[MoMo]

Re: Flower Arranging for Men

---

Why are you dissing your homeboy?

Because he's a self-righteous prig who was so stupid that he let Tony Blair walk all over him for 10 years !

Also, I hate public school snobs who think that they have the right to preach to all, that they represent the working class !

[MoMo]

If you guys want to hear the recording of this mornings report, go to :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/re...mbusters.shtml

A building used as a chapel on the wartime RAF base of the legendary Dambusters squadron has been discovered on a hauliers’ yard in Newark, Nottinghamshire.

Fifty nine years ago this week 19 planes set off from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and destroyed the Mohne and Eder dams. Eight Lancaster bombers were lost. The raid was immortalised in film and the man who led the operation, Guy Gibson, was awarded the Victoria Cross.

Now the large green Nissan hut used as one of the station chapels has been located at the compound owned by PA Freight in Newark. It had been dismantled and brought from Scampton to be used for storage.

The firm’s boss Andrew Morris didn’t know about the hut’s history when he bought the site. At a recent meeting of civic dignitaries at the depot he mentioned his plans for the hut’s demolition.

"Someone jokingly mentioned that it may be a listed building," said Mr Morris.

When he made further inquiries at Newark Air museum he discovered that the hut had been used as a chapel by airmen based at Scampton during the war.

"It’s incredible to think that some of those who carried out the Dambusters’ mission may actually have prayed inside here," said Mr Morris.

It’s now hoped that the building can be moved a few miles up the road to a permanent site at the Newark Air Museum.

[MoMo]

From the BBC website, I've cut this small piece of history as background. I've been re-reading bits of Speer's autobiography and, although very convincing, I believe that Albert should have taken the drop alongside the rest of the Nazi bigwigs who were hanged after the Nuremberg Trial.

How he managed to escape retribution and how he managed to convince the court that he did not deserve to die with the rest is beyond me. There must have been deals made to compensate Speer for providing information on the production of V weapons and other such information which was useful to the allies.

The Nuremberg trial

In November 1945, in the German city of Nuremberg, the victors of the World War Two began the first international war crimes trial. The choice of the city was significant for it was here that the National Socialist Party held its annual rallies.
Adolf Hitler intended it to be rebuilt as the 'party city'. Now many of the leaders of the party were on trial for their lives, only a short distance from the grand arena where they had been fêted by the German people.
The 21 defendants came from very different backgrounds. Some, like Hitler's chosen successor Hermann Goering, were senior politicians - their responsibility clear.
Others were there because senior party leaders Heinrich Himmler, head of the feared SS, and Joseph Goebbels, head of propaganda - had killed themselves rather than face capture and trial.Their deputies or juniors stood on trial instead of them. But most of them were regarded by the western public, rightly or wrongly, as key playmakers in a system that had brought war to Europe and cost the lives of 50 million people.
'This catalogue of sin was difficult for many of the defendants to come to terms with.'
The charges laid at their door were extraordinary. They were collectively accused of conspiring to wage war, and committing crimes against peace, crimes against humanity (including the newly defined crime of genocide) and war crimes in the ordinary sense (abuse and murder of prisoners, killing of civilians and so on). This catalogue of sin was difficult for many of the defendants to come to terms with.
One of them, Robert Ley, best known for his role as head of the 'Strength through Joy' movement, which masterminded the Volkswagen car, hanged himself in his cell a few weeks before the trial started, so shamed was he by the accusations of crime. Ley's suicide was the most extreme example of the many ways the defendants responded to the trial.
The reaction of the others covered a very wide spectrum, from confident defiance to full admission of responsibility. In the case of Rudolf Hess, Hitler's former deputy, the reality was almost complete memory loss.
Two prisoners in particular came to represent opposite poles in their reaction to the trials and the accusation of massive crimes. Hermann Goering, the man Hitler chose as his successor in the 1930s and the most flamboyant and ambitious of the party hierarchy, prepared to defend Hitler and the Reich's war policy rather than admit that what had been done was criminal.
On the other hand Albert Speer, the youthful architect who rose to run Germany's armaments effort during the war, accepted from the start the collective responsibility of the defendants for the crimes of which they were accused and tried to distance himself from Hitler's ghostly presence at the tribunal.
Hermann Goering: 'Prisoner Number One'




Goering was captured shortly after the end of the war with large quantities of his looted artworks. He thought he could negotiate with the Allies as Germany's most senior politician, but he found himself under arrest, stripped of everything, and held in an improvised prison camp before his transfer to Nuremberg to stand trial.
He was a big personality in every sense. The guards nicknamed him 'Fat Stuff' and bantered with him. He was charming, aloof and confident, and from the start was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.
Goering insisted that everything that they had done was the result of their German patriotism. To defy the court was to protect Germany's reputation and to maintain their loyalty to their dead leader.
'From the start Goering was determined to dominate the other prisoners and make them follow his line of defence.'
With the start of the trial, Goering assumed at once the informal role as leader and spokesman for the whole cohort of prisoners. He was given the most prominent position in the dock.
When it came to his cross-examination he prepared carefully and in the opening exchanges with the American chief prosecutor Robert Jackson he emerged an easy winner.
So frustrated did Jackson become with Goering's clever, mocking but evasive responses that at the end of the session he threw down the headphones he had been wearing to hear the translated answers and refused to continue.
'If you all handle yourselves half as well as I did,' Goering boasted to the other prisoners, 'you will do all right.' Only after his cross-examination by the more experienced British barrister, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, was Goering at last cut down to size.
For the prosecution teams, Goering's domineering role among the prisoner body posed a problem. In mid-February 1946, on the recommendation of the psychologist who monitored prisoner behaviour, Goering was forced to exercise and take his meals on his own.
His isolation allowed the other prisoners to talk freely to each other and in the courtroom. The united front that Goering wanted soon collapsed.
During the long summer months, when he had to listen to the catalogue of crimes and atrocities laid at the door of the system he had served, he became less confident. But he maintained his loyalty to Hitler until the very end, when he finally confessed to the prison psychologist his realisation that in the eyes of the German people Hitler had 'condemned himself'.
Goering was found guilty on all the charges laid against him and condemned to death. He regarded the whole trial as simply a case of victors' justice and had not expected to escape with his life. At the very end he cheated his captors. On 14 October 1946, the night before he was to be executed, he committed suicide with a phial of cyanide either hidden in his cell or smuggled in by a sympathetic guard.
Albert Speer: The 'Decent Nazi' ??????????????????




Speer was the opposite of Goering in almost every respect. Tall, conventionally good-looking, capable of a quiet charm, he impressed his captors and interrogators more than any of the other prisoners. For some time he had not expected to be one of the major war criminals.
From the start he posed as an efficient and helpful technocrat, willing to give detailed information quite voluntarily on German weapons, economic performance and strategy. He was held separately from the other war criminals and was transferred to Nuremberg only in the autumn when it was clear that he was one of those chosen for trial.
Despite the reservations of his defence lawyer, Speer decided that his best defence was to admit his share of collective responsibility for the crimes of the regime and to distance himself from Hitler, a man who Speer freely admitted had once held him in thrall like all the rest.
At the same time in his interrogations and cross-examinations, he seldom expressed his individual guilt. He succeeded in presenting himself as part of the system, but not a driving force.
Just before the trial opened he sent a four-page letter to Robert Jackson reminding him again of just how useful he had been as a source of intelligence and technical information since his capture.
'He posed as an efficient and helpful technocrat, willing to give detailed information quite voluntarily.'
Speer was bound to clash with Goering. He resented Goering's efforts to dominate the prisoners and to dictate the course of their defence. When Goering was separated from the other prisoners in February, Speer was free to talk openly with them about the crimes of the regime.
The others did not all share his candour, any more than they shared Goering's ebullience, but for the rest of the trial period the cohort of prisoners divided into small groups rather than presenting a united front.
Speer added to the division when he dramatically revealed early in the trial that at the very end of the war he had tried to find a way to assassinate Hitler by pouring poison gas into his underground bunker. The plot was abortive, but it again presented Speer to the prosecution as someone different from the rest of the defendants.
When Speer was cross-examined he got off more lightly than others. At the end of the trial, even though he had been responsible for the mass exploitation of forced foreign labour, he was given a 20-year sentence. The man who supplied the labour, Fritz Sauckel, was executed.
The Speer story has remained an enigma. No doubt he benefited from his pose as a technical manager (whose social background was not very different from those who were trying him) and from his willingness to confess responsibility. The extent to which he manipulated his story to win sympathy or genuinely believed that the regime he served was criminal is still open to conjecture.

[Cardinal]

Momo, I would suggest that you read Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth by Gitta Sereny. It is a well articulated and objective work that may provide you with some deeper insights and understanding on both this time period and the personalities involved.

http://www.amazon.com/Albert-Speer-H...9027702&sr=1-2

[MoMo]

thanks cardinal. I'll check it out.

MoMo

[MoMo]

Intimations of Senility ?

Well, not really. What yesterday's encouter at the bank seems to indicate is that there is a vast generational gap between what seems to matter to young people today, and what seems to matter to the people of the Baby boom generation.

I had gone to the bank to make a simple request to alter a Direct Debit in one of my accounts. The young woman who was fielding questions at the enquiry counter immediately caused minor blood vessels to rupture, deep in the inner recesses of my being.

She had one of those lifeless, pre-programmed voices which rose at the end of each statement in that nauseating, affected way in which young women have adopted the worst practices of Australian women. This mode of speech seeks to puncuate each statement with an exclamation mark, intimating to the enquirer that no further enquiries are encouraged, nor will they be tolerated.

My skin crawled.

I made my enquiry. The young woman delivered her pre-recorded speech, while standing to attention, her gaze fixed markedly on the distant horizons in the direction of her future career, while mouthing the corporate response. She then asked me for proof of identification. This was for my own good. They had to protect me from the unknown.

I spluttered.

I won't go into the pathetic ramblings of someone who is playing the " I Have Been an Account Holder of This Bank for 39 Years " card. It is too painful, by half.

" I'm sick of this bullshit !" I ranted. " Every time I come in here the procedures change, the staff has changed, the service gets poorer ! "

" This is all for your own protection, Sir ! "

" Forget it. I'll look for a new bank which has humans at the front counter, instead of androids ! "

Was I nostalgic for the days when one would visit the bank and would be greeted by " Good morning ", from someone who recognised you?

You bet I was.

[Shawn 507]

Gee I bet the same things were said of your generation. Take your meds and it'll be alright.
- Shawn

[jim]

Originally Posted by MoMo

Intimations of Senility ?

Well, not really. What yesterday's encouter at the bank seems to indicate is that there is a vast generational gap between what seems to matter to young people today, and what seems to matter to the people of the Baby boom generation.

I had gone to the bank to make a simple request to alter a Direct Debit in one of my accounts. The young woman who was fielding questions at the enquiry counter immediately caused minor blood vessels to rupture, deep in the inner recesses of my being.

She had one of those lifeless, pre-programmed voices which rose at the end of each statement in that nauseating, affected way in which young women have adopted the worst practices of Australian women. This mode of speech seeks to puncuate each statement with an exclamation mark, intimating to the enquirer that no further enquiries are encouraged, nor will they be tolerated.

My skin crawled.

I made my enquiry. The young woman delivered her pre-recorded speech, while standing to attention, her gaze fixed markedly on the distant horizons in the direction of her future career, while mouthing the corporate response. She then asked me for proof of identification. This was for my own good. They had to protect me from the unknown.

I spluttered.

I won't go into the pathetic ramblings of someone who is playing the " I Have Been an Account Holder of This Bank for 39 Years " card. It is too painful, by half.

" I'm sick of this bullshit !" I ranted. " Every time I come in here the procedures change, the staff has changed, the service gets poorer ! "

" This is all for your own protection, Sir ! "

" Forget it. I'll look for a new bank which has humans at the front counter, instead of androids ! "

Was I nostalgic for the days when one would visit the bank and would be greeted by " Good morning ", from someone who recognised you?

You bet I was.

I feel your pain Mo, I have had many of those moments.
I was threatend with being banned from Tescos because I told the manager his staff made morons look highly inteligent.
All I wanted was an empty cardboard box from the assistant when she had finished emptying it. Sorry sir buts its not allowed, all the boxes have to be crushed, and she then stamped on it!!!!!!

I bought along with a load of shopping 2 packets of Paracetomol, at the check out I was told I could only buy one packet at a time.
Ok I said but there are 2 of us, Lorraine was with me.
Sorry sir I cannot put 2 packets through on one bill.
OK then (sigh) I will put the other packet through when I have paid for the first packet.
Sorry sir I cannot do that because then you will have 2 packets and thats not allowed.
Ok then (even bigger sigh) Lorraine will put the packet through after I have paid for the other stuff.
Ah but then how do I know she will not give them to you afterwards?
Yes but you said only one packet per person , well I will have bought mine and then Lorraine here will have bought one, see, thats one packet per person.
Yes sir but I have seen you with the 2 packets already so I cannot let you have more than one packet.


At this point I had smoke coming out of my ears, WHERE IS THE MANAGER PLEASE I WISH TO HAVE WORDS WITH HIM.

We had words and he said he didnt like my attitude when I told him either he employed morons or his training programme for new recruits was rubbish.

Hey Ho its all good fun if you dont weaken.

[MoMo]

Jim,

just laugh at them....they can't stand it, and don't know how to handle it. Their training does not run to dealing with a response to one of their stock utterances which evokes a good laugh.

Health and Safety legislation is, of course, a necessary and positive force for good. However, when the assistants at the Chemist shop ( pharmacy ) ask you the same bloody questions every time you go in, it becomes something of a joke. It evokes a fit of mirth somewhat akin to the reaction one gets when faced with yet another demonstration of the safety features of the 747, and how your lifebelt will save you in the circumstances of having to ditch in mid-Altlantic. It has become absurd. Absurdity is the way to go.

Just laugh.

I am aware that some people can only face the public if they have a script to declaim. But this awareness does not blunt the pain of having to listen to the endlessly looped soliloquy.

My campaign for plain english and plain-speaking is dented every day.

[Cardinal]

Originally Posted by MoMo

I am aware that some people can only face the public if they have a script to declaim. But this awareness does not blunt the pain of having to listen to the endlessly looped soliloquy.

My campaign for plain english and plain-speaking is dented every day.

MoMo, your contribution to this noble endeavour is noteworthy and will ameliorate the angst felt by many who peruse the written word of which you doth speak ...