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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  • Ex Pat

    WILLIAM BLUM

    William Blum, author of ‘Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War 2’ recommends Lobster magazine.

    His own monthly ‘Anti-Empire Reports’ are always a wonderful dose of both reality and sanity (‘So I am sane’ ; ) ) – the complete opposite of the Muppet Stream Media, which is usually neither!

    Latest Anti-Empire Report – 7th February, 2013 –

    http://williamblum.org/aer/read/113

    Found via post by the resolutely anti-imperialist Joe Emersberger at Media Lens –

    http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1360280669.html

  • Cryptonym

    @Fred 7th Feb, 10:25pm

    Fred, highly unlikely as Hess never set foot in Scotland again after May 1941. The furthest North he’d ever been was Drymen, in an ambulance. From June ’42 till 45 he never left Wales.

    From Irving’s Hess: The Missing Years, 1941-1945, no less, his itinerary went something like:

    10th May ’41 Left Augsburg, Germany 5:40pm

    10th May ’41 Tracked by radar, plane crossed Northumberland coast 10:08pm, flying NW towards Ayrshire, ROC identified it as unusual Me-110, but not actively intercepted (operational control and on duty at RAF Turnhouse, Edinburgh was Duke of Hamilton), disappeared from radar (crashed) SW of Glasgow, 11:07pm

    10th May ’41 parachute landing Eaglesham, after failing to find or land at Duke of Hamilton’s private airfield at Dungavel Castle, Ayrshire; at the same time a 400 bomber raid on Central London destroyed the House of Commons and damaged other landmarks.

    From farmers cottage in Police custody to Boy Scout hut in Florence Drive Giffnock, Glasgow (3rd Battalion Home Guard)

    To Coplaw St Pollokshaws/Gorbals Glasgow (in custody of 11th Cameronians)

    11th May ’41 2:30am To Maryhill Barracks (Highland Light Infantry) treated for minor ankle and back injury at barracks hospital, where he met with DoH 10:00am

    Removed at 2:00pm same day to Buchanan Castle, Drymen, North of Glasgow, a military hospital (met again DoH and Ivone Kirkpatrick, who had both flown from Hendon to Turnhouse then driven to Drymen, after meeting with Churchill at Dytchley Park, Oxfordshire)

    16th May: By ambulance to Glasgow Central Station, by sleeper train to London, by ambulance again from sidings; in Tower of London early morning 17th May

    20th May 41, removed from Tower by ambulance, to fortified Mytchett Place, Aldershot (Camp-Z)

    By January 1942 his location there was known to most of the press.

    On 26th June 1942 he was moved to Maindiff Court, part of Pen-y-Fal Hospital, Abergavenny.

    His location there was the talk of town that summer, where he was a common sight on recreational outings, frequently met representatives of Swiss government there, this was known also to the national press but not divulged until December 1944.

    On 8th October 1945, left Wales, he was driven to then flew from Madley airfield, nr. Hereford, refuelling at Brussels, to Fürth nr. Nuremberg.

  • Mary

    I trust that Ms Robb has not been literally suspended. Do they still have gallows in Grantham?

    Margaret Thatcher statue claim: Grantham Museum manager suspended
    A spokesperson said the statue had not been offered to Grantham Museum

    A museum manager has been suspended for “erroneously” claiming a statue of Margaret Thatcher had been offered to Grantham Museum in Lincolnshire.

    /..
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-21373401#

    David referred to this statue furore two days ago. I said I preferred the headless version. The white marble used for Thatcher’s likeness was the ideal choice – cold and icy to the touch and as hard as nails.

    Excellent work by Mr Kelleher in 2002. He got a three month jail sentence for his trouble.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3543115.stm

    I see that £150,000 of OUR money was spent on the 8ft high monstrosity.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1795523.stm

    PS Why don’t Grantham have a copy made in iron? Then it could oxidise and gently rust away to dust.

  • Mary

    If only we could write off our debts in this easy fashion.

    Peugeot writes off 4bn euros as car market worsens Sales at the group fell 16% last year.
    French car maker PSA Peugeot Citroen is writing down the value of its assets by 4.1bn euros ($5.5bn; £3.5bn) to reflect the worsening state of the car market.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21379067

    Anglo Irish Bank debt deal gets ECB clearance Anglo Irish Bank, along with most of the Irish banking sector, collapsed after the 2008 financial crisis

    The European Central Bank has cleared a deal to liquidate the former Anglo Irish Bank, the Republic of Ireland’s Prime Minister has said.

    “Today’s outcome is a historic step on the road to economic recovery,” Enda Kenny told the Irish parliament.

    The Dail passed emergency legislation overnight for the deal, which lets Ireland defer by decades the bill for its most controversial bank bailout.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21361339

    ~~~
    I also read this the other day. Liberty Global who took over Branson’s Virgin Media, will be using Virgin Media’s accrued tax losses to avoid paying any tax in this country. Branson retains a 3% stake in the new company. Neil Berkett the present CEO of Virgin Media gets $65m from the takeover and every employee £16,000. Branson scoops $300m. Liberty Global is now the world’s largest broadband supplier.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/9853137/42m-for-Virgin-Media-boss-in-Liberty-Global-deal.html

  • doug scorgie

    A bigoted Tory

    The Conservatives have announced their candidate for the Eastleigh by-election will be Maria Hutchings.

    The Conservatives’ decision to select Maria Hutchings as their candidate for this month’s Eastleigh by-election is not one that has been well received by all in the party.

    To many Tories, she is exactly the kind of political novice that the party should avoid.

    [She has form] for bigotry towards immigrants and asylum seekers.

    Some quotes:

    “With an increasing number of immigrants and asylum seekers then the pot is reduced for the rest of us.

    “Mr Blair has got to stop focusing on issues around the world such as Afghanistan and Aids in Africa and concentrate on the issues that affect the people of Middle England, like myself who pay the taxes which keep the country going.”

    “I don’t care about refugees. I care about my little boy and I want the treatment he deserves.”

    http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/how-tory-election-candidate-maria-hutchings-attacked-asylum-seekers

  • doug scorgie

    More on the devious wench Maria Hutchings:

    “[S]he first came to prominence in 2005 when she confronted the then Prime Minister Tony Blair about the possible closure of Cedar Hall School in Thundersley in Essex. Mrs Hutchings you see has a son who suffers from autism and she was worried that the school would be shut.

    The thing is the school wasn’t in danger of being closed by the Tory run County Council – and more importantly – it never was. [She also claimed to be a life-long Labour supporter]”

    “Anyway three weeks later she was at the Tory Spring Conference speaking thanks to a personal invite from then Tory leader Michael Howard.”

    “So within a month of being a lifelong Labour supporter, being told that the Prime Minister of the nation [Blair] was looking into her case personally (the one where the school was never under any threat of closure no less) she was at the spring conference of another party.”

    “Considering she was a ‘non-political housewife’ (who had canvassed for Labour since the age of 14 – but, remember, she was ‘non-political’) she seemed to be getting a taste for this politics lark and the next year she found herself on the Conservative A-List of candidates.

    Not bad for someone who was non-political and a life-long Labour supporter.”

    http://neilmonnery.co.uk/2013/02/07/eastleigh-tory-candidate-maria-hutchings-care-refugees-fan-aids-intervention-prevention-africa/

  • Mary

    Do you not find these Food Standards Agency (a bit of a mismoner?) spokespersons unconvincing and useless?

    FSA on horsemeat lasagne: ‘This is completely unacceptable’
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21376453

    The food industry must make sure that when shoppers buy something, it is exactly what it says on the label, says Andrew Rhodes, from the Food Standards Agency.
    http://news.sky.com/story/1049331/horsemeat-scandal-criminal-activity-blamed

    It is not only the matter of adulteration of a ‘beefburger’ with horsemeat. A food writer Joanna Blythman says we should not buy any processed meat products and that one brand of beefburger contains 22 ‘legal’ additives and chemicals. She said that buying the raw ingredients from reliable sources is healthier and cheaper.

  • John Goss

    Doug Scorgie at 10.14 pm, 7 Feb.

    Jemima Khan’s article in the New Statesman, an organ which also hosts Assange-hater and pseudo-legal guru, David Allen Green, tells something about Ms Khan’s character. She has a monetary interest in the fictional film “Wikileaks. We Steal Secrets” the script of which Assange has read and claims to be anti-Wikileaks. She mentions how she was happy to stand bail for Assange but reading between the lines it seems now she is a tad worried about not getting her money back. And yes, that is understandable. My guess is therefore that the real reason she has turned against Assange has more to do with the money he is costing her than true justice for a persecuted man. Money can be a terrible distorter of truth.

    Here is an article nearly 2 years old and just as valid today by Guy Rundle. It was unavailable for a long while but is back up again now and worth reading. As well as giving a good account of the sequence of events in Sweden it also shows how these goings on were distorted by Guardian columnist, Nick Davies. Now where have I heard that before?

    http://www.themonthly.com.au/julian-assange-sex-crime-and-feminism-crayfish-summer-guy-rundle-3184

  • Fred

    “Fred, highly unlikely as Hess never set foot in Scotland again after May 1941. The furthest North he’d ever been was Drymen, in an ambulance. From June ’42 till 45 he never left Wales.”

    This is why it’s such a mystery, if Hess was in Wales then who was at Braemore and if Hess was at Braemore who was in Wales. Who was Prisoner 7 at Spandau, why was Prisoner 7 at Spandau Hess had an alibi.

    It’s an entertaining little mystery, lot’s of theories all of them highly unlikely, including the official one.

  • nevermind

    And the result being?

    Thousands of tons of perfect, protein rich, fat less meat products will end up being turned into pet food…

    Or will they? Very likely these products will end up dumped, an absolute obscenity in a world were hundreds of thousands are at the brink of starvation, every day.
    And for what? a hysteria beyond belief. Hammer the supermarkets by all means, for deceiving customers, but please, lets not waste all this food, it’s not green or clever.

    Could it possibly be that we have turned into a bunch of pampered nambi pambi’s, consumer choice fed, oh, the ‘poor animals’, horsey footed and navel gazing society? With no idea what it means to go hungry, bar those that fast.?

    Should we be ashamed of ourselves?. Let us see retailers sell horse meat and label it as such and then after a while, wait for people to try it and let it find its own market. Let them be allowed to sell burgers from a ‘variety of meats’ and clearly label them, but lets dispense with this false specism and piety with which we look at certain animals and not others.

    I have a quarter of a freezer free for any donations of horsey products deemed not PC enough, ideally as unprocessed as possible, 100% horse burgers will be fine, as long as they are still frozen, and within date of consumption.

  • Fred

    “Or will they? Very likely these products will end up dumped, an absolute obscenity in a world were hundreds of thousands are at the brink of starvation, every day.”

    Shhhh, us skip divers are expecting a bonanza.

  • Mary

    Nevermind. I did raise the question of the food waste before which I agree is shocking. My beef is about the misrepresentation and fraud that lies behind all of this. I imagine that horsemeat (which could contain phenylbutazone btw) is cheaper to obtain than beef.

    The financial tangle behind Findus.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/privateequity/9005885/Lion-Capital-buys-in-Findus-debt-to-stave-off-restructuring.html

    Remember Comigel in France too, the suppliers of the horse protein.

    Anyway we must not worry our little heads. Agent Cameron is on to it. He says that the situation is unacceptable.

    This is Mr Lyndon Lea of Lion Capital.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9857125/Horse-meat-scandal-The-polo-player-linked-to-Findus.html

  • Dreoilin

    American Exceptionalism?
    Poll Says It’s Illegal to Target Americans: Ok To Kill Foreigners

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33865.htm

    “By a two-to-one margin (48%-24%) American voters say they think it is illegal for the U.S. government to target its own citizens living abroad with drone attacks, according to a recent national survey of registered voters by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind …

    “However, by a wide six-to-one margin (75%-13%) voters approve of the U.S. military using drones to carry out attacks abroad ‘on people and other targets deemed a threat to the U.S.'”

    And they’re still whining on about “why do they hate us” …

  • David

    I see that Findus are offering refunds on purchases of their not meant to be horse meat products.

    But surely customers can sue the company?

    Might put a bit of a dent in hedgie boy’s playboy lifestyle.

    Who eats this shit anyway. Betcha he doesn’t eat it, nor no one he knows!

    It’s surprisingly cheap to make good lasagne, and certainly a lot cheaper and healthier than this frankenstein food. People need to wise up.

    Even their web site is shite.

    http://www.findus.co.uk/web/deepfill_beef_lasagne.htm

  • Mark Golding - Children of Conflict

    “It is a fantastic job that Stuart [Polak] and the CFI team do in getting people out to Israel – because seeing really is believing. It’s only when you visit the Lebanese border as I have done, when you look through binoculars and see the Hezbollah flags just hundreds of yards away, that you can really understand the fear that so many Israelis live with day-in, day-out. It is vital, important work CFI does in getting people out there on the ground in Israel – and I want to thank you for that”.

    Prime Minister David Cameron,

    CFI Annual Business Lunch 2012, 11 December 2012

    http://www.childrenofconflict.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Ahmed_Masharawi.jpg

  • A Node

    @ Dreoilin 8 Feb, 2013 – 12:28 pm

    “By a two-to-one margin (48%-24%) American voters say they think it is illegal for the U.S. government to target its own citizens living abroad with drone attacks, according to a recent national survey of registered voters by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind …

    “However, by a wide six-to-one margin (75%-13%) voters approve of the U.S. military using drones to carry out attacks abroad ‘on people and other targets deemed a threat to the U.S.’”

    Double spin. Not only do they use these (probably made up) statistics to suggest and re-enforce the idea that drone attacks abroad are justified in the interests of US security, but they also infer that it is up to the American public to decide whether or not they are illegal.

  • nevermind

    First two lines from Mary’s last link to the Telegraph will make Craig feel better about his typo’s.

    “• UK EU spend could still increase despite overall budget cut
    • Plans to cut budget to €960m, a €12bn cut from November meeting
    • Victory for Cameron as leaders agree EU budget cut”….

    960 Million? Hallo wakey, its 960 billions Telegraph, get a new owner, one who pays the proper taxes.

  • Mary

    Dream on if you want to buy a Dreamliner.

    Boeing have contacted all their custoners to say that there might be some production delays.

  • Mary

    I keep wanting to change the title of this thread to the actual quote ‘Now is the winter of our discontent….’

    The corrupt and corrupted Karzai and his entourage booked into Claridges and ‘The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) told the Guardian it usually picks up the tab for visiting heads of state, and in this instance it paid for ten of Karzai’s group, with the remaining cost being paid for by Afghanistan.’

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2275450/Afghan-president-Hamid-Karzai-tells-ministers-cut-costs-staying-Claridges-40-officials.html#ixzz2KJk57MKq

    I believe Karzai was entertained at Chequers too.

  • Cryptonym

    ISRAEL’S SACRED TERRORISM by Livia Rokach

    A study based on Moshe Sharett’s Personal Diary, and other documents. Foreword by Noam Chomsky

    http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/essays/rokach.html

    also at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20831.htm

    “POPULAR SUPPORT of Israel over the last quarter of a century has been based on a number of myths, the most Persistent of which has been the myth of lsrael’s security, Implying the permanent existence of grave threats to the survival of Jewish society in Palestine, this myth has been carefully cultivated to evoke anxious images in public opinion to permit, and even encourage, the use of large amounts of public funds to sustain Israel militarily and economically.”

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