Optimistic cafe owner - it was cold and blustery and no out door patrons - the washroom were not there, but somewhere inside the huge convention centre!

At the Birmingham Social Media Cafe on October 29th 2010, we asked people what they were optimistic about.

 

It's a spin-off from newoptimists.com. We asked scientists 'what are you optimistic about?' — and their answers are now in a brilliant book.

amzn.to/thenewoptimists

Rwanda’s private sector players are optimistic of business and investment opportunities that will come with Rwanda hosting the upcoming Commonwealth Business Forum (CBF) that will take place during this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM 2020).

 

This was revealed today in a breakfast meeting organized by RDB (Rwanda Development Board) and the Private Sector Federation (PSF) to engage members of the private sector on the opportunities that they stand to take advantage of by participating at the CBF.

 

CBF will bring together between 1,000 to 1,200 business and government leaders from all Commonwealth countries for a dialogue on practical ways to enhance trade and investment.

 

The forum will be structured around plenary sessions and interactive workshops over three days, and will also facilitate B2G and B2B discussions at the very highest levels, addressing key themes that affect the 54 diverse Commonwealth member nations.

 

Speaking while making her remarks, Clare Akamanzi, the RDB Chief Executive Officer said:

 

“I have every confidence that you agree with me that CBF 2020 presents a unique platform for us to market Rwanda as the best destination for investments. Indeed, we look forward to the private sector signing deals and partnerships on projects that will contribute to the sustainable economic growth of our country through profits, jobs, and increasing Rwanda’s exports. Just to give you some context, over 2.4 billion people live within the Commonwealth Marketplace, and this year will see US$ 1 trillion worth of trade realised within the Commonwealth for the very first time. This means that we have a limitless market for our Made in Rwanda products and services and there shouldn’t be reason not to export more quantities to these countries.”

 

Robert Bapfakulera, the PSF Chairman said:

 

“It is important for us to ensure that the CBF leaves a lasting and positive legacy, with Rwanda at the centre of Commonwealth trade for its two years as Chair-in Office. To achieve this, the private sector must be fully prepared to optimise the Commonwealth trade opportunity-for business, investment and trade. CBF is an extremely unique platform for us to meet strategic partners and do great business.”

 

CHOGM 2020 will take place in Kigali from 22nd to 28thJune and will have four main forums which are Commonwealth Business, People’s, Women and Youth forums.

At the Birmingham Social Media Cafe on October 29th 2010, we asked people what they were optimistic about.

 

It's a spin-off from newoptimists.com. We asked scientists 'what are you optimistic about?' — and their answers are now in a brilliant book.

amzn.to/thenewoptimists

Rwanda’s private sector players are optimistic of business and investment opportunities that will come with Rwanda hosting the upcoming Commonwealth Business Forum (CBF) that will take place during this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM 2020).

 

This was revealed today in a breakfast meeting organized by RDB (Rwanda Development Board) and the Private Sector Federation (PSF) to engage members of the private sector on the opportunities that they stand to take advantage of by participating at the CBF.

 

CBF will bring together between 1,000 to 1,200 business and government leaders from all Commonwealth countries for a dialogue on practical ways to enhance trade and investment.

 

The forum will be structured around plenary sessions and interactive workshops over three days, and will also facilitate B2G and B2B discussions at the very highest levels, addressing key themes that affect the 54 diverse Commonwealth member nations.

 

Speaking while making her remarks, Clare Akamanzi, the RDB Chief Executive Officer said:

 

“I have every confidence that you agree with me that CBF 2020 presents a unique platform for us to market Rwanda as the best destination for investments. Indeed, we look forward to the private sector signing deals and partnerships on projects that will contribute to the sustainable economic growth of our country through profits, jobs, and increasing Rwanda’s exports. Just to give you some context, over 2.4 billion people live within the Commonwealth Marketplace, and this year will see US$ 1 trillion worth of trade realised within the Commonwealth for the very first time. This means that we have a limitless market for our Made in Rwanda products and services and there shouldn’t be reason not to export more quantities to these countries.”

 

Robert Bapfakulera, the PSF Chairman said:

 

“It is important for us to ensure that the CBF leaves a lasting and positive legacy, with Rwanda at the centre of Commonwealth trade for its two years as Chair-in Office. To achieve this, the private sector must be fully prepared to optimise the Commonwealth trade opportunity-for business, investment and trade. CBF is an extremely unique platform for us to meet strategic partners and do great business.”

 

CHOGM 2020 will take place in Kigali from 22nd to 28thJune and will have four main forums which are Commonwealth Business, People’s, Women and Youth forums.

A toy car dumped in a local pond. The reflection completes its smile, seems like an optimistic type.

 

At the Birmingham Social Media Cafe on October 29th 2010, we asked people what they were optimistic about.

 

It's a spin-off from newoptimists.com. We asked scientists 'what are you optimistic about?' — and their answers are now in a brilliant book.

amzn.to/thenewoptimists

Now that is ambition

HILL COUNTRY

 

"Hill Country" is a vernacular term applied to a region including all or part of twenty-five counties near the geographical center of Texas. In the geomorphological sense, the Hill Country represents in large part a dissected plateau surface. It is bordered on the east and south by the Balcones Escarpment, on the west by the relatively undissected Edwards Plateau, and on the north by rolling plains and prairies. The elevations range from less than 1000 feet in the south and eastern areas of the Hill Country and generally rise toward the north and west to reach more than 2500 feet in Schleicher and Kerr counties, with most areas ranging between 1400 and 2200 feet. Lying in the transition zone between humid and semiarid climates, the Hill Country experiences both wet and dry years; at Fredericksburg eleven inches of precipitation was recorded in 1956 and forty-one inches the next year. The vegetation originally consisted of a parklike, open forest dominated by several types of oak, giving way in places to expanses of shinnery, to prairie, or to dense juniper (colloquially called cedar) brakes. Both mesquites and junipers have expanded as the environment has been disturbed. In the cultural sense the Hill Country has been a meeting ground of Indian, Spaniard, Mexican, hill southern Anglo, and northern European. The Apaches and their successors, the Comanches, left little imprint but did retard Spanish colonial activities in the region. As early as 1860 the partition of the Hill Country between the two groups that were to dominate it—hill southern Anglos and Germans—had been accomplished.

 

Between 1840 and 1850 significant numbers of settlers, mostly southern mountaineers, had been attracted to the Hill Country, particularly to Williamson, Hays, Comal, and Gillespie counties. Settlers from the mountain states of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri composed the largest nativity groups within the rural, immigrant, Anglo-American population of these counties. The initial settlement of the remaining Hill Country counties occurred in the decade before the outbreak of the Civil War, as migration into the hills continued on a larger scale. According to a count of the 1860 manuscript census the leading states of origin for the Anglo-American population were still Arkansas and Tennessee. In the 1880 census the trend remained the same, supporting the claim that migration from the Ozark, Ouachita, and Appalachian states was largely responsible for the settlement of the Hill Country.

 

But the southern mountaineers were not solely responsible for the peopling of the Hill Country. Germans, mainly hill Hessians and Lower Saxons, introduced in the middle 1840s by the Society of Nobles (see ADELSVEREIN), occupied a corridor stretching 100 miles northwestward from New Braunfels and San Antonio through Fredericksburg as far as Mason, along the axis of an old Indian route known as the Pinta Trail, later called the Upper Emigrant Road. The towns of Fredericksburg, Comfort, Boerne, and Mason all bear a strong German cultural imprint, as do numerous neighboring hamlets and farms. By 1870 the population of Gillespie County was 86 percent German, Comal 79 percent, Kendall 62 percent, and Mason 56 percent. Each river valley in the German-settled portion of the Hill Country developed its own distinctive subculture, particularly in the religious sense. The Pedernales valley in Gillespie County is a Lutheran-Catholic enclave abounding in dance halls and ethnic clubs; the Llano valley in Mason and western Llano counties is dominated by German Methodists, who avoid dancing, drinking, and card playing; and the Guadalupe valley of Kendall County is the domain of freethinkers who maintain the only rural stronghold of agnosticism in Texas. Other European groups in the Hill Country include Silesian Poles, who settled at Bandera in the 1850s; Alsatians, who spread up from the Castroville area, following streams such as Hondo Creek; and Britishers, who came as sheepraisers to Kerr and Kendall counties. Blacks are largely absent in the Hill Country, though a few tiny freedmen colonies, such as Payton Colony in Blanco County, occur. Hispanics form a relatively small minority throughout the Hill Country.

 

In the late 1970s a study was made to determine the extent and intensity of the Hill Country as a perceptual region. Almost three-quarters of the people in the region so designated identified "Hill Country" as the popular name for the area

 

Source: tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ryh02

  

Texas Longhorn

 

History

 

The Texas Longhorn was fashioned entirely by nature in North America. Stemming from ancestors that were the first cattle to set foot on American soil almost 500 years ago, it became the sound end product of "survival of the fittest". Shaped by a combination of natural selection and adaptation to the environment, the Texas Longhorn is the only cattle breed in America which - without aid from man - is truly adapted to America. In his book The Longhorns, J. Frank Dobie states this situation well: "Had they been registered and regulated, restrained and provided for by man, they would not have been what they were."

 

With the destruction of the buffalo following the Civil War, the Longhorns were rushed in to occupy the Great Plains, a vast empire of grass vacated by the buffalo. Cattlemen brought their breeding herds north to run on the rich grazing lands of western Nebraska, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Montana. Thus, the Great Plains became stocked largely with these "bovine citizens" from the Southwest. And, the Texas Longhorns adapted well to their expanding world. They had reached their historical heyday, dominating the beef scene of North America like no other cattle breed has done since. However, the romantic Longhorn era came to an end when their range was fenced in and plowed under and imported cattle with quick maturing characteristics were brought in to "improve" beef qualities. Intensive crossbreeding had nearly erased the true typical Longhorn by 1900.

  

Fortunately, beginning in 1927, the Texas Longhorn was preserved by the United States Government on wildlife refuges in Oklahoma and Nebraska. Also, a few southwestern cattlemen, convinced of the Longhorn's value as a genetic link and concerned for their preservation, maintained small herds through the years. The Texas Longhorn has been perpetuated further by members of the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America, which was formed in 1964. Thus, the Texas Longhorn was rescued from extinction. It was unfortunate for today's beef industry, however, that most of the continuing interest in the Texas Longhorn was in its historic and academic aspects. The Longhorn's genetic prospects and economic potential were almost completely overlooked for many years.

 

The longhorn now appears headed along another important new trail. Lean, natural meat, offering more nutrition per calorie, is in demand, and the longhorn fills the bill. Those who have tasted longhorn beef pronounce it tender and full of flavour.

 

But changes in the U.S. food chain don't happen overnight. It requires 107,000 cattle every day to supply our taste for beef, and longhorns number only about 100,000. Though it will be a while before we can ask for "longhorn lean" at supermarkets, the outlook is optimistic that its singular attributes will help strengthen other breeds and thus revitalise the industry.

  

Characteristics

 

The most spectacularly coloured of all cattle, with shadings and combinations so varied that no two are alike, they reach maximum weight in eight or ten years and range from 800 to 1500 pounds. Although slow to mature, their reproductive period is twice as long as that of other breeds. Most longhorn cows and bulls have horns of four feet or less. However, mature steers have an average span of six feet or more and a 15-year-old's horn span reach up to nine feet.

 

It does not take eight to ten years for Texas Longhorns to reach their maximum weight and they are by no means slow to mature. Texas Longhorn heifers have been known to conceive while still nursing their mother and produce a living calf without assistance before they are even 16 months old. This is not slow maturity.

  

Longhorns have a natural resistance to the most common cattle diseases and parasites, including the worst enemy of range cattle, the screw worm. Soon after a calf is born, blow flies deposit eggs in its navel, and under the cow's tail. The cows instantly lick the worms off the calf and themselves. If the worms infest some part of a longhorn's body that it can't reach, it will stand for hours in deep water, drowning them.

 

Texas Longhorn cattle eat a wider range of grasses, plants, and weeds than do most other cattle. Texas Longhorn owners are able to use pastures that require less fertilizer and weed killers than owners of other breeds of cattle.

 

The Texas Longhorn produces a very lean beef (more meat less fat per ounce). Studies at major universities have shown that Texas Longhorn beef is significantly lower in cholesterol than other breeds of beef cattle. A Texas Longhorn's, who was raised on grass without chemicals or supplements, meat is lower in cholesterol than a skinless chicken breast. The Texas Longhorn owner can feel good knowing he is producing a heart healthy product for consumption. Their Meat is very tasty and a pretty bright red colour.

 

The Texas Longhorn is the living symbol of the Old West.

  

Statistics

 

Lean Meat - The breed produces naturally less fat and lower cholesterol for today’s health conscious public.

Longevity - Texas Longhorns breed well into their teens. More live calves over the years mean more dollars.

Browse Utilisation - Less supplemental feed is needed because the cattle take advantage of the forage available.

Disease/Parasite Resistance - A natural immunity developed over the centuries means fewer veterinarian bills and less maintenance for todays cowman.

Reproductive Efficiency - Large pelvic openings and low birth weights result in live calves. Busy cattlemen can say “goodbye” to sleepless nights.

Docility - Longhorn cattle are intelligent, easy to work and to handle.

Adaptability - The breed thrives in climates from the hot, damp coastal regions to the harsh winters of Canada.

Hybrid Vigour - Heritable quality enhances your present breed and gives you a new genetic pool.

No two Texas Longhorns are alike. They all differ in colour pattern, size, horn length, and personality.

Tradition and Nostalgia - The Texas Longhorn is the living symbol of the Old West. Wherever the western influence is desired-front pasture, cattle drive, or tourist attraction-you’ll find a demand for this magnificent breed.

Horns and Hide - The Texas Longhorn is worth money even after it has outlived its usefulness as a beef producer. Top dollars are paid for the horns, skulls, and mounts that are used in the popular Southwestern decor of businesses and homes.

Pure Pleasure - Intelligent and easy to work with, the Texas Longhorn is easily trained to exhibit in the show ring, lead or drive in parades, pull wagons, and yes, even to ride!

  

Distribution

 

Texas Longhorns are becoming fairly popular and are mainly distributed across America and Canada although some Texas Longhorn exports are gaining pace.

 

References (the above information was cited from the following sites)

 

www.ansi.okstate.edu

www.texaslonghorn.net

www.tlbaa.org

www.texaslonghorn.com

 

Source: www.thecattlesite.com/breeds/beef/18/texas-longhorn/

Optimistic orchestra

Amsterdam

Raman Optimistic

At the Birmingham Social Media Cafe on October 29th 2010, we asked people what they were optimistic about.

 

It's a spin-off from newoptimists.com. We asked scientists 'what are you optimistic about?' — and their answers are now in a brilliant book.

amzn.to/thenewoptimists

So, I was feeling optimistic earlier, that I'd be able to catch up a bit more on contacts (my start was weak at best), but it's that time of the session already. The last week. I need to present my 6 weeks of work next Wednesday, and I have a lot of work to accomplish in that time. All in all, though, I really can't complain. It's been a good week, and a pretty good day so far. I'm starting to regain a bit of enthusiasm again (possibly even mojo?), as I've had a few days of sps that I've liked and put at least a bit of time into. I'm starting slowly to get a handle on the "ghetto lighting" setup that I have. And of course it's Half Nekkid Thursday yet again!

Oh, and I still haven't gotten anything in the mail for my sister Phoebe, and her birthday is Saturday! (Sorry Phoebe!) I'm going to try some new paper that I got today, but I'm still a bit intimidated by her birthday request: a photo of mine, printed large, that is art. Of course it's that last word that I find somewhat paralyzing. Of course I try to put an artistic eye into nearly every shot, but taking that step to being able to say: "this is art" is an intimidating one. Alas...

Update: I spent some time printing this evening (one of the perks of being an architecture student is a sweet printer: Epson Stylus 7800), tried out some new paper, and printed off a photo for my sister (hope she likes it!). Innova FibraPrint White Gloss (300gsm) (F type gloss). Generally I'm pleased - unlike a lot of the glossy papers it actually feels like paper (like traditional fiber paper - pretty much anyways), but unlike a lot of the matte and fine art papers it seems to capture a full range of tones - up to a good black. It ain't cheap (13x19 is about $5/sheet and I wasted one with a stupid mistake) I thought about getting a roll (24 in x 15 m) but that is bloody expensive ($240). ... fun stuff...

Optimistic Cat, Charca Masplomas

Evan Smith, CEO of The Texas Tribune, speaks with Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, at the 2014 ISOJ on the University of Texas-Austin campus, Apr. 5, 2014. Bryan Winter/Knight Center

At the Birmingham Social Media Cafe on October 29th 2010, we asked people what they were optimistic about.

 

It's a spin-off from newoptimists.com. We asked scientists 'what are you optimistic about?' — and their answers are now in a brilliant book.

amzn.to/thenewoptimists

Photos of Beakerhead 2014 Event - An Optimistic Evening with Mark Stevenson. Mark Stevenson thanking Beakerhead.

 

Photo by: Jeff Cruz

At the Birmingham Social Media Cafe on October 29th 2010, we asked people what they were optimistic about.

 

It's a spin-off from newoptimists.com. We asked scientists 'what are you optimistic about?' — and their answers are now in a brilliant book.

amzn.to/thenewoptimists

At the Birmingham Social Media Cafe on October 29th 2010, we asked people what they were optimistic about.

 

It's a spin-off from newoptimists.com. We asked scientists 'what are you optimistic about?' — and their answers are now in a brilliant book.

amzn.to/thenewoptimists

Rwanda’s private sector players are optimistic of business and investment opportunities that will come with Rwanda hosting the upcoming Commonwealth Business Forum (CBF) that will take place during this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM 2020).

 

This was revealed today in a breakfast meeting organized by RDB (Rwanda Development Board) and the Private Sector Federation (PSF) to engage members of the private sector on the opportunities that they stand to take advantage of by participating at the CBF.

 

CBF will bring together between 1,000 to 1,200 business and government leaders from all Commonwealth countries for a dialogue on practical ways to enhance trade and investment.

 

The forum will be structured around plenary sessions and interactive workshops over three days, and will also facilitate B2G and B2B discussions at the very highest levels, addressing key themes that affect the 54 diverse Commonwealth member nations.

 

Speaking while making her remarks, Clare Akamanzi, the RDB Chief Executive Officer said:

 

“I have every confidence that you agree with me that CBF 2020 presents a unique platform for us to market Rwanda as the best destination for investments. Indeed, we look forward to the private sector signing deals and partnerships on projects that will contribute to the sustainable economic growth of our country through profits, jobs, and increasing Rwanda’s exports. Just to give you some context, over 2.4 billion people live within the Commonwealth Marketplace, and this year will see US$ 1 trillion worth of trade realised within the Commonwealth for the very first time. This means that we have a limitless market for our Made in Rwanda products and services and there shouldn’t be reason not to export more quantities to these countries.”

 

Robert Bapfakulera, the PSF Chairman said:

 

“It is important for us to ensure that the CBF leaves a lasting and positive legacy, with Rwanda at the centre of Commonwealth trade for its two years as Chair-in Office. To achieve this, the private sector must be fully prepared to optimise the Commonwealth trade opportunity-for business, investment and trade. CBF is an extremely unique platform for us to meet strategic partners and do great business.”

 

CHOGM 2020 will take place in Kigali from 22nd to 28thJune and will have four main forums which are Commonwealth Business, People’s, Women and Youth forums.

"Better Homes and Gardens Handyman’s Book" printed with classic mid-century “optimistic style” illustrations.This wonderful vintage handyman's book is is filled with "Shag"-style kitsch illustrations of 1950's families doing work around the house. The copy is loaded with everything you need to know for remodeling and/or maintaining a mid-century modern home. This appears to be a “man’s” companion volume to the ubiquitous, red gingham motif, ring-bound "Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook".

 

Details:

 

Better Homes & Gardens Handyman's Book. 1951, 1957. 8th printing.

Hardcover, Ring Binder Style Book. 8.25x10". 400 Pgs.

Chapter 1: How To Use Hand Tools

Chapter 2: Power Tools

Chapter 3: Building Materials - Wood, Lumber, Moldings

Chapter 4: Fastening Techniques

Chapter 5: Finishing Techniques - Wood Finishes, How To Remove Old Finish, How To Paint Inside And Outside,

Chapter 6: Plumbing And Wiring

Chapter 7: Walls And Floors - How To Remove Old Wallpaper, Repair Plaster, How To Tile A Wall, How To Panel With Plywood, How To Refinish Hardwood Floors, How To Lay Wood Flooring, Lay A Tile Floor, How To Color Concrete Floors

Chapter 8: Windows And Doors - How To Replace Broken Windows, How To Cut Glass

Chapter 9: Exterior Repairs And Yardwork - How To Replace Siding, How To Build With Concrete Blocks, Lay Bricks, Use Concrete, How To Build A Fence, Post And Rail Fence With Many Variations Including Panel Fence

Chapter 10: Storage And Furniture - Built-ins, Cabinets, Furniture Measurements, Desk Chair, Lounge Chair, Loveseat, Sofa, Coffee Tables, Dining Table, Beds, Bookshelves

Chapter 11: Miscellaneous

 

Notes: This book is in wonderful condition considering its age. Pages are yellowed but clean and crisp with no marks, tears, dog ears or folds. Some slight water damage on pages 2-4 and 213-236 (this is the plumbing section so perhaps previous owner was fixing a project? :)

 

"Better Homes and Gardens Handyman’s Book" printed with classic mid-century “optimistic style” illustrations.This wonderful vintage handyman's book is is filled with "Shag"-style kitsch illustrations of 1950's families doing work around the house. The copy is loaded with everything you need to know for remodeling and/or maintaining a mid-century modern home. This appears to be a “man’s” companion volume to the ubiquitous, red gingham motif, ring-bound "Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook".

 

Details:

 

Better Homes & Gardens Handyman's Book. 1951, 1957. 8th printing.

Hardcover, Ring Binder Style Book. 8.25x10". 400 Pgs.

Chapter 1: How To Use Hand Tools

Chapter 2: Power Tools

Chapter 3: Building Materials - Wood, Lumber, Moldings

Chapter 4: Fastening Techniques

Chapter 5: Finishing Techniques - Wood Finishes, How To Remove Old Finish, How To Paint Inside And Outside,

Chapter 6: Plumbing And Wiring

Chapter 7: Walls And Floors - How To Remove Old Wallpaper, Repair Plaster, How To Tile A Wall, How To Panel With Plywood, How To Refinish Hardwood Floors, How To Lay Wood Flooring, Lay A Tile Floor, How To Color Concrete Floors

Chapter 8: Windows And Doors - How To Replace Broken Windows, How To Cut Glass

Chapter 9: Exterior Repairs And Yardwork - How To Replace Siding, How To Build With Concrete Blocks, Lay Bricks, Use Concrete, How To Build A Fence, Post And Rail Fence With Many Variations Including Panel Fence

Chapter 10: Storage And Furniture - Built-ins, Cabinets, Furniture Measurements, Desk Chair, Lounge Chair, Loveseat, Sofa, Coffee Tables, Dining Table, Beds, Bookshelves

Chapter 11: Miscellaneous

 

Notes: This book is in wonderful condition considering its age. Pages are yellowed but clean and crisp with no marks, tears, dog ears or folds. Some slight water damage on pages 2-4 and 213-236 (this is the plumbing section so perhaps previous owner was fixing a project? :)

London. Just before it ran up my leg!

Rwanda’s private sector players are optimistic of business and investment opportunities that will come with Rwanda hosting the upcoming Commonwealth Business Forum (CBF) that will take place during this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM 2020).

 

This was revealed today in a breakfast meeting organized by RDB (Rwanda Development Board) and the Private Sector Federation (PSF) to engage members of the private sector on the opportunities that they stand to take advantage of by participating at the CBF.

 

CBF will bring together between 1,000 to 1,200 business and government leaders from all Commonwealth countries for a dialogue on practical ways to enhance trade and investment.

 

The forum will be structured around plenary sessions and interactive workshops over three days, and will also facilitate B2G and B2B discussions at the very highest levels, addressing key themes that affect the 54 diverse Commonwealth member nations.

 

Speaking while making her remarks, Clare Akamanzi, the RDB Chief Executive Officer said:

 

“I have every confidence that you agree with me that CBF 2020 presents a unique platform for us to market Rwanda as the best destination for investments. Indeed, we look forward to the private sector signing deals and partnerships on projects that will contribute to the sustainable economic growth of our country through profits, jobs, and increasing Rwanda’s exports. Just to give you some context, over 2.4 billion people live within the Commonwealth Marketplace, and this year will see US$ 1 trillion worth of trade realised within the Commonwealth for the very first time. This means that we have a limitless market for our Made in Rwanda products and services and there shouldn’t be reason not to export more quantities to these countries.”

 

Robert Bapfakulera, the PSF Chairman said:

 

“It is important for us to ensure that the CBF leaves a lasting and positive legacy, with Rwanda at the centre of Commonwealth trade for its two years as Chair-in Office. To achieve this, the private sector must be fully prepared to optimise the Commonwealth trade opportunity-for business, investment and trade. CBF is an extremely unique platform for us to meet strategic partners and do great business.”

 

CHOGM 2020 will take place in Kigali from 22nd to 28thJune and will have four main forums which are Commonwealth Business, People’s, Women and Youth forums.

At the Birmingham Social Media Cafe on October 29th 2010, we asked people what they were optimistic about.

 

It's a spin-off from newoptimists.com. We asked scientists 'what are you optimistic about?' — and their answers are now in a brilliant book.

amzn.to/thenewoptimists

Amsterdam

At the Birmingham Social Media Cafe on October 29th 2010, we asked people what they were optimistic about.

 

It's a spin-off from newoptimists.com. We asked scientists 'what are you optimistic about?' — and their answers are now in a brilliant book.

amzn.to/thenewoptimists

Generative AI beauty image of an African American girl with afro hair

München

The statue of Benjamin Disraeli is an outdoor bronze sculpture by Mario Raggi, located at the west side of Parliament Square in London. It was unveiled in 1883 and became a Grade II listed building in 1970.

 

Description and history

The memorial features a bronze statue of the former prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, dressed in his robes as 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, standing on a red granite pedestal. At the front, immediately below the statue, the pedestal bears the inscription "BEACONSFIELD", and the rear face has the inscription "BENJAMIN DISRAELI / EARL OF BEACONSFIELD / K.G. / 1804 – 1881".

 

The statue was made by Mario Raggi (sometimes known as Mario Razzi or Rossi) and cast by H. Young & Co, art founders of Pimlico. It was recognised as a good likeness, based on a bust that Raggi had made before Disraeli's death. The monument was unveiled by Sir Stafford Northcote, Disraeli's successor as leader of the Conservative Party, on the second anniversary of Disraeli's death, 19 April 1883, a date which became known as Primrose Day. For many years, into the 1920s, arrangements of primroses, reputedly Disraeli's favourite flower, were left at the memorial to commemorate the anniversary of his death.

 

Originally sited on the south side of the square facing south towards St Margaret's, Westminster, it was moved when the square was reconfigured in the 1950s, and resited in its present location, on the west side of the square facing east towards the Houses of Parliament. The statue became a Grade II listed building in 1970.

 

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, DL, JP, FRS (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the British Empire and military action to expand it, both of which were popular among British voters. He is the only British Prime Minister to have been born Jewish.

 

Disraeli was born in Bloomsbury, then a part of Middlesex. His father left Judaism after a dispute at his synagogue; Benjamin became an Anglican at the age of 12. After several unsuccessful attempts, Disraeli entered the House of Commons in 1837. In 1846, Prime Minister Robert Peel split the party over his proposal to repeal the Corn Laws, which involved ending the tariff on imported grain. Disraeli clashed with Peel in the House of Commons, becoming a major figure in the party. When Lord Derby, the party leader, thrice formed governments in the 1850s and 1860s, Disraeli served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.

 

Upon Derby's retirement in 1868, Disraeli became prime minister briefly before losing that year's general election. He returned to the Opposition before leading the party to a majority in the 1874 general election. He maintained a close friendship with Queen Victoria who, in 1876, elevated him to the peerage, as Earl of Beaconsfield. Disraeli's second term was dominated by the Eastern Question—the slow decay of the Ottoman Empire and the desire of other European powers, such as Russia, to gain at its expense. Disraeli arranged for the British to purchase a major interest in the Suez Canal Company in Egypt. In 1878, faced with Russian victories against the Ottomans, he worked at the Congress of Berlin to obtain peace in the Balkans at terms favourable to Britain and unfavourable to Russia, its longstanding enemy. This diplomatic victory established Disraeli as one of Europe's leading statesmen.

 

World events thereafter moved against the Conservatives. Controversial wars in Afghanistan and South Africa undermined his public support. He angered farmers by refusing to reinstitute the Corn Laws in response to poor harvests and cheap imported grain. With Gladstone conducting a massive speaking campaign, the Liberals defeated Disraeli's Conservatives at the 1880 general election. In his final months, Disraeli led the Conservatives in Opposition. Disraeli wrote novels throughout his career, beginning in 1826, and published his last completed novel, Endymion, shortly before he died at the age of 76.

 

Early life

Disraeli was born on 21 December 1804 at 6 King's Road, Bedford Row, Bloomsbury, London, the second child and eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli, a literary critic and historian, and Maria (Miriam), née Basevi. The family was mostly from Italy, of Sephardic Jewish mercantile background. He also had some Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors. He later romanticised his origins, claiming his father's family was of grand Iberian and Venetian descent; in fact, Isaac's family was of no great distinction, but on Disraeli's mother's side, in which he took no interest, there were some distinguished forebears, including Isaac Cardoso, as well as members of the Goldsmids, the Mocattas and the Montefiores. Historians differ on Disraeli's motives for rewriting his family history: Bernard Glassman argues that it was intended to give him status comparable to that of England's ruling elite; Sarah Bradford believes "his dislike of the commonplace would not allow him to accept the facts of his birth as being as middle-class and undramatic as they really were".

 

Three portraits; a man and two women

Disraeli's father, mother and sister—Isaac, Maria and Sarah

Disraeli's siblings were Sarah, Naphtali (born and died 1807), Ralph and James ("Jem"). He was close to his sister and on affectionate but more distant terms with his surviving brothers. Details of his schooling are sketchy. From the age of about six he was a day boy at a dame school in Islington, which one of his biographers described as "for those days a very high-class establishment". Two years later or so—the exact date has not been ascertained—he was sent as a boarder to Rev John Potticary's school at Blackheath.

 

Following a quarrel in 1813 with the Bevis Marks Synagogue, his father renounced Judaism and had the four children baptised into the Church of England in July and August 1817. Isaac D'Israeli had never taken religion very seriously but had remained a conforming member of the synagogue. His father Benjamin was a prominent and devout member; it was probably out of respect for him that Isaac did not leave when he fell out with the synagogue authorities in 1813. After Benjamin senior died in 1816, Isaac felt free to leave the congregation following a second dispute. Isaac's friend Sharon Turner, a solicitor, convinced him that although he could comfortably remain unattached to any formal religion it would be disadvantageous to the children if they did so. Turner stood as godfather when Benjamin was baptised, aged twelve, on 31 July 1817. Conversion enabled Disraeli to contemplate a career in politics. There had been Members of Parliament (MPs) from Jewish families since Sampson Gideon in 1770. However, until the Jews Relief Act 1858, MPs were required to take the oath of allegiance "on the true faith of a Christian", necessitating at least nominal conversion. It is not known whether Disraeli formed any ambition for a parliamentary career at the time of his baptism, but there is no doubt that he bitterly regretted his parents' decision not to send him to Winchester College, one of the great public schools which consistently provided recruits to the political elite. His two younger brothers were sent there, and it is not clear why Isaac chose to send his eldest son to a much less prestigious school. The boy evidently held his mother responsible for the decision; Bradford speculates that "Benjamin's delicate health and his obviously Jewish appearance may have had something to do with it." The school chosen for him was run by Eliezer Cogan at Higham Hill in Walthamstow. He began there in the autumn term of 1817; he later recalled his education:

 

I was at school for two or three years under the Revd. Dr Cogan, a Greek scholar of eminence, who had contributed notes to the A[e]schylus of Bishop Blomfield, & was himself the Editor of the Greek Gnostic poets. After this I was with a private tutor for two years in my own County, & my education was severely classical. Too much so; in the pride of boyish erudition, I edited the Idonisian Eclogue of Theocritus, wh. was privately printed. This was my first production: puerile pedantry.

 

1820s

In November 1821, shortly before his seventeenth birthday, Disraeli was articled as a clerk to a firm of solicitors—Swain, Stevens, Maples, Pearse and Hunt—in the City of London. T F Maples was not only the young Disraeli's employer and a friend of his father's, but also his prospective father-in-law: Isaac and Maples considered that the latter's only daughter might be a suitable match for Benjamin. A friendship developed, but there was no romance. The firm had a large and profitable business, and as the biographer R W Davis observes, the clerkship was "the kind of secure, respectable position that many fathers dream of for their children". Although biographers including Robert Blake and Bradford comment that such a post was incompatible with Disraeli's romantic and ambitious nature, he reportedly gave his employers satisfactory service, and later professed to have learnt a good deal there. He recalled:

 

I had some scruples, for even then I dreamed of Parliament. My father's refrain always was 'Philip Carteret Webb', who was the most eminent solicitor of his boyhood and who was an MP. It would be a mistake to suppose that the two years and more that I was in the office of our friend were wasted. I have often thought, though I have often regretted the University, that it was much the reverse.

 

The year after joining Maples' firm, Benjamin changed his surname from D'Israeli to Disraeli. His reasons are unknown, but the biographer Bernard Glassman surmises that it was to avoid being confused with his father. Disraeli's sister and brothers adopted the new version of the name; Isaac and his wife retained the older form.

 

Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father in the summer of 1824. He later wrote that while travelling on the Rhine he decided to abandon his position: "I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer." On their return to England he left the solicitors, at the suggestion of Maples, with the aim of qualifying as a barrister. He enrolled as a student at Lincoln's Inn and joined the chambers of his uncle, Nathaniel Basevy, and then those of Benjamin Austen, who persuaded Isaac that Disraeli would never make a barrister and should be allowed to pursue a literary career. He had made a tentative start: in May 1824 he submitted a manuscript to his father's friend, the publisher John Murray, but withdrew it before Murray could decide whether to publish it.

 

Released from the law, Disraeli did some work for Murray, but turned most of his attention to speculative dealing on the stock exchange. There was at the time a boom in shares in South American mining companies. Spain was losing its South American colonies in the face of rebellions. At the urging of George Canning the British government recognised the new independent governments of Argentina (1824), Colombia and Mexico (both 1825). With no money of his own, Disraeli borrowed money to invest. He became involved with the financier J. D. Powles, who was prominent among those encouraging the mining boom. In 1825, Disraeli wrote three anonymous pamphlets for Powles, promoting the companies. The pamphlets were published by John Murray, who invested heavily in the boom.

 

Murray had ambitions to establish a new morning paper to compete with The Times. In 1825 Disraeli convinced him that he should proceed. The new paper, The Representative, promoted the mines and those politicians who supported them, particularly Canning. Disraeli impressed Murray with his energy and commitment to the project, but he failed in his key task of persuading the eminent writer John Gibson Lockhart to edit the paper. After that, Disraeli's influence on Murray waned, and to his resentment he was sidelined in the affairs of The Representative. The paper survived only six months, partly because the mining bubble burst in late 1825, and partly because, according to Blake, the paper was "atrociously edited".

 

The bursting of the mining bubble was ruinous for Disraeli. By June 1825 he and his business partners had lost £7,000. Disraeli could not pay off the last of his debts from this debacle until 1849. He turned to writing, motivated partly by his desperate need for money, and partly by a wish for revenge on Murray and others by whom he felt slighted. There was a vogue for what was called "silver-fork fiction"—novels depicting aristocratic life, usually by anonymous authors, read by the aspirational middle classes. Disraeli's first novel, Vivian Grey, published anonymously in four volumes in 1826–27, was a thinly veiled re-telling of the affair of The Representative. It sold well, but caused much offence in influential circles when the authorship was discovered. Disraeli, then just 23, did not move in high society, as the numerous solecisms in his book made obvious. Reviewers were sharply critical on these grounds of both the author and the book. Murray and Lockhart, men of great influence in literary circles, believed that Disraeli had caricatured them and abused their confidence—an accusation denied by the author but repeated by many of his biographers.[50] In later editions Disraeli made many changes, softening his satire, but the damage to his reputation proved long-lasting.

 

Disraeli's biographer Jonathan Parry writes that the financial failure and personal criticism that Disraeli suffered in 1825 and 1826 were probably the trigger for a serious nervous crisis affecting him over the next four years: "He had always been moody, sensitive, and solitary by nature, but now became seriously depressed and lethargic." He was still living with his parents in London, but in search of the "change of air" recommended by the family's doctors, Isaac took a succession of houses in the country and on the coast, before Disraeli sought wider horizons.

 

1830–1837

Together with his sister's fiancé, William Meredith, Disraeli travelled widely in southern Europe and beyond in 1830–31. The trip was financed partly by another high society novel, The Young Duke, written in 1829–30. The tour was cut short suddenly by Meredith's death from smallpox in Cairo in July 1831. Despite this tragedy, and the need for treatment for a sexually transmitted disease on his return, Disraeli felt enriched by his experiences. He became, in Parry's words, "aware of values that seemed denied to his insular countrymen. The journey encouraged his self-consciousness, his moral relativism, and his interest in Eastern racial and religious attitudes." Blake regards the tour as one of the formative experiences of Disraeli's career: "The impressions that it made on him were life-lasting. They conditioned his attitude toward some of the most important political problems which faced him in his later years—especially the Eastern Question; they also coloured many of his novels."

 

Disraeli wrote two novels in the aftermath of the tour. Contarini Fleming (1832) was avowedly a self-portrait. It is subtitled "a psychological autobiography" and depicts the conflicting elements of its hero's character: the duality of northern and Mediterranean ancestry, the dreaming artist and the bold man of action. As Parry observes, the book ends on a political note, setting out Europe's progress "from feudal to federal principles". The Wondrous Tale of Alroy the following year portrayed the problems of a medieval Jew in deciding between a small, exclusively Jewish state and a large empire embracing all.

 

Two men and two women

After these novels were published, Disraeli declared that he would "write no more about myself". He had already turned his attention to politics in 1832, during the great crisis over the Reform Bill. He contributed to an anti-Whig pamphlet edited by John Wilson Croker and published by Murray entitled England and France: or a cure for Ministerial Gallomania. The choice of a Tory publication was regarded as strange by Disraeli's friends and relatives, who thought him more of a Radical. Indeed, he had objected to Murray about Croker's inserting "high Tory" sentiment: Disraeli remarked, "it is quite impossible that anything adverse to the general measure of Reform can issue from my pen." Moreover, at the time Gallomania was published, Disraeli was electioneering in High Wycombe in the Radical interest.

 

Disraeli's politics at the time were influenced both by his rebellious streak and his desire to make his mark. At that time, British politics were dominated by the aristocracy, with a few powerful commoners. The Whigs derived from the coalition of Lords who had forced through the Bill of Rights 1689 and in some cases were their descendants. The Tories tended to support King and Church and sought to thwart political change. A small number of Radicals, generally from northern constituencies, were the strongest advocates of continuing reform. In the early 1830s the Tories and the interests they represented appeared to be a lost cause. The other great party, the Whigs, were anathema to Disraeli: "Toryism is worn out & I cannot condescend to be a Whig." There was a by-election and a general election in 1832; Disraeli unsuccessfully stood as a Radical at High Wycombe in each.

 

Disraeli's political views embraced certain Radical policies, particularly electoral reform, and also some Tory ones, including protectionism. He began to move in Tory circles. In 1834 he was introduced to the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, by Henrietta Sykes, wife of Sir Francis Sykes. She was having an affair with Lyndhurst and began another with Disraeli. Disraeli and Lyndhurst took an immediate liking to each other. Lyndhurst was an indiscreet gossip with a fondness for intrigue; this appealed greatly to Disraeli, who became his secretary and go-between. In 1835 Disraeli stood for the last time as a Radical, again unsuccessfully contesting High Wycombe.

 

Two men of Victorian appearance

Opponents of Disraeli: O'Connell and Labouchere

In April 1835, Disraeli fought a by-election at Taunton as a Tory candidate. The Irish MP Daniel O'Connell, misled by inaccurate press reports, thought Disraeli had slandered him while electioneering at Taunton; he launched an outspoken attack, referring to Disraeli as:

 

a reptile ... just fit now, after being twice discarded by the people, to become a Conservative. He possesses all the necessary requisites of perfidy, selfishness, depravity, want of principle, etc., which would qualify him for the change. His name shows that he is of Jewish origin. I do not use it as a term of reproach; there are many most respectable Jews. But there are, as in every other people, some of the lowest and most disgusting grade of moral turpitude; and of those I look upon Mr. Disraeli as the worst.

 

Disraeli's public exchanges with O'Connell, extensively reproduced in The Times,[66] included a demand for a duel with the 60-year-old O'Connell's son (which resulted in Disraeli's temporary detention by the authorities), a reference to "the inextinguishable hatred with which [he] shall pursue [O'Connell's] existence", and the accusation that O'Connell's supporters had a "princely revenue wrung from a starving race of fanatical slaves". Disraeli was highly gratified by the dispute, which propelled him to general public notice for the first time. He did not defeat the incumbent Whig member, Henry Labouchere, but the Taunton constituency was regarded as unwinnable by the Tories. Disraeli kept Labouchere's majority down to 170, a good showing that put him in line for a winnable seat in the near future.

 

With Lyndhurst's encouragement Disraeli turned to writing propaganda for his newly adopted party. His Vindication of the English Constitution, was published in December 1835. It was couched in the form of an open letter to Lyndhurst, and in Bradford's view encapsulates a political philosophy that Disraeli adhered to for the rest of his life: the value of benevolent aristocratic government, a loathing of political dogma, and the modernisation of Tory policies. The following year he wrote a series of satires on politicians of the day, which he published in The Times under the pen-name "Runnymede". His targets included the Whigs, collectively and individually, Irish nationalists, and political corruption. One essay ended:

 

The English nation, therefore, rallies for rescue from the degrading plots of a profligate oligarchy, a barbarizing sectarianism, and a boroughmongering Papacy, round their hereditary leaders—the Peers. The House of Lords, therefore, at this moment represents everything in the realm except the Whig oligarchs, their tools the Dissenters, and their masters the Irish priests. In the mean time, the Whigs bawl that there is a "collision!" It is true there is a collision, but it is not a collision between the Lords and the People, but between the Ministers and the Constitution.

 

Disraeli was elected to the exclusively Tory Carlton Club in 1836, and was also taken up by the party's leading hostess, Lady Londonderry. In June 1837 William IV died, the young Queen Victoria succeeded him, and parliament was dissolved. On the recommendation of the Carlton Club, Disraeli was adopted as a Tory parliamentary candidate at the ensuing general election.

 

Parliament

Back-bencher

In the election in July 1837, Disraeli won a seat in the House of Commons as one of two members, both Tory, for the constituency of Maidstone. The other was Wyndham Lewis, who helped finance Disraeli's election campaign, and who died the following year. In the same year Disraeli published a novel, Henrietta Temple, which was a love story and social comedy, drawing on his affair with Henrietta Sykes. He had broken off the relationship in late 1836, distraught that she had taken yet another lover. His other novel of this period is Venetia, a romance based on the characters of Shelley and Byron, written quickly to raise much-needed money.

 

Disraeli made his maiden speech in Parliament on 7 December 1837. He followed O'Connell, whom he sharply criticised for the latter's "long, rambling, jumbling, speech". He was shouted down by O'Connell's supporters. After this unpromising start Disraeli kept a low profile for the rest of the parliamentary session. He was a loyal supporter of the party leader Sir Robert Peel and his policies, with the exception of a personal sympathy for the Chartist movement that most Tories did not share.

 

Mary Anne Lewis c. 1820–30

In 1839 Disraeli married Mary Anne Lewis, the widow of Wyndham Lewis. Twelve years Disraeli's senior, Mary Lewis had a substantial income of £5,000 a year. His motives were generally assumed to be mercenary, but the couple came to cherish one another, remaining close until she died more than three decades later. "Dizzy married me for my money", his wife said later, "But, if he had the chance again, he would marry me for love."

 

Finding the financial demands of his Maidstone seat too much, Disraeli secured a Tory nomination for Shrewsbury, winning one of the constituency's two seats at the 1841 general election, despite serious opposition, and heavy debts which opponents seized on. The election was a massive defeat for the Whigs across the country, and Peel became prime minister. Disraeli hoped, unrealistically, for ministerial office. Though disappointed at being left on the back benches, he continued his support for Peel in 1842 and 1843, seeking to establish himself as an expert on foreign affairs and international trade.

 

Although a Tory (or Conservative, as some in the party now called themselves) Disraeli was sympathetic to some of the aims of Chartism, and argued for an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and new industrialists in the middle class. After Disraeli won widespread acclaim in March 1842 for worsting Lord Palmerston in debate, he was taken up by a small group of idealistic new Tory MPs, with whom he formed the Young England group. They held that the landed interests should use their power to protect the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen.

 

Disraeli hoped to forge a paternalistic Tory-Radical alliance, but he was unsuccessful. Before the Reform Act 1867, the working class did not possess the vote and therefore had little political power. Although Disraeli forged a personal friendship with John Bright, a leading Radical, Disraeli was unable to persuade Bright to sacrifice his distinct position for parliamentary advancement. When Disraeli attempted to secure a Tory-Radical cabinet in 1852, Bright refused.

 

Four men

Clockwise from top left: Bright, Peel, Bentinck and Stanley

Disraeli gradually became a sharp critic of Peel's government, often deliberately taking contrary positions. The young MP attacked his leader as early as 1843. However, the best known of these stances were over the Maynooth Grant in 1845 and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The President of the Board of Trade, William Gladstone, resigned from the cabinet over the Maynooth Grant. The Corn Laws imposed a tariff on imported wheat, protecting British farmers from foreign competition, but making the cost of bread artificially high. Peel hoped that the repeal of the Corn Laws and the resultant influx of cheaper wheat into Britain would relieve the condition of the poor, and in particular the Great Famine caused by successive failure of potato crops in Ireland.

 

The first months of 1846 were dominated by a battle in Parliament between the free traders and the protectionists over the repeal of the Corn Laws, with the latter rallying around Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. An alliance of free-trade Conservatives (the "Peelites"), Radicals, and Whigs carried repeal, and the Conservative Party split: the Peelites moved towards the Whigs, while a "new" Conservative Party formed around the protectionists, led by Disraeli, Bentinck, and Lord Stanley (later Lord Derby).

 

The split in the Tory party over the repeal of the Corn Laws had profound implications for Disraeli's political career: almost every Tory politician with experience of office followed Peel, leaving the rump bereft of leadership. In Blake's words, "[Disraeli] found himself almost the only figure on his side capable of putting up the oratorical display essential for a parliamentary leader." The Duke of Argyll wrote that Disraeli "was like a subaltern in a great battle where every superior officer was killed or wounded". If the Tory Party could muster the electoral support necessary to form a government, then Disraeli now seemed to be guaranteed high office, but with a group of men who possessed little or no official experience and who, as a group, remained personally hostile to Disraeli. In the event the Tory split soon had the party out of office, not regaining power until 1852. The Conservatives would not again have a majority in the House of Commons until 1874.

 

Bentinck and the leadership

Peel successfully steered the repeal of the Corn Laws through Parliament and was then defeated by an alliance of his enemies on the issue of Irish law and order; he resigned in June 1846. The Tories remained split, and the Queen sent for Lord John Russell, the Whig leader. In the 1847 general election, Disraeli stood, successfully, for the Buckinghamshire constituency. The new House of Commons had more Conservative than Whig members, but the depth of the Tory schism enabled Russell to continue to govern. The Conservatives were led by Bentinck in the Commons and Stanley in the Lords.

 

Four men

In 1847 a small political crisis removed Bentinck from the leadership and highlighted Disraeli's differences with his own party. In that year's general election, Lionel de Rothschild had been returned for the City of London. As a practising Jew he could not take the oath of allegiance in the prescribed Christian form, and therefore could not take his seat. Lord John Russell, the Whig leader who had succeeded Peel as prime minister, proposed in the Commons that the oath should be amended to permit Jews to enter Parliament.

 

Disraeli spoke in favour of the measure, arguing that Christianity was "completed Judaism", and asking the House of Commons "Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?" Russell and Disraeli's future rival Gladstone thought this brave; the speech was badly received by his own party. The Tories and the Anglican establishment were hostile to the bill. With the exception of Disraeli, every member of the future protectionist cabinet then in Parliament voted against the measure. The measure was voted down. In the aftermath of the debate Bentinck resigned the leadership and was succeeded by Lord Granby; Disraeli's speech, thought by many of his own party to be blasphemous, ruled him out for the time being.

 

While these intrigues played out, Disraeli was working with the Bentinck family to secure the necessary financing to purchase Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire. The possession of a country house and incumbency of a county constituency were regarded as essential for a Tory with leadership ambitions. Disraeli and his wife alternated between Hughenden and several homes in London for the rest of their marriage. The negotiations were complicated by Bentinck's sudden death on 21 September 1848, but Disraeli obtained a loan of £25,000 from Bentinck's brothers Lord Henry Bentinck and Lord Titchfield. Within a month of his appointment Granby resigned the leadership in the Commons and the party functioned without a leader in the Commons for the rest of the session. At the start of the next session, affairs were handled by a triumvirate of Granby, Disraeli, and John Charles Herries—indicative of the tension between Disraeli and the rest of the party, who needed his talents but mistrusted him. This confused arrangement ended with Granby's resignation in 1851; Disraeli effectively ignored the two men regardless.

 

Chancellor of the Exchequer

A stately-looking gentleman in a dark suit, sitting with a book

The Earl of Derby, Prime Minister 1852, 1858–59, 1866–68

In March 1851, Lord John Russell's government was defeated over a bill to equalise the county and borough franchises, mostly because of divisions among his supporters. He resigned, and the Queen sent for Stanley, who felt that a minority government could do little and would not last long, so Russell remained in office. Disraeli regretted this, hoping for an opportunity, however brief, to show himself capable in office. Stanley, in contrast, deprecated his inexperienced followers as a reason for not assuming office: "These are not names I can put before the Queen."

 

At the end of June 1851, Stanley succeeded to the title of Earl of Derby. The Whigs were wracked by internal dissensions during the second half of 1851, much of which Parliament spent in recess. Russell dismissed Lord Palmerston from the cabinet, leaving the latter determined to deprive the Prime Minister of office. Palmerston did so within weeks of Parliament's reassembly on 4 February 1852, his followers combining with Disraeli's Tories to defeat the government on a Militia Bill, and Russell resigned. Derby had either to take office or risk damage to his reputation, and he accepted the Queen's commission as prime minister. Palmerston declined any office; Derby had hoped to have him as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Disraeli, his closest ally, was his second choice and accepted, though disclaiming any great knowledge in the financial field. Gladstone refused to join the government. Disraeli may have been attracted to the office by the £5,000 annual salary, which would help pay his debts. Few of the new cabinet had held office before; when Derby tried to inform the Duke of Wellington of the names of the ministers, the old Duke, who was somewhat deaf, inadvertently branded the new government by incredulously repeating "Who? Who?"

 

In the following weeks, Disraeli served as Leader of the House (with Derby as prime minister in the Lords) and as Chancellor. He wrote regular reports on proceedings in the Commons to Victoria, who described them as "very curious" and "much in the style of his books". Parliament was prorogued on 1 July 1852 as the Tories could not govern for long as a minority; Disraeli hoped that they would gain a majority of about 40. Instead, the election later that month had no clear winner, and the Derby government held to power pending the meeting of Parliament.

 

Budget

Disraeli's task as Chancellor was to devise a budget which would satisfy the protectionist elements who supported the Tories, without uniting the free-traders against it. His proposed budget, which he presented to the Commons on 3 December, lowered the taxes on malt and tea, provisions designed to appeal to the working class. To make his budget revenue-neutral, as funds were needed to provide defences against the French, he doubled the house tax and continued the income tax. Disraeli's overall purpose was to enact policies which would benefit the working classes, making his party more attractive to them. Although the budget did not contain protectionist features, the Opposition was prepared to destroy it—and Disraeli's career as Chancellor—in part out of revenge for his actions against Peel in 1846. MP Sidney Herbert predicted that the budget would fail because "Jews make no converts".

 

delivered the budget on 3 December 1852, and prepared to wind up the debate for the government on 16 December—it was customary for the Chancellor to have the last word. A massive defeat for the government was predicted. Disraeli attacked his opponents individually, and then as a force: "I face a Coalition ... This, too, I know, that England does not love coalitions." His speech of three hours was quickly seen as a parliamentary masterpiece. As MPs prepared to divide, Gladstone rose to his feet and began an angry speech, despite the efforts of Tory MPs to shout him down. The interruptions were fewer, as Gladstone gained control of the House, and in the next two hours painted a picture of Disraeli as frivolous and his budget as subversive. The government was defeated by 19 votes, and Derby resigned four days later. He was replaced by the Peelite Earl of Aberdeen, with Gladstone as his Chancellor. Because of Disraeli's unpopularity among the Peelites, no party reconciliation was possible while he remained Tory leader in the Commons.

 

Opposition

With the fall of the government, Disraeli and the Conservatives returned to the Opposition benches. Disraeli would spend three-quarters of his 44-year parliamentary career in Opposition. Derby was reluctant to seek to unseat the government, fearing a repetition of the Who? Who? Ministry and knowing that shared dislike of Disraeli was part of what had formed the governing coalition. Disraeli, on the other hand, was anxious to return to office. In the interim, Disraeli, as Conservative leader in the Commons, opposed the government on all major measures.

 

In June 1853 Disraeli was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Oxford. He had been recommended for it by Lord Derby, the university's Chancellor. The start of the Crimean War in 1854 caused a lull in party politics; Disraeli spoke patriotically in support. The British military efforts were marked by bungling, and in 1855 a restive Parliament considered a resolution to establish a committee on the conduct of the war. The Aberdeen government made this a motion of confidence; Disraeli led the Opposition to defeat the government, 305 to 148. Aberdeen resigned, and the Queen sent for Derby, who to Disraeli's frustration refused to take office. Palmerston was deemed essential to any Whig ministry, and he would not join any he did not head. The Queen reluctantly asked Palmerston to form a government. Under Palmerston, the war went better, and was ended by the Treaty of Paris in early 1856. Disraeli was early to call for peace but had little influence on events.

 

When a rebellion broke out in India in 1857, Disraeli took a keen interest, having been a member of a select committee in 1852 which considered how best to rule the subcontinent, and had proposed eliminating the governing role of the British East India Company. After peace was restored, and Palmerston in early 1858 brought in legislation for direct rule of India by the Crown, Disraeli opposed it. Many Conservative MPs refused to follow him, and the bill passed the Commons easily.

 

Palmerston's grip on the premiership was weakened by his response to the Orsini affair, in which an attempt was made to assassinate the French Emperor Napoleon III by an Italian revolutionary with a bomb made in Birmingham. At the request of the French ambassador, Palmerston proposed amending the conspiracy to murder statute to make creating an infernal device a felony. He was defeated by 19 votes on the second reading, with many Liberals crossing the aisle against him. He immediately resigned, and Lord Derby returned to office.

 

Second Derby government

Derby took office at the head of a purely "Conservative" administration, not in coalition. He again offered a place to Gladstone, who declined. Disraeli was once more leader of the House of Commons and returned to the Exchequer. As in 1852, Derby led a minority government, dependent on the division of its opponents for survival. As Leader of the House, Disraeli resumed his regular reports to Queen Victoria, who had requested that he include what she "could not meet in newspapers".

 

During its brief life of just over a year, the Derby government proved moderately progressive. The Government of India Act 1858 ended the role of the East India Company in governing the subcontinent. The Thames Purification Bill funded the construction of much larger sewers for London. Disraeli had supported efforts to allow Jews to sit in Parliament with a bill passed through the Commons allowing each house of Parliament to determine what oaths its members should take. This was grudgingly agreed to by the House of Lords, with a minority of Conservatives joining with the Opposition to pass it. In 1858, Baron Lionel de Rothschild became the first MP to profess the Jewish faith.

 

Faced with a vacancy, Disraeli and Derby tried yet again to bring Gladstone, still nominally a Conservative MP, into the government, hoping to strengthen it. Disraeli wrote a personal letter to Gladstone, asking him to place the good of the party above personal animosity: "Every man performs his office, and there is a Power, greater than ourselves, that disposes of all this." In response, Gladstone denied that personal feelings played any role in his decisions then and previously whether to accept office, while acknowledging that there were differences between him and Derby "broader than you may have supposed".

 

The Tories pursued a Reform Bill in 1859, which would have resulted in a modest increase to the franchise. The Liberals were healing the breaches between those who favoured Russell and the Palmerston loyalists, and in late March 1859, the government was defeated on a Russell-sponsored amendment. Derby dissolved Parliament, and the ensuing general election resulted in modest Tory gains, but not enough to control the Commons. When Parliament assembled, Derby's government was defeated by 13 votes on an amendment to the Address from the Throne. He resigned, and the Queen reluctantly sent for Palmerston again.

 

Opposition and third term as Chancellor

After Derby's second ejection from office, Disraeli faced dissension within Conservative ranks from those who blamed him for the defeat, or who felt he was disloyal to Derby—the former prime minister warned Disraeli of some MPs seeking his removal from the front bench. Among the conspirators were Lord Robert Cecil, a Conservative MP who would a quarter century later become prime minister as Lord Salisbury; he wrote that having Disraeli as leader in the Commons decreased the Conservatives' chance of holding office. When Cecil's father objected, Lord Robert stated, "I have merely put into print what all the country gentlemen were saying in private."

 

Disraeli led a toothless Opposition in the Commons—seeing no way of unseating Palmerston, Derby privately agreed not to seek the government's defeat. Disraeli kept himself informed on foreign affairs, and on what was going on in cabinet, thanks to a source within it. When the American Civil War began in 1861, Disraeli said little publicly, but like most Englishmen expected the South to win. Less reticent were Palmerston, Gladstone, and Russell, whose statements in support of the South contributed to years of hard feelings in the United States. In 1862, Disraeli met Prussian Count Otto von Bismarck and said of him, "be careful about that man, he means what he says".

 

The party truce ended in 1864, with Tories outraged over Palmerston's handling of the territorial dispute between the German Confederation and Denmark known as the Schleswig-Holstein Question. Disraeli had little help from Derby, who was ill, but he united the party enough on a no-confidence vote to limit the government to a majority of 18—Tory defections and absentees kept Palmerston in office. Despite rumours about Palmerston's health as he turned 80, he remained personally popular, and the Liberals increased their margin in the July 1865 general election. In the wake of the poor election results, Derby predicted to Disraeli that neither of them would ever hold office again.

 

Political plans were thrown into disarray by Palmerston's death on 18 October 1865. Russell became prime minister again, with Gladstone clearly the Liberal Party's leader-in-waiting, and as Leader of the House Disraeli's direct opponent. One of Russell's early priorities was a Reform Bill, but the proposed legislation that Gladstone announced on 12 March 1866 divided his party. The Conservatives and the dissident Liberals repeatedly attacked Gladstone's bill, and in June finally defeated the government; Russell resigned on 26 June. The dissidents were unwilling to serve under Disraeli in the House of Commons, and Derby formed a third Conservative minority government, with Disraeli again as Chancellor.

 

Tory Democrat: the 1867 Reform Act

It was Disraeli's belief that if given the vote British people would use it instinctively to put their natural and traditional rulers, the gentlemen of the Conservative Party, into power. Responding to renewed agitation for popular suffrage, Disraeli persuaded a majority of the cabinet to agree to a Reform bill. With what Derby cautioned was "a leap in the dark", Disraeli had outflanked the Liberals who, as the supposed champions of Reform, dared not oppose him. In the absence of a credible party rival and for fear of having an election called on the issue, Conservatives felt obliged to support Disraeli despite their misgivings.

 

There were Tory dissenters, most notably Lord Cranborne (as Robert Cecil was by then known) who resigned from the government and spoke against the bill, accusing Disraeli of "a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals". Even as Disraeli accepted Liberal amendments (although pointedly refusing those moved by Gladstone) that further lowered the property qualification, Cranborne was unable to lead an effective rebellion. Disraeli gained wide acclaim and became a hero to his party for the "marvellous parliamentary skill" with which he secured the passage of Reform in the Commons.

 

From the Liberal benches too there was admiration. MP for Nottingham Bernal Ostborne declared:

I have always thought the Chancellor of Exchequer was the greatest Radical in the House. He has achieved what no other man in the country could have done. He has lugged up that great omnibus full of stupid, heavy, country gentlemen--I only say 'stupid' in the parliamentary sense--and has converted these Conservative into Radical Reformers.

 

The Reform Act 1867 passed that August.[158] It extended the franchise by 938,427 men—an increase of 88%—by giving the vote to male householders and male lodgers paying at least £10 for rooms. It eliminated rotten boroughs with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, and granted constituencies to 15 unrepresented towns, with extra representation to large municipalities such as Liverpool and Manchester.

 

Prime Minister (1868)

Disraeli ministry

Derby had long had attacks of gout which left him bedbound, unable to deal with politics. As the new session of Parliament approached in February 1868, he was unable to leave his home but was reluctant to resign, as at 68 he was much younger than either Palmerston or Russell at the end of their premierships. Derby knew that his "attacks of illness would, at no distant period, incapacitate me from the discharge of my public duties"; doctors had warned him that his health required his resignation. In late February, with Parliament in session and Derby absent, he wrote to Disraeli asking for confirmation that "you will not shrink from the additional heavy responsibility". Reassured, he wrote to the Queen, resigning and recommending Disraeli as "only he could command the cordial support, en masse, of his present colleagues". Disraeli went to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, where the Queen asked him to form a government. The monarch wrote to her daughter, Prussian Crown Princess Victoria, "Mr. Disraeli is Prime Minister! A proud thing for a man 'risen from the people' to have obtained!" The new prime minister told those who came to congratulate him, "I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole."

 

First government, February–December 1868

Manning

The Conservatives remained a minority in the House of Commons and the passage of the Reform Bill required the calling of a new election once the new voting register had been compiled. Disraeli's term as prime minister, which began in February 1868, would therefore be short unless the Conservatives won the general election. He made only two major changes in the cabinet: he replaced Lord Chelmsford as Lord Chancellor with Lord Cairns and brought in George Ward Hunt as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Derby had intended to replace Chelmsford once a vacancy in a suitable sinecure developed. Disraeli was unwilling to wait, and Cairns, in his view, was a far stronger minister.

 

Disraeli's first premiership was dominated by the heated debate over the Church of Ireland. Although Ireland was largely Roman Catholic, the Church of England represented most landowners. It remained the established church and was funded by direct taxation, which was greatly resented by the Catholics and Presbyterians. An initial attempt by Disraeli to negotiate with Archbishop Manning the establishment of a Catholic university in Dublin foundered in March when Gladstone moved resolutions to disestablish the Irish Church altogether. The proposal united the Liberals under Gladstone's leadership, while causing divisions among the Conservatives.

 

The Conservatives remained in office because the new electoral register was not yet ready; neither party wished a poll under the old roll. Gladstone began using the Liberal majority in the Commons to push through resolutions and legislation. Disraeli's government survived until the December general election, at which the Liberals were returned to power with a majority.

 

In its short life, the first Disraeli government passed noncontroversial laws. It ended public executions, and the Corrupt Practices Act did much to end electoral bribery. It authorised an early version of nationalisation, having the Post Office buy up the telegraph companies. Amendments to the school law, the Scottish legal system, and the railway laws were passed. In addition, the Public Health (Scotland) Act instituted sanitary inspectors and medical officers. According to one study, "better sanitation was enforced throughout Scotland." Disraeli sent the successful expedition against Tewodros II of Ethiopia under Sir Robert Napier.

 

Opposition leader; 1874 election

Given Gladstone's majority in the Commons, Disraeli could do little but protest as the government advanced legislation; he chose to await Liberal mistakes. He used this leisure time to write a new novel, Lothair (1870). A work of fiction by a former prime minister was a novelty for Britain, and the book became a bestseller.

 

By 1872 there was dissent in the Conservative ranks over the failure to challenge Gladstone. This was quieted as Disraeli took steps to assert his leadership, and as divisions among the Liberals became clear. Public support for Disraeli was shown by cheering at a thanksgiving service in 1872 on the recovery of the Prince of Wales from illness, while Gladstone was met with silence. Disraeli had supported the efforts of party manager John Eldon Gorst to put the administration of the Conservative Party on a modern basis. On Gorst's advice, Disraeli gave a speech to a mass meeting in Manchester that year. To roaring approval, he compared the Liberal front bench to "a range of exhausted volcanoes... But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes and ever and again the dark rumbling of the sea." Gladstone, Disraeli stated, dominated the scene and "alternated between a menace and a sigh".

 

At his first departure from 10 Downing Street in 1868, Disraeli had had Victoria create Mary Anne Viscountess of Beaconsfield in her own right in lieu of a peerage for himself. Through 1872 the eighty-year-old peeress had stomach cancer. She died on 15 December. Urged by a clergyman to turn her thoughts to Jesus Christ in her final days, she said she could not: "You know Dizzy is my J.C."

 

In 1873, Gladstone brought forward legislation to establish a Catholic university in Dublin. This divided the Liberals, and on 12 March an alliance of Conservatives and Irish Catholics defeated the government by three votes. Gladstone resigned, and the Queen sent for Disraeli, who refused to take office. Without a general election, a Conservative government would be another minority; Disraeli wanted the power a majority would bring and felt he could gain it later by leaving the Liberals in office now. Gladstone's government struggled on, beset by scandal and unimproved by a reshuffle. As part of that change, Gladstone took on the office of Chancellor, leading to questions as to whether he had to stand for re-election on taking on a second ministry—until the 1920s, MPs becoming ministers had to seek re-election.

 

In January 1874, Gladstone called a general election, convinced that if he waited longer, he would do worse at the polls. Balloting was spread over two weeks, beginning on 1 February. As the constituencies voted, it became clear that the result would be a Conservative majority, the first since 1841. In Scotland, where the Conservatives were perennially weak, they increased from seven seats to nineteen. Overall, they won 350 seats to 245 for the Liberals and 57 for the Irish Home Rule League. Disraeli became prime minister for the second time.

 

Prime Minister (1874–1880)

Second term

Disraeli's cabinet of twelve, with six peers and six commoners, was the smallest since Reform. Of the peers, five of them had been in Disraeli's 1868 cabinet; the sixth, Lord Salisbury, was reconciled to Disraeli after negotiation and became Secretary of State for India. Lord Stanley (who had succeeded his father, the former prime minister, as Earl of Derby) became Foreign Secretary and Sir Stafford Northcote the Chancellor.

 

In August 1876, Disraeli was elevated to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield and Viscount Hughenden. The Queen had offered to ennoble him as early as 1868; he had then declined. She did so again in 1874, when he fell ill at Balmoral, but he was reluctant to leave the Commons for a house in which he had no experience. Continued ill health during his second premiership caused him to contemplate resignation, but his lieutenant, Derby, was unwilling, feeling that he could not manage the Queen. For Disraeli, the Lords, where the debate was less intense, was the alternative to resignation. Five days before the end of the 1876 session of Parliament, on 11 August, Disraeli was seen to linger and look around the chamber before departing. Newspapers reported his ennoblement the following morning.

 

In addition to the viscounty bestowed on Mary Anne Disraeli, the earldom of Beaconsfield was to have been bestowed on Edmund Burke in 1797, but he had died before receiving it. The name Beaconsfield, a town near Hughenden, was given to a minor character in Vivian Grey. Disraeli made various statements about his elevation, writing to Selina, Lady Bradford on 8 August 1876, "I am quite tired of that place [the Commons]" but when asked by a friend how he liked the Lords, replied, "I am dead; dead but in the Elysian fields."

 

Domestic policy

Legislation

Under the stewardship of Richard Assheton Cross, the Home Secretary, Disraeli's new government enacted many reforms, including the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875, which made inexpensive loans available to towns and cities to construct working-class housing. Also enacted were the Public Health Act 1875, modernising sanitary codes, the Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875, and the Elementary Education Act 1876. Disraeli's government introduced a new Factory Act meant to protect workers, the Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875, which allowed peaceful picketing, and the Employers and Workmen Act 1875 to enable workers to sue employers in the civil courts if they broke legal contracts.

 

The Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875 prohibited the mixing of injurious ingredients with articles of food or with drugs, and provision was made for the appointment of analysts; all tea "had to be examined by a customs official on importation, and when in the opinion of the analyst it was unfit for food, the tea had to be destroyed". The Employers and Workmen Act 1875, according to one study, "finally placed employers and employed on an equal footing before the law". The Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875 established the right to strike by providing that "an agreement or combination by one or more persons to do, or procure to be done, any act in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute between employers and workmen, shall not be indictable as a conspiracy if such act committed by one person would not be punishable as a crime".

 

As a result of these social reforms the Liberal-Labour MP Alexander Macdonald told his constituents in 1879, "The Conservative party have done more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have in fifty."

 

Civil Service

London may have cost him votes in the 1868 election.

Gladstone in 1870 had sponsored an Order in Council, introducing competitive examination into the Civil Service, diminishing the political aspects of government hiring. Disraeli did not agree, and while he did not seek to reverse the order, his actions often frustrated its intent. For example, Disraeli made political appointments to positions previously given to career civil servants. He was backed by his party, hungry for office and its emoluments after almost thirty years with only brief spells in government. Disraeli gave positions to hard-up Conservative leaders, even—to Gladstone's outrage—creating one office at £2,000 per year. Nevertheless, Disraeli made fewer peers (only 22, including one of Victoria's sons) than had Gladstone (37 during his just over five years in office).

 

As he had in government posts, Disraeli rewarded old friends with clerical positions, making Sydney Turner, son of a good friend of Isaac D'Israeli, Dean of Ripon. He favoured Low church clergymen in promotion, disliking other movements in Anglicanism for political reasons. In this, he came into disagreement with the Queen, who out of loyalty to her late husband Albert preferred Broad church teachings. One controversial appointment had occurred shortly before the 1868 election. When the position of Archbishop of Canterbury fell vacant, Disraeli reluctantly agreed to the Queen's preferred candidate, Archibald Tait, the Bishop of London. To fill Tait's vacant see, Disraeli was urged by many people to appoint Samuel Wilberforce, the former Bishop of Winchester. Disraeli disliked Wilberforce and instead appointed John Jackson, the Bishop of Lincoln. Blake suggested that, on balance, these appointments cost Disraeli more votes than they gained him.

 

Final months, death, and memorials

Disraeli refused to cast blame for the defeat, which he understood was likely to be final for him. He wrote to Lady Bradford that it was just as much work to end a government as to form one, without any of the fun. Queen Victoria was bitter at his departure. Among the honours he arranged before resigning as Prime Minister on 21 April 1880 was one for his private secretary, Montagu Corry, who became Baron Rowton.

 

Disraeli's tomb at Hughenden

Returning to Hughenden, Disraeli brooded over his electoral dismissal, but also resumed work on Endymion, which he had begun in 1872 and laid aside before the 1874 election. The work was rapidly completed and published by November 1880.[251] He carried on a correspondence with Victoria, with letters passed through intermediaries. When Parliament met in January 1881, he served as Conservative leader in the Lords, attempting to serve as a moderating influence on Gladstone's legislation.

 

Because of his asthma and gout, Disraeli went out as little as possible, fearing more serious episodes of illness. In March, he fell ill with bronchitis, and emerged from bed only for a meeting with Salisbury and other Conservative leaders on the 26th. As it became clear that this might be his final sickness, friends and opponents alike came to call. Disraeli declined a visit from the Queen, saying, "She would only ask me to take a message to Albert." Almost blind, when he received the last letter from Victoria of which he was aware on 5 April, he held it momentarily, then had it read to him by Lord Barrington, a Privy Councillor. One card, signed "A Workman", delighted its recipient: "Don't die yet, we can't do without you."

 

Despite the gravity of Disraeli's condition, the doctors concocted optimistic bulletins for public consumption. Prime Minister Gladstone called several times to enquire about his rival's condition, and wrote in his diary, "May the Almighty be near his pillow." There was intense public interest in Disraeli's struggles for life. Disraeli had customarily taken the sacrament at Easter; when this day was observed on 17 April, there was discussion among his friends and family if he should be given the opportunity, but those against, fearing that he would lose hope, prevailed. On the morning of the following day, Easter Monday, he became incoherent, then comatose. Disraeli's last confirmed words before dying at his home at 19 Curzon Street in the early morning of 19 April were "I had rather live but I am not afraid to die". The anniversary of Disraeli's death was for some years commemorated in the United Kingdom as Primrose Day.

 

Despite having been offered a state funeral by Queen Victoria, Disraeli's executors decided against a public procession and funeral, fearing that too large crowds would gather to do him honour. The chief mourners at the service at Hughenden on 26 April were his brother Ralph and nephew Coningsby, to whom Hughenden would eventually pass; Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, Viscount Cranbrook, despite most of Disraeli's former cabinet being present, was notably absent in Italy. Queen Victoria was prostrated with grief, and considered ennobling Ralph or Coningsby as a memorial to Disraeli (without children, his titles became extinct with his death), but decided against it on the ground that their means were too small for a peerage. Protocol forbade her attending Disraeli's funeral (this would not be changed until 1965, when Elizabeth II attended the rites for the former prime minister Sir Winston Churchill) but she sent primroses ("his favourite flowers") to the funeral and visited the burial vault to place a wreath four days later.

 

A statue on a podium

Statue of Disraeli in Parliament Square, London

Disraeli is buried with his wife in a vault beneath the Church of St Michael and All Angels which stands in the grounds of his home, Hughenden Manor. There is also a memorial to him in the chancel in the church, erected in his honour by Queen Victoria. His literary executor was his private secretary, Lord Rowton. The Disraeli vault also contains the body of Sarah Brydges Willyams, the wife of James Brydges Willyams of St Mawgan. Disraeli carried on a long correspondence with Mrs. Willyams, writing frankly about political affairs. At her death in 1865, she left him a large legacy, which helped clear his debts. His will was proved in April 1882 at £84,019 18 s. 7 d. (roughly equivalent to £9,016,938 in 2021).

 

Disraeli has a memorial in Westminster Abbey, erected by the nation on the motion of Gladstone in his memorial speech on Disraeli in the House of Commons. Gladstone had absented himself from the funeral, with his plea of the press of public business met with public mockery. His speech was widely anticipated, if only because his dislike for Disraeli was well known. In the event, the speech was a model of its kind, in which he avoided comment on Disraeli's politics while praising his personal qualities.

Optimistic Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Despite the bad weather on a wedding day, as soon as the ceremony ended, we were able to get some pretty awesome fog photos since the rain stopped. Just great timing.

Built under orders by Kitchener to supply the British Army in the war against the Mahdi in the late 19th century, when I visited the area between Wadi Haifa and Station 10 (where the Sudanese railroad branches), the railroad was disused. An employee, proud in his uniform, told me that trains would start again the next day. Given how many of the tracks were still covered by sand, I was not optimistic: however, the railroad did start again (months rather than hours later) in 2013.

Flies are buzzing around my head

Vultures circling the dead

Picking up every last crumb

The big fish eat the little ones

The big fish eat the little ones

Not my problem give me some

 

You can try the best you can

If you try the best you can

The best you can is good enough

 

This one's optimistic

This one went to market

This one just came out of the swamp

This one dropped a payload

Fodder for the animals

Living on an animal farm

 

If you try the best you can

If you try the best you can

The best you can is good enough

 

I'd really like to help you man

I'd really like to help you man.....

Nervous messed up marionette

Floating around on a prison ship

 

If you try the best you can

If you try the best you can

The best you can is good enough

If you try the best you can

If you try the best you can

Dinosaurs will reign the earth

 

Optimistic, Radiohead

Kempton Park, 27 December 2021. Juvenile Hurdle (2m).

then everything will look up.

Rwanda’s private sector players are optimistic of business and investment opportunities that will come with Rwanda hosting the upcoming Commonwealth Business Forum (CBF) that will take place during this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM 2020).

 

This was revealed today in a breakfast meeting organized by RDB (Rwanda Development Board) and the Private Sector Federation (PSF) to engage members of the private sector on the opportunities that they stand to take advantage of by participating at the CBF.

 

CBF will bring together between 1,000 to 1,200 business and government leaders from all Commonwealth countries for a dialogue on practical ways to enhance trade and investment.

 

The forum will be structured around plenary sessions and interactive workshops over three days, and will also facilitate B2G and B2B discussions at the very highest levels, addressing key themes that affect the 54 diverse Commonwealth member nations.

 

Speaking while making her remarks, Clare Akamanzi, the RDB Chief Executive Officer said:

 

“I have every confidence that you agree with me that CBF 2020 presents a unique platform for us to market Rwanda as the best destination for investments. Indeed, we look forward to the private sector signing deals and partnerships on projects that will contribute to the sustainable economic growth of our country through profits, jobs, and increasing Rwanda’s exports. Just to give you some context, over 2.4 billion people live within the Commonwealth Marketplace, and this year will see US$ 1 trillion worth of trade realised within the Commonwealth for the very first time. This means that we have a limitless market for our Made in Rwanda products and services and there shouldn’t be reason not to export more quantities to these countries.”

 

Robert Bapfakulera, the PSF Chairman said:

 

“It is important for us to ensure that the CBF leaves a lasting and positive legacy, with Rwanda at the centre of Commonwealth trade for its two years as Chair-in Office. To achieve this, the private sector must be fully prepared to optimise the Commonwealth trade opportunity-for business, investment and trade. CBF is an extremely unique platform for us to meet strategic partners and do great business.”

 

CHOGM 2020 will take place in Kigali from 22nd to 28thJune and will have four main forums which are Commonwealth Business, People’s, Women and Youth forums.

At the Birmingham Social Media Cafe on October 29th 2010, we asked people what they were optimistic about.

 

It's a spin-off from newoptimists.com. We asked scientists 'what are you optimistic about?' — and their answers are now in a brilliant book.

amzn.to/thenewoptimists