A Coming Storm, June 6th, 1885; e pur si muove, tre

In the first week of June 1885, London’s beloved horse-racing festival, the Derby Day meeting, was taking place on Epsom Downs. The era’s greatest jockey, Fred Archer, came home first in the two premier races — both the Derby and the Oaks. In the Derby he rode the favourite Melton and won by a head. In… Continue reading A Coming Storm, June 6th, 1885; e pur si muove, tre

Cherished by the Puritans

This is how Chambers Book of Days in 1869 explained Thanksgiving to the British. You just have time to read this before settling down to an evening of “rustic games and amusements”. THANKSGIVING DAY IN AMERICA The great social and religious festival of New England, from which it has spread to most of the states of the American… Continue reading Cherished by the Puritans

“Not a novel experiment”

Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but it appears there are those citizens out there today who believe a majority of street people are in some way comfortable with hand-outs. Those who blame the poor often wonder why do-gooders aren’t practical-minded enough to try to actually find vagrants paid work.  Their argument is that the vagrants would not take work if they were… Continue reading “Not a novel experiment”

You’re not the boss of me, or are you?

Has not the British Constitution changed so much since the Act of Parliament allowing admittance into the European Common Market in 1972 that some old rules cease to have application — and the myth of Parliamentary sovereignty is one? EU sovereignty trumping the country’s own sovereignties has been in place in law long enough to… Continue reading You’re not the boss of me, or are you?

Even the bad times are good

An irony of the lust for content to fill up hours of broadcast, megabytes of digital and pages of newsprint,  is that one bad thing ‘done good’ for a Presidential candidate, while a good thing ‘done bad’ for the other. The bad thing? Thoughts of an assassination.  Nothing makes you look more Presidential — like Ronald Reagan resurrected… Continue reading Even the bad times are good

Mia constitutional crisis e sua constitutional crisis

We are spectators as some settled precepts of democracy come unglued. It is happening in the two countries where you’d bet the farm it would not have happened. Might it be that old, comforting representative democracy is just town crier in a Twitter age? There is not much to add about the US where the FBI —… Continue reading Mia constitutional crisis e sua constitutional crisis

Telephone’s early adopters

An aside into Victorian business life is the fact that when a London solicitors sent a letter on April 27 1885, its headed paper quoted the firm’s telephone number. The number was 1095 and there genuinely were another 1094 phones in businesses and a few private houses that the law firm could have called and been… Continue reading Telephone’s early adopters