The sanctions have gone further than I thought they would; not really healthy having a huge society isolated like that. Even the MacDonalds / Coke / Spotify / Facebook deprivation etc must be causing some internal pressure based on their effect on ordinary individuals, let alone the banking / commercial measures.

9th March, 1982

Argentine scrap metal merchant Constantino Davidoff notifies the British Embassy in Buenos Aires that a group of his workmen will leave for South Georgia in two days' time on a vessel chartered from the Argentine navy, the Bahia Buen Suceso. Davidoff has signed a contract with Christian Salvesen, a whaling firm, to dismantle their property at Leith.

Davidoff is required first to report to British authorities on arrival.

South Georgia is a remote and inhospitable British Overseas Territory about eight-hundred miles east-south-east of the Falklands and is also claimed by Argentina.

Of those bands I'm only familiar with Frost*, Porcupine Tree, King Gizzard and The The. Didn't realise The The had had a comeback.

I love Frost*. Bought a Gizzard album a few years ago but it didn't stick.

Wordle 263 3/6*

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Unusual.

Wise words.

Blimey, sounds like a serious bit of kit. Apart from my bikes my only exercise equipment is a rowing machine and I think it was £170 or something. Cheap one for sure but it works well enough when I use it, which these days isn't exactly a frequent occurrence. I should do that more often.

I liked Michael Foot, but his worldview had already had its day by the time he became leader. Healey might have been a more moderate and stronger leader potentially, but the political philosophy that both men espoused was already in the dustbin of history, where it belonged.

Long before 1983 Healey had crawled to the EMF, cap in hand, to beg for money to prop up the British state because that awful, final British socialist government in which he served as Chancellor had run out of other people's money to spend. Their terms for bailing us out were to impose public spending cuts that made the austerity budgets of the 2010s look positively extravagant - and all that culminated of course with the infamous Winter of Discontent at the end of the previous decade.

No, the British People had had enough of that model of ruining British industries by privatising them, removing competition by making them monopolies then crippling them with the militant trade unionism that had Labour in its pocket. Margaret Thatcher saved us from all that starting in 1979 and if she hadn't, we'd have been a third-world country by the '90s. We near enough were by 1979.

It wasn't the Falklands War that won the 1983 General Election for the Conservatives. It was Michael Foot's "longest suicide note in history"; a manifesto that called for wholesale renationalisation, abandonment of our nuclear deterrent, and for Britain to leave the EEC at a time when it was a relatively benign trading partnership. The country had already woken up.

To our credit we never looked back, and when Labour next had a spell in office it was a considerably less harmful government that even had a modest privatisation of its own and wisely chose to build on the precious Thatcher legacy.

By the way I'm not sure you'll find anyone of note in the Parliamentary Labour Party complaining about those defence cuts before they were implemented. Keir Starmer didn't invent hindsight.

Bercow has had his Commons pass revoked after an inquiry found him to have been a "serial bully" and a liar. I understand he's also been administratively suspended from the Labour Party now, as well. They welcomed him with open arms less than a year ago. Might have seen that coming.

Even the Guardian doesn't try a positive spin.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/08/john-bercow-ex-speaker-banned-commons-bullying-inquiry


That peerage looks a long, long way off now ..

Next time he shouts "order!" perhaps someone will reply "one Big Mac with fries and a coke, please"

I can accept your second paragraph there but definitely not the speculation in the last paragraph. Obviously the decision to attack the islands was not taken by Mrs Thatcher.

I hadn't heard that one before - in all honesty I don't think even Neil Oliver would buy that one.

I remember reading an analysis in the '80s that suggested she would have won the '83 election either way. I wouldn't quite say the 'Falklands Factor' was a myth, but I do think it's overstated.

Noticed that Boardman II has a flat rear tyre when I visited the garage yesterday. I think I'll take an opportunity to change the tyres, as well as the rear inner. The yellow ones are a nice match for the colour scheme of the frame but they look tarty. Plain ones, I think.

8th March, 1982

Sovereignty discussions between Britain and Argentina have taken place irregularly since 1964, when the United Nations passed a resolution calling on the two nations to negotiate a peaceful solution over the disputed islands.

Deputy Foreign Minister Richard Luce met with his Argentine counterpart Ernesto Ros in New York last month. But last week the Argentine Foreign Minister Costa Mendez announced that Argentine reserves the right to "employ other means" if Britain refuses to cede sovereignty.

Two days ago, a Hercules aircraft operated by the Argentine military airline LADE landed at Port Stanley, ostensibly due to a fuel leak. But several senior Argentine military officers were aboard, and the local LADE commandant provided them with a tour of Stanley and the immediate vicinity.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher instructs the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence to prepare contingency plans in case of an Argentine blockade or invasion of the islands.

Was really scratching my head over the third word, today. I play in "hard" mode which means only using possible solutions on each go (rather than words that you know can't be the solution, but which yield useful clues). In the end the correct guess was the only word I could think of that would fit.

Wordle 262 3/6

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I liked the Val Kilmer one, didn't really see Michael Keaton as Batman. But the Clooney one was poor. For me the Bale ones are Peak Batman but I haven't seen the new one. I don't really want to actually, I think it's been done to death now.

Prompted by discussion of The Ipcress File, I've been on Amazon and bought a Len Deighton novel for my Kindle, Horse Under Water. I've added the Audible narration for £8 so will listen to it while cycling.

About 20 years ago I read Deighton's XPD, about a coverup of a secret meeting between Churchill and Hitler during the Second World War. Very good and this one seems to be in a similar vein - albeit that one wasn't a Harry Palmer story. Horse Under Water was the sequel to The Ipcress File and does feature Palmer.