1/28/2009

Yom Ha-Shoah: Part Two. By Uncle Monty. Photos By Alex Albion.

At The Yom Ha-Shoah
Ceremony: Part Two.
Story By Uncle Monty.
Photos By Alex Albion.
~~~
In my previous article on The Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah, I
stated I would perhaps present more photos of the ceremony
at the Soviet War Memorial that marked yesterday’s Holocaust
Memorial Day, 2oo9. I also indicated that I might perhaps write
more about the actual ceremony of distinguished participants
and the Order of Remembrance to "The Holocaust Jews" of
WWII. So, I thought it would be best to present more of my
photographs of some of those distinguished participants at
at the Yom Ha-Shoah Ceremony rather than simply writing
more at length to describe what happened. I think the eight
photographs here helps to describe what did happen and
to give the overall depth of feeling and respect, if you
will, at the ceremony itself.
~~~
So this, which I present as Part Two, of my story and
images of the Yom Ha-Shoah Ceremony, will give you
a pictorial view, rather than a written view, of what
took place just only yesterday.
~~~
The caption picture above is of Rabbi Alan
Greenbat of the Chief Rabbi’s Office of Great
Britain. He, the good rabbi, officiated over the
impressive one-hour long ceremony. As I men-
tioned else where, Rabbi Greenbat was a delight
to meet and to chat with at his very youngish
80 years of age. And, he also holds an
O.B.E from The Queen herself.
~~~
Front Row L-R: Mayor Eliza Mann, Simon
Hughes, M.P., Ambassador Yury Fedotov,
and Belarus Military Attachè.
~~~
The British Presence: L-R – Archdeacon
of Southwark, Major Simon Kidd and
Capt. Simon Cook at Public Prayer.
~~~
His Excellency Yury Fedotov, Russian
Ambassador to the Court of St. James
~~~
Some at The Gathering at The
Ha-Shoah Ceremony, 2oo9.

~~~
Some Good Active Members
of The Royal British Legion.
~~~
The Laying Rightly of Memorial Wreaths.
~~~
In Memory of the Soviet People who
gave of their lives against The Nazi Terror.
~~~
After the close of the ceremony, I was invited to
have lovely refreshments at the invitation-only
brunch held inside The Boardroom of the Imperial
War Museum. The Imperial Boardroom was impre-
ssive and so was also the people present for me to
meet, photograph and chat with has we lunched on
fine hot coffee and superb English tea with delicious
sandwiches, baked fancy cakes and good round
British sausage pies along with elegant long stem
glasses of fresh orange and gratefruit juice. Very nice,
thank you very much and such was very welcome …
and all thankfully free, too … nice again. Thankz.
~~~
The refreshments, I think, helped to provide an
ideal anticlimax to the solemn and sombre Yom
Ha-Shoah Ceremony. After which I also first met
Ralph Gibson, Hon. Secretary of The Soviet
Memorial Trust Fund, former Labour mayors
Peter Cather and Charles Josie, and retired
fellow news photographer Ernestine Wilson.
She's worked at UPI, AP, l'Agence Française
Presse, Reuters, U.S. Capitol Press Corps, etc.
She also happens to be a Canadian Jew. So end-
ed my terrific and long day despite the sadness
and anguish of Holocaust Memorial Day, 2oo9.
~~~
Again Shalom, Uncle Monty.
+China's Lunar New Year, 2oo9.
~~~
Pope’s Gesture to Catholic
Traditionalists Outrages Jews
By Philip Pullella.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE50O0TD20090125

One of the Catholic prelates in question is British-born Richard Williamson,
who has made statements denying the full extent of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews. He has been called an Holocaust denier. In comments to Swedish television broadcast last Wednesday and widely available on the Internet,
Williamson said "I believe there were no gas chambers" and only up to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, instead of 6 million. "I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler," he said. My question to him as an Anglican Gentile is simply what does it matter if such entailed the slaughter of say 300,000 people or six milion people? What matters is that such slaughter happened and the numbers are unimportant per se against the hideous deed of such open inhumanity that the Nazi pogrom is so evidenced beyond all doubt to all sanely thinking people. Case, now closed ... period.
Your's, Uncle Monty. +St. Richard, 2oo9.

^^^

1/27/2009

Yom Hashoah Ve-Hegevurah. By Uncle Monty.

Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah.
Story By Uncle Monty.
Photos By Alex Albion.
~~~
They stood respectfully gathered to remember
"The Holocaust Jews" did the ambassadors,
military officers, noted politicians of the most
liberal kind, old diehard communist party
members, ex-soldiers of past wars, and
a few hundred various representatives
of the public along with the rabbi, the bishop,
the mayor and the town crier. Bold bodyguards
and groomed chauffeurs also stood stiffly by in
the shade of the bright mid-morning sunlight.
~~~
All there had come to sombrely and solemnly
mark Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah at the
Soviet War Memorial on what is known as
Holocaust Memorial Day, 2oo9, held this year
at London’s evergreen garden of Geraldine
Mary Harmsworth. I was glad that I could
be present there, too. The invitation to me to
attend the one-hour Memorial Ceremony was
more than welcomed by me. And, I suspect
did others who were so invited to attend.
~~~
People Gathering for the start
of the Yom Ha-Shoah Ceremony.
~~~
It was my first ever encounter with the Yom Ha-Shoah
Ceremony. It was also my first encounter with important
CIS ambassoadors and Russian Military and Defense
Attachès to the United Kingdom. I was also glad to meet
there again such old acquaintances of mine like Peter
Moore, London’s noted and official Town Crier; and
yet again the urbane Rt. Rev'd Christopher Chessun,
Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, who has the potential of
perhaps being a future Archbishop of Canterbury. I
do hope so. While Lib-Dem and openly gay Simon
Hughes, M.P. was a good bet to meet him again
like I did. He was one of the speaker, too, at the
ceremony in remembrance of the millions of
Holocaust Jews that died by the evil deeds
of pure German Nazism.
~~~
Old Acquaintances of Mine: Town Crier
Peter Moore and (r) Bishop Christopher.
~~~
As for Rabbi Alan Greenbat, O.B.E, of
The Chief Rabbi's Office of Great Britian,
he and I had lovely chats both before and
after the impressive ceremony that began
with singing Psalm 23 - The Lord's My
Shepherd. It was our first personal en-
counter and it was so delightful ... He re-
minisced with me about his childhood and
of his chemist father at Kennington Road,
which is just a stone's throw from where
the Yom Ha-Shoah ceremony actually
took place. The rabbi also lived for awhile
at Pittsburgh in America, so he told me.
Rabbi Greenbat, now a very youngish
80 year-old, also officiated at the
ceremony so well indeed.
~~~
My Graphic of Russian Defense Attachès.
~~~
I am unable right now to finish this piece
for the day has been a very long one for me
with two other events taking me else where
for much of the day. So come tomorrow, I
hope I can tell you more about the actual
ceremony and perhaps present a few more
of the many photographs that I took of
those present at today's sombre and
solemn Yom Ha-Shoah.
~~~
:: UPDATE ::
After what is now yesterday's ceremony,
I have today uploaded a new set of eight
photographs taken by me during the
Yom Ha-Shoah Ceremony. Therefore,
please see Part 2 of my complete story.
~~~
Shalom, Uncle Monty.
Holocaust Memorial Day, 2oo9.
~~~

1/26/2009

On Pages 16 and 17, Is She. By Uncle Monty.

On Pages 16 and 17, Is She.
Story By Uncle Monty.
Photos By Alex Albion.
<<>>
She is but one speck among the millions of
specks that exist in the anonymity of the urban
jungle. She also talks and walks and lives and sleeps
on the forgotten city streets of one of the world’s
biggest and most expensive cities that is
more than a thousand years old.
<<>>
Yet, just for one little moment last week, she
was no longer a faceless or unseen or voiceless
or an unheard of speck as she was publicly and
photographically-spread on pages 16 and 17 of
the UK nationwide street paper called The Big
Issue. There she was for all to see in the Judith
Erwes photograph that showed her all
wrapped up against the bitter cold snap and
street squalor that makes London a fearsome
experience when you’re a rough sleeper and
homeless like she is at her age of almost
half-a-century old.
<<>>
To then first meet Anne Marie Hodgson is
like coming face-to-face with the harsh and
grinding reality of all that’s wrong with being
marginalized and ostracized like she is in to-
day's modern socialistic and recession state
of the ever impersonal and morally
dying England of old.
<<>>
She spoke to me softly while her crutches stood
as oblique testimony to her poor health and physical
deterioration as she spends her life to freely drown,
and ultimately die, in quiet silence on the cold streets
of which she has bedded down of long years ago now.
<<>>
With only a day or two after the photospread, she
by chance stopped by to ask me for a quid to help
her out. I more than happily obliged by giving her
more than what she asked for of me. What was I
suppose to do? Just ignore her or say “no” to her
like the daily London masses regularly do?
Of course not, stupid …
<<>>
Anne Marie Hodgson’s old tattooes
on her hands, arms and neck.
<<>>
Old tattooes are her personal identification
(shown above) that marks her weathered neck
and her ageing arms and her ringless, rough hands.
Her courseness is oddly not course. And, her lack
of physical beauty is strangely attractive. Im-
prisoned, too, at London's infamous women's
prison of Holloway for a past stretch or two has
also been part of Anna Marie Hodgson's rather
luckless life from what she told me of herself.
<<>>
Our public face and our private face oftentimes
contradicts each other. But not the face of Anne
Marie Hodgson for her face is always a public
one with no place to take her private face to a
place called home like do most of us daily do.
Her "home" is simply the cold streets of London.
It is a choice she has made more through circum-
stances of her own life that leaves little for her to
freely choose from until she is forced off the streets
by perhaps medical mishap or sheer old age or
stupefied tiredness. By that time, she may indeed
have already withered away with yet another
rough sleeper to fill her wornout place and her
free Salvation Army shoes.
<<>>
Asked if The Big Issue photospread, along with
the few lines written about her by Daisy Green-
well, had helped her in anyway or improved her
circumstances by its publicity of her Covent
Garden rough existence on the streets, she
bluntedly expressed her complete negativity
of seeing no results from her 15 seconds of
very limited fame or public recognition, if
in fact, the story about her even came
close to that.
<<>>
Fame is fleeting, especially today from what
was once called 15 minutes of fame that's
down now to 15 seconds in the world of the
mass media. So here today in print and gone
by tomorrow's edition and then completely
and absolutely forgotten. That's what has
happen to Anne Marie Hodgson already,
despite her being on pages 16 and 17 of
The Big Issue, that she was just last
week ... But that's now old wash and
a long time ago ... Sorry, baaaaby.
<<>>
So it seems best for her to gather happy
dreams that life will be better one day for
her and for all of those who dwell and
ache on the city streets of anonymity.
<<>>
Good luck Anne Marie, Uncle Monty.
+Royal Winsdor Day, 2oo9.
...
:: Skeleton Skater ::
<<>>

1/24/2009

Voices From The Edge. Notes By Alastair Murray. Edited By Uncle Monty.

Voices From The Edge.
Starring Simon Callow
and Louise Jameson.
Notes By Alastair Murray.
Edited By Uncle Monty.
Graphic By Alex Albion.
-=-
“Voices From The Edge” is a stage play about the
homeless written by Christine Bacon. The drama
is based on the first hand testimonies of people
who are living today with homelessness and
deprivation in the British Isles.
=-=
“Voices From The Edge” is presented in active
support of this year’s 2oo9 Poverty and
Homelessness Action Week.
=-=
"The Edge" includes stage stars Simon Callow
and Louise Jameson, along with Actors for
Human Rights.
=-=
The performance is set for Friday, Feburary 6th,
2oo9, at 8:00 pm (Doors open at 7:00 pm).
=-=
The venue will be held at The Union Chapel,
Compton Street, London N1. Tickets in advance
are £10.00/£12.00 on the day at The Union
Chapel.
=-=
Please visit us at www.unionchapel.org.uk/
and/or Housing Justice for further details
.
:: Simon Callow ::
.:: Louise Jameson ::
-=-
“Voices From The Edge” is one of many great perform-
ances and special events taking place around the UK in
churches, arts venues, community centres and schools
during P+H Action Week.
-
.
Concessions for low/unwaged and free tickets for people
who are homeless. Complementary tickets are available for
people who currently attend homeless services like hostels or
day centres, but you must register as a group which includes a
member of staff. Also reduced priced tickets for low/unwaged.
Call Alastair Murray at Housing Justice on 020 7723 7273.

-=-
:: YOM HASHOAH VE-HAGEVURAH ::
By Uncle Monty.
...
I have now been invited to attend the 2oo9
Anglo-Soviet Ceremony to solemnly mark
"Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah." I will write
soon about the ceremony itself after I attend
it and of the top diplomatic, military, political
and governmental dignitaries there set
to be present.
...
Photo Below is of the Czech Terezin (Teresienstadt)
and Litomerice Nazi Concentration Camp of which
"Yom Ha-Shoah" forever remembers.
...

1/18/2009

Now All Agog With All Things Called Obama. An Opinion By Uncle Monty.

Now All Agog With All Things Called Obama.
An Opinion By Uncle Monty.
~~~
Some folks are already sick and tired of hearing his name,
which also includes me. And, for the next couple of days
the world’s news media will ram down our throats even
more that’s all agog with all things called Barack Hussein
Obama as the American capital of Washington, D.C.,
prepares for perhaps as many as 2 million swooning
Obama fans to flock to his presidential 3-day
celebration and inauguration that began today. It's
going to be by far a predominantly black affair of
the like that White America has never before seen.
~~~
His actual legal swearing-in as president under oath
is set for Tuesday – January 20th, 2oo9 - as the first
African-American to become U.S. President. On that
same day, the most detested U.S. President of modern
times - George W. Bush - finally leaves The White
House after eight long years of his murderous and
ignorant assault upon the world.
~~~
As cowboy Bush's vile name rides off into the
Texas sunset, Obama’s own name rises to new
heights that even overshadow the historic and
respected black name of America's assassinated
civil rights leader The Rev’d Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., whose national birthday is coincident-
ally marked tomorrow on the eve of Obama's
presidential swearing-in.
~~~
Many African-Americans, and other Africans in
such far flung places as their ghettoised enclaves
of Europe, and those in Africa itself, are now
joyously claiming they’re some how related by
family or ancestry to Obama when they’re no
more related to him than I am a white monkey
owner or a Chinese zoo keeper. Whatever, blacks
around the world are proud and excited at seeing
"their" Obama in the Oval Office. So, too, are
open leftists, Muslims, abortionists or baby
killers, gayboyz, liberation artists, democrats,
human rights activists, trade union leaders,
anti-neocons, anarachists, anti-racist agitators,
and an assortment of oldball internationalists.
Almost every other leftwinger seems to have now
come out of the woodwork to declare his or her
firm allegiance and adoration to all things Obama.
Such is so sick and so scary for folks like me, who
don't buy, nor ever will, into Obamamania
of any kind.
~~~
~~~
Such glee for Obama is really pitiful since his
meteoric rise is based more on his nation’s and
the world’s “anti-Bushism” than on knowing
who Obama really is. Since his election last Nov.
4th, the black gentleman has been portrayed
by the mass media as an expert on just about
anything that comes his political way. Yet, in
reality he is an expert on nothing other than
beating the Republican spectre of the ogre
and detestable George W. Bush and the then
lack lustre and elderly Republican John
Walker McCain III, 72, who was Obama's
2oo8 presidential election rival.
~~~
Other than that, we know sweet nothing about
how Barack Hussein Obama will finally turn
out as the nation's 44th President. Who knows?
He could be even worse than the Bush night-
mare despite all the present public glow of
Obamamania seemingly all around the world.
~~~
Just Who In The Hell Is He?
~~~
Under the real or imaginary fear stemming from the
result of Bush’s contrived and created “War on Terror,”
all the paranoid Federal law enforcement agencies
from the U.S. Secret Service to the FBI to the ATF
have now put Washington under virtual siege to counter
any threat, no matter how small or unreal, to the nation's
capital and U.S. Capitol and to Obama himself. The Yan-
kees have now done much like what the Chinese Comm-
unist apparatus did at last year’s Olympic Games inside
Beijing – sweep the streets of all who might somewhow
be considered “undesireable,” including those Dupont
Circle homeless at where I myself once was homeless
just a few weeks after Bush’s final 2005 and 2nd
inauguration that cost $40 million while the
Washington homeless shivered literally to death on
the downtown streets just a few blocks away from
The White House itself. I once sat very early in the
morning almost frozen myself on a public bench at
Dupont only to realise that the homeless man next
to me was already frozen to death – period. It made
me sick inside my empty and cold stomach. I was
then taught a real lesson about the Real America,
wasn't I? Sure thing. Ah, and yes, the Obama Cir-
cus in D.C. today is costing $100 million to per-
form against Bush's "poultry" $40 million ...
~~~
The lineup for the Obama Inauguration also
includes an ungodly "Dollop of Gayness" by the
invited gay Episcopal cleric V. Gene Robinson,
who I myself met and photographed at last
year's Hay Festival in Wales after I also met
and photographed there ex-U.S. President
Jimmy Carter. The Robinson fellow has helped
to put aslunder the whole worldwide Anglican
Communion of which I am a standing member
by virtue of being an avid and open Anglican
who happens to also unequivocally oppose all
things regarding the immoral New Hampshire
bishop that is the scandal of today's quivering
Anglicanism. Gay Gene was called upon after
many Obama party loyalists roundly condem-
ned the earlier selection of the conservative
Evangelist Rick Warren in doing the invocation
at the inauguration. Perhaps instead of coming
in his bishop's dress, Gene Robinson will feel at
liberty to fiddle instead with his "married" gay
lover at the nation's Washington Mall before or
after his "Episcopal blessing" to Obama and his
adoring crowd? Nothing would surprise me now
about Gene, unless he suddenly dropped dead.
I wouldn't blink an Anglican eyelid, if he so did.
~~~
Outside the Washington Beltway, with or with-
out the Obama Inauguration now underway, the
Deep South and in the back country of America,
there is a seething and swelling anti-black brigade
of staunch Repubicans, Prairie white folks and
“anti-Obamarists” who now detest and loathe him
for being the first African-American to enter The
White House and to presumably now sleep, when-
ever he wishes, in even the sacred Lincoln Bed-
room itself at where only white presidents have
hitherto slept. The thought of a black man now
there adds to their utter dismay and visual
hatred of him. While on the other hand, demo-
crats the world over are falling over themselves
at the “aura” of Obama and his clean sweep of
all things Republican or of any thing politically-
tainted by those who are seen as grossly or
midly pro-Bush or steadfast rightwing. Thus,
America and the world is now all agog with
all things called Obama, except for
some of those other good folk.
~~~
:: Barack Obama Background ::
~~~
As challenges mount, ardor for Obama cools abroad
By Associated Press
~~~
But the honeymoon will soon be over for
Barack Hussein Obama as very sticky
situations must be dealt with like
Israel's recent outrageous slaughter at Gaza
against Hamas and the Palestinian innocent;
the American domestic economic freefall and
downturn that sees more Americans becoming
increasingly jobless and homeless; the nuclear
configuration regarding Iran and North Korea,
of which I have both visited, will continue to
beckon on the world stage; the terrible horror
of Bush's unilateral invasion and occupation,
along with the help of his hideous fellow war
criminal Anthony Blair of Britain, of Iraq at
now trillions of wasted dollars along with the
umpteen thousands of the innocent so maimed,
detained, tortured and/or insanely killed off
by his vicious and vile U.S. military that is now
moving slowly toward somekind of disengage-
ment of Almighty America from Iraq under the
political promise of Obama. These are only a
few headaches of many that will test the new
president almost immediately after his Tuesday
Inauguration. How he deals with them must not
be Obama window dressing, but rather substantial
innovation from whatever the nasty George W.
Bush has left him and the nation to heal now for
the future good of America and the world. "Now
all agog with all things called Obama" must be
more than just niffy words from here on out, Mr.
Obama. Personally, however, I cannot see right
now how your promise is all that promising.
Whatever, good luck to you for sure ...
~~~
Crowds complicate Obama inaugural security
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50F1LF20090116
~~~
Man charged with threatening Obama on
website: Steven Joseph Christopher is charged
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE50G07920090117
~~
Venezuela's Chavez says Obama has "stench" of Bush
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE50G2F420090118
~~~
Iraq occupation Bush's "mother of all mistakes"
By Ulf Laessing and Rania El Gamal
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50H19H20090118
~~~
Feeling really good, Uncle Monty.
+The 2nd Sunday after The Epiphany, 2oo9.
~~~
An added afterthought:
If Barack H. Obama should come to any harm at any
time during his Black Presidency, America should ex-
pect to see the "Mother of All Race Riots" take place
there that could lead to a permanent state of siege
between the races that could well turn the
whole country inside out like nothing else
before seen at the US of A.
~~~
Now Just Alittle Bit About My Birthday Today ...
I want to first send my many thankz to those who
have kindly given me their thoughtful presents on
this my January 18th birthday of today. They inc-
ludes fine Jan Mol of The Netherlands, the retired
ambassador, I believe, to the UK. He came and
gave me his generous and belated-xmas-cum-his-
birthday gift of £200.00- for me. Jan is one of the
kindest and most generous of my many kind and
generous friends. Then durable and always very
dear Jill Ferguson came by and thoughtfully gave
me her lovely birthday gift of the profusely and
exquisitely-illustrated 368-page Anglican
Book of Common of Prayer by the renowned
Ebury Press. Jill's gift to me is based on the
original text of the 1662 BCP. I just love read-
ing it ... I really do. Dare I also mention lovely
Elizabeth Middleton? She has been away quite
along time after she returned home to Durban,
South Africa, to take care of her ailing father
who recently died after all of Elizabeth's 10
months of close loving care of him before his
own death just weeks ago. I was sad to hear
of her sad news, but was so happy to see her
again and quite unexpectedly, too, along with
her birthday gift of the hard-to-find South
African five shilling Crown pieces in solid silver
dated from the Boar War. How Elizabeth rem-
embered my birthday beats me and how she
also knew I am fond of collecting old and rare
coins, too. But she did. Thank you, my dear.
To Jan, Jill, and three or four others like
Karen Young, Bill and Catherine Oglivy,
Jackie DeLaney, and James York, I also
again say thank you ever so much ... And, I
do feel younger today than I did yesterday.
Really? Oh, Blimey ... Later today, I have
been invited to my Birthday Dinner with
my good friends The Dawson Family.
Enjoy such, I indeed will.
~~~

1/15/2009

Grim Death of British Civility and Courtesy. By Uncle Monty.

Grim-Death of British
Civility and Courtesy.
By Uncle Monty.
-=-
Once upon a time, the British were rightly considered
perhaps the most civil and polite people in the world.
At generation after generation, they were taught to
be such to one another and to those visiting us from
outside of Blighty. But, not so anymore. We have
now become crude and rude and ill-mannered
and ill-tempered to one other and to all manner
of other folks over the past two decades or so.
-=-
The result has been the ongoing grim -death of
British civility and courtesy that now makes our
once considered ill-bred "American Cousins" look
almost like ladies and gentlemen compared to
many of our modern, cold, rude, and
uncivil British folks of today.
-=-
And, it’s getting worse by each day and among
all social strata-of Britain’s now fragmented and
sick society. The more fragmented we've become,
the more grim and the more sick we seem to
have become, too. Along with becoming cruder
and ruder to each other more than ever before.
Ill-manners and blatant disrepect have now be-
come the growing norm from shop assistants to
street cops to co-workers and among the travel-
ling public, and not the exception anymore, in
today's ever rude and "Broken Little -Britain."
-=-
Why has all of this happened to the once
civil and polite British? One of the major
reasons, I believe, among others, is simply
we are no longer a relatively homogeneous
society of English people that we once was.
We are now an hetrogeneous one that has
seemingly thrown away many British values
and ideals out of the window to accomodate
the massive influx of millions of past and
present African and Asian immigrants and
European foreigners that have settled in
the UK. They have helped to uproot and
destroy what was once considered good
British manners and politeness. At one time
we positively shaped such people, but their
sheer and overwhelming numbers of recent
times has now started to negatively shape
us to the detriment of all-things British.
That includes, of course, what was once
our belief in good manners and polite
behaviour that is now pretty much
in the pigsty of modern settlers.
-=-
There are 12 other reasons, factors, and/or
problems, in my thinking, that has contributed
to more and more rude and crude behaviour
that overwhelms whatever civility and
courtesy is now left in the awful UK:
=
1: Binge Drinking and Anti-Social Behaviour.
Such excessive beer boozing and drug use by
youthz and young adultz in all regions of the country
engenders no civility and courtesy whatsoever. In
fact, such widespread misconduct has contributed
to greater rudeness and ill-manners by such
out-of-control people. Anti-social behaviour –
that includes vicious vandalism, petty crime, foul
language, and street violence - by kidz as young
as age 7 year is now becoming commonplace
in the British Isles.
=-=
2: Abusive Traffic Wardens and Tyrannical
Parking Enforcement.
Most people at first wouldn't associate such with
the rise of bad manners and lack of courtesy in
Britain. But such does on a daily basis in which
the motorist is compelled to be rude and angry
at the predatory nature of parking enforcement.
Now called “Civil Enforcement Officers,” traffic wardens
have brought about more rudeness and discourtesy by
their mindless ticketing than anything else. It makes
people scream and shout at them and the punitive
councils with justification by their enforcement of ty-
rannical parking rules that only reinforces the decline
of good manners and civil behaviour in Britain.
So wide spread is parking enforcement that we
cannot avoid it with local councils there to extract
more and more unjust fines out of the motoring
public. Greedy councils have been allowed to
commandeer all the public streets for their own
profit of millions of pounds at the gross expense
of the driving public. Some 700.000 parking
tickets alone were issued last year to visitors to
Britain by such council jackasses. It’s amazing
anybody would want to visit Britain in a car
with the state of wicked traffic enforcement and
all the rudeness that goes with it and all the out-
rageous ticketing, clamping, towing and impound-
ing, and parking fines to boot. That contributes
to greater incivility in the country today. The
UK is now the world's No. 1 country for writing
traffic tickets in its quest and war against the
motorist. More than 10 million traffic tickets of
one kind or another have been savagely imposed
by the country's traffic wardens in the past half
decade or so on the British motoring public. And,
there's no end in sight to the rude response.
=-=
3: Mindless Mass Immigration.
Without a doubt, Third World immigrants are
some of the rudest and most ignorant people
you’ll ever want to meet. They always push,
shove and shout their way onto crowded buses
and run shipshod over whoever gets in their
black way. Most have no manners because they
never have had any. Foreigners of every ilk also
show few manners. Ill-manners is a vicious cicle
in which once manners aren’t used, then the next
person oftentimes does the same. If your face
gets slammed in the door because the door wasn’t
held open politely for you, then next time you are
also likely to do the same to the next person.
-=-
4: The Criminalization of the People.
The present decade-old government or more of
Britain’s New Labour has passed more than 3,000
new criminal laws against the people. People are
being criminalized for everything and people are
angry over all that the government is or is not
doing other than making them criminals at every
turn. So bad is the country it is now in a perpetual
state of mindless phobia about racism to the degree
that pages after pages are written almost daily
about the nature of racism that amounts to catch-all
legislation and arrests used against those who are
native white sons and daughters of England. They
feel hounded every day and when folkz feel hound-
ed they aren’t civil or polite. How can we expect
them to be? Millions of Britons are fleeing the
country to live anywhere else but inside their own
country. Tragically, they are then replaced by
more immigrants and foreigners to our shores.
-=-
5: The Rise of the Mass Culture.
Most British grandparents have now lived to see
the rise of the mass culture than entails catering to
the masses that never existed until now. Everywhere
you go the food stores are packed, the banks are full
of folkz wanting money, buses and trains are jammed,
sidewalks are crowded with the faceless public, and
shopping malls and over-retailing suck in the
shopping masses like sociopaths on the run. How
can we be polite and civil when we’re treated
like dead sardines every day?
-=-
6: The Loss of Community and Belonging.
Mass immigration and the flood of EU foreigners
to the UK now sees the loss of community and
belonging for many of those who have lived in their
own communities long before all the useless immigrants
and lousy foreigners took over the place against the
will of the local people. Such has created friction and
will eventually spill over into violent confrontation,
if steps are not taken immediately to reign in New
Labour’s mindless mass immigration to the UK.
When one feels one no longer belongs, then the
spirit is destroyed and the levels of rudeness
and incivility increases as folkz lash out in their
anger at such outsiders taking over. Many
working folkz feel under siege from all the
immigrants and foreigners now overwhelm-
ing the country beyond all belief or all reason.
-=-
7: The End of Traditional Values of Child Rearing.
Do you ever hear today such common courtesy
as "Yes, sir" or "No, sir" or "Please, sir" or
"Thank you, sir" coming out of the mouths of
today's ill-reared and empty-mannered British
school kidz to their teachers or elders or to
those in authority? Well, of course, not. We
have instead, in the past couple of generations,
reared educational and social child morons that
are seen at our failed school system and poor
standards of education. Children are no longer
taught manners it seems now that we have
liberated them from almost all forms of
discipline and control in the home and school.
The callous disrespect for the elderly is also
seen in such children who also treat their own
parent as shoddy as their own parents are.
=-=
8: The Mass Mobility of Society.
Mass mobility has brought about the lack of
rootedness of many people that go everywhere
thesedays, but know nowhere other than on the
constant move to somewhere else from whence
they first came. When folkz suffer from "un-
rootedness" - like many of the homeless do -
we oftentimes see they also lose whatever
sense of manners they may have once had. As
our national and world populations explode, too,
the mass mobility of society become even more
pronounced and hence the lack of rootedness
grows greater along with the lack of kind
respect or courtesy to or for others.
-=-
9: The Impersonalization of the Individual.
The rise of the ID Card is a classic example of
Britain’s impersonalization of the individual with
an attached number and photo around their
neck as they enter their workplace to prove he
or she is indeed "a someone” who works there.
Distrust and suspicion of the individual is now
always tied to those without an ID Card to
show. Such can bring unpleasent confront-
ations from in-house security guards for
those "IDless," even though they are
perfectly harmless individual after all
is said and done. And, who then
guards the bloody guards?
-=-
10: The Cult of Celebrity.
Pick up any freesheet on any morning, at
say London's Waterloo or Covent Garden or
Canary Wharf, and you'll be visually-waylaid
by at least 3 or 4 or 5 pages of celebrity news
and gossip and their scandals and their dis-
gusting lifestyles or their arrests for this or
that, along with full TV listings of their talk
show appearances with say Oprah or
whoever. Many of those celebrities are
simply shallow and hollow. Yet, the public
thrives on them like empty idols that they
are. Worse still, their ill-manners and
filthy mouths infect the public mores
that are copied or mimicked by millions,
especially by the young who oftentimes
act out - consciously or subliminally - by
what they see of what such celebrities do.
Many celebrities have helped to bring about
the present contempt for what was once
good and solid British civility and courtesy.
-=-
11: The All-Embracing and Non-Stop
Use of Digital Gadgetry: Cellphones, etc.
Of all the modern digital monsters invading
our personal space thesedays are those
addictive and irrational users of the mind-
less cellphone or mobile at every spot of
the public realm. Public rudeness is rife
with many cellphone users who scream
and shout with their "must have" i.phone
or swanky model or their Blackberry to
constantly bring out of their pocket or purse
so that we can all see what they own and
have. Public laptop users, like cellphone
users, have no regard for anybody but
themselves in many cases. Good manners
go down the drain, too, as such users re-
fuse to interact outside of their gadgets
or machines. Ironically, today we have
more ditigal tools than ever before to
widely communicate, yet such tools have
in fact brought about less communication
with each other on a personal and social
level. Everybody is talking into "something"
like the cellphone, but less and less are
we talking directly to each other more
often than not. When people fail to talk with
each other, then there's less need to excerise
civility and courtesy to each other much like
we continue to see every day in places like
England that has now lost its past beauty of
mutual respect and concern for one another.
-=-
12: The Rejection of Church Teachings.
For ages, The Church has taught us how
we should as Christians treat each other.
That means using kind words of greeting
when we meet or bumped into one other.
With the grim death of British cilvility
and courtesy, we also see how folkz now
fail to greet each other with kind words
like "Good morning," How are you?,"
"Nice to see you," "What are you
doing today," "Hope you're alright?,"
and/or "Have a nice day ..." In almost 4
years, just as an example, as a Big Issue
vendor, not once have I been greeted by
distribution staff using kind words of morn-
ing greetings. Such reflects the dead state of
British manners and politeness today at the
street level at least. The Church teaches that
we most no treat others like they don't exist,
but such is common at The Big Issue at Co-
vent Garden not just to me, but to pretty
well everybody else. Incivility and discour-
tesy always flourish when the individual is
not first discerned for their dignity and
presence and experience by those they
that really don't know if they're talking
to a pauper or a prince or a priest or a
parasite or a plumber or a professor. And,
even if by chance they do know the differ-
ence, they just don't bloody care any-
way ... Again, Church teachings
teaches and tells us otherwise.
=-=
Above all, good manners and politeness
costs us nothing. They're cost free. But
the lack of such costs us alot more in the
overall loss of the quality of life for us all.
The traffic warden's nasty parking ticket
reduces the quality of life by their predatory
job and cold manners. The cold street cop also
lowers the quality of the community because
he or she has lost the ability to serve the
people with being nice and well-mannered.
The shop assistant who insists on not assist-
ing the customer is also part of the decline
of civility and courtesy all over the UK.
The rude kid who is told he or she does
not need to stand up so that someone who
is old enough to be his own grandmother
can sit down on the bus is open rudeness
that gets worse with each ill-bred kid, who
is no longer freely corrected by anybody.
Such are further eamples of all that is
wrong with today's "Broken Little Britain."
-=-
The 12 points I have listed above
are not listed by any special order or
gravity or level of importance per se,
but rather they're listed to demonstrate
some of the factors behind the death
of civility and courtesy right in our
every day midst. Such, explains why
we've become so bad-mannered and
so ignorant to each other.
-=-
Also read below what the
BBC found out about British bad manners
and lack of courtesy back now some 8 years
ago. If we were then called "Rude Britannia,"
we have, at the turn of the upcoming second
decade of the 21st century, now become even
more "Real -Rude Britannia" since then.
=
We've now become even more "Real-Rude
Britannia." And, we'll never see the return
of what was once truly British civility and
courtesy. People today for the most part
don't give a damn whether we're rude or not.
Why? Because they, too, are oftentimes as
rude and as impolite as the next person.
Who cares anyway? I for one do ...
-=-
Vexed, Uncle Monty.
+Love Is A Many-Splendoured
Thing, 2oo9.
-=-