Hi to everybody...well, just had some compensation for my missed prog Atom...I've just seen Andrew Marr's The History of Modern Britain and the period of the Tory reign covering Eden and McMillan...very interesting indeed, with some revelations in it I didn't know about...for example...my apologies if the figures are slightly off but from memory...McMillan had thirty five members in his government all related to him by marriage and seven in his cabinet and no women - it was a clique of old Etonians and was to bring Britain to its knees in the end...and Eden went to war with Egypt over the Suez after hatching a plot with Israel and France and the British people came out on the streets in protest against it and when the reservists were needed thirty five thousand refused with many writing 'bollocks' across the call up papers...:))
Eventually, Britain ran out of money and oil and had to go to Eisenhower for help..and was told in no uncertain terms 'you get nothing until you get out of Suez' and we got out...basically it was the end of Britain doing anything on her own bat without the approval of the USA...
There's a horrible familiarity with that time and Blair's escapades in Iraq...the British people came out onto the streets in protest and were ignored and it was a humiliating disaster just as Iraq has turned into for both the USA and Britain...all we've succeeded in doing is making a bad situation even worse and now there's little or no chance of a peaceful settlement with the various groups in Iraq breaking up into warring factions and thousands more dying until another powerful figure comes along to take control once again...
The McMillan period ended in the Profumo affair - very familiar to me...it was just before I joined the Ministry of Defence when I was eighteen and the whole of London was buzzing with the scandal...later on in my life, I would get to know Lady Astor (Her husband, Lord Astor, was at the heart of the Profumo affair) quite well when she had a religious community a couple of miles away from our hippy one :)) Odd how so many involved in scandals seem to find God...I believe Profumo, after his resignation, spent the rest of his life doing good works...
What concerns me now is...we could be heading for an attempted renaissance in the Tory ranks of the old Etonians trying to restore their perceived past glory, with David Cameron heading them ...unless of course he doesn't knuckle down and behave as they want him to and be their golden boy at the helm, then he'll be ditched like all the other failures of the recent past...I just hope Gordon Brown isn't like Eden who followed Winston Churchill as his shadow for years before he got a chance to be Prime Minister and rode on a welcome mat of popularity until he blew it with Suez...The question is whether Brown is strong enough to stand apart from the USA now and stop the mad concept that we're special in the eyes of the USA...we're not, all we are is strategically important to them in the event of a world conflict, and will strengthen our ties with Europe once we get over the problem of mass immigration and our apparent loss of freedom if we do draw closer...
Hmm...well that was a long post...sorry about that, but wanted to share some thoughts with you...and here's one last thing...here's a taste of Atom, it's got two more episodes to come so maybe this might stir some interest in it...big hugs and have a restful night, sweet dreams, and an early night night to one and all :D