The only reason for watching the DVD of My Kingdom is to see the last major film role of Richard Harris before his death at the age of 72. This will be disputed by many because the film, apart from its concept, has no other virtue than Richard Harris and Lyn Redgrave and he did make the role of Professor Dumbledore his own in the first two Harry Potter films before his death, and he had roles in a couple of others.
In My Kingdom Richard plays the King Lear of Liverpool written on the assumption that the only way of a lad from the poor area to make a name for himself is through media entertainment, sport or crime. I have met this crass attitude before which ignores the majority who work hard through school and go to university, but even if not, have created careers, reputations and contributed to their community through legitimate business, professions, working in local government and public services. It is true that misguided entertainment and sport personalities sometime do not check who they rub shoulders with and find themselves involved with full time gangsters and criminal entrepreneurs.
In My Kingdom there is no attempt to glamorise the world of city crime although the film attempts to entertain after all there are some good stills of Liverpool and Merseyside life and throughout I kept thinking, they are trying to do for Liverpool what Get Carter did for Newcastle and failing hopelessly. The problem is that the film hangs on us believing that for one crazy moment the top villain in the city, with the other crime boss hating his guts and usually surrounded better than Fort Knox, would go to and leave the Cathedral and walk the dark neighbouring streets for some reason on their own, and with not only no minders but no one else in sight. This is a necessary storyline to justify the Godfather being held up at gun point by a junkie who does not know who he is, and that the Godfather taunts the young man into pulling the trigger, as he pushes the gun away so that it points directly into the face of his wife killing her instantly. Not only does this stupid move confirm that his days are numbered but he has failed to protect the person in whose name his millions of cash and the homes and the business enterprises including a football club and a brothel.
All human beings no matter how ever clever they are or think they are, have moments of madness when they make mistakes but the character of Sandeman, this is joke on Port arriving at the Port from Ireland to sweep Mrs Sandeman of her feet and build an empire for the family.
At least we do then have the full works funeral with black coach and horses and the local priest coming to the wake held as it is in a nightclub which presumable they also own. It tends to be obligatory for films about Italian and Irish Catholics to have a priest or two, and sometimes even the hierarchy of the church are involved accepting money from the superficial and ritualistic unrepentant rather than excommunicating them and their family while they continue to operate their criminal activities and live a good life off its proceeds. At least in this film race is neutral in the sense that lawyer helping the family to secret its funds and evade the taxman is Chinese, the enforcer butcher. who enjoys his work, is a Muslim, and the headman of the rival gang is mixed Anglo West Indian and one trusted personal bodyguard who is AWOL on the night of the fateful mugging is of African origin.
Everything now falls apart for two reasons. Father with the mother's connivance had not only placed his cash and property ownership in her name but she has made a will leaving everything to the daughter, all three daughter appear to have been whores at one time or the other, who has stopped doing the streets and drugs, and is studying psychology after doing rehab and wants nothing from her family, but keeps in touch with her mother and one eye on her mixed race son which she appears to have had with head of the main rival gang in the city, and who is the only member of the family who appears to like and respect Granddad.
Granddad Godfather is not quite the fool he appears to have quickly become in that he plays his two other daughters against each other dividing the day to day running of things between the two daughters and their husbands, with one running the football club, mixing her time between hot instant sex and cocaine, ideal interests for someone the chairman of the football club which looked very much like, well I had better not say, while the other daughter runs the brothel and presumably the girls on the street. The daughter eventually murder each other and the grandson is drowned in the Mersey by which I am not clear who is having a go at who. There are the police, personified by a young lad from the same schools and neighbourhood who was moved into Vice before being asked to investigate the death of Queen Sandeman who appears to have been genuinely interested in keeping law and order, once, but is now only too willing to be bought off with sex and drug freebees. There is also the curious senior customs officer who appears to have managed to have been allowed to allocate twenty or more years of resources to trailing the Sandeman (similar to Candyman of course) without success and again is another one who facing retirement on grounds of terminal ill health and who also abandons his support team to get his eyes gouged out before being dumped in the midst of the local goods yard, Everyone is cancelling everyone out to leave the field for yet another displaced gangster terrorist to cross the water to take over without having to pretend and tribal political affiliation unless it suit's the business.
I enjoyed the placement of the Burton Wood Travel Lodge as a hideaway for Granddad and Grandson, my last accommodation stop for a visit to Chester. The Lodge is located close to a Motor way leading to the Mersey tunnel in the Wirral, where I lived for two and half years 1971- 1974, having had a County flat on the banks of the Dee at Chester until deciding on buying a house. By the way as anyone who has stayed in a Travel Lodge know the windows, are secured to prevent getting out if you are on a first or higher floor and getting in if you are on the ground so how they made their escape from their rooms when one lot of hoods came for them is a miracle.
Twice in my life I have been employed for three months before a major reorganisation. In Cheshire I was part of a small team, of half three or four brought in from outside the County with the new Director responsible for creating the first social services department out of the existing Welfare, Child Care and Mental Health departments of the County with just under one million people. One first tasks was to incorporate the Hospital and community based Health social workers and then in a move unique to the county, transfer half the education welfare work assistants. I was subsequently given a section where the boss placed his specialist creatives on the basis that we could be dispersed or transferred out of the county three years down the road with the next round of reorganisation of Local government and the National Health Service Management. At one point, although I was only fourth tier in the management structure I held the new department together representing the interests of the public and the front line workers while the rest of senior management jockeyed for position in the new set up or created as much mischief as they could knowing there were retiring and on their way out, while the new man who had made his name in Scotland with their earlier reorganisation became an absentee chief officer having been appointed the first Chairman of the newly formed Association of Directors of Social Services. I quickly learnt how to organise and effectively run a new local authority public service department because in his absence was sent off to meetings involving the corporate management structure of the local authority which was one of the best and foremost in the country from having a brilliant chief executive in a very traditional Tory County with the vision to see what was ahead and to plan for a local government reorganisation in which the County Council was to something of a federal alliance between the autonomous district authorities, For the big change in 1974 I was appointed the equivalent of the state social services chief for the largest county in California, given a budget, a large new open plan office space and an outline management structure and a local committee made up of county councillors from the area and district Council nominees, including the existing Chairman of the social services committee in what until then had been a separate social services department with its own Director of Social Services. I was to be paid £4000, a 25% increase over my existing salary although it would mean travelling twice as far and longer every day than to the County Headquarters in Chester City. I then discovered that South Tyneside was advertising for its first Director, a new authority where I had been short listed for Director in 1970 for the largest area, the then country borough of South Shields. This new authority had a population roughly the same size as my new Cheshire responsibilities but was offering salary133% more than I was then getting and 80% more than I would be getting.
Much to my own and everyone else's amazement I was appointed although in competition with the existing Director of Social Services and two others. I then found myself with a small office and a part time secretary shorthand typist to devise a staffing structure, a budget, policies and procedures over a period of five months with only three being in post. There had been a committee involving the councillors and officers from the authorities and departments concerned meeting over a year, collection information and agreeing what was being transferred in terms of existing buildings and budgets and how staffing was to be approached in general and who had then gone on to draw up plans based on the assumption that the previous men in power would continue as before. Being an outsider and not involved with these preparations to maintain the old order I was able to thank everybody for their work and bin it, and the devised a structure which had some hope of tackling the demands of the new situation.
I have mentioned all this because it relates to my knowledge of Merseyside and the city of Liverpool and that I have some understanding of the American system of government as a former insider. Given that I write this on a day when significant change could begin or the old order will find a way of not just surviving but of retaining control.
Between 1971 and 1974 my sphere of influence extended to the Mersey through the petrochemical district of Ellesmere Port and the banks of the Dee in the Wirral up to the then County Boroughs of Wallasey and Birkenhead and also to the borders of Manchester in the East. One could travel into Liverpool across the Mersey by ferry but the usual route was through the Tunnel by car or by train. I lived midway along the Wirral at residential suburb called Bromborough within walking distance of a Mere or small lake and while Chester was a very attractive city with cinema, theatre restaurants attractive walkways, Roman remains and attractive parkland overlooking the river Dee, Liverpool was just beginning to thrive on being the homeland of the Beatles and to become the potential leader of the new Local Government administrative area of Merseyside. Until then it was the poor relation, a declining port and declining city squeezed between the great power of Lancashire to the North and Cheshire to the South. Manchester and Yorkshire were to the East. Liverpool like Newcastle was strongly Labour and strongly trade union controlled cities, warts and all, with sectarian divided economic migrants from Ireland and its criminal underclass with heroin drug entrepreneurs moving in from London but not then on major scale, with the beer and the work men's Club along with the church and football being the main social outlets for the majority less privileged. And with most cities the wealthy did not live in the city,, It was to be another decade and more before organised drugs and vice became rooted in the new disco clubland as part of global enterprises. As the traditional oligarchic trade unions and trade union personalities who wielded more power than politicians were put in their place by economic changes and Margaret Thatcher determination, the traditional Labour Political base was under challenge, not from conservatism but Trevor Hatton led opportunistic militancy which after it was exposed for what it was , became replaced in Liverpool by liberal democrats, as has only more recently happened on Tyneside. In England in London, the South East and South West and in the midlands as far as Manchester, Thatcherism was replaced by Blairism, but this was only superficially accepted fin the north in parts of Yorkshire, and Lancashire, Merseyside and Tyneside, and not in Scotland and Wales. What New Labourism did was to make Thatcherism respectable to the middle class left but it was not a new ideology or something which convinced the intellectual left, or fooled working class traditionalists. It was a useful concept for gaining and keeping national power, but it did not affect too much the move for political change at local level.
Films such as My Kingdom, even which not set out to glamorise gangsterism are still dangerous because they suggest such men and their women folk are more important in communities that they are. They can have a disproportionate influence and this is sometimes the fault of the police, local government and the Catholic Church and the Church of England for allowing those involved too much power and position given that they pose greater threat to democracy than the international terrorist. It remains extraordinary but unsurprising that national politicians go on and on about international terrorists and about knife carrying young people but appear to ignore the men and some women who control the drugs and sex trade and to the greatest damage to individuals and society in general.
I am still not convinced that either Presidential candidate and more importantly their Political Parties at state and county levels are really serious about making the political changes required to enable the USA become an effective and respected partner in the international community. At present many states and counties are behaving like banana republics in making people stand in line for several hours to cast their vote and it will be interesting to see how many give up or are still in line when the polls close similar because the administrators and the politicians who control then have deliberately not ensured that there was sufficient people and an adequate system to enable everyone to cast their votes. It will also be interesting to see how many ballot papers are lost or declared spoilt, However winning the vote is an important but only a minor step ion achieving effective change with does more good than harm and which tackles those who will attempt to use whoever is in power or whatever politics and legislation they pass in order to make as much money for themselves and their families hiring the lawyers and the accountants to make what they do legal and the public relations to present their lives as worth and respectable. To ensure change you need poachers turned gamekeepers and not people who always wanted to be gamekeepers.
It was an excellent weekend, devoted the films of Ingmar Bergman and writing about the original and subsequent experiences.
I watched all but the last few seconds of the last Formula 1 Grand Prix race of the season live, switching off convinced that Louis Hamilton had failed to win the World Championship having been overtaken by a faster car in the because of changing tyres in a situation where it did not then rain as strongly as earlier. It was not until 2 am that I checked and discovered that the driver who had passed him suddenly seemed to be driving very slowly, enabling Louis to pass on the final bend and take fifth position, finishing one point ahead of the Brazilian. Finding this out on the internet rather than TV led to also finding the ITV has followed BBC with a programme player enabling full screen performance which last the whole period of the show, in this instance the second part of Robson Green Wire in the Blood. Robson has become an excellent actor although the programme follows well trodden pathways of other psychological thrillers.
Earlier there was a PD James story which I had not seen before on a satellite channel and the Antiques Roadshow. The ITV past covers programme for 30 days and there sis also a selection of programme series from the past, some my favourites which means that with the lap top to the computer I can have something on if I wish on the bog home screen while continuing to work on the desk top.
There were two disappointments on Saturday, The $20 million dollar Standford game was a disaster for England who decided to bat first on a good wicket and fell apart only getting 99 runs. The Stanford all stars won by ten wickets. The bubble has burst which I am pleased as everyone was getting carried away with making money. Sunderland were thrashed at Chelsea putting the team back in the danger area with two straight loses. For the third week in succession Newcastle have another live match, again on Monday evening at home against Aston Villa on Satanta. Arsenal lost 2.1 at Stoke and Hull gave Man U a scare at Old Trafford with the game ending 4,3.This weekend bottom clubs did well so Newcastle will need to win at home again.
I was able to complete three sets of work a day for the month and also passed completed set 7777 earlier in the money. I am nearly up to date in the work with a couple of days required but priority on Monday is to end of month financial and household matters and then later in the week on Christmas this and that. The Printer is working better so I will continue to use the remaining cartridges before switch to the new one, as well and commencing to work on the transfer of slides to computer and then to disk. I have maintained the 98% wins at Free Cell for 500 games and then concentrated on getting a high percentage at Hearts from 45% to 46% with 714 games won from 1551 while at Spider I reached 1000 wins.
I also watched an hilarious crime caper Park Plaza 605 featuring Sid James as a stupid cockney politics detective, George Sanders as George Sanders a respectable rouge criminal, living in his own block of apartments completed with garage and petrol station and Eva Bartok, the amazing and attractive Hungarian Young Woman who spent her youth in a German concentration camp and was coerced into marriage with a Nazi officer which was subsequently annulled and then married four other times. I remember her from the Crimson Pirate with Burt Lancaster and Operation Amsterdam which as with the presently view film was about diamonds although operation Amsterdam is based on the true decision to transfer as much of the Dutch diamond reserve to London before the Nazi's moved in. In Park Plaza 605 she is involved with straight forward diamond smuggling in relation to a former Nazi Von Hensell.
I started today with reference to Richard Harris a larger than life character with a capacity to drink vast quantities of alcohol as well as being an alleged supported of Irish Republicanism. The first film appearance I remember is in the Wreck of the Mary Deare 1959; then the Long and the Short and the Tall based on the Willis Hall play I saw performed in the West End, released as Jungle fighters in the USA; and then the Guns of Navarone where I visited the part of Rhodes where the film was shot diving off the boat into the bay for a cooling swim, something I only did in my early sixties for the first time and not since ,and is one of the great experiences in my life. In Mutiny of the Bounty he played a seaman called John Mills; He made his name in This Sporting Life as a Rugby player, which he was good at until illness curtailed what might have been a career. He then played in the Antonioni film the Red Desert before the Heroes of Telemark. The Bible, Hawaii. Camelot, the Molly McGuire's and A man called Horse were of the same era, followed by Cromwell and the Snow Goose, Juggernaut, The Cassandra crossing and Gulliver's Travels were in the 1970's along with The Wild Geese. Tarzan the Ape man as the father of Bo Derek was followed by Mack the Knife, Patriot Games, and Unforgiven which brought him into the 90's. Cry Beloved Country, and Smillas's sense of snow brought him up to the Millennium with Gladiator, The Count of Monte Christi, My Kingdom and Professor Dumbledore. I have seen at least half of the 80 films which he made. He was also a singer songwriter and when carried off to hospital before his death from a famous London hotel he is alleged to have told everyone to watch the food.
In My Kingdom Richard plays the King Lear of Liverpool written on the assumption that the only way of a lad from the poor area to make a name for himself is through media entertainment, sport or crime. I have met this crass attitude before which ignores the majority who work hard through school and go to university, but even if not, have created careers, reputations and contributed to their community through legitimate business, professions, working in local government and public services. It is true that misguided entertainment and sport personalities sometime do not check who they rub shoulders with and find themselves involved with full time gangsters and criminal entrepreneurs.
In My Kingdom there is no attempt to glamorise the world of city crime although the film attempts to entertain after all there are some good stills of Liverpool and Merseyside life and throughout I kept thinking, they are trying to do for Liverpool what Get Carter did for Newcastle and failing hopelessly. The problem is that the film hangs on us believing that for one crazy moment the top villain in the city, with the other crime boss hating his guts and usually surrounded better than Fort Knox, would go to and leave the Cathedral and walk the dark neighbouring streets for some reason on their own, and with not only no minders but no one else in sight. This is a necessary storyline to justify the Godfather being held up at gun point by a junkie who does not know who he is, and that the Godfather taunts the young man into pulling the trigger, as he pushes the gun away so that it points directly into the face of his wife killing her instantly. Not only does this stupid move confirm that his days are numbered but he has failed to protect the person in whose name his millions of cash and the homes and the business enterprises including a football club and a brothel.
All human beings no matter how ever clever they are or think they are, have moments of madness when they make mistakes but the character of Sandeman, this is joke on Port arriving at the Port from Ireland to sweep Mrs Sandeman of her feet and build an empire for the family.
At least we do then have the full works funeral with black coach and horses and the local priest coming to the wake held as it is in a nightclub which presumable they also own. It tends to be obligatory for films about Italian and Irish Catholics to have a priest or two, and sometimes even the hierarchy of the church are involved accepting money from the superficial and ritualistic unrepentant rather than excommunicating them and their family while they continue to operate their criminal activities and live a good life off its proceeds. At least in this film race is neutral in the sense that lawyer helping the family to secret its funds and evade the taxman is Chinese, the enforcer butcher. who enjoys his work, is a Muslim, and the headman of the rival gang is mixed Anglo West Indian and one trusted personal bodyguard who is AWOL on the night of the fateful mugging is of African origin.
Everything now falls apart for two reasons. Father with the mother's connivance had not only placed his cash and property ownership in her name but she has made a will leaving everything to the daughter, all three daughter appear to have been whores at one time or the other, who has stopped doing the streets and drugs, and is studying psychology after doing rehab and wants nothing from her family, but keeps in touch with her mother and one eye on her mixed race son which she appears to have had with head of the main rival gang in the city, and who is the only member of the family who appears to like and respect Granddad.
Granddad Godfather is not quite the fool he appears to have quickly become in that he plays his two other daughters against each other dividing the day to day running of things between the two daughters and their husbands, with one running the football club, mixing her time between hot instant sex and cocaine, ideal interests for someone the chairman of the football club which looked very much like, well I had better not say, while the other daughter runs the brothel and presumably the girls on the street. The daughter eventually murder each other and the grandson is drowned in the Mersey by which I am not clear who is having a go at who. There are the police, personified by a young lad from the same schools and neighbourhood who was moved into Vice before being asked to investigate the death of Queen Sandeman who appears to have been genuinely interested in keeping law and order, once, but is now only too willing to be bought off with sex and drug freebees. There is also the curious senior customs officer who appears to have managed to have been allowed to allocate twenty or more years of resources to trailing the Sandeman (similar to Candyman of course) without success and again is another one who facing retirement on grounds of terminal ill health and who also abandons his support team to get his eyes gouged out before being dumped in the midst of the local goods yard, Everyone is cancelling everyone out to leave the field for yet another displaced gangster terrorist to cross the water to take over without having to pretend and tribal political affiliation unless it suit's the business.
I enjoyed the placement of the Burton Wood Travel Lodge as a hideaway for Granddad and Grandson, my last accommodation stop for a visit to Chester. The Lodge is located close to a Motor way leading to the Mersey tunnel in the Wirral, where I lived for two and half years 1971- 1974, having had a County flat on the banks of the Dee at Chester until deciding on buying a house. By the way as anyone who has stayed in a Travel Lodge know the windows, are secured to prevent getting out if you are on a first or higher floor and getting in if you are on the ground so how they made their escape from their rooms when one lot of hoods came for them is a miracle.
Twice in my life I have been employed for three months before a major reorganisation. In Cheshire I was part of a small team, of half three or four brought in from outside the County with the new Director responsible for creating the first social services department out of the existing Welfare, Child Care and Mental Health departments of the County with just under one million people. One first tasks was to incorporate the Hospital and community based Health social workers and then in a move unique to the county, transfer half the education welfare work assistants. I was subsequently given a section where the boss placed his specialist creatives on the basis that we could be dispersed or transferred out of the county three years down the road with the next round of reorganisation of Local government and the National Health Service Management. At one point, although I was only fourth tier in the management structure I held the new department together representing the interests of the public and the front line workers while the rest of senior management jockeyed for position in the new set up or created as much mischief as they could knowing there were retiring and on their way out, while the new man who had made his name in Scotland with their earlier reorganisation became an absentee chief officer having been appointed the first Chairman of the newly formed Association of Directors of Social Services. I quickly learnt how to organise and effectively run a new local authority public service department because in his absence was sent off to meetings involving the corporate management structure of the local authority which was one of the best and foremost in the country from having a brilliant chief executive in a very traditional Tory County with the vision to see what was ahead and to plan for a local government reorganisation in which the County Council was to something of a federal alliance between the autonomous district authorities, For the big change in 1974 I was appointed the equivalent of the state social services chief for the largest county in California, given a budget, a large new open plan office space and an outline management structure and a local committee made up of county councillors from the area and district Council nominees, including the existing Chairman of the social services committee in what until then had been a separate social services department with its own Director of Social Services. I was to be paid £4000, a 25% increase over my existing salary although it would mean travelling twice as far and longer every day than to the County Headquarters in Chester City. I then discovered that South Tyneside was advertising for its first Director, a new authority where I had been short listed for Director in 1970 for the largest area, the then country borough of South Shields. This new authority had a population roughly the same size as my new Cheshire responsibilities but was offering salary133% more than I was then getting and 80% more than I would be getting.
Much to my own and everyone else's amazement I was appointed although in competition with the existing Director of Social Services and two others. I then found myself with a small office and a part time secretary shorthand typist to devise a staffing structure, a budget, policies and procedures over a period of five months with only three being in post. There had been a committee involving the councillors and officers from the authorities and departments concerned meeting over a year, collection information and agreeing what was being transferred in terms of existing buildings and budgets and how staffing was to be approached in general and who had then gone on to draw up plans based on the assumption that the previous men in power would continue as before. Being an outsider and not involved with these preparations to maintain the old order I was able to thank everybody for their work and bin it, and the devised a structure which had some hope of tackling the demands of the new situation.
I have mentioned all this because it relates to my knowledge of Merseyside and the city of Liverpool and that I have some understanding of the American system of government as a former insider. Given that I write this on a day when significant change could begin or the old order will find a way of not just surviving but of retaining control.
Between 1971 and 1974 my sphere of influence extended to the Mersey through the petrochemical district of Ellesmere Port and the banks of the Dee in the Wirral up to the then County Boroughs of Wallasey and Birkenhead and also to the borders of Manchester in the East. One could travel into Liverpool across the Mersey by ferry but the usual route was through the Tunnel by car or by train. I lived midway along the Wirral at residential suburb called Bromborough within walking distance of a Mere or small lake and while Chester was a very attractive city with cinema, theatre restaurants attractive walkways, Roman remains and attractive parkland overlooking the river Dee, Liverpool was just beginning to thrive on being the homeland of the Beatles and to become the potential leader of the new Local Government administrative area of Merseyside. Until then it was the poor relation, a declining port and declining city squeezed between the great power of Lancashire to the North and Cheshire to the South. Manchester and Yorkshire were to the East. Liverpool like Newcastle was strongly Labour and strongly trade union controlled cities, warts and all, with sectarian divided economic migrants from Ireland and its criminal underclass with heroin drug entrepreneurs moving in from London but not then on major scale, with the beer and the work men's Club along with the church and football being the main social outlets for the majority less privileged. And with most cities the wealthy did not live in the city,, It was to be another decade and more before organised drugs and vice became rooted in the new disco clubland as part of global enterprises. As the traditional oligarchic trade unions and trade union personalities who wielded more power than politicians were put in their place by economic changes and Margaret Thatcher determination, the traditional Labour Political base was under challenge, not from conservatism but Trevor Hatton led opportunistic militancy which after it was exposed for what it was , became replaced in Liverpool by liberal democrats, as has only more recently happened on Tyneside. In England in London, the South East and South West and in the midlands as far as Manchester, Thatcherism was replaced by Blairism, but this was only superficially accepted fin the north in parts of Yorkshire, and Lancashire, Merseyside and Tyneside, and not in Scotland and Wales. What New Labourism did was to make Thatcherism respectable to the middle class left but it was not a new ideology or something which convinced the intellectual left, or fooled working class traditionalists. It was a useful concept for gaining and keeping national power, but it did not affect too much the move for political change at local level.
Films such as My Kingdom, even which not set out to glamorise gangsterism are still dangerous because they suggest such men and their women folk are more important in communities that they are. They can have a disproportionate influence and this is sometimes the fault of the police, local government and the Catholic Church and the Church of England for allowing those involved too much power and position given that they pose greater threat to democracy than the international terrorist. It remains extraordinary but unsurprising that national politicians go on and on about international terrorists and about knife carrying young people but appear to ignore the men and some women who control the drugs and sex trade and to the greatest damage to individuals and society in general.
I am still not convinced that either Presidential candidate and more importantly their Political Parties at state and county levels are really serious about making the political changes required to enable the USA become an effective and respected partner in the international community. At present many states and counties are behaving like banana republics in making people stand in line for several hours to cast their vote and it will be interesting to see how many give up or are still in line when the polls close similar because the administrators and the politicians who control then have deliberately not ensured that there was sufficient people and an adequate system to enable everyone to cast their votes. It will also be interesting to see how many ballot papers are lost or declared spoilt, However winning the vote is an important but only a minor step ion achieving effective change with does more good than harm and which tackles those who will attempt to use whoever is in power or whatever politics and legislation they pass in order to make as much money for themselves and their families hiring the lawyers and the accountants to make what they do legal and the public relations to present their lives as worth and respectable. To ensure change you need poachers turned gamekeepers and not people who always wanted to be gamekeepers.
It was an excellent weekend, devoted the films of Ingmar Bergman and writing about the original and subsequent experiences.
I watched all but the last few seconds of the last Formula 1 Grand Prix race of the season live, switching off convinced that Louis Hamilton had failed to win the World Championship having been overtaken by a faster car in the because of changing tyres in a situation where it did not then rain as strongly as earlier. It was not until 2 am that I checked and discovered that the driver who had passed him suddenly seemed to be driving very slowly, enabling Louis to pass on the final bend and take fifth position, finishing one point ahead of the Brazilian. Finding this out on the internet rather than TV led to also finding the ITV has followed BBC with a programme player enabling full screen performance which last the whole period of the show, in this instance the second part of Robson Green Wire in the Blood. Robson has become an excellent actor although the programme follows well trodden pathways of other psychological thrillers.
Earlier there was a PD James story which I had not seen before on a satellite channel and the Antiques Roadshow. The ITV past covers programme for 30 days and there sis also a selection of programme series from the past, some my favourites which means that with the lap top to the computer I can have something on if I wish on the bog home screen while continuing to work on the desk top.
There were two disappointments on Saturday, The $20 million dollar Standford game was a disaster for England who decided to bat first on a good wicket and fell apart only getting 99 runs. The Stanford all stars won by ten wickets. The bubble has burst which I am pleased as everyone was getting carried away with making money. Sunderland were thrashed at Chelsea putting the team back in the danger area with two straight loses. For the third week in succession Newcastle have another live match, again on Monday evening at home against Aston Villa on Satanta. Arsenal lost 2.1 at Stoke and Hull gave Man U a scare at Old Trafford with the game ending 4,3.This weekend bottom clubs did well so Newcastle will need to win at home again.
I was able to complete three sets of work a day for the month and also passed completed set 7777 earlier in the money. I am nearly up to date in the work with a couple of days required but priority on Monday is to end of month financial and household matters and then later in the week on Christmas this and that. The Printer is working better so I will continue to use the remaining cartridges before switch to the new one, as well and commencing to work on the transfer of slides to computer and then to disk. I have maintained the 98% wins at Free Cell for 500 games and then concentrated on getting a high percentage at Hearts from 45% to 46% with 714 games won from 1551 while at Spider I reached 1000 wins.
I also watched an hilarious crime caper Park Plaza 605 featuring Sid James as a stupid cockney politics detective, George Sanders as George Sanders a respectable rouge criminal, living in his own block of apartments completed with garage and petrol station and Eva Bartok, the amazing and attractive Hungarian Young Woman who spent her youth in a German concentration camp and was coerced into marriage with a Nazi officer which was subsequently annulled and then married four other times. I remember her from the Crimson Pirate with Burt Lancaster and Operation Amsterdam which as with the presently view film was about diamonds although operation Amsterdam is based on the true decision to transfer as much of the Dutch diamond reserve to London before the Nazi's moved in. In Park Plaza 605 she is involved with straight forward diamond smuggling in relation to a former Nazi Von Hensell.
I started today with reference to Richard Harris a larger than life character with a capacity to drink vast quantities of alcohol as well as being an alleged supported of Irish Republicanism. The first film appearance I remember is in the Wreck of the Mary Deare 1959; then the Long and the Short and the Tall based on the Willis Hall play I saw performed in the West End, released as Jungle fighters in the USA; and then the Guns of Navarone where I visited the part of Rhodes where the film was shot diving off the boat into the bay for a cooling swim, something I only did in my early sixties for the first time and not since ,and is one of the great experiences in my life. In Mutiny of the Bounty he played a seaman called John Mills; He made his name in This Sporting Life as a Rugby player, which he was good at until illness curtailed what might have been a career. He then played in the Antonioni film the Red Desert before the Heroes of Telemark. The Bible, Hawaii. Camelot, the Molly McGuire's and A man called Horse were of the same era, followed by Cromwell and the Snow Goose, Juggernaut, The Cassandra crossing and Gulliver's Travels were in the 1970's along with The Wild Geese. Tarzan the Ape man as the father of Bo Derek was followed by Mack the Knife, Patriot Games, and Unforgiven which brought him into the 90's. Cry Beloved Country, and Smillas's sense of snow brought him up to the Millennium with Gladiator, The Count of Monte Christi, My Kingdom and Professor Dumbledore. I have seen at least half of the 80 films which he made. He was also a singer songwriter and when carried off to hospital before his death from a famous London hotel he is alleged to have told everyone to watch the food.
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