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.

Thursday, October 2, 2025

R is for Rhetoric, Rumination and Rant - The Rancid Rodent in the White House!

Sometimes, other people's words are much better than one's own, and no amount of creative writing classes will cure that uneven, uncomfortable fact! For getting a message across, or explaining something, especially if the subjects are outside one's own field - I'm not strong on economics, for instance - sometimes one's own witten imagination can be found lacking, or the self's vocabulary won't stretch to the task!

I'm OK at toys, seem to have a lot of success logically arguing Zionists into silence, and can have a good debate on the Environment, however, while I have had the odd stab at Politics in the past, and will do again, I'm sure; I started collecting these (below quotes) a while ago (soon after the inauguration), initially, in order to quote from them, but then decided that between them, they seem to say it all, better than I could!

All four pieces have 'gone viral', as the phrase is, these days, the first one twice, six years apart, and I think I reposted it on Faceplant, both times, as it succinctly sums-up the average Brit's incredulity, that Trump gets away with it, time and time again!

Not that he doesn't have his fans over here, but they are our 'rednecks', the fat, balding, tattooed, middle-aged, uneducated, benefit recipient lurches and dollops, the Morlocks and Yahoo's not only left behind by Capitalism, but too stupid to see it's the fault of people like Trump!

I love the second piece, because it's written by an American, and a religious, probably Republican American, and the very type you might have expected to vote for Trump, that he is so scathing, leads us all to hope America can still save itself - the brouhaha this week over the Federal lockdown has been amusing, as the Rep's did it every time a Democrat was in the Oval Office (which now looks like a Tart's Boudoir), and now they're having a hissy-fit!

I don't know who wrote the third piece, so I've credited the site's Admin', but they seem to 'get it', most Americans think we pay the tariffs on our stuff, no, they pay, it's a tax on them! The reason most countries haven't reciprocated, or have only reciprocated to a lesser percentage, or on targeted goods, is because we don't want to do the same damage to our economy, Trump's doing to his, but we do need to show we are willing to stand up to the turd of a man.

The fourth text, is a transcription of a recent speech, by someone who's better qualified, in more fields, than the entire Trump family, and points at a few possible futures, so is well worth a read. I don't think a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump is anywhere in that future, but war-crime trials for all sorts of people are being muted, just for the genocide in Gaza, before you get on to the Piracy on the High Seas, we're seeing again tonight - comes to something when the leaders of Columbia and Italy call out the Israelis!

And, to me, that's the real problem, Palestine and Ukraine are queering the pitch, for any group or individual nation trying to deal with Trumps fantastical nonsense, Russia and China hover in the background re-muddying any water before it can clear, and the planet is literally dying, while all these fuckers try to start World War three, in such a way as to blame each other! . . . Exactly what happened in 1914.

If I were to express one opinion, before the masters' speak, it's this - You know how Musk became de facto Prime Minister, without being elected, destroyed the Civil Service of the USA and left before Congress, or the House of Representatives, got their joint-acts' together? You know how he and Trump then fell out, big time, slagging each other off like two idiot schoolboys in the playground? You know how Trump then answered his base's calls for Musk to be deported to South Africa, with a hint at just that? And you know how it then all went very quiet, until they met and shook hands at that fascist's funeral the other day?

I think Musk has counter-threatened Trump - 'You send me back to SA, and I'll destroy the American economy'. And he can, not just because of his personal wealth, but because if he shut down Tesla, X, and SpaceX on the same day, sacked everybody and took the money, the Wall Street stock-markets would implode, like the World Trade Centre.

So, they're 'friends' again - TACO!

And, to those readers this side of The Pond who were surprised by B.Liar's involvement in the dodgy, genocidal 'peace treaty', which the Palestinians haven't even been consulted on, understand that Kier Starmer's wife is a pro-Israel Jew, and Richi Sunack's wife has shares in the same development companies, the dreadful (but brightest of that bunch) Gerard Kutchner has . . . thay ALL want a slice of the Palestinian offshore gas, they ALL want the Palestinian Land.

No doubt, the reason the BBC has given more coverage to one fascist march, than the scores of larger pro-Palestinian ones is because they are deep in it! Their section-chief in the Middle East is an ex-CIA friend of MossadLyse Doucet -who should be in the thick of it - was sent off to write a whimsical history of an Afghan hotel, so she couldn't be asked about Genocide or Piracy! And then it was serialised on the BBC, to help sales!

Orla Guerin, Jeremy Bowen and Lyse, have failed in their first duty as Journalists - to tell the truth. With what little we do get from them, so painfully 'neutral' as to be biased in favour of Tel Aviv! While IDF soldiers happily post their war-crimes on TikTok, despite their having being told twice, by their OWN generals, not to!

But . . . I must stop; in my anger, I'm changing the subject - they teach you not to do that on a creative writing course, I bet! Read and enjoy . . . or weep; Thoughtful comments welcome, anti-rants will be deleated, if you don't dissagree with what's going on globally at the moment, there's something wrong with your moral compass.

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G7 Meeting - 1st Term
Seven statesmen and a petulant child. 

Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?

"A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’ If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”

- Nate White
(February 12, 2019, on Quora)
Advertising Creative 2006–present
BA 1st Class Hons in English (language), King's College London
 
 
Threatening Europe on Tech' Regulation, a week ago.
 
Who's the worst US President in history?

"There was this one guy who started a trade war that killed 300,000 American jobs in his first two years. Then he signed a tax bill that flatlined the stock market and forced the Fed to start lowering interest rates to try to prevent a recession. Then he said a global pandemic was a liberal hoax to kill the economy he spent three years destroying and he set records for the six worst point drops in the history of the Dow, most new unemployment claims in history, and the largest deficit in history.

He was investigated and found to have welcomed and encouraged election interference by a foreign government and to have obstructed justice to cover his crimes. He got impeached once for abusing his office to try to coerce a foreign leader into helping him smear a political rival. Then he got impeached again for inciting an insurrection to try to stay in power after easily and predictably losing his re-election bid. Then he got indicted for almost 100 felonies after leaving office.

I forget his name. Draft dodger. Admitted sex offender. Painted himself orange and wore a dead rodent on his head. Wore elevator shoes. Misspelled three letter words on a smartphone. Kept filing bankruptcy. Called himself a winner. Dump? Rump? Plump? Chump? Something like that.

[Edit: I’ve never done this before, but this post was like catnip for morons and the most brainwashed fascists I’ve seen all flocked to the comment section to bleat their alt-right propaganda. So I’m disabling comments on this. I’ve also deleted some of the worst garbage that was posted. Wow. These people really need therapy.]"
 
- Will
(August 2024, Quora) 
"A life-long southerner, devout Christian, and a true conservative, I have worked in publishing, talk radio, and served as a staff pastor in a local church. I am currently writing my first book."

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Loosing it, 2018.
 
On Trump's Tarrifs

"It’s becoming harder by the day to pretend this isn’t a controlled demolition of the U.S. economy, except the person holding the plunger is also shouting “Help! The building’s falling!” That’s the tragicomic heart of the moment. Trump, the self-proclaimed dealmaker and economic genius, is now openly afraid of a 1929-style collapse, even as he isolates the United States from every major trading partner, fires or bullies institutional stewards, and surrounds himself with sycophants who think “Ron Vara” is a legitimate source of macroeconomic insight.
 
Meanwhile, outside our increasingly paranoid borders, the grown-ups are still at the table. Canada, led by a calm and resolute Mark Carney, is executing what can only be described as precision economic diplomacy. Their retaliatory tariffs aren’t broad-stroke chaos, they’re surgical. Instead of going after random U.S. goods, they’ve targeted symbolic, regionally sensitive exports: peanut butter from Georgia, coffee from Florida, orange juice from Florida, motorcycles from Wisconsin, and bourbon from Kentucky, each selected not only for economic impact, but for political resonance in Republican strongholds.
 
At the same time, they’ve spared critical sectors like auto manufacturing, shielding Canadian jobs while preserving the long-integrated North American supply chain. Provinces have joined in with layered actions of their own. Ontario canceled a $100 million Starlink contract, Quebec ordered American liquor off state shelves, and Nova Scotia doubled tolls on U.S. commercial vehicles.
 
Retailers across the country are now labeling American goods with a “T” for “tariff,” inviting consumers to make patriotic purchasing decisions. The result? A population that understands the stakes and a government actually coordinating its moves with strategy in mind, not cosplay, not chaos, but competence.
 
Japan, for its part, has begun quietly rebalancing its trade and defense postures, no longer convinced that the U.S. under Trump is a reliable ally or market. As Shinji Aguma recently said in a speech that's now ricocheting across global capitals, Trump behaves less like a statesman and more like an extortionist. Japan is responding accordingly, hedging its economic bets while bolstering ties with the EU and ASEAN nations.
 
China, for its part, is playing a masterclass in strategic patience. While Trump rattles sabers and brags about tariff victories that don’t exist, Beijing is quietly tightening its grip on global supply chains, shifting rare earth exports to preferred partners, and expanding its 'Belt and Road' economic influence without firing a shot.
 
Instead of engaging in tit-for-tat chaos, they’ve taken a colder approach: reducing purchases of long-term U.S. Treasuries, redirecting trade to Latin America and Africa, and quietly expanding yuan-denominated trade agreements—including a notable spike in oil deals settled outside the dollar. Internally, they're cushioning the impact of U.S. tariffs through state subsidies and domestic stimulus, while externally, they’re simply allowing U.S. dysfunction to speak for itself.
 
When asked if they plan to retaliate with a major U.S. bond selloff, they don’t say yes—they just don’t have to. The global market now expects instability from Washington, and China knows that expectation is power. Trump wants a fight; Xi Jinping is playing a waiting game. And every day Trump wages war against courts, investors, and allies, he’s doing Beijing’s work for them.
 
The European Union, too, is playing the long game. Rather than matching chaos with chaos, they've responded to Trump’s tariff barrage with targeted countermeasures, hitting Harley-Davidsons, bourbon, and cranberries in 2020, and now reviving pressure on key industrial imports like American-made electrical components and processed foods. But more importantly, they’re channeling their energy into building out multilateral alternatives: accelerating trade agreements with Mercosur and Australia, strengthening ties with Japan under the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, and actively pursuing deeper integration with African and ASEAN markets.
 
They’re also welcoming disillusioned U.S. investors. European equity funds have seen net inflows of over $11 billion this month alone, even as U.S. stock funds bled nearly $11 billion. Germany, France, and the Netherlands have seen especially strong investment surges, with capital moving into euro-denominated bonds and infrastructure projects offering both stability and return. And they’re doing all of this while watching the United States melt into a self-inflicted credibility crisis over its own debt, its currency, and its basic ability to govern. In short, while Washington yells into its own echo chamber, Brussels is quietly rerouting the future.
 
At home, the contrast is staggering. Trump continues to wage war against his own institutions. He has vilified the Federal Reserve, cast doubt on the integrity of courts, and inflated the powers of unqualified loyalists like Peter Navarro, a man who literally invented a fake economist to back his theories. Cooler heads, seasoned experts, and non-fabricated humans have been pushed aside in favor of true believers whose economic strategies might as well be based on Reddit threads and revenge fantasies.
 
The result is a spiral: as international partners recalibrate and global capital exits, Trump grows more erratic. He screams about depression, lashes out at Jerome Powell, threatens allies, and blames everyone but the mirror. But this isn’t just the tantrum of a man losing control. It’s the very real danger of a once-stable empire hollowed out by ego, paranoia, and a dangerous belief that reality itself can be managed like a brand.
 
There is still time to pull back from the brink, but it would require Trump to abandon the fantasy that he alone can fix what he alone is breaking. And that, as history has shown again and again, may be the most dangerous illusion of all."
 
- Oregon's Bay Area
(About six months ago, Facebook group, admin-post)
 
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On hearing about the invitaion for a state visit to the UK, January 2017

Sparked by the treatment of Zelenskyy in late February 2025, and the transformation of Ukraine from a sovereign country to an object for barter.
 
"Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.
 
This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs and duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.
 
The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
 
Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.
 
This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution. I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency.
 
We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor. Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.
 
Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign. Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised.
 
What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it. And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.
 
The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it. What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.
 
This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.
 
Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea. At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.” So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.
 
Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.
 
The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.
 
Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation. This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.
 
Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, and prisoners, and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.
 
Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defense, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.
 
Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy. It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defense Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.
 
The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed. Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.
 
But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament. We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left. They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr. Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defense. They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin. Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.
 
Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react. Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.
 
The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Congress, the Supreme Court and social networks. But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.
 
The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.
 
Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost. The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.
 
 Video for the above text.
- Claude Malhuret
(Tuesday 4th March 2025)
French physician, lawyer and politician, former head of MSF, who has served as a member of the French Senate since 2014, representing the department of Allier. A member of Horizons, a center-right party that was created to attract support for Emmanuel Marcron in the 2022 French presidential election, he has presided over the The Independents – Republic and Territories (LIRT) parliamentary group in the Senate since 2017.
 
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Complaining that someone else got the Nobel peace Prize in January 2020.
 
Finally, this was written by the Coucil on Foureign Relations, on 11th January 2021, full text here;
 
 
"Trump inherited a set of relationships, alliances, and institutions that, however imperfect, had for 75 years created a context in which great-power conflict had been avoided, democracy expanded, and wealth and living standards increased. Embracing a blend of “America first” nationalism, unilateralism, and isolationism, Trump did what he could to disrupt many of these relationships and arrangements without putting anything better in their place.

It will be difficult – if not impossible – to repair this damage anytime soon. Trump will no longer be president, but he will remain influential in the Republican party and the country. While the world was already in growing disarray, and while US influence was already declining, Trump dramatically accelerated both trends. The bottom line is that he is handing off a country and a world in far worse condition than he inherited. That is his distressing legacy."

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He is a self-obsessed narcissist, a misogynist, fascist, sex-pest, self-publicist, braggart, show-off, serial-bankrupt and cunt. A traitor to Democracy, the International 'Rule of Law', the post-war 'Order' and probably in the pocket's of Tel Aviv and Moscow. He has no serious economic acumen, little ability to read the room, or read individuals and surrounds himself with sycophantic "yes" people, he's robbing America blind, losing America all it's accumulated gravitas on the world stage, all its trust with friends and allies, and all its bargaining power with the rest of the world.
 
And calling every senior military General back, to some a-hole barracks in CONUS, from all over the world, at vast expense, to use words like 'that shit' in front of them, is no way to run a Superpower. No beards? Seriously? They've got nothing better to worry about than the hirsuteness of their servicemen? Israel is totally out of control, and they're worrying about fucking beards! Is Vance going to get rid of his? Girlyman!
 
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And now, he's President again! God help us. 

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

E is for Emergence Event

One of those many, many board-games, aimed at the adult members of sites like Boardgamegeek, I saw it going cheap, as many of these games do end-up, once the hype has settled, back in 2021, shot it, shoved the pictures in Picasa and forgot all about it!
 
I'll almost certainly never play it, and don't know anything about it, and in the grand scheme of things, it represents the straight-to-landfill waste of human endeavour, ingenuity and resources, which is one of many facets of the end of humanity event, we're currently living in! So . . . not much blurb! But it does have nice micro-spaceships, in plastic! Megacon Games - Emergence Event.
 
 Box art, half Jean Giraud (Moebius), half Frank Frazetta.
 
Half blokade-runner, far-far-away;
half Weyland-Yutani mining vessel, silently screaming.
 
Firefly 'Reaver' vessel,
or Harlock cruiser?
 
Babylon 5!
 
Romulan Warbird / Klingon Bird of Pray
 
Box full of bits!
 
By the time you've learnt the rules, you're bored with the game, and you've painted-up the playing pieces to go with your micro spacefleet stuff! Box ticked!
 
If you need more;
 

Monday, September 29, 2025

M is for Mighty Morphin's!

A new Toy Shop opened in Basingrad, while I wasn't paying attention, Toytown, in the big precinct, I think I have mentioned it before, but I bought these there, and kept going back to see if head office had sent some more down, although it was clear they were a discounted end-of-line thing.
 
As I clearly needed the Blue Ranger! Even thought they were clearly old stock, I thought maybe if the parent was supporting the new store with discounted stuff, to get the punter's in, maybe they'd have a couple more strips of these, but after over a year, they hadn't tuned up, and I'd blogged whatever else it was that caused me to mention them before, while the above shot languished in Picasa!
 
However, while visiting Peter Evans back in May, attending the Toy Project charity shop, and filling a few bags with bits, I managed to find these two, and thought "Hum, oversized Power Rangers, which ones do I need?", but, not remembering, I bought both as I was pretty sure I needed one, and indeed it was the Blue Ranger, while Yellow confirms they are the same set, without me needing to remove the others from their cards, or dig them out of the storage pile!
 
A bit big, at around 70-mil, but solids, and quite reasonable sculpts compared to some of the fatties we saw last time;
 
 
And, might go quite well with the based ones, we saw a couple of (red & black) in Rack Toy Month from Brian B. Interestingly, despite an ocean between them, the artwork on these baseless-figures' cards, is similar to the black-based ones sent to the Blog in August, so maybe the same prigin/factory?

E is for Eye Candy - Daleks and Mechaniods

My new camera really seems to struggle to take decent pictures in strong, natural light, especially on the macro setting, which is bloody annoying, especially when you consider it's cost more than every other camera killed by the Blog, put together, its near five-hundred quid, being more than all their forty-to-sixties! And it struggles both with focusing and compensating for the light levels.
 
So I'm already more disappointed by Olympus, than I was by the two Fuji Finepix I started with, before discovering the Nikon Coolpix, with which most of the Blog, to date, has been produced. Not that they were brilliant, they all died (about four or five of them), either from inordinate fluff finding itself into the lens, or components of the battery-housing catches breaking, and two actually went dead, after lens/focus failure.
 
But, it's par for the course, not in modern Britain, but the modern World, they (capitalists) are not interested in the customer, but only in the customer's money, and the customer is no longer first, nor right. We won't get to the stars if we can't build what have become 'basic' electronics, properly, and anyone who's switched (or been forcibly switched) to Windows11 will know we are actually going backwards now.
 
But, enough whinging, I shot these when I was up at the storage unit the other day, and while they're not brilliant shots, they are fun images!
 


Cherilea Daleks and Mecanoids, a pair of each with matching midriff colours! I've since discovered another type of Mechaniod, with handrails running round the 'equator', so my three or four (I think it's three, and enough bits for two crashed ones!), are still only a start!

T is for Two - The Works

I popped into The Works the other day and found a couple of bits which might be of some interest, to some people, reading the Blog, so a quick T is for Two... presented itself as the obvious, despite it being more than two of any measure, the 'two' being sharpeners and erasers!
 

Stubby little moon-rocket pencil sharpeners, not terribly realistic, as is, but a coat of paint could render them useful cargo containers in some space-station/space base diorama, and, like a lot of space-based stationary . . . A bit of fun!
 

We may have seen all these before, but the larger Dinosaurs may be new to the Blog, or new in these small 'back to school' containers, but I got them and shot them, because the Blog is a bit of a gaping maw which requires constant feeding!

Saturday, September 27, 2025

O is for Once Upon a Time, in June! Everything Else

So, we reach the last of the plunder, bought or donated, from the sort-of-fortieth PW show, at Whitton, in SW London, this June, just gone, and it's the bits & bobs, trees/plants, vessels, and remaining vehicular stuff!

A bunch of the Cereal Premium ships from Quaker Oats, we've seen the whole set before, here, and a previous lot of additional colours, but here's a few more!

Somebody gave me this at some point in the course of the day's proceedings, he came over and asked me about it, I said I didn't know, but that it looked both modern and really nice, and he said "Keep it" and left me holding it, I hope his name is in the footer acknowledgement, below, but if it isn't, eMail me! Sitting at it, is a larger scale Blue Box doll house kid, and smaller Britains Garden adult!

A fine rack-toy of the 6d/5p variety, a set of tools, which, had I seen it in the 70's, would have been purchased for Action Man! I reckon they would have fitted nicely in one of those silver Arctic Explorer crates, and could have been stowed in my Spartan personnel carrier!
 
Barrels from a die-cast Waggon , one of those Benbros-Charbens-Kemlows minor die-casters? A couple of road signs, one damaged, but it might be an only sample, and a badge probably from Brian, who keeps giving me his old badges, as I think he knew I'd kept all mine, and one day I'll have to sort them all out and throw them up here as a fun-post, on all the shows over the years! I've even got most of my Sandown stickers somewhere!


Scenics; including a small moon, or large cannon-ball, probably from a rack-toy bag, a Hong Kong hay-rick/stack clone, and what I suspect is a rabbit-hutch or poultry pen from Taylor, missing its front-door/mesh, but interestingly inscribed with the full For Good Toys slogan. It's probably taken from the lead original.

FG Taylor's 'squirrel-tree', a Lego Chestnut tree, a couple of Britains window-box scenics, and three smaller Barratt trees.

Largo's hydrofoil motor vessel Disco Volante (somewhat simplified!), from Gilbert, I have the carded one, so it's nice to now have a loose one, complete, if slightly discoloured by age (smoking or UV?), although I think an ultrasonic bath with diluted bleach can bring it back white, without taking the red off?

Mixed vessels, nothing too exciting, the smaller rubber-boat is Corgi I think, and the tug may be Springwell, a reissue of the Tudor Rose vessel, or one of the TR vessels (reader-driven post in the pipeworks, on that one!), several baking powder premiums and an odd colour of the usually silver/grey copies of Minic waterline ships 

Aircraft include a damaged and stripped Messerschmitt, a second Inter Cities Services Rota-Ship from Injection Moulders, a small spacy thing, probably from a board game and another Blue Box 'chopper', "I lurve the smell of vintage plastic in the mornin's!".

Another race-car, also Quaker, standard colour and number, but until it's checked against the master collection, I won't trust it! A large egg, from the discount-store rival to Kinder; Wow Eggs, an infant toy which will end-up going to charity, but is at least 'in the archive' now!
 
While the truck is - I think - the New Maries copy of the Holly copy of Blue Box's livestock truck from the Andy's/Home Farm sets, in all cases a sub-scale vehicle from those sets, but they were all mixed scale, with the Merit knock-off horses. probably fitting this nicely!

Friday, September 26, 2025

N is for Nuts!

While sorting out the house over the last few years, various things came to light which had long been forgotten, among which was this childhood stash of paperback-format bound volumes of Peanuts cartoons by Charles M. Schulz.
 




And then I found another one!
 
We were early fans of Snoopy and Co., and it was always Snoopy, it was Adults who thought of Charlie Brown first, because he represented the trails, tribulations and failures of adulthood, Snoopy was just a funny dog who thought he was a WWI fighter pilot and talked to yellow chicks, who coded back in scratch marks!
 
My brother and I had a shared bedroom until I was sixteen, and when we were little, there were loads of snoopy posters on the walls, similar to these book covers, a single image and some pithy aphorism about not liking Mondays (a decade before the Boomtown Rats), or something. Except they weren't actually glossy coated posters, they were matted wrapping paper!
 
I can't remember where we got them, but I guess it was WHSmith, in Fleet, or maybe Webb's, in Hartley Wintney, folded-over their wooden bars, you'd keep an eye out for a new colour, as like the book-covers they were single-colour sheets with a black-on-white snoopy, the paper an off-white, and about the same paper grade of brown parcel-paper, which they were near. I guess the idea was you used a whole sheet on a big-box gift, and the unwrapper got a cartoon! And, or course, they were much cheaper than the posters from the wire racks!
 
I seem to recall, Coronet, the publishers, also supplied a fair-few of my sci-fi novels a few years later! 
 
I also found these! Because we spent all our holidays running about on Hazeley Heath, climbing trees, shooting at each other with airguns (nope, we've still both got two working eyes!), from the tree-house or similar shenanigans, we tended to wreak havoc on our trousers (jeans or cords), and Mum would cover the holes (knees or bums!) with these patches, to give them a little more life. There were others, some more 'hippy' and I found a bunch of them too, they'll be a future post!

B is for Box-ticking Boy's Toys in Bottle Bags!

At the PW show, John Begg had a whole bunch of ex-shop, or out-painters stock (there were loose figures) from Charbens, and Colesmith Plastics (the moulds have a convoluted history which can be read in Plastic Warrior's Charbens Specialist Publication), to which I availed myself of what you might call a cross-sample, certainly not everything they produced, either figure or packaging wise, but a nice example for box-ticking their latter production, which I remember being in the shelves, when I was a kid.
 
Charbens own-branded packaging.
Unpainted Wild West.
 
A generic branding as 'Pic-a-Pack'.
Guards Band and Beefeaters. 
 
American civil war, an odd mix of plastic colours with the Union outnumbering the Confederates more than two-to-one, in both sets, with an apparently measured content count of one sky-blue figure, four dark blue, and two grey
 
More mixed ceremonials, here branded to Colesmith.
A Highland piper, and Lifeguards join the mix.
 
Mixed paratroopers (green bases) and Tommies (sand).
 
Comparison of the cards, I don't know why Colesmith got to brand some-up to themselves, maybe to pay off a debt, or just for a cheaper quote to Charbens? or did they inherit/hang-on to the moulds? I haven't got the Charbens Special to hand!
 
Note, also; the Artist's palette painting sign, used - rightly - on the unpainted Wild West set, but rather spurious on the pre-painted sets? I'm sure I remember the Colesmith sets in WHSmith around 1978/79?
 
"Jenny? What colour are Native Americans, really?"
 
"Dunno' love, try one of each!"
 
The 'Blues & Royals'.
 
Mixed, painted and unpainted.
Highlanders, Nelson, Lifeguard trumpeter and mounted cowboy.
 
Guards band in various treatments.

I is for Is This an AI Blog?

Three posts in 2020, and not one of them makes more than a gnat's crochet of sense?

https://jeffreyantiquetoys.wordpress.com/ 

AI has improved exponentially since 2020, but I don't know what was going on there, one wonders if it's auto-translating from another language, but the subjects - of the three posts - are all based in and around London.

And then . . . you go here:

https://jeffreytoysnews.mystrikingly.com/#_blog

And find the same strangled English, this time with four posts? Did the 'Bot responsible;e succumb to Covid a few weeks later? Does anyone know the history behind all this?

There's a rumour that the owner of Mint & Boxed was convicted of fraud and sent to gaol, but I have no firm knowledge of such happenings, and it looks like it was before these two sites (how many were there?) were churning out their pidgin rubbish! The Internet is groaning under the weight of this garbage.

I was actually searching because I picked this up the other day, thinking it was a book in the Shire Album or Self Publishing oeuvres, but in fact it's a sort of glorified catalogue, of really rather pricey stuff, and I wanted to find out more about the shop/auction house, only to find the above-linked weirdness!

It appears to be the only edition ever issued, with several on sale around the Internet, but all Issue 1 Winter 1990/1991, so a short-lived enterprise, whatever happened to the owner! Although I have also found a Summer 1989 copy, in a different format, which is unnumbered? And there are two versions of this, one (2nd printing?) cuts the logo's of Wells and Brimtoy off the bottom of the artwork.

One hobby site says, "Possible [sic] the largest vintage toy shop that ever was. Now closed." , but they like their hyperbole over there, and this mint Dinky-Corgi-Matchbox stuff goes through Vectis by the lorry load, umpteen times a year! Whilst Modeller's Loft had a pretty big store or two?

The internecine goings-on at the top of the hobby, where a few people think there's a fortune to be made from old toys? A couple of auction houses do OK, a few top evilBayers do OK, many bottom-feeders keep from starving, and the odd gentleman-amateur throws money at a loss-making enterprise, because he enjoys doing it, and can afford to.

But when a millionaire pays £250k for a tin-plate liner, or locomotive, or over a million-quid for a plastic Boba Fett, that's not our hobby, that's the Art World, the world of investment, and that's a very different thing.

And damn-me if another one hasn't appeared as I write this!

https://levytoysboxes.tumblr.com/ 

U is for Up the Smoke!

Except it's been smokeless for most of my life, people under 40 have no idea what fog was like once, I remember going to pick our pet rabbit up, from the pet-rabbit people in Rotherwick, a journey which would normally have taken maybe 20-minutes, round trip, but which took over an hour, because Mum had to drive at ten miles an hour, in the hope that if she caught-up with someone going 9-mph, she wouldn't hit them! Fog-lights became visible at about 20-yards!
 
Anyway, I was up to London the other day, and as is customary, had a look, first with PW's roving reporter; Peter Evans, then, on my own, while returning to Waterloo, for items of use! And these were the things which came back to Ash Road Towers, or not!
 
This was the 'or not', £7.99 is too much for such a piece of rack toy shite, so it stayed on the peg (keeping it warm!), hopefully one of the Bocheng Jin tanks will turn-up in a mixed lot in a few years, and I can see if the red flash-eliminator is easily removable? Daft soldier may also reappear at some point!
 
Timeless pocket-money, rubber-jiggler, 'finger fright' shite! A set of six from House of Marbles, I think we've seen theirs before, but these seem to be new and better colours than those seen previously (Waterstones?), I particularly liked the metallic gold one!
 

Imported by Thomas Benacci, I thought these 40mm figures would prove to be poured PE-resin, but they are, in fact, PVC, so well within the scope of the core project! And I think we've seen the policeman already in a mixed lot or show report, so they don't take long to filter down!
 

And I'd bought these earlier than the others, but they got shot last, so yah-boo-sucks to them! Four quid's more like it, and I thought the painting of a couple (Spinosaur and Sauropod) were better than the common offering. Unbranded, but it's a rack toy!