as John Belushi might have said 'it's 71 years ago today since the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour (Harbor)

Tora Tora Tora

A tenner says it isn't

Hope you are not using the fact it was the 8th in Japan as a sneaky way of gaining a tenner

No I'm not that clever, I was referring to the Germans never having bombed Pearl Harbour to the best of my knowledge. Thanks for giving me the opportunity of being a 2@ though, I wish I got more of them.

I recommend the film Animal House

I like this feature Rover.
I hope you'll be back tomorrow.

Today in history ?

Dec 8th 1980 : John Lennon is shot dead.

In slightly less celebrity obsessed times, an era when it was possible for a small handful of fans to hang around outside their home and wait for autographs and for the "celebs" to often be happy to sign and pose for photos whilst gaining no other publicity benefit (do they only ever pose for photos at cinema previews and award shows these days ?), it all changed with a deranged fan at a time in his life when he was apparently making a return to mainstream popular music with the release of Double Fantasy after years in the wilderness as a pop recluse - who knows if that album would have been successful without his death or if he would have got the airplay that he did post Dec 8th 1980...

Anyway, Yoko is still a bit of a wierdo, has anyone ever been to one of her art installations ?

Remember it well seeing as it was my 15th birthday.
Some great tracks on Double Fantasy.
[iWoman, Just Like Starting Over,[/i and my personal favourite [iWatching the Wheels.[/i

And yes, Yoko is still a bit off the wall.
Something I wouldn't knock her for mind.

[urlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/05/yoko-ono-katy-perry-firework-funny-video_n_2242842.html[/url

[url=http://jerrychicken.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/video-saturday-john-lennon-3/My own little tribute to a time[/url that we don't always appreciate was so completely different to the times we live in today, a time when the population could be effectively controlled by government and their violent dispersal of street protest and a time when one millionaire used his position and influence to speak out and was hounded through the courts for three and a half years under the shadow of a 60 day deportation notice until finally the US Appeal Court, under a different administration to that which had started the process and by now aware of the change in public opinion, declared ” … the courts will not condone selective deportation based upon secret political grounds.”

Those were very interesting times to be a teenager...

As the man himself sang, ''there's Nazis in the bathroom, just below the stairs............strange days indeed.''

It was a natural progression for me to to be stood in a field, with several thousand others, outside a coking plant in 1984 at the age of eighteen, on a balmy summers day.

Really ?

I was on my eight year sabbatical in the North East at that time, newly married into a family where my wife had one brother down t'pit and one in the Metropolitan Police

Her mother was from a century-long lineage of pit-wives, she worked in their local pit canteen until it closed in the sixties and yet her eldest son could do no wrong, even though he was one of the ones using his police dog against her comrades...

The company I worked for had a staunch Thatcher-ite at its head, one of Bentons posh-Geordie-Tories, I'd love to meet him again just to tell him how much petrol I put in my Miner brother-in-law's car on our company petrol card so that he could travel up and down the A1 on picket duty during that year

Yep.


And here I am on my 47th b'day thinking about it.
There's nothing wrong with being politically motivated early doors.
Especially when you know you were on the right side.


[size=50Should that be the left-side?[/size

Have a very happy one!

Appreciated.
Thoughts are with a fellow Sin-Binner who had a sad loss yesterday.

It's a funny old game.

Remember it well, was home on leave from the navy. It was one of those deaths were you genuinely ask 'why', the bloke lived his life for peace and non-violence.

Have you ever read that book ?

If you haven't then I have read it for you so you don't have to bother and if anyone ever asks you what you thought of it just reply "Bag of shoite", the only thing it made me want to do is to go and find another book to read, anything, even a Jeffrey Archer would have done.

Read it a couple of times, and enjoyed it.


Fook off with your Jeffrey Archer.



We can go anywhere you want.



Holden Caulfield was partly responsible for Lennon's death.
Kate Middleton was partly responsible for Jacintha Saldanha's death.

Jeffrey Archer once wrote in one of his books that the hero had been to Leeds University during the 1960s and in one of the chapters this hero spends a nice Saturday afternoon with his girlfriend rowing on the River Aire.

Thats the point at which I threw the book on the back of the fire.

It convinced me that Archer wrote his books according to a very simple computer program in which all you had to do was change the names and locations with the only research needed being that the city must have a river running through it.

Rowing on the River Aire in the 1960s - ask any resident of Cas what the River Aire looked like in the 1960s by the time it had reached them

Totally agree, honestly could not see what the fuss was all about. Not a patch on Catch 22

Maybe you didn't get it?

You possess quite a vivid imagination so I thought you may have enjoyed it.

It was a book that just never got going to me. Can see its influence on stuff like American Grafifiti and Porkys etc, but did nothing for me.

Perhaps we are more controlled today than we ever were back then JC?
This is an interesting piece on the current populi's sterility and submissiveness compared to the days of which you speak.

[iAcross The Universe,[/i agreed, masterpiece.

[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/09/british-have-no-fight-in-them[/url

I don't know, maybe we are more inclined to accept a pigeon hole to sit in and be content, even in todays times we all still have far more easily accessible credit than we did in the 1960/70s and when you have the means then there are far more retailers falling over themselves to sell far more toys to you, maybe we're just more lazy these days, its difficult to motivate yourself to go support a movement when theres fifty channels of tv to watch, the internet to mess about on, x-box games to master, etc etc.

Where things have changed is when you watch that video of "Give Peace a Chance" and see how authority reacted with unrestrained and uncriticised violence against public protest, its not just the batons (and occasionally live ammunition) but the punches thrown by police when protestors have already been restrained - those images are American but they could easily have been in the UK - Blair Peach anyone ?

Compare to the most recent reactions to the police attempts to use kettling tactics to stop (in the main) peaceful protest where the police themselves can then be subject to enquiry to see if their tactics are lawful - their counterparts from the 60s and 70s would be horrified if they found themselves being questioned for the way that they arrested people, or even shoved someone in the back when moving them on.