Almost everyone it seems knows, knows of or is related to someone who was on the fateful maiden voyage of the Titanic.
My connection is as the Priest in Charge, technically curate, of Farlam in Cumbria.
The Chief Engineer of the Titanic, Mr Joseph Bell was born in Farlam and is memorialised in the Churchyard.
I must confess to being a bit surprised by all the interest in the Titanic.
A new Titanic Museum on Belfast.
The memorial cruise of the Balmoral.
What has, for the past hundred years, been something of an embarrassment has suddenly become a cause celebre.
After all, the ship, newly launched, departs with a fanfare and a few days later, collides with a huge ice-berg and sinks.
It begs the question were there Polar Bears on the ice-berg and how did they fare?
But there it is, the Titanic is in the news and the name is on everyone's lips.
Presumably the Captain of the Balmoral will be keeping a weather eye open for ice-bergs, my advice if one suddenly appears out of the left ice field is keep on full speed ahead, run into it, jam the ships prow into the fissure created and it should keep you afloat until help gets there!
Given global warning and the melting of the ice cap there are likely to be less ice-bergs about so the memorial cruise should be without mishap unlike other recent cruises and all the jokes on the internet about how passengers on Italian Cruise ships like their drinks 'on the rocks' etc.
So this is a year of celebrations and bank holidays, Titanic celebrating the British approach to most things, (it's not the winning, it's the taking part!); the Diamond jubilee and of course the Olympics.
By the time we've found the lifeboats, had the street parties and run three times round the block we will all be exhausted by September.
Photographs of the Captain of the Titanic, Captain E. J. Smith shows him with a Beard, he is far too important to be smiling, and it seems from his uneventful life up until the ice-berg loomed out of the fog, he had precious little to smile about and by the time it was all over presumably the irony would have been lost on him.
However another man with a beard is described on his invitation to join him on Twitter, as 'the smiley man with the beard'.
So what is the Chairman of Virgin Group smiling about now?
Well it seems that the latest in a long line of acquisitions means that what used to be public services, operated by public companies, subject to public accountability is being transferred into the hands of a private company answerable to its shareholders
It seems that Virgin has now find the right partner with which to enter a new and prosperous field, health care, Assura Medical now re Bransoned, Virgin Health.
Bart Johnson (not Bart Simpson) is quoted as saying:
'We are now providing over 80 NHS services and we aim for each one of them to be good enough for our own families'.
My connection is as the Priest in Charge, technically curate, of Farlam in Cumbria.
The Chief Engineer of the Titanic, Mr Joseph Bell was born in Farlam and is memorialised in the Churchyard.
I must confess to being a bit surprised by all the interest in the Titanic.
A new Titanic Museum on Belfast.
The memorial cruise of the Balmoral.
What has, for the past hundred years, been something of an embarrassment has suddenly become a cause celebre.
After all, the ship, newly launched, departs with a fanfare and a few days later, collides with a huge ice-berg and sinks.
It begs the question were there Polar Bears on the ice-berg and how did they fare?
But there it is, the Titanic is in the news and the name is on everyone's lips.
Presumably the Captain of the Balmoral will be keeping a weather eye open for ice-bergs, my advice if one suddenly appears out of the left ice field is keep on full speed ahead, run into it, jam the ships prow into the fissure created and it should keep you afloat until help gets there!
Given global warning and the melting of the ice cap there are likely to be less ice-bergs about so the memorial cruise should be without mishap unlike other recent cruises and all the jokes on the internet about how passengers on Italian Cruise ships like their drinks 'on the rocks' etc.
So this is a year of celebrations and bank holidays, Titanic celebrating the British approach to most things, (it's not the winning, it's the taking part!); the Diamond jubilee and of course the Olympics.
By the time we've found the lifeboats, had the street parties and run three times round the block we will all be exhausted by September.
Photographs of the Captain of the Titanic, Captain E. J. Smith shows him with a Beard, he is far too important to be smiling, and it seems from his uneventful life up until the ice-berg loomed out of the fog, he had precious little to smile about and by the time it was all over presumably the irony would have been lost on him.
However another man with a beard is described on his invitation to join him on Twitter, as 'the smiley man with the beard'.
So what is the Chairman of Virgin Group smiling about now?
Well it seems that the latest in a long line of acquisitions means that what used to be public services, operated by public companies, subject to public accountability is being transferred into the hands of a private company answerable to its shareholders
It seems that Virgin has now find the right partner with which to enter a new and prosperous field, health care, Assura Medical now re Bransoned, Virgin Health.
Bart Johnson (not Bart Simpson) is quoted as saying:
'We are now providing over 80 NHS services and we aim for each one of them to be good enough for our own families'.
So that's reassuring.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it is OK for public services, trains, planes, etc to be operated within the private sector, but the con-dems were elected on a ticket of protecting the NHS not selling it off or privatising it.
It seems to me that at some point in the not too distant future a child will emerge from the maternity unit of a virgin hospital, the virgin condom having failed to perform effectively or efficiently, to be be educated in a virgin school (presumably that is on the virgin agenda?), open a virgin bank account, travel to university on a virgin train, drink virgin cola or virgin wine, take a virgin holiday on a virgin plane, watch virgin TV on a virgin broadband connection, call home on a virgin mobile and finally boldly go via virgin galactic into what has already been branded as virgin territory, currently known as Space or sometimes, the final frontier.
No wonder the bearded one is smiling a smiley smile, I just wonder if he's on the Titanic memorial voyage?
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