I suppose a seventieth anniversary is something special but perhaps it is more so when it involves an almost iconic event.

7/12/2011 marks seventy years since the Pearl Harbor attack, the event which turned relatively localised war into World War. “7^th December 1941: a date which will live in Infamy,” – FDR.

It is sobering to realise that the Second World War lasted less than four years after that. The US and UK have now had troops dying in Afghanistan for much longer than that; and in Iraq for not much less time. Not so many troops dying admittedly, but dying nonetheless.

I vaguely remember Gore Vidal saying something to the effect that the difference between Pearl Harbor and the September 11^th attack was that no-one saw the latter one coming. He had a personal reason to blame the US authorities for the war with Japan, though. His lover died in the Pacific fighting.

I was sad to hear of the death of Brazilian footballer Socrates. He was a member of that second most entertaining of Brazil teams: the one that lost to Italy (well, to Paolo Rossi) in the second stage of the 1982 World Cup tournament. His goal in that game was sublime as he appeared to ghost past an Italian defender and then comprehensively beat Dino Zoff (Dino Zoff!) at his near post. He also had an idiosyncratic way with penalty kicks – which he would take with absolutely no run-up.

In his non-footballing life he was a medic, qualifying as a doctor before taking up professional football.

I remember from TV reports of the Brazil camp in 1982 he could play guitar and hold a tune. He was a smoker, though, and also, it seems, overindulged in drink.

Sad to see him go.

Sócrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira (aren’t those Brazilian names wonderful?)
19/2/1954-4/12/2011. So it goes.

I turned over to the BBC news today and encountered bafflement. Gary Speed dead? Surely not? I’d seen him on Football Focus only yesterday and he looked in fine fettle.

Then it became curiouser and curiouser. It seems he took his own life – which is tragic, not least for his family.

The sense of shock in the football world at this news was admirably illustrated by the one minute’s silence called for at the Swansea City – Aston Villa game today spontaneously evolving into one minute’s applause.

Speed (helped by the emergence of some fine young footballing talent from the Principality) seemed on the verge of converting the Wales national team’s perennial also-rans status into something approaching success.

It would be a fitting memorial to him if Wales were now to qualify for the 2014 World Cup.

Gary Andrew Speed: 8/9/1969-27/11/11. So it goes.

I discovered today that SF writer Anne McCaffrey has died.

I mentioned her briefly a few months ago in my review of Legends.

I wasn’t over familiar with her work – her only book on my shelves is Dragonquest from the old Corgi Master SF series. I also have her contributions to Roger Elwood‘s uneven Continuum series – in which McCaffrey’s stories were better than most. But hers was a high profile name in SF circles in my youth.

She has been quite prolific, though but most of her woek has passed me by.

Anne Inez McCaffrey: 1/4/1926-21/11/2011. So it goes.

Due to being at the game on Saturday and a family night out the same evening I more or less missed the sad news of the death of Basil D’Oliveira.

It’s not given to many sporstmen to affect materially the social organisation of their native (or any other) country – even inadvertently – but that is what Basil D’Oliviera did.

I remember him as a composed batsman, an elegant stroke maker, but it is his contribution to the unwinding of the apartheid regime in South Africa that will be more commented on. There had been protests against that system before but it was the refusal of the then South African government to countenance his membership of an MCC touring party with the certainty that the “coloured” D’Oliveira would have played in Test matches in the country of his birth – albeit for England – that crystallised for many the iniquity of apartheid and its eventual downfall through various sporting boycotts and isolation. For D’Oliviera seemed the epitome of the cricketing ideal, sportsmanlike and dignified on the field, and his banning by the regime an act of extreme petty spitefulness.

His actual age may have been older than many sources quote as he may have given the impression he was younger than he was in order to be chosen to play for England. His wiki entry quotes a source for this.

Basil Lewis D’Oliveira: 4/10/1931-19/11/2011. So it goes.

The multi-car pile up on Friday night on the M5 near Taunton in Somerset was a horrific occurence and must have been a nightmarish situation for all those involved, the witnesses, the rescue workers and those who cleaned up afterwards. Not to mention a continuing nightmare for the families of the deceased.

But the emphasis of the news coverage seems askew to me. The focus of attention is on whether smoke from a fireworks display (or perhaps fog) was a contributing factor.

In essence it doesn’t matter, either – or both – may have reduced visibility.

And I believe neither was the cause the accident.

It is more likely that drivers did not adjust their driving to the prevailing conditions. Fog, or reduced visibility, means that they should have slowed down; even if the fog was patchy or intermittent. In all probability some (most?) did not.

The accident – like the majority of road “accidents” – was probably the result of poor, perhaps even dangerous, driving. It is that, as a counter to the dangerous notion that drivers are somehow put upon by laws intended to restrict their speed, that should be hammered home time and again, whenever deaths occur on the roads.

Contrary to what some people seem to believe a car is not an expression of individual freedom, it is merely a means to get from A to B in the most efficient way – and it is also a lethal weapon, needing to be handled with care.

I hope that this incident gives pause to those who wish to raise the motorway speed limit. They say people ignore the limit. Is that a good reason to change the law? After all some people rob banks, so should laws against theft then be changed? In any case, the people who break the speed limit now will most likely break the new one too; they don’t care unless they’re caught. Motorways will be many times more dangerous than they are now.

If it doesn’t give them pause and the limit does end up being raised we can expect more Tauntons, or worse, in the future.

For a wonder I actually saw poppies on sale this year (in my local Homebase) before there was any sign of one on a TV presenter or politician.

While I bought mine a week ago I haven’t put it on yet. Armistice Day isn’t till this Friday (I’ll have a special post for that) and Remembrance Sunday is seven days away yet. I think wearing one for more than a week is excessive. And I have a category dedicated to War Memorials.

So I wasn’t going to mention it this year. But they’re at it again. Hardly a TV programme I’ve seen during the past couple of weeks has had anyone without a poppy. Even Benjamin Zephaniah had one on Question Time; though his was white. I also find the ostentatious inclusion of a poppy on the shirts of English Premiership football teams in the past two rounds of fixtures somewhat bizarre.

On Saturday, Football Focus (for whom a previous instance has to be considered) interviewed David Beckham – presumably in the US (as he’s just helped LA Galaxy into a final or something) – and there he was sporting a poppy. Now where did he get that? While I fully expect Beckham would be extremely keen to wear one I can’t believe they’re on general sale in the US.

And I noticed on flicking through the channels on the TV that Johnny Depp was wearing one on the Graham Norton Show two nights ago.

However, a real nadir was reached tonight (perhaps last night as I never watch the programme concerned.) After Countryfile – whose presenters both this week and last naturally wore poppies (Naturally? How long ago were the items actually filmed?) – on came the results show for Strictly Come Dancing and we were given the spectacle of a troop of barely clad young women writhing about – all with poppies attached to what little costume they did have.

Might I submit that this display was rather inappropriate, not quite sober enough, as a mark of respect for the sacrifice of the fallen?

Oh for someone to appear on TV in late October or early November with, in place of a poppy, a sign saying, “They died for my right not to wear a poppy.”

I was at the game at Stirling on Saturday. The weekend coincided with the birthday of my younger son and I didn’t get home till later than usual.

As a result I hadn’t much time to think about the demise of Jimmy Savile.

Savile was certainly one of life’s one-offs. Instantly recognisable, among his lesser achievements was one I have noted before. He invented bling. No-one else on TV had his flamboyance yet there was an edge of irritation attached to his appearances, to the forced jollity, to the smugness he displayed on Jim’ll Fix It. (By the way, they weren’t “Jim’ll Fix It” badges. That was the name of the show. The wording on each medallion – and how Savilesque were they? – was “Jim Fixed It For Me.”) For all his hail fellow well met bonhomie you always felt that you never came near to the real man.

Yet he raised £30,000,000 pounds for various charitable causes (£12 million for Stoke Mandeville National Spinal Injuries Centre alone) and is said to have contributed 90% of his not insubstantial annual income to charitable trusts. That’s not a bad claim to fame.

He may have pioneered aspects of disc-jockeying and been a leader in parleying that endeavour into a wider media career but it was as if he pushed the world away. The TV interview he gave Louis Theroux offered the vision of someone not at all at ease with himself and his devotion to his dead mother strayed well beyond the admirable into the deeply strange. Whatever secrets actually lay behind the mask he presented to the world we may never know.

Perhaps it was appropriate he was born on Halloween.

James Wilson Vincent Savile: 31/10/1926 – 29/10/2011. So it goes.

I’ve just trawled through all my re-entered posts and I think I’ve fixed the problems with the formatting. This took a lot of trial and error. Deep joy.

I had to take out several stray commands that had crept in plus resize the pictures (again!) on my Dollar War Memorial post. The second and third pages now look okay – at least on my computer.

I’ve just put all my missing posts back up via the medium of googlereader.

My blog administrator could see them all and showed me how to access them. Much cutting and pasting followed.

Unfortunately the back up he attempted did not succeed (there was some error message) and as a result the comments have gone. I think all the comments – for up to five months!! – have disappeared. Only ones since the restore are there.

This all seems to have played havoc with the formatting of the second page of entries.