Albion’s Alchemist

Sois Musulman et tais tois! You cheese eating surrender Muslims…

Ooh, controversial!

In may of nineteen sixty eight the students of France, almost as one man, went on the warpath. No two people will ever agree on what exactly they were angry about, generally things like the Vietnam War and anti-fascist ideologies are cited and then the respectable historians move on to something more fun. So far as we are concerned the causes don’t really matter.

The recent riots in France are generally blamed on the poor conditions in which immigrant Muslims live. Commentators cite low income, unemployment and racism.
The Poosh makes a good point when he says that these privations are suffered by people who are neither immigrants, nor Muslims, yet they do not riot. In fact one imagines they are rioting, but they did not start the riot, and this is the good point.

France’s reaction to the riots has been execrable. In ’68 de Gaul reacted by laying down the law. He set up a military counter-riot office, and he authorised the police to use all necessary force. The riots nearly cost him his office (in fact they may have, but not immediately), but he crushed them swiftly enough. He prevented the sort of death and carnage which would have grown even greater had he pussy-footed around like the current administration.

Where are the water cannons? Where are the legions of armoured riot police? Where is the flash and staccato rhythm of sub-machineguns felling the unassimilated Mohammedan horde? I’ll tell you. Nowhere. Y’see Chirac has looked at the past, oh yes, and seen that de Gaul’s more, er, robust, response to the rioters made him unpopular with the left wing. Now the left wing are a powerful bunch in France today, and Chirac will not risk his les than sound position by doing his job.

In short, Chirac would rather people die than loose his job, and the left wing (not to mention the larger part of the global media) would rather see people die than see poor immigrant brown people made to abbey the law.

Actually, that’s not true, because of course the media, and the left wing, and most everyone else will not see anybody die. That don’t mean there will not be any death, just that the media will turn a blind eye, and no-one else will look.

This is the essence of the matter, regardless of the privations one might suffer, nothing grants the right to riot, to steal, to burn or to kill. If a man riots, then the Alchemist for one will look upon his plight with less, rather than more sympathy.

Today’s post is sparked by an email from Alchemy correspondent in Germany, Fräulein Merci H. She believes she has formulated a solution for France’s current problems.

At it’s most basic level it does involve foreign soldiers marching down the Champs Elise. Fräulein H forces the Alchemist to admit that this has done France a power of good in the past, and that said soldiers would be far more orderly than the current rif raf who are rioting nightly. Now typically the flaw in plans such as this is Albion – give us a few years and we can generally drive the invaders out of France. Therefore Fräulein H has charged me with rallying my countrymen to her side, and the glorious cause of sorting Marcel out once and for all. We’ll cross the channel at the start of December, the French will surrender after a fortnight and we’ll meet the Germans in Paris for Christmas. We could play football - that was fun last time.

Now, in case you cannot tell, Fräulein H and I are joking. We both of us think it is a very fine thing that we can make jokes about this sort of thing.

It is November, the month when we ought remember that millions have died for us, for our right to make cheep little jokes. I’d like to offer some thoughts not about those who have given their lives for us – I’m far to poor a wordsmith to do the least of them justice – so instead I will talk about the organization which represents them and their dependants.

The Royal British Legion is quite simply, one of the most magnificent institutions which has appeared in our age of the world.

Many years ago I decided that as far as charity goes, one can either give a little to everyone, or give all one can spare to one charity. I choose the latter, and I chose the Royal British Legion. Animals and children have many charities but what the devil have animals and children done for The Alchemist? I might donate to the Earth-lobby, but they are a pack of soap-dogging weirdoes and the Earth is big and old enough to look after herself. After decades of pouring money into Africa where has that got us, I will not put my donations into the African black hole. As for the homeless, well I have been known to buy lunch for one particular vagrant, but she is a friend so it is not proper charity.

No, as far as I am concerned the only people worthy of my money are those who have done something for me.
The Royal British Legion represent those people. People who have had the courage to make MY safety their personal responsibility. People who have DIED for me. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I know there are uncountable millions who have spent the only life they will ever have, just to secure a little peace and safety for your author.

When you see a politician wearing a poppy, he is only wearing it for appearance sake, after ordering British and Commonwealth soldiers to die in some god-forsaken Iraqi sandpit more than likely.

When I wear it, it is real.

Let’s look at the Royal British Legion.

It was founded in 1921 to support veterans and their families and to make sure that we do not forget those who have sacrificed themselves for us.

The Legion is almost the UK ’s largest membership organisation, with 519,000 members (including the Women’s Section this total is 589,000). twenty percent of people in the UK are eligible for it’s help in some way, 5.5 million ex-service people and 7.5 million dependants.
In total it spends more than £50 million a year but the poppy appeal raises less than half of that. the rest comes from year-round donations.

The 38 million poppies, 98,000 wreaths and sprays, 730,000 Remembrance Crosses are all made in a factory in Surrey. The factory, owned by the Legion employs about 60 people more than half of whom suffer from serious disabilities or illnesses as a result of their work, defending you and I around the world. It was designed to offer such people jobs and it always will.
Which is good when you consider that There has only been one year since the Second World War when a British Service person hasn’t been killed on active service, and that was 1968. There has not been any year since the inception of the United Kingdom when no British service person has not been injured.

So read this, and then, when Children in need or Live aid or comic relief or any of these other big-impact high-fat television extravaganzas ask you for money say no. Give Geldof a dose of his own foul language and damn Pudsey’s remaining eye.

Instead think about those who have died for you, and who are remembered not with a night of television fun, or a star studded concert, but with a simple paper flower, and give your money to the Royal British Legion.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

I have before me an email from Fräulein Merci H, Alchemy correspondent in Germany. It is not so joyful as I believed it would be.

For those of you who still do not know, Angela Merkel is now Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany – or at least she will be by the middle of next month. We knew this would happen, or at least Fräulein H told me that it would and I believed her. However earlier this year it was intimated to me that Merkel’s CDU would win by a small landslide (if’ee see what I mean). As the date of the election approached though, Merkel’s lead slipped, until the incumbent Schroeder was almost level with her.

Truth be told Fräulein H is rather venomous about her countrymen – blaming those who voted for Schroeder despite his crimes (her words) for hobbling then new Chancellery.

Fräulein H is a thorough Merkel supporter, and has sung her praises on a number of occasions, though fewer than the occasions on which she has derided Schroeder.

Angela ‘the knife’ Merkel acquired her nickname from the way she treated her former mentor Helmut Kohl. When he was accused of financial impropriety (the little scamp) it was Merkel who was his most vociferous attacker, and it was she who brought down Kohl’s names successor taking the job herself.

Certain parties have expressed doubt as to her ability to solve Germany’s crippling unemployment, a task which will be made harder yet by the fact that Schroeder’s Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands still control the Labour Ministry. One idea floated is to increase the size of Germany’s armed forces, Fräulein H informs me that I ought think twice before making any ‘humorous’ comment about this – the thought never even crossed my mind.

The German Home Office is under Merkel’s Christlich-Demokratische Union as is Defence and economics. But with the two main parties so evenly split, every decision made by the new Chancellor will be fought through the Bundestag. Fräulein H intends to lay all future national woes on those Germans who voted for the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands and thus prevented Merkel from achieving a decisive victory.

Merkel is the first female woman to lead Germany in a little over a thousand years. Lesbians with short hair and dirty finger-nails are making a big thing of this, at least that is how Fräulein H reports it. Your Author subscribes to the theory that, even in our modern age, for a woman to rise to high power, she must be twice as big-and-bad as a man, and that this is no bad thing in a leader. Look at our own Mrs. Thatcher – The Knife and the Iron Lady are two for a pair and I envy the Federal Republic her new leader. Merkel has a strong sense of national interest (do’ee remember when Albion had a leader with any national interest at all?) and is, as we have seen, not the sort to let personal feelings get in the way of the job at hand. She’s not going to put up with Europe co-opting her nations freedom, and she ain’t going to use Europe to co-opt Albion’s either.

Now it is of course true that distance can masque incompetence, and under the leadership of TB, almost any other government looks preferable, but I shall say it again, I envy Fräulein H her new leader.