YES YES YES
We are using Latin. Sue me. After acknowledging that English is the Mother Of All Languages, thank you so much.
ANYWAY we are back to BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM again, and all the various exhibits and displays there present, because if I went to the bother of capturing their essence, you are most certainly going to be enduring the benefit. Art!
This is one of the earliest exhibits, and denotes how rapidly the march of time strode through the Second Unpleasantness. At port is the diminutive Matilda Mk I, basically a self-propelled machine gun as used in 1939. To starboard is the Comet Cruiser Tank, with puny humans for scale, which is more closely like a 17-Pounder-Gun-On-An-Armoured-Chassis as used in early 1945. Art!
This is an Italian 'Lanciafiamme Modello 35', with normally-puny humans for scale. These horribly compact creations were the mainstay of the Italian armoured forces in the Thirties, which were successful enough in the Spanish Civil Unpleasantness and Abyssinia but which fared infinitely worse in North Africa. There they came up against British tank and anti-tank guns, not rifles and spears. Consider that this vehicle has to contort two crew members into the main chassis, next to the engine, under the sun of Libya in summer, and firing a flamethrower to boot. Hot stuff indeed, and not in a good way. Art!
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| Lanciafiamme in foreground |
Forgive me for the exclusive focus. This is one of the Teuton 3/4-tracks that they produced whilst participating in the Second Unpleasantness and you may see one of their characteristics as seen with the Kettenkrad of earlier exhibition: OVERENGINEERING. All they really needed was a truck, so instead they came up with an incredibly complicated vehicle using interleaved suspension and angled 'bullet-trap' sides to - display Teuton overengineering at it's best. Art!
This is one of my favouristest tanks ever, the British Crusader, thanks to being one of the first pair of Airfix tank model kits I ever built. Here we see it in it's second iteration, mounting a 6-pounder gun, which would have turned any Axis opposition in North Africa into a colander. Note the big-wheel Christie suspension, which gives an excellent ride, and the contrasting camouflage used to break up the outline. Art!
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| What an appropriate name! |
This beauty is the Valentine infantry tank, the next iteration up from the Matilda. The Valentine was far easier to produce thanks to ergonomics and at least three years of engineering advancement. It came armed with the same 2-pdr gun as the Matilda, meaning it was under-gunned instantly, a deficiently that was later addressed with a 6-pdr version. Those supplied to the thankless Sinisters were appreciated due to the ability to slide their entire engine out rearwards on rails, without special preparation. Valentine engine fine non-repine? Art!
Mutatis mutandis. We have already met the later iteration of this sporty beast, and here we see the M3 Stuart. Another tank that Conrad likes despite itself. This tank, you see, was the first South Canadian one to see service in North Africa during the Second Unpleasantness in the 8th Army. It only mounted a 37 mm gun, which was under-gunned at this point in the conflict, and had insufficient armour BUT it went like s*** off a shiny shovel and could manage 50 m.p.h. with a following wind downhill, making it more like a sports car than a metal mastodon. Plus, thanks to South Canadian engineering ethos, it did not break down every 7 kilometres, which it was immediately tubbed the 'Honey'. Art!
We are getting a bit off-tangent here, but this is a well-observed cover showing Honeys in service in the sands of valour*. If you nudge me I will tell you more of the M3 Honey in North Africa. If you are unlucky I will tell you even if you remain static.
I think that's enough BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM for one Intro as you may not be able to cope with such a concentrated dose of awesome.
Beards And Bills And Bullets
This here is Georgijs Ivanov, who runs the Youtube channel 'Ukraine Matters' and whom is fluent in Danish, English, Ruffian and Ukrainian. Danish because - you may be ahead of me here - he is Danish. He recently published a vlog which took a look at the Ruffian budget figures over the recent past and into the near future, which encapsulates in concise form quite a lot of info. All of it bad for Mordorvia. Art!
Take note of the legend at the top of this chart. This is not an extrapolation by the Wall Street Journal or MI6 or an EU think-tank; this is official data from the Ruffian Ministry of Finance itself, showing their budget history and projected future. So, that '0.52' positive figure is the Ruffian budget in 2021, before the Special Idiotic Operation. The totals are in trillions of rubles, ₽1 trillion being about $12 billion. Of particular interest is the budget for 2025, because their projection for this year was originally ₽1 trillion and they're already at $70 billion. Since Ruffia balances the books in December, you can guarantee this will hit at least ₽6 trillion by year's end. Now look at their projected negative figures for the next 3 years and multiply them by 6 as for 2025. Potentially $220 billion in the red in 2026. Wowsers.
Whomever approved the publishing of this data is going to be drinking a pot of polonium tea any moment now.
Talking Of Bad Budgets -
Your Humble Scribe recently stumbled across a Youtube vlog that was dishing the dirt on Disney's 'The Acolyte' and there was considerable dirt to be dished. Art!
Conrad hasn't seen this miserable excresence of a series and has no plans to ever remedy this deficiency, since 'Robot Head' bit the bullet, took several for the team and watched it so the rest of us don't have to.
As mentioned several times in the past, if a production shoots content in the UK, they can then apply for a tax rebate, which can amount to tens of millions of sterling, with the proviso that they HAVE to publish their tax records for said production. 'Twould seem that those tax records for TA have now been published. Art!
This is Mr. H of 'Mr H Reviews' and he is laughing incredulously at the cost of TA - $250,000,000. As he comments, no wonder they cancelled it so quickly. He puts up a graphic showing the weekly viewing figures for this farrago. Art!
As is clearly visible, very few people bothered to watch it all the way to the end, viewing figures falling further every week. Even the tenth-most viewed streaming series, 'Love Is Blind', got three times the views TA did.
On the back of disastrous figures like these, Disney will immediately offer Lesley Squareheadland another 'Star Wars' franchise to destroy, and we can but hope they film part of it in the UK so we get to see the tax records.
Let Us Quaff Schadenfreude Together
Yes indeed, Conrad is milking the results of that ballfoot game between Bent Ford and Manchester United Dairies, where the score escapes me. Art!
Let us now have a selection from the gloating Commenters.
thereasonableman
15:41 27 Sep
- and
Stan
16:08 27 Sep
Well, Stan, there are a lot of ballfoot fans out there who hate MUD with a passion and are delighted to have this long drawn-out analysis gloating.
Should Have Used A Mouse-Troubler, Mate
Conrad read this and winced. Art!
* THE novel of war in North Africa. When I take over it will become a film, if not a trilogy. You have been warned.
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