British Pathé: Christmas is for All

Very much a product of its era, and a cool time-capsule, as these things often tend to be.  Best part has to be (from 3'16) Mike and his Merseymen (the Trends) doing Good King Wenceslas.  Some pretty girls dancing there also, must say.

Audio of same can be found on YouTube here, and, for some more of the Merseymen, here we have photos, some video, including what looks to be behind-the-scenes from the Pathé filming, and names of the band-members at the end, accompanied by a selection of the band's other songs.  Enjoy.

The White House on Dick Cheney & the Iran Deal

Missed this before now somehow.  The music sucks, and I kinda hate conceptually posting something from the White House itself, but the point still needs to be made apparently about the undead corpse of Darth Cheney, and other warmongering neo-con assholes like him, whether they be fellow Ford-admin. revanchists, radicals of the Newt Gingrich 'revolution' in the 'nineties, or latter-day hangers-on like Sarah Palin, that they have been consistently wrong on foreign policy, over and over and again, at the expense not just of the American pocket-book, and thousands of dead US soldiers, but at the expense of millions of civilian lives destroyed, damaged, or displaced, as one society after another is wrecked in their real-life game of Risk.*


* And no, the Obama administration is far, far from blameless, with say its similar reckless destabilisation in Libya & Syria.

Tony, Tony, Tony

Wait, Tony Blair actually admitted to being wrong about something ?  That can't be right, surely ?  That Tone ?  Our Tone ?  That lying corrupt egotistical pile of human excrement ?  Never.

Tony Blair has admitted his government made a "mistake" by failing to do enough to ensure that devolution of powers to Scotland did not undermine the United Kingdom's national identity.

The former Prime Minister insisted that he still believes he was right to create national assemblies in Edinburgh and Cardiff in 1999, arguing that resisting demands for the devolution of power would have stoked up demand for outright independence.

Bullshit !  There was more no urgency for devolution specifically in your time than there was for reform of the Lords, and your response to the one was as cack-handed as the other.  As always, you were looking more to your own legacy as the great reformer, seeking to re-make British 'democracy' in your own image than you were thinking through the long-term consequences of your actions.  In the case of the Lords, you could have left things as they were, could have engaged in a long-term review of the options available, could have respected the consistent will of the electorate for an elected House.  But no...Tony knew best as always, and so the great overcrowded House of Political Cronies was born.

If you wanted to a) deflate the movement for independence in Scotland*, and b) address the broader concern of lack of representation across the UK** (including in England) by the ever Home County-centred government in Westminster, you could have come up with a plan for more regional and citywide devolution.  Instead of which, you completely ignored the English question, which has led us today to this EVEL nonsense, whilst you established 'national' assemblies in Scotland and Wales based upon largely arbitrary borders dating back to Norman times.  And then what ?  At best, perhaps you could buy the unionists some time whilst you re-thought a broader strategy...

But, in a new book entitled British Labour Leaders, he acknowledged that he did not understand at the time the importance of maintaining cultural unity between the different parts of the UK.

You didn't have any strategy, whatsover, did you ?  You created 'national' assemblies, and what, you thought they would tire of power after a few years and beg Westminster to re-absorb their responsibilities ?  That the Scots & Welsh seeing functioning assemblies governing over their respective 'nations' wouldn't beg the obvious question, why not more powers ?  Why draw the line here and not there ?  Why be governed by an unresponsive body tucked away in the furthest regions of Southeastern England at all ?

His admission came after a new poll, published almost a year after the referendum, showed for the first time a majority of Scots would support independence if another vote was staged now.

Don't fuckin' blame 'em !  Especially after how they were treated not just by the increasingly fascistic 'Conservative' party, but also by members of yer so-called 'Labour' party in the last election.

...Mr Blair admitted in his 2010 memoirs that he was “never a passionate believer” in devolution and he always thought creating a Scottish Parliament was a dangerous path.

Yes, yes it was.  Arsehole.

...Mr Blair said: "I did feel that we made a mistake on devolution. We should have understood that, when you change the system of government so that more power is devolved, you need to have ways of culturally keeping England, Scotland and Wales very much in sync with each other.

“We needed to work even stronger for a sense of UK national identity. But I don't accept the idea that we should never have done devolution. If we had not devolved power, then there would have been a massive demand for separation – as there was back in the 60s and 70s."

Funnily enough, people who are part of the same country, with the same basic culture, speaking the same language, and with a strong shared history, including shared sacrifice in war, tend to develop a pretty decent shared identity...until nationalist radicals seek to divide them, and find their efforts enabled by incompetent overconfident ego-mad politicians.  Politicians have many ways of dividing people, but building up cultural identity artificially from your spindoctors' offices in London...not so easily done.

Aw, feck it !  I wish the eventual independent Republic of Scotland well.  And Wales too, if they go that way.  Blair, Brown, Cameron, and their ilk, on the other hand can go fuck themselves.


* Not that I believe for one moment you respected the absolute right of the Scots to independence if that be their choice.

** Nor that you ever gave a damn about that issue either, given your consistent anti-democratic decisions.

Paging the Taliban

Well, we can't fold this up and stick it in a museum.  Time to break out the dynamite I guess...

The NSA's Long War on Encryption

How NSA and GCHQ spied on the Cold War world

American and British intelligence used a secret relationship with the founder of a Swiss encryption company to help them spy during the Cold War, newly released documents analysed by the BBC reveal.

...

Crypto AG sold its machines around the world, offering security.

But what customers did not know was that Hagelin himself had come to a secret agreement with the founding father of American code-breaking, William F Friedman.

...

The relationship, initially referred to as a "gentleman's agreement", included Hagelin keeping the NSA and GCHQ informed about the technical specifications of different machines and which countries were buying which ones.

The provision of technical details "is a revelation of the first order," says Paul Reuvers, an engineer who runs the Crypto Museum website.

"That's extremely valuable. It is something you would not normally do because the integrity and secrecy of your own customer is mandatory in this business."

...

In one document, Hagelin hints to Friedman he is going to be able "to supply certain customers" with a specific machine which, Friedman notes, is of course "easier to solve than the new models".

Previous reports of the deal suggested it may have involved some kind of backdoor in the machines, which would provide the NSA with the keys.

But there is no evidence for this in the documents (although some parts remain redacted).

Rather, it seems the detailed knowledge of the machines and their operations may have allowed code-breakers to cut the time needed to decrypt messages from the impossible to the possible.

The relationship also involved not selling machines such as the CX-52, a more advanced version of the C-52 - to certain countries.

"The reason that CX-52 is so terrifying is because it can be customised," says Prof Richard Aldrich, of the University of Warwick.

"So it's a bit like defeating Enigma and then moving to the next country and then you've got to defeat Enigma again and again and again."

Some countries - including Egypt and India - were not told of the more advanced models and so bought those easier for the US and UK to break.

In some cases, customers appear to have been deceived.

One memo indicates Crypto AG was providing different customers with encryption machines of different strengths at the behest of Nato and that "the different brochures are distinguishable only by 'secret marks' printed thereon".

Historian Stephen Budiansky says: "There was a certain degree of deception going on of the customers who were buying [machines] and thinking they were getting something the same as what Hagelin was selling everywhere when in fact it was a watered-down version."

Among the customers of Hagelin listed are Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, India, Jordan and others in the developing world.

In the summer of 1958, army officers apparently sympathetic to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the regime in Iraq.

Historian David Easter, of King's College, London, says intelligence from decrypted Egyptian communications was vital in Britain being able to rapidly deploy troops to neighbouring Jordan to forestall a potential follow-up coup against a British ally.

The 1955 deal also appears to have involved the NSA itself writing "brochures", instruction manuals for the CX-52, to ensure "proper use".

One interpretation is these were written so certain countries could use the machines securely - but in others, they were set up so the number of possible permutations was small enough for the NSA to crack.

So the NSA was working to undermine encryption as late as the Second World War.  Good to know.

Border Control in Calais

One Calais migrant caught every THREE minutes: New 'secure zone' to protect lorry drivers after 8,000 attempts by immigrants to get to UK in the last three weeks alone

• One immigrant caught every 3 minutes trying to sneak into Britain illegally

• About 11,300 stowaways were captured in three-week period from June 21 

• New 'secure zone' will cater for 230 vehicles, equivalent of a 2.5 mile queue

• Home Secretary said this would provide protection for lorries and drivers

• She said lorries on the open road had become 'targets for migrants' 

One immigrant is caught every three minutes trying to sneak into Britain illegally, figures show.

Around 11,300 stowaways were captured in a three-week period from June 21 – revealing the extent to which the UK’s borders are now under siege.

Some 8,100 illegal migrants were stopped in France by British immigration officers working at Calais, while security staff discovered another 3,200 in trucks trying to sneak through the Channel Tunnel.

In a bid to tackle the growing crisis, Home Secretary Theresa May announced a new ‘secure zone’ for British-bound lorries at the beleaguered French port to stop vehicles being targeted by foreigners desperate to reach the UK.

Able to accommodate 230 wagons, equivalent to a two-and-a-half mile queue, she said it would provide protection for drivers by ‘removing them from the open road where they can become targets for migrants’.

But the secure area, expected to be open in the autumn and monitored by French police, was dismissed by hauliers as too little.

Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, told MPs that the situation in Calais was ‘out of control’ and criticised delays in opening the secure zone.

He said: ‘This isn’t fast enough. We’ve got drivers being threatened with bars and knives. We’ve had an example of a driver being threatened with a gun. This is unprecedented and it’s escalating. We need action now.’

He added that his organisation’s drivers had been ‘let down’ by the Government and also said the French military should be called in to boost security in Calais. 

I don't know how effective this new 'secure zone' is likely to be, and my attitude towards this issue is complicated by the very real (and largely Western-caused) humanitarian crisis in North Africa.  But it is crazy as hell to still be seeing the sort of images we're seeing and reading the sort of stories about lorries being flooded, and migrants attempting to sneak onto trains, given the level of public frustration that we saw at this kind of thing back in the early 2000's.  This isn't exactly a new problem.

---

Tuesday, 6 February, 2001, 18:21 GMT
UK asylum plan: The French view

France may see the UK proposals as an electoral ploy

The BBC Paris office considers the likely reaction from the French Government to proposals from the UK Home Secretary Jack Straw for an EU-wide plan to reduce the number of asylum seekers arriving in Europe.

Last week an Iraqi man became the latest victim of the daily dash for Britain from the French port of Calais. His mangled body was found beside railway lines near the entrance to the Channel tunnel.

A French government is unlikely to take too kindly to an initiative... that looks like the kind of "people-dumping" that Britain regularly accuses France of

"He must have tried to jump aboard when the train was setting out, but he lost his balance and fell onto the tracks," said Alain Bertrand, a spokesman for Eurotunnel.

He was carrying no identity papers. Police still do not know who he was.

The human cost of illegal immigration is not lost on the French, which is why they are certain not to want to dismiss the British government's latest proposals out of hand.

Thursday, 22 March, 2001, 13:01 GMT

Desperate cargo

Ever more stowaways are trying to get into the UK by any means necessary. Prepared to risk life and limb to gain entry, some pay the highest price of all.

Despite the risks - and the tightening asylum rules across the European Union - stowaways continue to cram into planes, trains and automobiles crossing the Channel.

Safe haven

76,040 people applied for ayslum in the UK last year, up from 30,000 in 1996

The former home secretary, Michael Howard, whose Folkestone constituency includes the Eurotunnel terminal and a ferry port, claims there has been a huge rise in the number of people attempting to get in to the UK illegally through the Channel Tunnel.

Each month, as many as 2,000 illegal migrants are caught hiding in - or under - freight lorries.

The refugees, many from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, wait at the Calais terminal for lorries to park. Some rounded up by police are said to have tried at least 20 times.

Wednesday, 26 December, 2001, 15:37 GMT

New calls to close Sangatte

Police used tear gas to dispel 400 would-be intruders

Eurotunnel has renewed demands for the closure of a Calais refugee camp after about 550 would-be asylum seekers tried to storm the Channel Tunnel to enter the UK illegally.

Alain Bertrand, Eurotunnel deputy managing director, said the tunnel operator was "powerless" to deal with the frequent attempts to cross the tunnel by refugees based at Sangatte.

"We demand the authorities take their responsibilities to take control of the situation, to put in place a curfew and decommission Sangatte," he said.

"The French and British governments have taken a passive approach to this problem, saying a lot but doing nothing, and letting the situation deteriorate."

...

Trains were stopped for 10 hours overnight as French police, aided by about 60 British officers, rounded up the intruders, with hundreds of delayed travellers having to be put up in hotels.


Monday, 11 March, 2002, 18:21 GMT

Railways seek tighter Tunnel security

An invasion by asylum seekers halted freight services

French railway bosses are meeting to decide when to reopen the Channel Tunnel to freight traffic, amid calls for added security to stop illegal immigrants.

Container services through the tunnel remain suspended following an invasion by more than 200 asylum seekers.

French rail operator SNCF halted operations from the freight depot at Frethun, near Calais, during the weekend.

UK cargo firms will be unable to move traffic on Monday night, while SNCF - which runs the depot - clears a backlog of about 12 trains, according to a spokesman for rail freight company English Welsh & Scottish Railway (EWS).

...

An EWS spokesperson said on Monday: "The French authorities can re-open the Channel Tunnel tonight by taking very basic action.

"They simply need to provide the proper level of security required to permit the running of full rail freight operations 24 hours a day through the Channel Tunnel.

"The fact that one of the most vital trading links between Britain and Europe has been closed, affecting businesses right across Britain is disgraceful.

Saturday, 30 November, 2002, 12:19 GMT

Sangatte's enduring appeal

Nightly ritual: The attempt to break into the port area

By Pam O'Toole  Sangatte, northern France

The issue of Sangatte, the controversial Red Cross reception centre near the port of Calais in Northern France, is far from resolved, ahead of a meeting on Monday between French and British interior ministers.

Under a deal reached this summer the French Government agreed to close Sangatte in exchange for London enacting tougher asylum legislation designed to make the UK less attractive to asylum seekers.

...

Many of Sangatte's inhabitants were gearing up for what's become a nightly ritual - heading off to the port of Calais five kilometres away.

I watched them as they trudged off into the night. Many of them were young men of Middle Eastern appearance.

Most of Sangatte's residents are intent on crossing the English Channel illegally by sneaking onto lorries, ferries or trains.

---

Tony Blair was about midway through his premiership at the time of the stories above.  Jacques Chirac was president of France.  Governments have come and gone in the nearly decade and a half since.  And still the politicians seem to be floundering.

In the United States, we still have Republican presidential candidates running on the promise of (belatedly) securing the nearly 2000 mile-long border with Mexico, by building...a wall.  The border between the UK & France has for the last twenty years consisted essentially of a single chokepoint crossing under the English Channel.  And they haven't been able to secure even that.

American Exceptional Ignorance of American History via Bill O'Reilly & Fox News

First off, yes, Bill O'Reilly is a fascist asshole, and yes, many of the editions of this segment on his show are used via selective editing to promote the (vastly exaggerated, but not totally baseless) idea of widespread liberal bias on college-campuses.  That said, there is clearly a shocking degree of ignorance to be exposed, and...most, if not all, of these people are eligible to vote.

And no, it's not a one-off:

In what democracy would this level of ignorance be remotely acceptable ?...

...Er, one in which actual democracy wasn't remotely an actual goal of the political elites in the first place ?...

What Happened to the Dinosaurs, Daddy ?

America needs to replace a rotting arsenal of nuclear weapons and counteract an increasingly boisterous Russia, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday. For these reasons, it must consider the long-taboo prospect of building new nukes.

“Can we have a national conversation about building new nuclear weapons?” Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said in remarks at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. “That’s something we haven’t been able to even have a conversation about for a while, but I think we’re going to have to.”

“Russia obviously retains the right if needed to deploy its nuclear weapons anywhere on its national territory, including on the Crimean Peninsula,” Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the Russian Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, said in early June.Just last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his plans to boost the former Soviet power’s nuclear arsenal with 40 new missiles. The plan follows a string of provocative comments from top Russian officials who consider a nuclear weapon the most effective method of countering what they consider NATO’s provocative actions in Eastern Europe.

Thornberry said Tuesday this is more than enough justification for considering a new supply of offensive nukes.

None of this had to happen.  We had peace.  We had reason for hope.  We also had idiotic Russophobic politicians who treated Russia like shit after the end of the last cold war, and helped enable the rise of Putin.  Five decades somehow survived without destroying the world, and, having learned nothing from history, we immediately started sowing the seeds of the next war.  Sigh.

Nina Paley: This Land is Mine

Was looking for something else entirely, but this piece by Nina Paley is a classic, and arguably says something more universal about us humans, than the specific historical/spatial context might imply.


Sita Sings the Blues is worth checking out as well, if you like her style.

Taking Piss-Taking to a Whole New Level

Belgium Commemorates Waterloo With a Coin, and France Is Not Pleased

LONDON — Perhaps befitting a battle that ended French hegemony in Europe, Paris, it seems, has been outflanked once again.

After it objected to a decision in March by Belgium to introduce a new 2 euro coin to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the Belgians retreated, scrapping 180,000 coins they had already minted.

But victory for France is proving elusive.

This week, Belgium decided to circumvent French resistance by invoking a little-known European Union rule that allows countries to issue euro coins of their choice, provided they are in an irregular denomination.

That led to the unveiling of a €2.50 coin — a first in Belgium — and 70,000 of them have now been minted. The coins, which can only be spent inside Belgium, display a monument of a lion atop a cone-shaped hill on the site of France’s humiliation, as well as lines indicating where troops were positioned when forces led by Britain and Prussia defeated Napoleon in the countryside near Brussels.

Well, it's an original solution, I guess.

Johan Van Overtveldt, the Belgian finance minister, insisted on Monday that the new coins were not meant to provoke Gallic anger.

Uh huh...

Seems like time for some music, maybe.

The Arrow

Speaking of the CBC, and the fiction that Canada can these days defend itself without being entirely dependent upon the protection of its pimpthe United States, got me thinking of this maybe not totally authentically historical but still awesome piece about the Avro Arrow...and what could have been.  And yay, it's on YouTube.

Israel in Colour by British Pathé

Interesting time-capsules in these videos, including in the way Israel was portrayed by British Pathé back in the 'fifties & 'sixties.  Keeping in mind that Israel during much of this period was more political ally of the UK & France than of the United States.  There's a more than somewhat touristy if not propagandistic tone to many of the videos, but always cool to see a window into the past.  And in colour no-less.  Hell, most British teevee was still in black-and-white till the seventies.

Last line of the last video, from '69: 'They hope for peace.  The tragedy is, can it be achieved ?'  Well...

American Exceptionalism...

...in accidentally harming children by giving them the wrong doses of medicine apparently...

Children’s liquid medicines should only be measured in metric units to avoid overdoses common with teaspoons and tablespoons, U.S. pediatricians say.

Tens of thousands of kids wind up in emergency rooms after unintentional medicine overdoses each year, and the cause is often badly labeled containers or unclear directions, said Dr. Ian Paul, a pediatrician at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Children's Hospital and lead author of new metric dosing guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

"Even though we know metric units are safer and more accurate, too many healthcare providers are still writing that prescription using spoon-based dosing," said Paul. "Some parents use household spoons to administer it, which can lead to dangerous mistakes.”

For example, he said, accidentally using a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon would triple the dose.

To avoid errors associated with common kitchen spoons, the guidelines urge that liquid medicines being taken by mouth should be dosed using milliliters (abbreviated as "mL").

Also, prescriptions should include so-called leading zeros, such as 0.5 for a half mL dose, and exclude so-called trailing zeroes, such as 0.50, to reduce the potential for parents to misunderstand the dosing.

While the AAP has been pushing for more accurate dosing of children's medicines since the 1970s, the new guidelines are the most extensive call for metric dosing to date and are intended to reach drug manufacturers, retailers, pharmacists, prescribers and caregivers.

"For this to be effective, we need not just the parents and families to make the switch to metric, we need providers and pharmacists too," said Paul.

The image above is of course a map of countries that have still not adopted the metric system*.  Those other two countries in red are Liberia (yes, that Liberia) and Myanmar/Burma (yes, that one too).  And the latter announced in 2013 its own planned conversion to metric, which will leave just the US of A and Liberia in this particular little club.

And this of a country that adopted decimal currency in 1792.  To much of the rest of the world, the idea of using an Imperial-based system of measurement is as strange as still using the likes of guineas, florins, crowns, and groats.

A smidgen of history on the US' flirtation with metric:

In 1821, after studying the various units of measurement used by the 22 states, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams determined that the U.S. Customary System was sufficiently uniform and required no changes. Most people thought actually that the metric won’t survive Napoleon’s rule. They were wrong however and by the time the American Civil War ended, most of Europe had turned metric, besides the proud British of course.

In 1866, an act of Congress, signed into law by President Andrew Johnson, made it “lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and measures of the metric system in all contracts, dealings or court proceedings.” The act however was merely an act of recognition, which didn’t necessarily translate into practical use.

Following the second WWII, the world officially entered a stage still in expansion: globalization. As America was importing and exporting millions of goods, it found itself in a predicament when trading with other countries, most of whom used metric. American companies had to make twin labels, train workers and students with both systems and re-purpose thousands of machines across various industries. The costs were and still are enormous. With this in mind, some Congressmen proposed the US finally switched to metric. In 1971, the U.S. National Bureau of Standards issued a report titled “A Metric America” recommending that the U.S. transition to the metric system over the course of 10 years. In response, Congress enacted the Metric Conversion Act in 1975 to commence the conversion process. However, these good intentions were extremely poorly applied because someone had the bright idea to strip out the 10-year deadline and make the conversion voluntary. Of course no one wanted to willingly change to metric.

Could it be that due to the size of its economy, the US has made a calculation that it would be more expensive for it to convert than not, unlike the conclusion the rest of the planet has come to ?  Perhaps.  More likely, it's just plain...cussedness.  Or, as it's more commonly explained:

Freedom!

* And yes, of course there are variations & exceptions in the degree of adoption, such as items sold in 'Liters' in the US, and the continuing use of MPH in the UK.

Nolwenn Leroy: Tri Martolod

Guess that language...

Via piece in which we learn that the English of Shakespeare's time spoke not, as we had been told recently with an American accent, but in a sort of Irish mumble.  Uh, okay.  Interesting enough summary still.

Big Finish 162: Protect and Survive

Big Finish stories of recent years generally aren't what they used to be, but there's still the occasional rare gem, and Protect and Survive is one of these.  Since the end of the cold war, most, in the west at least, have been happy to forget the period as if the potentially world-ending conflict between East and West never happened, and the cold war has over time become a less and less common subject for popular fiction.  That this trend may now be coming to an end, as evidenced by the like of the recent BBC series 'The Game' is a sad reflection on our contemporary politics, as the idiots who run our foreign policy, seemingly desperately hungry for a new cold war, if not worse, go out of their way to seek confrontation and discord with Putin's Russia.  Strange how soon we forget, even seemingly those of us who lived through the sixties, seventies, or eighties.  How we once grew up somehow having to be reconciled with, or in denial of, the fact that we lived under constant threat of nuclear holocaust.  The threat never truly went away, and may even be greater today than it was then, but somehow with all the weight of history behind us, and all the knowledge previous generations lacked (such as just how close we really came to annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis), we'd still rather forget the uncomfortable truth of the recent past.  And as for the near-religious belief in the US in the ultimate victory over Communism, in the 'American Century', in the 'single Superpower', in 'American Exceptionalism', well that particular mindset seems bedded in for a generation or two at least.  And in the interim, as we shift political power from the generation of the Cheney's and Rumsfeld's to that of the millennials, who have grown up blissfully ignorant of the still very real nuclear threat hanging over the planet ?  Well, we're fucked, aren't we ?

Protect and Survive plunges Ace and Hex right into the very apocalypse many of us grew us fearing, and keeps them there in one of the tightest, more claustrophobic, and most atmospheric releases of recent years.  The title is taken from a remarkable series of public information films and pamphlets that were genuinely produced in the UK in the 80's with the intent of reassuring and pacifying the public in the event of a nuclear attack from the USSR.  Most Americans of a certain age are probably at least vaguely aware of the 'Duck and Cover' pieces of the fifties and sixties, but we're talking about the nineteen-eighties here, and trying to convince modern Britons that taping up their windows and hiding in their cellar for a few days would somehow protect them from the awesome explosions and fallout of the Soviet Union's most powerful weapons, each of them exponentially more powerful than those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Protect and Survive does a fine job of both capturing the ultimate futility of such efforts, and imagining the horror of facing the desperate reality of the 'survivors' of a nuclear attack, and in the case of Hex and Ace doing so over and over and over again.

This being modern Big Finish, it is unsurprisingly part of a three-part 'trilogy', and the larger story here regarding the Elder Gods frankly isn't much to get very excited about, but while the focus remains on Ace & Hex and the elderly couple whose shelter they share, the drama and tension is some of the best one could expect from Big Finish.  Sylvester McCoy's Doctor remains hidden in the shadows for much of the story, being eventually revealed as much more of the spider at the centre of the web, in keeping with his history on TV, and reflecting a theme of abandonment by the Doctor that seems increasingly common with Who, both on audio and TV, in this case giving Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier that much more opportunity to bounce off one another and to shine in the Doctor's absence.  Sound design and editing throughout are excellent.  Would that it were financially possible for BF to return to an era of far fewer ranges, and one in which each of the main monthly releases could reach this level or better...

If you truly want to add to your nightmares, the original Protect and Survive videos are available at the Imperial War Museum (http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060022098) and elsewhere, and remember that this was our actual very recent history, and part of an imagining that could still reflect our very imminent future...or lack thereof.  Stupid humans !

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/protect-and-survive-330

Top Gear Patagonia Special

Up next on BBC2, the peace- and democracy-loving people of Argentina respond to the arrival of a BBC film crew by staging a spontaneous apology for the utterly immoral and illegal 1982 invasion of the Falklands.  Oh right, that's not what happened at all is it ?...

Glad to see no-one was hurt, and they finally got the programme out despite all that.  Stupid humans !