Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Tag: History
Concluding this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.
If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:
Part One is here.
Part Two is here.
Part Three is here.
Part Four is here.
Part Five is here.
By Paul Handover
Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.
If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:
Part One is here.
By Paul Handover
This may be of no surprise to dog owners!
The BBC recently screened one of the most fascinating programmes in ages (OK, subjective comment!). It was about the relationship between dogs and humans. The hour-long programme demonstrated just how important that relationship between dog and man really is.
Indeed, within the first few minutes of the programme, one of the contributors says that without that early domestication of dogs, civilisation of man might not have taken place!
Luckily someone has uploaded this programme onto YouTube. This Post contains the link to the first of 6 parts with the following 5 parts being presented on this Blog each day.
Please, please take time to watch these videos – they will amaze you, and very possibly bring tears to your eyes.
So if you are a dog owner, prepare to see your dog friend in a totally new way.
By Paul Handover
Some chilling reminders of the reality of war!
Britain has a National Collection of Aerial Photography. It is held within the offices of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland – perfectly logical!
A summary of the different collections is listed here, many of them wartime photographs that bring a multitude of emotions to the surface: incredible bravery of the pilots; photographic standards of 70 years ago, man’s inhumanity to man; and so on.
I pondered a bit about writing this Post because, well ….. well…, see what you make of it!
Being born in England in the early part of November, 1944, World War 2 still resonates within me.
Early home in an industrial part of West London meant that my mother and father had a ring-side view of the German V1 and V2 rockets that were being visited on London at that time.
My mother, 90, still recounts her enormous sense of relief when VE Day was announced (May 8th, 1945) because she then thought that her son’s future life was more or less assured.
So back to these aerial photographs held in those collections.
Here’s a picture of the visitation of war on the beautiful French town of Caen.
Linger a while and look at the damage, mostly to private homes. The photograph was taken just slightly more than a month before I was born.
So where’s this Post leading to….?
A huge misunderstanding of democracy.
Yesterday, I covered the appalling lunacy that took place recently on British television. This is the concluding part of my Post.
Nick Griffin and his party are gaining support because immigration in Britain has been overdone, and anything overdone is bad news. Moreover, many perceive that their own government has been involved in a campaign of 
blatant lying.
The average Brit is a staunch yeoman, solid as a rock, but he won’t take being lied to, nor patronised, nor flooded with immigrants of an alien culture who often show little wish to integrate and some of whom seem to be actively seeking the downfall of the west and the establishment of a single Islamic worldwide Caliphate.
Now these are megalomaniac dreams, but many before have had them: Genghis Khan and Hitler to name but two.
There is also a visceral dislike of certain Islamic practices seen as alien to an open, democratic society based on Human Rights, in particular the attitude to women.
Hence the growth of the BNP, which – despite the above arguments – remains a nauseatingly xenophobic and homophobic party.
BUT, and here’s the rub, it does – for better or worse, and thanks to the idiotic policies of the present Labour government – represent the views of a substantial and increasing minority of people.
Nick Griffin’s Appearance on BBC’s “Question Time”
Recently, an event of surpassing lunacy took place on British television. The weekly popular current affairs programme, “Question Time”, invited Nick Griffin to appear as one of the five politicians who respond to questions from a studio audience. There are some clips from the programme on the BBC website.
Now Nick Griffin is not just any old boring political hack; he is the Leader of the BNP, the British National Party.
For our American friends who may not be up to speed on the minutiae of British politics, this is a minority party which is strongly anti-immigrant. Moreover, Nick Griffin himself is homophobic, has flirted with leaders of the KKK and is said to be sympathetic to Nazi ideas, though this he denies, alleging that the British Nazis hate him.
The latter, by the way, are a group of microscopic importance on the British political scene; extremism having never taken root in British politics.
France, Polanski and respect for the Law.
I have always associated France with surrealism after, at a fairly young age, seeing those amazing photos of early 1920s surrealist art by Duchamp, Ernst and others. In recent days this surrealist experience has returned with a vengeance in the bizarre case of Roman Polanski, with a reported 62% of French people believing that the arrest of Polanski in Switzerland was an unjustified affront to a long-standing resident “artist” and citizen of France.
The strongest condemnation of this arrest was initially by the French Minister of Culture, Mr Frédéric Mitterand, who said the affair “had no sense” and who expressed his “profound emotion” at the arrest of this “film director of international repute.”
Learning from Dogs 