h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now he'll have to Face The Music in Xanadu.

RF

There's been a bit of confusion over this story so here is the news. All over the world people have been turned to stone when they heard of his death. I was calling America at the time, speaking to a Wild West Hero who told me over the telephone line. "Don't bring me down you sweet talking woman." I said, "That's horrible and I just can't get it out of my head now." If only that hay bale had chosen to roll over Beethoven instead.

A very sad day. Hey-ey-hey.

As a lifelong ELO fan, I find this in bad taste. I'm Steppin' Out of this thread. It's Over.

Duck house sold for charity:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11202494

Story: the sad passing of Sarah Krennedy as a Radio Tweo DJ. No doube her timeslot will go to some screaming verbally incontinent egotist who shouts and screams and loves the sound of his own voice too much, Decidedly not what you want on Two at six in the morning, thank you very much! Sarah was perfectly pitched for that time.

Just checking that I'm still allowed to post on hootoo - in the past this has been the case despite being premodded on other BBC sites. If I'm in premod here too for an "offence" comitted on Radio Two's boards, then the system stinks. Ah well, I could always go to the Daily Mail and see if they want a story....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11197376

"Tony Blair has hinted that he could cancel a book signing in London on Wednesday to prevent causing the police "a lot of hassle"...

But people should not try to prevent him from holding the events, he added."

RF

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4102984/Farmer-killed-while-loading-cattle

Non-member of ELO killed in bizarre farm accident. You don't have to be a celeb* to get in the news in NZ.

RF

* Even a micro-celeb former member of a 70s band.

Dresden mayor 'to lobby against building of Bomber Command memorial’

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/rafbombercommand/7985917/Dresden-mayor-to-lobby-against-building-of-Bomber-Command-memorial.html

off. You started it. 55,573 airmen died putting an end to it. The scandal is that it's taken 65 years to mark their sacrifice.

I have a feeling the mayor's attempt will crash and burn.

Hmmm... history is silent on the protests made by the then Mayor of Dresden about the humanitarian aspects of the Luftwaffe bombing the heart out of Warsaw, Coventry, Rotterdam, Leningrad... as Churchill said, the Germans sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind...

Montana President of libertarian lunatics The Tea Party joked on Facebook about murdering homosexuals.

Story seems to be a few days old now, and he's subsequently been sacked.

All it seems in a reference, apparently, to this famous murder in a chat on Facebook

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard

http://towleroad.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c730253ef013486bc25fd970c-pi


See these blogs for more.

http://www.amplifyyourvoice.org/u/AFY_EmilyB/2010/9/4/Tea-Party-president-jokes-about-murdering-GLBTQ-people

http://gay.americablog.com/2010/09/montana-tea-party-president-jokes-about.html

>>"bleep off. You started it."

Are you suggesting that Hitler is alive, well (after the op) and living out his days as the mayor of Dresden?

Or are you suggesting that the "sins" of Germans now mostly dead, should be forever carried by their descendants?

...or what?

>>55,573 airmen died putting an end to it.

Amongst them my uncle, a tail-gunner, there are many horrible ways to die, but there are a fewer that are worse than are better than the way they died.


>>The scandal is that it's taken 65 years to mark their sacrifice.

Perhaps.
But, perhaps you might like to think about just what it was we did to Dresden.
It wasn't a noble sacrifice. It wasn't a desperate act in the fight not be extinguished by fascists. It was a callous act designed to make it's perpetrators look relevant as the USSR and USA came to dominate the war and world.



My view is that the sacrifices are best memorialised by endeavouring to keep future generations properly educated and informed. Educated on the realities of the wars without bias or jingoism.
Lumps of rock and metal in parks are hubristic gestures and left unregarded and meaningless without it.

Thanks Jack for that.

My uncle was also among the airmen who died.

The true cause of war is nationalism. As long as we only build memorials to our own then the next war comes that closer. I'd like to see a memorial to all of the uncounted millions who lost everything as a sacrifice to human stupidity.

>> ...endeavouring to keep future generations properly educated and informed. <<

I have to say I object to a Bomber Command memorial being erected in Dresden.

Not just because I was born that day as Dresden was consumed in a firestorm.
(I carry that fact as a birthmark as certain as the mark of the beast.)

And not just because the ratio of 10 to 1 (60,000 citizens killed by bombs in the
UK compared to at least 600,000 in Germany) takes the edge off any claim to
noble heroism, honour or glory.

And yes I know that survival rates in Allied Air Forces were barely 50 per cent.

And yes, my father was in the RCAF and once (just once) described how they
had to hose out the remains of a tailgunner. I do not deny the bravery and
sacrifice of any individual who served in the Allied forces against Fascism.

But a memorial to Bomber Harris' genocidal policies erected at the site of his
most deadly raid would be as obscene as the Americans putting an Enola Gay
replica in Hiroshima. Crass and insensitive don't begin to describe such a display
of gloating and 'I told ya so'.

A memorial to those who served in Bomber Command is probably a good idea,
but perhaps at some more reasonable 'military target' site or better still not on
foreign soil. Put it at one of the old bases in the UK or somewhere that tomorrow's
generations can see it.


~jwf~

>>I have to say I object to a Bomber Command memorial being erected in Dresden.


Thankfully, no-one is planning to put one there.

Perhaps I'm reading it wrongly?

It's to be built in London.
It's not a memorial to the Dresden raids, it's a memorial to those of Bomber Command

It is, however, a memorial not a celebration.

Education, yes but let's not be allowed to forget the actuality. Those memorials around the country are reminders.

What would you do? Knock 'em down & build night clubs for the aware?

The basic premise of the memorial is that there are numerous memorials to Fighter Command around the country, because Fighter Command is "sexier", whereas there are none to Bomber Command, although they lost more lives. It's not about whether you (or indeed, anyone) agrees with the policy of specific bombing raids, it's to memorialise those who currently do not have any memorial.

RF

Yes RF, I agree. From the link,

'..Planners at Westminster City Council approved in May the proposed £3.5 million memorial for the 55,573 bombers who were killed in the Second World War. Daily Telegraph readers helped raise more than £1.8 million towards the cost of the monument, which will be built in Green Park, central London.

I think its very good that public servants who laid down their lives on behalf of their fellow citizens are given proper respect and remembrance. It's nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the policy, its to do with all those people giving their lives to defend the rest of us.

It's a memorial to the men who died, not the bombing of Dresden. And for those who buy into the myth that Dresden was fully of gentle peace-loving civilians making fluffy wabbits, how many Jews died during the raid on Dresden?