Cookie Notice

WE LOVE THE NATIONS OF EUROPE
However, this blog is a US service and this site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and analyze traffic. Your IP address and user-agent are shared with Google along with performance and security metrics to ensure quality of service, generate usage statistics, and to detect and address abuse.

Friday 1 June 2018

Remembering Ronnie

I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing in the early hours of the morning in the UK when it was confirmed that Ronald Reagan had won the US presidency. At the time we were appalled - a 'B' movie actor, a rather stupid and vain man who dyed his hair, a man unacquainted with the complexity of realpolitik, we thought. East Anglia back then was little more than a vast USAF airfield; F4 Phantoms and A10 Thunderbolts screamed overhead at low level from dawn until dusk, the last of our own fantastic Lightnings having been retired from RAF Wattisham in 1974. The faint stench of unburnt kerosene hung in the air and on our clothes and somewhere over to the east vast Soviet tank armies and millions of jackbooted killers stood ready to steamroll over Europe headed for Southwold and Walberswick.

The fear of nuclear war was endemic and ever present. Our rural counties had ICBMs targeted at them, we knew. Members of the Royal Observer Corps, normally village postmen or somesuch, would don their berets each day after work and scuttle down into their holes in the ground, mashing-up forty feet below the fields, with the milk rota pinned up next to the expected megadeaths from various megatonnages of nuclear blasts. We were terrified that the stupid, ignorant, blundering Reagan would provoke war with Russia, that he was gambling with our young lives. 

Well, we were as wrong as were the nation's finest economists who scribbled chain letters explaining why the housewife Margaret Thatcher would be a disaster for jobs and growth. And of course we've heard it all again about President Trump. And on past form, that's why I'm less concerned about a trade war, tariffs and sanctions, mutual economic destruction and all the rest than I should be. In fact, the more that the world's economists are shrieking how dreadful it all is, the more experience tells me that it may just work, but perhaps not in the way that Mr Trump thinks it will (those US rust belt jobs will never return - but tax cuts, deregulation and fracking will compensate). Reagan never expected the wall to come down, after all. 

EU tariffs on cranberries, bourbon and denim jeans? Give me strength. BTW, preiselbeere or Lingonberry sauce is a perfect substitute for cranberry sauce - sold in big, cheap jars and also perfect with venison, I wouldn't use Bourbon to clean the sink and my denim is made in China and SE Asia by slaves. If I couldn't get hold of Dickies shirts and boots, on the other hand, that would be a disaster ..

16 comments:

Ravenscar. said...

Yeah Ronnie was so thick, right.

Yack, always the bovids ie the western media were even thicker, no surprises.

Not least, the left wing fuckers (spitting image) who mercilessly took the piss out of a great US president and having a go at his wife was execrable malignancy but true to type.

Recently and contrast it (the treatment of Nancy Reagen) with how they tre't Michelle O'barmy as if she was/is THE ominiscient being (it's a woman power thing and about as stupid as it gets).

Michelle O'barmy, she's just the mother of O'barmy's kids for fuck sake not even an intellectual genius like her husband tells us he is and tell us he certainly did, the beeb sly, itv and the left wing chatterati weting their panties, swooned when O'barmy stuck his oar in and told us to 'stay in the EU or else you'll be back of the queue'.
Funny but I don't remember Ronnie threatening us, he even helped during the Falklands, an adventure yes but necessary.

Yep Ronnie, he was so thick that, he ably finessed the Soviet Union with the star wars threat, they (NASA, US military hive in the Pentagon) didn't have the tech' but Gorbechev and his stiffs in the GRU thought it might just be possible.......he rushed over to Iceland and the rest as they say is deMAD.

They continue to, constantly underestimate a wily old fox in Donald J. Trump, he is playing them like a fiddle and doing requests.

Trump violin expertise, has gone virtuouso, and they still come for more, though they (UK-illiberal media claque) are beginning to get it, it's taken them 18 months and 2 years before that, but even thicko's get it eventually.

That Trump is holding all the aces and dealing from under the deck, and out of his sleeve and still they gawp, it's quite brilliant really.

DeeDee99 said...

Ronnie had Maggie ....... a most fortuitous circumstance for our two countries.

Who's Trump got? Theresa-the Appeaser, whose devotion to the EU means we've just been hit with steel tariffs as we can't be treated differently from the rest of the EU.

Perhaps the silly cow is NOW starting to understand that membership of the EU (or remaining shackled to it via EI-lite) isn't a benefit.

Stephen J said...

Yes, listening to the wireless this morning, the various correspondents were ranting about what an idiot that Trump bloke is... He clearly hasn't thought this through etc. etc. etc.

The reality of course is that Trump has thought the next four or five moves ahead.

It is just such a shame that his chief ally has got the intellect of a pygmy, and is only in that job due to her inability to stand up to those that put her in place.

Pat said...

You can rely on experts in any field to offer a solution that gives maximum benefit to themselves. Keynesian economics gives maximum importance to economists, hence economists prefer Keynes rather than Hayek. An ongoing cold war provides long term riches for the military. Raising the school leaving age and expanding the universities provides lots more work for educators. Long and complicated trade negotiations provide cushy work for negotiators. Etc.
Mr. Trump appears to be at least trying to solve problems once and for all- he's therefore threatening a lot of cushy careers.

Anonymous said...

Reagan never expected the wall to come down, after all.

Pres Trump though expects the wall to go up.

Anonymous said...

One of the positive things about the BBC is that you get to see what Diversity gives us - a whole bunch of idiot reporters, females mainly, Muslim females, and Black males.

This "Diversity" is manifest even more when GCSE results come out. An alien would think that there are no boys in human species.

Yet, virtually the entire body of Engineering and scientific civilisation that we name Western civilisation is a product of Western man.

DP111

rapscallion said...

ravenscar at 07:15

Concur. The thing is that all these lefty tossers, is that they are still trying to play the game of politics. Trump, as you well know is NOT a politician; he's a businessman and he plays by his own rules.

Trump is playing the Left beautifully, and they bite like starving pike every time. Whilst he winds them up with tweets, it focuses their attention whilst he does something else (where he doesn't want their focus). He is letting them implicate themselves in the daft Mueller investigation, all "slowly, slowly catchee monkey"

Yes, right-writes - he is at least 4-5 moves ahead of them - and it is so funny to watch it. It's cruel you understand, but oh, so funny.

terence patrick hewett said...

Yes so do I: I was in a pub in Cape Town and on came RR doing his folksy act and I started to smile he was so good: he was one of the best Presidents of the US.

The best joke of that era was:

"what is wrong with and actor as President - we have had a clown for the last 4 years" - I still laugh - he wos grate.

Smoking Scot said...

One thing Ronald did that sticks in my mind was to take out of mothballs and completely recommissioned the battleship New Jersey!

A hugely impressive piece of kit that intimidated from 5 miles away. They had a slight problem with her 16 inch guns, because the shells weighed just over 1 tonne and cost a fortune to manufacture, but boy, oh boy when they were fired the earth shook.

And I loved him to bits when he left office and was subsequently asked to testify to some investigation, the guy couldn't remember a thing!

Dave_G said...


Many people laugh along with the (clever) moves by Trump.

Sadly, we're stuck with laughing at the moves by May.

anon 2 said...

Dave G (19:15):
Laugh at Mayhem? I think that's crying, you mean --- though one doubts if many of the British can tell the difference these days.

And how are the unholy slitherer and her alien "home" Secretary responding to the cries of the People? Cowering in their underground safe places?
Thank the Good Lord for Tommy Robinson -- and I pray he's still alive.

Thud said...

I'll happily raise a glass of any of the fine bourbons I own to the memory of President Reagan anytime, a great drink and an even greater president oh and buying Chinese jeans, you should and could do better.

Anonymous said...

Not only is she, a shitkicking waste of space.

It is very clear that, and dear God but perish the thought but reading between the lines and noting the rampant EU apparat meddling in the internal affairs of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the ECB run Ireland, think about it!! Come on think!... someone fixed (likely Berlin-Paris imprimatur and Brussels initiated) it so that she became 'our' PM.

In fact the cap fits, she is fucking useless as are the Brussels politburo an uncanny match of bodge, underachievement and ducking out when the going gets anywhere near tough. All done with the Reichsag approval and the shady ghouls and numb heads who run the show behind the curtains of the Berlaymont circus.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if, in future years as these things inevitably reach 'fresh air' and the UK public! IF, we were to learn that Mutti and Junckyard scripted her every line, particular in regards to in order;

i. "Leaving" the Empire,
ii. every utterance about Trump after that first meeting (pretty friendly and thereafter, equally as cool and distant) they Berlin really shut her down... think on that.
iii. concerning Britain in reference to making external deals out of the shackles of the EU - no chance, the fekkin last thing they want us to have.

So long as that EU beholden ncut shariza may remains in No10, the remoaniacs under the guidance of Goldman Sachs+ soros + kofi annan, tories, banksters inc - there more chance of a turtle crawling across the Sahara from Senegal to the Red Sea, than there is of us leaving the Empire of Doom.

If we're going to get out, may has to go.

anon 2 said...

Couldn't stand Ronnie, misen.
However, my reaction to the announcement of JFK's shooting is as ineradicable as that Raedwald describes here. I know exactly where I was (in my kitchen/dining room in Manchester - doing some ironing) at the time.

However short-lived my remaining time may be, the rhythm of Oh, Tommy. Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy Robinson will keep on echoing through the halls of my non-dementia memory.

Bill Quango MP said...

I cannot recall the last time I saw made in USA jeans in the uk.
Even back in the 1990s, when it was Levi or laughter, they were being made in Vietnam and Indonesia.
Bolt and rifle, a decent make, Did all their manufacture in Spain.

Tesco and other £5-£15 denim is not really China. It’s India. Pakistan. Bangladesh, Turkey. Philippines. Portugal.
Japan for quality denim.

Lee and wrangler are the VF Company. Which is VF Europe. Separate from USA.
Shouldn’t think a tariff would touch them at all.

John Vasc said...

Redcurrant jelly is also excellent with venison - and it was the more usual accompaniment in England before the mass importation of US cranberries.
Redcurrants grow more or less everywhere in England (possibly Scotland too, but I have no experience of gardening there), but more readily on the drier, eastern side of the country.

And yes, Trump has a lot in common with Ronnie Reagan. If we want to avoid trouble we need to drop Mrs Nice But Dim, stop kowtowing to Brussels, get OUT soonest, stop insulting Trump, and declare Unilateral Free Trade..