Happy Empire Day

Happy Empire Day from Ephemeral Isle

Finally!

Britain is at last on the road back to sovereignty as the British ambassador delivers the formal letter starting the two-year process.

A great day.

Britain is FREE!

RESULT!

Forty three years after the duplicitous Ted Heath conned Britain into joining the European Economic Community under the lie that it was a free-trade zone and decades after that "community" morphed into the rotten edifice of the EU, Britain is now free. Or, at least, it has the chance to be free. Given that the self-serving swine that backed Remain are also the ones holding the reins of power, I would heartily recommend that they be watched closely so they don't find ways to drag their feet or even ignore the result.

Once everyone sobers up in the morning and downs an Alka Seltzer, those who backed Leave should form Free Briton Brigades to assemble outside Parliament and Downing Street with ample supplies of tar and feathers along with large stacks of rails to remind those inside of what the alternative is to obeying the will of the people and that being thrown off Westminster Bridge means a very unpleasant swim.

And to our brothers on the Continent: Come on in, the water's lovely!

In the meantime, God save the Queen.

Britain does not fall

Scotland votes 'No.'
My country endures.

Margaret Thatcher and soft-serve ice cream

As if restoring Britain's pride, crushing the unions, saving the Falklands and helping defeat Communism wasn't enough.

Margaret Thatcher (1925 - 2013)

Her claim as Britain's greatest prime minister is surpassed only by Churchill's.

Sleep well, Ma'am.

Taxation by whim

How to get businesses to relocate abroad and not trade with you?  Rolls Royce is learning that lesson.  THe company paid no corporate taxes and now MPs and the MSM are howling for its blood.

The strange thing about this is that there's no indication that Rolls Royce did anything illegal.  Surely if the government feels it should pay higher taxes, then it's the law that needs changing.

Unless, of course, Britain is now an openly Fascist Socialist state where the law is merely a pretense.

Horse meat: Two places, two views

via Retronaut

With horse meat scandal playing itself out to its inevitable bureaucratic and editorial conclusion, it's interesting to see two takes on equine cuisine. The above from the United States and below from Britain.

We really don't like horse meat.

The Sounds of Silence

The Rotten State of Britain

We were promised Cool Britannia and a People’s Government, but instead, we got boom and bust, injustice, surveillance, regulation, stealth taxes, interference, sleaze, lies, hoodies, and binge-drinking ladettes… Our whole relationship with the state has become adversarial, rather than collaborative.

The Library of Law and Liberty looks at Eamonn Butler's The Rotten State of Britian. As you can see from the above quote, it's not exactly a laugh riot.

Ammunitioning Ship

Turning's century

Alan Turing would have turned 100 this year and the intertubes are loaded with tributes to him.  Unfortunately, while most articles pay attention to his invaluable services during the war and his contributions to computer science, there is also an obligatory tendency to refer to him not as a great man, but as a great homosexual.  Worse than that; as some sort of "gay martyr".  Indeed, the real irony of the man is that the very conviction for gross indecency that ruined his life is probably the main reason he's getting so much publicity today while the men who built Colossus remain in relative obscurity.  It's rather sad that the memory of this great man should be held in subservience to identity politics.

Case in point is this absurd plaque resting at the foot of Turing's statue at Bletchley Park.  "Victim of prejudice"?  Hardly.  Turing was convicted of gross indecency and he did lose his security clearance.  However, his conviction was entirely in accordance with the law and the revocation of his clearance was standard procedure since clearances weren't issued to people seen as at risk of blackmail.  The only "victim" status that Turing could reasonably be awarded is that he was the victim of misplaced compassion.  Rather than the court finding him guilty of a minor criminal act and punishing him, it took the "enlightened" view that he wasn't a criminal, but an unfortunate with a condition in need of a cure, so they gave him the option of oestrogen injections, which may (or may not) have contributed to his suicide.

When judges take it upon themselves to act like doctors and come to regard criminals as patients, justice is ill served.

Update: Suicide? Maybe not, but that doesn't serve a "martyr" narrative.  Let's stop this nonsense and remember Turing as a great man, not a sacrificial lamb to identity politics.

Inner Party members and guests only

This will go over well.  In honour of the 2012 Olympics and as a demonstration of what the illegal junata that occupies Britain thinks of the peasants, the government is establishing Zil lanes so that the Great and the Good don't have to drive alongside the hoi poli.

Welcome to Airstrip One.

Diamond Jubilee

May we be celebrating your next one in 2027

Reviewed no more

In honour of her diamond jubilee, we present footage of the Spithead Review of the Fleet from her 1953 coronation and for her silver jubilee in 1977.

We'd show you footage of the one for the current celebration, but we can't because there isn't any.  Why?  Because there wasn't a review because the Royal Navy has suffered such appalling cuts that to mount a review of the pitifully few hulls available would be an exercise in national humiliation.

Time for a John Belushi-style rant, I think.

The Coronation: 1953

Tiny satellites will use Kinect to dock with one another

Little satellites grow up to be big satellites. At least, that’s what will happen if Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) gets its way. Working in conjunction with the University of Surrey, the UK-based company plans to launch a pair of nano-satellites into orbit equipped with Kinect motion-control sensors that will allow the minisats to seek each other out and dock to form a new, larger satellite. If this technology proves successful, it has the potential to change the way satellites are built, maintained and even disposed of by changing satellites from individual machines into intelligent building blocks... Continue Reading Tiny satellites will use Kinect to dock with one another

He did warn us

Newspeak dilemma

Don't worry, doublethink will solve it

Fat is evil... Calling people overweight bad... Fat  ungood... Overweight ungood... Must condemn... Must not offend... Class enemy... Victim group... No viable alternatives... Paradigm shifting... No clutch....  Alert... Alert...

Unhelpful

Deputy Prime Minister Nicholas "Nick" Clegg says that talk about hordes of refugees swarming from the Continent in the event of the Euro collapsing is "deeply unhelpful".

If you're part of a government that allows 250,000 immigrants, mostly illegal, swarming into Britain every year, then the prospect of facing an even larger wave due to your continued support the entire European Empire project that any sane person can't see as anything less than barking mad, then someone pointing out your utter uselessness might be "deeply unhelpful".

But that depends on to whom it's unhelpful.  For the rest of us, it's as helpful as raising the alarm on the eve of invasion.