Early Risers.

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, rockershovel said:

No British PM is elected to the role; they are invited by the Monarch to form a government. They are, by convention a sitting MP (cf Sir Alec Douglas-Home) but do not need to be the Leader of the incumbent Party; they need only command the support of the HoC (hence they cannot be a member of HoL). 

The conservatives were in the majority in 1940 but Churchill was not the party leader - or elected as such. There is a long tradition of Lords being Prime Minister. 

 

The last Lord to be PM was Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, who left office in 1892.

 

Alec Douglas-Home (aka Lord Duglass) was PM (replacing Harold MacMillan), having temporarily renounced his Earldom and stood for election in the commons - it being considered improper but not extra-legal for a Lord to serve as PM. On retiring from politics he became a life peer: Baron Home of the Hirsel. Lord / not Lord, but PM / Lord again. Lordy, lordy, did it matter?

 

As far as I know, there remains no law to prevent a Lord from being PM, though (as you note) it has become convention.

 

Edited August 29 by Ozexpatriate

[polybear]

Oh good, some common sense....if it happens.....

 

"There's a difference between smoking outside and walking in a forest and smoking outside where there are large groups of people, particularly children, concentrated, like restaurants, like pub gardens, like football matches."

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg79ym5mrzyo

 

But there's always one (other terms are available......):

 

But former Conservative special adviser Anita Boateng told the BBC: "It feels a very draconian step for people who are adults who can make decisions and who can legally smoke.

"The point is you are in an outside area of a pub garden in a walled off area. You don't have to stand there if you don't want to experience second-hand smoking."

[Ozexpatriate]

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Recent histories of the period claim that Chamberlain was well aware of the duplicitous nature of Hitler and the Nazi regime and through various meetings and “agreements” with Hitler was buying time to get Britain’s armaments industry up and running.

Finding useful data on actual British aircraft production (as one metric) between September 1938 and September 1939 is proving difficult for me with cursory browsing.

 

However, I do like some of the sentiments expressed here.

Quote

In his enthusiasm for the Spitfire and Hurricane, Chamberlain showed more insight than Churchill, who, as a Tory backbencher, felt that the RAF should be concentrating production on two-seater fighters with rearward-firing turrets. In 1938 Churchill explained: “The urgency for action arises from the fact that the Germans must know we have banked on the forward-shooting, plunging Spitfire, whose attack must most likely resolve itself into a pursuit which, if not instantly effective, exposes the pursuer to destruction.”

 

Exactly such a plane was being made, though not in the quantities that Churchill wanted. It was called the Boulton-Paul Defiant and proved a disaster in the war, offering little more than target practice for the Luftwaffe.

The Defiant of course did exactly what it said on the tin. It was a good interceptor for flying up underneath to engage slow bombers. It was next to useless if those bombers were escorted by fighters.

 

Relevantly,

Quote

When Chamberlain finally declared war in September 1939, Britain’s aircraft output had overtaken that of Germany’s.

...

Munich undoubtedly bought Britain time for the RAF to modernise dramatically over the next two years. In autumn 1938 Fighter Command had just 25 squadrons, mostly made up of obsolete biplanes. By the eve of the Battle of Britain, there were 58, most of them Spitfires and Hurricanes. Denis Webb, a manager at the Supermarine company that built the Spitfire, wrote, “Chamberlain’s despised scrap of paper gave us a good return”.

Which surely made a difference.

 

Edited August 29 by Ozexpatriate

[Gwiwer]

Good morning all. Genuinely an ER today as I take the morning watch shortly.
 

There shall be no Jack Russell here.  Yappy, nippy little things they are. Loathsome creatures. A well-behaved collie (which is probably most of them) I could deal with if I had to.
 

The canine of choice locally seems to be tall, stocky and slightly woolly. Several of those to be seen taking their humans for a walk. At least one is being actively sought by the town council for never picking up the waste.   It might well have an older human who cannot bend and collect but there are other ways of removing your evidence from the footpaths. 

[monkeysarefun]

53 minutes ago, polybear said:

Oh good, some common sense....if it happens.....

 

"There's a difference between smoking outside and walking in a forest and smoking outside where there are large groups of people, particularly children, concentrated, like restaurants, like pub gardens, like football matches."

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg79ym5mrzyo

 

But there's always one (other terms are available......):

 

But former Conservative special adviser Anita Boateng told the BBC: "It feels a very draconian step for people who are adults who can make decisions and who can legally smoke.

"The point is you are in an outside area of a pub garden in a walled off area. You don't have to stand there if you don't want to experience second-hand smoking."

 

Out of interest, I looked up where smoking is now banned in NSW because they always seem to be announcing new ones. It  looks pretty much like what is being proposed in that article:

 

As well as the usual pubs and clubs, theatres, shopping centres,, dining areas, schools, business premises, community centres and public transport   etc  smoking is also banned:

a) within 10 metres of children's play equipment in outdoor public places
b) at public swimming pool complexes
c) in spectator areas at public sports grounds and other recreational areas during an organized sporting event
d) at public transport stops and stations
e) within 4 metres of a pedestrian entrance to any public building.

f) at outdoor public dining venues and within 10 metres of a food fair stall

g) at public beaches. 

h) In Martin Place pedestrian plaza and Pitt St Mall

i) at most workplaces, even outside*

 

Added to that that the price of a packet of 25 Winfield Reds (most popular brand) is the equivalent of £26.05 and its pretty rare to see anyone smoke these days!

 

*Legally, people don’t have a right to take a smoke break at work, even outside the building. While it’s up to employers to decide if they’ll allow smoking during work time, they can also lawfully enforce a smoke-free workplace.

In fact, courts have ruled that workers can be sacked for breaking no-smoking rules. 

If an employer were to allow smoke breaks, they would need to consider the impact on their non-smoking employees, who may not get as many breaks and would therefore be at a disadvantage.

Furthermore, there is the concern of outdoor passive smoking, which is harmful to other employees who are nearby.

 

 

I

Edited August 29 by monkeysarefun

[iL Dottore]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

He deserves credit for that after May 10, 1940, than at the time of the Munich Agreement - and he wasn't the first choice as PM.

 

Let's remember that he wasn't elected. The Labour opposition called for a division in parliament during the Norway/Narvik Debate and as a consequence, Chamberlain resigned.  HM,GVIR only asked WSC to form a government after Lord Halifax declined the 'honour'.

 

Churchill would later shunt Halifax off to the US as Ambassador in January 1941, where he would remain ('safely' out of British politics) through Truman's inauguration. There he made some faux-pas, not really comprehending how FDR 'worked' Congress and the isolationist sentiment there.

 

True. For simplicity I didn’t go into dates. I would consider that Chamberlain got a “bum rap”, because of Munich, however - as I mentioned before - he bought Britain time it desperately needed. And he did this whilst dying of cancer.

 

I don’t think he was an “appeaser” - at least as it has been widely considered, unlike Halifax.

3 hours ago, rockershovel said:

No British PM is elected to the role; they are invited by the Monarch to form a government. They are, by convention a sitting MP (cf Sir Alec Douglas-Home) but do not need to be the Leader of the incumbent Party; they need only command the support of the HoC (hence they cannot be a member of HoL). 

Halifax was the choice of many parliamentarians, had Halifax accepted the offer, the king would have “invited” Halifax to form a government (probably of “national unity”) and would have found a work around the tradition that a PM could not be from the HoL.

 

However Halifax would have been made PM, it is not unreasonable to conclude that he would have come to an agreement with Hitler (probably with Mussolini acting as broker). Given that Hitler is on record as considering Britain as a “natural ally” against communism, a likely scenario would have been some territorial concessions from Britain in exchange for a peace treaty that “allowed” the UK to retain most of its empire. Whether such an arrangement would have survived Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the US into the war (although it is perfectly feasible that the US would’ve just conducted only a pacific war had Britain not been fighting Germany at the time of Pearl Harbor) is anyone’s guess.

 

One thing is clear, without Germany “wasting“ men, resources and materiél fighting the British in North Africa, Greece, Crete, and in the Atlantic, Hitler would’ve had much, much more resources available to him for Operation Barbarossa, which would’ve started earlier than it did with a much higher probability of a final, German, victory.

 
One of the interesting things about these contrafactual histories (which can be very serious historical studies as they explore how minor changes could have major repercussions), is that the further you go from a decision point (here: Churchill vs Halifax), the more speculative it becomes.

[enz]

But with regard to the idea that the Munich agreement gained time for the British (and the French) to rearm, the problem is that it gave away a powerful ally (Czechoslovakia); it's an interesting question if Germany could have penetrated the Czech border defenses and then defeated them quickly enough given that the Germans couldn't afford to fight a long war.

 

Germany did also get some value from the Czech industrial base too... .

[Ozexpatriate]

9 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Whether such an arrangement would have survived Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the US into the war (although it is perfectly feasible that the US would’ve just conducted only a pacific war had Britain not been fighting Germany at the time of Pearl Harbor) is anyone’s guess.

Japan also invaded the Philippines, Hong Kong and Malaya on the same day - the date line only makes it look like December 8 rather than December 7.

 

They had their own reasons to do this independently of any hypothetical European alliances. What cemented the "Germany first" joint strategy is the early Christmas present the allies received on December 11, 1941 when Germany declared war on the US.

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

Plans for today.. buy some tickets for international games next year at Headingley.

Collect tickets for a match v Australia at Headingley.. in September...

Watch a bit of cricket. Attend an on line meeting of people putting the world to rights, and any thing else added by her indoors..

 

Phew!

 

It seems that the UK Civil Service have, yet again, got their financial calculations wrong. Whatasurprise! NOT !

Time for my teas then off into the bright lights of Headingley!

 

Have a great day if you can!

 

Baz

[iL Dottore]

3 hours ago, rockershovel said:

the expansion of the Sino-Japanese War was inevitable (see J G Ballard's Empire of the Sun for a treatment of this little-understood matter)

I think that the war in the East remains poorly studied and relegated to an afterthought in many histories, focusing as many do mostly on the war in Europe.

 

Was the expansion of the Sino-Japanese inevitable? Probably and for two reasons: the expansionistic aims of the Nationalist government which used a perverted and twisted form of Bushido as part of the rationale for empire building* and the fact that Japan has absolutely no natural resources (and if you want to build an empire, or even just a modern nation state, you will need resources, whether your own, purchased or “acquired”). But here we get into “chicken or egg” territory: was it Nationalistic expansion that created the need for a huge amount of resources or was it the need for resources that fueled the Nationalistic expansion.

 

But, to return to earlier posts, would the war in the Far East/Pacific have become part of a global conflict, had Hitler not declared war on the US? Or would the world have just seen two huge, but separate, conflicts? The German-Russian conflict and The Pacific War? I think it would have eventually become global, but much later in the decade and probably when the victors of the German-Russian came up against the victors of the war in the far east.

 

* Japanese empire building was perhaps unsurprising given that - as a rapidly modernising country and on the “winning” side in WWI - Japan must have taken one look at the Industrialised Western Powers’ empires and thought “we’ll have some of that” concluding that an empire is what a modern industrialised country must have**….

** OK, that’s a bit simplistic, but you get my gist.

[rockershovel]

2 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

The conservatives were in the majority in 1940 but Churchill was not the party leader - or elected as such. There is a long tradition of Lords being Prime Minister. 

 

The last Lord to be PM was Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, who left office in 1892.

 

Alec Douglas-Home (aka Lord Duglass) was PM (replacing Harold MacMillan), having temporarily renounced his Earldom and stood for election in the commons - it being considered improper but not extra-legal for a Lord to serve as PM. On retiring from politics he became a life peer: Baron Home of the Hirsel. Lord / not Lord, but PM / Lord again. Lordy, lordy, did it matter?

 

As far as I know, there remains no law to prevent a Lord from being PM, though (as you note) it has become convention.

 

The convention regarding a Lord not being PM is that the PM must lead the government in the Commons. A member of HoL may not enter the HoC except on sufferance. A "noble" PM would therefore be dependant upon sufferance or delegation for Commons business, would be dependant upon sufferance to attend PMQ and would be in conflict with the convention that the HoL shall not be beholden to HoC Party interests 

Edited August 29 by rockershovel

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

True. For simplicity I didn’t go into dates. I would consider that Chamberlain got a “bum rap”, because of Munich, however - as I mentioned before - he bought Britain time it desperately needed. And he did this whilst dying of cancer.

 

I don’t think he was an “appeaser” - at least as it has been widely considered, unlike Halifax.

Halifax was the choice of many parliamentarians, had Halifax accepted the offer, the king would have “invited” Halifax to form a government (probably of “national unity”) and would have found a work around the tradition that a PM could not be from the HoL.

 

However Halifax would have been made PM, it is not unreasonable to conclude that he would have come to an agreement with Hitler (probably with Mussolini acting as broker). Given that Hitler is on record as considering Britain as a “natural ally” against communism, a likely scenario would have been some territorial concessions from Britain in exchange for a peace treaty that “allowed” the UK to retain most of its empire. Whether such an arrangement would have survived Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the US into the war (although it is perfectly feasible that the US would’ve just conducted only a pacific war had Britain not been fighting Germany at the time of Pearl Harbor) is anyone’s guess.

 

One thing is clear, without Germany “wasting“ men, resources and materiél fighting the British in North Africa, Greece, Crete, and in the Atlantic, Hitler would’ve had much, much more resources available to him for Operation Barbarossa, which would’ve started earlier than it did with a much higher probability of a final, German, victory.

 
One of the interesting things about these contrafactual histories (which can be very serious historical studies as they explore how minor changes could have major repercussions), is that the further you go from a decision point (here: Churchill vs Halifax), the more speculative it becomes.

The German surrender at Tunis was second only to Stalingrad in terms of the numbers and quantities involved. 

 

Of course it wasn't accompanied by the same level of destruction in the preceding battle. 

 

[rockershovel]

56 minutes ago, enz said:

But with regard to the idea that the Munich agreement gained time for the British (and the French) to rearm, the problem is that it gave away a powerful ally (Czechoslovakia); it's an interesting question if Germany could have penetrated the Czech border defenses and then defeated them quickly enough given that the Germans couldn't afford to fight a long war.

 

Germany did also get some value from the Czech industrial base too... .

But would Czechoslovakia have fought? They had a sizeable ethnic German population, and the further threat of Russia (then in a quasi-alliance with Germany) to the East. They are a landlocked country with no obvious external allies. 

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

True. For simplicity I didn’t go into dates. I would consider that Chamberlain got a “bum rap”, because of Munich, however - as I mentioned before - he bought Britain time it desperately needed. And he did this whilst dying of cancer.

 

I don’t think he was an “appeaser” - at least as it has been widely considered, unlike Halifax.

Halifax was the choice of many parliamentarians, had Halifax accepted the offer, the king would have “invited” Halifax to form a government (probably of “national unity”) and would have found a work around the tradition that a PM could not be from the HoL.

 

However Halifax would have been made PM, it is not unreasonable to conclude that he would have come to an agreement with Hitler (probably with Mussolini acting as broker). Given that Hitler is on record as considering Britain as a “natural ally” against communism, a likely scenario would have been some territorial concessions from Britain in exchange for a peace treaty that “allowed” the UK to retain most of its empire. Whether such an arrangement would have survived Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the US into the war (although it is perfectly feasible that the US would’ve just conducted only a pacific war had Britain not been fighting Germany at the time of Pearl Harbor) is anyone’s guess.

 

One thing is clear, without Germany “wasting“ men, resources and materiél fighting the British in North Africa, Greece, Crete, and in the Atlantic, Hitler would’ve had much, much more resources available to him for Operation Barbarossa, which would’ve started earlier than it did with a much higher probability of a final, German, victory.

 
One of the interesting things about these contrafactual histories (which can be very serious historical studies as they explore how minor changes could have major repercussions), is that the further you go from a decision point (here: Churchill vs Halifax), the more speculative it becomes.

Britain already had a "government of national unity", and had done so since 1931. 

 

There is no reason a PM can't be from HoL, only a convention - which although it exists for a reason, was much weaker in those days, and the HoL much stronger. The "work-around" would have been either for Halifax to renounce his title, or for it to be agreed that the convention be suspended for as long as necessary. 

 

Hitler had good reason to expect Britain to stand aside while Germany fought the USSR - had they not attempted military intervention in the Russian Civil War? One of the minor sights I sought out during my time in Baku was a memorial stone to the British soldiers killed there in 1921-2. 

 

 

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from the Charey where the sky has weeped and is due to again.  Various things to do and an expedition to choose some drawer handles for an IKEA chest of drawers.   First off ring Orange helpline. 

 

Jamie

[rockershovel]

36 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

I think that the war in the East remains poorly studied and relegated to an afterthought in many histories, focusing as many do mostly on the war in Europe.

 

Was the expansion of the Sino-Japanese inevitable? Probably and for two reasons: the expansionistic aims of the Nationalist government which used a perverted and twisted form of Bushido as part of the rationale for empire building* and the fact that Japan has absolutely no natural resources (and if you want to build an empire, or even just a modern nation state, you will need resources, whether your own, purchased or “acquired”). But here we get into “chicken or egg” territory: was it Nationalistic expansion that created the need for a huge amount of resources or was it the need for resources that fueled the Nationalistic expansion.

 

But, to return to earlier posts, would the war in the Far East/Pacific have become part of a global conflict, had Hitler not declared war on the US? Or would the world have just seen two huge, but separate, conflicts? The German-Russian conflict and The Pacific War? I think it would have eventually become global, but much later in the decade and probably when the victors of the German-Russian came up against the victors of the war in the far east.

 

* Japanese empire building was perhaps unsurprising given that - as a rapidly modernising country and on the “winning” side in WWI - Japan must have taken one look at the Industrialised Western Powers’ empires and thought “we’ll have some of that” concluding that an empire is what a modern industrialised country must have**….

** OK, that’s a bit simplistic, but you get my gist.

The Sino-Japanese War would undoubtedly have spread, bringing Japan and other European powers into conflict. 

 

THEN there would have been a general conflict of interest between the European colonial powers (dependent upon the Med and Suez Canal) and Italian (and by alliance, German) conflicting interests. 

 

There was also the not-so-small matter of German weapons technology. The reason that the US was able to justify the huge cost of the Manhattan Project was that it was already understood that it was theoretically feasible to build a weapon system, and within the resources of the combined German/Soviet bloc. It was also known that Germsny envisaged ICBM in the 1930s. 

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

The last Lord to be PM was Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, who left office in 1892.

 

... to return in 1895 for a further seven years. His successor, Balfour, was his nephew.

 

In the eighteenth century, the PM was a commoner for 61 years but in the nineteenth century, only 40 years. There were two prime ministers who served their first term in the Commons and their second in the Lords, plus Disraeli who was ennobled during his second term.

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, polybear said:

But former Conservative special adviser Anita Boateng told the BBC: "It feels a very draconian step for people who are adults who can make decisions and who can legally smoke.

"The point is you are in an outside area of a pub garden in a walled off area. You don't have to stand there if you don't want to experience second-hand smoking."

 

It is not just the second-hand smoke that is offensive but the smell of the habitual smoker. 

[jjb1970]

The second world war was two separate wars overlapping in time. 

 

Something as simple as start and end date is far from simple. The Asian war started in the 1930's, although most histories use 1937 as the start for the second Sino-Japan war it could also be dated to 1931 and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Similarly, for some countries 1945 was merely a shift from Japanese occupation to fighting to secure independence from former colonial masters and the Chinese civil war which was one of the more consequential events of the 20th century. 

 

Similarly in Europe, while for Britain and France war started in September 1939, Czechs might consider their war started in 1938.

 

There was never any serious collaboration between Germany and Japan and of course the USSR only entered the war against Japan in the closing days of the war.

[jamie92208]

33 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

The second world war was two separate wars overlapping in time. 

 

Something as simple as start and end date is far from simple. The Asian war started in the 1930's, although most histories use 1937 as the start for the second Sino-Japan war it could also be dated to 1931 and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Similarly, for some countries 1945 was merely a shift from Japanese occupation to fighting to secure independence from former colonial masters and the Chinese civil war which was one of the more consequential events of the 20th century. 

 

Similarly in Europe, while for Britain and France war started in September 1939, Czechs might consider their war started in 1938.

 

There was never any serious collaboration between Germany and Japan and of course the USSR only entered the war against Japan in the closing days of the war.

I believe that WW2 only fimished formally after the fall of the USSR. I think that one of the post war treaties was never ratified by the Soviets. 

 

Jamie

[jjb1970]

Just now, jamie92208 said:

I believe that WW2 only fimished formally after the fall of the USSR. I think that one of the post war treaties was never ratified by the Soviets. 

 

Jamie

 

I don't think Russia and Japan ever signed a peace treaty, there's still a territorial dispute between over the Kuril islands. A few years ago both sides were moving towards an agreement but that went out of the window.

[rockershovel]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Finding useful data on actual British aircraft production (as one metric) between September 1938 and September 1939 is proving difficult for me with cursory browsing.

 

However, I do like some of the sentiments expressed here.

The Defiant of course did exactly what it said on the tin. It was a good interceptor for flying up underneath to engage slow bombers. It was next to useless if those bombers were escorted by fighters.

 

Relevantly,

Which surely made a difference.

 

The Defiant had considerable success as a radar-equipped night interceptor, before being withdrawn from combat to serve in various niche roles such as ECM, air-sea rescue and gunnery training 

[enz]

4 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

 

I don't think Russia and Japan ever signed a peace treaty, there's still a territorial dispute between over the Kuril islands. A few years ago both sides were moving towards an agreement but that went out of the window.

 

But according to wikipedia, they have formally ended their state of war in 1956; Japan gave up the Kurils in 1951 but says that the southern Kurils aren't actually Kurils. Complicated.

[jjb1970]

The Korean war grew out of WW2 with the North occupied or liberated (depending on perspective) by the Soviet Army and the South by the US, leading to two governments. 

[rockershovel]

12 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I believe that WW2 only fimished formally after the fall of the USSR. I think that one of the post war treaties was never ratified by the Soviets. 

 

Jamie

Well, not really. The European war might be regarded as starting in 1936 (German re-occupation of the Rhineland, France and Britain accelerate re-armament) and was definitively over by August 1945 (definitive border between Allied and Soviet limits of occupation, establishment of Cold War, arrest and dissolution of Donitz government resulting in complete dissolution of Third Reich).

 

The Far Eastern War might be regarded as beginning in 1931 (first phase of Sino-Japanese War) and ending in 1970s with the US abandonment of Saigon and subsequent Treaty of Paris concluding the hostilities against the Viet Cong and marking a definitive ending to Western colonialism in that Hemisphere