Yesterday I got a leaflet from the BNP through my door. I have cleaned my teeth eight times since that. It can (and won’t) be used as a window poster with the slogan, “People like you voting BNP”. Not like me pal. Oh, so not like me. The reverse has the slogan “We say what you think”. Oh no you don’t. I am English and proud of it. Being English is a state of mind and I absolutely don’t need Nick Griffin’s Brownshorts to remind me of the truth of my birth. To put it bluntly he can go away and be fucked up the council gritter by an alpaca (or whatever other Latin American beast of burden is up for the job and can be hepped-up on PCP).
I could be here all day fisking that leaflet’s myriad absurdities. I have things to do so I shall keep it focussed.
Focused on this:
OK folks. A poignant image. Our finest hour and all that. Obviously “Battle for Britain 2009″ is a dismal attempt to compare what Churchill called the struggle to save Christian Civilization to the tawdry political ambitions of a one-eyed Welsh git. Now I’m like Henry’s Cat. I know an awful lot about nothing and not too much about that but I do know aircraft. That’s a Spit with a B-wing (or possibly a C-wing). You can tell because of the long-barrel 20mm Hispano-Suiza cannon. It also has a four blade prop. I am probs gonna be shot down in flames for this but I’m calling it a Mk9*. It could be an 8 (or just possibly a 5 - sorry I no longer recall the number of exhausts a two-stage supercharged Merlin had**). It certainly ain’t the Mk 1 or 2s that fought the Battle of Britain. And before anyone has a cow and points out that there were cannon armed Spits in the BoB… Well yes there were but they didn’t have four-blade props and that ain’t one of them and they were exceedingly few and far between.
And finally, look at the nose of the plane. That little red and white symbol denotes that airframe as belonging to the Free Polish Airforce. Yeah, you know those slavic folks coming over here, shagging our women, taking our jobs, defending the entire fabric of western civilization. All those terrible things they did. But that’s the BNP for ya. They might use the symbolism of our finest hour (farcially incorrectly - but what the heck) to their electoral ends but they do not speak for me.
They are in fact abhorrent to me. I am a libertarian and their use of one of the free-world’s most potent symbols (and it was also pretty good in a furball) of freedom to espouse insane racism is deeply inuslting and very odd. I am sitting here in my shed in Cheshire with my pale skin and blue eyes and blonde(ish) hair married to a blue-eyed blonde and I am fucking outraged. English is not something you are. It is something that just happens to you. And the BNP bastards will never, ever, take that away from me. Just watch the 1960s film about the Battle of Britain starring Lawrence Olivier (of French Huguenot extraction hence the surname) as Air Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding. Watch it to the end. It ends with a roll-call of those who died defending our skies from Heinkels and Dorniers. They were from all over the place. The defence of these islands was the defence of civilization itself and that cuts both ways. Yes, we defended Europe (yet again) from tyranny but those folks and our mighty empire pitched in. And our pals across the pond helped, eventually. And you know what folks? In the end we won!
Miss Shilling was a Vicker’s engineer who made a significant change to the carburetor of the Spitfire’s Merlin engine. For giving the Spit the capacity to out-dive the Bf-109E she is remembered only for her orifice. Well at least we won the sodding war.
It is not so much that the BNP are execrable racist hoons (though they are) that I object to. It is the simple fact they’re complete fucking edjits.
*Between the 5 and the 9 (the 8 was similar and better than the 9 but produced in small numbers for technical reasons). They do differ in terms of the number of exhausts on the nose but I do not recall the detail there alas.
** But who cares. Well I do because I’m mortified at not knowing exactly and call me a bugger but I have a terrible need to pilot something with that many horsepower and a 27 litre, 24 cylinder supercharged engine. God alone knows why that might be but it would beat the Corsa into a cocked hat. Can you think of a reason?
Agreed, that list of BoB aircrew is an inspring proof that Churchill’s rhetoric was not overstated. It really was a time when a Few defended the whole earth.
Predominantly the UK and the dominions, and East Europe, but so many other countries were represented.
Ever notice, right down the list, it mentions “1 Israeli”?
But Israel didn’t exist then; he must have been a Jew from Palestine. (Maybe Ezer Weizmann - he flew a Hurricane in the RAF.)
Yeah ED. I have long pondered the one Israeli who died in the BoB. I always assumed as you did that it was a Jew from what would become Israel. Oddly enough th 1948 war which saw the foundation of the Jewish State was the only time Spits fought Spits both Egypyt and Israel having them at the time.
Query: is that list the roll of the dead, or the list of those that took part? I thought the latter. That’s why I thought it could be Weizmann - he founded Israel’s Air Force.
There were also some Me-109’s in the IAF at the start in 1948.
The Spanish had new-build Henkel 111s and Me-109s up till late 1960s, which they allowed to be used for the BoB film. The film-makers only paid for the fuel used, though Franco was still very much alive, and was making trouble over Gibraltar. One of the pilots - an older man - had flown with the Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front. And Adolf Galland came over as advisor and flew the two-seater Me-109 they had.
The Spanish also flew Merlin engined 109s which almost beggars belief. So did Israel which is something else. That is ED the roll of the dead.
The Israeli’s were very pragmatic about where their weapons came from. I think they would have flown Focke Wulf’s if necessary.
A friend of mine who was a sniper in the IDF started his career using a Mauser K98….
The BNP seem to be having a spot more bother with their leaflets.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2009/05/bnp-voters-dont-exist.html
Surely to god they have some genuine supporters??
Since we’re doing the plane geekery thing, I’ll agree with you on it being a MkIX. A MkV only has the three exhausts per side. The big visual difference I can remember between the VIII and the IX was the tail …. which we can’t see, so call it a IX based on them being so much more common. Lovely fighter, pretty much the pinnacle of the Merlin engined Spit. Most of the variants that came after had the Griffon engine.
As for the BNP, I’m fairly sure I received the same bloody leaflet at the other end of the country. You know, I sometimes wonder if by dismissing them and not deigning to mention them, the media have given the BNP a bit of an opportunity. They haven’t had a chance to show the public just how closely they compete with sewage plants for ownership of the term “unpleasant shower”. So they get to campaign on vaguely pro-British imagery and rhetoric, talking about ‘people like you’, and they get away with it, because people aren’t exposed to the full nastiness of their ideology.
Thanks for that Jon! The Spit I mean. Oh, and your second paragraph was very thoughtful and clever as well.