This Might Only Make Some Sense -
And please note I qualify that with 'some', because the blog is not known for sticking to the rules of either reality or logic, unless we feel like it, and that depends on which side of the bed Your Humble Scribe fell out of.
So, yes, I am spoofing a particular brand of tea. Art!
Conrad was unaware that Brooke Bond originated in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell. Small world. They were a mighty tea retailer until they got bought up by the soulless multinational Unilever. The 'PG Tips' brand is still around, and I have just discovered that the 'PG' comes from a contraction of their old title, 'Pre-Gest'. Not surprising, 'Pre-Gest' sounds like a medical condition experienced by expectant mothers.
I am also spoofing another trope, that of the 'James Bond' films, where the actor playing James would introduce themselves with the line 'The name's Bond - James Bond'. Art!
As an aside, you can tell this was filmed decades ago, because matey is making a production of smoking a cigarette. You couldn't get away with that nowadays.
Nor could you this! Art?
You see, for a couple of decades Brooke Bond used trained chimps to make adverts promoting their tea, and one of their last iterations of this was 'Brooke Bond', themselves spoofing James Bond, and one takes it their lawyers must have had long and fascinating chats with each other for this to go ahead.
Now, this is where we get around to that fascinating topic of definitions, by which introduction you can guess our tack is about to change.
"Brook": 'To bear or to tolerate, from the Old English 'Brucan'. Yes ys yes I know there's an 'e' missing, bear with me on this and I plead poetic licence.
"Bond": Finance. A certificate of debt Issued in order to raise funds. It is repayable with or without security at a specified future date".
For Lo! I have trickily inveigled you into a financial Intro, and, even worse, one to do with Captain Capslock the Orange Land Whale. Art!
People made cruel comments about his latest hair extension wig and it rapidly vanished.
ANYWAY you surely cannot be unaware of DJ Tango and his tariffs, and do you know Conrad came across one of his blogs from January, where I hilariously riff on the 'James Bond' theme again, because truly everything is interconnected.
BOOJUM!: The Name's Bond. Blames Bond
That one's about financial mayhem as it concerned one particular investment bank, but Fatty's tariffs and lifting and partial repeal and changing and chopping not only affects South Canada but the rest of the world, too.
Now, if you are a regular reader of the blog, you'll know that Conrad has read three books about Donold, and my opinion of the Tribble-topped-beer-keg-in-a-suit decreased each time. You can tell he's lying because his mouth is moving.
So, why did Donold* Judas Trump rescind all those tariffs really? Art!
This is the Youtube vlogger Jake Broe, whose Youtube channel is called, by wild coincidence, 'Jake Broe'. His surname is Dutch, as his dad emigrated to South Canada from t
You see, the US Government raises money by selling government bonds, as do all other major nations. These are bought by other entities at a rate that can vary, and are paid off in the long term - ten, twenty or thirty years as examples. Who buys lots of US Government bonds? Why, China, Japan and Europe, three of the principal nations (or groups of nations) affected by the tariffs. Art!
This shows the overall trend of South Canadian debt, which has been trending upwards since Covid. Art!
What you see here is the result of bonds being dumped en masse, because of some arcane and vague event I cannot quite remember. The bond yield - the amount that will be paid back at completion of the term, in 10 and 30 year bonds above - has gone up half a percentage point. This might not sound much, so just look at how sharp the increase is above, and remember that we are talking billions and billions of dollars here. In fact a ONE PER CENT increase would hike the amount of South Canadian debt by <drum roll cymbal crash> by £300 billion dollars. So that modest 0.5% hike has already added $150 billion to the National Debt. Well done Mopey Dick!
After all that number-crunching and hard data, you probably need a nice cup of tea.
Meanwhile, Out In The Bucolic Shires
Your Humble Scribe was a little better prepared on the Sunday for his trip o'er the Peak District and into the exotic and foreign climes of Yorkshire. I had my trusty (if cheap and simple) digital camera at the ready. Art!
You can make out the slump in the road by the blue arrow sign, although it's not clear that the stone wall is now canted out into space. No signs of any remedial work being done on this stretch, but it looks more hopeful than the photo below.
Note the red light, Conrad being a safe motorist. You can see, in the distance, where the road has been eaten away by landslide, and not repaired. It would need a considerable amount of retaining structure to buttress and prevent further landslip, and Derbyshire County Council don't have that kind of money.
Still Further Out In The Bucolic Shires
As I have already informed you AND THERE WILL BE A TEST LATER this weekend was Richard's 'Crisis Point' wargaming event, held in the Village Hall at Dungworthy. Much better than the School Hall, because we had access to a fully-fitted kitchen with crockery and cutlery, whoopee! Art?
About That 'Invincible' Motion Comic
Yes, it is what I suspected it would be, more a sequential run of stills instead of a proper animation, though they did add in sound effects, so good for them I suppose. Art!
It doesn't seem to be quite as bloody as the animated version, but then it was to be played on MTV not Amazon. When it was created they were only 6 trade paperbacks into the comic book series, and it eventually totalled 22, so it falls a bit short narratively. You do get the benefit of the original artwork with no compromises for animation needs, however.
INVINCIBLE'S ORIGIN STORY! | Invincible: Family Matters | Part One | Issue #1 - Motion Comic
The link if you need it.
"The War Illustrated Edition 206 11 May 1945"
I finally tracked these down, having been looking unsuccessfully for them on my digital camera, and then realised I'd taken them with my phone's camera, for reasons that escape me. Art!
Here you see the aftermath of the Brylcreem Boys of the RAF's bomber squadrons paying a visit. The '10 ton bombs' mentioned in the text are the unspeakably destructive 'Grand Slam' ordnance that we've mentioned before. If used on a planar target such as the marshalling yards, they create a gigantic underground 'camouflet' that everything collapses into. The photo at starboard shows one of the Third Reich's more urgently needed structures: a massive reinforced concrete bomb shelter for civilians. That last photo shows what a Teuton town looked after conquest where there had been resistance; Prof. Caddick-Adams' work on 1945 and the last 3 months of the war has numerous examples of Nazi fanatics fighting on after any hope of anything remotely positive had vanished, resulting in utterly needless destruction. Gotterdammerung and all that, one speculates.
* Calling him this enrages him, apparently.
DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD
DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD
DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD DONOLD
Tee hee!
Sophisticated we are not.
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