‘ave it!

Apologies for the antipodean language at the end.

As Corporal Jones used to say, “They don’t like it up ‘em, Captain Mainwaring”

Tip of the batting helmet to Simon-Peter Vickers-Buckley

Hoots mon!

From the BBC: 

Kilt wearers could face prosecution if they do not have a licence for their sporran under new legislation which has been introduced in Scotland.

So, the next time Scotland get into the cricket World Cup, there will be a few questions at Glasgow Airport:

“Do you have a licence for that sporran, sir?”

“Whit?”

A pretty straight kind of guy

I had thought that the BBC were pretty bad on reporting matters Catholic, but Jonathan Petre gets a D- despite being the “Religion Correspondent” of the Daily Telegraph. Fr Finigan points out the howlers in a recent piece on the Motu Proprio That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

 In today’s piece, the Telegraph trots out the spin being put out by “sources” (yeah, yeah, yeah…) that Mr Blair will convert “soon”.  Then of course there is the little problem of squaring his record in Parliament with what Mr Blair would have to say if he did seek full communion with the Catholic Church (in a formal sense rather than just deciding he fancies taking Holy Communion anyway)

“I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church teaches, believes and proclaims to be revealed by God.”

The howler in today’s piece is not only parotting this planted fluff but the following description of a deacon (something the soon-to-be-ex-Prime Minster aspires to be):

a position below that of a priest that can be held by lay people.

 Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!

Latter-day Jacobins

This from Burke’s Reflections on The Revolution in France, 1791:

Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a very great proportion of the assembly (a majority, I believe, of the members who attended) was composed of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not of distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to their country of their science, prudence, and integrity; not of leading advocates, the glory of the bar; not of renowned professors in univerSitieS-but for the far greater part, as it must in such a number, of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession. There were distinguished exceptions, but the general composition was of obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty local jurisdictions, country attorneys, notaries, and the whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war of village vexation. From the moment I read the list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happened, all that was to follow.

 Eight members of Citizen Blair’s Cabinet are lawyers by training or profession.

A victory! And a Patron Saint?

A reflection on Old Trafford: a good result, but against a fast fading team.  Michael Vaughan’s success as the England captain who has led his team to most successes should not lull us into a sense that the team we have now is a world beater.  The Fredalo incident may produce problems for the future.  How good, sub specie, is Monty?  Lots of questions and doubts.

But we have won a series, and there must be a feeling that after an appalling winter, English cricket is beginning to reassert itself.  The Ashes series in Australia and the World Cup in the Caribbean were the lowest of low points, but may have been the hangover after the previous Ashes series, rather than a reversion to the English cricket we had all become accustomed to.  More questions …

This victory coincides with the feast of St Barnabas, in both the old and new calendars.  St Barnabas was the companion of St Paul, and a seasoned traveller.

I don’t know whether we have a Patron Saint for the team or not: it strikes me, though, that St Barnabas might be a good one.  He knew defeat, but as he travelled, he knew victory as well.  He learned, and he suffered at home, but succeeded overseas.  He does not belong to a time and place imbued with the values of cricket, but then, who would have thought that St Frances of Rome would become the Patronness of car drivers? 

And if not St Barnabas, then who?