Conrad Is Pretty Sure He's Touched On Malfeasance Before
Otherwise, why would I have a Metro Tram Ticket inserted into my 'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' about - er - 'Leviathan'. Okay, nothing to do with Malfeasance. Moving swiftly along -
Let's instead focus on my Collin's Concise. "The doing of a wrongful or illegal act, especially by a public official". From the Old French 'Mal Faisant', meaning 'To do evil'. Art!
How to strangle cats the Donald Trump way!
Now, Conrad is pretttty sure you imagined that we were going to slide seamlessly into a critique of Ruffia, or the Fun-Sized Foot Fiddler's latest attempt to create viable microchips out of spiderwebs and pixie-dust.
Not so.
At least, not yet.
You see, I am currently reading "The West Riding Territorials In The Great War", because it has been sat in front of me for who knows how many years without being so much as scorned, let alone read (BECAUSE YORKSHIREMEN!!). The West Riding Territorials were a peacetime organisation before the First Unpleasantness, whom numbered so many amongst their members that they were able to form two whole divisions (49th and 62nd) when the First Unpleasantness erupted. For those unaware, their home was Yorkshire, and it's West Riding in geographical terms. Art!
Their mascot was a pelican. No, I don't know either. Too much beer?
ANYWAY the 62nd was in betweenst battles in the front lines around Bullecourt, a legendarily grim and bloody battlefield. Art!
As is their wont, the paper-clip counting Captain Darlings of the British Expeditionary Force focussed their beady, monocled eyes upon the 62nd and declared them deficient in salvage.
Here we interject a little exposition. The post-battle battlefields of the First Unpleasantness were an unbelievable midden of murder and mundaneness. The bodies got hauled off for interment, because both Perfidious Albion and the Teutons adhered to basic human values YES RUFFIANS LOOKING AT YOU, in a tradition of interment of one's own that goes back to classical Greek history. Art!
"Leave no man behind, unless you're all dead" said Leonidas
There was always a detritus of military kit left on the battlefield- if you're dead then you cannot tidy up behind yourself - and so an un-named platoon of the 62nd set to with a will, determined to carry out what salvage they could, and to give a silent **** *** to the HQ warriors. Art!
They found a derelict tank, hidden in undergrowth. They found seven Lewis guns and forty drum magazines to go with same.
More particularly, they found four bodies belonging to the Royal Warwicks, which inspired them to go looking for other bodies in the locality. They discovered forty bodies, who were then transferred from the 'Missing' totals to the 'Killed' totals.
Stop and think about that for a minute. The Yorkies were digging up the rotting corpses of men long dead, riddled with maggots, surrounded by flies and beating off vermin, not because they'd been ordered to do so, but because they felt obligated to. A ghastly job. Art!
Thanks to dog-tags the families of the dead would have at least been given a sense of closure. Brigade Headquarters would probably have been more impressed with the recovered Lewis guns. And this, gentle reader, is 'Salvage'. We may come back to this, it's a big subject.
Yes, I realise this is more misery than malfeasance. Give me a couple of minutes and we'll see.
Aha!
Here's a Mighty Meaty Malefeasance, focussed on our old pal Ruffia and their budgetary woes, as evinced by Konstantin of "Inside Russia" on Youtube. Thanks, K! Art?
K the hairy one at rear
K, having been a Ruffian all his life, is knowledgeable in the ways of Muscovy, especially their economy. When talking about the Ruffian national deficit, he's had to qualify his statements, because the Ministry Of Finance only put out partial figures for the federal budget.
Does this matter? I hear you asking. Yes. Yes it does. Art!
Just to remind you where we're talking about
You see, the federal budget is only part of the whole 'Consolidated' budget, which also includes the provincial budget for all the regions of the Ruffian Federation, plus the local budgets for cities, towns and villages and the vaguely-defined 'Extra-budgetary funds'.
This month, for the first time, the Consolidated budget deficit was revealed for the first time, and - no spoilers here - it's not good. In fact it's bad. Very bad.
For the first two months of 2023, the Consolidated budget deficit was ₽6.1 trillion rubles, compared to ₽3.4 trillion for the Federal budget part of this total. Using the dollar/ruble exchange rate (which has also plummeted) of ₽80 to the $, those are $76 billion and $42.5 billion respectively. So the annual deficit for 2023 could be approaching half a trillion dollars. Dollars, not rubles (that would be ₽34 trillion)
And this, whilst the total revenue has fallen by 62% and expenditure increased by 42% compared to this time in 2022.
There you go, pretty much the poster child for 'Malfeasance'.
More On That Theme Of 'Spring'
You know, the monthly BBC picture competition. This one has been extremely dull, frankly, with endless pictures of flowers or birds. Not exciting at all. Art!
Courtesy Clare Sheppard
As lively as it gets. The photographer captured these hares boxing the stuffing out of each other at the unearthly hour of 06:45, so she deserves a good picture for getting up at that time.
The Haul
As you should surely know, Conrad took Wednesday off as a holiday, resulting in him being able to visit a couple of charity bookshops. Art!
I have a couple of other works by John Toland. This one deals with 1918, the last year of the First Unpleasantness and, unusually, it deals with events on the Eastern Front as well. This is normally dealt with as an aside, so it will be interesting to see Lenin and the Bolshevik hordes squirming under Teuton occupation. 'Para Handy and Other Tales' concerns the exploits of the Clyde 'puffer' (a small steamship) "Vital Spark" around the lochs and islands of West Scotland at the beginning of the twentieth century: Para Handy is the captain, Dougie is the mate, McPhail is the engineer and The Tar is the general dogsbody. Later on we get Sunny Jim, and still later on Hurricane Jack. Art!
Adapted for TV umpteen times
I was rather chuffed at getting a James Ellroy novel in the British Heart Foundation shop; he is widely regarded as one of the best South Canadian crime writers evah, possibly only eclipsed by James Crumley.
And one can never have too many Philip K. Dick novels. I've not read TMITHC for probably 40 years, so it will be interesting to see how it and Conrad get along now that I am an aged, surly truculent chap. As opposed to a young, surly, truculent chap.
More Baroque 'Starry Wars' Crew
Some of these I've omitted from highlighting because they seem to simply be a painted portrait with no particular eighteenth-century resonance. Art!
Brrrrrr. Not a chap you'd like to get on the wrong side of, hmmmm? I imagine he'd challenge you to a duel, skewer you like a kebab, then be on his way, all in the space of thirty seconds. Art!
I think this one falls under the heading of 'Saucy Wench'. Not 'Strumpet' as she'd knock your head off if you called her that.
Finally -
Hmmmmm I've finished this blog unusually early, which comes of not festering in my pit until 10:30 any longer - having to get up at 06:45 rather broke that lazy habit of mine. And we've hit over 1.300 words without any recourse to Fan Fiction, for which you may be truly grateful. Or not.
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