BY JOHN MUSGRAVE The race is on to save our country. And it starts in the stables of possibility this Christmas. Boxing Day 2025 looks like becoming a mass demonstration. Families plan to mobilise in support of farming and hunting on the Feast of Stephen. Up and down the land Boxing Day meets are set to attract record crowds. It’s a picture to gladden the … Continue reading The Race of the Swift
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE As Advent begins – notionally a fast, but more often a progression of parties and good cheer – spare a thought for meat-dependent merrymakers. We are all under threat from the mean-green vegan party-poopers who want to ban meat-eating altogether. Halal meat is now in the crosshairs as the soya-bean sallies plot further Herodian bedevilment. Any move to ban halal slaughter is … Continue reading Hands off Halal
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE The final act of growing up, psychiatrists tell us, is to take responsibility for yourself. Children who never grow up, including sociopaths and the intellectually enfeebled will always blame circumstances and events. Never do they accept that what has happened is down to them. It’s always someone else’s fault. Two examples prove this point. Look at the government and the BBC. Far … Continue reading Persons Responsible
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE As Brits reel at the scale of the Labour administration’s perfidy it is essential to ask: Why? Why is the Starmer administration doing this? Let us frack down with jack-hammer vengeance to find the answer. Why seek to rejoin the EU when 2TK (Two Tier Keir) said he’d do no such thing. Why impose Net Zero when he must know it’s destroying … Continue reading From Scaredy Cat to Roaring Lion
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE ‘For Frodo,’ the young boy shouted as the three of us pelted down a farm track, hounds baying ahead of us. ‘For Frodo’ – it’s a line from Lord of the Rings. We were out hunting after the ban came in. This Monday, 17th February, marks the 20th anniversary of the infamous Hunting Act cutting in. On this day the Hard Left … Continue reading The Road to Rivendell
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE Many years ago my late mother used an horrendous phrase to describe a friend of her father’s: ‘Giles had a Good War,’ she said, ‘and he found himself well placed after it.’ As a 10-year-old I noted her sniff of disapproval and asked her what she meant. The war had been easy for this fellow, she explained. Despite haring off to join … Continue reading A Good War
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE On the eve of the new Hunting Season a well-meaning townie, a friend of a friend, said, ‘Isn’t it a bit rightist, dashing about hunting?’ ‘Far from it,’ I told him. ’The main reason I took up trail laying all those years ago was as a result of a conversation with the huntsman and two ageing men, both foot followers.’ We were … Continue reading Skyline Pigeon
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE ‘Eh, Yohnnie, you know the British Embassy in Tel Aviv has advised you must to leave,’ said Tamir, down at the fish farm. I’d been working there since January 1891. ‘Ha staphon,’ (the north) he said, nodding towards Lebanon. We were tugging at a fish net so huge it might once have seen service on a tennis court. Columns of tanks droned as they … Continue reading Gone Fishing
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE Britain’s first rock and roll radio station, Radio Caroline, started transmissions this weekend 60 years ago. Despite our country’s role as the world’s leading democracy, free speech has had a tough time of it in Britain. Back in the 60s the establishment loathed the idea of free radio. It couldn’t be controlled and playing rock and roll was considered unwholesome. Nevertheless, Caroline … Continue reading The Importance of Radio Caroline
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE British foreign secretary, David Cameron, and US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, should be ashamed of themselves. The idea of a two-state solution is dead in the water and they know it. The two-state solution might once have seemed a great idea, but it’s been tried and found wanting. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005. The plan was to create a … Continue reading State of Unrest
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE This Boxing Day morning thousands of folk will gather on cobbled squares to greet their local hunt. Packs of hounds and squadrons of horses will clip-clop down the highway to cheers and applause. Gabled inns will do a roaring trade in mulled wine, cider and ale. Old friends greet one another. Hounds cast about the crowd for titbits delighting children. It’s a … Continue reading Boxing Clever
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE ‘Enough is enough,’ is a phrase now increasingly heard on the lips of all good men and true. The follow-up phrase: ‘They really ought to do something,’ is overused and self-defeating. The problem here is the word ‘THEY,’ a much-abused pronoun of dubious provenance. When we expect ‘them’ to do something we abrogate responsibility. In the real world ‘they’ don’t exist. Suits … Continue reading Enough is Enough
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE This weekend, black clad supporters of Islamist violence will clog the streets of a thousand cities. Shouting “Hamas, Hamas, Jews, to the gas” and “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” their aims are quite clear: Destroy the Land of Israel and kill the Jews. These emissaries of the dark side march on unopposed, trampling faith and reason beneath … Continue reading Common Cause
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE It is hard to imagine how Gaza may be rendered terror free and tractable. Events in Israel carry a dire warning, not only for Israelis, but for the rest of the free world. Timing is everything in war. Hamas has made no secret of its aim to destroy the state of Israel and expel or murder all Jews. Why launch a concerted … Continue reading Night Boat to Cairo
BY JOHN MUSGRAVE Today marks the annual anniversary of the death of pirate radio back in 1967. Every year a dwindling band of ageing rockers and ravers mark the passing of the Marine Etc Broadcasting Offences Act; Harold Wilson’s infamous law that sank rock and roll radio. For three glorious years we’d listened to pop music from the high seas. Radio Caroline began broadcasting at … Continue reading On My Radio
