About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Monday, October 17, 2011

S is for 'Special Relationship'...(Bloody Journalists!)

I have been trying to upload this for weeks, but Blogger will not accept the scan of the original newspaper article, so I've had to mock it up as well as I can in Word for Windows. It is a very delicate object and needed a high resolution to be readable leading to endless "An error has occurred..." messages from Blogger.

I've tried sharpening and lightening it to reduce the pixel-count but no dice. The mock-up is almost correct but lacks the vertical justification. Wording per-line/column is correct and the title and Images are where they lie on the original and, although that is very yellowed; I have rendered this is B&W to ease reading.

[You will need to right-click 'Open Link' to render this readable]

The Author of this piece definitely didn't think he had a Special Relationship with the 'Old Country'. I'm guessing this was published sometime after Dunkirk, and before the US reporters in the UK had started to fully report back to the US on the successes in the Battle of Britain, or the worst effects of the Blitz. As a historical document it is priceless, of note is the lack of a byline, a coward never signs his work - as true today as it was then.

He also credits the two non-combat poses above as being lazy old Brits, but the guy shaving is definitely a German officer in those riding Britches they favoured (Elastolin figure; 550/28) while the wounded guy is not the known British pose (in a tin helmet), is reversed from the illustration in War Toys 1 (39/40 catalogue) and has the wrong base for Lineol, but looks to be French - with that greatcoat on - anyway?

So not only does the reporter have a low opinion of the British and their efforts to keep the world free of repressive, fascist dictators single handed, but he's willing to lie to 'prove' his point...a journalist, lying? Never!

The other two are both Lineol, the 'Tirpitz launch' Hitler (5/1) and 5/79/2 - German soldier throwing a stick-grenade.

It should be pointed out that three out of four Americans at the time supported their Presidents support (albeit tacit and with ulterior motives!!) for the British position and more specifically his friend Winston Churchill, unfortunately, the 25% were good-old-boy, red-necked, right-wing fascists!

And what happened to the Importhause in the next year or so . . . ?

Some of the 'offending' articles at a recent show; Elastolin SA and Hitler Jugend at the front, SS/Leibstandart guarding the gate and Lineol British Guards behind a ranting madman on the dais (what am I doing there!!). The fort is also a German piece of the same period.

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