Now is the Winter of our Disinterment 699


The researchers had a hunch he was there. ATOS pass Richard III’s skeleton as fit to work.

Joking aside, the discovery of Richard III’s body is fascinating and wonderful. Aside from Shakespeare’s brilliant play (which is evidently not as physically inaccurate as we have been told for years), and the question of who killed the Princes in the Tower, there is a romance about lost dynasties which appeals to a deep human yearning for a golden age when things were somehow better, and for “lost futures”. What might have been, had those evil Stanleys not turned on Richard at Bosworth and put their miserable Welsh accountant on the throne?

Richard is described in today’s newspapers as the last English King. The Plantagenets were of course Angevin. The last English King – indeed the only English King of all England – was Harold Godwinson. Now there’s a lost dynasty for you.

We now know that Richard’s “Claim of Right” was almost certainly true and Edward IV a bastard, as his father was nowhere near his mother for months around the purported conception. But the so-called Royal line is, I am quite sure, sprinkled with bastards and no line at all. Not to mention that George I was 39th in line to the throne when given it 300 years ago, but the first Protestant.

Monarchy is bollocks, and something we should have outgrown a long time ago. Nice to see that today’s Prince Harry retains the tradition of remorseless homicide though.

Leicester University deserve congratulations on a genuine achievement. I hope Richard can now be reburied as soon as possible – as a Catholic, which is what he was. He was a human being. The degradation and display of his fresh corpse were horrible; but there is a danger of repeating it with a po face and feigned serious intent.


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699 thoughts on “Now is the Winter of our Disinterment

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  • Fred

    “Fred : could you explain why you’re against”

    I haven’t said I was against anything.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    Oh, sorry, all those anti-Israel, anti-US, anti-UK,anti-France posts must be by another Fred then.

  • Clark

    It’s ok, Habbabkuk, it’s ok…

    …No, no one’s going to do anything…

    …That’s good. yes… just… put the gun down…

    …good… good… deep breath… that’s really good…

    …now, just… send me an e-mail..

  • Fred

    “But since it’s by Islamic findamentalists, not a peep!”

    I see plenty of criticism of Islamic fundamentalists here, like the ones trying to overthrow the government of Syria.

    Because people don’t go delving into the depths of the BBC web site to find a story about some obscure bloke nobody ever heard of bumped off in a country most people don’t know where it is doesn’t make them biassed, quite the converse I would think.

    When US drones are assassinating people every day, America have just admitted they have a list of people they intend to assassinate no doubt killing plenty of innocent women and children as well, I’m just wondering why you singled out this story.

  • John Goss

    Just a word about the troll. I don’t really think he is a troll in the ‘controlled’ sense of the word. His comments (which he mistakenly calls posts) are too long. I vary rarely read them. Life’s too short. But not an average troll.

  • Jay

    @Mary

    As with most televisio, it diverts our attention from the realms of possability
    into perspectives of a reality that is auctioned.

    I believe ‘love’ to simply be a measurement of caring, without love would there be no hate.
    Who cares?

  • Fred

    “Oh, sorry, all those anti-Israel, anti-US, anti-UK,anti-France posts must be by another Fred then.”

    Second straw man argument in a row.

  • John Goss

    At the risk of offending one person here my modesty will not prevent me from sharing this with friends who comment here.

    Two Swedish colleagues and myself wrote to Senator Bob Carr, Australia’s Foreign Minister, to ask why he courted the company of Sweden’s ambassador to Australia, Sven Olof Petersson. Petersson has a track record for rendition to countries where torture is endemic and has also called for Julian Assange to go to Sweden (presumably so he can be handed over to the CIA). The reply from his office was totally evasive.

    http://newsjunkiepost.com/2013/02/08/pressure-australia-to-act-on-behalf-of-wikileaks-assange/

  • Arbed

    Brilliant letter, John

    I wonder how many people know that Senator Bob “What Grand Jury? Haven’t heard a thing about it” Carr is chummy enough with the Swedish Ambassador to do gardening chores with him, and that said Ambassador was one of the Swedish politicians who signed off on the illegal extraditionary rendition of the two Egyptian asylum seekers?

  • karel

    Halibaba,

    I feel honoured by your attentive reading of every word I write. It has also come to my attention that quite recently you embelished your rather primitive hahababa with “La vita è bella”. It sounds very noble, almost like the German von and zu. But what does it actually mean, hababa? I have heard of dolce vita but yours is more obscure. Can you please translate it for all of us so that we can profit once more from your “intelectual firepower”. But watch out and try to be less moronic next time or I will plant a hezbollah flag in your garden to test the vigilance of MI5.

    To mary and others

    Somewhat perplexed by the excitement about the horse meat in beefburgers. Rather than being thankful to the Tesco board of directors for a pinch of lean horse meat (I assume that it is actually meat rather than something else) the beefburger munchers feel cheated. It is quite common throughout Europe that a tin labled as “Duck Pâté” contains no more than 15 percent of duck liver. So far, I have not noticed any deceived consumers building bariccades to remedy this sorry state of affairs. Anyone who is too lazy to think and to cook does not deserve anything better.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    Karel, I’m delighted that the addition to my handle (La vita è bella) has attracted your attention and your displeasure.

    Re its translation, surely I should leave this to the learned Italian linguist which you are? Not.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    “Because people don’t go delving into the depths of the BBC web site to find a story about to find a story about some obscure bloke nobody ever heard of bumped off…..doesn’t make them biassed, quite the converse I would think..”

    So not delving = unbiassed.

    Therefore delving = biassed.

    Therefore people on this blog (ie, the usual Eminences) who go delving into the bumping off of obscure Al Quaida and Taliban blokes by coalition forces are biassed.

    Which is of course quite obvious to the 99% who live in the real world 🙂

  • Mary

    Prezza is obviously narked that Mandelslime got this ridiculous title from Mrs Windsor and that he was passed over.

    Lord Mandelson picked for High Steward of Hull post
    Lord Mandelson will serve as the High Steward of Hull for 10 years
    Lord Mandelson has been offered the newly resurrected ceremonial post of High Steward of Hull.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-21362803

    Following was linked on the same page. ‘Hull City Council set to cut 240 posts.’

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)

    @ Mary (13h04) : your criticism of someone being appointed High Steward of Hull at the same time as Hull City Council is set to cut 240 posts would only have validity if the post of High Steward were a paid post.

    Is it?

  • Villager

    Oh Habitual Babbler, the thought just crossed my mind that you were an old-timer senile stenographer, and just then you show up as CE’s secretary!

    Btw, La vita è bella = Life is Beautiful

    Good = buona

    And another thing:

    Fred writes: “Because people don’t go delving into the depths of the BBC web site to find a story about some obscure bloke nobody ever heard of bumped off in a country most people don’t know where it is doesn’t make them biassed, quite the converse I would think.”

    Babbler: “Because people don’t go delving into the depths of the BBC web site to find a story about to find a story about some obscure bloke nobody ever heard of bumped off…..doesn’t make them biassed, quite the converse I would think..”

    Spot the difference.

    Can someone please teach the senile Babbler how to cut ‘n paste.
    :::
    Babbler, did you enjoy your Belgian Woffles for breakfast. LOL

    You have really turned from being our school superintendent to the resident Court Jester (and a rather poor one at that, given your obscure sense-of-humour).

    Of course Life is Beautiful! Even precious and sacred! The latter too subtle for you.

    But never mind Babbler, All the World’s a stage, and the world has a place for you in your second-childhood:

    All the World’s a Stage monologue

    All the world’s a stage,
    And all the men and women merely players:
    They have their exits and their entrances;
    And one man in his time plays many parts,
    His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
    Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
    And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
    And shining morning face, creeping like snail
    Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
    Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
    Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
    Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
    Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
    Seeking the bubble reputation
    Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
    In fair round belly with good capon lined,
    With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
    Full of wise saws and modern instances;
    And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
    Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
    With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
    His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
    For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
    Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
    And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
    That ends this strange eventful history,
    Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
    Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

    Now go along and practice typing that…grammar, syntax and orthography et al

    And then into oblivion. I hope that is an elegant enough send off for you, and that my fellow cult-members like Clark, Fred, Glenn, Karel and others will agree, sans objection.

    Fare thee well Habakuku.

  • Mary

    In spite of my ‘great age’ Villager, I can recite that piece from ‘As you Like It’ by heart, and many others plus some of the work of the C19 English poets! We had a very stern English mistress (as they were called then), Miss Dorothy Rowe, who was a Shakespearean scholar. Woe betide you if you could not answer her questions. She was a MA and like all the other teachers, wore her university gown. It was an all girls’ school. Thank goodness I had three brothers and all their friends to mix with.

  • Villager

    Thank you for sharing that vivid glimpse into the past Mary. Sure that Kuku isn’t one of the boys you spurned, given the stalking?! 🙂

    At least Miss Rowe didn’t force upon you a book called “A Pattern of Islands” by Arthur Grimble. God it was so boring, we renamed him to Arthur Grumble. Perhaps i should keep a copy by my bedside to induce sleep.

    Just looked him up in wiki and it was published by John Murray. Which reminds me of a book i once had titled A Gentleman Publishers Commonplace Book. And one of the gems from that i recall is to the effect “We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Let’s hope we can contribute to making this world a better place. I think this blog plays a role.

    Btw have you thought of writing your memoirs or such; you write well.

  • Mary

    I found her on the internet! She was a founder of the Bournemouth Little Theatre Club. There is even a photo of her here. She nust have been in her early sixties when she taught me and she still had one of those sit up and beg bicycles mentioned here. She was completely devoted to her vocation and she never married. We all respected her.

    Dorothy Rowe, BLTC and
    Diana of Dobson’s
    by Hugh Norris and Eileen Rawlings

    To celebrate the 90th anniversary of the
    Club, we are staging a second production
    of Diana of Dobson’s which was the very
    first full-length play we ever did in our first
    season which was 1919/20.
    A photo taken at the time is
    displayed in one of the frames
    you pass as you enter the
    auditorium. Tbere was just one
    performance, on 7th February
    1920. It was held in the
    Boscombe Hippodrome –
    a building which still stands – and it
    produced a net profit of twenty-nine
    pounds and eight pence which was donated
    to a charity called The Comrades of the
    Great War.
    What was the play about, who chose it and why?
    That is easy: it was still a fairly recent (1908)
    play about the early days of Women’s Lib
    which had had a very successful run in both
    London and New York. It was clearly chosen
    by Miss Dorothy Rowe
    who was then a feisty
    young English teacher
    at the school now known
    as Talbot Heath. She had
    been a friend of Dorothy
    L Sayers when they were
    at Oxford together.
    With two friends she
    had founded the Club.
    Although personally charming, she did not
    stand fools gladly and would instantly
    correct anyone who later referred to her as
    ‘founder member’ by saying, “I was a
    founder of the Club”.
    More details of the history of the Club and
    anecdotes of the early days can be found
    in the official History, available from the
    Club, price £5. But it is worthy of note
    that Miss Rowe could easily have moved on
    to a better-paid job, but that would have
    meant leaving the Club which she loved. A
    photograph of Dorothy Rowe, taken later in
    life but whilst she could still be seen cycling
    around Bournemouth on an old-fashioned,
    ‘sit up and beg’
    bicycle, is in the
    Green Room awaiting
    a long-overdue
    nameplate.
    The Boscombe
    Hippodrome

    p5 http://www.bournemouthlittletheatre.co.uk/newsletters/Newsletter_2009_Nov.pdf

    Hope this little anecdote did not send you off to sleep.

  • Villager

    Oh and A Gentleman Publishers Commonplace Book was John Murrays commonplace book not just published by the, hence the title. Its a gem, happy to recommend to all.

    Happiness!

  • Arbed

    Actually, just to add to what John Goss’s article above is pointing out. While we are all busy focusing on the latest empty-headed smear pieces in the UK press, the REAL campaign against Assange is going on behind closed doors.

    Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has just visited South America (a week before the Ecuador elections) to lobby CELAC. Here’s what else is going on with CELAC:

    25/1/13: REGION : Sabotaging CELAC – The US and Sweden
    http://tortillaconsal.com/tortilla/es/node/12421

    The article mentions that this destabilisation push is being organised from Chile but is aimed at the 5-nation ALBA alliance including Ecuador (Chile, of course, being the source of that CIA-backed drug running op to fund anti-Correa activities too). The article also mentions a Swedish diplomat, Cederberg, who ran the embassy in Cuba while Anna Ardin was up to her destabilisation tricks there. And – you’ll love this bit, John – Timbro, a Swedish outfit aligned to US rightwing orgs that is thought to be behind a lot of the smear campaign against Julian Assange in Sweden.

    Here’s a webcache of a blogpost Anna Ardin wrote describing her deportation from Cuba (inc about her visit to the embassy there – sounds cosy), which she’s since scrubbed from the net:

    https://www.flashback.org/sp25035413
    (use Google translate – it doesn’t muck this one up too much)

    Meanwhile, Ecuador’s opposition candidate (albeit with bugger-all chance of winning) has stated publicly that, if elected, he will rescind JA’s asylum…

    http://archive.is/2UYLb

    Not sure whether Carl Bildt is back in Sweden already, but he’s heading to Australia next, on 27 February…

    Looks like the Ecuadorian elections are bringing things to a head, just as Ricardo Patino hinted there would be “new developments in the Assange case in February or March”.

  • Villager

    And yes Mary, it makes me believe that we were taught by Giants in the good old days. Now look what school education has come to. But then who knows maybe i’m off-the-wall.

    And no wide awake, if anything with an appetite whetted to ‘take-in’ a play 😉

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    Arbed; Carl Bildt is at the top of the list for Sweden.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bilderberg_participant

    “The active participation in this move of Sweden, a country increasingly regarded as a slavish follower of the United States, probably seeks to put pressure on those members of the European Union more readily open to taking the summit seriously. However, the latest condemnation in Venezuela of plans to assassinate Vice-President Nicolás Maduro and the President of Venezuela’s National Assembly Diosdado Cabello indicate that even more sinister motives may lie behind the organization of the CADAL event.”

    Nope. No right-wingers to see here….move along trolls.

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    “Meanwhile, Ecuador’s opposition candidate (albeit with bugger-all chance of winning) has stated publicly that, if elected, he will rescind JA’s asylum…”

    Cross-posting again, eh Arbed?

    (see ‘dirty liar’ thread.)

  • A Node

    Here ya go, C.I.A., help yourselves. Anything else we can do for you?

    “U.S. intelligence agencies will soon be able to trawl through all British government documents stored online including ministerial files, local authority records and public sector data thanks to an unchallenged amendment to a spy law in Washington.
    Britain’s ambitious plans to store all government data on the so-called G-Cloud have led to warnings from the European Union that security will be compromised now that U.S. intelligence agencies have the legal right to survey all data held on U.S. owned Cloud services.
    [……]
    Eventually, it is hoped the G-Cloud will hold the bulk of State data in addition to that of schools, charities, the BBC and police, even the Bank of England.
    [……]
    In the case of Britain, by putting all government data online – including health and criminal records – every facet of peoples’ lives will be open to scrutiny by intelligence analysts across the Atlantic. Many warn that this will also lead to activists, journalists, politicians, Muslims and others being specifically targeted without the need to justify national security.”

    http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/u-k-warned-cia-will-access-all-government-data/34488/

  • Ben Franklin -Machine Gun Preacher (unleaded version)

    Assange was on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

    Maher quotes Feinstein and identifies her as liberal. Assange “lovely woman”

    What a disappointing, superficial interview. 5 minutes in length. Julian did get a last minute
    word in for Manning.

    Now Maher is back on Obama and our narcissistic local politics.

  • Arbed

    Hello Ben,

    “Cross-posting again, eh Arbed?

    (see ‘dirty liar’ thread.)”

    Yes, I do that when I think the links are important enough, just to be sure that peeps here see them. I’ll stop if it’s considered bad etiquette. Thanks for the gentle prod. xx A

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