The Cruel Sea

The Cruel Sea

I watched the Cruel Sea last week. I have read the book many times and given the Brexiteer’s shite about about what we, or more accurately our parents went through in WW2 wondered how the film stood up to the test of time. The book was written in 1951 and the film made in 1953; it ought to have been contemporaneous.

Film technology has moved on immensely and somehow the actual film itself is too clean, it fails to bring home the fact that the main enemy is the Sea not the enemy submarines. It is quite short for today and fails to tell the story of the ordinary sailors, although the book itself focuses more on the Officers than the other ranks.

The accents of the officers was all so “cut glass”. Was that true or just a reflection of the acting profession? I was shocked at the scene of the bombing of Birkenhead as the crew return home to find their homes gone; the whole of the conversation between the crew and the civil defence team is held in the same cut glass accent without a hint of scouse. I can’t believe that would be true!

Another storyline which was massively under-emphasised was the story of infidelity of Morrel’s wife. I suppose that the censorship code inhibited the telling of the story but it made me think and check. I was sure that levels of adultery increased massively due to both opportunity and the economic freedom that work brought to women. I found this  From Chapter 13: The Girls They Left Behind  from “Love, Sex and War” by John Costello

The wartime divorce phenomenon afflicted British servicemen to the same increasing degree. The number of adultery petitions filed after 1942 rose by a hundred per cent each year above the 1939-42 average. The final twelve months of the war also saw a spectacular eightfold jump in the number of husbands who were suing for divorce on the grounds of adultery. By 1945, two out of every three petitions were being filed by men, whereas until 1940 female petitions had been in the majority.

ooOOOoo

The featured image is cropped from a graphic on this page, advertising the book as an audiofile. I have cropped it and justify my use as “fair use”. …

A very British Coup

A very British Coup

So it seems the ruthless Johnson Regime plan to suspend Parliament to stop it holding them to account for their Brexit do-or-die policy.

We are in Charles 1st territory now! The English Civil War was fought to make the Government subordinate to (some of) the people’s representatives and it was the King who eventually lost his head in attempting to ensure that his Government could rule without reference to the elected House of Commons. One of the procedural/structural 450 year old reforms was the development of the post/role of Speaker; the reason the Speaker is dragged to the Chair on their election is that standing up to the Crown was originally personally very dangerous.

In these circumstances, the Speaker can and should just tell the Government that the House of Commons will continue to meet.

We should note that control of the Met. Police, who control the doors is shared between the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London, but we need to give MP’s some help by showing our solidarity with them as they return to the House of Commons.

Please write to your MP, and sign these petitions,

  1. https://www.anothereurope.org/petitions/defend-democracy/
  2. https://www.bestforbritain.org/queenproroguepetition
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Retweets, likes and bookmarks

Retweets, likes and bookmarks

Twitter have, it seems, changed the way and thus the semantics of the way in which we can tag ours and others tweets. One can no longer parse the history of one’s own likes but we now have bookmarks which can. Up until now, I have said that, “… comments are mine, retweets are not agreement, likes likely to mean ‘read later'”. I’d best change this.

From now my policy is “comments are mine, retweets, likes and bookmarks do not signify agreement”.

Retweets everyone can see, followers get this in the feed, and the author is notified.

Likes, the author is notified and the like count incremented.

Bookmarks  can be browsed. …

On ward boundaries

On ward boundaries

I attended yesterday’s meeting on Lewisham’s Ward Boundaries and discovered the source of much confusion. The meeting had been called by the Boundaries Commission, and the discontent was caused by the Council’s proposed evidence to the LGBCE, which I review on my wiki. The council propose to split up Ladywell, Whitefoot and Lewisham Central and the howls of rage from Ladywell Labour can be heard in Harrow. I make some pissy comments on the arguments against change and the foolish xenophobia of some councillors; I look at Councillors per Constituency and I finish by presenting an impossibility trilemma arguing that it is not possible to have equal numbers of councillors/ward, equal numbers of voters/councillor and respect the constituency boundaries.  For more, see below/overleaf … …

On ward boundaries in Lewisham

‘The borough of Lewisham has changed substantially since the last ward review in 1999 that was published in 2002. In those 20 years, our borough has seen significant housing development and population expansion, particularly in the central and northern wards.

The Council have made proposals and are having an open meeting to discuss this at the town hall.

See also https://davelevy.info/wiki/redistricting-lewisham/ …

No Deal & cross border data flows

No Deal & cross border data flows

I have just written a blog at linkedin on the impact of a No Deal Brexit on cross border personal data flows. Obtaining an adequacy agreement will take time, one would have hoped that the transition period would have been enough, but without one there will be no adequacy decision on Day 1. Large and prepared entities may be OK as they can use the currently legally permitted alternatives. The US privacy shield may not be avaialable n Day 1, since its an EU agreement. If we leave, we i.e. the UK state may no longer avail itself of the Article 23 powers and the Investigatory Powers Act and the DPA “immigration exception” may cause problems in achieving an adequacy decision. …

Childish Innocence

I can’t remember who reminded me to look this up, but I rather like,

“What childish innocence it is to present one’s own impatience as a theoretically convincing argument!” (Frederick Engels, “Programme of the Blanquist Communards”, [30] from the German Social-Democratic newspaper Volksstaat, 1874, No. 73

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Bosses & CCTV

I wrote a piece on my linkedin blog called, “Reusing CCTV in employee relations“. I rang the ICO and was told that employers can reuse CCTV, “if they come across something they cannot reasonably ignore”. The linkedin article looks at the ramifications of this and points to the ICO document, “the employment practices code“, which states that cameras may not be covert and may not be used for general monitoring. …