Re: Winston Churchill and crossing the house degenerating to crossing your legs

[Thomas]

Oh get over yourself Thomas, the original thread was about a muppet from Bury crossing the floor,Churchill was brought in to it which I was answering and you steamed in bringing Cromwell up too which had sod all to do with any of it at all but you know what you're like and all because you didn't like I reply I made to Moray......I'm sure he's big enough to stand up for himself.

Calm down hen , we are only talking and debating. Theres nothing to get over and im perfectly aware how and why the thread developed so no point throwing in deflections now after discussing it with me all this time.

I'm sure he's big enough to stand up for himself

Well i have decided to hold morays hauns today .

Anyway to that in bold above we had an even more recent conversation where you said you were having a bit of fun,so you went off on one like you do on this thread,so I did the same.

of course , and it doesnt need saying but i will , that you can "have a bit of fun " an still think historical figures like cromwell or churchill are cants. You seem to constantly add two and two and get five. Im just astounded after all the years we have known each other on these forums you actully think im a supporter of cromwell or churchill.?

[Thomas]

I think the naval argument convincingly explains why the Germans couldn't invade Britain in 1940 (or at very least that it would have been ruinously expensive to try it). But even Sandhurst educated officers will profess the greater mystery is why Hitler stopped the Panzers in front of Dunkirk, when that was the point at which he could feasibly have destroyed the British Army and caused a capitulation.

Your other argument (which I'm pretty sure you've articulated before) holds more water imho. That the "cozy" relations of certain British establishment figures with the Nazi regime and the lack if any serious criticism of it by plenty of politicians until we were all but on the verge of war, could be construed as "sympathetic". There are plenty of narratives that Hitler admired the British Empire and hoped he could come to an "accommodation" with it.

As for luck, fate, weather and fortitude etc, yeah to all that. "No plan survives..." as the saying goes. I've never known an exercise let alone an operation proceed exactly according to plan. A load of krauts on barges in the middle of the channel at night in September could have been sunk by a destroyer simply passing them at high speed, let alone by firing any main armament. Victory usually goes to those with the biggest balls, the least stupid plan and the most luck. I know, because I've seen a few

perhaps you are right deppity , and im looking for something thats staring me in the face. It could well be the naval argument explains the situation , but i have always felt something didnt quite add up to that argument.

History is full of events where inspirational thinking won the battle or war , and yet hitler and his high command for all thier planning and foresight  and the speed in which they ran over the top of much of europe and north africa , couldnt come up with something better than operation sealion nor have the balls to try and put it into action.

Off the top of my head , no leg pulling ( honest:D )for example at the battle of bannockburn , the scottish were vastly outnumbered , had no answer to the english and welsh bowmen , and yet came up with the schiltrom idea to defeat the english heavy horse , the most feared part of the english army in the entire christian world.

One historical commentator put it the scottish schiltroms standing facing the english heavy horse and defeating them would be the modern equivalent of regiments of soldiers standing facing legions of tanks with nothing more than their  SLRs in their hands......and winning.

Im just always astounded hitler couldnt come up with a similar inspirational idea and chance it at least , but perhaps he wasnt desperate enough to do so unlike the scottish in the fourteenth century.

Your other argument (which I'm pretty sure you've articulated before) holds more water imho. That the "cozy" relations of certain British establishment figures with the Nazi regime and the lack if any serious criticism of it by plenty of politicians until we were all but on the verge of war, could be construed as "sympathetic". There are plenty of narratives that Hitler admired the British Empire and hoped he could come to an "accommodation" with it.

without a doubt. Tim bouveries book i mentioned a few times earlier in the thread talks incessantly of the cozy relationship many in the british elite had with the germans , the willingness to turn a blind eye to things they new were happening to the jews , and much anti semitism itself within the ranks of the brit elite. Wasnt edward 8th always regarded as a nazi sympathiser himself?

maybe thats it , that hitler didnt want to waste time money and loss of life with an elite he felt he could come to terms with . My old paternal grandad as you know was slaughtered at st valery along with many other highlander scots regiments ( argyle and sutherland highlanders) as the rearguard protecting the evacuation at dunkirk. My maternal grandad served around the mediterranean and survived the war , and used to always take me down the library to research and read all about the third reich and much of the war events , and he said the same thing about the german elite admiring the british empire.

As we know , its alleged thats where hitler got the idea of the concentration camp from , the british concentration camps of the boer war decades earlier. ..and of course the germans and english had long recognised their shared ancestry and origins , the english being merely germans who could swim or use boats centuries ago .

As for luck, fate, weather and fortitude etc, yeah to all that. "No plan survives..." as the saying goes. I've never known an exercise let alone an operation proceed exactly according to plan.

without a doubt.

Victory usually goes to those with the biggest balls, the least stupid plan and the most luck. I know, because I've seen a few

thats what im saying. I wonder why hitlers bottle went ?

It must have been sorely tempting to try  the invasion ?


one of those things now like charlie boy turning back at derby  , while the british elite were packing their bags to run away.

[cromwell]

We are talking about the events during and slightly after june 1940. Mein camfy chair was written 15 years earlier to these events , and no general could possibly know hitlers innermost thoughts at the time , but perhaps again you can link me to what his generals have said about dunkirk , and the subsequent events ?
wheres the about turn??

You can hold the resonable position of being against rent a mobs running around defacing historical artifacts or pulling down statues due to it being the "in " thing to do without necessarily supporting the said individual the statue represents.

I was totally against the taliban for example blowing up the statue of buddha in afghanistan , that didnt mean i am a buddhist , just as not supporting rent a mobs defacing churchils statue necessarily meant i supported the man.
Oliver cromwell was a can't. We even had a brief conversation about it via pm many years ago.

Oliver cromwell is one of those figures from history , along with the likes of fat henry 8th , the french guy plantagenet , and possibly the entire stuart dynasty , certainly james 6th , that if i could invent a time machine i would happily go back and put a number of bullets into their heads.

I dont know why you insist on trying to misrepresent my views on this cromwell , but if you can find any quote of mine where i have ever said anything you are trying to claim , feel free to do so and post it on here.

Oh get over yourself Thomas, the original thread was about a muppet from Bury crossing the floor,Churchill was brought in to it which I was answering and you steamed in bringing Cromwell up too which had sod all to do with any of it at all but you know what you're like and all because you didn't like I reply I made to Moray......I'm sure he's big enough to stand up for himself.

Anyway to that in bold above we had an even more recent conversation where you said you were having a bit of fun,so you went off on one like you do on this thread,so I did the same.   

[Thomas]

Yes, I admit the thought did occur to me while heaving my intestinal content over the side on a voyage to Cherbourg a few decades back that less choppy waters might have meant me learning German not Latin.

i think to be honest john that is about the sum of the argument .

[Thomas]

Basically, the German Kriegsmarine was pitifully small compared to the Royal Navy, and couldn't possibly hope to protect any invasion flotilla from being sent to the bottom. So they had to rely on the Luftwaffe to provide much of the protection, bombing and sinking any Royal Navy battleships, cruisers and destroyers that were attempting to attack. But to have any hope of doing this, the Luftwaffe had to be free of aerial challenge itself, ie it had to destroy the RAF before it could be free to focus upon protecting any invasion flotilla. The attempt to do that became known later as the Battle of Britain.

The UK armed forces insofar as the army were concerned were indeed very weak and no match for the Wehrmacht. But to get at us they had to cross the Channel in the face of overwhelming British naval superiority. And they had to do so without any adequate landing craft at all of a kind later developed by the Allies and had to make do with barges not designed for open water and vulnerable to being swamped in all but calm weather conditions.

Most military historians believe that such an attempt would have been highly risky even with total air dominance, doubting whether enough British naval vessels could have been sunk quickly enough to prevent the invasion flottilla being severely attacked. Most believe that with the RAF still in existence and able to mount an effective challenge, any German invasion attempt would have been a disaster. No one can know for sure though, this is all just educated opinions. Certainly, had a viable invasion force managed to get ashore, and if the Germans were subsequently able to keep it supplied in the face of likely Royal Navy attempts to prevent that, then the British Army of the time would have been no match for it.

i know steve , as i said to cromwell earlier , i have read most of this , and listened to most of the reasoning behind the navy/air force arguments , and for me it doesnt explain hitlers position after he had chased the remnants of the british army out of France , and why he stopped when he had the uk on its knees.

As i said perhaps we will never know .

[Thomas]

Well we do know what he was thinking,Mein Kampf told us and so did some of his surviving generals.

We are talking about the events during and slightly after june 1940. Mein camfy chair was written 15 years earlier to these events , and no general could possibly know hitlers innermost thoughts at the time , but perhaps again you can link me to what his generals have said about dunkirk , and the subsequent events ?

And as I said there you were slagging off the protestors in Bristol and now an about turn.

wheres the about turn??

You can hold the resonable position of being against rent a mobs running around defacing historical artifacts or pulling down statues due to it being the "in " thing to do without necessarily supporting the said individual the statue represents.

I was totally against the taliban for example blowing up the statue of buddha in afghanistan , that didnt mean i am a buddhist , just as not supporting rent a mobs defacing churchils statue necessarily meant i supported the man.

Same as steaming in about Cromwell.

Oliver cromwell was a cant. We even had a brief conversation about it via pm many years ago.

Oliver cromwell is one of those figures from history , along with the likes of fat henry 8th , the french guy plantagenet , and possibly the entire stuart dynasty , certainly james 6th , that if i could invent a time machine i would happily go back and put a number of bullets into their heads.

I dont know why you insist on trying to misrepresent my views on this cromwell , but if you can find any quote of mine where i have ever said anything you are trying to claim , feel free to do so and post it on here.

[Borchester]

As for luck, fate, weather and fortitude etc, yeah to all that. "No plan survives..." as the saying goes. I've never known an exercise let alone an operation proceed exactly according to plan. A load of krauts on barges in the middle of the channel at night in September could have been sunk by a destroyer simply passing them at high speed, let alone by firing any main armament. Victory usually goes to those with the biggest balls, the least stupid plan and the most luck. I know, because I've seen a few

As a rider to this, the German High Command expected the Battle for France to last a year. In practice it lasted about six weeks.

Speaking as someone whose sole military experience consists of dragging a WWI Lee Enfield round the school playground nearly 60 years ago, I think Deppity has summed things up pretty well. In war, shit happens

[DeppityDawg]

One of the great mysteries of history , how when the brit empire was on its knees and ripe for the taking , hitler bottled it and didnt invade.

I have read many theories of the barrier of twenty miles of channel water , the british fleet off scapa flow waiting , the battle of britian and none convince why hitler stopped when he had the british army on the run and floundering.

One of thes little ironies and mysteries of history that we will never know  , and where luck seemed to play a very large slice of what went on .

I think the naval argument convincingly explains why the Germans couldn't invade Britain in 1940 (or at very least that it would have been ruinously expensive to try it). But even Sandhurst educated officers will profess the greater mystery is why Hitler stopped the Panzers in front of Dunkirk, when that was the point at which he could feasibly have destroyed the British Army and caused a capitulation.

Your other argument (which I'm pretty sure you've articulated before) holds more water imho. That the "cozy" relations of certain British establishment figures with the Nazi regime and the lack if any serious criticism of it by plenty of politicians until we were all but on the verge of war, could be construed as "sympathetic". There are plenty of narratives that Hitler admired the British Empire and hoped he could come to an "accommodation" with it.

As for luck, fate, weather and fortitude etc, yeah to all that. "No plan survives..." as the saying goes. I've never known an exercise let alone an operation proceed exactly according to plan. A load of krauts on barges in the middle of the channel at night in September could have been sunk by a destroyer simply passing them at high speed, let alone by firing any main armament. Victory usually goes to those with the biggest balls, the least stupid plan and the most luck. I know, because I've seen a few 

[johnofgwent]

One of the great mysteries of history , how when the brit empire was on its knees and ripe for the taking , hitler bottled it and didnt invade.

I have read many theories of the barrier of twenty miles of channel water , the british fleet off scapa flow waiting , the battle of britian and none convince why hitler stopped when he had the british army on the run and floundering.

One of thes little ironies and mysteries of history that we will never know  , and where luck seemed to play a very large slice of what went on .

Yes, I admit the thought did occur to me while heaving my intestinal content over the side on a voyage to Cherbourg a few decades back that less choppy waters might have meant me learning German not Latin.

[srb7677]

The fact that Churchill is widely respected by many is undeniable. It is the justification for that that can be questioned.

Most of that respect is entirely due to him proving to be the right man for the moment in 1940 when the chips were down. There were others in the cabinet at the time - notably Lord Halifax - who were quite prepared to negotiate virtual surrender terms with Germany, whose likely outcome would have been us being reduced to a status similar to Vichy France. In May 1940 the Wehrmacht had the entire BEF (British Expeditionary Force) at it's mercy and on the verge of total destruction or surrender, when it made the first serious German military mistake of the war in halting the attack for two whole days and withdrawing the tanks. This gave the British time to regroup and strengthen their defences and is more than anything else what made the successful Dunkirk evacuation possible.

It is worth noting that at the height of the evacuation, there were critical cabinet discussions taking place, with Lord Halifax advocating an approach to Mussolini to negotiate peace terms, which would have quickly resulted in us becoming some sort of British equivalent of Vichy France. Churchill himself made the point that as soon as peace talks became known the British people's will to resist would have collapsed, never to have been rekindled. But in these crucial cabinet discussions - with the evacuation going better than anyone had dared hope - most ministers, Tory, Labour, and Liberal and including the Labour and Liberal leaders, backed Churchill in his will to resist, and Halifax was defeated and isolated.

It is worth speculating - and no one can know for sure - what the outcome of such a cabinet meeting would have been had the entire BEF been destroyed or forced to surrender. Because when they issued the halt order the Wehrmact had it at their mercy. Such a loss would have been a massive blow to morale in both the cabinet and amongst the people. This would have made it much harder for Churchill to rally the people in a spirit of defiance. And crucially, it would have strengthened Halifax in his call for peace talks, and weakened Churchill in opposition to them. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that with our army gone a majority of the cabinet might well have backed Halifax, Churchill would have been forced to resign, and Hitler would have effectively won the war, with a defeatist government taking whatever terms it could get.

As for Churchill himself, like everyone else he was both a flawed human being and a product of his age. Coming of age in the Victorian era he was in essence a Victorian imperialist at heart. His career path included many lows and things we would not condone today. He sent armed troops to confront striking miners in Wales before WW1. In that war he was one of the driving forces behind the disastrous Dardanelles campaign, for which he lost his job as First Lord of the Admiralty. He is well known for being a voice in the wilderness when Nazi Germany was rearmimg, but few ever reflect on his reasons for being in the wilderness in the first place - because of his utter opposition to any form of self government for India, and desire to retain total British dominance there. Many of his attitudes towards the Indian people were essentially racist, and he was unconcerned to the point of callousness in 1943-44 when millions of them were starving to death in the Bengali famine. He was also known for enjoying a tipple, under whose influence in WW2 he frequently came up with hare brained military schemes that drove his generals to despair and which he had to be frequently talked out of.

Nevertheless, for all that he proved to be the right man, in the right place, at the right time in 1940 when the chips were down and we were staring defeat and Nazi subjugation in the face, with all that would have entailed for us. His speaches and steadfastness at such a time did much to rally the people. It is for this that the majority of people in this island respect him and revere his memory, notwithstanding all his faults and many errors of judgement both before that moment and later.

[johnofgwent]

So why not say it is a 'code of conduct' in the first place? I do not disagree with that but when big issues come up they'll usually do what the whips tell them.
Ostensibly yes. But in practice many people don't know the candidates. It is then the job of constituency branch members to make people aware of who their candidate is. In many parts of England it wouldn't matter who stands for the Tories, elsewhere in England Labour would win regardless of who their candidate is. In Scotland at the moment it is SNP almost everywhere. You do not see many Independents getting elected in General Elections!
My present, Tory, MP was elected basically because many of the 'swing voters' wanted to give the local loon a chance. That, plus the died in the wool Tory vote was enough to tip the balance.
What I am trying to say is that it is not a clear cut 'you vote for the person' scenario
Going by what happens in Scotland, I do not think that is the case. I can only speak of the SNP here. The party sends, to each member, a list of candidates who have put themselves forward to be entered on the party list. It is not down to anyone else to say who should be on the list nor can anyone choose the order the names appear. The people  are ranked according to the number of votes received. The top man/woman on a party list becomes an MSP. For example, Dross was feart to stand in the FPTP section so he wangled his way onto the Tory list and was duly elected as the first, of the 2021 cohort, Highlands & Islands List MSP.  The only way a person gets elected despite their placing is if people above them are elected in a constituency.  So, although the SNP managed only one Regional MSP, the next person who would have been elected was in 5th position (the 2nd, 3rd & 4th on the list had already been elected)
Out of interest, what is a 'national nominating officer?
Again, I don't think that is so. The party puts forward the next person on the list. So, for the SNP in H&I number 5 would be asked and if he (for it was a he) couldn't accept, the process would carry on.
I actually wondered about how such a scenario would pan out. I did not know it had already happened. I suppose that once elected it is up to the individual to decide whether he/she stays on after changing political colours. You can't force an AM or MSP to resign.

I can't break down quotes in quotes and the result is a bloody mess.

As I said, Parliament itself provided me with a written document referring to duties and responsibilities of MPs back when I still had acne and that referred to the representation of the people acts as it's justification. The problem is which one. I'm still digging.

Parliament itself seems to have dumbed down its public documentation. I'm not done yet. I will let you know what I find.

I think the situation is clearer cut in Wales and probably similarly so in Scotland. As a dedicated separatist I can't see why you'd actually give a f**k about England.

In Wales it most definitely is not "custom and practice" it is written into the rules of the establishment as set out in the legislation that established it. So said Dafydd Elis Thomas on being dragged from his coffin as President of the shithole to rule on the contempt shown to the people by Mohammed Asghar.

As I have oft said, the people of Newport were flanneled by a bunch of terrorists into believing being the assembly was formed from forty members drawn from constituencies roughly those of Her Majesty's Government (a term now banned by Cardiff so i use it a lot) and twenty elected from regional seats for which it is possible to stand as an independent but the overwhelming majority of candidates are listed by a party and the idea is to balance out party representation.

Asghar, a Tory turned labour turned Plaid man wheedled his way into plaid to exploit their life vevof minorities to be feted as plaids first Pakistani.

Elected and feted as the first Pakistani to become a Welsh Nationalist he immediately sought a bribe to stay one, in the firm of a job for his daughter at party or public expense and admitted to the Western Daily express his leaders refusal to bribe him in this way l d to him joining the Tories.

In the shitfest that followed the President of the Assembly was forced to hold an enquiry and rule on the legality of the contemptuous behaviour of the corrupt shitbag.

Given Elis Thomas was a founder cottage burner and reservoir bombing supporter on record as in favour of those illegalities, I found it all the more surprising that he rocked up and stated that in total contrast to the things SAID when the assembly was founded, the RULES put in place by the LAW that established the Assembly made it clear even a party list member was entitled to change the party to whom they made their allegiance.

Regrettably they seem l as than happy to join those fits for me but I'm still shovelling....

A large part of the problem in the UK parliament is if course the UK has no constitution so much of this comes from the deal struck with Charles the Second in returning the Kingdom to a Kingdom by dissolving the Republic Cromwell created

[srb7677]

One of the great mysteries of history , how when the brit empire was on its knees and ripe for the taking , hitler bottled it and didnt invade.

I have read many theories of the barrier of twenty miles of channel water , the british fleet off scapa flow waiting , the battle of britian and none convince why hitler stopped when he had the british army on the run and floundering.

One of thes little ironies and mysteries of history that we will never know  , and where luck seemed to play a very large slice of what went on .

Basically, the German Kriegsmarine was pitifully small compared to the Royal Navy, and couldn't possibly hope to protect any invasion flotilla from being sent to the bottom. So they had to rely on the Luftwaffe to provide much of the protection, bombing and sinking any Royal Navy battleships, cruisers and destroyers that were attempting to attack. But to have any hope of doing this, the Luftwaffe had to be free of aerial challenge itself, ie it had to destroy the RAF before it could be free to focus upon protecting any invasion flotilla. The attempt to do that became known later as the Battle of Britain.

The UK armed forces insofar as the army were concerned were indeed very weak and no match for the Wehrmacht. But to get at us they had to cross the Channel in the face of overwhelming British naval superiority. And they had to do so without any adequate landing craft at all of a kind later developed by the Allies and had to make do with barges not designed for open water and vulnerable to being swamped in all but calm weather conditions.

Most military historians believe that such an attempt would have been highly risky even with total air dominance, doubting whether enough British naval vessels could have been sunk quickly enough to prevent the invasion flottilla being severely attacked. Most believe that with the RAF still in existence and able to mount an effective challenge, any German invasion attempt would have been a disaster. No one can know for sure though, this is all just educated opinions. Certainly, had a viable invasion force managed to get ashore, and if the Germans were subsequently able to keep it supplied in the face of likely Royal Navy attempts to prevent that, then the British Army of the time would have been no match for it.

[morayloon]

The situation is not so much a law as a code of conduct

So why not say it is a 'code of conduct' in the first place?

The crucial point is the successful candidate is required under their responsibilities to use their best judgement to act in either capacity as they see fit subject only to their conscience in that they are required to serve their constituents b St interests

I do not disagree with that but when big issues come up they'll usually do what the whips tell them.

The point I've tried to make is you don't vote for the party you vote for the person

Ostensibly yes. But in practice many people don't know the candidates. It is then the job of constituency branch members to make people aware of who their candidate is. In many parts of England it wouldn't matter who stands for the Tories, elsewhere in England Labour would win regardless of who their candidate is. In Scotland at the moment it is SNP almost everywhere. You do not see many Independents getting elected in General Elections!
My present, Tory, MP was elected basically because many of the 'swing voters' wanted to give the local loon a chance. That, plus the died in the wool Tory vote was enough to tip the balance. 
What I am trying to say is that it is not a clear cut 'you vote for the person' scenario

The party list is under the utter control of the national nominating officer. The rules state that where a party succeeds in attaining a party list deat, the national nominating officer chooses who from his list  gets it. The person chosen need not be the first on the list

Going by what happens in Scotland, I do not think that is the case. I can only speak of the SNP here. The party sends, to each member, a list of candidates who have put themselves forward to be entered on the party list. It is not down to anyone else to say who should be on the list nor can anyone choose the order the names appear. The people  are ranked according to the number of votes received. The top man/woman on a party list becomes an MSP. For example, Dross was feart to stand in the FPTP section so he wangled his way onto the Tory list and was duly elected as the first, of the 2021 cohort, Highlands & Islands List MSP.  The only way a person gets elected despite their placing is if people above them are elected in a constituency.  So, although the SNP managed only one Regional MSP, the next person who would have been elected was in 5th position (the 2nd, 3rd & 4th on the list had already been elected)

In short, the rules state if the party won the seat, a national nominating officer chose who gets to put their bum on it

Out of interest, what is a 'national nominating officer?

If they resign, or die, the national nominating officer is asked to specify who from the original list should replace them

Again, I don't think that is so. The party puts forward the next person on the list. So, for the SNP in H&I number 5 would be asked and if he (for it was a he) couldn't accept, the process would carry on.

But the rules as handed out did not state what was to happen if a list seat member found it impossible to carry on as a candidate for the party in question. All the hype spouted by the scum made it look that the party list was controlled by the party. Mohammed the lying shitbag and corrupt bribetaker Asghar proved this was a falsehood. Dafydd Elis Thomas was forced to rule that the full rule set for conduct of assembly business allowed a party list man who resigned the whip and exhibited such callous contempt for democracy as to refuse to stand aside and let another of the party continue where his conscience dictates he cannot, remain in the post occupying a seat originally the property of another.

I actually wondered about how such a scenario would pan out. I did not know it had already happened. I suppose that once elected it is up to the individual to decide whether he/she stays on after changing political colours. You can't force an AM or MSP to resign.

[cromwell]

no , its not historical fact. you dont know , neither do i , hitlers mind and why he didnt invade when he had the british on their knees.

History is written by the victors no the purveyors of truth.

Im not asking for a regurgitation of two world wars and one world cup. Im asking if  you have any links to those thinking outside the box and any new revelations.

Nevermind.

Well we do know what he was thinking,Mein Kampf told us and so did some of his surviving generals.

And it's nothing to do with footie.

drank himself to death and the new londoners graffitied a statue of him  i think.

And as I said there you were slagging off the protestors in Bristol and now an about turn.

Same as steaming in about Cromwell.

[Sheepy]

Poor old Winnie. He just couldn't do anything right could he?

He made some real howlers, but then he is one of the few remembered for the right as well as the wrong. I guess the likes of Brunel will be seen as the enemy one day.