Church of St. John the Baptist Keyston, Huntingdonshire - Cambridgeshire, consists of a chancel, nave, north & south transepts, north & south aisles, tower and south porch. built of coursed rubble with stone dressings. www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/52iNZ0

The church is not mentioned in the 1086 Domesday survey and the earliest existing parts are the c1250 nave and aisles ; The chancel was built c1280, and the tower and porch added c1300.

Beginning c1480, considerable reconstruction took place: the east wall of the chancel was rebuilt, the walls heightened and new east window inserted , the clerestory windows were added to the nave, the south transept was built, and new windows inserted into the south aisle walls. The roofs of the nave, transepts and aisles were renewed when these parts were y reconstructed towards the end of the 15c but those of the south aisle and porch were renewed in the 17c.

There are 5 bells in the tower inscribed: "Feare the Lorde 1592"; "William Marks churchwarden: . I: Eayre fecit. 1743 gloria Deo soli: . Francis [?] Clitherow Esquire": "Remember the ende 1592"; "Give God the praise 1592": "Thomas Rvssell of Wootton near X Bedford made me in 1733 Thomas Simonts churchwarden" (In 1552 there were 4 bells and a sanctus bell.

On the west wall of the north transept is a reset early 16c gravestone with indents of lost brasses a man and wife, with blank inscription plate below; the top of the stone has been cut to the shape of a two-centred arch, and on either side of the figures an ornamental cross, the letter 'D' and a monogram (possibly 'N A') have been deeply engraved. www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/6KJ488

Originally part of a bigger tomb, now lying on a bier in front of the chancel altar, is a late 15c / early 16c rare carved oak cadaver possibly of a priest showing good anatomical knowledge by the sculptor. www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/d908y8

The tithes in Keyston seem to have been of considerable value, in c1620, when Sir James Wingfield proposed the inclosure of over 1,700 acres of land, the rector John Scott, 'perceiving the great inconvenience which was to arise to the church,' resisted the proposal and refused to receive tithes in kind out of the inclosure, declaring that the rectory was thereby disinherited almost to the value of one-half yearly. Upon this complaint, 'to prevent the disherison of the said church and to make the said parsonage of as good, or neere as good, value as it was before,' Sir James and his tenants agreed that arbitrators 'of qualitie and conscience' should be chosen by common consent 'for establishing such a yearly rate upon the new inclosed grounds as they in their consciences and discretions should think to be equall ratably and respectively for the proportion of the said lands.' Sir Robert Payne and Sir Lewis Pemberton, the chosen arbitrators, decided that the inclosure should pay 1s. 8d. an acre yearly to the rector and his successors in lieu of tithes. Notwithstanding their agreement, Edward Bate and Thomas Hilles, 'two substantiall tenants' and owners respectively of 120 and 850 acres of the inclosure, neglected to pay their share. The rector brought an action against them in chancery; whereupon Edward Bate declared that the rate was exorbitant, and begged 'not to be compelled to pay as sett down by the referees'; while Thomas Hilles pleaded that, having learned that 'Dame Mary,' probably the widow of Sir Edward Wingfield, 'was not willing to encumber the inheritance with this perpetual rent charge,' he did not absolutely agree to it, but 'did pay at times to stay suits until there might be some friendly agreement.'

Richard Lee Woodson (b. March 30, 1945 in Oelwein, Iowa) is a former professional baseball pitcher. A right-hander, he played all or part of five seasons in Major League Baseball for the Minnesota Twins and the New York Yankees.

 

Woodson pitched in the League Championship Series in each of his first two Major League seasons, 1969 and 1970. He went 7-5 in 1969 as both a starting and a relief pitcher. After spending 1971 in the minor leagues, he returned as a full-time starter in 1972, going 14-14. The next season, he was 10-8 despite missing all of September due to injury.

 

On May 4, 1974, Woodson was traded by the Minnesota Twins to the New York Yankees for Mike Pazik, along with some cash. Woodson played his final major league game on July 8, 1974 with the Yankees.

 

On February 11, 1974, Dick Woodson became the first player to invoke the new free agency clause, as he sought $30,000, and the Twins offered $23,000. The arbitrator sided with Woodson.

 

He pitched in the minor leagues in 1975 in the Texas Rangers and Atlanta Braves organizations before retiring.

 

MLB debut - April 8, 1969, for the Minnesota Twins

Last MLB appearance - July 8, 1974, for the New York Yankees

 

MLB statistics:

Win–loss record 34–32

ERA - 3.47

Strikeouts - 315

 

Teams:

Minnesota Twins (1969–70; 1972–74)

New York Yankees (1974)

 

Link to all of his issued baseball cards - www.tradingcarddb.com/Person.cfm/pid/6397/col/1/yea/0/Dic...

Acrocorinth (Greek: Ακροκόρινθος), "Upper Corinth", the acropolis of ancient Corinth, is a monolithic rock overseeing the ancient city of Corinth, Greece. "It is the most impressive of the acropoleis of mainland Greece," in the estimation of George Forrest. Acrocorinth was continuously occupied from archaic times to the early nineteenth century. The city's archaic acropolis, already an easily defensible position due to its geomorphology, was further heavily fortified during the Byzantine Empire as it became the seat of the strategos of the Thema of Hellas. It was defended against the Crusaders for three years by Leo Sgouros.

 

Afterwards it became a fortress of the Frankish Principality of Achaea, the Venetians and the Ottoman Turks. With its secure water supply, Acrocorinth's fortress was used as the last line of defense in southern Greece because it commanded the Isthmus of Corinth, repelling foes from entry into the Peloponnese peninsula. Three circuit walls formed the man-made defense of the hill. The highest peak on the site was home to a temple to Aphrodite which was converted to a church, and then became a mosque. The American School began excavations on it in 1929. Currently, Acrocorinth is one of the most important medieval castle sites of Greece.

 

In a Corinthian myth related in the second century CE to Pausanias, Briareus, one of the Hecatonchires, was the arbitrator in a dispute between Poseidon and Helios, between the sea and the sun: his verdict was that the Isthmus of Corinth belonged to Poseidon and the acropolis of Corinth (Acrocorinth) to Helios.

 

The Upper Pirene spring is located within the encircling walls. "The spring, which is behind the temple, they say was the gift of Asopus to Sisyphus. The latter knew, so runs the legend, that Zeus had ravished Aegina, the daughter of Asopus, but refused to give information to the seeker before he had a spring given him on the Acrocorinthus.

Brass figure of Sir Humphrey Stanley, of Clifton and Pipe Staffordshire. High Sheriff of Staffordshire, 1481, 1485, 1493; He stands wearing plate armour, his hands in prayer. between 5 shields of amrs (2 missing) Stanley (argent, on a bend azure, three stags heads cabossed or) quartering Lathom, Stanley and Lathom quartering Stafford, Pypes and Camville, and the arms of Stafford.

 

"Here lies Humphrey Stanley, Knight, Esquire of the Body to the most excellent Prince Henry VII King of England, who died the 12th March A.D. 1505, on whose soul God have mercy. Amen"

 

He was the 2nd son of Sir John Stanley KG 1474 www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/0R80q6 of Elford by 2nd wife Elizabeth 1471 www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/73DG9Q daughter of Richard Vernon of Tong & Benedicta flic.kr/p/4o9ULD daughter of John Ludlow and Isabel Lingen 1446 www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/2219918943/

 

Fighting on the Lancastrian side, he took part in the battle of Bosworth, afterwards receiving a knighthood from the new king Henry Vll becoming Squire of the Body to the monarch. . Like his father before him, he was Sheriff of Staffordshire

 

He m Ellen 1524 only child of James Leigh of Aston

Children

1. William m Margaret Comberford having 1 daughter Iziod 1524 m Edward 1544 alderman of Norwich, son of John Reade /Rede and Johanne Ludlow

2. John m Margaret Gerard having 2 daughters - Isold Reade & Isabella wife of Walter son of John Moyle & Anne Darcy, parents of Mary wife of Sir Erasmus 1559 5th son of Thomas Heveningham 1499, wife Anne Yarde of Ketteringham www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/xbGB1M

1. Maud m Thomas Wolfreston / Wolrerston / Wolperston 1455-1524

 

In 1491 Humphrey was involved in a law suit with his eldest half brother John Stanley 1508 regarding the division of their late father's estates. Sir William Stanley of Holt, Denbighshire (the younger brother of Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby) was appointed in his capacity of Lord Chamberlain to act as arbitrator in the dispute. It was agreed that Sir Humphrey who had been given the manor of Stratfold with land in Tamworth by his father in 1474 should be awarded the additional estates of Pipe and Clifton with grants of land in Campden for life which reverted on his death back to John's daughter Margery & husband William Staunton,

 

- chapel of St Nicholas in Westminster Abbey

no copyright infringement is intended

This is where our city council...our "Legislators"....work

===Trivia===

-This eclectic work had the initial purpose of hosting the State Legislative Congress (now called Legislative Assembly).

-The construction was entrusted, in 1890, to the piedmontese engineer Ernesto Guaita. The beginning of the work was in 1891, being completed in 1895, year that was baptized Palace of the Congress.

-In 1957, the State Congress was transferred to a new building in the Civic Center and the Palace was renamed Rio Branco and ceded to the Municipal Congress, which until 1963 operated in a rented building in Tiradentes Square.

-Since 1963, the Rio Branco Palace has been the seat of the City Hall and is located at Rua Barão do Rio Branco, and both the palace and the street were named after the patron of Brazilian diplomacy, José Maria da Silva Paranhos Júnior, The Baron of Rio Branco, who lived between 1845 and 1912.

-Still in Brazil Empire era, Jose Maria began in the political race like promoter and deputy. In 1871 he was editor in the periodical A Nação (The Nation), having collaborated, from 1891, in Jornal do Brasil (Brazil's Journal). He was consul-general in Liverpool from 1876, was accredited minister in Germany in 1900, took over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (from December 3, 1902 until his death), holding office over four presidents of the republic ( Rodrigues Alves, Afonso Pena, Nilo Peçanha and Hermes da Fonseca).

-He received the title of Baron of Rio Branco on the eve of the end of the imperial period, but continued to use the title "Rio Branco" in his signature even after the proclamation of the republic in 1889. This was due to being a convicted monarchist and to honor His late father, the senator and diplomat José Maria da Silva Paranhos, the Viscount of Rio Branco.

-Rio Branco helped to concretize the Brazilian borders, being the "lawyer" of Brazil through arbitration processes or bilateral negotiations, of which three border issues stand out:

=The Question of Palmas - 1890 to 1895, Argentina claimed the western region of the present states of Paraná and Santa Catarina, intending to establish the borders by the rivers Chapecó and Chopim, after a few years without solution to the problem, the question was submitted to arbitration Of US President Grover Cleveland, whose verdict was entirely favorable to Brazil, defining borders by the Peperiguaçu and Santo Antônio rivers, giving the current format of international borders in the two states;

=The Question of the Franco-Brazilian Contestant -1894 to1900, France, after the French Revolution, did not consider the Rio Oiapoque as a frontier boundary between French Guiana and Brazil, a treaty on April 10, 1897 between the two countries, Elected the arbitrator of the Question, the chairman of the Swiss Federal Council, Walter Hauser, and only on the first day of December in the year nineteen hundred and ninety, the arbitration award was given, the boundary would still be Rio Oiapoque (the contested territory forms the present State of Amapá ); and

=The Question of Acre - from 1899 to 1903, at the end of the nineteenth century there was a boom in the value of Rubber, and the forgotten Province of Acre was of great value, eighteen thousand Peruvian, Bolivian, and - for the most part - Brazilian adventurers and colonists traveled to the region to explore the rubber trees. According to the Treaty of Ayacucho, the whole province was Bolivian territory, but because of the huge amount of Brazilian settlers, Bolivia was losing its sovereignty over the region and, as a way of avoiding it, set up a customs post, triggering a series of Conflicts between the Bolivian government and the rubber tappers - who were receiving support from the Amazonas State's Government. The issue worsened further in 1901 with an alliance between the US and Bolivian governments and the lease of the province to a US consortium: the Bolivian Syndicate, which could occupy the region with soldiers and exploit it for thirty years. This treaty of Bolivia with the United States made Peru and the Federal Government of Brazil stop recognizing the sovereignty of Bolivia over the province, leading Brazil to concentrate military forces in the city of Corumbá. In the imminence of an international armed conflict, Rio Branco, now Brazilian Chancellor, began negotiations with Bolivia, having previously indemnified the US Company at 110 thousand pounds sterling for abandoning its claims, and in the year one thousand nine hundred and three, the Treaty Of Petrópolis, closed the issue by rectifying small stretches of the border line, paying two million pounds sterling and building the Madeira-Mamoré Railroad, Brazil becomes the owner of the whole region (In nineteen hundred and nine, with the Treaty of Rio de Janeiro between Peru and Brazil, the current international border lines of Acre are made).

-The consolidation of the Counsil as an organ of representation of the public power took place in 1721, on the occasion of the visit of the ombudsman Raphael Pires Pardinho. The visitor registered his appointments (administrative councils) that began to guide the official acts of the councilman (good men). At that time, the Chamber had two judges and three councilors, elected indirectly by citizens with possessions above a certain value, and gradually, with the increase of population, new demands would arise, making the work of the councilors essential. Questions of supply and customs began to form part of the debates that took place between long intervals, given the small population of the time.

-In the year of independence of Brazil, Dom Pedro I grants a constitution that adopts the division of political-administrative powers into: executive, legislative, judiciary and moderator (the latter, exclusive use of the emperor, would be abolished with the Proclamation of the Republic ), Making the Judiciary activities dissociated from the Municipal Councils, leaving only those of Legislative and Executive (because there were no prefectures at the time), and only in 1829 and 1830 did the House vote the first municipal positions (set of rules regarding Urban development and the distribution and characteristics of public roads, among other aspects of urban life).

-Only in 1889, with the Proclamation of the Republic and the institution of the figure of the mayor, that the City Councils are exclusively engaged in the elaboration of the municipal legislations.

The viaduct connects Knaresborough with Harrogate on the York to Harrogate to Leeds line, in North Yorkshire, England. The line was built in 1848 with the Leeds and Thirsk Railway creating a branch from their line at Starbeck railway station to go through Knaresborough and connect with the line that was being built westwards from York as part of the East and West Yorkshire Junction Railway. Just as the viaduct had been almost completed, it collapsed into the River Nidd on 11 March 1848. The resultant noise of the falling masonry was said to have lasted for five minutes. Whilst there was no official inquiry, it is believed that the collapse of the viaduct was down to a combination of bad workmanship, poor materials, and excess water in the swollen river below as a result of heavy rain over a period of two months. Despite the collapse, the centre span was still in-situ and had to be demolished before work could start again on a replacement viaduct.

The fall of the viaduct necessitated a temporary Knaresborough railway station situated to the east of the present-day station whilst a new viaduct was completed and the permanent station was built. The collapse of the viaduct allowed a considerable amount of stone and lime to enter the river. Due to the presence of lime in the water, thousands of fish were found dead over a large stretch of the river downstream. The contractors, Wilson and Benson, took the two railway companies to court as Thomas Grainger had been engaged to act as an arbitrator in the resultant argument about who should pay for the failed viaduct. Grainger decided that the railway companies should pay over £5,600, but that the two contractors must pay £2,389 and relinquish any further claims on property, materials or the right to build the new viaduct. The main complaint that Benson and Wilson had against Grainger was that he had been employed by both companies to engineer the railway line and stations, so they alleged a bias on his part.

A new viaduct was started in 1848 and used the same source of stone as the previous viaduct; a quarry at Abbey Crags, part of the Nidd Gorge through Knaresborough some 1 mile (1.5 km) to the south of the viaduct. The stone was quarried from the same Upper Plompton Grit that was used in the castle and other buildings in the town.

A replacement viaduct was opened on 1 October 1851 costing £9,803 and was constructed with castellated walls and piers to blend in with the ruined walls of Knaresborough Castle. It consists of four arches and three piers, the middle of which stands in the water. Railway mapping lists the viaduct as being 4 chains (260 ft / 80m), but other sources list its length to be 330 feet (100 m). The viaduct is 78 feet (24 m) high, and each span is 56.9 feet (17.3 m) across in width. The height of the parapets is only 35 inches (88 cm) which has led to Network Rail installing temporary fencing to protect workers when maintenance is underway on the structure.

The viaduct can be seen from the castle (looking upstream along the River Nidd) and is a regular viewpoint of the structure that has attracted accolades, though opinion is divided on the subject. In his 1967 survey of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Nikolaus Pevsner stated that the viaduct was "one of the most notable railway crimes in England. To castellate the bridge does not make it a picturesque object". Conversely, noted Yorkshire-born writer, J B Priestley, was in admiration of how the river reflected the viaduct and said that it "added a double beauty to the scene". In a 2015 poll conducted by the Dalesman magazine, the viaduct came at number 23 out of the 50 best views in Yorkshire. The viaduct is now a grade II* listed structure.

 

Mount Pelion is a densely forested natural fortress predominating the Magnesia Prefecture in the plain of Thessaly and overlooking the city-port of Volos. The entire area is a treasure trove of legends, myths, history, culture, tradition, and a paradise for the nature loving tourist, the archaeologist, the historian, the anthropologist, as it has since time immemorial been trodden upon by gods and goddesses, demigods and centaurs, titans and giants, nymphs and hamadryads, kings and queens, princes and princesses, heroes and warriors. It has also been the battleground of "Gigantomahia" [the battle of the giants against Zeus], the summer resort of the Olympian gods, the hunting grounds of divinity, royalty and nobility, the venue of mythical weddings and of the first beauty pageant between the fair goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.

 

A few kilometers west of Volos is Sesklo, where archaeologists have discovered Europe's oldest organized community with citadel, houses, walls, graves and many artifacts dating as far back in time as 6500-6000 B.C. In its heyday, in the mid-Neolithic period c. 5300- 4300 B.C., the community boasted 100,000 sq. meters of inhabited area and a population of several thousand. One can only wonder at the infrastructure and organization and culture required for the survival and progress of such a populous community that flourished and prospered over the late Neolithic and early Bronze periods to finally be abandoned in 1600 B.C. with the ascendancy of the Mycenaean era and the ensuing predominance of Iolkos, the forerunner of Volos -- the term being a corrupted form of Iolkos.

 

From Iolkos set sail the "talking" ship Argo with a crew of fifty demigods and princes under Jason's leadership in the 13th century B.C. Their mission was to reach Colchis in Aea at the eastern seaboard of the Black Sea and reclaim and bring back the Golden Fleece, a symbol of the opening of new trade routes. Along with the Golden Fleece Jason brought a wife, the sorceress Medea, king Aeetes' daughter, granddaughter of the Sun, niece of Circe, princess of Aea, and later queen of Iolkos, Korinth and Aea, and also slayer of her brother Apsyrtos and her two sons from Jason, indeed a tragic figure of a woman whose trials and tribulations were so artfully dramatized in the much staged Euripides' "Medea".

 

On Pelion took place the wedding of Thetis the Nereid to the mortal Peleus. Their son, the immortal Achilles, slayer of Hector of Troy, was instrumental in the successful launching of the Achaean expedition against and sacking of Troy or Ilium. The reason, we are told by Homer, was the abduction of the fairest of all women Helen of Sparta by Hector's sibling the dashing prince Paris, who had been the arbitrator in the quarrel of the three goddesses in the beauty competition held at Thetis' wedding reception. Paris had given the prize -- a golden apple thrown out of spite by Eris [Discordia], the only goddess that had not been invited to the wedding -- to Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love, who, in gratitude, arranged the romance with Helen. A beautiful myth to justify the Greeks' punitive expedition against the Trojans, who levied heavy tolls on all merchant ships passing through the Straits of Hellispont.

 

Mount Pelion was roamed by the centaurs, the most famous of whom was Cheiron, a great teacher renowned for his knowledge and wisdom. Practically all demigods, princes and heroes, including Hercules, Achilles, Jason and Asklepios [Aesculapius] had been instructed in Cheiron's cave not only in the art of archery, combat and leadership but also in the path of virtue, knowledge and compassion. He also passed on to his students his knowledge on the hundreds of herbs and plants of medicinal and pharmaceutical value that grew and still grow on Pelion today. As a matter of fact, Asklepios surpassed his master in the art of healing and curing diseases by far. He raised his own snake and became the god of medicine with the snake, the giver of both life and death, as his symbol as it is seen today in the caduceus, the symbol of medicime.

 

It was on the Aegean rocky coast of Pelion that in 480 B.C. Xerxes, the king of mighty Persia , lost 40 ships on his way to Salamis, where, in the greatest sea battle of the classical times, Xerxes' fleet along with his plans of conquering Greece and the Mediterranean were destroyed. Thus was opened the way for the conquest of the Persian Empire by the Greeks united under Alexander the Great.

 

Around the year 290 B.C. Dimitrios the Besieger, king of Macedonia, founded Dimitriada, which included Iolkos and Pagases, which by now had lost their past importance and glory. Dimitriada became the center of the Commonwealth of Magnetes. Dimitriada was sacked several times but it somehow managed to survive the raids of Slavs, Goths, Bulgarians, Saracens, Franks, Turks until 1600 A.D.

 

The sacking of Constantinople [now Istanbul] in 1453 A.D. marks the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans, their gradual conquest of the Balkans and Greece, and the onset of the 400-year Turkish occupation. Thanks to its ideal geographical position and configuration of the ground, its inaccessibility and defensibility, its luxuriant vegetation and fertile soil, the abundance of water, timber and fruit of the earth, Pelion became one of the destinations for many of the thousands of intellectuals, educators, administrators, priests, monks, merchants, artists, craftsmen, free spirits, freedom fighters fleeing barbarism. They came and established settlements, villages, schools, libraries, churches, monasteries, businesses, navigation, new trade routes with renaissant Europe. And Pelion prospered and grew in autonomy and relative independence and in the 1700s and 1800s it came to be the wealthiest and most densely populated mountainous area of Greece.

 

And it became one of the bastions and champions of Hellenism by being an Ark that bred generations of progressive individuals who brought about the Greek Enlightenment by keeping the Hellenic language, history, culture, customs and Christian faith alive. Inspired poets sang Pelion's beauty and riches, and men of letters wrote paeans about it. Generations of stone masons created a unique architectural style, while painters, skilled craftsmen and hagiographers [painters of icons] decorated monasteries, churches and mansions with frescos, paintings, murals and wood and stone sculpture of at once charming innocence and spontaneity and unparallelled diversity and spirituality with themes and symbols drawn from the inexhaustible reservoir of the Greek lore, religion and real life. Great teachers, both lay and men of the cloth, taught at schools, or, in dark and dangerous times, in inaccessible caves where they gathered the children at the risk of loss of limb and life, thus creating the Secret School, which has a special place in the Greek psyche. What's more, some of them together with other ardent patriots were among those who first organized the Greeks' uprising against the Turkish oppression in 1821.

 

Today, most places on Pelion and its vicinity still have the same name they have had for millennia, thus preserving the continuity of their and the Greek culture's identity. Furthermore, Pelion has forged its own character and personality, which are unique in Greece. A rare blend of primordial energy in the elements and the soothing fruitfulness of a clement nature that manage the impossible in modern life: they slow down time. An irresistible effect, indeed. That is why Pelion has for decades been the secret resort for the few, both Greeks and foreigners, who have been fortunate enough to discover it and get so enthralled by and enamored of it that they keep coming back. For there are two types of Pelion visitors: the first timer tourist and the returning pilgrim. And then, there is the resident pilgrim.

www.pelion.org/history/index.asp

Robert Hooke FRS (/hʊk/; 28 July [O.S. 18 July] 1635 – 3 March 1703) was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath.

 

His adult life comprised three distinct periods: as a scientific inquirer lacking money; achieving great wealth and standing through his reputation for hard work and scrupulous honesty following the great fire of 1666, but eventually becoming ill and party to jealous intellectual disputes. These issues may have contributed to his relative historical obscurity.

 

He was at one time simultaneously the curator of experiments of the Royal Society and a member of its council, Gresham Professor of Geometry and a Surveyor to the City of London after the Great Fire of London, in which capacity he appears to have performed more than half of all the surveys after the fire. He was also an important architect of his time – though few of his buildings now survive and some of those are generally misattributed – and was instrumental in devising a set of planning controls for London whose influence remains today. Allan Chapman has characterised him as "England's Leonardo".[1]

 

Robert Gunther's Early Science in Oxford, a history of science in Oxford during the Protectorate, Restoration and Age of Enlightenment, devotes five of its fourteen volumes to Hooke.

 

Hooke studied at Wadham College during the Protectorate where he became one of a tightly knit group of ardent Royalists led by John Wilkins. Here he was employed as an assistant to Thomas Willis and to Robert Boyle, for whom he built the vacuum pumps used in Boyle's gas law experiments. He built some of the earliest Gregorian telescopes and observed the rotations of Mars and Jupiter. In 1665 he inspired the use of microscopes for scientific exploration with his book, Micrographia. Based on his microscopic observations of fossils, Hooke was an early proponent of biological evolution.[2][3] He investigated the phenomenon of refraction, deducing the wave theory of light, and was the first to suggest that matter expands when heated and that air is made of small particles separated by relatively large distances. He performed pioneering work in the field of surveying and map-making and was involved in the work that led to the first modern plan-form map, though his plan for London on a grid system was rejected in favour of rebuilding along the existing routes. He also came near to an experimental proof that gravity follows an inverse square law, and hypothesised that such a relation governs the motions of the planets, an idea which was subsequently developed by Isaac Newton.[4] Much of Hooke's scientific work was conducted in his capacity as curator of experiments of the Royal Society, a post he held from 1662, or as part of the household of Robert Boyle.

 

Much of what is known of Hooke's early life comes from an autobiography that he commenced in 1696 but never completed. Richard Waller mentions it in his introduction to The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, M.D. S.R.S., printed in 1705. The work of Waller, along with John Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors and John Aubrey's Brief Lives, form the major near-contemporaneous biographical accounts of Hooke.

 

Robert Hooke was born in 1635 in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight to John Hooke and Cecily Gyles. Robert was the last of four children, two boys and two girls, and there was an age difference of seven years between him and the next youngest.[5] Their father John was a Church of England priest, the curate of Freshwater's Church of All Saints,[6] and his two brothers (Robert's uncles) were also ministers. Robert Hooke was expected to succeed in his education and join the Church. John Hooke also was in charge of a local school, and so was able to teach Robert, at least partly at home perhaps due to the boy's frail health. He was a Royalist and almost certainly a member of a group who went to pay their respects to Charles I when he escaped to the Isle of Wight. Robert, too, grew up to be a staunch monarchist.

 

As a youth, Robert Hooke was fascinated by observation, mechanical works, and drawing, interests that he would pursue in various ways throughout his life. He dismantled a brass clock and built a wooden replica that, by all accounts, worked "well enough", and he learned to draw, making his own materials from coal, chalk and ruddle (iron ore).

 

On his father's death in 1648, Robert was left a sum of forty pounds[5][7] that enabled him to buy an apprenticeship; with his poor health throughout his life but evident mechanical facility his father had it in mind that he might become a watchmaker or limner (a decorator of illuminated manuscripts), though Hooke was also interested in painting. Hooke was an apt student, so although he went to London to take up an apprenticeship, and studied briefly with Samuel Cowper and Peter Lely, he was soon able to enter Westminster School in London, under Dr. Richard Busby. Hooke quickly mastered Latin and Greek,[7] made some study of Hebrew, and mastered Euclid's Elements.[7] Here, too, he embarked on his lifelong study of mechanics.

 

It appears that Hooke was one of a group of students whom Busby educated in parallel to the main work of the school. Contemporary accounts say he was "not much seen" in the school, and this appears to be true of others in a similar position. Busby, an ardent and outspoken Royalist (he had the school observe a fast-day on the anniversary of the King's beheading), was by all accounts trying to preserve the nascent spirit of scientific inquiry that had begun to flourish in Carolean England but which was at odds with the literal Biblical teachings of the Protectorate. To Busby and his select students the Anglican Church was a framework to support the spirit of inquiry into God's work, those who were able were destined by God to explore and study His creation, and the priesthood functioned as teachers to explain it to those who were less able. This was exemplified in the person of George Hooper, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, whom Busby described as "the best scholar, the finest gentleman and will make the completest bishop that ever was educated at Westminster School".

 

In 1653, Hooke (who had also undertaken a course of twenty lessons on the organ) secured a chorister's place at Christ Church, Oxford.[8] He was employed as a "chemical assistant" to Dr Thomas Willis, for whom Hooke developed a great admiration. There he met the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, and gained employment as his assistant from about 1655 to 1662, constructing, operating, and demonstrating Boyle's "machina Boyleana" or air pump.[9] He did not take his Master of Arts until 1662 or 1663. In 1659 Hooke described some elements of a method of heavier-than-air flight to Wilkins, but concluded that human muscles were insufficient to the task.

 

Hooke himself characterised his Oxford days as the foundation of his lifelong passion for science, and the friends he made there were of paramount importance to him throughout his career, particularly Christopher Wren. Wadham was then under the guidance of John Wilkins, who had a profound impact on Hooke and those around him. Wilkins was also a Royalist, and acutely conscious of the turmoil and uncertainty of the times. There was a sense of urgency in preserving the scientific work which they perceived as being threatened by the Protectorate. Wilkins' "philosophical meetings" in his study were clearly important, though few records survive except for the experiments Boyle conducted in 1658 and published in 1660. This group went on to form the nucleus of the Royal Society. Hooke developed an air pump for Boyle's experiments based on the pump of Ralph Greatorex, which was considered, in Hooke's words, "too gross to perform any great matter."[10]

 

It is known that Hooke had a particularly keen eye, and was an adept mathematician, neither of which applied to Boyle. Gunther suggests that Hooke probably made the observations and may well have developed the mathematics of Boyle's law. Regardless, it is clear that Hooke was a valued assistant to Boyle and the two retained a mutual high regard.

 

A chance surviving copy of Willis' pioneering De anima brutorum, a gift from the author, was chosen by Hooke from Wilkins' library on his death as a memento at John Tillotson's invitation. This book is now in the Wellcome Library. The book and its inscription in Hooke's hand are a testament to the lasting influence of Wilkins and his circle on the young Hooke.

 

The Royal Society was founded in 1660, and in April 1661 the society debated a short tract on the rising of water in slender glass pipes, in which Hooke reported that the height water rose was related to the bore of the pipe (due to what is now termed capillary action). His explanation of this phenomenon was subsequently published in Micrography Observ. issue 6, in which he also explored the nature of "the fluidity of gravity". On 5 November 1661, Sir Robert Moray proposed that a Curator be appointed to furnish the society with Experiments, and this was unanimously passed with Hooke being named. His appointment was made on 12 November, with thanks recorded to Dr. Boyle for releasing him to the Society's employment.

 

In 1664, Sir John Cutler settled an annual gratuity of fifty pounds on the Society for the founding of a Mechanick Lecture, and the Fellows appointed Hooke to this task. On 27 June 1664 he was confirmed to the office, and on 11 January 1665 was named Curator by Office for life with an additional salary of £30 to Cutler's annuity.[11]

 

Hooke's role at the Royal Society was to demonstrate experiments from his own methods or at the suggestion of members. Among his earliest demonstrations were discussions of the nature of air, the implosion of glass bubbles which had been sealed with comprehensive hot air, and demonstrating that the Pabulum vitae and flammae were one and the same. He also demonstrated that a dog could be kept alive with its thorax opened, provided air was pumped in and out of its lungs, and noting the difference between venous and arterial blood. There were also experiments on the subject of gravity, the falling of objects, the weighing of bodies and measuring of barometric pressure at different heights, and pendulums up to 200 ft long (61 m).

 

Instruments were devised to measure a second of arc in the movement of the sun or other stars, to measure the strength of gunpowder, and in particular an engine to cut teeth for watches, much finer than could be managed by hand, an invention which was, by Hooke's death, in constant use.[12]

 

In 1663 and 1664, Hooke produced his microscopy observations, subsequently collated in Micrographia in 1665.

 

On 20 March 1664, Hooke succeeded Arthur Dacres as Gresham Professor of Geometry. Hooke received the degree of "Doctor of Physic" in December 1691.

 

There is a widely reported story that Dr. Hooke corresponded with Thomas Newcomen in connection with Newcomen's invention of the steam engine. This story was discussed by Rhys Jenkins, a past President of the Newcomen Society, in 1936.[14] Jenkins traced the origin of the story to an article "Steam Engines" by Dr. John Robison (1739–1805) in the third edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica”, which says There are to be found among Hooke's papers, in the possession of the Royal Society, some notes of observations, for the use of Newcomen, his countryman, on Papin's boasted method of transmitting to a great distance the action of an mill by means of pipes and that Hooke had dissuaded Newcomen from erecting a machine on this principle. Jenkins points out a number of errors in Robison's article, and questions whether the correspondent might in fact have been Newton, who Hooke is known to have corresponded with, the name being misread as Newcomen. A search by Mr. H W Dickinson of Hooke's papers held by the Royal Society, which had been bound together in the middle of the 18th century, i.e. before Robison's time, and carefully preserved since, revealed no trace of any correspondence between Hooke and Newcomen. Jenkins concluded ... this story must be omitted from the history of the steam engine, at any rate until documentary evidence is forthcoming.

 

In the intervening years since 1936 no such evidence has been found, but the story persists. For instance, in a book published in 2011 it is said that in a letter dated 1703 Hooke did suggest that Newcomen use condensing steam to drive the piston.

 

Hooke was irascible, at least in later life, proud, and prone to take umbrage with intellectual competitors, though he was by all accounts also a staunch friend and ally and was loyal always to the circle of ardent Royalists with whom he had his early training at Wadham College, particularly Christopher Wren. His reputation suffered after his death and this is popularly attributed to a dispute with Isaac Newton over credit for his work on gravitation, the planets and to a lesser degree light. His dispute with Oldenburg about whether Oldenburg had leaked or passed on details of Hooke's watch escapement to others is another well-known example.

 

Newton, as President of the Royal Society, did much to obscure Hooke, including, it is said, destroying (or failing to preserve) the only known portrait of the man. It did not help that the first life of Wren, Parentalis, was written by Wren's son, and tended to exaggerate Wren's work over all others. Hooke's reputation was revived during the twentieth century through studies of Robert Gunther and Margaret 'Espinasse. After a long period of relative obscurity he has now been recognised as one of the most important scientists of his age.[16]

 

Hooke was apt to use ciphers and guard his ideas. As curator of Experiments to the Royal Society he was responsible for demonstrating many ideas sent in to the Society, and there is evidence that he would subsequently assume some credit for these ideas. Hooke also was immensely busy and thus unable – or in some cases unwilling, pending a way of profiting from the enterprise via letters patent – to develop all of his own ideas. This was a time of immense scientific progress, and numerous ideas were developed in several places simultaneously.

 

None of this should distract from Hooke's inventiveness, his remarkable experimental facility, and his capacity for hard work. His ideas about gravitation, and his claim of priority for the inverse square law, are outlined below. He was granted a large number of patents for inventions and refinements in the fields of elasticity, optics, and barometry. The Royal Society's Hooke papers (recently discovered after disappearing when Newton took over) will open up a modern reassessment.

 

Much has been written about the unpleasant side of Hooke's personality, starting with comments by his first biographer, Richard Waller, that Hooke was "in person, but despicable" and "melancholy, mistrustful, and jealous."[12] Waller's comments influenced other writers for well over two centuries, so that a picture of Hooke as a disgruntled, selfish, anti-social curmudgeon dominates many older books and articles. For example, Arthur Berry said that Hooke "claimed credit for most of the scientific discoveries of the time."[17] Sullivan wrote that Hooke was "positively unscrupulous" and possessing an "uneasy apprehensive vanity" in dealings with Newton.[18] Manuel used the phrase "cantankerous, envious, vengeful" in his description.[19] More described Hooke having both a "cynical temperament" and a "caustic tongue."[20] Andrade was more sympathetic, but still used the adjectives "difficult", "suspicious", and "irritable" in describing Hooke.[21]

 

The publication of Hooke's diary in 1935[22] revealed other sides of the man that 'Espinasse, in particular, has detailed carefully. She writes that "the picture which is usually painted of Hooke as a morose and envious recluse is completely false."[23] Hooke interacted with noted craftsmen such as Thomas Tompion, the clockmaker, and Christopher Cocks (Cox), an instrument maker. Hooke often met Christopher Wren, with whom he shared many interests, and had a lasting friendship with John Aubrey. Hooke's diaries also make frequent reference to meetings at coffeehouses and taverns, and to dinners with Robert Boyle. He took tea on many occasions with his lab assistant, Harry Hunt. Within his family, Hooke took both a niece and a cousin into his home, teaching them mathematics.

 

Robert Hooke spent his life largely on the Isle of Wight, at Oxford, and in London. He never married, but his diary shows that he was not without affections, and more, for others. On 3 March 1703, Hooke died in London, having amassed a sizable sum of money, which was found in his room at Gresham College. He was buried at St Helen's Bishopsgate, but the precise location of his grave is unknown.

 

In 1660, Hooke discovered the law of elasticity which bears his name and which describes the linear variation of tension with extension in an elastic spring. He first described this discovery in the anagram "ceiiinosssttuv", whose solution he published in 1678 as "Ut tensio, sic vis" meaning "As the extension, so the force." Hooke's work on elasticity culminated, for practical purposes, in his development of the balance spring or hairspring, which for the first time enabled a portable timepiece – a watch – to keep time with reasonable accuracy. A bitter dispute between Hooke and Christiaan Huygens on the priority of this invention was to continue for centuries after the death of both; but a note dated 23 June 1670 in the Hooke Folio (see External links below), describing a demonstration of a balance-controlled watch before the Royal Society, has been held to favour Hooke's claim.

 

It is interesting from a twentieth-century vantage point that Hooke first announced his law of elasticity as an anagram. This was a method sometimes used by scientists, such as Hooke, Huygens, Galileo, and others, to establish priority for a discovery without revealing details.

 

Hooke became Curator of Experiments in 1662 to the newly founded Royal Society, and took responsibility for experiments performed at its weekly meetings. This was a position he held for over 40 years. While this position kept him in the thick of science in Britain and beyond, it also led to some heated arguments with other scientists, such as Huygens (see above) and particularly with Isaac Newton and the Royal Society's Henry Oldenburg. In 1664 Hooke also was appointed Professor of Geometry at Gresham College in London and Cutlerian Lecturer in Mechanics.[25]

 

On 8 July 1680, Hooke observed the nodal patterns associated with the modes of vibration of glass plates. He ran a bow along the edge of a glass plate covered with flour, and saw the nodal patterns emerge.[26][27] In acoustics, in 1681 he showed the Royal Society that musical tones could be generated from spinning brass cogs cut with teeth in particular proportions.

 

While many of his contemporaries believed in the aether as a medium for transmitting attraction or repulsion between separated celestial bodies, Hooke argued for an attracting principle of gravitation in Micrographia of 1665. Hooke's 1666 Royal Society lecture "On gravity"[29] added two further principles – that all bodies move in straight lines till deflected by some force and that the attractive force is stronger for closer bodies. Dugald Stewart, in his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind,[30] quoted Hooke's own words on his system of the world.

 

"I will explain," says Hooke, in a communication to the Royal Society in 1666, "a system of the world very different from any yet received. It is founded on the following positions. 1. That all the heavenly bodies have not only a gravitation of their parts to their own proper centre, but that they also mutually attract each other within their spheres of action. 2. That all bodies having a simple motion, will continue to move in a straight line, unless continually deflected from it by some extraneous force, causing them to describe a circle, an ellipse, or some other curve. 3. That this attraction is so much the greater as the bodies are nearer. As to the proportion in which those forces diminish by an increase of distance, I own I have not discovered it...."

 

Hooke's 1670 Gresham lecture explained that gravitation applied to "all celestial bodies" and added the principles that the gravitating power decreases with distance and that in the absence of any such power bodies move in straight lines.

 

Hooke published his ideas about the "System of the World" again in somewhat developed form in 1674, as an addition to "An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations".[31] Hooke clearly postulated mutual attractions between the Sun and planets, in a way that increased with nearness to the attracting body.

 

Hooke's statements up to 1674 made no mention, however, that an inverse square law applies or might apply to these attractions. Hooke's gravitation was also not yet universal, though it approached universality more closely than previous hypotheses.[32] Hooke also did not provide accompanying evidence or mathematical demonstration. On these two aspects, Hooke stated in 1674: "Now what these several degrees [of gravitational attraction] are I have not yet experimentally verified" (indicating that he did not yet know what law the gravitation might follow); and as to his whole proposal: "This I only hint at present", "having my self many other things in hand which I would first compleat, and therefore cannot so well attend it" (i.e. "prosecuting this Inquiry").[31]

 

In November 1679, Hooke initiated a remarkable exchange of letters with Newton[33] (of which the full text is now published).[34] Hooke's ostensible purpose was to tell Newton that Hooke had been appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence.[35] Hooke therefore wanted to hear from members about their researches, or their views about the researches of others; and as if to whet Newton's interest, he asked what Newton thought about various matters, giving a whole list, mentioning "compounding the celestial motions of the planetts of a direct motion by the tangent and an attractive motion towards the central body", and "my hypothesis of the lawes or causes of springinesse", and then a new hypothesis from Paris about planetary motions (which Hooke described at length), and then efforts to carry out or improve national surveys, the difference of latitude between London and Cambridge, and other items. Newton's reply offered "a fansy of my own" about a terrestrial experiment (not a proposal about celestial motions) which might detect the Earth's motion, by the use of a body first suspended in air and then dropped to let it fall. The main point was to indicate how Newton thought the falling body could experimentally reveal the Earth's motion by its direction of deviation from the vertical, but he went on hypothetically to consider how its motion could continue if the solid Earth had not been in the way (on a spiral path to the centre). Hooke disagreed with Newton's idea of how the body would continue to move.[36] A short further correspondence developed, and towards the end of it Hooke, writing on 6 January 1679|80 to Newton, communicated his "supposition ... that the Attraction always is in a duplicate proportion to the Distance from the Center Reciprocall, and Consequently that the Velocity will be in a subduplicate proportion to the Attraction and Consequently as Kepler Supposes Reciprocall to the Distance."[37] (Hooke's inference about the velocity was actually incorrect)[38]

 

In 1686, when the first book of Newton's 'Principia' was presented to the Royal Society, Hooke claimed that Newton had had from him the "notion" of "the rule of the decrease of Gravity, being reciprocally as the squares of the distances from the Center". At the same time (according to Edmond Halley's contemporary report) Hooke agreed that "the Demonstration of the Curves generated therby" was wholly Newton's.[34]

 

A recent assessment about the early history of the inverse square law is that "by the late 1660s," the assumption of an "inverse proportion between gravity and the square of distance was rather common and had been advanced by a number of different people for different reasons".[39] Newton himself had shown in the 1660s that for planetary motion under a circular assumption, force in the radial direction had an inverse-square relation with distance from the center.[40] Newton, faced in May 1686 with Hooke's claim on the inverse square law, denied that Hooke was to be credited as author of the idea, giving reasons including the citation of prior work by others before Hooke.[34] Newton also firmly claimed that even if it had happened that he had first heard of the inverse square proportion from Hooke, which it had not, he would still have some rights to it in view of his mathematical developments and demonstrations, which enabled observations to be relied on as evidence of its accuracy, while Hooke, without mathematical demonstrations and evidence in favour of the supposition, could only guess (according to Newton) that it was approximately valid "at great distances from the center".[34]

 

On the other hand, Newton did accept and acknowledge, in all editions of the 'Principia', that Hooke (but not exclusively Hooke) had separately appreciated the inverse square law in the solar system. Newton acknowledged Wren, Hooke and Halley in this connection in the Scholium to Proposition 4 in Book 1.[41] Newton also acknowledged to Halley that his correspondence with Hooke in 1679–80 had reawakened his dormant interest in astronomical matters, but that did not mean, according to Newton, that Hooke had told Newton anything new or original: "yet am I not beholden to him for any light into that business but only for the diversion he gave me from my other studies to think on these things & for his dogmaticalness in writing as if he had found the motion in the Ellipsis, which inclined me to try it."[34]

 

One of the contrasts between the two men was that Newton was primarily a pioneer in mathematical analysis and its applications as well as optical experimentation, while Hooke was a creative experimenter of such great range, that it is not surprising to find that he left some of his ideas, such as those about gravitation, undeveloped. This in turn makes it understandable how in 1759, decades after the deaths of both Newton and Hooke, Alexis Clairaut, mathematical astronomer eminent in his own right in the field of gravitational studies, made his assessment after reviewing what Hooke had published on gravitation. "One must not think that this idea ... of Hooke diminishes Newton's glory", Clairaut wrote; "The example of Hooke" serves "to show what a distance there is between a truth that is glimpsed and a truth that is demonstrated"

 

Hooke made tremendously important contributions to the science of timekeeping, being intimately involved in the advances of his time; the introduction of the pendulum as a better regulator for clocks, the balance spring to improve the timekeeping of watches, and the proposal that a precise timekeeper could be used to find the longitude at sea.

 

In 1655, according to his autobiographical notes, Hooke began to acquaint himself with astronomy, through the good offices of John Ward. Hooke applied himself to the improvement of the pendulum and in 1657 or 1658, he began to improve on pendulum mechanisms, studying the work of Giovanni Riccioli, and going on to study both gravitation and the mechanics of timekeeping.

 

Henry Sully, writing in Paris in 1717, described the anchor escapement as an admirable invention of which Dr. Hooke, formerly professor of geometry in Gresham College at London, was the inventor.[44] William Derham also attributes it to Hooke.

 

Hooke recorded that he conceived of a way to determine longitude (then a critical problem for navigation), and with the help of Boyle and others he attempted to patent it. In the process, Hooke demonstrated a pocket-watch of his own devising, fitted with a coil spring attached to the arbour of the balance. Hooke's ultimate failure to secure sufficiently lucrative terms for the exploitation of this idea resulted in its being shelved, and evidently caused him to become more jealous of his inventions. There is substantial evidence to state with reasonable confidence, as Ward, Aubrey, Waller and others all do, that Hooke developed the balance spring independently of and some fifteen years before Christiaan Huygens, who published his own work in Journal de Scavans in February 1675.

 

In 1665 Hooke published Micrographia, a book describing observations made with microscopes and telescopes, as well as some original work in biology. Hooke coined the term cell for describing biological organisms, the term being suggested by the resemblance of plant cells to cells of a honeycomb.[46] The hand-crafted, leather and gold-tooled microscope he used to make the observations for Micrographia, originally constructed by Christopher White in London, is on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, DC.

 

Micrographia also contains Hooke's, or perhaps Boyle and Hooke's, ideas on combustion. Hooke's experiments led him to conclude that combustion involves a substance that is mixed with air, a statement with which modern scientists would agree, but that was not widely understood, if at all, in the seventeenth century. Hooke went on to conclude that respiration also involves a specific component of the air.[47] Partington even goes so far as to claim that if "Hooke had continued his experiments on combustion it is probable that he would have discovered oxygen".

 

One of the observations in Micrographia was of fossil wood, the microscopic structure of which he compared to ordinary wood. This led him to conclude that fossilised objects like petrified wood and fossil shells, such as Ammonites, were the remains of living things that had been soaked in petrifying water laden with minerals.[49] Hooke believed that such fossils provided reliable clues to the past history of life on earth, and, despite the objections of contemporary naturalists like John Ray who found the concept of extinction theologically unacceptable, that in some cases they might represent species that had become extinct through some geological disaster.[50]

 

Charles Lyell wrote the following in his Principles of Geology (1832).

 

'The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke M.D.,'... appeared in 1705, containing 'A Discourse of Earthquakes'... His treatise... is the most philosophical production of that age, in regard to the causes of former changes in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature. 'However trivial a thing,' he says, 'a rotten shell may appear to some, yet these monuments of nature are more certain tokens of antiquity than coins or medals, since the best of those may be counterfeited or made by art and design, as may also books, manuscripts, and inscriptions, as all the learned are now sufficiently satisfied has often been actually practised,' &c.; 'and though it must be granted that it is very difficult to read them and to raise a chronology out of them, and to state the intervals of the time wherein such or such catastrophes and mutations have happened, yet it is not impossible.

 

One of the more-challenging problems tackled by Hooke was the measurement of the distance to a star (other than the Sun). The star chosen was Gamma Draconis and the method to be used was parallax determination. After several months of observing, in 1669, Hooke believed that the desired result had been achieved. It is now known that Hooke's equipment was far too imprecise to allow the measurement to succeed.[51] Gamma Draconis was the same star James Bradley used in 1725 in discovering the aberration of light.

 

Hooke's activities in astronomy extended beyond the study of stellar distance. His Micrographia contains illustrations of the Pleiades star cluster as well as of lunar craters. He performed experiments to study how such craters might have formed.[52] Hooke also was an early observer of the rings of Saturn,[53] and discovered one of the first observed double-star systems, Gamma Arietis, in 1664.

 

A lesser-known contribution, however one of the first of its kind, was Hooke's scientific model of human memory. Hooke in a 1682 lecture to the Royal Society proposed a mechanistic model of human memory, which would bear little resemblance to the mainly philosophical models before it.[55] This model addressed the components of encoding, memory capacity, repetition, retrieval, and forgetting—some with surprising modern accuracy.[56] This work, overlooked for nearly 200 years, shared a variety of similarities with Richard Semon's work of 1919/1923, both assuming memories were physical and located in the brain.[57][58][59] The model's more interesting points are that it (1) allows for attention and other top-down influences on encoding; (2) it uses resonance to implement parallel, cue-dependent retrieval; (3) it explains memory for recency; (4) it offers a single-system account of repetition and priming, and (5) the power law of forgetting can be derived from the model's assumption in a straightforward way.[56] This lecture would be published posthumously in 1705 as the memory model was unusually placed in a series of works on the nature of light. It has been speculated that this work saw little review as the printing was done in small batches in a post-Newtonian age of science and was most likely deemed out of date by the time it was published. Further interfering with its success was contemporary memory psychologists' rejection of immaterial souls, which Hooke invoked to some degree in regards to the processes of attention, encoding and retrieval.

 

Hooke was Surveyor to the City of London and chief assistant to Christopher Wren, in which capacity he helped Wren rebuild London after the Great Fire in 1666, and also worked on the design of London's Monument to the fire, the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Montagu House in Bloomsbury, and the infamous Bethlem Royal Hospital (which became known as 'Bedlam'). Other buildings designed by Hooke include The Royal College of Physicians (1679), Ragley Hall in Warwickshire, Ramsbury Manor in Wiltshire[60] and the parish church of St Mary Magdalene at Willen in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. Hooke's collaboration with Christopher Wren also included St Paul's Cathedral, whose dome uses a method of construction conceived by Hooke. Hooke also participated in the design of the Pepys Library, which held the manuscripts of Samuel Pepys' diaries, the most frequently cited eyewitness account of the Great Fire of London.[61]

 

Hooke and Wren both being keen astronomers, the Monument was designed to serve a scientific function as a telescope for observing transits, though Hooke's characteristically precise measurements after completion showed that the movement of the column in the wind made it unusable for this purpose. The legacy of this can be observed in the construction of the spiral staircase, which has no central column, and in the observation chamber which remains in place below ground level.

 

In the reconstruction after the Great Fire, Hooke proposed redesigning London's streets on a grid pattern with wide boulevards and arteries, a pattern subsequently used in the renovation of Paris, Liverpool, and many American cities. This proposal was thwarted by arguments over property rights, as property owners were surreptitiously shifting their boundaries. Hooke was in demand to settle many of these disputes, due to his competence as a surveyor and his tact as an arbitrator.

 

For an extensive study of Hooke's architectural work, see the book by Cooper.

 

No authenticated portrait of Robert Hooke exists. This situation has sometimes been attributed to the heated conflicts between Hooke and Newton, although Hooke's biographer Allan Chapman rejects as a myth the claims that Newton or his acolytes deliberately destroyed Hooke's portrait. German antiquarian and scholar Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach visited the Royal Society in 1710 and his account of his visit specifically mentions him being shown the portraits of 'Boyle and Hoock' (which were said to be good likenesses), but while Boyle's portrait survives, Hooke's has evidently been lost.[63] In Hooke's time, the Royal Society met at Gresham College, but within a few months of Hooke's death Newton became the Society's president and plans were laid for a new meeting place. When the move to new quarters finally was made a few years later, in 1710, Hooke's Royal Society portrait went missing, and has yet to be found.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke

Founder of penis envy

 

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology, the “Father of psychoanalysis” as he is commonly referred to. This user and advocate of cocaine is renowned for his theory of sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life which is directed toward a extensive multiplicity of objects as well as the presumed value of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. Freud has been a highly influential force on the culture—popularizing such notions as the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, defense mechanism, Freudian slips with which even the man on the street is familiar with.

 

Other phrases in the Freudian lexicon are Ego, Super-ego, and Id. Freud proposed that the human psyche could be separated into three elements: the id is known as the child-like portion, an impulsive element that takes into account only what it wants disregarding consequences. The super-ego is the moral code of the psyche that solely follows right and wrong, taking only the right action into account. Finally, the ego is the balance between the two. It is the part of the psyche that is portrayed as an arbitrator of sorts—acting in a way as to take both impulses and morality into consideration.

 

Another popular Freudian notion is Penis Envy. Penis envy in Freudian psychoanalysis refers to the theorized reaction of a girl during her psychosexual development to the recognition that she does not have a penis. Freud considered this realization a crucial moment in the development of gender and sexual identity for women. According to Freud, the parallel reaction in boys to the realization that girls do not have a penis is Castration anxiety.

 

The alluring force behind Freud’s spurious theories of sexual fixations, oedipal desires, anal fixations, etc, are iconographic and thus accounts for pop culture’s embrace of him. Freud found popularity in the 1960s counterculture as shrill hairy legged feminists wrecked mayhem on any semblances of “tradition.” In today’s top American universities, the Freudian system of thought as a research paradigm is dead, but its symbolism continues to thrive in pop culture.

 

*text from ICONS AND IDOLS*

Spaniel dog at the feet of John Stanley 1467 - 1470 known as the "Stanley Boy" -found under the niche in the nave north wall in 1848 . www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/Q6NFC4 He is said to have been killed by a blow from a wooden tennis ball and is shown holding the tennis ball that caused his death and pointing to his temple where it hit him . His effigy is in hard grit stone unlike the others here, which are of alabaster.

 

He was the only son of John Stanley 1508 (buried at Northenden Cheshire) and Anne daughter of Sir Robert Hanford

He was the grandson of Sir John Stanley 1474 www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/2j5072

 

In 1491 his father John was involved in a law suit with his younger half-brother Sir Humphrey +++ regarding the division of their late father's estates. Sir William Stanley of Holt, Denbighshire (the younger brother of Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby) was appointed in his capacity of Lord Chamberlain to act as arbitrator in the dispute. It was agreed that Sir Humphrey who had been given the manor of Stratfold with land in Tamworth by his father in 1474 should be awarded the additional estates of Pipe and Clifton with grants of land in Campden for life

When his father died in 1508 he was commemorated in a window of St. Wilfred's Church at Northenden, Cheshire (which is destroyed by the Roundheads during the Civil War). He was described in the inscription as the one-time Lord of Pipe, Clifton Campville, and Elford in the County of Staffordshire; of Sibbertoft (near Market Harborough) Northamptonshire; and Camden super Wild, Gloucestershire; and especially of Eschells (in the Parish of Northenden), Alford and Nether Alderley in Cheshire. Sir John sold Alford and Nether Alderley in Cheshire to Sir William Stanley of Holt.

 

With his death the male line of the Elford Stanleys became extinct (His uncles having had only a daughter each) and the estates came to his sisters

1. Anne m1 Roger son of John Cheney & Eleanor Shottesbroke ; m2 1499 Sir Christopher 1513 (at Flodden) 7th son of Sir John Savage 1495 and wife Katherine Stanley-1498 flic.kr/p/aXjwbT at Macclesfield ; bringing him the manors of Aston-sub-Edge , and Chipping Campden after the death of her uncle Sir Humphrey Stanley+++

2. Margery 1463 - 1506 heir to Elford , m William Staunton (parents of heiress to Elford Anne 1st wife of Sir William Smythe 1525 / 26 www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/290cB3 ;.

3. Elizabeth / Maud m John son of Sir Thomas Ferrers 1498 & Anne Hastings at Tamworth flic.kr/p/7ncriv (parents of John Ferrers of Tamworth Castle m Dorothy daughter of William Harper / Harpur of Rushall) - Church of St Peter, Elford Staffordshire.

We're Here looks at Portraits in Yellow today, mellow or otherwise.

Why? Lifting the veil: wakey wake key ~

It’s time to awaken from the larval dream. It’s time to emerge from the chrysalis and metamorphose. It’s time to step out of the plastic straitjacket and remove the blindfold tightly tied around body and mind by insecure family, indoctrinating schooling and insincere relationships. It’s time to decide who you really are, what you’re truly here for - and why.

 

It’s time to ask, “what’s ‘work’, what’s a ‘job’, what’s freedom, and what in hell is everyone doing – and why?” It’s time to stop making non-existent illusory money and garnering disinterested social approval by giving your time and energy to speed the destruction of Planet Earth’s biosphere – time to live a real life in a real living world instead of running a rat race through a pseudo civilisation of loathsome architect-designed concrete toilets in a pointless maze of toxic termite towers.

 

Yes, yes, you’ve heard it all before and you already know what’s going on. You don’t need to be told. You know what you need to do. You already know how you really could be living, thanks very much. You’ll get around to it in your own sweet time, when you’ve paid off your debts, when your family’s grown up, when you get some free time to pause and change tack, when you retire, when you win the lottery. When you’re good and ready.

 

Sure, buddy. Sure sis. You’ll get around to doing the right thing when you’re dead – in your next incarnation on a planet you’ve helped to thoroughly degrade and ruin – when you’re reborn in Bangladesh or Mongolia or sub-Saharan Africa, instead of in a better, blessed place where you can actually be free and make a difference, like here and now.

 

It’s time to find ways to share what remains of our beautiful planet with honour and without guilt. It’s time to decide whether to live a life of truth and beauty or die for a lie you know to be false. You’ve already chosen; your actions and ‘lifestyle’ are your choice, and the time has come to reassess your decisions and remake your destiny.

 

It’s time to realise why you’ve given yourself such an incredibly rare and privileged life that you actually have the space, mentality and leisure time to sit back and read this little diatribe. Now is the time and you are the person on the spot. You’re the one we need to save the world - now, at this critical juncture betwixt future and past. Living for life or dying for death? Choose. Now.

 

The system is set up to make you think you’re either on the high road to material success or sliding down a slippery slope to a loser’s failure; yet it’s designed to ensure you fail in the end. ‘Society’ is set up to ensure anything you build or create is taken from you, bit by bit, clod by clod, and stolen from any you choose to bequeath it to. Putrescent obsolescence is built into everything you’re sold and all that you’re told.

 

In modern all-consuming societies you’re taxed more highly than any ancient feudal serf, and even when you buy something outright you’ve just begun paying for it with the only thing you can ever really own - your time. The time of your life is taxed and stolen by those you vote for on behalf of remote controllers who think they ‘own’ the world. There are plenty of alternatives to their manipulated systems, but they’re all carefully concealed from you.

 

Most humans base their entire lives – plans, hopes, fears, dreams and strategies - on outdated assumptions programmed into them by brainwashed timeservers. They smother their kids in regimental uniforms and don’t care enough to notice how playtime becomes muted, how minds are restrained and freedom retrained into uniform mindlessness. They follow in the footsteps of torpid dolts and wonder why a regimented life is boringly doleful. Trained to subservience by millennia of feuding feudalists, humankind can only approach absolute truths (and long term survival) by roundabout routes that invariably lead people further astray.

 

Schooling isn’t education. It’s a system where open minds are successfully closed and everything not forbidden is compulsory. ‘Modern’ schooling ensures that cheats always prosper and that bullies and liars always prevail in the ‘real’ outside world of business and finance. Today’s educational establishments are dopey money factories designed to extort obedient volunteer slaves. No intelligent independent minds are found in them; none can survive there.

 

Schools, colleges and universities are quagmires of brainwashing, cultural imperialism and mindless training for destructive jobs that will soon cease to exist – training yards designed to serve the momentary needs of industries owned and run by short sighted paranoid sociopaths. They’re the birthplace of hierarchy and corruption. You know it’s true. Any real learning achieved is incidental. Scores and scoring a cushy job where you can lord it over others are everything. Learning and knowledge are secondary, sacrificial goals.

 

The system is thoroughly rigged by and for the worst elements to make sure that only most egregious people rise to the top of the dung heap and prosper. Only the worst control freaks and insecure jerks with killer ‘instincts’ claw their way to the summit. You know it’s true. There’s no ‘survival of the fittest’ (or even of the most adaptable) involved. Societies aren’t interested in change and evolution, but in security, status and stasis. And sooner or later stasis always means extinction, not survival.

 

But you can be different. So can your children. Deny the unloving death of blind conformity and confirm a free loving life with every action. Be what you always wanted to be, ’ere it harm none. If you’re well intentioned and wise the multiverse will provide. Choose. Now.

  

People are bigger than their straightjackets. You have the power to remove any blindfold and widen your vision whenever you choose. You have the ability to concentrate, meditate, cogitate and liberate. Only you can do it. Only you can free yourself, heal yourself, grow and learn. No-one can do it for you and anyone who says they can is a liar you need to avoid. And you have to do these things or die blind, lonely and incomplete before your time.

 

You’re a psychic immortal who gets precisely what you created. Only when people develop the inner divining and dowsing facilities latently inherent in all conscious beings are they able to discern truth from lies –able to actually tell the truth. You can only be free when you drop all that cultural conditioning and learn to open your inner sight. You can only decide what’s what, what to do and why when you have genuine personal insight.

 

Welcome to the new Aeon, a time when dangerous old myths can finally be laid to rest and healthier new legends allowed to arise from the ashes of yesterday’s ignorance.

 

One easy way to learn the truth is to ask two simple questions; ‘Why?’, and ‘Who Profits?’ Keep these liberating queries in mind as you progress onward…

 

Here’s a handy list of dangerous myths we need to lay to rest (and drive stakes through the hearts of. Repeatedly).

  

‘What did you do to save the world, daddy/mummy?’

 

Lie #1: The planet will soak up any mess humans make.

 

It won’t - not in any timeframe recognisable by you. We’ll all be dead before the planet is repaired and reforested unless WE go out and clean up our messes, stop the destruction of living treasures, replant entire continents of forests and weed and nourish them for generations, starting yesterday. Most brain-deprived, depraved ‘leaders’ seem to think the planet merely needs to be repaved. Don’t fall for their bandaid ‘solutions’. Opt out of death-dealing ‘civilisation’ and help start fresh societies in the green living world beyond the walls.

 

1b: Trees are a renewable resource. Forests will grow back if we cut them down.

 

They won’t. They haven’t. When the soil has washed away, the seed stock is gone and rainfall has disappeared (because forests make most of our rain, and store most of our fresh water) you’ve killed all the most interesting, nourishing and beneficial plants and animals and inherit a desert of sand, clay and rocks. It takes centuries for trees to be large enough, with large enough hollows, to support viable animal populations – including humans. Forests without animals are scrubby denuded death zones bereft of nutrients.

 

Idiots are still cutting down trees for money when there are better, cleaner, cheaper and totally renewable solutions for everything provided by natural forests - for everything except clean water, food and air! Somewhere near you, now, today, a forest is being felled. Help anyone who’s trying to stop them. Now.

 

Without global forests you’ll have no water fit to drink, no air fit to breathe and no crops to eat. The truth isn’t ‘out there’ – it’s obvious to any who actually look with unblinkered eyes.

 

Lie #2: Burning toxic fuels with lethal exhausts isn’t dangerous to the ecosystem or to people, and we need to keep doing it to fuel a prosperous civilisation.

 

It is. We don’t. If you don’t know about better technologies that are already available your head is in the sand with the in dust ‘realists’, looking for another oilfield or coal seam to vampirise. Some advanced nations are already totally fuelled by clean renewable energy. Literally hundreds of patents for new energy technologies are literally suppressed and stolen by ‘intelligence’ and ‘the military’ on behalf of ruthless killer corporations every year. Clean, free energy systems have been available for over a century and repeatedly eliminated, along with their investors (see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/free%20energy ). One name should suffice to explain much; Nikola Tesla.

 

The truth isn’t ‘out there’ – it’s being actively suppressed all around you. Why? The answer is a nested series of onion skins; the Russian dolls of money, control and power wrapped round an inner core of ultimate terrified insecurity.

 

2b: Human-made global warming is a lie spread by some unnameable group to control our lives and make us poorer.

 

It isn’t. The fossil fuel power mongers have lied to you so successfully that many or most people have been convinced ecologists have some vested interest in misleading them – instead of the profiteering planet killers who make gazillions from mining and selling you toxic and unnecessary products. CO2 IS a ‘greenhouse gas’, whose levels have dictated global temperatures for billions of years.

 

Whether we inject enough heat into the biosphere to forestall an impending cyclic ice age or simply create a global desert, every industry that injects carbon dioxide into the biosphere is doing so as a byproduct of pumping far more deadly chemicals into your body all the time, in the interests of meaningless profit. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply lying or ignorant.

 

Any time someone tells you that carbon dioxide isn’t a greenhouse gas or that manmade global warming is a lie, challenge them for some data – any real facts – and you won’t get any that aren’t constructs of half-truths, misdirecting distractions and outright lies. Humans ARE heating the planet with toxic emissions regardless of what industry shills and conspiratorial ignoramuses tell you (see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/co2 ).

 

Time for an inconvenient and little-appreciated fact: when climate scientists tell you there will be, say, a five degree Celsius rise in global temperature they’re talking about global averages – including sea temperatures, which will hardly rise at all. A ‘five degree average rise’ means a TEN DEGREE rise - or more - on the land (outside the tropics) – where you and everything that makes it possible for you to survive actually lives. Forget drowning cities and sinking islands – all that will be left is desert and dust if we allow our ‘leaders’ to keep taking bribes from blindly competitive in dust ‘realists’.

 

There is no truth on the side of profiteering corporations, surprisingly enough – and the only ‘invested interest’ environmentalists have is the wish to survive and thrive. Have you heard of the Precautionary Principle? If you haven’t, google it. The truth isn’t ‘out there’, it’s simple: stop using toxic products fuelled by toxic fuels that make profits for toxic monopolies run by toxic people.

  

Authorised Docterds

Lie #3: We’re repeatedly informed that ‘education is liberation’. It isn’t. Learning is liberation; education swiftly becomes rote indoctrination. The most dangerous, authoritarian ignoramuses are those who stayed in school the longest. No-one with a doctorate is entirely sane. No-one who demands money in exchange for healing the sick, protecting another’s rights and freedom, repairing the ecosystem or providing education can be trusted; they know nothing of truth and are part of the problem, not the solution. Anyone who profits from another’s misery, toil or terror is actually, functionally, a heartless sociopath.

 

In ‘advanced’ notions today, more people die from medical errors than from any other cause. Only a few years ago docterds ensured that just about everyone in ‘developed’ notions had organs removed from their bodies ‘just in case’ something went wrong. Every child was expected to have their tonsils and adenoids (lymph glands), appendix and wisdom teeth ‘removed’, just in case their docterd couldn’t afford a flashier car or another mistress. And many an operation led to another, to correct the mistakes made in the first. It was all bullshit and almost everyone fell for it, because, like priests and lawyers, docterds claim a false monopoly on access to life and death and rule only by terror. See hermetic.blog.com/2012/09/16/freeing-god’s-slaves-the-e...

 

Today fluoridation, toxic vaccines, poisonous drugs and a host of other techniques bestow slow death and perpetual dissolution on the incredibly patient (trusting, ignorant and terrified) patient.

See nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/fluoridation and nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/vaccines

 

Your health and mind are in your hands. Sawbones/surgeons can occasionally be handy in real emergencies but best avoided at all other times. Once in a while you may damage yourself so much you need some repairs, but the only actual healing is done by you, your self, your body. The placebo effect – whereby if you believe something will heal you it will, regardless of whether it has any active ingredients or not – is estimated by reputable sources as being around forty percent – that’s 40%! This means that almost half of all cures are widely accepted as being basically magical –consciousness-driven - in nature. The other sixty percent are as well.

  

Time for some Truths

Cui Bono? Who Profits? Who is it good for?

 

Truth #1: Who profits? No-one who doesn’t have another planet or two readily available profits from old style industrial societies. Yet there will always be some deluded power monger willing to kill millions – to wreck an entire planet and civilisation - so that they can have a flashier car or another mansion complex surrounded by bodyguards and electric fences.

 

There are always those who’ve been so successfully brainwashed they’ll actually believe that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Messiah, a Redeemer, a big bearded genocidal racist asshole in the sky, his fallen foes or his mythical toady son are real – and these naïfs make fine prey for patriarchal paedophilic proselytising pederast priests. Who but the most ignorant innocents fall for such superstitious claptrap? Who but an insecure control freak with delusions of grandeur would want to interpose themselves as a middleman between you and your divine psychic heritage?

 

Anyone who tells you the Divine is only available through some frock wearing po-faced priest, or from some Bronze Age tome cobbled together by merciless barbaric dictators, or through some graven image or guru or savant, is lying. All who ‘worship’ some odd bod god or other fetish are simply trained to doff the forelock, kneel, bow, scrape and be subservient to a dead or deadly psychopathic control freak. Watch out, little girls! Bums to the wall, boys!

 

Christinanity, Islime and Moronism – to name a few - are nothing more than some of the more recent pernicious death cults focused on lies of pies in the skies at the expense of happy, healthy lives in the only real place - here and now. All other ‘great religions’ are as bad or worse. Religion is a region with a li(e) in it. But they make gigantic tax-free profits! Cui bono?

 

The truth is always simple. The only beliefs that are true are those that spread life, light, health and diversity – the hallmarks of true survival and wisdom. Everything else is deceptive bullshit.

 

If you really want to learn how to access the godhead that is the birthright and crown of all beings, all you have to do is listen to the endless programs running through the rat wheel of your mind – and transcend them. Everyone can do it if they try, but the younger and fresher you start deprogramming yourself and tuning into ‘higher’ or ‘deeper’ consciousness the better. See nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/meditation and nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/magic if you want to learn how.

 

Enlightenment will always be available to any true seeker with an open mind and compassionate heart. Guides are always available if you simply search, but accept no substitute for self-gained awareness – and anyone who demands money in exchange for spreading the light of universal awareness is not a person you want anything to do with.

  

The Lore of the Land

 

Truth #2: There is no government. There is no law. There are no companies or corporations. Money does not exist. They are fables, illusions, widely accepted truisms – but they aren’t things. They don’t actually exist, except as agreements between people. They have no inherent power. They are clever pernicious illusions.

 

If you take a closer look you’ll discover that none of your country’s laws has a basis in any fact. In fact, you’ll find that your nation is also merely a notion, a fable agreed to by a sectional segment of some of the people; not all, or even necessarily most, but merely those who profit the most from the fable.

 

No ‘higher power’ or external ‘divine plan’ or government controls your life. No dog, no master. Thou art god(dess). All human-made laws are simply constructs and contracts, and none are writ in stone. The only real inherent law is the lore or karma and dharma – the ‘golden rule’: Do unto others as you’d be done by. It’s the only law and lore that works, and needs no intercessor or interpreter, no priest, monk, scholar or savant to preserve or transmit through the ages. It’s free for all, forever.

 

The real Law is no mystery and has no officers. It needs no prophets, liars/lawyers, judges or arbitrators. As above, so below. You are part of a giant hologram, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and every part contains the whole. In a holographic universe where everyone shares the same consciousness, anything you do to or for anyone else is something you do to or for your self.

 

Don’t kid yourself that ‘good deeds for others will reap rewards’. Of course they will. But anything you do for your children, family or strangers you’re actually doing for yourself. Caring about your family more than anyone else is perfectly understandable on a mechanical, biological and genetic level – but it’s also the basis for the worst traits of humankind. Racism, genocide, slavery and most forms of discrimination are outgrowths of such ‘love’, which is actually selfish at its root. Everyone is your family.

 

In fact, everyone is you, and you are everyone, for thou art god(dess), recreating the manifest world from instant to moment at a level beyond and behind linguistic thought.

  

Abundance and Scarcity: It’s Falseconomy, Stupid!

  

Truth #3: Money doesn’t exist. It’s a global pyramid scam whereby only the first ones in get to the top of the pyramid – everyone else loses. We have the ability to provide everyone on the planet with enough food, water and shelter – but we don’t appear to have enough of an entirely imaginary commodity to do it with. Something is very wrong.

 

The ‘science’ of economics is bullshit, as any true scientist can tell you. Arbitrary rules are continually altered and no ‘economist’ can make accurate predictions based on ‘economics’. It’s just another scam to make you think ‘authorities’ know what they’re doing and can be trusted to look after your best interests. Lol.

 

Money is simply invented. It’s created at the flick of a keyboard. It’s all made up; simply invented by (in)vested interests with ‘interest’. When the illusion is so arranged as to make it appear the ‘economy’ is circling the drain you go down the tubes – but the banksters, monarchs and in dust realists who own actual, tangible things don’t, as we all ought to recognise. This happens regularly and repeatedly. I won’t go on – see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/banksters and never take out a loan. Don’t use banks. There are plenty of alternatives.

 

Become as self-sufficient and live as sustainably as possible.

 

People are told they must pay money to inhabit a patch of the planet, and because they’ve been trained to accept a vast raft of lies by feudal societies run by hideous robber barons surrounded by gunmen they simply accept it.

 

People are told they must go to school and work every day to provide enough food, water, shelter and entertainment for themselves and their families. It’s a lie. That only has to happen because we’ve allowed industrious robber barons and banksters to steal everything and arrange it that way when we have a wide choice of much better possibilities. Now, at the dawn of the Third Millennium, the new industrious revolution has begun and advancing automation, nanotech and new processed like 3d printing mean that the jig is up. Full ‘employment’ is no longer possible or desirable. Now we have to provide shelter, food, water, transport and other necessities to everyone, even the rich, for free – because now, at last, we can!

 

If you work at any job that isn’t actively healing the planet you’re almost certainly actively destroying it. If you go into debt you’re destroying it. If you flush a toilet into a river or ocean, if you use fossil fuelled transport to and from work or to power your home (and nuclear fuels are fossil fuels, too) you’re destroying it. If you aren’t growing at least some of your own food and medicine you’re destroying it. If you leave your kids in some regimented school (or even a childcare centre) to be mindlessly raised to do and be the same as you were brainwashed into, you’re destroying it – and them.

 

If you’re trapped on a treadmill with no easy way out but to simply jump off and take your chances – JUMP OFF.

 

You’ll be so glad you did!

  

Competitiveness = Death Dealers

  

Truth #4: The ‘killer instinct’ is no instinct – it’s a result of training. Bullies and psychopaths are made, not born – and they can be unmade if you catch, restrain and retrain them early enough. Without bullying children don’t learn hate, fear and fight. Without bullies children don’t learn to be subservient. Bullies must be separated from other kids until they can be trusted among them. The same is true for adults.

 

The only reason to have a gun is to murder. They’re made for no other reason. They’re the coward’s long distance death dealing weapon of choice. Only people terrified of their neighbours own guns – and that, of course, terrifies their neighbours. Violence begets violence and weapons beget weapons. They’re feedback loops. Weapon ownership is always an arms race, the stupid doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction writ small for small minded loony hoons, terrified cowards and immature halfwits who like to menace others. Anyone who wants a gun – like anyone who wants a presidency – is precisely the person you don’t want to trust with one.

 

Allowing gun ownership in human society is just a form of collective lunacy. No popguns will save you from a modern army – or government swat team. They’ll just get you killed more quickly and assuredly. That’s the real lesson of modern history, for anyone who cares to look; don’t fall for the lies of weapon profiteers. In modern conflicts the survivors are those who successfully avoid the fighting. Save your money and save a life; you can’t have peace with a gun in your hand and it’s almost certain that no-one will aim one at you if you don’t. War or peace; you can’t serve two masters. Choose. Now.

 

All free societies have a fine time without weaponised populations perpetually living under a Sword of Damocles. The US, for instance, is not a free society but a corporatocracy that’s had its freedoms surgically removed since neoconmen ensured King George II stole the (p)residency. Freedom is free. How could it be otherwise? If you have to do something to defend or promote ‘freedom’, it isn’t freedom and you aren’t free. The contrary view is oxymoronic absurdity.

 

Flags are just coloured rags used to blindfold sacrificial lambs and enshroud their mangled bodies. Wars are always fought to enrich a few cowardly, spiteful old dorks and their trophy girlfriends hiding in some castle or penthouse. There is no honour involved in killing – it’s simply the worst form of working for The Man.

 

The only people who profit from wars and weapons are weapon makers, ammunition merchants, oil barons and the politicians they coerce and bribe. No-one who kills for a wage is anything but a (poorly) paid killer. This includes virtually all soldiers – not just mercenaries – and everyone who makes a profit from raising, hunting or killing animals for food.

 

You may have fallen for the bullshit that humans need to eat corpses to be healthy. The opposite is true. No-one (regardless of blood type or haplogroup) needs meat to survive. It’s a choice, a habit, an appetite – an addiction, nothing more.

 

Cattle and ‘meat animals’ are condemned to lives of pain and torture. They’re castrated, poisoned, fed garbage, corralled into cages, beaten, shocked and terrified into submission (rather like modern domesticated primates). If you saw what happens to animals before they end up in your mouth you wouldn’t touch the poisons collected at the top of the food chain and pump them through your bloodstream. Most young kids vomit the first time they’re fed eggs or meat. Ever wonder why?

 

Before you accept the lie that ‘vegetarians kill too – everything kills to survive’, consider that eating the fruits, vegetables and seeds of plants doesn’t kill any plant. The plant lives on, and reproduces. Just on more lie told by profiteers; one more unexamined false assumption.

 

If you choose to create endless unnecessary suffering by slaughtering innocent, terrified animals you deserve all that’s coming to you. Remember that ‘karma’ thing? Choose. Now.

See nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/vegetarianism

  

The Road to Hell is Paved with False Assumptions

 

When we’re kids we all ask, “Why?” Some kids mean, “Why does it work like that?” Others are asking, “Why on Earth would people do something so stupid?”

 

Bereft of imagination, in dust ‘realists’ force everyone to inhabit their bland, artless, heartless concrete toilets - blocky headstones designed by award winning wannabes and built by money-mastered so called craftsmen. Chintzy malls and ugly mausoleums masquerading as a civilisation. We can do much, much better.

 

Everything we’ve built has foundations of clay. All our sciences, beliefs and political systems are based on antiquated false assumptions; on lies, to be absolutely clear. Truth is always in here, within, waiting to be recognised by a freshly awakening mind. It isn’t going anywhere – unlike the outmoded scams perpetuated by a dying breed of conmen and the pernicious women hiding behind their thrones.

 

You’d think they’d know by now - you can service two mistresses but you can’t serve two masters! Life or Mammoney: Choose! Now!

  

It’s beyond the scope of this little entreaty to cover all these bases in detail – but they’re all explored in more (and more) depth at this website: become one of the New Illuminati by perusing truths and subscribing via one of the many ways available @ nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/

 

- Welcome to the New Millennium and have a great New Aeon

R. Ayana

 

For more by R, Ayana see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/r.%20ayana

- See ‘Older Posts’ at the end of each section

 

From nexusilluminati.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/why-lifting-veil-...

By 1858 rules, the Arbitrator (umpire) keeps an eye on the Match (game).

“ Hic jacet Nicholas Montgomery miles et Johanna uxor ejus, qui quidem Nichus obiit 3 die Aug. 1494”

Marble tomb on the north wall of the chancel - Nicholas Montgomery 1449-1494 & Joan Delves , the kneeling figures in brass now totally gone. Remains of 8 children stand round the sides - 4 boys flic.kr/p/6JJ3Cq flic.kr/p/6JDZGR & 4 girls

 

Nicholas was the son of Nicholas Montgomery 1428 - 1464 & Isabella Vernon later wife of Thomas Agard of Foston Hall

 

Nicholas was the grandson of Nicholas Montgomery 1465

www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/3765323866/ & 1st wife Eleanor Chebsey

He m 1 / 2 Joan daughter of John Haddon

Children

1. Ralph

2. Thomas

3. Walter

4. John 1513 m Elizabeth daughter of Sir Thomas Gresley of Drakelow by Anne Ferrers : Elizabeth m2 Sir John Gifford 1556 of Chillington flic.kr/p/f5BH8L

1. Isabel m Henry Sacheverell of Morley,

2. Margaret m John Kniveton,

3. Ann m Lewis Bagot flic.kr/p/6RAuqN son of John Bagot and Isabella Curzon flic.kr/p/dRCvYc of Kedleston

4; Katherine m Sir William Bothe / Bowden. www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/3764489951/

 

He m 1 / 2 Joan daughter of Sir John Delves of Delves Hall / Doddington Castle Cheshire by Ellen Egerton www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/8020295432/ )

 

Nicholas was Sheriff of Derby 1484, in 1485 he acted as an arbitrator in a dispute between Elena Delves widow of Sir John Delves and her son Ralph Delves of Doddington www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/8019964555/ , He was knighted on 29 November 1489 at the investiture of Prince Arthur as Prince of Wales

The tomb was known to Benedicta widow of Henry Foljambe who after his death in 1503 asked in the contract with albastermen Henry Harpur and William Moorecock of Burton Upon Trent, for their tomb at Bakewell to be a "good as is the tomb of Sir Nicholas Montgomery of Colley (Great Cubley Derbys) with 18 images under the table and the arms upon them.............." which seems to have survived better www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/6116635935/

 

On 14 December 1462 his father Nicholas Mountgomery, junior, son and heir of Eleanor (Chebsey) Mountgomery, deceased, late the wife of Nicholas Mountgomery, granted the remainder expectant upon the death of his father of a certain pasture called "Heymys" near Coldmorton in the fee of Chebsey.

In September 1465 his dying father placed him into the wardship of Ralph Wolseley. He had reached his majority before 1474, when he was Deputy Steward of the Honour of Tutbury under William, Lord Hastings, one of whose closest associates he became.

On 17 July 1472 John Stanley, knt, and Nicholas FitzHerbert esq. arbitrated in a dispute between Nicholas Montgomery esq. and Nicholas Agard of Sudbury and Isabel Montgomery, mother of the said Nicholas, regarding title to the manors of Sudbury and Aston and lands at Mackley Campion, Oakes, Potter Somersall, Waddeley, Somersall Herbert, Snelston and Leigh.

He was summoned by writ dated 5 June 1483 to be knighted at the intended coronation of Edward V on 22 June 1483. The ceremony however did not take place. He was made a Knight of the Bath at the creation of Prince Arthur as Prince of Wales on 29 November 1489.

He married Joan daughter of Sir John Delves of Doddington, Cheshire. In 1485 Nicholas acted as arbitrator in a dispute between his mother-in-law Elena Delves and brother-in-law Ralph Delves, widow and son respectively of the late Sir John Delves, and Sir Robert Sheffield of Lincolnshire, husband of a daughter of Sir John's eldest son.

He died on 3 August 1494. His tomb in Cubley church names his wife Joan, his sons Thomas and Walter and two other sons whose names have been defaced, and his four daughters Isabell (wife of Henry Sacheverell), Margaret (wife of John Kniveton), Ann (wife of Lewis Bagot), and Katherine (wife of Sir William Bowden).

On the north side of the tower [of Cubley church] are five shields, one of which has Montgomery quartering Chebsey, (?) and was probably intended for Ralph Montgomery, who died unmarried. The other four are Sacheverell (arg., on a saltire, az,, five water bougets, or) ; Kniveton (gu., a chevron vaire, arg. and sa., a martlett for difference) ; Bagot (arg., a chevron, gu., between three martlets, sab.); and Bowden (quarterly, sab. and or, in the first quarter a lion passant, arg.); each of them impaling Montgomery.

 

Sir John Vernon, fourth son of Sir Henry Vernon, of Haddon, married Ellen, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Montgomery. The arms usually borne by Montgomery were— Or, an eagle displayed, az., number 12 on the quarterings; but there was an older coat borne by Montgomery in the thirteenth century — Erm., on a bordure, gu., twelve horse shoes, arg. (Harl. MSS., 6,589, Coll. of Arms MSS., L. 14). The tinctures differ on different rolls. We have no doubt that number 13 of these quarterings is intended for this coat, but not only have the tinctures been wrongly painted, but the horse shoes turned into what appear to be crescents, at sometime when the monument was restored. The Montgomeries subsequently quartered this coat with the spread eagle, and we believe it to be this coat that is intended to be represented on the tower of Cubley, and not that of Cheresey / Chebsey, as we have previously stated.

  

- Cubley church Derbyshire

www.stirnet.com/genie/data/british/zwrk/montgomery09.php#lk1

www.wikitree.com/wiki/Montgomery-52

Picture with thanks - copyright Tony Grist CCL en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrew%27s_Church,_Cubley#/media...

Online media star Rae Lil Black is a Japanese performer who got noticeable quality among people by her Twitch channel. Check under to get more data about her.

 

She is a Japanese American by ethnicity who got notable because of the live stream on Twitch. She moreover went to the adult business, and in 2019 she was picked the arbitrator of Phb Awards.

 

Rae Lil Black is a performer and a web-based media star who got qualification from her power Twitch account, which is named @raelilblack. She has over 244k disciples on her position Twitch account, where she streams.

 

- Also, Read It: Akari Asagiri Height, Weight, Net Worth, Age, Birthday

 

Talking about age, Rae Lil Black is 24 years old beginning in 2021. Her genuine date of birth is seventeenth December 1996 in Osaka, Japan. Examining Rae Lil Black's stature, she is approximately 5 feet and 5 inches tall.

 

Rae Lil Black Height, Weight, Net Worth, Age, Birthday, Wikipedia, Biography

 

NAME

DETAILS

 

Real Name

Mrs, Rae Lil Black

 

Age in 2022

26 Years Old

 

Birthday Date

17th December 1996

 

Gender

Female

 

Height In Feet

5 feet 5 inches (approx.)

 

Weight In KG

55 KG

 

Body Measurements

36-26-39 inches (approx.)

 

Nationality

Japanese

 

Profession's

Actress, Instagram Star, Youtuber

 

Net Worth in 2022

500,000$ M

 

Married/Single

Single in 2022

 

Instagram Id

@RaeLilBlackOfficial

 

Twitter Id

@RaelilblackTV

 

Youtube Channel

@RaeLilBlackOfficial

 

Spitting the facts…

You can often see my light makeup face on twitch streaming!

 

redditwiki.com/rae-lil-black/

The New York Palace Hotel (formerly The Helmsley Palace)

455 Madison Avenue at 50th Street

New York, NY 10022

 

The Villard Houses were brownstone residences built by Henry Villard in 1884. Villard was a railway promoter and financier, who took over the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1881. The architect was McKim, Mead & White. The firm also designed the Pennsylvania Hotel in Manhattan. The six residence building was clad in quarried brownstone and wrapped around a u-shaped courtyard representative of a 15th century Italian palazzo. Four homes opened onto the courtyard while two had entrances on 51st Street.

 

Villard moved into the corner residence at 451 Madison, at the corner of 50th Street for just a short while before declaring bankruptcy. Much of the interior decoration is still visible today in the restaurant Gilt (formerly Le Cirque 2000).

 

In the 1940’s the Villard House was known as Women's Military Services Club. It served women in the military that could stay there for .50 cents a night. By the late 60’s the Archdiocese of New York owned the complex.

 

In the early 70’s Harry Helmsley found the perfect location in which to build his dream hotel. The Villard House was located on New York's Madison Avenue, across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral.

 

Helmsley negotiated a 99 year lease on the site from the the Archdiocese of New York and proposed gutting the interiors of the Villard and putting a 51-story hotel on top of it. The preservationists prevailed and Helmsley’s plan was changed to save most of the interiors of the Villard houses, though the buildings' rear facades were demolished and incorporated in to the new 51-story hotel. long-term ground lease, which runs for decades. The Archdiocese of New York receives $10 million annually in ground rent.

 

Helmsley commissioned architects Emery Roth & Sons and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer to design the modern structure and integrate the 1884 houses. The tower’s façade is a dark bronze reflective glass that was to blend with the Villard Houses. Started in 1977, the 905-room hotel project was completed in 1980.

 

Leona Helmsley spent a great deal of time and energy managing the decorating and staffing of the hotel. Leona took seriously her role as President of Helmsley Hotels and was determined to give her guests unprecedented service.

 

On September 15, 1980, the opulent Helmsley Palace Hotel opened. At the time The Helmsley Palace had the highest hotel rates in the city. An early print advertisement featuring Leona had the by-line: “It’s the only palace in the world where the Queen stands guard”

 

The hotel has four Triplex Suites. Situated at the top of the tower and occupying the four corners, each 2-bedroom suite is spread over three floors and include a private roof terrace.

 

In 1982, the limited partners in the Helmsley Palace Hotel partnership forced an arbitration proceeding after Harry Helmsley, in his role as general partner demanded more money from the limited partners for cost overruns in building the hotel. The limited partners said the Helmsley’s had mismanaged the business and had hurt the partnership through several self-dealing transactions. The arbitrators ruled in favor of the limited partners and forced the Helmsley’s to pay the cost overruns and an additional $3.5 million to the partnership.

 

Leona Helmsley, was convicted of income tax fraud in August 1989 - (“We don’t pay taxes … only the little people do”). Leona was convicted of 33 felony counts of trying to defraud the government and IRS, including mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns (essentially running millions of dollars of personal expenses through the Helmsley Palace and Park Lane books)

 

Harry Helmsley was indicted on similar charges in 1988, but was found too ill to stand trial. He died in 1997.

 

Following appeals Leona Helmsley was imprisoned from 1992-1993.

 

The limited partners in the Palace partnership were rightfully concerned during the Helmsley’s legal mess that the hotel was in desperate need for another general partner. The limited partners contended Helmsley Enterprises breached its fiduciary duties in managing and operating the partnership. They sought through the courts to remove the Helmsleys as general partner, and to appoint a receiver until a new general partner and manager can be found or the hotel be sold. They also sought restoration of any money the Helmsleys may have diverted to their affiliates through self-dealing.

 

Helmsley operated the Helmsley Palace hotel until 1992. She was known to fire managers from her jail cell.

 

Interstate Hotels was appointed by the court as the hotel’s receiver. The hotel changed its name to The New York Palace Hotel. The receiver received 6 qualified bids for the hotel.

 

In November 1993 The Royal Family of Brunei agreed to buy the New York Palace for $202 million (the highest offer). The agreement to buy the Palace is with Amedeo Hotels Limited Partnership, an investment company in Brunei. The Sultan of Brunei, through its development company, Amedeo Limited, contracted with Harman Jablin Architects for the complete renovation of the hotel and Villard Houses.

 

The hotel is comprised of three structures: the899-room 55-story hotel tower, the 5-story Villard House, and the 2-story Maloney & Porcelli restaurant.

 

The wealth of the royal family of Brunei, a tiny oil-rich sultanate on the island of Borneo, is controlled by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, whose estimated worth of $33 billion makes him one of the world's richest men. He and his family also own the 263-room Beverly Hills Hotel in California, bought for $187 million in 1987, and the Dorchester Hotel in London, bought for about $85 million in 1985.

 

The Royal Family’s new wealth comes from a constant flow of royalties into their private bank accounts from Shell Oil, who they joint ventured with to extract Brunei’s only natural resource.

 

The Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah younger brother is Prince Jefri Bolkiah who was the finance minister of Brunei from 1986 to 1998 and thus the chairman of The Brunei Investment Agency (BIA) responsible for overseas investments. He was known for his extravagant lifestyle, which included a private Boeing 747 and 2,000 automobiles. Hotels he controlled included The New York Palace Hotel, Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles and Plaza Athénée in Paris.

 

Following an audit in 1987 The Brunei government charged Prince Jefri with embezzling $14.8 billion and he was removed as chairman of BEI.

 

In July 2008 BEI signed management contracts with the Dorchester Group to operate the New York Plaza and the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles.

 

Prince Jefri’s two main legal and financial advisors, the British husband and wife lawyers Thomas Derbyshire and Faith Zaman were dispatched by the Prince to the New York Palace in 2004 to protect his interests. The two were involved in many aspects of Prince Jefri’s business affairs and they held powers of attorney to act of his behalf.

 

So In November 2005, Zaman claims Jefri gave them a 17-year lease on a 2,800-square-foot apartment on the third floor of the hotel, which rented as a suite for $20,000 a night. The prince gave the apartment to them rent-free for the first five years After that, the charge would be $500 a month, with an option to renew for 51 years. According the Vanity Fair this was done so the sultan if ever was successful in taking over the hotel, he would have to deal with them for the rest of his life.

 

In February 2006, John Segreti, the managing director of the Palace, dropped dead at 52 of a pulmonary embolism. Segreti formerly was the chief operating officer at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, in Hong Kon).

 

In March 2006 Faith Zaman was appointed Managing Director of the Palace. Her annual salary included 5 percent of the hotel’s gross operating profit, a car allowance of $100,000 per year, and free use of the company credit card for personal expenses. Also the prince gave her control of a second lease at a low price for the Maloney & Porcelli steak house on the hotel’s ground floor, on East 50th Street.

 

Meanwhile Derbyshire was working hard on finding a way for Jefri to cash in on two of his biggest assets the New York Palace and Hotel Bel-Air. A prospective buyer, Ty Warner (owner of the Four Seasons New York), was found who had agreed to acquiring the two hotels for $800 million. The sell certainly would have breached the government of Brunei’s freeze of Prince Jefri’s assets and further, what bank in the world could be used to deposit the proceeds and hide it from the government of Brunei.

 

The sell never occurred. Prince Jefri filed a suit against Derbyshire and Zaman seeking to recover $7 million in questionable expenses, Derbyshire and Zaman countersued for $13 million in contractual wages never received. In December 2010 the New York City jury awarded Derbyshire and Zaman $21 million.

 

Prince Jefri, a father of 17 with four wives, has swapped a decadent lifestyle for a fugitive existence. He is reported to have been allowed back in Brunei.

 

In 1997, with a new name--Le Cirque 2000--the restaurant moved from the Mayfair to the New York Palace Hotel and its landmark, the Villard Houses. Designer Adam Tihany gave Le Cirque its dazzling new look, and, as the opening approached, Siro Maccioni told New York magazine, "They're either going to give us a medal or exile us to Kilimanjaro."

 

In 2006 Siro Maccioni moved Le Cirque from the Palace Hotel to the Bloomberg building on East 58th Street.

 

John Segretti, the hotel’s managing director, decided The Palace Hotel should operate its own restaurant in the Villard space. In December 2005 it opened the 52-seat restaurant GILT with the interior design done by Patrick Jouin. The executive chef was Paul Liebrandt. The NY Times food critic panned Gilt two months after opening describing some entrees as “no larger than a hockey puck”. Shortly after Liebrandt was fired. In 2009 GILT was awarded Twp Michelin Stars under the direction of Executive Chef Justin Bogle.

 

In July 2011 Northwood Investors acquired the New York Plaza for approximately $400 million. The price is low by NYC standards – held down due to the $10 million dollar a year ground lease. The seller Brunei Investment Agency also owns the Dorchester Collection of luxury hotels. The New York Palace is no longer affiliated with the Dorchester Collection.

 

Northwood Investors is a privately-held real estate investment advisor that was founded in 2006 by John Z. Kukral, the former President and CEO of Blackstone Real Estate Advisors. It also owns the Alden Houston Hotel and The Radisson Hotel Boston.

 

Northwood has appointed David Chase to general manager of The New York Palace. Most recently he was the pre-opening general manager of Trump SoHo New York.

 

World Leaders - Hamani Diori (1916-1989, first president of the Republic of Niger) - autograph on the back of a period black and white photograph. Signed in black ink, with letter from his secretary and the original transmittal envelope.

 

The letter is dated May 27, 1961, from the Republic of Niger and is signed by an individual identified only as "Le Secrétariat Particulier". It confirms the sending of a signed photo from the President of the Republic to a M. Terence Cox in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The President of Niger in May 1961 was Hamani Diori, the country's first president after it gained independence from France in November 1960. Hamani Diori served as president until he was deposed in a military coup in April 1974.

 

Hamani Diori (6 June 1916 – 23 April 1989) was the first President of the Republic of Niger. He was appointed to that office in 1960, when Niger gained independence from France. Although corruption was a common feature of his administration, he gained international respect for his role as a spokesman for African affairs and as a popular arbitrator in conflicts. His rule ended with a military coup in 1974.

 

Early life - Born in Soudouré, near the capital, Niamey, Diori was the son of a public health officer in the French colonial administration. He attended William Ponty Teachers' Training College in Dakar, Senegal, and worked as a teacher in Niger from 1936 to 1938, then became a Hausa and Djerma foreign language instructor at the Institute of Study Abroad, in Paris.

 

Independence activism - In 1946, while working as the headmaster of a school in Niger’s capital city of Niamey, he became one of the founders of the Nigerien Progressive Party (PPN), a regional branch of the African Democratic Rally (RDA). Later that year, he was elected to the French National Assembly. In the 1951 election, Diori was defeated by his cousin and political rival Djibo Bakary. He was again elected to the assembly in 1956, and was chosen deputy-speaker. In 1958, after a referendum that granted Niger self-government, Diori became president of the provisional government. He then became Prime Minister of the republic in 1959.

 

Presidency - Niger gained independence from France on 3 August 1960 and Diori was elected president by the country's national assembly in November 1960. Organizing a powerful coalition of Hausa, Fula, and (most prominently) Djerma leaders, including chiefs and traditionalists, in support of Niger’s independence referendum, Diori gained French favor. Soon after independence, Diori made the PPN to be the only legally permitted party. His government favored the maintenance of traditional social structures and the retention of close economic ties with France. From the early 1960s, he ruled through a small number of pre-independence figures who sat on the PPN Politburo and largely bypassed even the cabinet. In addition to being both president of the republic and president of the PPN, Diori directly led a number of Ministries. From 1960 to 1963 he served as his own defence minister and foreign minister, and again took over the Foreign Ministry from 1965 to 1967. Most prominent, and perhaps most powerful, among Diori's advisers was writer and President of the National Assembly of Niger, Boubou Hama, who one writer has called the "eminence grise" behind Diori's rule. The National Assembly of Niger met in largely ceremonial yearly sittings to ratify government positions. Traditional notables, elected as parliamentary representatives, often unanimously endorsed government proposals. As president of the PPN, Diori was the only candidate for president of the republic, and as such was re-elected unopposed in 1965 and 1970. He gained worldwide respect for his role as a spokesman for African affairs and as a popular arbitrator in conflicts involving other African nations. Domestically, however, his administration was rife with corruption, and the government was unable to implement much-needed reforms or to alleviate the widespread famine brought on by the Sahelian drought of the early 1970s. Increasingly criticized at home for his negligence in domestic matters, Diori put down a coup in December 1963, which occurred concurrently with a border dispute with the Republic of Dahomey. He also narrowly escaped assassination in 1965. Faced with an attempted military coup and attacks by members of Sawaba, he used French advisers and troops to strengthen his rule. Close links with France lead to student and union protests against what they described as "French neocolonialism". However, his relationship with France suffered when his government voiced dissatisfaction with the level of investment in uranium production when Georges Pompidou visited Niger in 1972.

 

Unrest and fall - Widespread civil disorder followed allegations that some government ministers were misappropriating stocks of food aid and accused Diori of consolidating power. Diori limited cabinet appointments to fellow Djerma, family members, and close friends. In addition, he acquired new powers by declaring himself the minister of foreign and defense affairs. On 15 April 1974, Lieutenant colonel Seyni Kountché led a military coup that ended Diori's rule. Diori's wife, First Lady Aissa Diori, was killed during the coup, while he was imprisoned for six years. After his release in 1980, he remained under house arrest until 1987. After being released from house arrest, he moved to Morocco, where he died on 23 April 1989 at the age of 72.

 

LINK to video - Biography of Hamani Diori, Origin, Education ,Policies, Achievements, Wife, Children & Death - www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayhAacOIryo

 

LINK to video - Hamani Diori: the man France placed at the head of Niger - www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fO5dWC9tKg

 

LINK to video - Niger 1974: the military coup against Diori Hamani - Auto-dubbed - www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cCOu2ySzyM

Arles is possibly better known these days for its connection with Vincent Van Gogh than its Roman and medieval remains. It was exciting to see that many of the places Vincent had lived in and painted between 1888-89 were still clearly identifiable.

This is of the hospital courtyard where Vincent stayed after cutting his ear lobe.

The house on Place St Martine no longer exists but the hotel/bar behind does and is easy to pick out. The old hospital courtyard looks almost exactly like Vincent's painting of 1889.

Van Gogh arrived on 21 February, 1888, at the railroad station in Arles, crossed Place Lamartine, entered the city through the Porte de la Cavalerie, and took quarters a few steps further, at the Hôtel-Restaurant Carrel, 30 Rue Cavalerie. He had ideas of founding a Utopian art colony. His companion for two months was the Danish artist, Christian Mourier-Petersen. In March, he painted local landscapes, using a gridded "perspective frame." Three of his pictures were shown at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. In April he was visited by the American painter, Dodge MacKnight, who was resident in Fontvieille nearby.

 

On May 1, he signed a lease for 15 francs a month to rent the four rooms in the right hand side of the "Yellow House" (so called because its outside walls were yellow) at No. 2 Place Lamartine. The house was unfurnished and had been uninhabited for some time so he was not able to move in straight away. He had been staying at the Hôtel Restaurant Carrel in the Rue de la Cavalerie, just inside the medieval gate to the city, with the old Roman Arena in view. The rate charged by the hotel was 5 francs a week, which Van Gogh regarded as excessive. He disputed the price, and took the case to the local arbitrator who awarded him a twelve franc reduction on his total bill (the weekly rate being reduced from five francs to four). On May 7 he moved out of the Hôtel Carrel, and moved into the Café de la Gare.[54] He became friends with the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux. Although the Yellow House had to be furnished before he could fully move in, Van Gogh was able to use it as a studio.[55] His major project at this time was a series of paintings intended to form the décoration for the Yellow House.

 

My first direct encounter with the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh was at Rijksmusem Kroller Muller, Otterlo in the Netherlands and then in Amsterdam. I think seeing a large group of his work was in a way far more powerful than isolated or well known individual examples. During the 1980's when I painted in America often working directly from landscape, I became very influenced by his graphic style and his bright palette. I doubt any painter could see the world in the same way after an encounter with Van Gogh's art. Many of my drawings were directely influenced by Van Gogh’s Reed Pen drawings, and if I had to choose from Van gogh's output, it would be his drawings from 1888 that I find most exciting.

images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=Van+Gogh+Hospital+...

 

The camera and the artist (set) about the relationship between photographic images and those painted. I hope to use examples from my own practice where photography has been used in both photo-realistic work as well as illustration and other art-forms.

 

I have used a number of artists whose work I have studied and look at the way photography informed and influenced their visual expression.

 

As I have scanned a lot of my old work I'm well aware that photography has played and still plays a significant role for me as an artist, indeed in recent years these two practices have overlapped and are no longer distinct paths.

Fox was born at Cossey, near Norwich, where his father was steward to Lord Stafford, of Cossey Hall. After a period of studying engraving under Edwards at Bungay, he came up to London, became an inmate in the studio of John Burnet, who was at that time engaged in engraving some of Wilkie's principal works, and assisted Burnet in their completion.

 

When John Lindley, his fellow-townsman, was appointed secretary of the Horticultural Society, Fox was chosen as a judge and arbitrator for its prizes. He also executed all the engravings for a periodical called The Florist. He died at Leyton in 1849.

 

Fox engraved plates after Wilkie for Robert Cadell's edition of Sir Walter Scott's novels, and various illustrations to the Annuals of the day. His large engravings are a whole-length portrait of Sir George Murray, after Pickersgill; The First Council of the Queen and Village Recruits, after Wilkie. At the time of his death he was engaged upon a large print after William Mulready's picture of The Fight interrupted.

 

Brompton Cemetery

Why? Lifting the veil: wakey wake key ~

It’s time to awaken from the larval dream. It’s time to emerge from the chrysalis and metamorphose. It’s time to step out of the plastic straitjacket and remove the blindfold tightly tied around body and mind by insecure family, indoctrinating schooling and insincere relationships. It’s time to decide who you really are, what you’re truly here for - and why.

 

It’s time to ask, “what’s ‘work’, what’s a ‘job’, what’s freedom, and what in hell is everyone doing – and why?” It’s time to stop making non-existent illusory money and garnering disinterested social approval by giving your time and energy to speed the destruction of Planet Earth’s biosphere – time to live a real life in a real living world instead of running a rat race through a pseudo civilisation of loathsome architect-designed concrete toilets in a pointless maze of toxic termite towers.

 

Yes, yes, you’ve heard it all before and you already know what’s going on. You don’t need to be told. You know what you need to do. You already know how you really could be living, thanks very much. You’ll get around to it in your own sweet time, when you’ve paid off your debts, when your family’s grown up, when you get some free time to pause and change tack, when you retire, when you win the lottery. When you’re good and ready.

 

Sure, buddy. Sure sis. You’ll get around to doing the right thing when you’re dead – in your next incarnation on a planet you’ve helped to thoroughly degrade and ruin – when you’re reborn in Bangladesh or Mongolia or sub-Saharan Africa, instead of in a better, blessed place where you can actually be free and make a difference, like here and now.

 

It’s time to find ways to share what remains of our beautiful planet with honour and without guilt. It’s time to decide whether to live a life of truth and beauty or die for a lie you know to be false. You’ve already chosen; your actions and ‘lifestyle’ are your choice, and the time has come to reassess your decisions and remake your destiny.

 

It’s time to realise why you’ve given yourself such an incredibly rare and privileged life that you actually have the space, mentality and leisure time to sit back and read this little diatribe. Now is the time and you are the person on the spot. You’re the one we need to save the world - now, at this critical juncture betwixt future and past. Living for life or dying for death? Choose. Now.

 

The system is set up to make you think you’re either on the high road to material success or sliding down a slippery slope to a loser’s failure; yet it’s designed to ensure you fail in the end. ‘Society’ is set up to ensure anything you build or create is taken from you, bit by bit, clod by clod, and stolen from any you choose to bequeath it to. Putrescent obsolescence is built into everything you’re sold and all that you’re told.

 

In modern all-consuming societies you’re taxed more highly than any ancient feudal serf, and even when you buy something outright you’ve just begun paying for it with the only thing you can ever really own - your time. The time of your life is taxed and stolen by those you vote for on behalf of remote controllers who think they ‘own’ the world. There are plenty of alternatives to their manipulated systems, but they’re all carefully concealed from you.

 

Most humans base their entire lives – plans, hopes, fears, dreams and strategies - on outdated assumptions programmed into them by brainwashed timeservers. They smother their kids in regimental uniforms and don’t care enough to notice how playtime becomes muted, how minds are restrained and freedom retrained into uniform mindlessness. They follow in the footsteps of torpid dolts and wonder why a regimented life is boringly doleful. Trained to subservience by millennia of feuding feudalists, humankind can only approach absolute truths (and long term survival) by roundabout routes that invariably lead people further astray.

 

Schooling isn’t education. It’s a system where open minds are successfully closed and everything not forbidden is compulsory. ‘Modern’ schooling ensures that cheats always prosper and that bullies and liars always prevail in the ‘real’ outside world of business and finance. Today’s educational establishments are dopey money factories designed to extort obedient volunteer slaves. No intelligent independent minds are found in them; none can survive there.

 

Schools, colleges and universities are quagmires of brainwashing, cultural imperialism and mindless training for destructive jobs that will soon cease to exist – training yards designed to serve the momentary needs of industries owned and run by short sighted paranoid sociopaths. They’re the birthplace of hierarchy and corruption. You know it’s true. Any real learning achieved is incidental. Scores and scoring a cushy job where you can lord it over others are everything. Learning and knowledge are secondary, sacrificial goals.

 

The system is thoroughly rigged by and for the worst elements to make sure that only most egregious people rise to the top of the dung heap and prosper. Only the worst control freaks and insecure jerks with killer ‘instincts’ claw their way to the summit. You know it’s true. There’s no ‘survival of the fittest’ (or even of the most adaptable) involved. Societies aren’t interested in change and evolution, but in security, status and stasis. And sooner or later stasis always means extinction, not survival.

 

But you can be different. So can your children. Deny the unloving death of blind conformity and confirm a free loving life with every action. Be what you always wanted to be, ’ere it harm none. If you’re well intentioned and wise the multiverse will provide. Choose. Now.

  

People are bigger than their straightjackets. You have the power to remove any blindfold and widen your vision whenever you choose. You have the ability to concentrate, meditate, cogitate and liberate. Only you can do it. Only you can free yourself, heal yourself, grow and learn. No-one can do it for you and anyone who says they can is a liar you need to avoid. And you have to do these things or die blind, lonely and incomplete before your time.

 

You’re a psychic immortal who gets precisely what you created. Only when people develop the inner divining and dowsing facilities latently inherent in all conscious beings are they able to discern truth from lies –able to actually tell the truth. You can only be free when you drop all that cultural conditioning and learn to open your inner sight. You can only decide what’s what, what to do and why when you have genuine personal insight.

 

Welcome to the new Aeon, a time when dangerous old myths can finally be laid to rest and healthier new legends allowed to arise from the ashes of yesterday’s ignorance.

 

One easy way to learn the truth is to ask two simple questions; ‘Why?’, and ‘Who Profits?’ Keep these liberating queries in mind as you progress onward…

 

Here’s a handy list of dangerous myths we need to lay to rest (and drive stakes through the hearts of. Repeatedly).

  

‘What did you do to save the world, daddy/mummy?’

 

Lie #1: The planet will soak up any mess humans make.

 

It won’t - not in any timeframe recognisable by you. We’ll all be dead before the planet is repaired and reforested unless WE go out and clean up our messes, stop the destruction of living treasures, replant entire continents of forests and weed and nourish them for generations, starting yesterday. Most brain-deprived, depraved ‘leaders’ seem to think the planet merely needs to be repaved. Don’t fall for their bandaid ‘solutions’. Opt out of death-dealing ‘civilisation’ and help start fresh societies in the green living world beyond the walls.

 

1b: Trees are a renewable resource. Forests will grow back if we cut them down.

 

They won’t. They haven’t. When the soil has washed away, the seed stock is gone and rainfall has disappeared (because forests make most of our rain, and store most of our fresh water) you’ve killed all the most interesting, nourishing and beneficial plants and animals and inherit a desert of sand, clay and rocks. It takes centuries for trees to be large enough, with large enough hollows, to support viable animal populations – including humans. Forests without animals are scrubby denuded death zones bereft of nutrients.

 

Idiots are still cutting down trees for money when there are better, cleaner, cheaper and totally renewable solutions for everything provided by natural forests - for everything except clean water, food and air! Somewhere near you, now, today, a forest is being felled. Help anyone who’s trying to stop them. Now.

 

Without global forests you’ll have no water fit to drink, no air fit to breathe and no crops to eat. The truth isn’t ‘out there’ – it’s obvious to any who actually look with unblinkered eyes.

 

Lie #2: Burning toxic fuels with lethal exhausts isn’t dangerous to the ecosystem or to people, and we need to keep doing it to fuel a prosperous civilisation.

 

It is. We don’t. If you don’t know about better technologies that are already available your head is in the sand with the in dust ‘realists’, looking for another oilfield or coal seam to vampirise. Some advanced nations are already totally fuelled by clean renewable energy. Literally hundreds of patents for new energy technologies are literally suppressed and stolen by ‘intelligence’ and ‘the military’ on behalf of ruthless killer corporations every year. Clean, free energy systems have been available for over a century and repeatedly eliminated, along with their investors (see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/free%20energy ). One name should suffice to explain much; Nikola Tesla.

 

The truth isn’t ‘out there’ – it’s being actively suppressed all around you. Why? The answer is a nested series of onion skins; the Russian dolls of money, control and power wrapped round an inner core of ultimate terrified insecurity.

 

2b: Human-made global warming is a lie spread by some unnameable group to control our lives and make us poorer.

 

It isn’t. The fossil fuel power mongers have lied to you so successfully that many or most people have been convinced ecologists have some vested interest in misleading them – instead of the profiteering planet killers who make gazillions from mining and selling you toxic and unnecessary products. CO2 IS a ‘greenhouse gas’, whose levels have dictated global temperatures for billions of years.

 

Whether we inject enough heat into the biosphere to forestall an impending cyclic ice age or simply create a global desert, every industry that injects carbon dioxide into the biosphere is doing so as a byproduct of pumping far more deadly chemicals into your body all the time, in the interests of meaningless profit. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply lying or ignorant.

 

Any time someone tells you that carbon dioxide isn’t a greenhouse gas or that manmade global warming is a lie, challenge them for some data – any real facts – and you won’t get any that aren’t constructs of half-truths, misdirecting distractions and outright lies. Humans ARE heating the planet with toxic emissions regardless of what industry shills and conspiratorial ignoramuses tell you (see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/co2 ).

 

Time for an inconvenient and little-appreciated fact: when climate scientists tell you there will be, say, a five degree Celsius rise in global temperature they’re talking about global averages – including sea temperatures, which will hardly rise at all. A ‘five degree average rise’ means a TEN DEGREE rise - or more - on the land (outside the tropics) – where you and everything that makes it possible for you to survive actually lives. Forget drowning cities and sinking islands – all that will be left is desert and dust if we allow our ‘leaders’ to keep taking bribes from blindly competitive in dust ‘realists’.

 

There is no truth on the side of profiteering corporations, surprisingly enough – and the only ‘invested interest’ environmentalists have is the wish to survive and thrive. Have you heard of the Precautionary Principle? If you haven’t, google it. The truth isn’t ‘out there’, it’s simple: stop using toxic products fuelled by toxic fuels that make profits for toxic monopolies run by toxic people.

  

Authorised Docterds

Lie #3: We’re repeatedly informed that ‘education is liberation’. It isn’t. Learning is liberation; education swiftly becomes rote indoctrination. The most dangerous, authoritarian ignoramuses are those who stayed in school the longest. No-one with a doctorate is entirely sane. No-one who demands money in exchange for healing the sick, protecting another’s rights and freedom, repairing the ecosystem or providing education can be trusted; they know nothing of truth and are part of the problem, not the solution. Anyone who profits from another’s misery, toil or terror is actually, functionally, a heartless sociopath.

 

In ‘advanced’ notions today, more people die from medical errors than from any other cause. Only a few years ago docterds ensured that just about everyone in ‘developed’ notions had organs removed from their bodies ‘just in case’ something went wrong. Every child was expected to have their tonsils and adenoids (lymph glands), appendix and wisdom teeth ‘removed’, just in case their docterd couldn’t afford a flashier car or another mistress. And many an operation led to another, to correct the mistakes made in the first. It was all bullshit and almost everyone fell for it, because, like priests and lawyers, docterds claim a false monopoly on access to life and death and rule only by terror. See hermetic.blog.com/2012/09/16/freeing-god’s-slaves-the-e...

 

Today fluoridation, toxic vaccines, poisonous drugs and a host of other techniques bestow slow death and perpetual dissolution on the incredibly patient (trusting, ignorant and terrified) patient.

See nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/fluoridation and nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/vaccines

 

Your health and mind are in your hands. Sawbones/surgeons can occasionally be handy in real emergencies but best avoided at all other times. Once in a while you may damage yourself so much you need some repairs, but the only actual healing is done by you, your self, your body. The placebo effect – whereby if you believe something will heal you it will, regardless of whether it has any active ingredients or not – is estimated by reputable sources as being around forty percent – that’s 40%! This means that almost half of all cures are widely accepted as being basically magical –consciousness-driven - in nature. The other sixty percent are as well.

  

Time for some Truths

Cui Bono? Who Profits? Who is it good for?

 

Truth #1: Who profits? No-one who doesn’t have another planet or two readily available profits from old style industrial societies. Yet there will always be some deluded power monger willing to kill millions – to wreck an entire planet and civilisation - so that they can have a flashier car or another mansion complex surrounded by bodyguards and electric fences.

 

There are always those who’ve been so successfully brainwashed they’ll actually believe that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Messiah, a Redeemer, a big bearded genocidal racist asshole in the sky, his fallen foes or his mythical toady son are real – and these naïfs make fine prey for patriarchal paedophilic proselytising pederast priests. Who but the most ignorant innocents fall for such superstitious claptrap? Who but an insecure control freak with delusions of grandeur would want to interpose themselves as a middleman between you and your divine psychic heritage?

 

Anyone who tells you the Divine is only available through some frock wearing po-faced priest, or from some Bronze Age tome cobbled together by merciless barbaric dictators, or through some graven image or guru or savant, is lying. All who ‘worship’ some odd bod god or other fetish are simply trained to doff the forelock, kneel, bow, scrape and be subservient to a dead or deadly psychopathic control freak. Watch out, little girls! Bums to the wall, boys!

 

Christinanity, Islime and Moronism – to name a few - are nothing more than some of the more recent pernicious death cults focused on lies of pies in the skies at the expense of happy, healthy lives in the only real place - here and now. All other ‘great religions’ are as bad or worse. Religion is a region with a li(e) in it. But they make gigantic tax-free profits! Cui bono?

 

The truth is always simple. The only beliefs that are true are those that spread life, light, health and diversity – the hallmarks of true survival and wisdom. Everything else is deceptive bullshit.

 

If you really want to learn how to access the godhead that is the birthright and crown of all beings, all you have to do is listen to the endless programs running through the rat wheel of your mind – and transcend them. Everyone can do it if they try, but the younger and fresher you start deprogramming yourself and tuning into ‘higher’ or ‘deeper’ consciousness the better. See nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/meditation and nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/magic if you want to learn how.

 

Enlightenment will always be available to any true seeker with an open mind and compassionate heart. Guides are always available if you simply search, but accept no substitute for self-gained awareness – and anyone who demands money in exchange for spreading the light of universal awareness is not a person you want anything to do with.

  

The Lore of the Land

 

Truth #2: There is no government. There is no law. There are no companies or corporations. Money does not exist. They are fables, illusions, widely accepted truisms – but they aren’t things. They don’t actually exist, except as agreements between people. They have no inherent power. They are clever pernicious illusions.

 

If you take a closer look you’ll discover that none of your country’s laws has a basis in any fact. In fact, you’ll find that your nation is also merely a notion, a fable agreed to by a sectional segment of some of the people; not all, or even necessarily most, but merely those who profit the most from the fable.

 

No ‘higher power’ or external ‘divine plan’ or government controls your life. No dog, no master. Thou art god(dess). All human-made laws are simply constructs and contracts, and none are writ in stone. The only real inherent law is the lore or karma and dharma – the ‘golden rule’: Do unto others as you’d be done by. It’s the only law and lore that works, and needs no intercessor or interpreter, no priest, monk, scholar or savant to preserve or transmit through the ages. It’s free for all, forever.

 

The real Law is no mystery and has no officers. It needs no prophets, liars/lawyers, judges or arbitrators. As above, so below. You are part of a giant hologram, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and every part contains the whole. In a holographic universe where everyone shares the same consciousness, anything you do to or for anyone else is something you do to or for your self.

 

Don’t kid yourself that ‘good deeds for others will reap rewards’. Of course they will. But anything you do for your children, family or strangers you’re actually doing for yourself. Caring about your family more than anyone else is perfectly understandable on a mechanical, biological and genetic level – but it’s also the basis for the worst traits of humankind. Racism, genocide, slavery and most forms of discrimination are outgrowths of such ‘love’, which is actually selfish at its root. Everyone is your family.

 

In fact, everyone is you, and you are everyone, for thou art god(dess), recreating the manifest world from instant to moment at a level beyond and behind linguistic thought.

  

Abundance and Scarcity: It’s Falseconomy, Stupid!

  

Truth #3: Money doesn’t exist. It’s a global pyramid scam whereby only the first ones in get to the top of the pyramid – everyone else loses. We have the ability to provide everyone on the planet with enough food, water and shelter – but we don’t appear to have enough of an entirely imaginary commodity to do it with. Something is very wrong.

 

The ‘science’ of economics is bullshit, as any true scientist can tell you. Arbitrary rules are continually altered and no ‘economist’ can make accurate predictions based on ‘economics’. It’s just another scam to make you think ‘authorities’ know what they’re doing and can be trusted to look after your best interests. Lol.

 

Money is simply invented. It’s created at the flick of a keyboard. It’s all made up; simply invented by (in)vested interests with ‘interest’. When the illusion is so arranged as to make it appear the ‘economy’ is circling the drain you go down the tubes – but the banksters, monarchs and in dust realists who own actual, tangible things don’t, as we all ought to recognise. This happens regularly and repeatedly. I won’t go on – see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/banksters and never take out a loan. Don’t use banks. There are plenty of alternatives.

 

Become as self-sufficient and live as sustainably as possible.

 

People are told they must pay money to inhabit a patch of the planet, and because they’ve been trained to accept a vast raft of lies by feudal societies run by hideous robber barons surrounded by gunmen they simply accept it.

 

People are told they must go to school and work every day to provide enough food, water, shelter and entertainment for themselves and their families. It’s a lie. That only has to happen because we’ve allowed industrious robber barons and banksters to steal everything and arrange it that way when we have a wide choice of much better possibilities. Now, at the dawn of the Third Millennium, the new industrious revolution has begun and advancing automation, nanotech and new processed like 3d printing mean that the jig is up. Full ‘employment’ is no longer possible or desirable. Now we have to provide shelter, food, water, transport and other necessities to everyone, even the rich, for free – because now, at last, we can!

 

If you work at any job that isn’t actively healing the planet you’re almost certainly actively destroying it. If you go into debt you’re destroying it. If you flush a toilet into a river or ocean, if you use fossil fuelled transport to and from work or to power your home (and nuclear fuels are fossil fuels, too) you’re destroying it. If you aren’t growing at least some of your own food and medicine you’re destroying it. If you leave your kids in some regimented school (or even a childcare centre) to be mindlessly raised to do and be the same as you were brainwashed into, you’re destroying it – and them.

 

If you’re trapped on a treadmill with no easy way out but to simply jump off and take your chances – JUMP OFF.

 

You’ll be so glad you did!

  

Competitiveness = Death Dealers

  

Truth #4: The ‘killer instinct’ is no instinct – it’s a result of training. Bullies and psychopaths are made, not born – and they can be unmade if you catch, restrain and retrain them early enough. Without bullying children don’t learn hate, fear and fight. Without bullies children don’t learn to be subservient. Bullies must be separated from other kids until they can be trusted among them. The same is true for adults.

 

The only reason to have a gun is to murder. They’re made for no other reason. They’re the coward’s long distance death dealing weapon of choice. Only people terrified of their neighbours own guns – and that, of course, terrifies their neighbours. Violence begets violence and weapons beget weapons. They’re feedback loops. Weapon ownership is always an arms race, the stupid doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction writ small for small minded loony hoons, terrified cowards and immature halfwits who like to menace others. Anyone who wants a gun – like anyone who wants a presidency – is precisely the person you don’t want to trust with one.

 

Allowing gun ownership in human society is just a form of collective lunacy. No popguns will save you from a modern army – or government swat team. They’ll just get you killed more quickly and assuredly. That’s the real lesson of modern history, for anyone who cares to look; don’t fall for the lies of weapon profiteers. In modern conflicts the survivors are those who successfully avoid the fighting. Save your money and save a life; you can’t have peace with a gun in your hand and it’s almost certain that no-one will aim one at you if you don’t. War or peace; you can’t serve two masters. Choose. Now.

 

All free societies have a fine time without weaponised populations perpetually living under a Sword of Damocles. The US, for instance, is not a free society but a corporatocracy that’s had its freedoms surgically removed since neoconmen ensured King George II stole the (p)residency. Freedom is free. How could it be otherwise? If you have to do something to defend or promote ‘freedom’, it isn’t freedom and you aren’t free. The contrary view is oxymoronic absurdity.

 

Flags are just coloured rags used to blindfold sacrificial lambs and enshroud their mangled bodies. Wars are always fought to enrich a few cowardly, spiteful old dorks and their trophy girlfriends hiding in some castle or penthouse. There is no honour involved in killing – it’s simply the worst form of working for The Man.

 

The only people who profit from wars and weapons are weapon makers, ammunition merchants, oil barons and the politicians they coerce and bribe. No-one who kills for a wage is anything but a (poorly) paid killer. This includes virtually all soldiers – not just mercenaries – and everyone who makes a profit from raising, hunting or killing animals for food.

 

You may have fallen for the bullshit that humans need to eat corpses to be healthy. The opposite is true. No-one (regardless of blood type or haplogroup) needs meat to survive. It’s a choice, a habit, an appetite – an addiction, nothing more.

 

Cattle and ‘meat animals’ are condemned to lives of pain and torture. They’re castrated, poisoned, fed garbage, corralled into cages, beaten, shocked and terrified into submission (rather like modern domesticated primates). If you saw what happens to animals before they end up in your mouth you wouldn’t touch the poisons collected at the top of the food chain and pump them through your bloodstream. Most young kids vomit the first time they’re fed eggs or meat. Ever wonder why?

 

Before you accept the lie that ‘vegetarians kill too – everything kills to survive’, consider that eating the fruits, vegetables and seeds of plants doesn’t kill any plant. The plant lives on, and reproduces. Just on more lie told by profiteers; one more unexamined false assumption.

 

If you choose to create endless unnecessary suffering by slaughtering innocent, terrified animals you deserve all that’s coming to you. Remember that ‘karma’ thing? Choose. Now.

See nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/vegetarianism

  

The Road to Hell is Paved with False Assumptions

 

When we’re kids we all ask, “Why?” Some kids mean, “Why does it work like that?” Others are asking, “Why on Earth would people do something so stupid?”

 

Bereft of imagination, in dust ‘realists’ force everyone to inhabit their bland, artless, heartless concrete toilets - blocky headstones designed by award winning wannabes and built by money-mastered so called craftsmen. Chintzy malls and ugly mausoleums masquerading as a civilisation. We can do much, much better.

 

Everything we’ve built has foundations of clay. All our sciences, beliefs and political systems are based on antiquated false assumptions; on lies, to be absolutely clear. Truth is always in here, within, waiting to be recognised by a freshly awakening mind. It isn’t going anywhere – unlike the outmoded scams perpetuated by a dying breed of conmen and the pernicious women hiding behind their thrones.

 

You’d think they’d know by now - you can service two mistresses but you can’t serve two masters! Life or Mammoney: Choose! Now!

  

It’s beyond the scope of this little entreaty to cover all these bases in detail – but they’re all explored in more (and more) depth at this website: become one of the New Illuminati by perusing truths and subscribing via one of the many ways available @ nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/

 

- Welcome to the New Millennium and have a great New Aeon

R. Ayana

 

For more by R, Ayana see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/r.%20ayana

- See ‘Older Posts’ at the end of each section

 

From nexusilluminati.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/why-lifting-veil-...

Night shot of Acrocorinth, Greece

 

Acrocorinth (Greek: Ακροκόρινθος), "Upper Corinth", the acropolis of ancient Corinth, is a monolithic rock overseeing the ancient city of Corinth, Greece. "It is the most impressive of the acropoleis of mainland Greece," in the estimation of George Forrest.

In a Corinthian myth related in the second century CE to Pausanias, Briareus, one of the Hecatonchires, was the arbitrator in a dispute between Poseidon and Helios, between the sea and the sun: his verdict was that the Isthmus of Corinth belonged to Poseidon and the acropolis of Corinth (Acrocorinth) to Helios.

  

Spanish collector's card. Escenas selectas de cinematografía. Chocolates Guillèn, Barcelona, Series B, No. 15. Charles Ray in Un frac para dos/ A Tailor-Made Man (Joseph De Grasse, 1922). This comedy was shown in Spain in 1923-1924. Plot: John Paul Bart is mistaken for the arbitrator in a big steamship labor case when in actuality he is a lowly pants presser.

 

Charles Ray (1891-1943) was an American actor, scriptwriter, and director of the silent screen, who knew a parabole from rags to riches and back again. He worked for Paramount, his own company, United Artists and MGM. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, he was a very popular actor and one of Hollywood's best-paid stars.

Tombstone of George MacLean Rose (1829 - 1898) and his wife. He was a printer, publisher, and politician. Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Canada. A late afternoon, fall 2020. Pentax K1 II.

 

From The Dictionary of Canadian Biography www.biographi.ca/en/bio/rose_george_maclean_12E.html

 

ROSE, GEORGE MACLEAN, printer, publisher, temperance advocate, journalist, author, and politician; b. 14 March 1829 in Wick, Scotland, son of Donald Rose and Christian Maclean; m. 23 Sept. 1856 Margaret Catherine Johan Levack Manson in East Oxford Township, Oxford County, Upper Canada, and they had six sons and three daughters who survived infancy; d. 10 Feb. 1898 in Toronto.

 

George Maclean Rose, like two of his brothers, Henry and Daniel, was trained as a printer, serving a seven-year apprenticeship in the office of the John o’ Groat Journal in Wick. According to George’s son Malcolm Cameron, he had little formal schooling, but continued to educate himself throughout his life. In 1850, at the age of 21, he joined the Northern Ensign, a Reform paper founded that year by John Mackie, formerly editor of the John o’ Groat Journal. Mackie, a temperance advocate and political writer, was to have a lifelong influence on Rose, who as early as the age of 12 had joined the temperance cause. It was with reluctance that Rose left his employ the following year, when his father decided to immigrate with his family to Lower Canada.

 

In Montreal they joined Henry Rose, who had come to Lower Canada in 1848, and George found work in the office of John C. Becket*, printer of the Montreal Witness and publisher of the Canada Temperance Advocate. Except for a few months spent with the engraver George Matthews, Rose worked for Becket until his father’s death in January 1853 created a need to support his mother and dependent brothers and sisters. In March, Henry and George announced a new printing establishment, H. and G. M. Rose. Here young Daniel Rose completed his apprenticeship.

 

The Roses had been brought up as Congregationalists, but in Montreal, under the influence of the Reverend John Cordner, they joined the Unitarian Church, and George was to remain a staunch Unitarian throughout his life. The Liberal Christian, a monthly journal edited by Cordner, was published by H. and G. M. Rose in 1854 and 1855, and the brothers sold books of interest to its readers at their printing-office on Great St James Street (Rue Saint-Jacques Ouest). Henry and George were also active in the temperance movement in Montreal: in 1855 they were among the incorporating members of the Lower Canada division of the Sons of Temperance [see Letitia Creighton; Robert Dick*].

 

Early in 1856 the partnership with Henry was dissolved, and George’s ambitions took him to Upper Canada. After a brief stay in Merrickville, he moved to London, where he was hired to manage the job-printing office of Henry A. Newcombe, publisher of the Evangelical Witness. In September he married Margaret Manson, of nearby Oxford County, whose family he may have known when they lived in Vaudreuil, Lower Canada. Like the Roses, the Mansons were from Caithness: Margaret was a cousin of Oliver Mowat*, who would later become Liberal premier of Ontario. For a short time in 1857 Rose was in partnership with Hamilton Hunter, a Unitarian minister turned journalist and publisher of the London Weekly Atlas. But by November of that year the Atlas had been sold to Marcus Talbot, who also published the London Prototype. Rose worked for Talbot as city editor and reporter until the summer of 1858, when he moved once again, this time to Toronto.

 

There, he was hired as the foreman of Samuel Thompson*’s printing-office, a position that was to determine his future career. In 1859 Thompson won a five-year contract as printer to the Province of Canada, the first time the contract had been awarded for more than one year at a time, and in the fall of 1859 Rose moved to Quebec, the provincial capital, to set up the new printing-office. At its September meeting the Toronto Typographical Society passed a resolution commending Rose for “his conduct as a printer and foreman” while a member of the society. It praised him for upholding “the principles of our Constitution” and for his “kind and gentlemanly demeanor” toward members of the society under his charge.

 

In 1860, soon after Thompson took up his appointment in Quebec, he found himself in financial difficulties, a situation he blamed on a general reduction in the number of documents being printed and on the animosity of some legislative officials. At a bailiff’s sale several employees, including Rose, bought enough of Thompson’s assets to keep the printing-office going, and by April 1861 Robert Hunter, his accountant, was the “principal owner of the Printing Office and materials.” On 10 April Hunter wrote to the legislature that he had entered into a subcontract with Thompson to carry out its printing “under the name and designation of Thompson, Hunter & Co.” When later the same year Thompson withdrew completely from the business, Hunter, Rose, and François Lemieux formed a new partnership as Hunter, Rose and Company. They carried out the balance of Thompson’s contract and in 1864 successfully bid on a new five-year contract in their own name. Following the transfer of the government to Ottawa in 1865, the company moved its printing-office to the new capital late that year or early in 1866.

 

Hunter, Rose thus already had several years’ experience in government printing when in 1868 it was offered the Ontario government contract on the same terms. According to Henry Jervis Hartney, the provincial queen’s printer, who negotiated with them on behalf of the premier, John Sandfield Macdonald*, the partners “hesitated long over this offer.” He was able to persuade them that, although in Ottawa they could not make “a dollar outside the Government,” in Toronto they would be able to build up a good general business. On 11 July 1868 Hunter, Rose signed a ten-year contract with the province of Ontario to do all government printing and binding, including the distribution of the official Ontario Gazette. Hunter took charge of the new Toronto office while Rose remained in Ottawa; in 1871 he too moved to Toronto and the Ottawa office was closed.

 

In Quebec and Ottawa the company had done some non-governmental printing, but very little original publishing. A notable exception was Henry James Morgan*’s Sketches of celebrated Canadians (Quebec and London, 1862). In Toronto in the early 1870s it began to expand its activities by publishing Canadian editions of such popular British authors as Lord Lytton, William Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, and Anthony Trollope. Unlike many Toronto publishers who at this time routinely pirated foreign authors, Hunter, Rose compensated its British writers fairly. A surviving letter from Trollope to the firm in 1874 thanks them for a remittance of £19 16s. 7d. and promises that his British publishers will be in touch with them about his latest novel, The way we live now. Hunter, Rose printed the influential Canadian Monthly and National Review from its beginning in 1872 (it was later also published by Rose under the Rose-Belford imprint), and works in the fields of history and literature by Canadian authors, including Alexander Begg, Alexander McLachlan, and Susanna Moodie [Strickland*], appeared in increasing numbers.

 

The printing contract with the province of Ontario had been based on what seemed fair rates in 1868, but in the early 1870s labour costs in Toronto rose so sharply that in 1873 and subsequently the firm had to petition for increases in the contract prices to be paid for composition, presswork, and binding. When the contract came up for renewal in 1878, the Hunter, Rose tender was one of the highest, reflecting the company’s more realistic idea of the actual labour costs involved, and legislative printing went to Christopher Blackett Robinson and William Warwick. Despite the difficulties over fair compensation for this government work (not settled until an arbitrator was appointed in 1881), the company prospered: in 1875 it was able to build a “large & valuable building” on Wellington Street West that was to house the business during Rose’s lifetime.

 

Soon after moving to Toronto in 1871, Rose had become the secretary of the First Unitarian Church, a position he was to hold for 20 years. He regularly taught a Bible class on Sunday afternoons and was one of the church’s principal donors. His son Malcolm noted after his father’s death that although he had made money in 40 years as a printer and publisher, he had also “made large losses helping others.” The cause in which he was most active was temperance. In the debate among temperance advocates over the best way to bring an end to the consumption of alcoholic beverages, Rose supported the movement for legislation that would prohibit the liquor traffic entirely. Maria Simpson, in her temperance story “Brother G. M. Rose” (1879), claimed that he “gave more time and money to the Temperance Cause than any other man in Canada.” The portrait of Rose presented by Simpson in this and two other books, Ronald McFarlane (1878) and Sayings and doings of noted temperance advocates (1879), is idealized, but these books reveal how he must have worked, going out almost nightly to give “fiery, impromptu addresses” at clubs and lodges, filling in good-naturedly for absent speakers, and even on one occasion submitting to a phrenological examination in public. Though generally of “a manner urbane and kindly,” he was “capable, on occasion, of firing into vehement outbursts on behalf of his favorite topic – abstinence,” and even of crying “like a baby.” He continued to take a leading part in the Sons of Temperance, becoming grand worthy patriarch of the Ontario division in 1874, and for its gatherings he compiled several collections of songs and recitations. He was the principal promoter of the Temperance Colonization Society, the organization that founded Saskatoon as a temperance colony in 1882.

 

By the mid 1870s Rose’s family had grown to nine, and after more than 20 years of living in rented houses he was able to build a large residence on St Joseph Street in the suburban Cloverhill area of Toronto. His affection for his family is evident in a surviving letter written to his wife from Toronto in 1868, when the family was still living in Ottawa. “I was so sorry, dear Mag, that I was from home when the birthdays of two of our pets came off. When I get home we will celebrate them again, and then I will have a romp with them all round. . . . Kiss the pets for me and accept one for yourself.”

 

The death of Robert Hunter on 15 May 1877 at age 39 brought a number of changes. Rose was now sole owner of Hunter, Rose and Company (though he was to bring his brother Daniel in as a partner in 1878), and he seems to have had to mortgage the property on Wellington Street for several years. In April 1878, with Robert James Belford, of the publishing firm Belford Brothers, and several investors, he incorporated a new firm, the Rose-Belford Publishing Company. The association with the Belfords did not last long. On 7 Feb. 1879, in a letter to the prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, R. J. Belford reported that “yesterday we separated for good.” The reasons are hinted at in a letter of 28 January from Alexander Beaty Belford to an unidentified correspondent. They seem in part to have been political: the Belfords and their brother Charles*, editor of the Mail, were staunch Conservatives and Rose was a Liberal. It is unlikely they were suited temperamentally either; the Belfords soon left Toronto for the richer fields of Chicago and New York. Rose, however, continued to publish in Toronto under the Rose-Belford name until 1882.

 

Under the Rose-Belford Publishing Company and its successor, the Rose Publishing Company, the publishing side of Rose’s business was greatly expanded. The Rose Library, a series of inexpensive editions, mostly reprints, of popular authors, was launched in 1879 and by 1886 had reached 56 titles. Other series directed at the mass market included the Red Line Edition of Standard Poets and the Premier Library of popular fiction. In the mid 1880s the Rose Publishing Company entered the textbook field; although never as active in this field as the companies operated by William James Gage* and William Walter Copp, it was producing a dozen titles annually by the 1890s. The company also published reference works such as A cyclopædia of Canadian biography (2v., 1886–88), edited by Rose himself, and important historical studies such as Joseph Edmund Collins’s biography of Sir John A. Macdonald (1883, revised 1891) and Graeme Mercer Adam*’s The Canadian North-west: its history and its troubles (1885). Some titles were extremely popular: in 1885 the trade journal Books and Notions reported that The home cook book had sold “not less than 100,000” copies, “the largest [sale], we believe, of any book ever published in Canada.”

 

Although Rose was the president of the Rose Publishing Company, it was managed from the early 1880s by his eldest son, Daniel Alexander, who was increasingly the family spokesman on the Canadian copyright question. Canada’s attempts to pass a new copyright act, repeatedly frustrated by the Colonial Office, preoccupied the country’s publishers in the late 1880s and 1890s [see Samuel Edward Dawson*; John Ross Robertson*]. Two other sons, William Manson and George Maclean Jr, were also involved in the family’s business activities. In 1891 Rose served one term as an alderman for St John’s Ward, but this seems to have been his only venture into political life. He was long active in the city’s Board of Trade, as a member of council (from 1878), vice-president (1881), president (1882), and treasurer (1883–92).

 

Rose’s last years were darkened by several reversals. In 1892, in a dispute over the ministry of the Reverend Thomas C. Jackson, he and several other members left the First Unitarian Church to form a new congregation. He and his family were to return to the church before his death. In January 1894 the Rose Publishing Company failed, and Hunter, Rose, its principal creditor, was badly hurt but survived. (The name remained associated with printing in Toronto into the 1980s.) The failure had been expected in the industry for some time, and the trade journals speculated on its causes. The Canadian Printer and Publisher blamed Canada’s copyright dilemma: “The British own us, and throw us as a sweet bone to the publishing dogs of the United States.”

 

In July 1895 Hunter, Rose was reorganized as an incorporated company with Rose as president and D. A. Rose and Atwell Fleming as joint managers. Rose continued to chair directors’ meetings until August 1897, but his health was failing. In 1896 he had suffered a severe attack of pneumonia from which he never fully recovered. In a letter to his daughter Christina Henrietta in October 1897, he reported, “Some days I am very bright, other days I am as weak as can be . . . . However, . . . as I am not one of those who give in easily, I have great hopes that I will be strong enough to visit you next winter.” Less than four months later he was dead at the age of 68.

 

The Globe, in an obituary that ran over a column, described Rose as “one of the best known citizens of Toronto.” He belonged to a generation of printer-publishers who, in the years after confederation, created a publishing industry that expressed the aspirations of the new nation. In his avocations too he was representative of his time. Although his preoccupation with prohibition is now out of fashion, the social concerns that lay behind it are not.

The tomb of François II, Duke of Brittany, and his wife Marguerite de Foix is a funerary monument in Nantes, in the cathedral of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul. It was created in a variety of noble materials, including Carrara marble, in the early 16th century by Michel Colombe (sculptor, with his workshop) and Jean Perréal (architect & painter).

**************************************************************************

 

The allegorical figures of women represent the four cardinal virtues.

Justice, in the guise of Anne of Brittany herself, holds in her left hand a book, representing the law, illustrated with a balance, representing justice. In her right hand, she holds an imposing sword, but delicately covered by a flap of her scarf: "Deliver justice, but do not destroy the person ". The sword punishes and the scales weigh the seriousness of the crime or the weight of the arguments on both sides. The statue wears a crown, a reminder that the prince acts as judge and arbitrator.

 

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombeau_de_Fran%c3%a7ois_II_de_Bret...

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nantescathedrale.free.fr/tombeau.htm

 

hermetism.free.fr/nantes-prudence.htm

 

www.dansemacabredesigns.co.uk/2017/10/tomb-of-francois-ii...

 

fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombeau_de_Fran%C3%A7ois_II_de_Bret...

 

www.proquest.com/openview/7ddd7244d49febbd028fbc5ed699a73...

  

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The 99 Names of Allah, also known as The 99 Most Beautiful Names of God (Arabic: أسماء الله الحسنى‎ ʾasmāʾ allāh al-Ḥusnā), are the names of God (specifically, attributes) by which Muslims regard God and which are traditionally maintained as described in the Qur'ān, and Sunnah, amongst other places.[1] There is, according to hadith, a special group of 99 names but no enumeration of them. Thus the exact list is not agreed upon, and the names of God (as adjectives, word constructs, or otherwise) exceed 99 in the Qur'ān and Sunnah. Some of the names of God have been hidden from mankind, therefore there are not only 99 names of God but there are more.

 

Contents

1 Origin

2 List of names

3 100th name

3.1 Baha' ad-Din al-`Amili

3.2 Bábí and Bahá'í

4 Personal names

5 Notes

6 See also

7 External links

  

Origin

In one Islamic tradition, the Islamic prophet Muhammad used to call God by all His Names:

 

اللهم إني ادعوك بأسمائك الحسنى كلها "O Allah, I invoke You with all of Your Beautiful Names."[2]

Muhammad is also reported to have said in a famous hadith:

 

Verily, there are ninety-nine names of God, one hundred minus one. He who enumerates [and believes in them and the one God behind] them would get into Paradise.[3]

Of note is that this hadith does not say that there are only 99 names, but 99 names that are better than the others. This caused people to search them out in the Qur'an and Sunnah, and a list was compiled. Over time it became custom to recite the list in its entirety. While some Muslims believe that this list is mentioned by Muhammad himself, the specialist Muslim scholars argue strongly that the list was just compiled by a Muslim scholar as an addendum to the actual hadith (al-Waleed ibn Muslim). If it was only an attempt of a scholar, they are not necessarily the names proper, and other attempts may still be made. A recent scholar, Dr. Mahmoud Abdel-Razek, made an attempt of this kind and explained in detail why he differs in opinion with al-Waleed about enlisting some of the names.[4]

 

However, reciting the traditional names has developed into a ritual by some Muslims as an attempt to enumerate them, while most other Muslims believe that the "enumeration" is not just the act of recitation, but applying the attributes that the names suggest.

 

List of names

The Qur'an refers to the attributes of God as God's “most beautiful names” (Arabic: al-ʾasmāʾ al-ḥusnā) (see [Qur'an 7:180], [Qur'an 17:110], [Qur'an 20:8], [Qur'an 59:24]). According to Gerhard Böwering,

 

They are traditionally enumerated as 99 in number to which is added as the highest name (al-ism al-ʾaʿẓam), the supreme name of God, Allāh. The locus classicus for listing the divine names in the literature of qurʾānic commentary is [Qur'an 17:110], “Call upon God, or call upon the merciful; whichsoever you call upon, to him belong the most beautiful names,” and also [Qur'an 59:22] q 59:22-4, which includes a cluster of more than a dozen divine epithets.[5]

Islamic theology makes a distinction between the attributes of God and the divine essence.[5]

 

Below is a list of the 99 Names of God according to the tradition of Islam.

 

#

Arabic

Transliteration

Translation (can vary based on context)

Qur'anic usage

 

1 الرحمن Ar-Rahmān The All Beneficent, The Most Merciful in Essence, The Compassionate, The Most Gracious Beginning of every chapter except one, and in numerous other places. Name frequently used in Surah 55, Ar-Rahman.

2 الرحيم Ar-Rahīm The Most Merciful, The Most Merciful in Actions Beginning of every chapter except one, and in numerous other places

3 الملك Al-Malik The Owner, The Sovereign, The True and Ultimate King 59:23, 20:114

4 القدوس Al-Quddūs The Most Holy, The Most Pure, The Most Perfect 59:23, 62:1

5 السلام As-Salām The Peace and Blessing, The Source of Peace and Safety, The Most Perfect 59:23

6 المؤمن Al-Mu'min The Guarantor, The Self Affirming, The Granter of Security, The Affirmer of Truth 59:23

7 المهيمن Al-Muhaymin The Guardian, The Preserver, The Overseeing Protector 59:23

8 العزيز Al-Azīz The Almighty, The Self Sufficient, The Most Honorable 3:6, 4:158, 9:40, 48:7, 59:23

9 الجبار Al-Jabbār The Powerful, The Irresistible, The Compeller, The Most Lofty, The Restorer/Improver of Affairs 59:23

10 المتكبر Al-Mutakabbir The Tremendous 59:23

11 الخالق Al-Khāliq The Creator 6:102, 13:16, 39:62, 40:62, 59:24

12 البارئ Al-Bāri' The Rightful 59:24

13 المصور Al-Musawwir The Fashioner of Forms 59:24

14 الغفار Al-Ghaffār The Ever Forgiving 20:82, 38:66, 39:5, 40:42, 71:10

15 القهار Al-Qahhār The All Compelling Subduer 13:16, 14:48, 38:65, 39:4, 40:16

16 الوهاب Al-Wahhāb The Bestower 3:8, 38:9, 38:35

17 الرزاق Ar-Razzāq The Ever Providing 51:58

18 الفتاح Al-Fattāh The Opener, The Victory Giver 34:26

19 العليم Al-'Alīm The All Knowing, The Omniscient 2:158, 3:92, 4:35, 24:41, 33:40

20 القابض Al-Qābid The Restrainer, The Straightener 2:245

21 الباسط Al-Bāsit The Expander, The Munificent 2:245

22 الخافض Al-Khāfid The Abaser 95:5

23 الرافع Ar-Rāfi' The Exalter 58:11, 6:83

24 المعز Al-Mu'izz The Giver of Honour 3:26

25 المذل Al-Mu'dhell The Giver of Dishonour 3:26

26 السميع As-Samī The All Hearing 2:127, 2:256, 8:17, 49:1

27 البصير Al-Basīr The All Seeing 4:58, 17:1, 42:11, 42:27

28 الحكم Al-Hakam The Judge, The Arbitrator 22:69

29 العدل Al-`Adl The Utterly Just 6:115

30 اللطيف Al-Latīf The Gentle, The Subtly Kind 6:103, 22:63, 31:16, 33:34

31 الخبير Al-Khabīr The All Aware 6:18, 17:30, 49:13, 59:18

32 الحليم Al-Halīm The Forbearing, The Indulgent 2:235, 17:44, 22:59, 35:41

33 العظيم Al-'Azīm The Magnificent, The Infinite 2:255, 42:4, 56:96

34 الغفور Al-Ghafūr The All Forgiving 2:173, 8:69, 16:110, 41:32

35 الشكور Ash-Shakūr The Grateful 35:30, 35:34, 42:23, 64:17

36 العلي Al-'Aliyy The Sublimely Exalted 4:34, 31:30, 42:4, 42:51

37 الكبير Al-Kabīr The Great 13:9, 22:62, 31:30

38 الحفيظ Al-Hafīz The Preserver 11:57, 34:21, 42:6

39 المقيت Al-Muqīt The Nourisher 4:85

40 الحسيب Al-Hasīb The Bringer of Judgment 4:6, 4:86, 33:39

41 الجليل Al-Jalīl The Majestic 55:27, 39:14, 7:143

42 الكريم Al-Karīm The Bountiful, The Generous 27:40, 82:6

43 الرقيب Ar-Raqīb The Watchful 4:1, 5:117

44 المجيب Al-Mujīb The Responsive, The Answerer 11:61

45 الواسع Al-Wāsi' The Vast, The All Encompassing 2:268, 3:73, 5:54

46 الحكيم Al-Hakīm The Wise 31:27, 46:2, 57:1, 66:2

47 الودود Al-Wadūd The One Who Loves His Believing Slaves and His Believing Slaves Love Him 11:90, 85:14

48 المجيد Al-Majīd The All Glorious 11:73

49 الباعث Al-Bā'ith The Raiser of The Dead 22:7

50 الشهيد Ash-Shahīd The Witness 4:166, 22:17, 41:53, 48:28

51 الحق Al-Haqq The Truth, The Real 6:62, 22:6, 23:116, 24:25

52 الوكيل Al-Wakīl The Trustee, The Dependable 3:173, 4:171, 28:28, 73:9

53 القوى Al-Qawwiyy The Strong 22:40, 22:74, 42:19, 57:25

54 المتين Al-Matīn The Firm, The Steadfast 51:58

55 الولى Al-Waliyy The Protecting Friend, Patron and Helper 4:45, 7:196, 42:28, 45:19

56 الحميد Al-Hamid The All Praiseworthy 14:8, 31:12, 31:26, 41:42

57 المحصى Al-Muhsi The Accounter, The Numberer of All 72:28, 78:29, 82:10-12

58 المبدئ Al-Mubdi' The Producer, Originator, and Initiator of All 10:34, 27:64, 29:19, 85:13

59 المعيد Al-Mu'īd The Restorer, The Reinstater Who Brings Back All 10:34, 27:64, 29:19, 85:13

60 المحيى Al-Muhyi The Giver of Life 7:158, 15:23, 30:50, 57:2

61 المميت Al-Mumīt The Bringer of Death, The Destroyer 3:156, 7:158, 15:23, 57:2

62 الحي Al-Hayy The Ever Living 2:255, 3:2, 25:58, 40:65

63 القيوم Al-Qayyūm The Self Subsisting Provider of All 2:255, 3:2, 20:111

64 الواجد Al-Wājid The Perceiver, The Finder, The Unfailing 38:44

65 الماجد Al-Mājid The Illustrious, The Magnificent 85:15, 11:73,

66 الواحد Al-Wāhid The One, The Unique, Manifestation of Unity 2:163, 5:73, 9:31, 18:110

67 الاحد Al-'Ahad The One, the All Inclusive, The Indivisible 112:1

68 الصمد As-Samad The Self Sufficient, The Impregnable,

The Eternally Besought of All, The Everlasting 112:2

69 القادر Al-Qādir The All Able 6:65, 36:81, 46:33, 75:40

70 المقتدر Al-Muqtadir The All Determiner, The Dominant 18:45, 54:42, 54:55

71 المقدم Al-Muqaddim The Expediter, He Who Brings Forward 16:61, 17:34,

72 المؤخر Al-Mu'akhkhir The Delayer, He Who Puts Far Away 71:4

73 الأول Al-'Awwal The First (Alpha) 57:3

74 الأخر Al-'Akhir The Last (Omega) 57:3

75 الظاهر Az-Zāhir The Manifest, The All Victorious 57:3

76 الباطن Al-Bātin The Hidden, The All Encompassing 57:3

77 الوالي Al-Wāli The Patron 13:11, 22:7

78 المتعالي Al-Mutā'ali The Self Exalted 13:9

79 البر Al-Barr The Most Kind and Righteous 52:28

80 التواب At-Tawwāb The Ever Returning, Ever Relenting 2:128, 4:64, 49:12, 110:3

81 المنتقم Al-Muntaqim The Avenger 32:22, 43:41, 44:16

82 العفو Al-Afuww The Pardoner, The Effacer of Sins 4:99, 4:149, 22:60

83 الرؤوف Ar-Ra'ūf The Compassionate, The All Pitying 3:30, 9:117, 57:9, 59:10

84 مالك الملك Mālik-ul-Mulk The Owner of All Sovereignty 3:26

85 ذو الجلال والإكرام Dhū-l-Jalāli

wa-l-'ikrām The Lord of Majesty and Generosity 55:27, 55:78

86 المقسط Al-Muqsiţ The Equitable, The Requiter 7:29, 3:18

87 الجامع Al-Jāmi The Gatherer, The Unifier 3:9

88 الغني Al-Ghaniyy The All Rich, The Independent 3:97, 39:7, 47:38, 57:24

89 المغني Al-Mughni The Enricher, The Emancipator 9:28

90 المانع Al-Māni' The Withholder, The Shielder, the Defender 67:21

91 الضار Ad-Dārr The Distressor, The Harmer, The Afflictor 6:17

92 النافع An-Nāfi The Propitious, The Benefactor 30:37

93 النور An-Nūr The One Who Creates the Light of Belief in the Hearts of All the Believers 24:35

94 الهادي Al-Hādi The Guide 25:31

95 البديع Al-Badī The Incomparable, The Originator 2:117, 6:101

96 الباقي Al-Bāqi The Ever Enduring and Immutable 55:27

97 الوارث Al-Wārith The Heir, The Inheritor of All 15:23

98 الرشيد Ar-Rashīd The Guide, Infallible Teacher and Knower 2:256

99 الصبور As-Sabur The Patient, The Timeless. 2:153, 3:200, 103:3

 

[edit] 100th name

Several hadiths, which vary according to different Shi'a sects of Islam, suggest that the 100th Name will be revealed by the Mahdi.[citation needed]

 

Baha' ad-Din al-`Amili

According to Bahá'í scholar ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd Ishráq-Khávari, Shaykh Baha' al-Din adopted the pen name (takhallus) 'Baha' after being inspired by words of Shi'a Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (the fifth Imam) and Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (the sixth Imam), who had stated that the Greatest Name of God was included in either Du'ay-i-Sahar or Du'ay-i-Umm-i-Davud.[6] In the first verse of the Du'ay-i-Sahar, a dawn prayer for the Ramadan, the name "Bahá" appears four times: "Allahumma inni as 'aluka min Bahá' ika bi Abháh va kulla Bahá' ika Bahí".[7]

 

Bábí and Bahá'í

Bahá'í sources state that the Báb fulfills the prophecy of the Mahdi, and the 100th name was revealed as "Bahá’" (an Arabic word بهاء meaning "glory, splendor" etc.), which is the root word for Bahá'u'lláh and Bahá'í. It is also known as the 'Greatest Name'.[8][6] The Báb wrote a noted pentagram-shaped tablet with 360 derivatives of the word "Bahá'" used in it.[6]

 

Personal names

According to Islamic tradition, a Muslim may not be given any of the 99 names of God in the exact same form. For example, nobody may be named al-Malik (The King), but may be named Malik (King). This is because of the belief that God is almighty, and no human being is the equivalent of God, and no human being will ever be the equivalent of God. Muslims are allowed to use the 99 names of Allah for themselves but should not put 'Al' at the front of them.

 

However the names/attributes of God can be combined with the word "‘Abd -" which means "servant/slave" (of God) and are commonly used as personal names among Muslims. For example ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān ("Servant of the Most Compassionate/the Beneficent"). The two parts of the name may be written separately (as above) or combined as one transliterated name; in such a case, the vowel transcribed after ‘Abd is often written as u when the two words are transcribed as one: e.g., Abdurrahman, Abdul'aziz, "Abdul-Jabbar," or even Abdullah ("Servant of God"). (This has to do with Arabic case vowels, the final u vowel showing the normal "quote" nominative/vocative case form: ‘abdu.)

 

Some Muslim people have names resembling those 99. Examples include

 

Ra'ouf, such as Ra'ouf Mus'ad.

Salam, such as Salam Fayyad.

Kareem, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

[edit] Notes

^ Fleming, Marrianne; Worden, David (2004). Religious Studies for AQA; Thinking About God and Morality. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers. ISBN 0-435-30713-4.

^ Narrated by Ibn Majah, book of Du`a; and by Imam Malik in his Muwatta', Kitab al-Shi`r

^ Sahih Muslim, Vol. 4, no. 1410

^ Dr. Mahmoud Abdul Razek Al Radwany a professor in the faculty of Sharia at Al Azhar University, Cairo “Of the 99 Names Of Allah That We Repeat: Only 69 Are Authentic” published in the Egyptian daily, Al Ahram, in Nov 18, 2005. His objections are mostly grammatical in that a ‘name’ in Arabic must be a noun: “only 69 of those names are authenticated from the Quran and Sunnah, while 29 are not authentic in that 22 are verbs or adjectives, and 7 are 'modafa' or ‘added to.’” Islamic Forum/

^ a b Böwering, Gerhard. "God and his Attributes ." Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān.

^ a b c Lambden, Stephen (1993). "The Word Bahá': Quintessence of the Greatest Name". Bahá'í Studies Review 3 (1). bahai-library.com/?file=lambden_quintessence_greatest_name.

^ Khadem, Dhikru'llah (March 1976). "Bahá'u'lláh and His Most Holy Shrine". Bahá'í News (540): Pp. 4-5. www.teachingandprojects.com/meansandmaterials.htm.

^ Smith, Peter (2000). "greatest name". A concise encyclopedia of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxford: Oneworld Publications. pp. p. 167-8. ISBN 1-85168-184-1.

[edit] See also

Arabic theophoric names

Basmala

Names of God

Names of God in Judaism

Names of God in Hinduism

"The Nine Billion Names of God", a short story by Arthur C. Clarke.

[edit] External links

Asmaul Husna Widget Displays a slideshow of the 99 Names of Allah in an islamic ornamental frame.

The Most Beautiful Names of Allah Gives a list of the names in English and Arabic as well as the verses in which they are found in the Qur'an.

The Beautiful Names of Allah A site containing the derivation and meanings of the 99 names. Also has audio of someone saying each one.

99 Names of Allah The names of Allah in Arabic with English meaning and benefit virtues of reciting each Ism.

The Most Beautiful Names of Allah The most beautiful names of Allah in Arabic with English transliteration and meaning.

Benefits of reciting The Most Beautiful Names of Allah The benefits of reciting the most beautiful names of Allah.

99 Names of Allah With meanings and benefits of recitation.

99 Excellent Names of Allah with references to verses where the name appears in the Qur'an.

The Most Beautiful Names of Allah with references to verses where the name appears in the Qur'an.

The 99 Names and Attributes of Allah, numbered list of names and meanings.

The beautiful names of Allah 99 names written clearly in Arabic

Oil paintings of all the 99 names of Allah Also you can view 99 names of Prophet.

99 Names of Allah 99 names of almighty God with a brief description of each name.

Asmāʼul-Husnā: The 99 Beautiful Names of Allah online book By M. R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

 

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism and imperialism, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.

 

Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire into the wealthy, aristocratic Spencer family. He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British India, the Mahdist War (also known as the Anglo-Sudan War), and the Second Boer War, later gaining fame as a war correspondent and writing books about his campaigns. Elected a Conservative MP in 1900, he defected to the Liberals in 1904. In H. H. Asquith's Liberal government, Churchill served as President of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary, championing prison reform and workers' social security. As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, he oversaw the Gallipoli campaign but, after it proved a disaster, he was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He resigned in November 1915 and joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front for six months. In 1917, he returned to government under David Lloyd George and served successively as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and Secretary of State for the Colonies, overseeing the Anglo-Irish Treaty and British foreign policy in the Middle East. After two years out of Parliament, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government, returning the pound sterling in 1925 to the gold standard at its pre-war parity, a move widely seen as creating deflationary pressure and depressing the UK economy.

 

Out of government during his so-called "wilderness years" in the 1930s, Churchill took the lead in calling for British rearmament to counter the growing threat of militarism in Nazi Germany. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was re-appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. In May 1940, he became prime minister, succeeding Neville Chamberlain. Churchill formed a national government and oversaw British involvement in the Allied war effort against the Axis powers, resulting in victory in 1945. After the Conservatives' defeat in the 1945 general election, he became Leader of the Opposition. Amid the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union, he publicly warned of an "iron curtain" of Soviet influence in Europe and promoted European unity. Between his terms as prime minister, he wrote several books recounting his experience during the war. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. He lost the 1950 election but was returned to office in 1951. His second term was preoccupied with foreign affairs, especially Anglo-American relations and preservation of what remained of the British Empire with India now no longer part of it. Domestically, his government emphasised housebuilding and completed the development of a nuclear weapon (begun by his predecessor). In declining health, Churchill resigned as prime minister in 1955, remaining an MP until 1964. Upon his death in 1965, he was given a state funeral.

 

One of the 20th century's most significant figures, Churchill remains popular in the UK and the rest of the Anglosphere where he is generally viewed as a victorious wartime leader who played an important role in defending liberal democracy against the spread of fascism. While he has been criticised for his views on race and empire alongside some of his wartime decisions, historians often rank Churchill as the greatest prime minister in British history.

 

Early life

Churchill was born on 30 November 1874 at his family's ancestral home, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. On his father's side, he was a member of the British aristocracy as a descendant of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, representing the Conservative Party, had been elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Woodstock in 1874. His mother, Jennie, was a daughter of Leonard Jerome, a wealthy American businessman.

 

In 1876, Churchill's paternal grandfather, John Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough, was appointed Viceroy of Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom. Randolph became his private secretary and the family relocated to Dublin. Winston's brother, Jack, was born there in 1880. Throughout much of the 1880s, Randolph and Jennie were effectively estranged, and the brothers were mostly cared for by their nanny, Elizabeth Everest. When she died in 1895, Churchill wrote that "she had been my dearest and most intimate friend during the whole of the twenty years I had lived".

 

Churchill began boarding at St George's School in Ascot, Berkshire, at age seven but was not academic and his behaviour was poor. In 1884, he transferred to Brunswick School in Hove, where his academic performance improved. In April 1888, aged 13, he narrowly passed the entrance exam for Harrow School. His father wanted him to prepare for a military career and so his last three years at Harrow were in the army form. After two unsuccessful attempts to gain admittance to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he succeeded on his third. He was accepted as a cadet in the cavalry, starting in September 1893. His father died in January 1895, a month after Churchill graduated from Sandhurst.

 

Cuba, India, and Sudan: 1895–1899

In February 1895, Churchill was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars regiment of the British Army, based at Aldershot. Eager to witness military action, he used his mother's influence to get himself posted to a war zone. In the autumn of 1895, he and his friend Reggie Barnes, then a subaltern, went to Cuba to observe the war of independence and became involved in skirmishes after joining Spanish troops attempting to suppress independence fighters. Churchill sent reports about the conflict to the Daily Graphic in London. He proceeded to New York City and, in admiration of the United States, wrote to his mother about "what an extraordinary people the Americans are!". With the Hussars, he went to Bombay in October 1896. Based in Bangalore, he was in India for 19 months, visiting Calcutta three times and joining expeditions to Hyderabad and the North West Frontier.

 

In India, Churchill began a self-education project, reading a range of authors including Plato, Edward Gibbon, Charles Darwin and Thomas Babington Macaulay. The books were sent to him by his mother, with whom he shared frequent correspondence when abroad. In order to learn about politics, he also asked his mother to send him copies of The Annual Register, the political almanac. In one 1898 letter to her, he referred to his religious beliefs, saying: "I do not accept the Christian or any other form of religious belief". Churchill had been christened in the Church of England but, as he related later, he underwent a virulently anti-Christian phase in his youth, and as an adult was an agnostic. In another letter to one of his cousins, he referred to religion as "a delicious narcotic" and expressed a preference for Protestantism over Roman Catholicism because he felt it "a step nearer Reason".

 

Interested in British parliamentary affairs, he declared himself "a Liberal in all but name", adding that he could never endorse the Liberal Party's support for Irish home rule. Instead, he allied himself to the Tory democracy wing of the Conservative Party and on a visit home, gave his first public speech for the party's Primrose League at Claverton Down, near Bath. Mixing reformist and conservative perspectives, he supported the promotion of secular, non-denominational education while opposing women's suffrage.

 

Churchill volunteered to join Bindon Blood's Malakand Field Force in its campaign against Mohmand rebels in the Swat Valley of north-west India. Blood accepted him on condition that he was assigned as a journalist, the beginning of Churchill's writing career. He returned to Bangalore in October 1897 and there wrote his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, which received positive reviews. He also wrote his only work of fiction, Savrola, a Ruritanian romance. To keep himself fully occupied, Churchill embraced writing as what Roy Jenkins calls his "whole habit", especially through his political career when he was out of office. Writing was his main safeguard against recurring depression, which he referred to as his "black dog".

 

Using his contacts in London, Churchill got himself attached to General Herbert Kitchener's campaign in the Sudan as a 21st Lancers subaltern while, additionally, working as a journalist for The Morning Post. After fighting in the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898, the 21st Lancers were stood down. In October, Churchill returned to England and began writing The River War, an account of the campaign which was published in November 1899; it was at this time that he decided to leave the army. He was critical of Kitchener's actions during the war, particularly the latter's unmerciful treatment of enemy wounded and his desecration of Muhammad Ahmad's tomb in Omdurman.

 

On 2 December 1898, Churchill embarked for India to settle his military business and complete his resignation from the 4th Hussars. He spent a lot of his time there playing polo, the only ball sport in which he was ever interested. Having left the Hussars, he sailed from Bombay on 20 March 1899, determined to launch a career in politics.

 

Politics and South Africa: 1899–1901

Seeking a parliamentary career, Churchill spoke at Conservative meetings and was selected as one of the party's two parliamentary candidates for the June 1899 by-election in Oldham, Lancashire. While campaigning in Oldham, Churchill referred to himself as "a Conservative and a Tory Democrat". Although the Oldham seats had previously been held by the Conservatives, the result was a narrow Liberal victory.

 

Anticipating the outbreak of the Second Boer War between Britain and the Boer Republics, Churchill sailed to South Africa as a journalist for the Morning Post under the editorship of James Nicol Dunn. In October, he travelled to the conflict zone near Ladysmith, then besieged by Boer troops, before heading for Colenso. After his train was derailed by Boer artillery shelling, he was captured as a prisoner of war (POW) and interned in a Boer POW camp in Pretoria. In December, Churchill escaped from the prison and evaded his captors by stowing away aboard freight trains and hiding in a mine. He eventually made it to safety in Portuguese East Africa. His escape attracted much publicity.

 

In January 1900, he briefly rejoined the army as a lieutenant in the South African Light Horse regiment, joining Redvers Buller's fight to relieve the Siege of Ladysmith and take Pretoria. He was among the first British troops into both places. He and his cousin, the Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, demanded and received the surrender of 52 Boer prison camp guards. Throughout the war, he had publicly chastised anti-Boer prejudices, calling for them to be treated with "generosity and tolerance", and after the war he urged the British to be magnanimous in victory. In July, having resigned his lieutenancy, he returned to Britain. His Morning Post despatches had been published as London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and had sold well.

 

Churchill rented a flat in London's Mayfair, using it as his base for the next six years. He stood again as one of the Conservative candidates at Oldham in the October 1900 general election, securing a narrow victory to become a Member of Parliament at age 25. In the same month, he published Ian Hamilton's March, a book about his South African experiences, which became the focus of a lecture tour in November through Britain, America and Canada. Members of Parliament were unpaid and the tour was a financial necessity. In America, Churchill met Mark Twain, President McKinley and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt; he did not get on well with Roosevelt. Later, in spring 1901, he gave more lectures in Paris, Madrid and Gibraltar.

 

Conservative MP: 1901–1904

Commons, where his maiden speech gained widespread press coverage. He associated with a group of Conservatives known as the Hughligans, but he was critical of the Conservative government on various issues, especially increases in army funding. He believed that additional military expenditure should go to the navy. This upset the Conservative front bench but was supported by Liberals, with whom he increasingly socialised, particularly Liberal Imperialists like H. H. Asquith. In this context, Churchill later wrote that he "drifted steadily to the left" of parliamentary politics. He privately considered "the gradual creation by an evolutionary process of a Democratic or Progressive wing to the Conservative Party", or alternately a "Central Party" to unite the Conservatives and Liberals.

 

By 1903, there was real division between Churchill and the Conservatives, largely because he opposed their promotion of economic protectionism. As a free trader, he took part in the foundation of the Free Food League. Churchill sensed that the animosity of many party members would prevent him from gaining a Cabinet position under a Conservative government. The Liberal Party was then attracting growing support, and so his defection in 1904 may also have been influenced by personal ambition. He increasingly voted with the Liberals against the government. For example, he opposed an increase in military expenditure; he supported a Liberal bill to restore legal rights to trade unions; and he opposed the introduction of tariffs on goods imported into the British Empire, describing himself as a "sober admirer" of the principles of free trade. Arthur Balfour's government announced protectionist legislation in October 1903. Two months later, incensed by Churchill's criticism of the government, the Oldham Conservative Association informed him that it would not support his candidature at the next general election.

 

In May 1904, Churchill opposed the government's proposed Aliens Bill, designed to curb Jewish migration into Britain. He stated that the bill would "appeal to insular prejudice against foreigners, to racial prejudice against Jews, and to labour prejudice against competition" and expressed himself in favour of "the old tolerant and generous practice of free entry and asylum to which this country has so long adhered and from which it has so greatly gained". On 31 May 1904, he crossed the floor, defecting from the Conservatives to sit as a member of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons.

 

Liberal MP: 1904–1908

As a Liberal, Churchill attacked government policy and gained a reputation as a radical under the influences of John Morley and David Lloyd George. In December 1905, Balfour resigned as prime minister and King Edward VII invited the Liberal leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman to take his place. Hoping to secure a working majority in the House of Commons, Campbell-Bannerman called a general election in January 1906, which the Liberals won. Churchill won the Manchester North West seat. In the same month, his biography of his father was published; he received an advance payment of £8,000. It was generally well received. It was also at this time that the first biography of Churchill himself, written by the Liberal Alexander MacCallum Scott, was published.

 

In the new government, Churchill became Under-Secretary of State for the Colonial Office, a junior ministerial position that he had requested. He worked beneath the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin, and took Edward Marsh as his secretary; Marsh remained Churchill's secretary for 25 years. Churchill's first task was helping to draft a constitution for the Transvaal; and he helped oversee the formation of a government in the Orange River Colony. In dealing with southern Africa, he sought to ensure equality between the British and the Boers. He also announced a gradual phasing out of the use of Chinese indentured labourers in South Africa; he and the government decided that a sudden ban would cause too much upset in the colony and might damage the economy. He expressed concerns about the relations between European settlers and the black African population; after the Zulu launched their Bambatha Rebellion in Natal, Churchill complained about the "disgusting butchery of the natives" by Europeans.

 

Asquith government: 1908–1915

Asquith succeeded the terminally ill Campbell-Bannerman on 8 April 1908 and, four days later, Churchill was appointed President of the Board of Trade, succeeding Lloyd George who became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Aged 33, Churchill was the youngest Cabinet member since 1866. Newly appointed Cabinet ministers were legally obliged to seek re-election at a by-election and on 24 April, Churchill lost the Manchester North West by-election to the Conservative candidate by 429 votes. On 9 May, the Liberals stood him in the safe seat of Dundee, where he won comfortably.

 

In private life, Churchill proposed marriage to Clementine Hozier; they were married on 12 September 1908 at St Margaret's, Westminster and honeymooned in Baveno, Venice, and Veveří Castle in Moravia. They lived at 33 Eccleston Square, London, and their first daughter, Diana, was born in July 1909. Churchill and Clementine were married for over 56 years until his death. The success of his marriage was important to Churchill's career as Clementine's unbroken affection provided him with a secure and happy background.

 

One of Churchill's first tasks as a minister was to arbitrate in an industrial dispute among ship-workers and employers on the River Tyne. He afterwards established a Standing Court of Arbitration to deal with future industrial disputes, establishing a reputation as a conciliator. In Cabinet, he worked with Lloyd George to champion social reform. He promoted what he called a "network of State intervention and regulation" akin to that in Germany.

 

Continuing Lloyd George's work, Churchill introduced the Mines Eight Hours Bill, which legally prohibited miners from working more than an eight-hour day. In 1909, he introduced the Trade Boards Bill, creating Trade Boards which could prosecute exploitative employers. Passing with a large majority, it established the principle of a minimum wage and the right of workers to have meal breaks. In May 1909, he proposed the Labour Exchanges Bill to establish over 200 Labour Exchanges through which the unemployed would be assisted in finding employment. He also promoted the idea of an unemployment insurance scheme, which would be part-funded by the state.

 

To ensure funding for their reforms, Lloyd George and Churchill denounced Reginald McKenna's policy of naval expansion, refusing to believe that war with Germany was inevitable. As Chancellor, Lloyd George presented his "People's Budget" on 29 April 1909, calling it a war budget to eliminate poverty. With Churchill as his closest ally Lloyd George proposed unprecedented taxes on the rich to fund the Liberal welfare programmes. The budget was vetoed by the Conservative peers who dominated the House of Lords. His social reforms under threat, Churchill became president of the Budget League, and warned that upper-class obstruction could anger working-class Britons and lead to class war. The government called the January 1910 general election, which resulted in a narrow Liberal victory; Churchill retained his seat at Dundee. After the election, he proposed the abolition of the House of Lords in a cabinet memorandum, suggesting that it be succeeded either by a unicameral system or by a new, smaller second chamber that lacked an in-built advantage for the Conservatives. In April, the Lords relented and the People's Budget passed into law. Churchill continued to campaign against the House of Lords and assisted passage of the Parliament Act 1911 which reduced and restricted its powers.

 

Home Secretary: 1910–1911

In February 1910, Churchill was promoted to Home Secretary, giving him control over the police and prison services; he implemented a prison reform programme. Measures included a distinction between criminal and political prisoners, with prison rules for the latter being relaxed. There were educational innovations like the establishment of libraries for prisoners, and a requirement for each prison to stage entertainments four times a year. The rules on solitary confinement were relaxed somewhat, and Churchill proposed the abolition of automatic imprisonment of those who failed to pay fines. Imprisonment of people aged between 16 and 21 was abolished except for the most serious offences. Churchill reduced ("commuted") 21 of the 43 death ("capital") sentences passed while he was Home Secretary

 

One of the major domestic issues in Britain was women's suffrage. Churchill supported giving women the vote, but he would only back a bill to that effect if it had majority support from the (male) electorate. His proposed solution was a referendum on the issue, but this found no favour with Asquith and women's suffrage remained unresolved until 1918. Many suffragettes believed that Churchill was a committed opponent of women's suffrage, and targeted his meetings for protest. In November 1910, the suffragist Hugh Franklin attacked Churchill with a whip; Franklin was arrested and imprisoned for six weeks.

 

In November 1910, Churchill had to deal with the Tonypandy riots, in which coal miners in the Rhondda Valley violently protested against their working conditions. The Chief Constable of Glamorgan requested troops to help police quell the rioting. Churchill, learning that the troops were already travelling, allowed them to go as far as Swindon and Cardiff, but blocked their deployment; he was concerned that the use of troops could lead to bloodshed. Instead he sent 270 London police, who were not equipped with firearms, to assist their Welsh counterparts. As the riots continued, he offered the protesters an interview with the government's chief industrial arbitrator, which they accepted. Privately, Churchill regarded both the mine owners and striking miners as being "very unreasonable". The Times and other media outlets accused him of being too soft on the rioters; in contrast, many in the Labour Party, which was linked to the trade unions, regarded him as having been too heavy-handed. In consequence of the latter, Churchill incurred the long-term suspicion of the labour movement.

 

Asquith called a general election in December 1910 and the Liberals were re-elected with Churchill secure in Dundee. In January 1911, Churchill became involved in the Siege of Sidney Street; three Latvian burglars had killed several police officers and hidden in a house in the East End of London, which was surrounded by police. Churchill stood with the police though he did not direct their operation. After the house caught fire, he told the fire brigade not to proceed into the house because of the threat posed by the armed men. Afterwards, two of the burglars were found dead. Although he faced criticism for his decision, he stated that he "thought it better to let the house burn down rather than spend good British lives in rescuing those ferocious rascals".

 

In March 1911, Churchill introduced the second reading of the Coal Mines Bill in parliament. When implemented, it imposed stricter safety standards at coal mines. He also formulated the Shops Bill to improve the working conditions of shop workers; it faced opposition from shop owners and only passed into law in a much emasculated form. In April, Lloyd George introduced the first health and unemployment insurance legislation, the National Insurance Act 1911, which Churchill had been instrumental in drafting. In May, Clementine gave birth to their second child, Randolph, named after Churchill's father. In response to escalating civil strife in 1911, Churchill sent troops into Liverpool to quell protesting dockers and rallied against a national railway strike.

 

During the Agadir Crisis of April 1911, when there was a threat of war between France and Germany, Churchill suggested an alliance with France and Russia to safeguard the independence of Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands to counter possible German expansionism. The Agadir Crisis had a profound effect on Churchill and he altered his views about the need for naval expansion.

 

First Lord of the Admiralty

In October 1911, Asquith appointed Churchill First Lord of the Admiralty, and he took up official residence at Admiralty House. He created a naval war staff and, over the next two and a half years, focused on naval preparation, visiting naval stations and dockyards, seeking to improve morale, and scrutinising German naval developments. After the German government passed its 1912 Naval Law to increase warship production, Churchill vowed that Britain would do the same and that for every new battleship built by the Germans, Britain would build two. He invited Germany to engage in a mutual de-escalation of naval building projects, but this was refused.

 

Churchill pushed for higher pay and greater recreational facilities for naval staff, an increase in the building of submarines, and a renewed focus on the Royal Naval Air Service, encouraging them to experiment with how aircraft could be used for military purposes. He coined the term "seaplane" and ordered 100 to be constructed. Some Liberals objected to his levels of naval expenditure; in December 1913 he threatened to resign if his proposal for four new battleships in 1914–15 was rejected. In June 1914, he convinced the House of Commons to authorise the government purchase of a 51 percent share in the profits of oil produced by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, to secure continued oil access for the Royal Navy.

 

The central issue in Britain at the time was Irish Home Rule and, in 1912, Asquith's government introduced the Home Rule Bill. Churchill supported it and urged Ulster Unionists to accept it as he opposed the partition of Ireland. Concerning the possibility of the Partition of Ireland, Churchill stated: "Whatever Ulster's right may be, she cannot stand in the way of the whole of the rest of Ireland. Half a province cannot impose a permanent veto on the nation. Half a province cannot obstruct forever the reconciliation between the British and Irish democracies". Speaking in the House of Commons on 16 February 1922, Churchill said: "What Irishmen all over the world most desire is not hostility against this country, but the unity of their own". Later, following a Cabinet decision, he boosted the naval presence in Ireland to deal with any Unionist uprising.[ Seeking a compromise, Churchill suggested that Ireland remain part of a federal United Kingdom but this angered Liberals and Irish nationalists.

 

As First Lord, Churchill was tasked with overseeing Britain's naval effort when the First World War began in August 1914. In the same month, the navy transported 120,000 British troops to France and began a blockade of Germany's North Sea ports. Churchill sent submarines to the Baltic Sea to assist the Russian Navy and he sent the Marine Brigade to Ostend, forcing a reallocation of German troops. In September, Churchill assumed full responsibility for Britain's aerial defence. On 7 October, Clementine gave birth to their third child, Sarah. In October, Churchill visited Antwerp to observe Belgian defences against the besieging Germans and promised British reinforcements for the city. Soon afterwards, Antwerp fell to the Germans and Churchill was criticised in the press. He maintained that his actions had prolonged resistance and enabled the Allies to secure Calais and Dunkirk. In November, Asquith called a War Council, consisting of himself, Lloyd George, Edward Grey, Kitchener, and Churchill. Churchill set the development of the tank on the right track and financed its creation with Admiralty funds.

 

Churchill was interested in the Middle Eastern theatre and wanted to relieve pressure on the Russians in the Caucasus by staging attacks against Turkey in the Dardanelles. He hoped that the British could even seize Constantinople. Approval was given and, in March 1915, an Anglo-French task force attempted a naval bombardment of Turkish defences in the Dardanelles. In April, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, including the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), began its assault at Gallipoli. Both campaigns failed and Churchill was held by many MPs, particularly Conservatives, to be personally responsible.

 

In May, Asquith agreed under parliamentary pressure to form an all-party coalition government, but the Conservatives' condition of entry was that Churchill must be removed from the Admiralty. Churchill pleaded his case with both Asquith and Conservative leader Bonar Law but had to accept demotion and became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

 

Military service, 1915–1916

Churchill decided to return to active service with the Army and was attached to the 2nd Grenadier Guards, on the Western Front. In January 1916, he was temporarily promoted to lieutenant-colonel and given command of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers. After a period of training, the battalion was moved to a sector of the Belgian Front near Ploegsteert. For over three months, they faced continual shelling although no German offensive. Churchill narrowly escaped death when, during a visit by his staff officer cousin the 9th Duke of Marlborough, a large piece of shrapnel fell between them. In May, the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers were merged into the 15th Division. Churchill did not request a new command, instead securing permission to leave active service. His temporary promotion ended on 16 May 1916, when he returned to the rank of major.

 

Back in the House of Commons, Churchill spoke out on war issues, calling for conscription to be extended to the Irish, greater recognition of soldiers' bravery, and for the introduction of steel helmets for troops. It was in November 1916 that he penned "The greater application of mechanical power to the prosecution of an offensive on land", but it fell on deaf ears. He was frustrated at being out of office as a backbencher, but he was repeatedly blamed for Gallipoli, mainly by the pro-Conservative press. Churchill argued his case before the Dardanelles Commission, whose published report placed no blame on him personally for the campaign's failure.

 

Lloyd George government: 1916–1922

In October 1916, Asquith resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Lloyd George who, in May 1917, sent Churchill to inspect the French war effort. In July, Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions. He quickly negotiated an end to a strike in munitions factories along the Clyde and increased munitions production. In his October 1917 letter to his Cabinet colleagues, he penned the plan of attack for the next year that would bring final victory to the Allies. He ended a second strike, in June 1918, by threatening to conscript strikers into the army. In the House of Commons, Churchill voted in support of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave some British women the right to vote. In November 1918, four days after the Armistice, Churchill's fourth child, Marigold, was born.

 

Secretary of State for War and Air: 1919–1921

With the war over, Lloyd George called a general election with voting on Saturday, 14 December 1918. During the election campaign, Churchill called for the nationalisation of the railways, a control on monopolies, tax reform, and the creation of a League of Nations to prevent future wars. He was returned as MP for Dundee and, although the Conservatives won a majority, Lloyd George was retained as prime minister. In January 1919, Lloyd George moved Churchill to the War Office as both Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air.

 

Churchill was responsible for demobilising the British Army, although he convinced Lloyd George to keep a million men conscripted for the British Army of the Rhine. Churchill was one of the few government figures who opposed harsh measures against Germany, and he cautioned against demobilising the German Army, warning that they might be needed as a bulwark against Soviet Russia. He was an outspoken opponent of Vladimir Lenin's new Communist Party government in Russia. He initially supported using British troops to assist the anti-Communist White forces in the Russian Civil War, but soon recognised the desire of the British people to bring them home. After the Soviets won the civil war, Churchill proposed a cordon sanitaire around the country.

 

In the Irish War of Independence, he supported the use of the paramilitary Black and Tans to combat Irish revolutionaries. After British troops in Iraq clashed with Kurdish rebels, Churchill authorised two squadrons to the area, proposing that they be equipped with "poison gas" to be used to "inflict punishment upon recalcitrant natives without inflicting grave injury upon them", although this was never implemented. More broadly, he saw the occupation of Iraq as a drain on Britain and proposed, unsuccessfully, that the government should hand control back to Turkey.

 

Secretary of State for the Colonies: 1921–1922

Churchill as Secretary of State for the Colonies during his visit to Mandatory Palestine, Tel Aviv, 1921.

Churchill as Secretary of State for the Colonies during his visit to Mandatory Palestine, Tel Aviv, 1921

 

Churchill's main home was Chartwell in Kent. He purchased it in 1922 after his daughter Mary was born.

Churchill became Secretary of State for the Colonies in February 1921. The following month, the first exhibit of his paintings took place in Paris, with Churchill exhibiting under a pseudonym. In May, his mother died, followed in August by his two-year-old daughter Marigold who died from septicaemia. Marigold's death devastated her parents and Churchill was haunted by the tragedy for the rest of his life.

 

Churchill was involved in negotiations with Sinn Féin leaders and helped draft the Anglo-Irish Treaty. He was responsible for reducing the cost of occupying the Middle East, and was involved in the installations of Faisal I of Iraq and his brother Abdullah I of Jordan. Churchill travelled to Mandatory Palestine where, as a supporter of Zionism, he refused an Arab Palestinian petition to prohibit Jewish migration. He did allow temporary restrictions following the 1921 Jaffa riots.

 

In September 1922, the Chanak Crisis erupted as Turkish forces threatened to occupy the Dardanelles neutral zone, which was policed by the British army based in Chanak (now Çanakkale). Churchill and Lloyd George favoured military resistance to any Turkish advance but the majority Conservatives in the coalition government opposed it. A political debacle ensued which resulted in the Conservative withdrawal from the government, precipitating the November 1922 general election.

 

Also in September, Churchill's fifth and last child, Mary, was born, and in the same month he purchased Chartwell, in Kent, which became his family home. In October 1922, he underwent an operation for appendicitis. While he was in hospital, Lloyd George's coalition was dissolved. In the general election, Churchill lost his Dundee seat to Edwin Scrymgeour, a prohibitionist candidate. Later, he wrote that he was "without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix". He was elevated as one of 50 members of the Order of the Companions of Honour, as named in Lloyd George's 1922 Dissolution Honours list.

 

Out of Parliament: 1922–1924

Churchill spent much of the next six months at the Villa Rêve d'Or near Cannes, where he devoted himself to painting and writing his memoirs. He wrote an autobiographical history of the war, The World Crisis. The first volume was published in April 1923 and the rest over the next ten years.

 

After the 1923 general election was called, seven Liberal associations asked Churchill to stand as their candidate, and he selected Leicester West, but he did not win the seat. A Labour government led by Ramsay MacDonald took power. Churchill had hoped they would be defeated by a Conservative-Liberal coalition. He strongly opposed the MacDonald government's decision to loan money to Soviet Russia and feared the signing of an Anglo-Soviet Treaty.

 

On 19 March 1924, alienated by Liberal support for Labour, Churchill stood as an independent anti-socialist candidate in the Westminster Abbey by-election but was defeated. In May, he addressed a Conservative meeting in Liverpool and declared that there was no longer a place for the Liberal Party in British politics. He said that Liberals must back the Conservatives to stop Labour and ensure "the successful defeat of socialism". In July, he agreed with Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin that he would be selected as a Conservative candidate in the next general election, which was held on 29 October. Churchill stood at Epping, but he described himself as a "Constitutionalist". The Conservatives were victorious, and Baldwin formed the new government. Although Churchill had no background in finance or economics, Baldwin appointed him as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

 

Chancellor of the Exchequer: 1924–1929

Main article: Winston Churchill as Chancellor of the Exchequer

Becoming Chancellor on 6 November 1924, Churchill formally rejoined the Conservative Party. As Chancellor, he intended to pursue his free trade principles in the form of laissez-faire economics, as under the Liberal social reforms. In April 1925, he controversially albeit reluctantly restored the gold standard in his first budget at its 1914 parity against the advice of some leading economists including John Maynard Keynes. The return to gold is held to have caused deflation and resultant unemployment with a devastating impact on the coal industry. Churchill presented five budgets in all to April 1929. Among his measures were reduction of the state pension age from 70 to 65; immediate provision of widow's pensions; reduction of military expenditure; income tax reductions and imposition of taxes on luxury items.

 

During the General Strike of 1926, Churchill edited the British Gazette, the government's anti-strike propaganda newspaper. After the strike ended, he acted as an intermediary between striking miners and their employers. He later called for the introduction of a legally binding minimum wage. In a House of Commons speech in 1926 Churchill made his unique feelings on the issue of Irish unity clear. He stated that Ireland should be united within itself but also "united to the British Empire." In early 1927, Churchill visited Rome where he met Mussolini, whom he praised for his stand against Leninism.

 

The "Wilderness Years": 1929–1939

In the 1929 general election, Churchill retained his Epping seat, but the Conservatives were defeated, and MacDonald formed his second Labour government. Out of office, Churchill was prone to depression (his "black dog") but addressed this by writing. He began work on Marlborough: His Life and Times, a four-volume biography of his ancestor John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. It was by this time that he had developed a reputation for being a heavy drinker of alcoholic beverages, although Jenkins believes that was often exaggerated.

 

Hoping that the Labour government could be ousted, he gained Baldwin's approval to work towards establishing a Conservative-Liberal coalition, although many Liberals were reluctant. In October 1930, after his return from a trip to North America, Churchill published his autobiography, My Early Life, which sold well and was translated into multiple languages.

 

In January 1931, Churchill resigned from the Conservative Shadow Cabinet because Baldwin supported the government's decision to grant Dominion status to India. Churchill believed that enhanced home rule status would hasten calls for full independence. He was particularly opposed to Mohandas Gandhi, whom he considered "a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir". His views enraged Labour and Liberal opinion although he was supported by many grassroot Conservatives.

 

The October 1931 general election was a landslide victory for the Conservatives. Churchill nearly doubled his majority in Epping, but he was not given a ministerial position. The Commons debated Dominion Status for India on 3 December and Churchill insisted on dividing the House, but this backfired as only 43 MPs supported him. He embarked on a lecture tour of North America, hoping to recoup financial losses sustained in the Wall Street Crash. On 13 December, he was crossing Fifth Avenue in New York City when he was knocked down by a car, suffering a head wound from which he developed neuritis. To further his convalescence, he and Clementine took ship to Nassau for three weeks but Churchill became depressed there about his financial and political losses. He returned to America in late January 1932 and completed most of his lectures before arriving home on 18 March.

 

Having worked on Marlborough for much of 1932, Churchill in late August decided to visit his ancestor's battlefields. In Munich, he met Ernst Hanfstaengl, a friend of Hitler, who was then rising in prominence. Hanfstaengl tried to arrange a meeting between Churchill and Hitler, but Hitler was unenthusiastic: "What on earth would I talk to him about?" he asked. Soon after visiting Blenheim, Churchill was affected by paratyphoid fever and spent two weeks at a sanatorium in Salzburg. He returned to Chartwell on 25 September, still working on Marlborough. Two days later, he collapsed while walking in the grounds after a recurrence of paratyphoid which caused an ulcer to haemorrhage. He was taken to a London nursing home and remained there until late October.

 

Warnings about Germany and the abdication crisis: 1933–1936

After Hitler came to power on 30 January 1933, Churchill was quick to recognise the menace of such a regime and expressed alarm that the British government had reduced air force spending and warned that Germany would soon overtake Britain in air force production. Armed with official data provided clandestinely by two senior civil servants, Desmond Morton and Ralph Wigram, Churchill was able to speak with authority about what was happening in Germany, especially the development of the Luftwaffe. He told the people of his concerns in a radio broadcast in November 1934, having earlier denounced the intolerance and militarism of Nazism in the House of Commons. While Churchill regarded Mussolini's regime as a bulwark against the perceived threat of communist revolution, he opposed the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, despite describing the country as a primitive, uncivilised nation. He admired the exiled king of Spain Alfonso XIII and feared that Communism was making inroads during the Spanish Civil War. He referred to Franco's army as the "anti-red movement", but later became critical of Franco as too close to Mussolini and Hitler.

 

Between October 1933 and September 1938, the four volumes of Marlborough: His Life and Times were published and sold well. In December 1934, the India Bill entered Parliament and was passed in February 1935. Churchill and 83 other Conservative MPs voted against it. In June 1935, MacDonald resigned and was succeeded as prime minister by Baldwin. Baldwin then led the Conservatives to victory in the 1935 general election; Churchill retained his seat with an increased majority but was again left out of the government.

 

In January 1936, Edward VIII succeeded his father, George V, as monarch. His desire to marry an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, caused the abdication crisis. Churchill supported Edward and clashed with Baldwin on the issue. Afterwards, although Churchill immediately pledged loyalty to George VI, he wrote that the abdication was "premature and probably quite unnecessary".

 

Anti-appeasement: 1937–1939

In May 1937, Baldwin resigned and was succeeded as prime minister by Neville Chamberlain. At first, Churchill welcomed Chamberlain's appointment but, in February 1938, matters came to a head after Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigned over Chamberlain's appeasement of Mussolini, a policy which Chamberlain was extending towards Hitler.

 

In 1938, Churchill warned the government against appeasement and called for collective action to deter German aggression. In March, the Evening Standard ceased publication of his fortnightly articles, but the Daily Telegraph published them instead. Following the German annexation of Austria, Churchill spoke in the House of Commons, declaring that "the gravity of the events[...] cannot be exaggerated"...

 

A country like ours, possessed of immense territory and wealth, whose defence has been neglected, cannot avoid war by dilating upon its horrors, or even by a continuous display of pacific qualities, or by ignoring the fate of the victims of aggression elsewhere. War will be avoided, in present circumstances, only by the accumulation of deterrents against the aggressor.

 

— Winston Churchill,

He began calling for a mutual defence pact among European states threatened by German expansionism, arguing that this was the only way to halt Hitler. This was to no avail as, in September, Germany mobilised to invade the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Churchill visited Chamberlain at Downing Street and urged him to tell Germany that Britain would declare war if the Germans invaded Czechoslovak territory; Chamberlain was not willing to do this. On 30 September, Chamberlain signed up to the Munich Agreement, agreeing to allow German annexation of the Sudetenland. Speaking in the House of Commons on 5 October, Churchill called the agreement "a total and unmitigated defeat". Following the final dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Churchill and his supporters called for the foundation of a national coalition. His popularity increased and people began to agitate for his return to office.

 

First Lord of the Admiralty: September 1939 to May 1940

Main article: Winston Churchill in the Second World War

Phoney War and the Norwegian Campaign

On 3 September 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, Chamberlain reappointed Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty and he joined Chamberlain's war cabinet. Churchill was one of the highest-profile ministers during the so-called "Phoney War". Churchill was ebullient after the Battle of the River Plate on 13 December 1939 and afterwards welcomed home the crews, congratulating them on "a brilliant sea fight". On 16 February 1940, Churchill personally ordered Captain Philip Vian of the destroyer HMS Cossack to board the German supply ship Altmark in Norwegian waters freeing 299 British merchant seamen who had been captured by the Admiral Graf Spee. These actions, supplemented by his speeches, considerably enhanced Churchill's reputation.

 

He was concerned about German naval activity in the Baltic Sea and initially wanted to send a naval force there but this was soon changed to a plan, codenamed Operation Wilfred, to mine Norwegian waters and stop iron ore shipments from Narvik to Germany. There were disagreements about mining, both in the war cabinet and with the French government. As a result, Wilfred was delayed until 8 April 1940, the day before the German invasion of Norway.

 

Norway Debate and Chamberlain's resignation

After the Allies failed to prevent the German occupation of Norway, the Commons held an open debate from 7 to 9 May on the government's conduct of the war. This has come to be known as the Norway Debate, one of the most significant events in parliamentary history. On the second day, the Labour opposition called for a division which was in effect a vote of no confidence in Chamberlain's government. Churchill was called upon to wind up the debate, which placed him in the difficult position of having to defend the government without damaging his own prestige. Although the government won the vote, its majority was drastically reduced amid calls for a national government to be formed.

 

Early on 10 May, German forces invaded Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands as a prelude to their assault on France. Since the division vote, Chamberlain had been trying to form a coalition but Labour declared on the Friday afternoon that they would not serve under his leadership, although they would accept another Conservative. The only two candidates were Churchill and Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary. The matter had already been discussed at a meeting on the 9th between Chamberlain, Halifax, Churchill, and David Margesson, the government Chief Whip. Halifax admitted that he could not govern effectively as a member of the House of Lords and so Chamberlain advised the King to send for Churchill, who became prime minister. Churchill later wrote of feeling a profound sense of relief in that he now had authority over the whole scene. He believed that his life so far had been "a preparation for this hour and for this trial".

 

Prime Minister: 1940–1945

Main article: First premiership of Winston Churchill

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the first premiership of Winston Churchill.

Further information: Churchill war ministry

See also: Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II and British Empire in World War II

Dunkirk to Pearl Harbor: May 1940 to December 1941

 

Churchill takes aim with a Sten sub-machine gun in June 1941. The man in the pin-striped suit and fedora to the right is his bodyguard, Walter H. Thompson.

War ministry created

Main article: Churchill war ministry

In May, Churchill was still generally unpopular with many Conservatives and probably most of the Labour Party. Chamberlain remained Conservative Party leader until October when ill health forced his resignation. By that time, Churchill had won the doubters over and his succession as party leader was a formality.

 

He began his premiership by forming a war cabinet: Chamberlain as Lord President of the Council, Labour leader Clement Attlee as Lord Privy Seal (later as Deputy Prime Minister), Halifax as Foreign Secretary and Labour's Arthur Greenwood as a minister without portfolio. In practice, these five were augmented by the service chiefs and ministers who attended the majority of meetings. The cabinet changed in size and membership as the war progressed, one of the key appointments being the leading trades unionist Ernest Bevin as Minister of Labour and National Service. In response to previous criticisms that there had been no clear single minister in charge of the prosecution of the war, Churchill created and assumed the position of Minister of Defence, making him the most powerful wartime prime minister in British history. He drafted outside experts into government to fulfil vital functions, especially on the Home Front. These included personal friends like Lord Beaverbrook and Frederick Lindemann, who became the government's scientific advisor.

 

Resolve to fight on

At the end of May, with the British Expeditionary Force in retreat to Dunkirk and the Fall of France seemingly imminent, Halifax proposed that the government should explore the possibility of a negotiated peace settlement using the still-neutral Mussolini as an intermediary. There were several high-level meetings from 26 to 28 May, including two with the French premier Paul Reynaud. Churchill's resolve was to fight on, even if France capitulated, but his position remained precarious until Chamberlain resolved to support him. Churchill had the full support of the two Labour members but knew he could not survive as prime minister if both Chamberlain and Halifax were against him. By gaining the support of his outer cabinet, Churchill outmanoeuvred Halifax and won Chamberlain over.

 

Churchill succeeded as an orator despite being handicapped from childhood with a speech impediment. He had a lateral lisp and was unable to pronounce the letter s, verbalising it with a slur. He worked hard on his pronunciation by repeating phrases designed to cure his problem with the sibilant "s". He was ultimately successful, turning the impediment into an asset, as when he called Hitler a "Nar-zee" (rhymes with "khazi"; emphasis on the "z"), rather than a Nazi ("ts").

 

His first speech as prime minister, delivered to the Commons on 13 May, was the "blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech. It was little more than a short statement but, Jenkins says, "it included phrases which have reverberated down the decades". Churchill made it plain to the nation that a long, hard road lay ahead and that victory was the final goal

 

I would say to the House... that I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: it is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: it is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

 

Churchill's use of rhetoric hardened public opinion against a peaceful resolution – Jenkins says Churchill's speeches were "an inspiration for the nation, and a catharsis for Churchill himself".

 

Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of 338,226 Allied servicemen from Dunkirk, ended on 4 June when the French rearguard surrendered. The total was far in excess of expectations and it gave rise to a popular view that Dunkirk had been a miracle, and even a victory.[312] Churchill himself referred to "a miracle of deliverance" in his "we shall fight on the beaches" speech to the Commons that afternoon, though he shortly reminded everyone that: "We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations". The speech ended on a note of defiance coupled with a clear appeal to the United States:

 

We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

 

Germany initiated Fall Rot the following day and Italy entered the war on the 10th. The Wehrmacht occupied Paris on the 14th and completed their conquest of France on 25 June. It was now inevitable that Hitler would attack and probably try to invade Great Britain. Faced with this, Churchill addressed the Commons on 18 June with one of his most famous speeches, ending with this peroration:

 

What General Weygand called the "Battle of France" is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say: "This was their finest hour".

 

Churchill ordered the commencement of the Western Desert campaign on 11 June, an immediate response to the Italian declaration of war. This went well at first while the Italian army was the sole opposition and Operation Compass was a noted success. In early 1941, however, Mussolini requested German support and Hitler sent the Afrika Korps to Tripoli under the command of Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel, who arrived not long after Churchill had halted Compass so that he could reassign forces to Greece where the Balkans campaign was entering a critical phase.

 

In other initiatives through June and July 1940, Churchill ordered the formation of both the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Commandos. The SOE was ordered to promote and execute subversive activity in Nazi-occupied Europe while the Commandos were charged with raids on specific military targets there. Hugh Dalton, the Minister of Economic Warfare, took political responsibility for the SOE and recorded in his diary that Churchill told him: "And now go and set Europe ablaze".

 

Battle of Britain and the Blitz

The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

 

The Luftwaffe altered its strategy from 7 September 1940 and began the Blitz, which was especially intensive through October and November. Churchill's morale during the Blitz was generally high and he told his private secretary John Colville in November that he thought the threat of invasion was past. He was confident that Great Britain could hold its own, given the increase in output, but was realistic about its chances of actually winning the war without American intervention.

 

Lend-Lease

In September 1940, the British and American governments concluded the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, by which fifty American destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy in exchange for free US base rights in Bermuda, the Caribbean and Newfoundland. An added advantage for Britain was that its military assets in those bases could be redeployed elsewhere.

 

Churchill's good relations with United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped secure vital food, oil and munitions via the North Atlantic shipping routes. It was for this reason that Churchill was relieved when Roosevelt was re-elected in 1940. Upon re-election, Roosevelt set about implementing a new method of providing necessities to Great Britain without the need for monetary payment. He persuaded Congress that repayment for this immensely costly service would take the form of defending the US. The policy was known as Lend-Lease and it was formally enacted on 11 March 1941.

 

Operation Barbarossa

Hitler launched his invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Churchill had known since early April, from Enigma decrypts at Bletchley Park, that the attack was imminent. He had tried to warn Joseph Stalin via the British ambassador to Moscow, Stafford Cripps, but to no avail as Stalin did not trust Churchill. The night before the attack, already intending an address to the nation, Churchill alluded to his hitherto anti-communist views by saying to Colville: "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil".

 

Atlantic Charter

In August 1941, Churchill made his first transatlantic crossing of the war on board HMS Prince of Wales and met Roosevelt in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. On 14 August, they issued the joint statement that has become known as the Atlantic Charter. This outlined the goals of both countries for the future of the world and it is seen as the inspiration for the 1942 Declaration by United Nations, itself the basis of the United Nations which was founded in June 1945.

 

Pearl Harbor and United States entry into the war

On 7–8 December 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was followed by their invasion of Malaya and, on the 8th, Churchill declared war on Japan. With the hope of using Irish ports for counter-submarine operations, Churchill sent a telegram to the Irish Prime Minister Éamon de Valera (December 8) in which he obliquely offers Irish unity: "Now is your chance. Now or never! A nation once again! I will meet you wherever you

Acrocorinth (Greek: Ακροκόρινθος), "Upper Corinth", the acropolis of ancient Corinth, is a monolithic rock overseeing the ancient city of Corinth, Greece. "It is the most impressive of the acropoleis of mainland Greece," in the estimation of George Forrest.[1] Acrocorinth was continuously occupied from archaic times to the early 19th century. The city's archaic acropolis, already an easily defensible position due to its geomorphology, was further heavily fortified during the Byzantine Empire as it became the seat of the strategos of the thema of Hellas and later of the Peloponnese. It was defended against the Crusaders for three years by Leo Sgouros.

 

Afterwards it became a fortress of the Frankish Principality of Achaea, the Venetians and the Ottoman Turks.[clarification needed] With its secure water supply, Acrocorinth's fortress was used as the last line of defense in southern Greece because it commanded the Isthmus of Corinth, repelling foes from entry into the Peloponnese peninsula. Three circuit walls formed the man-made defense of the hill. The highest peak on the site was home to a temple to Aphrodite which was converted to a church, and then became a mosque. The American School's Corinth Excavations began excavations on it in 1929. Currently, Acrocorinth is one of the most important medieval castle sites of Greece.

 

In a Corinthian myth related in the 2nd century CE to Pausanias, Briareus, one of the Hecatonchires, was the arbitrator in a dispute between Poseidon and Helios, between the sea and the sun: his verdict was that the Isthmus of Corinth belonged to Poseidon and the acropolis of Corinth (Acrocorinth) to Helios.[2][3]

 

The Upper Pirene spring is located within the encircling walls. "The spring, which is behind the temple, they say was the gift of Asopus to Sisyphus. The latter knew, so runs the legend, that Zeus had ravished Aegina, the daughter of Asopus, but refused to give information to the seeker before he had a spring given him on the Acrocorinthus

 

Why? Lifting the veil: wakey wake key ~

It’s time to awaken from the larval dream. It’s time to emerge from the chrysalis and metamorphose. It’s time to step out of the plastic straitjacket and remove the blindfold tightly tied around body and mind by insecure family, indoctrinating schooling and insincere relationships. It’s time to decide who you really are, what you’re truly here for - and why.

 

It’s time to ask, “what’s ‘work’, what’s a ‘job’, what’s freedom, and what in hell is everyone doing – and why?” It’s time to stop making non-existent illusory money and garnering disinterested social approval by giving your time and energy to speed the destruction of Planet Earth’s biosphere – time to live a real life in a real living world instead of running a rat race through a pseudo civilisation of loathsome architect-designed concrete toilets in a pointless maze of toxic termite towers.

 

Yes, yes, you’ve heard it all before and you already know what’s going on. You don’t need to be told. You know what you need to do. You already know how you really could be living, thanks very much. You’ll get around to it in your own sweet time, when you’ve paid off your debts, when your family’s grown up, when you get some free time to pause and change tack, when you retire, when you win the lottery. When you’re good and ready.

 

Sure, buddy. Sure sis. You’ll get around to doing the right thing when you’re dead – in your next incarnation on a planet you’ve helped to thoroughly degrade and ruin – when you’re reborn in Bangladesh or Mongolia or sub-Saharan Africa, instead of in a better, blessed place where you can actually be free and make a difference, like here and now.

 

It’s time to find ways to share what remains of our beautiful planet with honour and without guilt. It’s time to decide whether to live a life of truth and beauty or die for a lie you know to be false. You’ve already chosen; your actions and ‘lifestyle’ are your choice, and the time has come to reassess your decisions and remake your destiny.

 

It’s time to realise why you’ve given yourself such an incredibly rare and privileged life that you actually have the space, mentality and leisure time to sit back and read this little diatribe. Now is the time and you are the person on the spot. You’re the one we need to save the world - now, at this critical juncture betwixt future and past. Living for life or dying for death? Choose. Now.

 

The system is set up to make you think you’re either on the high road to material success or sliding down a slippery slope to a loser’s failure; yet it’s designed to ensure you fail in the end. ‘Society’ is set up to ensure anything you build or create is taken from you, bit by bit, clod by clod, and stolen from any you choose to bequeath it to. Putrescent obsolescence is built into everything you’re sold and all that you’re told.

 

In modern all-consuming societies you’re taxed more highly than any ancient feudal serf, and even when you buy something outright you’ve just begun paying for it with the only thing you can ever really own - your time. The time of your life is taxed and stolen by those you vote for on behalf of remote controllers who think they ‘own’ the world. There are plenty of alternatives to their manipulated systems, but they’re all carefully concealed from you.

 

Most humans base their entire lives – plans, hopes, fears, dreams and strategies - on outdated assumptions programmed into them by brainwashed timeservers. They smother their kids in regimental uniforms and don’t care enough to notice how playtime becomes muted, how minds are restrained and freedom retrained into uniform mindlessness. They follow in the footsteps of torpid dolts and wonder why a regimented life is boringly doleful. Trained to subservience by millennia of feuding feudalists, humankind can only approach absolute truths (and long term survival) by roundabout routes that invariably lead people further astray.

 

Schooling isn’t education. It’s a system where open minds are successfully closed and everything not forbidden is compulsory. ‘Modern’ schooling ensures that cheats always prosper and that bullies and liars always prevail in the ‘real’ outside world of business and finance. Today’s educational establishments are dopey money factories designed to extort obedient volunteer slaves. No intelligent independent minds are found in them; none can survive there.

 

Schools, colleges and universities are quagmires of brainwashing, cultural imperialism and mindless training for destructive jobs that will soon cease to exist – training yards designed to serve the momentary needs of industries owned and run by short sighted paranoid sociopaths. They’re the birthplace of hierarchy and corruption. You know it’s true. Any real learning achieved is incidental. Scores and scoring a cushy job where you can lord it over others are everything. Learning and knowledge are secondary, sacrificial goals.

 

The system is thoroughly rigged by and for the worst elements to make sure that only most egregious people rise to the top of the dung heap and prosper. Only the worst control freaks and insecure jerks with killer ‘instincts’ claw their way to the summit. You know it’s true. There’s no ‘survival of the fittest’ (or even of the most adaptable) involved. Societies aren’t interested in change and evolution, but in security, status and stasis. And sooner or later stasis always means extinction, not survival.

 

But you can be different. So can your children. Deny the unloving death of blind conformity and confirm a free loving life with every action. Be what you always wanted to be, ’ere it harm none. If you’re well intentioned and wise the multiverse will provide. Choose. Now.

  

People are bigger than their straightjackets. You have the power to remove any blindfold and widen your vision whenever you choose. You have the ability to concentrate, meditate, cogitate and liberate. Only you can do it. Only you can free yourself, heal yourself, grow and learn. No-one can do it for you and anyone who says they can is a liar you need to avoid. And you have to do these things or die blind, lonely and incomplete before your time.

 

You’re a psychic immortal who gets precisely what you created. Only when people develop the inner divining and dowsing facilities latently inherent in all conscious beings are they able to discern truth from lies –able to actually tell the truth. You can only be free when you drop all that cultural conditioning and learn to open your inner sight. You can only decide what’s what, what to do and why when you have genuine personal insight.

 

Welcome to the new Aeon, a time when dangerous old myths can finally be laid to rest and healthier new legends allowed to arise from the ashes of yesterday’s ignorance.

 

One easy way to learn the truth is to ask two simple questions; ‘Why?’, and ‘Who Profits?’ Keep these liberating queries in mind as you progress onward…

 

Here’s a handy list of dangerous myths we need to lay to rest (and drive stakes through the hearts of. Repeatedly).

  

‘What did you do to save the world, daddy/mummy?’

 

Lie #1: The planet will soak up any mess humans make.

 

It won’t - not in any timeframe recognisable by you. We’ll all be dead before the planet is repaired and reforested unless WE go out and clean up our messes, stop the destruction of living treasures, replant entire continents of forests and weed and nourish them for generations, starting yesterday. Most brain-deprived, depraved ‘leaders’ seem to think the planet merely needs to be repaved. Don’t fall for their bandaid ‘solutions’. Opt out of death-dealing ‘civilisation’ and help start fresh societies in the green living world beyond the walls.

 

1b: Trees are a renewable resource. Forests will grow back if we cut them down.

 

They won’t. They haven’t. When the soil has washed away, the seed stock is gone and rainfall has disappeared (because forests make most of our rain, and store most of our fresh water) you’ve killed all the most interesting, nourishing and beneficial plants and animals and inherit a desert of sand, clay and rocks. It takes centuries for trees to be large enough, with large enough hollows, to support viable animal populations – including humans. Forests without animals are scrubby denuded death zones bereft of nutrients.

 

Idiots are still cutting down trees for money when there are better, cleaner, cheaper and totally renewable solutions for everything provided by natural forests - for everything except clean water, food and air! Somewhere near you, now, today, a forest is being felled. Help anyone who’s trying to stop them. Now.

 

Without global forests you’ll have no water fit to drink, no air fit to breathe and no crops to eat. The truth isn’t ‘out there’ – it’s obvious to any who actually look with unblinkered eyes.

 

Lie #2: Burning toxic fuels with lethal exhausts isn’t dangerous to the ecosystem or to people, and we need to keep doing it to fuel a prosperous civilisation.

 

It is. We don’t. If you don’t know about better technologies that are already available your head is in the sand with the in dust ‘realists’, looking for another oilfield or coal seam to vampirise. Some advanced nations are already totally fuelled by clean renewable energy. Literally hundreds of patents for new energy technologies are literally suppressed and stolen by ‘intelligence’ and ‘the military’ on behalf of ruthless killer corporations every year. Clean, free energy systems have been available for over a century and repeatedly eliminated, along with their investors (see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/free%20energy ). One name should suffice to explain much; Nikola Tesla.

 

The truth isn’t ‘out there’ – it’s being actively suppressed all around you. Why? The answer is a nested series of onion skins; the Russian dolls of money, control and power wrapped round an inner core of ultimate terrified insecurity.

 

2b: Human-made global warming is a lie spread by some unnameable group to control our lives and make us poorer.

 

It isn’t. The fossil fuel power mongers have lied to you so successfully that many or most people have been convinced ecologists have some vested interest in misleading them – instead of the profiteering planet killers who make gazillions from mining and selling you toxic and unnecessary products. CO2 IS a ‘greenhouse gas’, whose levels have dictated global temperatures for billions of years.

 

Whether we inject enough heat into the biosphere to forestall an impending cyclic ice age or simply create a global desert, every industry that injects carbon dioxide into the biosphere is doing so as a byproduct of pumping far more deadly chemicals into your body all the time, in the interests of meaningless profit. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply lying or ignorant.

 

Any time someone tells you that carbon dioxide isn’t a greenhouse gas or that manmade global warming is a lie, challenge them for some data – any real facts – and you won’t get any that aren’t constructs of half-truths, misdirecting distractions and outright lies. Humans ARE heating the planet with toxic emissions regardless of what industry shills and conspiratorial ignoramuses tell you (see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/co2 ).

 

Time for an inconvenient and little-appreciated fact: when climate scientists tell you there will be, say, a five degree Celsius rise in global temperature they’re talking about global averages – including sea temperatures, which will hardly rise at all. A ‘five degree average rise’ means a TEN DEGREE rise - or more - on the land (outside the tropics) – where you and everything that makes it possible for you to survive actually lives. Forget drowning cities and sinking islands – all that will be left is desert and dust if we allow our ‘leaders’ to keep taking bribes from blindly competitive in dust ‘realists’.

 

There is no truth on the side of profiteering corporations, surprisingly enough – and the only ‘invested interest’ environmentalists have is the wish to survive and thrive. Have you heard of the Precautionary Principle? If you haven’t, google it. The truth isn’t ‘out there’, it’s simple: stop using toxic products fuelled by toxic fuels that make profits for toxic monopolies run by toxic people.

  

Authorised Docterds

Lie #3: We’re repeatedly informed that ‘education is liberation’. It isn’t. Learning is liberation; education swiftly becomes rote indoctrination. The most dangerous, authoritarian ignoramuses are those who stayed in school the longest. No-one with a doctorate is entirely sane. No-one who demands money in exchange for healing the sick, protecting another’s rights and freedom, repairing the ecosystem or providing education can be trusted; they know nothing of truth and are part of the problem, not the solution. Anyone who profits from another’s misery, toil or terror is actually, functionally, a heartless sociopath.

 

In ‘advanced’ notions today, more people die from medical errors than from any other cause. Only a few years ago docterds ensured that just about everyone in ‘developed’ notions had organs removed from their bodies ‘just in case’ something went wrong. Every child was expected to have their tonsils and adenoids (lymph glands), appendix and wisdom teeth ‘removed’, just in case their docterd couldn’t afford a flashier car or another mistress. And many an operation led to another, to correct the mistakes made in the first. It was all bullshit and almost everyone fell for it, because, like priests and lawyers, docterds claim a false monopoly on access to life and death and rule only by terror. See hermetic.blog.com/2012/09/16/freeing-god’s-slaves-the-e...

 

Today fluoridation, toxic vaccines, poisonous drugs and a host of other techniques bestow slow death and perpetual dissolution on the incredibly patient (trusting, ignorant and terrified) patient.

See nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/fluoridation and nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/vaccines

 

Your health and mind are in your hands. Sawbones/surgeons can occasionally be handy in real emergencies but best avoided at all other times. Once in a while you may damage yourself so much you need some repairs, but the only actual healing is done by you, your self, your body. The placebo effect – whereby if you believe something will heal you it will, regardless of whether it has any active ingredients or not – is estimated by reputable sources as being around forty percent – that’s 40%! This means that almost half of all cures are widely accepted as being basically magical –consciousness-driven - in nature. The other sixty percent are as well.

  

Time for some Truths

Cui Bono? Who Profits? Who is it good for?

 

Truth #1: Who profits? No-one who doesn’t have another planet or two readily available profits from old style industrial societies. Yet there will always be some deluded power monger willing to kill millions – to wreck an entire planet and civilisation - so that they can have a flashier car or another mansion complex surrounded by bodyguards and electric fences.

 

There are always those who’ve been so successfully brainwashed they’ll actually believe that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Messiah, a Redeemer, a big bearded genocidal racist asshole in the sky, his fallen foes or his mythical toady son are real – and these naïfs make fine prey for patriarchal paedophilic proselytising pederast priests. Who but the most ignorant innocents fall for such superstitious claptrap? Who but an insecure control freak with delusions of grandeur would want to interpose themselves as a middleman between you and your divine psychic heritage?

 

Anyone who tells you the Divine is only available through some frock wearing po-faced priest, or from some Bronze Age tome cobbled together by merciless barbaric dictators, or through some graven image or guru or savant, is lying. All who ‘worship’ some odd bod god or other fetish are simply trained to doff the forelock, kneel, bow, scrape and be subservient to a dead or deadly psychopathic control freak. Watch out, little girls! Bums to the wall, boys!

 

Christinanity, Islime and Moronism – to name a few - are nothing more than some of the more recent pernicious death cults focused on lies of pies in the skies at the expense of happy, healthy lives in the only real place - here and now. All other ‘great religions’ are as bad or worse. Religion is a region with a li(e) in it. But they make gigantic tax-free profits! Cui bono?

 

The truth is always simple. The only beliefs that are true are those that spread life, light, health and diversity – the hallmarks of true survival and wisdom. Everything else is deceptive bullshit.

 

If you really want to learn how to access the godhead that is the birthright and crown of all beings, all you have to do is listen to the endless programs running through the rat wheel of your mind – and transcend them. Everyone can do it if they try, but the younger and fresher you start deprogramming yourself and tuning into ‘higher’ or ‘deeper’ consciousness the better. See nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/meditation and nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/magic if you want to learn how.

 

Enlightenment will always be available to any true seeker with an open mind and compassionate heart. Guides are always available if you simply search, but accept no substitute for self-gained awareness – and anyone who demands money in exchange for spreading the light of universal awareness is not a person you want anything to do with.

  

The Lore of the Land

 

Truth #2: There is no government. There is no law. There are no companies or corporations. Money does not exist. They are fables, illusions, widely accepted truisms – but they aren’t things. They don’t actually exist, except as agreements between people. They have no inherent power. They are clever pernicious illusions.

 

If you take a closer look you’ll discover that none of your country’s laws has a basis in any fact. In fact, you’ll find that your nation is also merely a notion, a fable agreed to by a sectional segment of some of the people; not all, or even necessarily most, but merely those who profit the most from the fable.

 

No ‘higher power’ or external ‘divine plan’ or government controls your life. No dog, no master. Thou art god(dess). All human-made laws are simply constructs and contracts, and none are writ in stone. The only real inherent law is the lore or karma and dharma – the ‘golden rule’: Do unto others as you’d be done by. It’s the only law and lore that works, and needs no intercessor or interpreter, no priest, monk, scholar or savant to preserve or transmit through the ages. It’s free for all, forever.

 

The real Law is no mystery and has no officers. It needs no prophets, liars/lawyers, judges or arbitrators. As above, so below. You are part of a giant hologram, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and every part contains the whole. In a holographic universe where everyone shares the same consciousness, anything you do to or for anyone else is something you do to or for your self.

 

Don’t kid yourself that ‘good deeds for others will reap rewards’. Of course they will. But anything you do for your children, family or strangers you’re actually doing for yourself. Caring about your family more than anyone else is perfectly understandable on a mechanical, biological and genetic level – but it’s also the basis for the worst traits of humankind. Racism, genocide, slavery and most forms of discrimination are outgrowths of such ‘love’, which is actually selfish at its root. Everyone is your family.

 

In fact, everyone is you, and you are everyone, for thou art god(dess), recreating the manifest world from instant to moment at a level beyond and behind linguistic thought.

  

Abundance and Scarcity: It’s Falseconomy, Stupid!

  

Truth #3: Money doesn’t exist. It’s a global pyramid scam whereby only the first ones in get to the top of the pyramid – everyone else loses. We have the ability to provide everyone on the planet with enough food, water and shelter – but we don’t appear to have enough of an entirely imaginary commodity to do it with. Something is very wrong.

 

The ‘science’ of economics is bullshit, as any true scientist can tell you. Arbitrary rules are continually altered and no ‘economist’ can make accurate predictions based on ‘economics’. It’s just another scam to make you think ‘authorities’ know what they’re doing and can be trusted to look after your best interests. Lol.

 

Money is simply invented. It’s created at the flick of a keyboard. It’s all made up; simply invented by (in)vested interests with ‘interest’. When the illusion is so arranged as to make it appear the ‘economy’ is circling the drain you go down the tubes – but the banksters, monarchs and in dust realists who own actual, tangible things don’t, as we all ought to recognise. This happens regularly and repeatedly. I won’t go on – see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/banksters and never take out a loan. Don’t use banks. There are plenty of alternatives.

 

Become as self-sufficient and live as sustainably as possible.

 

People are told they must pay money to inhabit a patch of the planet, and because they’ve been trained to accept a vast raft of lies by feudal societies run by hideous robber barons surrounded by gunmen they simply accept it.

 

People are told they must go to school and work every day to provide enough food, water, shelter and entertainment for themselves and their families. It’s a lie. That only has to happen because we’ve allowed industrious robber barons and banksters to steal everything and arrange it that way when we have a wide choice of much better possibilities. Now, at the dawn of the Third Millennium, the new industrious revolution has begun and advancing automation, nanotech and new processed like 3d printing mean that the jig is up. Full ‘employment’ is no longer possible or desirable. Now we have to provide shelter, food, water, transport and other necessities to everyone, even the rich, for free – because now, at last, we can!

 

If you work at any job that isn’t actively healing the planet you’re almost certainly actively destroying it. If you go into debt you’re destroying it. If you flush a toilet into a river or ocean, if you use fossil fuelled transport to and from work or to power your home (and nuclear fuels are fossil fuels, too) you’re destroying it. If you aren’t growing at least some of your own food and medicine you’re destroying it. If you leave your kids in some regimented school (or even a childcare centre) to be mindlessly raised to do and be the same as you were brainwashed into, you’re destroying it – and them.

 

If you’re trapped on a treadmill with no easy way out but to simply jump off and take your chances – JUMP OFF.

 

You’ll be so glad you did!

  

Competitiveness = Death Dealers

  

Truth #4: The ‘killer instinct’ is no instinct – it’s a result of training. Bullies and psychopaths are made, not born – and they can be unmade if you catch, restrain and retrain them early enough. Without bullying children don’t learn hate, fear and fight. Without bullies children don’t learn to be subservient. Bullies must be separated from other kids until they can be trusted among them. The same is true for adults.

 

The only reason to have a gun is to murder. They’re made for no other reason. They’re the coward’s long distance death dealing weapon of choice. Only people terrified of their neighbours own guns – and that, of course, terrifies their neighbours. Violence begets violence and weapons beget weapons. They’re feedback loops. Weapon ownership is always an arms race, the stupid doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction writ small for small minded loony hoons, terrified cowards and immature halfwits who like to menace others. Anyone who wants a gun – like anyone who wants a presidency – is precisely the person you don’t want to trust with one.

 

Allowing gun ownership in human society is just a form of collective lunacy. No popguns will save you from a modern army – or government swat team. They’ll just get you killed more quickly and assuredly. That’s the real lesson of modern history, for anyone who cares to look; don’t fall for the lies of weapon profiteers. In modern conflicts the survivors are those who successfully avoid the fighting. Save your money and save a life; you can’t have peace with a gun in your hand and it’s almost certain that no-one will aim one at you if you don’t. War or peace; you can’t serve two masters. Choose. Now.

 

All free societies have a fine time without weaponised populations perpetually living under a Sword of Damocles. The US, for instance, is not a free society but a corporatocracy that’s had its freedoms surgically removed since neoconmen ensured King George II stole the (p)residency. Freedom is free. How could it be otherwise? If you have to do something to defend or promote ‘freedom’, it isn’t freedom and you aren’t free. The contrary view is oxymoronic absurdity.

 

Flags are just coloured rags used to blindfold sacrificial lambs and enshroud their mangled bodies. Wars are always fought to enrich a few cowardly, spiteful old dorks and their trophy girlfriends hiding in some castle or penthouse. There is no honour involved in killing – it’s simply the worst form of working for The Man.

 

The only people who profit from wars and weapons are weapon makers, ammunition merchants, oil barons and the politicians they coerce and bribe. No-one who kills for a wage is anything but a (poorly) paid killer. This includes virtually all soldiers – not just mercenaries – and everyone who makes a profit from raising, hunting or killing animals for food.

 

You may have fallen for the bullshit that humans need to eat corpses to be healthy. The opposite is true. No-one (regardless of blood type or haplogroup) needs meat to survive. It’s a choice, a habit, an appetite – an addiction, nothing more.

 

Cattle and ‘meat animals’ are condemned to lives of pain and torture. They’re castrated, poisoned, fed garbage, corralled into cages, beaten, shocked and terrified into submission (rather like modern domesticated primates). If you saw what happens to animals before they end up in your mouth you wouldn’t touch the poisons collected at the top of the food chain and pump them through your bloodstream. Most young kids vomit the first time they’re fed eggs or meat. Ever wonder why?

 

Before you accept the lie that ‘vegetarians kill too – everything kills to survive’, consider that eating the fruits, vegetables and seeds of plants doesn’t kill any plant. The plant lives on, and reproduces. Just on more lie told by profiteers; one more unexamined false assumption.

 

If you choose to create endless unnecessary suffering by slaughtering innocent, terrified animals you deserve all that’s coming to you. Remember that ‘karma’ thing? Choose. Now.

See nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/vegetarianism

  

The Road to Hell is Paved with False Assumptions

 

When we’re kids we all ask, “Why?” Some kids mean, “Why does it work like that?” Others are asking, “Why on Earth would people do something so stupid?”

 

Bereft of imagination, in dust ‘realists’ force everyone to inhabit their bland, artless, heartless concrete toilets - blocky headstones designed by award winning wannabes and built by money-mastered so called craftsmen. Chintzy malls and ugly mausoleums masquerading as a civilisation. We can do much, much better.

 

Everything we’ve built has foundations of clay. All our sciences, beliefs and political systems are based on antiquated false assumptions; on lies, to be absolutely clear. Truth is always in here, within, waiting to be recognised by a freshly awakening mind. It isn’t going anywhere – unlike the outmoded scams perpetuated by a dying breed of conmen and the pernicious women hiding behind their thrones.

 

You’d think they’d know by now - you can service two mistresses but you can’t serve two masters! Life or Mammoney: Choose! Now!

  

It’s beyond the scope of this little entreaty to cover all these bases in detail – but they’re all explored in more (and more) depth at this website: become one of the New Illuminati by perusing truths and subscribing via one of the many ways available @ nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/

 

- Welcome to the New Millennium and have a great New Aeon

R. Ayana

 

For more by R, Ayana see nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/r.%20ayana

- See ‘Older Posts’ at the end of each section

 

From nexusilluminati.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/why-lifting-veil-...

This photo is the result of a "happy accident." I was at my corner grocery, talking with one of the young co-owners about his academic career. (He's one course short of his Bachelor's degree--he'll be the first in his family to finish college.) As I looked up, I saw myself reflected in the mirror on the shelf. A lightbulb went off...what a great photo opportunity--and perfect occasion for a "selfie"!

 

I was delighted to discover in late 2013 that the Oxford Dictionary in the UK--the semi-official arbitrators of the English language internationally--had chosen the word "selfie" as one of the new words they were adding to the dictionary, whence the above link.

 

I L.O.V.E. hodgepodge! I am a proud member of the flickr Hodgepodge group, founded by Loon Man.

 

Washington Heights, Upper Manhattan

New York City

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Title created for the group Six Word Story.

 

An outdoor bronze sculpture of former British prime minister David Lloyd George by Glynn Williams stands in Parliament Square in London, United Kingdom.

 

This statue, which stands 8 feet (2.4 m) tall, was unveiled in October 2007 and was funded by the David Lloyd George Statue Appeal, a charitable trust supported in part by the Prince of Wales.

 

David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor,[a] OM, KStJ, PC (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. A Liberal Party politician from Wales, he was known for leading the United Kingdom during the First World War, for social-reform policies (including the National Insurance Act 1911), for his role in the Paris Peace Conference, and for negotiating the establishment of the Irish Free State. He was the last Liberal Party prime minister; the party fell into third-party status shortly after the end of his premiership.

 

After becoming active in local politics, Lloyd George gained a reputation as an orator and a proponent of a Welsh blend of radical Liberal ideas, which included support for Welsh devolution, for the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales, for equality for labourers and tenant farmers, and for reform of land ownership. In 1890 he narrowly won a by-election to become the Member of Parliament for Caernarvon Boroughs, in which seat he remained for 55 years. He served in Henry Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet from 1905. After H. H. Asquith succeeded to the premiership in 1908, Lloyd George replaced him as Chancellor of the Exchequer. To fund extensive welfare reforms he proposed taxes on land ownership and high incomes in the "People's Budget" (1909), which the Conservative-dominated House of Lords rejected. The resulting constitutional crisis was only resolved after two elections in 1910 and the passage of the Parliament Act 1911. His budget was enacted in 1910, and the National Insurance Act 1911 and other measures helped to establish the modern welfare state. In 1913, he was embroiled in the Marconi scandal, but he remained in office and promoted the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales until 1914, when its implementation was suspended in response to the outbreak of the First World War.

 

As wartime chancellor, Lloyd George strengthened the country's finances and forged agreements with trade unions to maintain production. In 1915, Asquith formed a Liberal-led wartime coalition with the Conservatives and Labour. Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions and rapidly expanded production. Amongst other measures, he set up four large munitions factories as a countermeasure to the shell crisis of the previous year. The so-called 'National Filling Factory' in Renfrewshire was named 'Georgetown' in Lloyd George's honour. In 1916, he was appointed Secretary of State for War but was frustrated by his limited power and by clashes with the military establishment over strategy. Amid stalemate on the Western Front, confidence in Asquith's leadership as prime minister waned, and he resigned in December 1916. Lloyd George succeeded him as prime minister, supported by the Conservatives and some Liberals. He centralised authority by creating a smaller war cabinet, a new Cabinet Office and what he called his "Garden Suburb" of advisers. To combat food shortages he implemented the convoy system, established rationing, and stimulated farming. After supporting the disastrous French Nivelle Offensive in 1917, he had to reluctantly approve Field Marshal Haig's plans for the Battle of Passchendaele, which again resulted in huge casualties with little strategic benefit. Against the views of British military commanders, he was finally able to see the Allies brought under one command in March 1918. The war effort turned in their favour in August and was won in November. In the aftermath, and following the December 1918 "Coupon" election, he and the Conservatives maintained their coalition with popular support. Earlier that year his government had extended the franchise to all men and some women.

 

Lloyd George was a major player in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but the situation in Ireland worsened that year, erupting into the Irish War of Independence, which lasted until Lloyd George negotiated independence from the UK for the Irish Free State in 1921. At home, he initiated reforms to education and housing, but trade-union militancy rose to record levels, the economy became depressed in 1920 and unemployment rose; spending cuts followed in 1921–22, and in 1922 he became embroiled in a scandal over the sale of honours and the Chanak Crisis. The Carlton Club meeting resulted in backbench support for the Conservatives to end the coalition and to contest the next election alone. Lloyd George resigned as prime minister and never held office again, but continued as the leader of a Liberal faction. After an awkward reunion with Asquith's faction in 1923, Lloyd George led the Liberals from 1926 to 1931. He put forward innovative proposals for public works and other reforms in a series of coloured books, but made only modest gains in the 1929 election. After 1931, he was a mistrusted figure heading a small rump of breakaway Liberals who were opposed to the National Government. In 1940, he refused to serve in Winston Churchill's War Cabinet. He was elevated to the peerage in 1945, shortly before his death.

 

Early life

David George was born on 17 January 1863 in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, to Welsh parents William George and Elizabeth Lloyd George. William George had previously been married to Selina Huntley, who died in 1855 aged 36. William and Elizabeth's first child was a son, David, born in September 1860, who only lived 12 hours.

 

William George had been a teacher in both London and Liverpool. He also taught in the Unitarian-administered Hope Street Sunday Schools, where he met Unitarian minister James Martineau.  In March 1863, on account of his failing health, William George returned with his family to his native Pembrokeshire. He took up farming but died in June 1864 of pneumonia, aged 44. David was just over one year old.

 

William's widow, Elizabeth George, sold the farm and moved with her children to her native Llanystumdwy in Caernarfonshire, where she lived in a cottage known as Highgate with her brother Richard. Richard Lloyd was a shoemaker, a minister (first in the Scottish Baptists and then in the Church of Christ), and a strong Liberal. Richard Lloyd was a towering influence on his nephew until his death in 1917 and was the first to encourage his nephew to take up a career in law and enter politics. David adopted his uncle's surname to become "Lloyd George" Lloyd George was educated at the local Anglican school, Llanystumdwy National School, and later under tutors.

 

He was brought up with Welsh as his first language;[4] Roy Jenkins, another Welsh politician, notes that, "Lloyd George was Welsh, that his whole culture, his whole outlook, his language was Welsh." Though Lloyd George cited the influence of his childhood throughout his career, biographer John Grigg argues that his childhood was nowhere near as poverty-stricken as he liked to suggest.

 

Though brought up a devout evangelical, Lloyd George privately lost his religious faith as a young man. Biographer Don Cregier says he became "a Deist and perhaps an agnostic, though he remained a chapel-goer and connoisseur of good preaching all his life." He was nevertheless, according to Frank Owen, "one of the foremost fighting leaders of a fanatical Welsh Nonconformity" for a quarter of a century.

 

Legal practice and early politics

Lloyd George qualified as a solicitor in 1884 after being articled to a firm in Porthmadog and taking Honours in his final law examination. He set up his own practice in the back parlour of his uncle's house in 1885. Although many prime ministers have been barristers, Lloyd George is, as of 2024, the only solicitor to have held that office.

 

As a solicitor, Lloyd George was politically active from the start, campaigning for his uncle's Liberal Party in the 1885 election. He was attracted by Joseph Chamberlain's "unauthorised programme" of Radical reform.  After the election, Chamberlain split with Gladstone in opposition to Irish Home Rule, and Lloyd George moved to join the Liberal Unionists. Uncertain of which wing to follow, he moved a resolution in support of Chamberlain at a local Liberal club and travelled to Birmingham to attend the first meeting of Chamberlain's new National Radical Union, but arrived a week too early.  In 1907 Lloyd George would tell Herbert Lewis that he had thought Chamberlain's plan for a federal solution to the Home Rule Question correct in 1886 and still thought so, and that "If Henry Richmond, Osborne Morgan and the Welsh members had stood by Chamberlain on an agreement as regards the [Welsh] disestablishment, they would have carried Wales with them"

 

His legal practice quickly flourished; he established branch offices in surrounding towns and took his brother William into partnership in 1887. Lloyd George's legal and political triumph came in the Llanfrothen burial case, which established the right of Nonconformists to be buried according to denominational rites in parish burial grounds, as given by the Burial Laws Amendment Act 1880 but theretofore ignored by the Anglican clergy. On Lloyd George's advice, a Baptist burial party broke open a gate to a cemetery that had been locked against them by the vicar. The vicar sued them for trespass and although the jury returned a verdict for the party, the local judge misrecorded the jury's verdict and found in the vicar's favour. Suspecting bias, Lloyd George's clients won on appeal to the Divisional Court of Queen's Bench in London, where Lord Chief Justice Coleridge found in their favour. The case was hailed as a great victory throughout Wales and led to Lloyd George's adoption as the Liberal candidate for Carnarvon Boroughs on 27 December 1888.  The same year, he and other young Welsh Liberals founded a monthly paper, Udgorn Rhyddid (Bugle of Freedom).

 

In 1889, Lloyd George became an alderman on Carnarvonshire County Council (a new body which had been created by the Local Government Act 1888) and would remain so for the rest of his life.  Lloyd George would also serve the county as a Justice of the Peace (1910), chairman of Quarter Sessions (1929–38), and Deputy Lieutenant in 1921.

 

Marriage

Lloyd George married Margaret Owen, the daughter of a well-to-do local farming family, on 24 January 1888.

 

Early years as a member of Parliament (1890–1905)

Lloyd George's career as a member of parliament began when he was returned as a Liberal MP for Caernarfon Boroughs (now Caernarfon), narrowly winning the by-election on 10 April 1890, following the death of the Conservative member Edmund Swetenham. He would remain an MP for the same constituency until 1945, 55 years later. Lloyd George's early beginnings in Westminster may have proven difficult for him as a radical liberal and "a great outsider". Backbench members of the House of Commons were not paid at that time, so Lloyd George supported himself and his growing family by continuing to practise as a solicitor. He opened an office in London under the name of "Lloyd George and Co." and continued in partnership with William George in Criccieth. In 1897, he merged his growing London practice with that of Arthur Rhys Roberts (who was to become Official Solicitor) under the name of "Lloyd George, Roberts and Co."

 

Welsh affairs

Kenneth O. Morgan describes Lloyd George as a "lifelong Welsh nationalist" and suggests that between 1880 and 1914 he was "the symbol and tribune of the national reawakening of Wales", although he is also clear that from the early 1900s his main focus gradually shifted to UK-wide issues. He also became an associate of Tom Ellis, MP for Meirionydd, having previously told a Caernarfon friend in 1888 that he was a "Welsh Nationalist of the Ellis type".

 

Decentralisation and Welsh disestablishment

One of Lloyd George's first acts as an MP was to organise an informal grouping of Welsh Liberal members with a programme that included; disestablishing and disendowing the Church of England in Wales, temperance reform, and establishing Welsh home rule. He was keen on decentralisation and thus Welsh devolution, starting with the devolution of the Church in Wales saying in 1890: "I am deeply impressed with the fact that Wales has wants and inspirations of her own which have too long been ignored, but which must no longer be neglected. First and foremost amongst these stands the cause of Religious Liberty and Equality in Wales. If returned to Parliament by you, it shall be my earnest endeavour to labour for the triumph of this great cause. I believe in a liberal extension of the principle of Decentralization."

 

During the next decade, Lloyd George campaigned in Parliament largely on Welsh issues, in particular for disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England. When Gladstone retired in 1894 after the defeat of the second Home Rule Bill, the Welsh Liberal members chose him to serve on a deputation to William Harcourt to press for specific assurances on Welsh issues. When those assurances were not provided, they resolved to take independent action if the government did not bring a bill for disestablishment. When a bill was not forthcoming, he and three other Welsh Liberals (D. A. Thomas, Herbert Lewis and Frank Edwards) refused the whip on 14 April 1894, but accepted Lord Rosebery's assurance and rejoined the official Liberals on 29 May.

 

Cymru Fydd and Welsh devolution

Historian Emyr Price referred to Lloyd George as "the first architect of Welsh devolution and its most famous advocate" as well as "the pioneering advocate of a powerful parliament for the Welsh people". Lloyd George himself stated in 1880 "Is it not high time that Wales should the powers to manage its own affairs" and in 1890, "Parliament is so overweighted that it cannot possibly devote the time and trouble necessary to legislate for the peculiar and domestic retirement of each and every separate province of Britain". These statements would later be used to advocate for a Welsh assembly in the 1979 Welsh devolution referendum. Lloyd George felt that disestablishment, land reform and other forms of Welsh devolution could only be achieved if Wales formed its own government within a federal imperial system. In 1895, in a failed Church in Wales Bill, Lloyd George added an amendment in a discreet attempt at forming a sort of Welsh home rule, a national council for appointment of the Welsh Church commissioners. Although not condemned by Tom Ellis MP, this was to the annoyance of J. Bryn Roberts MP and the Home Secretary H. H. Asquith MP.

 

He was also a co-leader of Cymru Fydd, a national Welsh party with liberal values with the goals of promoting a "stronger Welsh identity" and establishing a Welsh government. He hoped that Cymru Fydd would become a force like the Irish National Party. He abandoned this idea after being criticised in Welsh newspapers for bringing about the defeat of the Liberal Party in the 1895 election. In an AGM meeting in Newport on 16 January 1896 of the South Wales Liberal Federation, led by D. A. Thomas, a proposal was made to unite the North and South Liberal Federations with Cymru Fydd to form The Welsh National Federation. This was a proposal which the North Wales Liberal Federation had already agreed to. However, the South Wales Liberal Federation rejected this. According to Lloyd George, he was shouted down by "Newport Englishmen" in the meeting, although the South Wales Argus suggested the poor crowd behaviour came from Lloyd George's supporters. Following difficulty in uniting the Liberal federations along with Cymru Fydd in the South East and thus, difficulty in gaining support for Home Rule for Wales, Lloyd George shifted his focus to improving the socio-economic environment of Wales as part of the United Kingdom and the British Empire. Although Lloyd George considered himself a "Welshman first", he saw the opportunities for Wales within the UK.

 

Uniting Welsh Liberals

In 1898, Lloyd George created the Welsh National Liberal Council, a loose umbrella organisation covering the two federations, but with very little power. In time, it became known as the Liberal Party of Wales.

 

Support of Welsh institutions

Lloyd George had a connection to or promoted the establishment of the National Library of Wales, the National Museum of Wales and the Welsh Department of the Board of Education. He also showed considerable support for the University of Wales, that its establishment raised the status of Welsh people and that the university deserved greater funding by the UK government.

 

Opposition to the Boer War

Lloyd George had been impressed by his journey to Canada in 1899. Although sometimes wrongly supposed—both at the time and subsequently—to be a Little Englander, he was not an opponent of the British Empire per se, but in a speech at Birkenhead (21 November 1901) he stressed that it needed to be based on freedom, including for India, not "racial arrogance".  Consequently, he gained national fame by displaying vehement opposition to the Second Boer War.

 

Following Rosebery's lead, he based his attack firstly on what were supposed to be Britain's war aims—remedying the grievances of the italicno and in particular the claim that they were wrongly denied the right to vote, saying "I do not believe the war has any connection with the franchise. It is a question of 45% dividends" and that England (which did not then have universal male suffrage) was more in need of franchise reform than the Boer republics. A second attack came on the cost of the war, which, he argued, prevented overdue social reform in England, such as old-age pensions and workmen's cottages. As the fighting continued his attacks moved to its conduct by the generals, who, he said (basing his words on reports by William Burdett-Coutts in The Times), were not providing for the sick or wounded soldiers and were starving Boer women and children in concentration camps. But his major thrusts were reserved for the Chamberlains, accusing them of war profiteering through the family company Kynoch Ltd, of which Chamberlain's brother was chairman. The firm had won tenders to the War Office, though its prices were higher than some of its competitors. After speaking at a meeting in Birmingham Lloyd George had to be smuggled out disguised as a policeman, as his life was in danger from the mob. At this time the Liberal Party was badly split as H. H. Asquith, R. B. Haldane and others were supporters of the war and formed the Liberal Imperial League.

 

Opposition to the Education Act 1902

On 24 March Arthur Balfour, just about to take office as Prime Minister, introduced a bill which was to become the Education Act 1902. Lloyd George supported the bill's proposals to bring voluntary schools (i.e. religious schools—mainly Church of England, and some Roman Catholic schools in certain inner city areas) in England and Wales under the control of local school boards, who would conduct inspections and appoint two out of each school's six managers. However, other measures were more contentious: the majority-religious school managers would retain the power to employ or sack teachers on religious grounds and would receive money from the rates (local property taxes). This offended nonconformist opinion, then in a period of revival, as it seemed like a return to the hated church rates (which had been compulsory until 1868), and inspired a large grassroots campaign against the bill.

 

Within days of the bill's unveiling (27 March), Lloyd George denounced "priestcraft" in a speech to his constituents, and he began an active campaign of speaking against the bill, both in public in Wales (with a few speeches in England) and in the House of Commons. On 12 November, Balfour accepted an amendment (willingly, but a rare case of him doing so), ostensibly from Alfred Thomas, chairman of the Welsh Parliamentary Liberal Party, but in reality instigated by Lloyd George, transferring control of Welsh schools from appointed boards to the elected county councils. The Education Act became law on 20 December 1902.

 

Lloyd George now announced the real purpose of the amendment, described as a "booby trap" by his biographer John Grigg. The Welsh National Liberal Council soon adopted his proposal that county councils should refuse funding unless repairs were carried out to schools (many were in a poor state), and should also demand control of school governing bodies and a ban on religious tests for teachers; "no control, no cash" was Lloyd George's slogan. Lloyd George negotiated with A. G. Edwards, Anglican Bishop of St Asaph, and was prepared to settle on an "agreed religious syllabus" or even to allow Anglican teaching in schools, provided the county councils retained control of teacher appointments, but this compromise failed after opposition from other Anglican Welsh bishops. A well-attended meeting at Park Hall Cardiff (3 June 1903) passed a number of resolutions by acclamation: county council control of schools, withholding money from schools or even withholding rates from unsupportive county councils. The Liberals soon gained control of all thirteen Welsh County Councils. Lloyd George continued to speak in England against the bill, but the campaign there was less aggressively led, taking the form of passive resistance to rate paying. 

 

In August 1904 the government brought in the Education (Local Authority Default) Act giving the Board of Education power to take charge of schools, which Lloyd George immediately nicknamed the "Coercion of Wales Act". He addressed another convention in Cardiff on 6 October 1904, during which he proclaimed that the Welsh flag was "a dragon rampant, not a sheep recumbent". Under his leadership, the convention pledged not to maintain elementary schools, or to withdraw children from elementary schools altogether so that they could be taught privately by the nonconformist churches. In Travis Crosbie's words, public resistance to the Education Act had caused a "perfect impasse". There was no progress between Welsh counties and Westminster until 1905.

 

Having already gained national recognition for his anti-Boer War campaigns, Lloyd George's leadership of the attacks on the Education Act gave him a strong parliamentary reputation and marked him as a likely future cabinet member. The Act served to reunify the Liberals after their divisions over the Boer War and to increase Nonconformist influence in the party, which then included educational reform as policy in the 1906 election, which resulted in a Liberal landslide. All 34 Welsh seats returned a Liberal, except for one Labour seat in Merthyr Tydfil.

 

Other stances

Lloyd George also supported the Romantic Nationalist idea of Pan-Celtic unity and gave a speech at the 1904 Pan-Celtic Congress in Caernarfon.

 

During his second-ever speech in the House of Commons, Lloyd George criticised the grandeur of the monarchy.

 

Lloyd George wrote extensively for Liberal-supporting papers such as the Manchester Guardian and spoke on Liberal issues (particularly temperance—the "local option"—and national as opposed to denominational education) throughout England and Wales.

 

He served as the legal adviser of Theodor Herzl in his negotiations with the British government regarding the Uganda Scheme, proposed as an alternative homeland for the Jews due to Turkish refusal to grant a charter for Jewish settlement in Palestine.

 

President of the Board of Trade (1905–1908)

In 1905, Lloyd George entered the new Liberal Cabinet of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as President of the Board of Trade.

 

The first priority on taking office was the repeal of the 1902 Education Act. Lloyd George took the lead along with Augustine Birrell, President of the Board of Education. Lloyd George appears to have been the dominant figure on the committee drawing up the bill in its later stages and insisted that the bill create a separate education committee for Wales. Birrell complained privately that the bill, introduced in the Commons on 9 April 1906, owed more to Lloyd George and that he himself had had little say in its contents.  The bill passed the House of Commons greatly amended but was completely mangled by the House of Lords. For the rest of the year Lloyd George made numerous public speeches attacking the House of Lords for mutilating the bill with wrecking amendments, in defiance of the Liberals' electoral mandate to reform the 1902 Act. Lloyd George was rebuked by King Edward VII for these speeches: the Prime Minister defended him to the King's secretary Francis Knollys, stating that his behaviour in Parliament was more constructive but that in speeches to the public "the combative spirit seems to get the better of him".  No compromise was possible and the bill was abandoned, allowing the 1902 Act to continue in effect. As a result of Lloyd George's lobbying, a separate department for Wales was created within the Board of Education.

 

Nonconformists were bitterly upset by the failure of the Liberal Party to reform the 1902 Education Act, its most important promise to them, and over time their support for the Liberal Party slowly fell away.

 

At the Board of Trade Lloyd George introduced legislation on many topics, from merchant shipping and the Port of London to companies and railway regulation. His main achievement was in stopping a proposed national strike of the railway unions by brokering an agreement between the unions and the railway companies. While almost all the companies refused to recognise the unions, Lloyd George persuaded the companies to recognise elected representatives of the workers who sat with the company representatives on conciliation boards—one for each company. If those boards failed to agree then an arbitrator would be called upon.

 

Chancellor of the Exchequer (1908–1915)

On Campbell-Bannerman's death, he succeeded Asquith, who had become prime minister, as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1908 to 1915.  While he continued some work from the Board of Trade—for example, legislation to establish the Port of London Authority and to pursue traditional Liberal programmes such as licensing law reforms—his first major trial in this role was over the 1909–1910 Naval Estimates. The Liberal manifesto at the 1906 general election included a commitment to reduce military expenditure. Lloyd George strongly supported this, writing to Reginald McKenna, First Lord of the Admiralty, of "the emphatic pledges given by all of us at the last general election to reduce the gigantic expenditure on armaments built up by the recklessness of our predecessors." He then proposed the programme be reduced from six to four dreadnoughts. This was adopted by the government, but there was a public storm when the Conservatives, with covert support from the First Sea Lord, Admiral Jackie Fisher, campaigned for more with the slogan "We want eight and we won't wait". This resulted in Lloyd George's defeat in Cabinet and the adoption of estimates including provision for eight dreadnoughts. During this period he was also a target of protest by the women's suffrage movement, for he professed personal support for extension of the suffrage but did not move for changes within the Parliament process.

 

People's Budget, 1909

In 1909, Lloyd George introduced his People's Budget, imposing a 20% tax on the unearned increase in the value of land, payable at the death of the owner or sale of the land, and 1⁄2 d. on undeveloped land and minerals, increased death duties, a rise in income tax, and the introduction of Supertax on income over £3,000. There were taxes also on luxuries, alcohol and tobacco, so that money could be made available for the new welfare programmes as well as new battleships. The nation's landowners (well represented in the House of Lords) were intensely angry at the new taxes, mostly at the proposed very high tax on land values, but also because the instrumental redistribution of wealth could be used to detract from an argument for protective tariffs.

 

The immediate consequences included the end of the Liberal League, and Rosebery breaking friendship with the Liberal Party, which in itself was for Lloyd George a triumph. He had won the case of social reform without losing the debate on Free Trade. Arthur Balfour denounced the budget as "vindictive, inequitable, based on no principles, and injurious to the productive capacity of the country."  Roy Jenkins described it as the most reverberating since Gladstone's in 1860.

 

In the House of Commons, Lloyd George gave a brilliant account of the budget, which was attacked by the Conservatives. On the stump, notably at his Limehouse speech in 1909, he denounced the Conservatives and the wealthy classes with all his very considerable oratorical power. Excoriating the House of Lords in another speech, Lloyd George said, "should 500 men, ordinary men, chosen accidentally from among the unemployed, override the judgement—the deliberate judgement—of millions of people who are engaged in the industry which makes the wealth of the country?". In a break with convention, the budget was defeated by the Conservative majority in the House of Lords. The elections of 1910 narrowly upheld the Liberal government. The 1909 budget was passed on 28 April 1910 by the Lords and received the Royal Assent on the 29th. Subsequently, the Parliament Act 1911 removed the House of Lords' power to block money bills, and with a few exceptions replaced their veto power over most bills with a power to delay them for up to two years.

 

Although old-age pensions had already been introduced by Asquith as Chancellor, Lloyd George was largely responsible for the introduction of state financial support for the sick and infirm (known colloquially as "going on the Lloyd George" for decades afterwards)—legislation referred to as the Liberal Reforms. Lloyd George also succeeded in putting through Parliament his National Insurance Act 1911, making provision for sickness and invalidism, and a system of unemployment insurance. He was helped in his endeavours by forty or so backbenchers who regularly pushed for new social measures, often voted with Labour MPs. These social reforms in Britain were the beginnings of a welfare state and fulfilled the aim of dampening down the demands of the growing working class for rather more radical solutions to their impoverishment.

 

Under his leadership, after 1909 the Liberals extended minimum wages to farmworkers.

 

Lloyd George was an opponent of warfare but he paid little attention to foreign affairs until the Agadir Crisis of 1911. After consulting Edward Grey (the foreign minister) and H. H. Asquith (the prime minister) he gave a stirring and patriotic speech at Mansion House on 21 July 1911. He stated:

 

But if a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated where her interests were vitally affected as if she were of no account in the Cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure. National honour is no party question. The security of our great international trade is no party question.

 

He was warning both France and Germany, but the public response cheered solidarity with France and hostility toward Germany. Berlin was outraged, blaming Lloyd George for doing "untold harm both with regard to German public opinion and the negotiations." Count Metternich, Germany's ambassador in London, said, "Mr Lloyd George's speech came upon us like a thunderbolt".

 

Marconi scandal 1913

In 1913, Lloyd George, along with Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney General, was involved in the Marconi scandal. Accused of speculating in Marconi shares on the inside information that they were about to be awarded a key government contract (which would have caused them to increase in value), he told the House of Commons that he had not speculated in the shares of "that company". He had in fact bought shares in the American Marconi Company.

 

Welsh Disestablishment

Lloyd George was instrumental in fulfilling a long-standing aspiration to disestablish the Anglican Church of Wales. As with Irish Home Rule, previous attempts to enact this had failed in the 1892–1895 Governments, and were now made possible by the removal of the Lords' veto in 1911, and as with Home Rule the initial bill (1912) was delayed for two years by the Lords, becoming law in 1914, only to be suspended for the duration of the war. After the Welsh Church (Temporalities) Act 1919 was passed, Welsh Disestablishment finally came into force in 1920. This Act also removed the right of the six Welsh Bishops in the new Church in Wales to sit in the House of Lords and removed (disendowed) certain pre-1662 property rights.

 

First World War

Lloyd George was as surprised as almost everyone else by the outbreak of the First World War. On 23 July 1914, almost a month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and on the eve of the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia, he made a speech advocating "economy" in the House of Commons, saying that Britain's relations with Germany were better than for many years.  On 27 July he told C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian that Britain would keep out of the impending war. With the Cabinet divided, and most ministers reluctant for Britain to get involved, he struck Asquith as "statesmanlike" at the Cabinet meeting on 1 August, favouring keeping Britain's options open. The next day he seemed likely to resign if Britain intervened, but he held back at Cabinet on Monday 3 August, moved by the news that Belgium would resist Germany's demand of passage for her army across her soil. He was seen as a key figure whose stance helped to persuade almost the entire Cabinet to support British intervention.  He was able to give the more pacifist members of the cabinet and the Liberal Party a principle—the rights of small nations—which meant they could support the war and maintain united political and popular support.

 

Lloyd George remained in office as Chancellor of the Exchequer for the first year of the Great War. The budget of 17 November 1914 had to allow for lower taxation receipts because of the reduction in world trade. The Crimean and Boer Wars had largely been paid for out of taxation, but Lloyd George raised debt financing of £321 million. Large (but deferred) increases in Supertax and income tax rates were accompanied by increases in excise duties, and the budget produced a tax increase of £63 million in a full year.  His last budget, on 4 May 1915, showed a growing concern for the effects of alcohol on the war effort, with large increases in duties, and a scheme of state control of alcohol sales in specified areas. The excise proposals were opposed by the Irish Nationalists and the Conservatives, and were abandoned.

 

Minister of Munitions

Lloyd George gained a heroic reputation with his energetic work as Minister of Munitions in 1915 and 1916, setting the stage for his move up to the height of power. After a long struggle with the War Office, he wrested responsibility for arms production away from the generals, making it a purely industrial department, with considerable expert assistance from Walter Runciman. The two men gained the respect of Liberal cabinet colleagues for improving administrative capabilities, and increasing outputs.

 

When the Shell Crisis of 1915 dismayed public opinion with the news that the Army was running short of artillery shells, demands rose for a strong leader to take charge of munitions. In the first coalition ministry, formed in May 1915, Lloyd George was made Minister of Munitions, heading a new department. In this position, he won great acclaim, which formed the basis for his political ascent. All historians agree that he boosted national morale and focussed attention on the urgent need for greater output, but many also say the increase in munitions output in 1915–16 was due largely to reforms already underway, though not yet effective before he had even arrived. The Ministry broke through the cumbersome bureaucracy of the War Office, resolved labour problems, rationalised the supply system and dramatically increased production. Within a year it became the largest buyer, seller and employer in Britain.

 

Lloyd George was not at all satisfied with the progress of the war. He wanted to "knock away the props", by attacking Germany's allies—from early in 1915 he argued for the sending of British troops to the Balkans to assist Serbia and bring Greece and other Balkan countries onto the side of the Allies (this was eventually done—the Salonika expedition—although not on the scale that Lloyd George had wanted, and mountain ranges made his suggestions of grand Balkan offensives impractical); in 1916, he wanted to send machine guns to Romania (insufficient amounts were available for this to be feasible). These suggestions began a period of poor relations with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Robertson, who was "brusque to the point of rudeness" and "barely concealed his contempt for Lloyd George's military opinions", to which he was in the habit of retorting "I've 'eard different".

 

Lloyd George persuaded Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, to raise a Welsh Division, and, despite Kitchener's threat of resignation, to recognise nonconformist chaplains in the Army.

 

Late in 1915, Lloyd George became a strong supporter of general conscription, an issue that divided Liberals, and helped the passage of several conscription acts from January 1916 onwards. In spring 1916 Alfred Milner hoped Lloyd George could be persuaded to bring down the coalition government by resigning, but this did not happen.

 

Secretary of State for War

In June 1916 Lloyd George succeeded Lord Kitchener (who died when the ship HMS Hampshire was sunk taking him on a mission to Russia) as Secretary of State for War, although he had little control over strategy, as General Robertson had been given direct right of access to the Cabinet so as to bypass Kitchener. He did succeed in securing the appointment of Sir Eric Geddes to take charge of military railways behind British lines in France, with the honorary rank of major-general. Lloyd George told a journalist, Roy W. Howard, in late September that "the fight must be to a finish—to a knockout", a rejection of President Woodrow Wilson's offer to mediate.

 

Lloyd George was increasingly frustrated at the limited gains of the Somme Offensive, criticising General Haig to Ferdinand Foch on a visit to the Western Front in September (British casualty ratios were worse than those of the French, who were more experienced and had more artillery), proposing sending Robertson on a mission to Russia (he refused to go), and demanding that more troops be sent to Salonika to help Romania. Robertson eventually threatened to resign.

 

Much of the press still argued that the professional leadership of Haig and Robertson was preferable to civilian interference that had led to disasters like Gallipoli and Kut. Lord Northcliffe, owner of The Times, stormed into Lloyd George's office and, finding him unavailable, told his secretary "You can tell him that I hear he has been interfering with Strategy and that if he goes on I will break him", and the same day (11 October) Lloyd George also received a warning letter from H. A. Gwynne, editor of the Morning Post. He was obliged to give his "word of honour" to Asquith that he had complete confidence in Haig and Robertson and thought them irreplaceable, but he wrote to Robertson wanting to know how their differences had been leaked to the press (affecting to believe that Robertson had not personally "authorised such a breach of confidence & discipline"). He asserted his right to express his opinions about strategy in November, by which time ministers had taken to holding meetings to which Robertson was not invited.

 

The weakness of Asquith as a planner and organiser was increasingly apparent to senior officials. After Asquith had refused, then agreed to, and then refused again Lloyd George's demand to be allowed to chair a small committee to manage the war, he resigned in December 1916. Grey was among leading Asquithians who had identified Lloyd George's intentions the previous month. Lloyd George became prime minister, with the nation demanding he take vigorous charge of the war.

 

Although during the political crisis Robertson had advised Lloyd George to "stick to it" and form a small War Council, Lloyd George had planned if necessary to appeal to the country. His Military Secretary Colonel Arthur Lee prepared a memo blaming Robertson and the General Staff for the loss of Serbia and Romania. Lloyd George was restricted by his promise to the Unionists to keep Haig as Commander-in-Chief and the press support for the generals, although Milner and Curzon were also sympathetic to campaigns to increase British power in the Middle East. After Germany's offer (12 December 1916) of a negotiated peace, Lloyd George rebuffed President Wilson's request for the belligerents to state their war aims by demanding terms tantamount to German defeat.

 

Prime Minister (1916–1922)

The fall of Asquith as prime minister split the Liberal Party into two factions: those who supported him and those who supported the coalition government. In his War Memoirs, Lloyd George compared himself with Asquith:

 

There are certain indispensable qualities essential to the Chief Minister of the Crown in a great war. ... Such a minister must have courage, composure, and judgment. All this Mr. Asquith possessed in a superlative degree. ... But a war minister must also have vision, imagination and initiative—he must show untiring assiduity, must exercise constant oversight and supervision of every sphere of war activity, must possess driving force to energize this activity, must be in continuous consultation with experts, official and unofficial, as to the best means of using the resources of the country in conjunction with the Allies for the achievement of victory. If to this can be added a flair for conducting a great fight, then you have an ideal War Minister.

 

After December 1916 Lloyd George relied on the support of Conservatives and of the press baron Lord Northcliffe (who owned both The Times and the Daily Mail). Besides the Prime Minister, the five-member War Cabinet contained three Conservatives (Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords Lord Curzon, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons Bonar Law, and Minister without Portfolio Lord Milner) and Arthur Henderson, unofficially representing Labour. Edward Carson was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, as had been widely touted during the intrigues of the previous month, but excluded from the War Cabinet. Amongst the few Liberal frontbenchers to support Lloyd George were Christopher Addison (who had played an important role in drumming up some backbench Liberal support for Lloyd George), H. A. L. Fisher, Lord Rhondda and Sir Albert Stanley. Edwin Montagu and Churchill joined the government in the summer of 1917.

 

Lloyd George's Secretariat, popularly known as Downing Street's "Garden Suburb", assisted him in discharging his responsibilities within the constraints of the war cabinet system. Its function was to maintain contact with the numerous departments of government, to collect information, and to report on matters of special concern. Its leading members were George Adams and Philip Kerr, and the other secretaries included David Davies, Joseph Davies, Waldorf Astor and, later, Cecil Harmsworth.

 

Lloyd George wanted to make the destruction of the Ottoman Empire a major British war aim, and two days after taking office told Robertson that he wanted a major victory, preferably the capture of Jerusalem, to impress British public opinion.

 

At the Rome Conference (5–6 January 1917) Lloyd George was discreetly quiet about plans to take Jerusalem, an object which advanced British interests rather than doing much to win the war. Lloyd George proposed sending heavy guns to Italy with a view to defeating Austria-Hungary, possibly to be balanced by a transfer of Italian troops to Salonika but was unable to obtain the support of the French or Italians, and Robertson talked of resigning.

 

Nivelle affair

Lloyd George engaged almost constantly in intrigues calculated to reduce the power of the generals, including trying to subordinate British forces in France to the French General Nivelle. He backed Nivelle because he thought he had "proved himself to be a Man" by his successful counterattacks at Verdun, and because of his promises that he could break the German lines in 48 hours. Nivelle increasingly complained of Haig's dragging his feet rather than cooperating with their plans for the offensive.

 

The plan was to put British forces under Nivelle's direct command for the great 1917 offensive. The British would attack first, thereby tying down the German reserves. Then the French would strike and score an overwhelming victory in two days. It was announced at a War Cabinet meeting on 24 February, to which neither Robertson nor Lord Derby (Secretary of State for War) had been invited. Ministers felt that the French generals and staff had shown themselves more skilful than the British in 1916, whilst politically Britain had to give wholehearted support to what would probably be the last major French effort of the war. The Nivelle proposal was then given to Robertson and Haig without warning on 26–27 February at the Calais Conference (minutes from the War Cabinet meeting were not sent to the King until 28 February, so that he did not have a prior chance to object). Robertson in particular protested vehemently. Finally, a compromise was reached whereby Haig would be under Nivelle's orders but would retain operational control of British forces and keep a right of appeal to London "if he saw good reason". After further argument the status quo, that Haig was an ally of the French but was expected to defer to their wishes, was largely restored in mid-March.

 

The British attack at the Battle of Arras (9–14 April 1917) was partly successful but with much higher casualties than the Germans suffered. There had been many delays and the Germans, suspecting an attack, had shortened their lines to the strong Hindenburg Line. The French attack on the Aisne River in mid-April gained some tactically important high ground but failed to achieve the promised decisive breakthrough, pushing the French Army to the point of mutiny. While Haig gained prestige, Lloyd George lost credibility, and the affair further poisoned relations between himself and the "Brasshats".

 

U-boat war

Shipping

In early 1917 the Germans had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in a bid to achieve victory on the Western Approaches. Lloyd George set up a Ministry of Shipping under Sir Joseph Maclay, a Glasgow shipowner who was not, until after he left office, a member of either House of Parliament, and housed in a wooden building in a specially drained lake in St James's Park, within a few minutes' walk from the Admiralty. The Junior Minister and House of Commons spokesman was Leo Chiozza Money, with whom Maclay did not get on, but on whose appointment Lloyd George insisted, feeling that their qualities would complement one another. The Civil Service staff was headed by the highly able John Anderson (then only thirty-four years old) and included Arthur Salter. A number of shipping magnates were persuaded, like Maclay himself, to work unpaid for the ministry (as had a number of industrialists for the Ministry of Munitions), who were also able to obtain ideas privately from junior naval officers who were reluctant to argue with their superiors in meetings. The ministers heading the Board of Trade, for Munitions (Addison) and for Agriculture and Food (Lord Rhondda), were also expected to co-operate with Maclay. 

 

In accordance with a pledge Lloyd George had given in December 1916 nearly 90% of Britain's merchant shipping tonnage was soon brought under state control (previously less than half had been controlled by the Admiralty), whilst remaining privately owned (similar measures were in force at the time for the railways). Merchant shipping was concentrated, largely on Chiozza Money's initiative, on the transatlantic route where it could more easily be protected, instead of being spread out all over the globe (this relied on imports coming first into North America). Maclay began the process of increasing ship construction, although he was hampered by shortages of steel and labour, and ships under construction in the United States were confiscated by the Americans when she entered the war. In May 1917 Eric Geddes, based at the Admiralty, was put in charge of shipbuilding, and in July he became First Lord of the Admiralty.  Later the German U-boats were defeated in 1918.

 

Convoys

Main article: Convoys in World War I

Lloyd George had raised the matter of convoys at the War Committee in November 1916, only to be told by the admirals present, including Jellicoe, that convoys presented too large a target, and that merchant ship masters lacked the discipline to keep station in a convoy.

 

In February 1917 Maurice Hankey, the secretary of the War Cabinet, wrote a memorandum for Lloyd George calling for the introduction of "scientifically organised convoys", almost certainly after being persuaded by Commander Reginald Henderson and the Shipping Ministry officials with whom he was in contact. After a breakfast meeting (13 February 1917) with Lloyd George, Sir Edward Carson (First Lord of the Admiralty) and Admirals Jellicoe and Duff agreed to "conduct experiments"; however, convoys were not in general use until August, by which time the rate of shipping losses was already in decline after peaking in April.

 

Lloyd George later claimed in his War Memoirs that the delay in introducing convoys was because the Admiralty mishandled an experimental convoy between Britain and Norway and because Jellicoe obtained, behind Maclay's back, an unrepresentative sample of merchant skippers claiming that they lacked the skill to "keep station" in convoy. In fact, Hankey's diary shows that Lloyd George's interest in the matter was intermittent, whilst Frances Stevenson's diaries contain no mention of the topic. He may well have been reluctant, especially at a time when his relations with the generals were so poor, for a showdown with Carson, a weak administrator who was as much the mouthpiece of the admirals as Derby was of the generals, but who had played a key role in the fall of Asquith and who led a significant bloc of Conservative and Irish Unionist MPs.

 

The new Commander of the Grand Fleet Admiral Beatty, whom Lloyd George visited at Invergordon on 15 April, was a supporter of convoys, as was the American Admiral Sims (the USA had just entered the war). The War Cabinet on 25 April authorised Lloyd George to look into the anti-submarine campaign, and on 30 April he visited the Admiralty. Duff had already recommended to Jellicoe that the Admiralty adopt convoys after a recent successful convoy from Gibraltar.

 

Most of the organisations Lloyd George created during the First World War were replicated with the outbreak of the Second World War. As Lord Beaverbrook wrote, "There were no road signs on the journey he had to undertake." The latter's personal efforts to promote convoys were less consistent than he (and Churchill in The World Crisis and Beaverbrook in Men and Power) later claimed; the idea that he, after a hard struggle, sat in the First Lord's chair (on his 30 April visit to the Admiralty) and imposed convoys on a hostile Board is a myth; however, in Grigg's view the credit goes largely to men and institutions which he set in place, and with a freer hand, and making fewer mistakes, than in his dealings with the generals, he and his appointees took decisions which can reasonably be said to have saved the country. "It was a close-run thing ... failure would have been catastrophic." 

 

Russian Revolution

Lloyd George welcomed the Fall of the Tsar, both in a private letter to his brother and in a message to the new Russian Prime Minister Prince Lvov, not least as the war could now be portrayed as a clash between liberal governments and the autocratic Central Powers. Like many observers, he had been taken by surprise by the exact timing of the revolution (it had not been predicted by Lord Milner or General Wilson on their visit to Russia a few weeks earlier) and hoped—albeit with some concerns—that Russia's war effort would be invigorated like that of France in the early 1790s.

 

Lloyd George gave a cautious welcome to the suggestion (19 March on the western calendar) by the Russian Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov that the toppled Tsar and his family be given sanctuary in Britain (although Lloyd George would have preferred that they go to a neutral country). From the very start the King's adviser Stamfordham raised objections, and in April the British government withdrew its consent under Royal pressure. Eventually, the Russian Royal Family were moved to the Urals where they were executed in 1918. Lloyd George was often blamed for the refusal of asylum, and in his War Memoirs he did not mention King George V's role in the matter, which was not explicitly confirmed until Kenneth Rose's biography of the King was published in 1983.

 

Imperial War Cabinet

An Imperial War Cabinet, including representatives from Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, met 14 times from 20 March 1917 to 2 May 1917 (a crisis period of the war) and twice in 1918.[99] The idea was not entirely without precedent as there had been Imperial Conferences in 1887, 1894, 1897, 1902, 1907 and 1911, whilst the Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes had been invited to attend the Cabinet and War Committee on his visit to the UK in the spring of 1916. The South African Jan Smuts was appointed to the British War Cabinet in the early summer of 1917. 

 

Passchendaele

Lloyd George set up a War Policy Committee (himself, Curzon, Milner, Law and Smuts, with Maurice Hankey as secretary) to discuss strategy, which held 16 meetings over the next six weeks. At the very first meeting (11 June) Lloyd George proposed helping the Italians to capture Trieste, explicitly telling the War Policy Committee (21 June 1917) that he wanted Italian soldiers to be killed rather than British.

 

Haig believed that a Flanders Offensive had a good chance of clearing the Belgian coast, from which German submarines and destroyers were operating (a popular goal with politicians), and that victory at Ypres "might quite possibly lead to (German) collapse". Robertson was less optimistic, but preferred Britain to keep her focus on defeating Germany on the Western Front, and had told Haig that the politicians would not "dare" overrule both soldiers if they gave the same advice. Haig promised he had no "intention of entering into a tremendous offensive involving heavy losses" (20 June) whilst Robertson wanted to avoid "disproportionate loss" (23 June).

 

The Flanders Offensive was reluctantly sanctioned by the War Policy Committee on 18 July and the War Cabinet two days later, on condition it did not degenerate into a long drawn-out fight like the Somme. The War Cabinet promised to monitor progress and casualties and, if necessary call a halt, although in the event they made little effort to monitor progress until September. Frustrated at his inability to get his way, Lloyd George talked of resigning and taking his case to the public.

 

The Battle of Passchendaele began on 31 July, but soon became bogged down in unseasonably early wet weather, which turned much of the battlefield into a barely passable swamp in which men and animals sometimes drowned, whilst the mud and rain severely reduced the accuracy and effectiveness of artillery, the dominant weapon of the time. Lloyd George tried to enlist the King for diverting efforts against Austria-Hungary, telling Stamfordham (14 August) that the King and Prime Minister were "joint trustees of the nation" who had to avoid waste of manpower. A new Italian offensive began (18 August), but Robertson advised that it was "false strategy" to call off Passchendaele to send reinforcements to Italy, and despite being summoned to George Riddell's home in Sussex, where he was served apple pudding (his favourite dish), agreed only reluctantly. The Anglo-French leadership agreed in early September to send 100 heavy guns to Italy (50 of them French) rather than the 300 which Lloyd George wanted—Lloyd George talked of ordering a halt to Passchendaele, but in Hankey's words "funked it" (4 September). Had he not done so his government might have fallen, for as soon as the guns reached Italy Cadorna called off his offensive (21 September).

 

At a meeting at Boulogne on the 25th of September, Lloyd George broached with Painlevé the setting up of an Allied Supreme War Council then making Foch generalissimo. Law had written to Lloyd George that ministers must soon decide whether or not the offensive was to continue. Lloyd George and Robertson met Haig in France (26 September) to discuss the recent German peace feelers (which in the end were publicly repudiated by Chancellor Michaelis) and the progress of the offensive. Haig preferred to continue, encouraged by Plumer's recent successful attacks in dry weather at Menin Road (20 September) and Polygon Wood (26 September), and stating that the Germans were "very worn out". In October the wet weather returned for the final attack towards Passchendaele. At the final meeting of the War Policy Committee on 11 October 1917, Lloyd George authorised the offensive to continue, but warning of failure in three weeks' time. Hankey (21 October) claimed in his diary that Lloyd George had deliberately allowed Passchendaele to continue to discredit Haig and Robertson and make it easier for him to forbid similar offensives in 1918

 

Supreme War Council

Lloyd George played a critical role in the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour's famous Declaration: "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

 

The Italians suffered a disastrous defeat at Caporetto, requiring British and French reinforcements to be sent. Lloyd George said he "wanted to take advantage of Caporetto to gain "control of the War". The Supreme War Council was inaugurated at the Rapallo Conference (6–7 November 1917). Lloyd George then gave a controversial speech in Paris (12 November) at which he criticised the high casualties of recent Allied "victories" (a word which he used with an element of sarcasm). These events led to an angry Commons debate (19 November), which Lloyd George survived.

 

In reply to Robertson's 19 November memo, which warned (correctly) that the Germans would use the opportunity of Russia's departure from the war to attack in 1918 before the Americans were present in strength, Lloyd George wrote (wrongly) that the Germans would not attack and would fail if they did. That autumn he declared that he was willing "to risk his whole political reputation" to avoid a repetition of the Somme or Passchendaele.

 

In December 1917 Lloyd George remarked to C. P. Scott that: "If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course, they don't know, and can't know."

 

Death

Lloyd George died of cancer at the age of 82 on 26 March 1945, with his wife Frances and his daughter Megan at his bedside. Four days later, on Good Friday, he was buried beside the river Dwyfor in Llanystumdwy. A boulder marks the grave; there is no inscription; however, a monument designed by the architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis was subsequently erected around the grave, bearing an englyn (strict-metre stanza) engraved on slate in his memory composed by his nephew W. R. P. George. Nearby stands the Lloyd George Museum, also designed by Williams-Ellis and opened in 1963.

Rodney Richmond, shown in a photograph circa 1974, became the first black full-time officer of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 in Washington, D.C. when he was elected to financial secretary-treasurer in December 1973.

 

The union represented the vast majority of employees of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA, often called Metro) that had recently acquired four private bus companies and was operating exclusively bus service prior to the Metrorail system inaugurating service in 1976.

 

Richmond ran on a ticket with George Davis for president, Robert Delaney for Recording Secretary, Harvey Lee for first vice president and James Buckner for second vice president, the latter two also being black—the first fully integrated ticket for the top offices of the union.

 

Davis had been secretary-treasurer under the man he was challenging for the presidency, George Apperson, so Richmond was running for an open seat. Richmond had previously served as second vice president, replacing the first black officer--James Shipman--who resigned.

 

Davis campaigned agains the incumbent president George Apperson for "spending too much time on Capitol Hill" and neglecting Local 689 business. The Davis-Richmond team swept the top offices.

 

Richmond tied his fate closely to Davis and the pair seemed to get off on a good start, leading a strike in 1974 that was declared illegal and the union fined, but not before the judge ordered arbitration and directed the arbitrator to give “great weight” to the union’s position on a disputed cost-of-living clause.

 

Arbitration proved unnecessary after the judge’s direction and Metro and union negotiated an agreement that included the disputed COLA clause.

 

In November 1975, Metro also imposed a new, harsher disciplinary policy that the union administration objected to.

 

The aging buses Metro acquired were badly in need of major maintenance and Davis led a work-to-the rule safety check and halted any buses leaving the garages that lacked horns, turn signals, speedometers, brake lights and other safety features, causing about one-third of the service to be cut and forced delays on the other two-thirds.

 

The direct action forced Metro to make some minor repairs and modify their dictionary policy.

 

Davis and Richmond negotiated a supplemental rail agreement in 1975 that assured Local 689 of blue collar rail representation and provided that disabled employees could fill station attendant (later manager) positions under certain circumstances whereas previously they simply terminated or forced to retire on disability, if eligible.

 

Davis and Richmond were re-elected without opposition in 1976.

 

However things had begun to turn for the pair that year with their failure to wage a fight around the new Montgomery County Ride On service that was replacing Metrobus routes or to organize the Ride On workers once the service became operational.

 

They failed to arbitrate the issue of COLA payments in July 1976 due under a rollover provision in the contract that said all terms of the contract would remain “undisturbed” while the contract was being arbitrated.

 

While the cost of living clause was retained in arbitration that year, the arbitrator ruled that Metro did not have to make one of the payments that came due during the arbitration process. Davis and Richmond were blamed for lost payment.

 

In May 1978 a woman operator was raped and bus operators staged a one-day wildcat strike protesting the lack of security on the buses. The union leadership was seen as playing no role in the strike or subsequent gains made.

 

Police patrols were increased, radios on the buses made operational, a “panic button” to summon police was activated and a plexiglass shield was placed behind the driver. When the union leadership attempted to take credit for the changes, many rank-and-file were offended.

 

Shortly afterward in July 1978, the contract was again in arbitration and Metro again failed to pay the COLA that was due in July.

 

This time workers staged a seven day wildcat strike that resulted in a judge ordering the disputed money put in escrow and expedited arbitration of the issue—a clear indication from the judge favoring the workers position.

 

Within days after the strike’s end, the expedited arbitration was held and a ruling issued that WMATA must pay the disputed COLA money—vindicating the workers and embarrassing Davis and Richmond.

 

Dozens of workers were disciplined by Metro for strike activities, including nine who were fired. While many had discipline modified in the grievance procedure, including reinstatement after lengthy suspensions for those who were fired, workers blamed Davis and Richmond for not fighting the issue of the COLA payment and thereby spurring an illegal strike.

 

Later, the main contract arbitration retained the COLA clause, but the arbitrator ordered part-time work without benefits or seniority. Richmond defended the inclusion of part-time in the arbitration award, believing it would forestall Ride On type operations in other jurisdictions. Subsequent events would prove him wrong.

 

Despite it being an arbitration award, Davis and Richmond were blamed for the introduction of substandard part-time work.

 

As the 1979 election neared, a rank-and-file committee investigating the union’s finances found that many disbursements had been made without back-up. While no theft of funds was alleged, the report tarnished Richmond just two months out from the election.

 

A dispute over which candidates for union office were qualified to run postponed the election to January 1980. Richmond lost to a rank-and-file candidate, John A. “Jack” Thomas, who had no previous union experience by a 2-1 margin.

 

A run-off election was required at that time under the bylaws for offices where no candidate received an absolute majority and a week after Richmond was defeated, Davis lost 2-1 in a runoff election to Charles Boswell, another rank-and-file member with no previous union experience.

 

Richmond made a comeback. He went back to work as a bus operator at Bladensburg garage and rebuilt his base. He ran for president of the union in December 1982 against Boswell but both were defeated by James M. Thomas Jr who became the first black president.

 

However, Richmond had support at Bladensburg and a few other locations. Instead of continuing to try to run for a top office, Richmond went back and ran for shop steward/executive board member at Bladensburg in the following election and won.

 

He was poised to run against Thomas again for president, but Thomas instead obtained the support of ATU International President James LaSala and offered Richmond an International vice president position. Richmond accepted and was elected at the convention that followed.

 

He continued to serve as ATU International vice president until his retirement and in 2020 lives in New Orleans, LA.

 

Richmond had a mixed legacy early in his career. The Davis-Richmond leadership integrated the top ranks of the transit union, retained the cost-of-living clause in the union contract during a period of high inflation and insured that the union was the exclusive representative of rail operations and maintenance.

 

However, Davis’s lackluster response to the introduction of low-wage county-run bus service that supplanted Metrobus, the failure to fight to enforce the rollover clause of the contract concerning the COLA and support for the introduction of part-time work stained their legacy and cost Richmond.

 

Richmond’s come-back, however, was successful. As an international vice-president he was able to use his experiences in the large Local 689 unit to help smaller locals across the country wage contract fights and organize new workers.

 

For a blog post on the turmoil in the D.C. transit union from 1974-80, see washingtonareaspark.com/2020/03/16/george-davis-and-the-t...

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmLRWRyd

 

The photographer is unknown. The image was donated by Craig Simpson

 

... une des quatre vertus cardinales que tout homme est appelé à suivre (statue en marbre de Carrare de Michel Colombe à l'un des angles du tombeau de François II, duc de Bretagne).

 

La Justice, sous les traits de laquelle on croit voir Anne de Bretagne elle-même, porte en main gauche un livre, représentant la loi, illustré d'une balance, représentant la justice. En main droite, elle tient un glaive imposant mais délicatement recouvert d'un pan de son écharpe : « Rendre la justice, mais ne pas détruire la personne ». Le glaive châtie et la balance pèse la gravité du crime ou le poids des arguments des deux parties. La statue porte une couronne rappelant que le prince exerce le rôle de juge et d'arbitre.

 

Justice, in the guise of which one thinks to see Anne of Brittany herself, carries in her left hand a book, representing the law, illustrated with a scale, representing justice. In her right hand, she holds an imposing but delicately covered sword with a piece of her scarf: "To render justice, but not to destroy the person". The chained sword and the scales weigh the gravity of the crime or the weight of the arguments of the two parties. The statue bears a crown reminding that the prince plays the role of judge and arbitrator.

Acrocorinth (Greek: Ακροκόρινθος), "Upper Corinth", the acropolis of ancient Corinth, is a monolithic rock overseeing the ancient city of Corinth, Greece. "It is the most impressive of the acropoleis of mainland Greece," in the estimation of George Forrest.[1] Acrocorinth was continuously occupied from archaic times to the early 19th century. The city's archaic acropolis, already an easily defensible position due to its geomorphology, was further heavily fortified during the Byzantine Empire as it became the seat of the strategos of the thema of Hellas and later of the Peloponnese. It was defended against the Crusaders for three years by Leo Sgouros.

 

Afterwards it became a fortress of the Frankish Principality of Achaea, the Venetians and the Ottoman Turks.[clarification needed] With its secure water supply, Acrocorinth's fortress was used as the last line of defense in southern Greece because it commanded the Isthmus of Corinth, repelling foes from entry into the Peloponnese peninsula. Three circuit walls formed the man-made defense of the hill. The highest peak on the site was home to a temple to Aphrodite which was converted to a church, and then became a mosque. The American School's Corinth Excavations began excavations on it in 1929. Currently, Acrocorinth is one of the most important medieval castle sites of Greece.

 

In a Corinthian myth related in the 2nd century CE to Pausanias, Briareus, one of the Hecatonchires, was the arbitrator in a dispute between Poseidon and Helios, between the sea and the sun: his verdict was that the Isthmus of Corinth belonged to Poseidon and the acropolis of Corinth (Acrocorinth) to Helios.[2][3]

 

The Upper Pirene spring is located within the encircling walls. "The spring, which is behind the temple, they say was the gift of Asopus to Sisyphus. The latter knew, so runs the legend, that Zeus had ravished Aegina, the daughter of Asopus, but refused to give information to the seeker before he had a spring given him on the Acrocorinthus

 

The New York Palace Hotel (formerly The Helmsley Palace)

455 Madison Avenue at 50th Street

New York, NY 10022

 

A grand staircase leads up from the lower lobby to the Madison Avenue entrance and the oval Villard Ballroom.

-----------------------

The Villard Houses were brownstone residences built by Henry Villard in 1884. Villard was a railway promoter and financier, who took over the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1881. The architect was McKim, Mead & White. The firm also designed the Pennsylvania Hotel in Manhattan. The six residence building was clad in quarried brownstone and wrapped around a u-shaped courtyard representative of a 15th century Italian palazzo. Four homes opened onto the courtyard while two had entrances on 51st Street.

 

Villard moved into the corner residence at 451 Madison, at the corner of 50th Street for just a short while before declaring bankruptcy. Much of the interior decoration is still visible today in the restaurant Gilt (formerly Le Cirque 2000).

 

In the 1940’s the Villard House was known as Women's Military Services Club. It served women in the military that could stay there for .50 cents a night. By the late 60’s the Archdiocese of New York owned the complex.

 

In the early 70’s Harry Helmsley found the perfect location in which to build his dream hotel. The Villard House was located on New York's Madison Avenue, across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral.

 

Helmsley negotiated a 99 year lease on the site from the the Archdiocese of New York and proposed gutting the interiors of the Villard and putting a 51-story hotel on top of it. The preservationists prevailed and Helmsley’s plan was changed to save most of the interiors of the Villard houses, though the buildings' rear facades were demolished and incorporated in to the new 51-story hotel. long-term ground lease, which runs for decades. The Archdiocese of New York receives $10 million annually in ground rent.

 

Helmsley commissioned architects Emery Roth & Sons and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer to design the modern structure and integrate the 1884 houses. The tower’s façade is a dark bronze reflective glass that was to blend with the Villard Houses. Started in 1977, the 905-room hotel project was completed in 1980.

 

Leona Helmsley spent a great deal of time and energy managing the decorating and staffing of the hotel. Leona took seriously her role as President of Helmsley Hotels and was determined to give her guests unprecedented service.

 

On September 15, 1980, the opulent Helmsley Palace Hotel opened. At the time The Helmsley Palace had the highest hotel rates in the city. An early print advertisement featuring Leona had the by-line: “It’s the only palace in the world where the Queen stands guard”

 

The hotel has four Triplex Suites. Situated at the top of the tower and occupying the four corners, each 2-bedroom suite is spread over three floors and include a private roof terrace.

 

In 1982, the limited partners in the Helmsley Palace Hotel partnership forced an arbitration proceeding after Harry Helmsley, in his role as general partner demanded more money from the limited partners for cost overruns in building the hotel. The limited partners said the Helmsley’s had mismanaged the business and had hurt the partnership through several self-dealing transactions. The arbitrators ruled in favor of the limited partners and forced the Helmsley’s to pay the cost overruns and an additional $3.5 million to the partnership.

 

Leona Helmsley, was convicted of income tax fraud in August 1989 - (“We don’t pay taxes … only the little people do”). Leona was convicted of 33 felony counts of trying to defraud the government and IRS, including mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns (essentially running millions of dollars of personal expenses through the Helmsley Palace and Park Lane books)

 

Harry Helmsley was indicted on similar charges in 1988, but was found too ill to stand trial. He died in 1997.

 

Following appeals Leona Helmsley was imprisoned from 1992-1993.

 

The limited partners in the Palace partnership were rightfully concerned during the Helmsley’s legal mess that the hotel was in desperate need for another general partner. The limited partners contended Helmsley Enterprises breached its fiduciary duties in managing and operating the partnership. They sought through the courts to remove the Helmsleys as general partner, and to appoint a receiver until a new general partner and manager can be found or the hotel be sold. They also sought restoration of any money the Helmsleys may have diverted to their affiliates through self-dealing.

 

Helmsley operated the Helmsley Palace hotel until 1992. She was known to fire managers from her jail cell.

 

Interstate Hotels was appointed by the court as the hotel’s receiver. The hotel changed its name to The New York Palace Hotel. The receiver received 6 qualified bids for the hotel.

 

In November 1993 The Royal Family of Brunei agreed to buy the New York Palace for $202 million (the highest offer). The agreement to buy the Palace is with Amedeo Hotels Limited Partnership, an investment company in Brunei. The Sultan of Brunei, through its development company, Amedeo Limited, contracted with Harman Jablin Architects for the complete renovation of the hotel and Villard Houses.

 

The hotel is comprised of three structures: the899-room 55-story hotel tower, the 5-story Villard House, and the 2-story Maloney & Porcelli restaurant.

 

The wealth of the royal family of Brunei, a tiny oil-rich sultanate on the island of Borneo, is controlled by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, whose estimated worth of $33 billion makes him one of the world's richest men. He and his family also own the 263-room Beverly Hills Hotel in California, bought for $187 million in 1987, and the Dorchester Hotel in London, bought for about $85 million in 1985.

 

The Royal Family’s new wealth comes from a constant flow of royalties into their private bank accounts from Shell Oil, who they joint ventured with to extract Brunei’s only natural resource.

 

The Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah younger brother is Prince Jefri Bolkiah who was the finance minister of Brunei from 1986 to 1998 and thus the chairman of The Brunei Investment Agency (BIA) responsible for overseas investments. He was known for his extravagant lifestyle, which included a private Boeing 747 and 2,000 automobiles. Hotels he controlled included The New York Palace Hotel, Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles and Plaza Athénée in Paris.

 

Following an audit in 1987 The Brunei government charged Prince Jefri with embezzling $14.8 billion and he was removed as chairman of BEI.

 

In July 2008 BEI signed management contracts with the Dorchester Group to operate the New York Plaza and the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles.

 

Prince Jefri’s two main legal and financial advisors, the British husband and wife lawyers Thomas Derbyshire and Faith Zaman were dispatched by the Prince to the New York Palace in 2004 to protect his interests. The two were involved in many aspects of Prince Jefri’s business affairs and they held powers of attorney to act of his behalf.

 

So In November 2005, Zaman claims Jefri gave them a 17-year lease on a 2,800-square-foot apartment on the third floor of the hotel, which rented as a suite for $20,000 a night. The prince gave the apartment to them rent-free for the first five years After that, the charge would be $500 a month, with an option to renew for 51 years. According the Vanity Fair this was done so the sultan if ever was successful in taking over the hotel, he would have to deal with them for the rest of his life.

 

In February 2006, John Segreti, the managing director of the Palace, dropped dead at 52 of a pulmonary embolism. Segreti formerly was the chief operating officer at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, in Hong Kon).

 

In March 2006 Faith Zaman was appointed Managing Director of the Palace. Her annual salary included 5 percent of the hotel’s gross operating profit, a car allowance of $100,000 per year, and free use of the company credit card for personal expenses. Also the prince gave her control of a second lease at a low price for the Maloney & Porcelli steak house on the hotel’s ground floor, on East 50th Street.

 

Meanwhile Derbyshire was working hard on finding a way for Jefri to cash in on two of his biggest assets the New York Palace and Hotel Bel-Air. A prospective buyer, Ty Warner (owner of the Four Seasons New York), was found who had agreed to acquiring the two hotels for $800 million. The sell certainly would have breached the government of Brunei’s freeze of Prince Jefri’s assets and further, what bank in the world could be used to deposit the proceeds and hide it from the government of Brunei.

 

The sell never occurred. Prince Jefri filed a suit against Derbyshire and Zaman seeking to recover $7 million in questionable expenses, Derbyshire and Zaman countersued for $13 million in contractual wages never received. In December 2010 the New York City jury awarded Derbyshire and Zaman $21 million.

 

Prince Jefri, a father of 17 with four wives, has swapped a decadent lifestyle for a fugitive existence. He is reported to have been allowed back in Brunei.

 

In 1997, with a new name--Le Cirque 2000--the restaurant moved from the Mayfair to the New York Palace Hotel and its landmark, the Villard Houses. Designer Adam Tihany gave Le Cirque its dazzling new look, and, as the opening approached, Siro Maccioni told New York magazine, "They're either going to give us a medal or exile us to Kilimanjaro."

 

In 2006 Siro Maccioni moved Le Cirque from the Palace Hotel to the Bloomberg building on East 58th Street.

 

John Segretti, the hotel’s managing director, decided The Palace Hotel should operate its own restaurant in the Villard space. In December 2005 it opened the 52-seat restaurant GILT with the interior design done by Patrick Jouin. The executive chef was Paul Liebrandt. The NY Times food critic panned Gilt two months after opening describing some entrees as “no larger than a hockey puck”. Shortly after Liebrandt was fired. In 2009 GILT was awarded Twp Michelin Stars under the direction of Executive Chef Justin Bogle.

 

In July 2011 Northwood Investors acquired the New York Plaza for approximately $400 million. The price is low by NYC standards – held down due to the $10 million dollar a year ground lease. The seller Brunei Investment Agency also owns the Dorchester Collection of luxury hotels. The New York Palace is no longer affiliated with the Dorchester Collection.

 

Northwood Investors is a privately-held real estate investment advisor that was founded in 2006 by John Z. Kukral, the former President and CEO of Blackstone Real Estate Advisors. It also owns the Alden Houston Hotel and The Radisson Hotel Boston.

 

Northwood has appointed David Chase to general manager of The New York Palace. Most recently he was the pre-opening general manager of Trump SoHo New York.

 

The New York Palace Hotel (formerly The Helmsley Palace)

455 Madison Avenue at 50th Street

New York, NY 10022

 

Steps to the lobby from the Madison Avenue entrance.

------------

The Villard Houses were brownstone residences built by Henry Villard in 1884. Villard was a railway promoter and financier, who took over the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1881. The architect was McKim, Mead & White. The firm also designed the Pennsylvania Hotel in Manhattan. The six residence building was clad in quarried brownstone and wrapped around a u-shaped courtyard representative of a 15th century Italian palazzo. Four homes opened onto the courtyard while two had entrances on 51st Street.

 

Villard moved into the corner residence at 451 Madison, at the corner of 50th Street for just a short while before declaring bankruptcy. Much of the interior decoration is still visible today in the restaurant Gilt (formerly Le Cirque 2000).

 

In the 1940’s the Villard House was known as Women's Military Services Club. It served women in the military that could stay there for .50 cents a night. By the late 60’s the Archdiocese of New York owned the complex.

 

In the early 70’s Harry Helmsley found the perfect location in which to build his dream hotel. The Villard House was located on New York's Madison Avenue, across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral.

 

Helmsley negotiated a 99 year lease on the site from the the Archdiocese of New York and proposed gutting the interiors of the Villard and putting a 51-story hotel on top of it. The preservationists prevailed and Helmsley’s plan was changed to save most of the interiors of the Villard houses, though the buildings' rear facades were demolished and incorporated in to the new 51-story hotel. long-term ground lease, which runs for decades. The Archdiocese of New York receives $10 million annually in ground rent.

 

Helmsley commissioned architects Emery Roth & Sons and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer to design the modern structure and integrate the 1884 houses. The tower’s façade is a dark bronze reflective glass that was to blend with the Villard Houses. Started in 1977, the 905-room hotel project was completed in 1980.

 

Leona Helmsley spent a great deal of time and energy managing the decorating and staffing of the hotel. Leona took seriously her role as President of Helmsley Hotels and was determined to give her guests unprecedented service.

 

On September 15, 1980, the opulent Helmsley Palace Hotel opened. At the time The Helmsley Palace had the highest hotel rates in the city. An early print advertisement featuring Leona had the by-line: “It’s the only palace in the world where the Queen stands guard”

 

The hotel has four Triplex Suites. Situated at the top of the tower and occupying the four corners, each 2-bedroom suite is spread over three floors and include a private roof terrace.

 

In 1982, the limited partners in the Helmsley Palace Hotel partnership forced an arbitration proceeding after Harry Helmsley, in his role as general partner demanded more money from the limited partners for cost overruns in building the hotel. The limited partners said the Helmsley’s had mismanaged the business and had hurt the partnership through several self-dealing transactions. The arbitrators ruled in favor of the limited partners and forced the Helmsley’s to pay the cost overruns and an additional $3.5 million to the partnership.

 

Leona Helmsley, was convicted of income tax fraud in August 1989 - (“We don’t pay taxes … only the little people do”). Leona was convicted of 33 felony counts of trying to defraud the government and IRS, including mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns (essentially running millions of dollars of personal expenses through the Helmsley Palace and Park Lane books)

 

Harry Helmsley was indicted on similar charges in 1988, but was found too ill to stand trial. He died in 1997.

 

Following appeals Leona Helmsley was imprisoned from 1992-1993.

 

The limited partners in the Palace partnership were rightfully concerned during the Helmsley’s legal mess that the hotel was in desperate need for another general partner. The limited partners contended Helmsley Enterprises breached its fiduciary duties in managing and operating the partnership. They sought through the courts to remove the Helmsleys as general partner, and to appoint a receiver until a new general partner and manager can be found or the hotel be sold. They also sought restoration of any money the Helmsleys may have diverted to their affiliates through self-dealing.

 

Helmsley operated the Helmsley Palace hotel until 1992. She was known to fire managers from her jail cell.

 

Interstate Hotels was appointed by the court as the hotel’s receiver. The hotel changed its name to The New York Palace Hotel. The receiver received 6 qualified bids for the hotel.

 

In November 1993 The Royal Family of Brunei agreed to buy the New York Palace for $202 million (the highest offer). The agreement to buy the Palace is with Amedeo Hotels Limited Partnership, an investment company in Brunei. The Sultan of Brunei, through its development company, Amedeo Limited, contracted with Harman Jablin Architects for the complete renovation of the hotel and Villard Houses.

 

The hotel is comprised of three structures: the899-room 55-story hotel tower, the 5-story Villard House, and the 2-story Maloney & Porcelli restaurant.

 

The wealth of the royal family of Brunei, a tiny oil-rich sultanate on the island of Borneo, is controlled by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, whose estimated worth of $33 billion makes him one of the world's richest men. He and his family also own the 263-room Beverly Hills Hotel in California, bought for $187 million in 1987, and the Dorchester Hotel in London, bought for about $85 million in 1985.

 

The Royal Family’s new wealth comes from a constant flow of royalties into their private bank accounts from Shell Oil, who they joint ventured with to extract Brunei’s only natural resource.

 

The Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah younger brother is Prince Jefri Bolkiah who was the finance minister of Brunei from 1986 to 1998 and thus the chairman of The Brunei Investment Agency (BIA) responsible for overseas investments. He was known for his extravagant lifestyle, which included a private Boeing 747 and 2,000 automobiles. Hotels he controlled included The New York Palace Hotel, Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles and Plaza Athénée in Paris.

 

Following an audit in 1987 The Brunei government charged Prince Jefri with embezzling $14.8 billion and he was removed as chairman of BEI.

 

In July 2008 BEI signed management contracts with the Dorchester Group to operate the New York Plaza and the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles.

 

Prince Jefri’s two main legal and financial advisors, the British husband and wife lawyers Thomas Derbyshire and Faith Zaman were dispatched by the Prince to the New York Palace in 2004 to protect his interests. The two were involved in many aspects of Prince Jefri’s business affairs and they held powers of attorney to act of his behalf.

 

So In November 2005, Zaman claims Jefri gave them a 17-year lease on a 2,800-square-foot apartment on the third floor of the hotel, which rented as a suite for $20,000 a night. The prince gave the apartment to them rent-free for the first five years After that, the charge would be $500 a month, with an option to renew for 51 years. According the Vanity Fair this was done so the sultan if ever was successful in taking over the hotel, he would have to deal with them for the rest of his life.

 

In February 2006, John Segreti, the managing director of the Palace, dropped dead at 52 of a pulmonary embolism. Segreti formerly was the chief operating officer at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, in Hong Kon).

 

In March 2006 Faith Zaman was appointed Managing Director of the Palace. Her annual salary included 5 percent of the hotel’s gross operating profit, a car allowance of $100,000 per year, and free use of the company credit card for personal expenses. Also the prince gave her control of a second lease at a low price for the Maloney & Porcelli steak house on the hotel’s ground floor, on East 50th Street.

 

Meanwhile Derbyshire was working hard on finding a way for Jefri to cash in on two of his biggest assets the New York Palace and Hotel Bel-Air. A prospective buyer, Ty Warner (owner of the Four Seasons New York), was found who had agreed to acquiring the two hotels for $800 million. The sell certainly would have breached the government of Brunei’s freeze of Prince Jefri’s assets and further, what bank in the world could be used to deposit the proceeds and hide it from the government of Brunei.

 

The sell never occurred. Prince Jefri filed a suit against Derbyshire and Zaman seeking to recover $7 million in questionable expenses, Derbyshire and Zaman countersued for $13 million in contractual wages never received. In December 2010 the New York City jury awarded Derbyshire and Zaman $21 million.

 

Prince Jefri, a father of 17 with four wives, has swapped a decadent lifestyle for a fugitive existence. He is reported to have been allowed back in Brunei.

 

In 1997, with a new name--Le Cirque 2000--the restaurant moved from the Mayfair to the New York Palace Hotel and its landmark, the Villard Houses. Designer Adam Tihany gave Le Cirque its dazzling new look, and, as the opening approached, Siro Maccioni told New York magazine, "They're either going to give us a medal or exile us to Kilimanjaro."

 

In 2006 Siro Maccioni moved Le Cirque from the Palace Hotel to the Bloomberg building on East 58th Street.

 

John Segretti, the hotel’s managing director, decided The Palace Hotel should operate its own restaurant in the Villard space. In December 2005 it opened the 52-seat restaurant GILT with the interior design done by Patrick Jouin. The executive chef was Paul Liebrandt. The NY Times food critic panned Gilt two months after opening describing some entrees as “no larger than a hockey puck”. Shortly after Liebrandt was fired. In 2009 GILT was awarded Twp Michelin Stars under the direction of Executive Chef Justin Bogle.

 

In July 2011 Northwood Investors acquired the New York Plaza for approximately $400 million. The price is low by NYC standards – held down due to the $10 million dollar a year ground lease. The seller Brunei Investment Agency also owns the Dorchester Collection of luxury hotels. The New York Palace is no longer affiliated with the Dorchester Collection.

 

Northwood Investors is a privately-held real estate investment advisor that was founded in 2006 by John Z. Kukral, the former President and CEO of Blackstone Real Estate Advisors. It also owns the Alden Houston Hotel and The Radisson Hotel Boston.

 

Northwood has appointed David Chase to general manager of The New York Palace. Most recently he was the pre-opening general manager of Trump SoHo New York.

 

Another hi-light of our USA visit was going to Hawaii.

we had 2 weeks there and what a wonderfully friendly place it was to visit.

 

There have been few places around the world that i have visited that has stirred up my emotions more that PEARL HARBOR, it brought a tear to both me & my wife's eyes visiting the various places that soldiers + sailors still rest in the sunken wrecks & seeing all the names of these men & women on plaques killed on that day.........RIP

 

photo taken on the mighty USS Missouri showing some her massive guns, i believe the pop singer 'Cher' sat on one of these guns in one of her videos back in the 1980s

  

Pearl Harbor is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the United States Pacific Fleet. The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941 brought the United States into World War II

During the early 19th century, Pearl Harbor was not used for large ships due to its shallow entrance. The interest of United States in the Hawaiian Islands followed its whaling and trading ships in the Pacific. As early as 1820, an "Agent of the United States for Commerce and Seamen" was appointed to look after American business in the Port of Honolulu. These commercial ties to the American continent were accompanied by the work of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. American missionaries and their families became an integral part of the Hawaiian political body.

 

Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, many American warships visited Honolulu. In most cases, the commanding officers carried letters from the U.S. Government giving advice on governmental affairs and of the relations of the island nation with foreign powers. In 1841, the newspaper Polynesian, printed in Honolulu, advocated that the U.S. establish a naval base in Hawaii for protection of American citizens engaged in the whaling industry. The British Hawaiian Minister of Foreign Affairs Robert Crichton Wyllie, remarked in 1840 that "... my opinion is that the tide of events rushes on to annexation to the United States."

 

From the conclusion of the Civil War, to the purchase of Alaska, the increased importance of the Pacific states, the projected trade with the Orient, and the desire for a duty-free market for Hawaiian staples, Hawaiian trade expanded. In 1865, the North Pacific Squadron was formed to embrace the western coast and Hawaii. Lackawanna in the following year was assigned to cruise among the islands, "a locality of great and increasing interest and importance." This vessel surveyed the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands toward Japan. As a result the United States claimed Midway Island. The Secretary of the Navy was able to write in his annual report of 1868, that in November 1867, 42 American flags flew over whaleships and merchant vessels in Honolulu to only six of other nations. This increased activity caused the permanent assignment of at least one warship to Hawaiian waters. It also praised Midway Island as possessing a harbor surpassing Honolulu's. In the following year, Congress approved an appropriation of $50,000 on March 1, 1869, to deepen the approaches to this harbor.

  

Astronaut photograph of Pearl Harbor from October 2009

After 1868, when the Commander of the Pacific Fleet visited the islands to look after American interests, naval officers played an important role in internal affairs. They served as arbitrators in business disputes, negotiators of trade agreements and defenders of law and order. Periodic voyages among the islands and to the mainland aboard U.S. warships were arranged for members of the Hawaiian royal family and important island government officials. When King Lunalilo died in 1873, negotiations were underway for the cessation of Pearl Harbor as a port for the duty-free export of sugar to the U.S.[citation needed] With the election of King Kalākaua in March 1874, riots prompted landing of sailors from USS Tuscarora and Portsmouth. The British warship, HMS Tenedos, also landed a token force. During the reign of King Kalākaua the United States was granted exclusive rights to enter Pearl Harbor and to establish "a coaling and repair station."

 

Although this treaty continued in force until August 1898, the U.S. did not fortify Pearl Harbor as a naval base. The shallow entrance constituted a formidable barrier against the use of the deep protected waters of the inner harbor as it had for 60 years.

 

The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom signed the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 as supplemented by Convention on December 6, 1884, the Reciprocity Treaty was made by James Carter and ratified it in 1887. On January 20, 1887, the United States Senate allowed the Navy to exclusive right to maintain a coaling and repair station at Pearl Harbor. (The US took possession on November 9 that year). The Spanish-American War of 1898 and the desire for the United States to have a permanent presence in the Pacific both contributed to the decision.

 

Naval presence (1899–present)

Main article: Naval Station Pearl Harbor

Following the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States Navy established a base on the island in 1899. In 1941, the base was attacked by the Japanese military, causing the American entry into World War II. Over the years, Pearl Harbor remained a main base for the US Pacific Fleet after World War II along with Naval Base San Diego. In 2010, the Navy and the Air Force merged their two nearby bases; Pearl Harbor joined with Hickam Air Force Base to create Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

 

wikipedia

Judge Sir Richard Newton 1368-1444 Chief Justice of the Common Pleas aged 78 and 2nd wife Emmota / Emma Perrot de Sherborne 1475

Sir Richard Newton who died December 13th 1444 or 1448. He changed his name from Craddock , and was the west country's most senior judge. He was a lawyer at Middle Temple, and created a Serjeant-at-law in 1425, followed by a promotion to King's Serjeant & later Recorder of Bristol in 1430 where he had close ties; he also had links with Wales, where by September 1426 he had been appointed as an Itinerant justice to Humphrey Duke of Gloucester at his court in Pembrokeshire. In 1438 he led a commission of Oyer and terminer in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, and in November of that year he was appointed a justice of the Court of Common Pleas. Less than a year later on 17 September 1439 he was made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, being granted £93 6s. 8d. as well as the usual fee. By July 1440 he had been knighted, and in 1441 he acted as an arbitrator to decide the dispute over the inheritance of Thomas Berkeley.

He was buried here at St Mary's church Yatton, leaving money to finance a bell for the church.

He also has a monument at Bristol Cathedral flic.kr/p/bxpsbH

He was the son of of John Newton de Craddock and Margaret Ferch Hywel daughter of Hywel Moethe ap Rhys

 

He m1 Emma c1420-c1449 co-heiress of Sir Thomas Perrot pf Islington and Alice daughter of Martha & William Picton of Newport

Children

1. Sir John Newton 1447-1488 m Isabel daughter of Thomas & Isabel Cheddar / de Cheddre

2. Thomas Newton m ........... Hampton

3. Sir Peter Newton of Tabley Cheshire

4. Joanna Craddock Newton m Alexander St. John, Lord of Uchelolau 1480

5. Sir Matthew Newton alias Cradock of Albertawe Gwyr m Alice daughter of Philip Mansel and Mary Verch Griffith

6. Sir Richard Newton of Tre Newydd Newcasted m Joanne ...

 

He m2 Emmota / Emma de Sherborne 1475 daughter of John Harvey of Bristol (After Sir Richard's death she lived at Walton in Gordano where she had the right to present the vicars of that church)

 

For the greater part of the 15c century the Newton family enlarged, enriched, and beautified the church

www.geni.com/people/Sir-Richard-Newton-Cradock-of-Barr-s-...

 

Picture with thanks - copyright Rex Harris flic.kr/p/9o41MW

Members of the International Hod Carriers, Building and Common Laborers Union Local 74 picket June 5, 1939 on the first day of their strike against more than 100 job sites in the Washington, D.C. area.

 

This photograph is believed to portray the construction of the Melon Gallery of Art on Constitution Ave. NW.

 

Among the job sites affected work stoppage by 1700 members of the union were the Venezuelan Legation, the Greyhound bus terminal on New York Avenue NW, the Bricklayers building, Lansburgh’s Warehouse, four projects at the university of Maryland, three at Gallinger Hospital; Municipal Court, Bethesda Health Center, Government Printing Office and Doctors’ Hospital.

 

Another 4-500 members remained at work at job sites not under the Master Builders Association contract.

 

The union was demanding $0.80 cents-per-hour for unskilled workers (up from $0.70) and 90 cents-per-hour for semi-skilled laborers. Local 74 Business Agent Carl Kelly called upon the employers association to agree to arbitration.

 

At the request of other building trades unions, the Laborers’ halted their pickets of job sites the next day. That meant other crafts could work and be paid, but would some crafts would not be able to accomplish much without laborers. It had the effect of slowing construction, but not halting it.

  

On June 12th, the Carpenters’ Union called a strike of its 1,000 members employed on Master Builders Association members sites. They were the only other craft besides the laborers that had not settled their issues.

 

The Laborers union ended its strike June 22nd when the employers agreed to arbitration as the union had requested. The Carpenters, however, continued their strike the next day when a compromise was reached.

 

The Carpenters had been seeking an increase from $12 per day to $13 per day. The agreement provided that current work would continue at $12 per day, new work would pay $12.50 and on May 1, 1940, all work would pay $13 per day.

 

Howard T. Colvin, a U.S. Labor Department conciliator that the Laborers’ Union and the employers association agreed to as an arbitrator, awarded a similar wage increase to the laborers.

 

Work on current or bid work as of June 30, 1939 would continue at $0.70 per hour. New work would be increased to $0.75 per hour and as of May 1, 1940, all work would pay $0.80 per hour.

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmGa6cGE

 

The photographer is unknown. The image is a Washington Daily News photograph courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

 

Pickets march in the rain April 26, 1946 outside the bus depot of the Washington, Virginia & Maryland Coach Company (WV&MC--later WV&M) bus line at N. Quincey Street and Wilson Blvd. in Arlington, Va. on the first day of a strike by the Amalgamated Association of Street Electric Railway and Motorcoach Employees of America Division 1079 (later Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1079).

 

The 250 workers walked out after the company refused arbitration and issued a notice of termination of the existing contract.

 

The company, also known as the Arnold Bus Line after its owner Leon Arnold, refused to arbitrate the issue until a request for a fare increase was acted on by the Arlington Public Utilities Commission and promised to continue to pay the current pay and benefits while negotiations continued—although the workers would be without a contract.

 

The union was demanding raises for operators of 30 cents-per-hour and as much as 42 cents-per-hour for mechanics.

 

The company served about 1,250,000 passengers per month at the time in Arlington, Fairfax, Falls Church, Clarendon, Westover, Langley, McLean, Tyson’s corner, Vienna and Oakton with Washington, D.C. terminals at 11th Street between E and F Streets NW and at 9th and Constitution Ave. NW.

 

The strike took place against a backdrop of a nationwide strike wave 1945-46 following World War II that involved work stoppages by millions of workers. Workers’ wages in the country continued to be regulated by a war-era wage board despite the end of the conflict.

 

The strike was settled on May 3rd when the company acquiesced to the union’s demand for arbitration and an agreement to continue negotiations in the interim.

 

On May 23rd, a three member arbitration panel voted to award a 12 cent-per-hour increase with the union arbitrator dissenting.

 

This was not the end of the story, however. The government Wage Stabilization Board cut the pay increase to nine cents-per-hour on June 12, 1946.

 

Angry workers already felt cheated. The Capital Transit Company across the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. paid $1.14 per hour. The initial increase only brought them to $0.98 per hour, but was now cut to $0.95 per hour for operators.

 

However at a union meeting held at the Ballston Fire House, members defeated a motion to resume their strike and reluctantly accepted the outcome.

 

The WV&M company was eventually bought by D.C. Transit, but continued to operate as a separate company until acquired by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) in 1973. Local 1079 was also merged into the larger Local 689 at that time that represented transit workers in the District of Columbia.

 

The Arlington bus garage was closed in 2009 and ultimately demolished to make way for redevelopment in the town.

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmLVmtxd

 

The photographer is unknown. The image is a Washington Daily News photograph courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

 

Judge Sir Richard Newton 1400-1444 Chief Justice of the Common Pleas aged 78 and 2nd wife Emmota / Emma Perrot de Sherborne 1475

Sir Richard Newton who died December 13th 1444 or 1448. He changed his name from Craddock , and was the west country's most senior judge. He was a lawyer at Middle Temple, and created a Serjeant-at-law in 1425, followed by a promotion to King's Serjeant & later Recorder of Bristol in 1430 where he had close ties; he also had links with Wales, where by September 1426 he had been appointed as an Itinerant justice to Humphrey Duke of Gloucester at his court in Pembrokeshire. In 1438 he led a commission of Oyer and terminer in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire, and in November of that year he was appointed a justice of the Court of Common Pleas. Less than a year later on 17 September 1439 he was made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, being granted £93 6s. 8d. as well as the usual fee. By July 1440 he had been knighted, and in 1441 he acted as an arbitrator to decide the dispute over the inheritance of Thomas Berkeley.

He was buried here at St Mary's church Yatton, leaving money to finance a bell for the church.

He also has a monument at Bristol Cathedral flic.kr/p/bxpsbH

He was the son of of John Newton de Craddock and Margaret Ferch Hywel daughter of Hywel Moethe ap Rhys

 

He m1 Emma c1420-c1449 co-heiress of Sir Thomas Perrot pf Islington and Alice daughter of Martha & William Picton of Newport

Children

1. Sir John Newton 1447-1488 m Isabel daughter of Thomas & Isabel Cheddar / de Cheddre

2. Thomas Newton m Joan daughter of John Barr

3. (?) Sir Peter Newton of Tabley Cheshire

4. (?) Joanna Craddock Newton m Alexander St. John, Lord of Uchelolau 1480

5. (?) Sir Matthew Newton alias Cradock of Albertawe Gwyr m Alice daughter of Philip Mansel and Mary Verch Griffith

6. (?) Sir Richard Newton of Tre Newydd Newcasted m Joanne ...

 

He m2 Emmota / Emma de Sherborne 1475 daughter of Sir John Perrott of Islington (or daughter of John Harvey)

 

For the greater part of the 15c century the Newton family enlarged, enriched, and beautified the church

www.geni.com/people/Sir-Richard-Newton-Cradock-of-Barr-s-...

Sir John Stanley c1423 - 1474 Sheriff of Staffordshire who built the south aisle, and founded therein a chantry of the Cross for the "maintenaunce of one prieste perpetually to celebrate dayly masse for the good of all Christian souls"

Previously placed on a low recess in the north wall of the chantry immediately above where it now stands on a tomb chest made of Chelleston alabaster. (possibly not original with the effigy ?) It suffered damage from dampness and running water before it was restored mid 19c..

 

Once highly coloured, near his head is an eagle and a baby www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/a626PB which refers to the legend associated with Sir John's descent from the Latham family and in particular Sir Thomas Latham, whose wife being barren, wanted to adopt his illegitimate son- he the baby in a nearby eagle's nest, and calling his wife, she delighted with this 'miracle' , took the child as her own.

Beside the female portrait in the centre or clasp jewel of his girdle, two smaller female faces can be found in other links, a possible reference to his 3 marriages.

 

John was the son & heir of Sir Thomas Stanley & Matilda Arderne c1431 www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/836N6P heiress to Elford & Halour manors , daughter of John Arderne and Matilda Pilkington

1463.

He was the great grandson of Sir Thomas Arderne 1391 of Elford & Katherine Stafford 1382 www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/F29388

He was MP in 1446 and Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1460 and created a Knight Banneret at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471.

 

He m1 1428 Cecilia daughter of Ralph de Arderne & Katherine Stanley ( They were children when they married and had a Papal Dispensation as they were close relatives via the Ardere family

Children

1. John Stanley c1446 - 1508 (buried at Northenden Cheshire) m Anne daughter of Sir Robert Hanford having a son & 3 daughters: - A. John 1467 - 1470 killed by being hit by a wooden tennis ball , last male Stanley heir www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/r5222A ;

B. Anne m Sir Christopher Savage : C. Margery heir to Elford m William Staunton www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/i822A5 ; D. Elizabeth m William Ferrers of Tamworth.

2. Maud 1483 m John de Ferrers

 

He m2 1452 Elizabeth (Matilda?) 1471 daughter of Richard Vernon of Tong & Benedicta flic.kr/p/4o9ULD daughter of John Ludlow and Isabel Lingen 1446 www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/2219918943/ ;

Children

1. Humphrey Stanley 1505 www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/497066 of Clifton and Pipe m Ellen 1524 daughter of James Leigh (parents of 2 sons William & John & 2 grand daughters Isiod Reade & Isabel Moyle)

2. Alice 1493 m (1st wife) John son of John Melton & Margery daughter of William FitzHugh by Margery Willoughby; who m2 Eleanor daughter of John St John and Alice Bradshaw

3. Isabel b 1460 m1 Hugh son of Humphrey Peshale ; m2 John Russhe 1498 www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/d8Mb42 merchant of London

 

He m3 (August 1471) Anne daughter of Robert Horne / Hansacre, Alderman of London and Joan Fabian,: Widow of William son of Thomas Harcourt and Joan Francis; who m3 (3rd wife) 1476 William son of John Norreys by Alice Merbrooke having 3 children Anne Baldwin; Jane Cheney and Elizabeth 3rd wife of William Fermor 1552 widower of Katherine Powlett at Hornchurch www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/s4X0n0

 

His 3 wives were once shown kneeling in a window in the chantry. www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/D7i28v

 

In 1491 his eldest son John was involved in a law suit with his younger half-brother Sir Humphrey regarding the division of their late father's estates. Sir William Stanley of Holt, Denbighshire (the younger brother of Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby) was appointed in his capacity of Lord Chamberlain to act as arbitrator in the dispute. It was agreed that Sir Humphrey who had been given the manor of Stratfold with land in Tamworth by his father in 1474 should be awarded the additional estates of Pipe and Clifton with grants of land in Campden for life

When Sir John died in 1508 he was commemorated in a window of St. Wilfred's Church at Northenden, Cheshire (which is destroyed by the Roundheads during the Civil War). He was described in the inscription as the one-time Lord of Pipe, Clifton Campville, and Elford in the County of Staffordshire; of Sibbertoft (near Market Harborough) Northamptonshire; and Camden super Wild, Gloucestershire; and especially of Eschells (in the Parish of Northenden), Alford and Nether Alderley in Cheshire. Sir John sold Alford and Nether Alderley in Cheshire to Sir William Stanley of Holt. As Sir John's only son predeceased him in 1470, he had no male heir , his estates were divided between his 3 daughters, the Manor of Elford passed to his daughter Margery & husband William Staunton,

- Church of St Peter, Elford Staffordshire.

www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stanley-504

The New York Palace Hotel (formerly The Helmsley Palace)

455 Madison Avenue at 50th Street

New York, NY 10022

 

The entrance to GILT

------------------

The Villard Houses were brownstone residences built by Henry Villard in 1884. Villard was a railway promoter and financier, who took over the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1881. The architect was McKim, Mead & White. The firm also designed the Pennsylvania Hotel in Manhattan. The six residence building was clad in quarried brownstone and wrapped around a u-shaped courtyard representative of a 15th century Italian palazzo. Four homes opened onto the courtyard while two had entrances on 51st Street.

 

Villard moved into the corner residence at 451 Madison, at the corner of 50th Street for just a short while before declaring bankruptcy. Much of the interior decoration is still visible today in the restaurant Gilt (formerly Le Cirque 2000).

 

In the 1940’s the Villard House was known as Women's Military Services Club. It served women in the military that could stay there for .50 cents a night. By the late 60’s the Archdiocese of New York owned the complex.

 

In the early 70’s Harry Helmsley found the perfect location in which to build his dream hotel. The Villard House was located on New York's Madison Avenue, across the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral.

 

Helmsley negotiated a 99 year lease on the site from the the Archdiocese of New York and proposed gutting the interiors of the Villard and putting a 51-story hotel on top of it. The preservationists prevailed and Helmsley’s plan was changed to save most of the interiors of the Villard houses, though the buildings' rear facades were demolished and incorporated in to the new 51-story hotel. long-term ground lease, which runs for decades. The Archdiocese of New York receives $10 million annually in ground rent.

 

Helmsley commissioned architects Emery Roth & Sons and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer to design the modern structure and integrate the 1884 houses. The tower’s façade is a dark bronze reflective glass that was to blend with the Villard Houses. Started in 1977, the 905-room hotel project was completed in 1980.

 

Leona Helmsley spent a great deal of time and energy managing the decorating and staffing of the hotel. Leona took seriously her role as President of Helmsley Hotels and was determined to give her guests unprecedented service.

 

On September 15, 1980, the opulent Helmsley Palace Hotel opened. At the time The Helmsley Palace had the highest hotel rates in the city. An early print advertisement featuring Leona had the by-line: “It’s the only palace in the world where the Queen stands guard”

 

The hotel has four Triplex Suites. Situated at the top of the tower and occupying the four corners, each 2-bedroom suite is spread over three floors and include a private roof terrace.

 

In 1982, the limited partners in the Helmsley Palace Hotel partnership forced an arbitration proceeding after Harry Helmsley, in his role as general partner demanded more money from the limited partners for cost overruns in building the hotel. The limited partners said the Helmsley’s had mismanaged the business and had hurt the partnership through several self-dealing transactions. The arbitrators ruled in favor of the limited partners and forced the Helmsley’s to pay the cost overruns and an additional $3.5 million to the partnership.

 

Leona Helmsley, was convicted of income tax fraud in August 1989 - (“We don’t pay taxes … only the little people do”). Leona was convicted of 33 felony counts of trying to defraud the government and IRS, including mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns (essentially running millions of dollars of personal expenses through the Helmsley Palace and Park Lane books)

 

Harry Helmsley was indicted on similar charges in 1988, but was found too ill to stand trial. He died in 1997.

 

Following appeals Leona Helmsley was imprisoned from 1992-1993.

 

The limited partners in the Palace partnership were rightfully concerned during the Helmsley’s legal mess that the hotel was in desperate need for another general partner. The limited partners contended Helmsley Enterprises breached its fiduciary duties in managing and operating the partnership. They sought through the courts to remove the Helmsleys as general partner, and to appoint a receiver until a new general partner and manager can be found or the hotel be sold. They also sought restoration of any money the Helmsleys may have diverted to their affiliates through self-dealing.

 

Helmsley operated the Helmsley Palace hotel until 1992. She was known to fire managers from her jail cell.

 

Interstate Hotels was appointed by the court as the hotel’s receiver. The hotel changed its name to The New York Palace Hotel. The receiver received 6 qualified bids for the hotel.

 

In November 1993 The Royal Family of Brunei agreed to buy the New York Palace for $202 million (the highest offer). The agreement to buy the Palace is with Amedeo Hotels Limited Partnership, an investment company in Brunei. The Sultan of Brunei, through its development company, Amedeo Limited, contracted with Harman Jablin Architects for the complete renovation of the hotel and Villard Houses.

 

The hotel is comprised of three structures: the899-room 55-story hotel tower, the 5-story Villard House, and the 2-story Maloney & Porcelli restaurant.

 

The wealth of the royal family of Brunei, a tiny oil-rich sultanate on the island of Borneo, is controlled by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, whose estimated worth of $33 billion makes him one of the world's richest men. He and his family also own the 263-room Beverly Hills Hotel in California, bought for $187 million in 1987, and the Dorchester Hotel in London, bought for about $85 million in 1985.

 

The Royal Family’s new wealth comes from a constant flow of royalties into their private bank accounts from Shell Oil, who they joint ventured with to extract Brunei’s only natural resource.

 

The Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah younger brother is Prince Jefri Bolkiah who was the finance minister of Brunei from 1986 to 1998 and thus the chairman of The Brunei Investment Agency (BIA) responsible for overseas investments. He was known for his extravagant lifestyle, which included a private Boeing 747 and 2,000 automobiles. Hotels he controlled included The New York Palace Hotel, Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles and Plaza Athénée in Paris.

 

Following an audit in 1987 The Brunei government charged Prince Jefri with embezzling $14.8 billion and he was removed as chairman of BEI.

 

In July 2008 BEI signed management contracts with the Dorchester Group to operate the New York Plaza and the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles.

 

Prince Jefri’s two main legal and financial advisors, the British husband and wife lawyers Thomas Derbyshire and Faith Zaman were dispatched by the Prince to the New York Palace in 2004 to protect his interests. The two were involved in many aspects of Prince Jefri’s business affairs and they held powers of attorney to act of his behalf.

 

So In November 2005, Zaman claims Jefri gave them a 17-year lease on a 2,800-square-foot apartment on the third floor of the hotel, which rented as a suite for $20,000 a night. The prince gave the apartment to them rent-free for the first five years After that, the charge would be $500 a month, with an option to renew for 51 years. According the Vanity Fair this was done so the sultan if ever was successful in taking over the hotel, he would have to deal with them for the rest of his life.

 

In February 2006, John Segreti, the managing director of the Palace, dropped dead at 52 of a pulmonary embolism. Segreti formerly was the chief operating officer at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, in Hong Kon).

 

In March 2006 Faith Zaman was appointed Managing Director of the Palace. Her annual salary included 5 percent of the hotel’s gross operating profit, a car allowance of $100,000 per year, and free use of the company credit card for personal expenses. Also the prince gave her control of a second lease at a low price for the Maloney & Porcelli steak house on the hotel’s ground floor, on East 50th Street.

 

Meanwhile Derbyshire was working hard on finding a way for Jefri to cash in on two of his biggest assets the New York Palace and Hotel Bel-Air. A prospective buyer, Ty Warner (owner of the Four Seasons New York), was found who had agreed to acquiring the two hotels for $800 million. The sell certainly would have breached the government of Brunei’s freeze of Prince Jefri’s assets and further, what bank in the world could be used to deposit the proceeds and hide it from the government of Brunei.

 

The sell never occurred. Prince Jefri filed a suit against Derbyshire and Zaman seeking to recover $7 million in questionable expenses, Derbyshire and Zaman countersued for $13 million in contractual wages never received. In December 2010 the New York City jury awarded Derbyshire and Zaman $21 million.

 

Prince Jefri, a father of 17 with four wives, has swapped a decadent lifestyle for a fugitive existence. He is reported to have been allowed back in Brunei.

 

In 1997, with a new name--Le Cirque 2000--the restaurant moved from the Mayfair to the New York Palace Hotel and its landmark, the Villard Houses. Designer Adam Tihany gave Le Cirque its dazzling new look, and, as the opening approached, Siro Maccioni told New York magazine, "They're either going to give us a medal or exile us to Kilimanjaro."

 

In 2006 Siro Maccioni moved Le Cirque from the Palace Hotel to the Bloomberg building on East 58th Street.

 

John Segretti, the hotel’s managing director, decided The Palace Hotel should operate its own restaurant in the Villard space. In December 2005 it opened the 52-seat restaurant GILT with the interior design done by Patrick Jouin. The executive chef was Paul Liebrandt. The NY Times food critic panned Gilt two months after opening describing some entrees as “no larger than a hockey puck”. Shortly after Liebrandt was fired. In 2009 GILT was awarded Twp Michelin Stars under the direction of Executive Chef Justin Bogle.

 

In July 2011 Northwood Investors acquired the New York Plaza for approximately $400 million. The price is low by NYC standards – held down due to the $10 million dollar a year ground lease. The seller Brunei Investment Agency also owns the Dorchester Collection of luxury hotels. The New York Palace is no longer affiliated with the Dorchester Collection.

 

Northwood Investors is a privately-held real estate investment advisor that was founded in 2006 by John Z. Kukral, the former President and CEO of Blackstone Real Estate Advisors. It also owns the Alden Houston Hotel and The Radisson Hotel Boston.

 

Northwood has appointed David Chase to general manager of The New York Palace. Most recently he was the pre-opening general manager of Trump SoHo New York.

 

ROSE, GEORGE MACLEAN, printer, publisher, temperance advocate, journalist, author, and politician; b. 14 March 1829 in Wick, Scotland, son of Donald Rose and Christian Maclean; m. 23 Sept. 1856 Margaret Catherine Johan Levack Manson in East Oxford Township, Oxford County, Upper Canada, and they had six sons and three daughters who survived infancy; d. 10 Feb. 1898 in Toronto.

 

George Maclean Rose, like two of his brothers, Henry and Daniel, was trained as a printer, serving a seven-year apprenticeship in the office of the John o’ Groat Journal in Wick. According to George’s son Malcolm Cameron, he had little formal schooling, but continued to educate himself throughout his life. In 1850, at the age of 21, he joined the Northern Ensign, a Reform paper founded that year by John Mackie, formerly editor of the John o’ Groat Journal. Mackie, a temperance advocate and political writer, was to have a lifelong influence on Rose, who as early as the age of 12 had joined the temperance cause. It was with reluctance that Rose left his employ the following year, when his father decided to immigrate with his family to Lower Canada.

 

In Montreal they joined Henry Rose, who had come to Lower Canada in 1848, and George found work in the office of John C. Becket*, printer of the Montreal Witness and publisher of the Canada Temperance Advocate. Except for a few months spent with the engraver George Matthews, Rose worked for Becket until his father’s death in January 1853 created a need to support his mother and dependent brothers and sisters. In March, Henry and George announced a new printing establishment, H. and G. M. Rose. Here young Daniel Rose completed his apprenticeship.

 

The Roses had been brought up as Congregationalists, but in Montreal, under the influence of the Reverend John Cordner, they joined the Unitarian Church, and George was to remain a staunch Unitarian throughout his life. The Liberal Christian, a monthly journal edited by Cordner, was published by H. and G. M. Rose in 1854 and 1855, and the brothers sold books of interest to its readers at their printing-office on Great St James Street (Rue Saint-Jacques Ouest). Henry and George were also active in the temperance movement in Montreal: in 1855 they were among the incorporating members of the Lower Canada division of the Sons of Temperance [see Letitia Creighton; Robert Dick*].

 

Early in 1856 the partnership with Henry was dissolved, and George’s ambitions took him to Upper Canada. After a brief stay in Merrickville, he moved to London, where he was hired to manage the job-printing office of Henry A. Newcombe, publisher of the Evangelical Witness. In September he married Margaret Manson, of nearby Oxford County, whose family he may have known when they lived in Vaudreuil, Lower Canada. Like the Roses, the Mansons were from Caithness: Margaret was a cousin of Oliver Mowat*, who would later become Liberal premier of Ontario. For a short time in 1857 Rose was in partnership with Hamilton Hunter, a Unitarian minister turned journalist and publisher of the London Weekly Atlas. But by November of that year the Atlas had been sold to Marcus Talbot, who also published the London Prototype. Rose worked for Talbot as city editor and reporter until the summer of 1858, when he moved once again, this time to Toronto.

 

There, he was hired as the foreman of Samuel Thompson*’s printing-office, a position that was to determine his future career. In 1859 Thompson won a five-year contract as printer to the Province of Canada, the first time the contract had been awarded for more than one year at a time, and in the fall of 1859 Rose moved to Quebec, the provincial capital, to set up the new printing-office. At its September meeting the Toronto Typographical Society passed a resolution commending Rose for “his conduct as a printer and foreman” while a member of the society. It praised him for upholding “the principles of our Constitution” and for his “kind and gentlemanly demeanor” toward members of the society under his charge.

 

In 1860, soon after Thompson took up his appointment in Quebec, he found himself in financial difficulties, a situation he blamed on a general reduction in the number of documents being printed and on the animosity of some legislative officials. At a bailiff’s sale several employees, including Rose, bought enough of Thompson’s assets to keep the printing-office going, and by April 1861 Robert Hunter, his accountant, was the “principal owner of the Printing Office and materials.” On 10 April Hunter wrote to the legislature that he had entered into a subcontract with Thompson to carry out its printing “under the name and designation of Thompson, Hunter & Co.” When later the same year Thompson withdrew completely from the business, Hunter, Rose, and François Lemieux formed a new partnership as Hunter, Rose and Company. They carried out the balance of Thompson’s contract and in 1864 successfully bid on a new five-year contract in their own name. Following the transfer of the government to Ottawa in 1865, the company moved its printing-office to the new capital late that year or early in 1866.

 

Hunter, Rose thus already had several years’ experience in government printing when in 1868 it was offered the Ontario government contract on the same terms. According to Henry Jervis Hartney, the provincial queen’s printer, who negotiated with them on behalf of the premier, John Sandfield Macdonald*, the partners “hesitated long over this offer.” He was able to persuade them that, although in Ottawa they could not make “a dollar outside the Government,” in Toronto they would be able to build up a good general business. On 11 July 1868 Hunter, Rose signed a ten-year contract with the province of Ontario to do all government printing and binding, including the distribution of the official Ontario Gazette. Hunter took charge of the new Toronto office while Rose remained in Ottawa; in 1871 he too moved to Toronto and the Ottawa office was closed.

 

In Quebec and Ottawa the company had done some non-governmental printing, but very little original publishing. A notable exception was Henry James Morgan*’s Sketches of celebrated Canadians (Quebec and London, 1862). In Toronto in the early 1870s it began to expand its activities by publishing Canadian editions of such popular British authors as Lord Lytton, William Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, and Anthony Trollope. Unlike many Toronto publishers who at this time routinely pirated foreign authors, Hunter, Rose compensated its British writers fairly. A surviving letter from Trollope to the firm in 1874 thanks them for a remittance of £19 16s. 7d. and promises that his British publishers will be in touch with them about his latest novel, The way we live now. Hunter, Rose printed the influential Canadian Monthly and National Review from its beginning in 1872 (it was later also published by Rose under the Rose-Belford imprint), and works in the fields of history and literature by Canadian authors, including Alexander Begg, Alexander McLachlan, and Susanna Moodie [Strickland*], appeared in increasing numbers.

 

The printing contract with the province of Ontario had been based on what seemed fair rates in 1868, but in the early 1870s labour costs in Toronto rose so sharply that in 1873 and subsequently the firm had to petition for increases in the contract prices to be paid for composition, presswork, and binding. When the contract came up for renewal in 1878, the Hunter, Rose tender was one of the highest, reflecting the company’s more realistic idea of the actual labour costs involved, and legislative printing went to Christopher Blackett Robinson and William Warwick. Despite the difficulties over fair compensation for this government work (not settled until an arbitrator was appointed in 1881), the company prospered: in 1875 it was able to build a “large & valuable building” on Wellington Street West that was to house the business during Rose’s lifetime.

 

Soon after moving to Toronto in 1871, Rose had become the secretary of the First Unitarian Church, a position he was to hold for 20 years. He regularly taught a Bible class on Sunday afternoons and was one of the church’s principal donors. His son Malcolm noted after his father’s death that although he had made money in 40 years as a printer and publisher, he had also “made large losses helping others.” The cause in which he was most active was temperance. In the debate among temperance advocates over the best way to bring an end to the consumption of alcoholic beverages, Rose supported the movement for legislation that would prohibit the liquor traffic entirely. Maria Simpson, in her temperance story “Brother G. M. Rose” (1879), claimed that he “gave more time and money to the Temperance Cause than any other man in Canada.” The portrait of Rose presented by Simpson in this and two other books, Ronald McFarlane (1878) and Sayings and doings of noted temperance advocates (1879), is idealized, but these books reveal how he must have worked, going out almost nightly to give “fiery, impromptu addresses” at clubs and lodges, filling in good-naturedly for absent speakers, and even on one occasion submitting to a phrenological examination in public. Though generally of “a manner urbane and kindly,” he was “capable, on occasion, of firing into vehement outbursts on behalf of his favorite topic – abstinence,” and even of crying “like a baby.” He continued to take a leading part in the Sons of Temperance, becoming grand worthy patriarch of the Ontario division in 1874, and for its gatherings he compiled several collections of songs and recitations. He was the principal promoter of the Temperance Colonization Society, the organization that founded Saskatoon as a temperance colony in 1882.

 

By the mid 1870s Rose’s family had grown to nine, and after more than 20 years of living in rented houses he was able to build a large residence on St Joseph Street in the suburban Cloverhill area of Toronto. His affection for his family is evident in a surviving letter written to his wife from Toronto in 1868, when the family was still living in Ottawa. “I was so sorry, dear Mag, that I was from home when the birthdays of two of our pets came off. When I get home we will celebrate them again, and then I will have a romp with them all round. . . . Kiss the pets for me and accept one for yourself.”

 

The death of Robert Hunter on 15 May 1877 at age 39 brought a number of changes. Rose was now sole owner of Hunter, Rose and Company (though he was to bring his brother Daniel in as a partner in 1878), and he seems to have had to mortgage the property on Wellington Street for several years. In April 1878, with Robert James Belford, of the publishing firm Belford Brothers, and several investors, he incorporated a new firm, the Rose-Belford Publishing Company. The association with the Belfords did not last long. On 7 Feb. 1879, in a letter to the prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, R. J. Belford reported that “yesterday we separated for good.” The reasons are hinted at in a letter of 28 January from Alexander Beaty Belford to an unidentified correspondent. They seem in part to have been political: the Belfords and their brother Charles*, editor of the Mail, were staunch Conservatives and Rose was a Liberal. It is unlikely they were suited temperamentally either; the Belfords soon left Toronto for the richer fields of Chicago and New York. Rose, however, continued to publish in Toronto under the Rose-Belford name until 1882.

 

Under the Rose-Belford Publishing Company and its successor, the Rose Publishing Company, the publishing side of Rose’s business was greatly expanded. The Rose Library, a series of inexpensive editions, mostly reprints, of popular authors, was launched in 1879 and by 1886 had reached 56 titles. Other series directed at the mass market included the Red Line Edition of Standard Poets and the Premier Library of popular fiction. In the mid 1880s the Rose Publishing Company entered the textbook field; although never as active in this field as the companies operated by William James Gage* and William Walter Copp, it was producing a dozen titles annually by the 1890s. The company also published reference works such as A cyclopædia of Canadian biography (2v., 1886–88), edited by Rose himself, and important historical studies such as Joseph Edmund Collins’s biography of Sir John A. Macdonald (1883, revised 1891) and Graeme Mercer Adam*’s The Canadian North-west: its history and its troubles (1885). Some titles were extremely popular: in 1885 the trade journal Books and Notions reported that The home cook book had sold “not less than 100,000” copies, “the largest [sale], we believe, of any book ever published in Canada.”

 

Although Rose was the president of the Rose Publishing Company, it was managed from the early 1880s by his eldest son, Daniel Alexander, who was increasingly the family spokesman on the Canadian copyright question. Canada’s attempts to pass a new copyright act, repeatedly frustrated by the Colonial Office, preoccupied the country’s publishers in the late 1880s and 1890s [see Samuel Edward Dawson*; John Ross Robertson*]. Two other sons, William Manson and George Maclean Jr, were also involved in the family’s business activities. In 1891 Rose served one term as an alderman for St John’s Ward, but this seems to have been his only venture into political life. He was long active in the city’s Board of Trade, as a member of council (from 1878), vice-president (1881), president (1882), and treasurer (1883–92).

 

Rose’s last years were darkened by several reversals. In 1892, in a dispute over the ministry of the Reverend Thomas C. Jackson, he and several other members left the First Unitarian Church to form a new congregation. He and his family were to return to the church before his death. In January 1894 the Rose Publishing Company failed, and Hunter, Rose, its principal creditor, was badly hurt but survived. (The name remained associated with printing in Toronto into the 1980s.) The failure had been expected in the industry for some time, and the trade journals speculated on its causes. The Canadian Printer and Publisher blamed Canada’s copyright dilemma: “The British own us, and throw us as a sweet bone to the publishing dogs of the United States.”

 

In July 1895 Hunter, Rose was reorganized as an incorporated company with Rose as president and D. A. Rose and Atwell Fleming as joint managers. Rose continued to chair directors’ meetings until August 1897, but his health was failing. In 1896 he had suffered a severe attack of pneumonia from which he never fully recovered. In a letter to his daughter Christina Henrietta in October 1897, he reported, “Some days I am very bright, other days I am as weak as can be . . . . However, . . . as I am not one of those who give in easily, I have great hopes that I will be strong enough to visit you next winter.” Less than four months later he was dead at the age of 68.

 

The Globe, in an obituary that ran over a column, described Rose as “one of the best known citizens of Toronto.” He belonged to a generation of printer-publishers who, in the years after confederation, created a publishing industry that expressed the aspirations of the new nation. In his avocations too he was representative of his time. Although his preoccupation with prohibition is now out of fashion, the social concerns that lay behind it are not.

 

ALLAH(الله)

 

Al Rahman (الرحمن)

The All Beneficent

 

Al Rahim (الرحيم)

The Most Merciful

 

Al Malik (الملك)

The King, The Sovereign

 

Al Quddus (القدوس)

The Most Holy

 

Al Salam (السلام)

Peace and Blessing

  

Al Mu'min (المؤمن)

The Guarantor

 

Al Muhaymin (المهيمن)

The Guardian, the Preserver

 

Al 'Aziz (العزيز)

The Almighty, the Self Sufficient

 

Al Jabbar (الجبار)

The Powerful, the Irresistible

 

Al Mutakabbir (المتكبر)

The Tremendous

 

Al Khaliq (الخالق)

The Creator

 

Al Bari' (البارئ)

The Maker

  

Al Musawwir (المصور)

The Fashioner of Forms

 

Al Ghaffar (الغفار)

The Ever Forgiving

 

Al Qahhar (القهار)

The All Compelling Subduer

 

Al Wahhab (الوهاب)

The Bestower

 

Al Razzaq (الرزاق)

The Ever Providing

 

Al Fattah (الفتاح)

The Opener, the Victory Giver

 

Al Alim (العليم)

The All Knowing, the Omniscient

 

Al Qabid (القابض)

The Restrainer, the Straitener

 

Al Basit (الباسط)

The Expander, the Munificent

 

Al Khafid (الخافض)

The Abaser

 

Al Rafi' (الرافع)

The Exalter

 

Al Mu'izz (المعز)

The Giver of Honor

 

Al Mudhill (المذل)

The Giver of Dishonor

 

Al Sami' (السميع)

The All Hearing

 

Al Basir (البصير)

The All Seeing

 

Al Hakam (الحكم)

The Judge, the Arbitrator

 

Al 'Adl (العدل)

The Utterly Just

 

Al Latif (اللطيف)

The Subtly Kind

 

Al Khabir (الخبير)

The All Aware

 

Al Halim (الحليم)

The Forbearing, the Indulgent

 

Al 'Azim (العظيم)

The Magnificent, the Infinite

 

Al Ghafur (الغفور)

The All Forgiving

 

Al Shakur (الشكور)

The Grateful

 

Al 'Ali (العلى)

The Sublimely Exalted

 

Al Kabir (الكبير)

The Great

 

Al Hafiz (الحفيظ)

The Preserver

 

Al Muqit (المقيت)

The Nourisher

 

Al Hasib (الحسيب)

The Reckoner

 

Al Jalil (الجليل)

The Majestic

 

Al Karim (الكريم)

The Bountiful, the Generous

 

Al Raqib (الرقيب)

The Watchful

 

Al Mujib (المجيب)

The Responsive, the Answerer

 

Al Wasi' (الواسع)

The Vast, the All Encompassing

 

Al Hakim (الحكيم)

The Wise

 

Al Wadud (الودود)

The Loving, the Kind One

 

Al Majid (المجيد)

The All Glorious

 

Al Ba'ith (الباعث)

The Raiser of the Dead

 

Al Shahid (الشهيد)

The Witness

 

Al Haqq (الحق)

The Truth, the Real

 

Al Wakil (الوكيل )

The Trustee, the Dependable

 

Al Qawiyy (القوى)

The Strong

 

Al Matin (المتين)

The Firm, the Steadfast

 

Al Wali (الولى)

The Protecting Friend, Patron, and Helper

 

Al Hamid (الحميد)

The All Praiseworthy

 

Al Muhsi (المحصى)

The Accounter, the Numberer of All

 

Al Mubdi' (المبدئ)

The Producer, Originator, and Initiator of all

 

Al Mu'id (المعيد)

The Reinstater Who Brings Back All

 

Al Muhyi (المحيى)

The Giver of Life

 

Al Mumit (المميت)

The Bringer of Death, the Destroyer

 

Al Hayy (الحي)

The Ever Living

 

Al Qayyum (القيوم)

The Self Subsisting Sustainer of All

 

Al Wajid (الواجد)

The Perceiver, the Finder, the Unfailing

 

Al Majid (الماجد)

The Illustrious, the Magnificent

 

Al Wahid (الواحد)

The One, the All Inclusive, the Indivisible

 

Al Samad (الصمد)

The Self Sufficient,the Impregnable,the

Eternally Besought of All, the Everlasting

 

Al Qadir (القادر)

The All Able

 

Al Muqtadir (المقتدر)

The All Determiner, the Dominant

 

Al Muqaddim (المقدم)

The Expediter, He who brings forward

 

Al Mu'akhkhir (المؤخر)

The Delayer, He who puts far away

 

Al Awwal (الأول)

The First

 

Al Akhir (الأخر)

The Last

 

Al Zahir (الظاهر)

The Manifest; the All Victorious

 

Al Batin (الباطن)

The Hidden; the All Encompassing

 

Al Wali (الوالي)

The Patron

 

Al Muta'al (المتعالي)

The Self Exalted

 

Al Barr (البر)

The Most Kind and Righteous

 

Al Tawwab (التواب)

The Ever Returning, Ever Relenting

 

Al Muntaqim (المنتقم)

The Avenger

 

Al 'Afuww (العفو)

The Pardoner

 

Al Ra'uf (الرؤوف)

The Compassionate, the All Pitying

 

Malik al Mulk (مالك) (الملك)

The Owner of All Sovereignty

 

Dhu al Jalal wa al Ikram (ذو الجلال و الإكرام)

The Lord of Majesty and Generosity

 

Al Muqsit (المقسط)

The Equitable, the Requiter

 

Al Jami' (الجامع)

The Gatherer, the Unifier

 

Al Ghani (الغنى)

The All Rich, the Independent

 

Al Mughni (المغنى)

The Enricher, the Emancipator

 

Al Mani'(المانع)

The Withholder, the Shielder, the Defender

 

Al Darr (الضار)

The Distresser, the Harmer

 

Al Nafi' (النافع)

The Propitious, the Benefactor

 

Al Nur (النور)

The Light

 

Al Hadi (الهادئ)

The Guide

 

Al Badi (البديع)

Incomparable, the Originator

 

Al Baqi (الباقي)

The Ever Enduring and Immutable

 

Al Warith (الوارث)

The Heir, the Inheritor of All

 

Al Rashid (الرشيد)

The Guide, Infallible Teacher, and Knower

 

Al Sabur (الصبور)

The Patient, the Timeless

  

Stock exchange for agricultural products

(Pictures you can see by clicking on the link at the end of the site!)

Vienna, 10 Tabor Road, stock exchange for agricultural products, 2008

Picture from 1900

The Attic inscriptions

The back side of the Great Mohrengasse

Interior, adapted as Odeon Theatre 2010

The market for agricultural products in Vienna, in short, Commodity Exchange, is a in 1869 founded produce exchange, without time bargain. It is located since 1890 in a 1887-1890 specifically created building in Tabor street in Vienna's Leopoldstadt.

During National Socialism in Austria (1938-1945) as well as because of market organisation act, from 1949 to 1994 the stock market possessed no power. With Austria's EU accession in 1995 the stock market was reactivated and resumed the function of the finding of the target price (Richtpreisfindung) for the Austrian market by the major market participants. Stock exchange listings are taking place on a weekly basis.

In addition, the Vienna Commodity Exchange has a tribunal that is responsible for all members and trading partners in the event of disputes.

History

Since 1812, the grain trade is a free business in Austria, therefore, therefore, corn a commodity. With the development of trade in 1853 arose the Viennese fruit and flour stock exchange. This was for the moment subordinated under the Vienna Magistrate and was only on 24 June 1869 independent. This was the birth year of the Vienna Commodity Exchange. Whose trade for the moment took place in the café Commodity Exchanges in Vienna's Leopoldstadt (2nd district). With the increase of trading volume and the trading participants, the construction of a separate stock exchange building was decided. The contract for this got in 1887 the architect Karl König, who built the Stock Exchange building in Tabor street, near the café in the Neo-Renaissance style. The completion and the start of trading took place on 23 August, 1890. In Latin letters the motto of the stock market was walled in: in usum negotiatorum cuiuscumque Nationis ac linguae ("the merchants of all nations and all languages ​​dedicated").

Until the First World War, the Stock Exchange was the most important market for agricultural products of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. After its demise, and the years of inflation, stock exchange trading experienced a large decline, of which the stock market not recovered until the mid-20s.

In 1938, after the annexation of Austria to Germany, the stock market was closed. During the Second World War, the stock market was hit in air raids on Vienna, the trading hall burned down . After the war was began with the rebuilding. On 10 November 1948 followed the reconstitution of the Stock Exchange Chamber and on Wednesday, the 29th July 1949, the first stock exchange meeting was held in Taborstraße in the repaired stock exchange building. The stock market was now, however, because of market regulation law determining the fixing of prices by the social partnership largely meaningless. It merely served as a weekly meeting place of key market participants. From the 1980s on, the great hall was used by the Odeon Theatre.

With the accession of Austria to the EU market in 1995, the Market Organsation Act had to be abrogated. The Commodity Exchange sat together again and took up again its function as place of target price finding of the key market participants.

The Vienna Commodity Exchange was decisively involved in the making of a unified Italian-Austrian-German model agreement for the grain trade.

Stock exchange dealing

Merchandises

Actual trading does not take place at the Produce Exchange. However, there are business transactions from a certain minium dimension for the purpose of target price finding of the traded commodities - depending on traded good, differently high, as a rule, not less than 100 tons - recorded. The exchange traffic includes substantially all in the region grown agricultural raw materials and semi-finished products which are used for human and animal consumption. Excluded from the exchange traffic are forestry products, spices, herbs as well as raw materials serving for the production of fabrics and spun yarns, such as jute. Also excluded are almost all "colonial goods", ie sugar, coffee, tea, chocolate, cocoa, and the like.

Trade practices

As binding basis of the in business occurring terms, business conditions, deadlines, settlement procedures and trade practices are serving the practices of the stock exchange for agricultural products Vienna. They should prevent misunderstandings and misinterpretations and thus facilitate domestic and international trade.

In addition, special provisions specify what requirements quality or brand denominations must fulfill - such as, "quality" or "Premium Wheat".

Quotation

The quotations occure ​​on the basis of actual having taken place trade, hence, without contracts such as options and futures, which are not traded in Vienna, once a week on Wednesday at 13.30 clock. For assessment used are only large trades from a certain minimum quantity at wholesale price. Fixed are the prices ultimately by the Price Determination Commission, which is under the supervision of the Exchange Commissioner. The publication of the prices takes place in the official list.

Organs

Exchange Chamber

The management of the stock exchange for agricultural products behooves the chamber of the market for agricultural products in Vienna. This is composed of 30 stock exchange councilors called members, who are elected or appointed for a term of four years. They are appointed in equal numbers by the Ministry of Agriculture from by the Austrian Chambers of Agriculture proposed persons. More, in all, three members are appointed by the Chambers of Agriculture of Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland. The remaining 17 members are elected by the stock exchange members six of which must be coming from the milling industry or the milling craft, one from the flour processing industry or sector, six from the grain trade. The other four may belong to other professional groups participating in the exchange market. A further condition on the 30 trading councils is, that at least half of them reside in Vienna.

Out of the stock exchange councils, as well for four years are elected a governing body, the executive of the stock exchange plus the chairman of the stock exchange with his three vice-presidents and the treasurer.

As supervising organ acts the commissioner of the stock exchange with his two deputies, which are provided by the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Economy.

Also appointed by the stock exchange chamber are the four-member panel of arbitrators and the three-member college of experts.

Former Presidents of the Exchange Chamber:

1869-1872: Konstantin Dora

1872-1875: Roman Uhl

1876-1894: Wilhelm Naschauer

1895-1916: Paul Ritter von Schoeller

1917-1925: Fritz Mendl

1926-1928: Hugo Hauser

1929-1931: Hermann Reif

1932-1933: Jakob Handl

1934-1938: Josef Zwetzbacher

1948-1958: Josef Rupp

1959-1963: Alfred Fromm

1963-1976: Leopold Holzschuh

1976-1977: Hermann Grün

1978-1993: Ernst Polsterer

1994-1997: Kurt Engleitner

since 1998: Rudolf Kunisch

Arbitration

Members of the Exchange are legally bound by the trade practices. These fixe also the recognition of the Arbitration Court of the Vienna Stock Exchange for agricultural products as competent tribunal in the event of disputes or disagreements. This is not bound by procedural requirements of the ordinary courts, and therefore against judgments of the tribunal also can not be appealed. The procedures usually last less than a month and the sayings of the tribunal on the Vienna Stock Exchange are, in contrast to many other European stock exchanges, immediately enforceable executory titles.

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