began to lose their coats.  Pink, balding knees were held up for ridicule by the fashionable, until the scullion’s heirs fitted knee pads.

When Ebeneezer Skinner in the 18th century, invented the mounting block, the writing was on the wall for the scullion dog.

Quietly, Bontemps Tuileries, the now owner of the breed and a broken man, accepted an offer from a German breeder and shipped, secretly and illegally, what remained of the breed off by train to the famous Teutonic Kennels in Austria.  Somewhere in the Alps, near Berne, in Switzerland in a siding somewhere,  Bontemps, unable either to keep his dogs, or give them up to strangers, slid their carriage door open and sobbing, let the dogs go.

Annually, Bontemps Tuileries returned to Switzerland in the hope that one or two may have survived.  Year after year, despite his best efforts, he saw nothing.  Then one day, sharing a schnapps on the verandah of his ski lodge near Berne, he saw familiar movement in the snow.

‘My God! They survived!’ he gasped, forgetting in his excitement to guard his tongue as his much loved dogs came closer, ‘it’s my bare knees mounting dogs!’

His young companion hesitated, puzzled.

‘The what?…your… Bernese Mountain…Dogs?…is that what you called them…?’

Before he could say a word, others joined in;

‘So that’s it, is it?’

‘Yes’ someone else broke in, ‘I’ve seen them before, never knew what they were called though!’

‘Amazing animals!’

‘The Bernese Mountain Dog! What a magnificent creature!’

Bontemps, ecstatic, said nothing, only smiled.

Poetry Sunday 14 July 2013

SAINTS ARE HOMELESS

The poor not homeless cause they have souls richest.
Fortune are homeless, tunes are homeless,
Homeless be the resistances
Homing babies don’t cry
Homeless be the rich of explores
Renting and owners be a homeless
Souls of cold are homeless
Soulful houses are hot with that foods want by the homeless.
Now prayers don’t work for homeless
A camp tent disappear, when a house no tiles to walk on.
Beds all lay sensible as inflict a strategy by all homeless survival.
Resistance are many homeless when they are exhibited.
Homage strange ungirth bring sad eyes handled by transgressor.
Love can not be a molesting,’ we got it better to live”
Home made invader on our homeless are tears not seen to comfort the living.
Home sweet homes must look at the big pictures.
Poor fairest bring all your morning happy when rhythms are lullaby as if the house is earth.
Home swear will not cover the hot cold seasons our homeless needs.
Religions are using the unhoused people for forgotten bush realization.
Pain comes passion at the men who needs a home to home his women’s.
Society eternity seems to want a keep homeless at bay at no stay.
Gifts are given, yet the homeless can’t pay rent or play ownership no more at doors gates close, a whole history roofs side walls seems fallen by the homeless callings.
My people housed know they not full housed cause our people’s live air think even eat as homeless.
Land taken made us homeless.
The trees roots are arms of our brothers and sisters homeless.
They say why don’t them get it together.
Well knock pale the rising sun light on homeless.
We’ll find music is beat best in homeless songs.
Always not be homeless for the crowed will intake,
Swift perfect lives make no homeless we run through years of rain in the sun shining.
Their feeling are not homeless when not housed don’t mean they lost.
Homes many are lonely than the homeless song on songs.
Let the peace be the piss over fires that don’t warm the homeless kinds.
The gold’s are the homeless
The futures are all homeless
Just don’t be up you one’s of a housed care.
Don’t cares are right wing bad bodies mouths.
We pity the stay on owners who will not house the homeless.
Most homeless have peaces unity and loves over money wearing sparkling.
Most homeless do soul the soulless even smart talk the politic of it all.
Most homeless are friends without friends.
We must not feel sadden for the homeless are a real worlds.

LIONEL G FOGARTY 2013 2 JULY TUESDAY TIME 8.30 MERTON VIC

Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce by TARQUIN O’FLAHERTY.

For a while there, since the early days of the horseless caRolls-Royceiage, Rolls-Royce made the best horseless caRolls-Royceiage in the world. It was the best because, in a world beset by mechanical failure, it was reliable.

On the Grand Tour, should you, in your Silver Ghost, find yourself, inexplicably, broken down in Addis Ababa, Rolls-Royce would fly out, at their expense, all the necessary spare parts to get you going again, together with a trained Rolls-Royce mechanic to do the work!

Then came the Hitler war.  In what seemed like about five years, planes went from the puttering, twin-winged Tiger Moth type aircraft to full blown jet planes.  During this time Rolls-Royce brought out the legendary Merlin engine.  This beauty was fitted to some equally legendary aircraft, like the Spitfire, the HuRolls-Royceicane, the Mosquito and the Lancaster bomber, amongst others. When the Americans joined the war they found the Merlin so superior to their own engine, that their engineless planes were shipped to England to have Merlins installed. Eventually, a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine factory was established in the States so that US planes were ‘combat ready’ straight out of the US factory.  One could say that the near legendary reliability of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, together with the skill and bravery of the flying crews made the defeat of Hitler possible.  All of Europe and the USA owe a huge debt of gratitude to the engineering genius of Rolls-Royce.

Despite Rolls-Royce, despite the absolutely reliable Volkswagen which sold in millions, British car manufacturers after the war were blind as bats to the signs.  People wanted good reliable cars and they didn’t have them.  The British Motor Corporation drove the British car industry into despair and into the ground through blind ignorance of the realities, a stupefying belief in ‘British superiority’ and a niggardly attitude towards the people who did buy their cars. Everything, from radios to heaters, from antennae to a reasonable degree of comfort was ‘extra’. Put a radio and a heater in  British car in the Fifties and Sixties and the price skyrocketed! Even a different name, ‘Wolseley’ rather than ‘Austin’, (despite the fact that the vehicles were exactly the same and equally liable to expire in the middle of the road) shoved the price up astronomically.  Japan flooded the market with better engineered cars and motorbikes, with ‘extras’ as standard, and instead of seizing the opportunity and learning from it, the ‘superior’ British bike and car industry had a hissy fit and died.

In the meantime, Rolls-Royce went on, quietly and reliably making aircraft engines.  These engines took us all over the world, opening our minds up, broadening our horizons.  They took us to Australia, and back again, to California and Cannes, BiaRolls-Royceitz and Barbados.

Millions upon millions of people owed their lives to the war time Merlin engine.  Equally, millions of people owe their peace time lives to the utter reliability of the Rolls-Royce jet-aircraft engine.

To have a fire in an engine of a flying aircraft, and, despite this handicap, have the aircraft land safely with every passenger alive and unharmed seems to me something to be grateful for.  It is something for which the passengers should be down on their knees and thanking God, the pilot, and the rest of the still functioning Rolls-Royce engines, both in their own  plane and in the hundreds of other aircraft worldwide.  People seem utterly unaware that if this particular Rolls-Royce engine did not have a history of absolute reliability, the aviation authorities would not have allowed the engine into the air.

Instead we have a ‘class action’ being mounted against one of the most reliable aircraft engine in the world.  Not because people have died, or been maimed or blown up, but because people have not been killed, maimed or blown up.  This does not seem fair.

Occasionally, planes fall out of the sky.  Everybody who boards a plane knows this.  They also know that there is no cast iron guarantee that the plane will not fall out of the sky.  And as a consequence, as a result of this, people take to suing other people.

Suing a company for what might have happened  but didn’t, seems to me to have more to do with the state of mind of the class action passengers than the state of the aircraft engine.

I am thinking of initiating a class action, principally because the sky didn’t fall today. Because I worry that it might, I am permanently traumatised.  I am, therefore, looking for other similarly traumatised  folk to join me in this worthwhile, and potentially lucrative action.

I remain,
Tarquin O’Flaherty
The Bethlehem House for the Criminally Insane,

POSTSCRIPT
Sadly even Rolls-Royce now shows signs of going the way of the British Car Industry:
A piece in the Guardian Weekly (5.7.13. Finance in Brief) The exploding Rolls-Royce jet engine.
“The Australian Transport Safety Bureau detailed how faulty manufacturing processes…’ at Rolls-Royce’s… ‘Hucknall plant in Nottingham, failed to conform to design standards…’

The report found that Rolls-Royce knew about the problem with the Trent 900 engine, fitted to the A380  jet, for at least three years before the accident.