[BITList] Ushakov Medals

[HUGH]

John,

Can we envisage a scenario in which some aged veteran of an obscure (obscure in that the powers-that-be reckon it obscure) campaign is hauled from his wheelchair on Armistice (or any other) Day for wearing a medal not on HMQ's permission list?  Or has his door battered down at 3.00am for accepting it? Civil servants, even faceless ones, don't make laws, nor do they make legally enforceable rules of dress. Something they think might be "illegal" in London might be perfectly "legal" in Glasgow.

As a footnote, and to cheer you up, I heard on the news this morning that complaints have been made about The Railway Children. Some dimwit suddenly woke from a deep sleep to the realisation that both the book and the film feature children standing at or on a railway line, contrary to Section 6b, Sub-section 18a, of the bla deh bla deh blah. This, they aver, must surely encourage children to stand on or near railway lines.

There was a time when people woke up from deep sleeps to more interesting and less disruptive thoughts. Blaise Pascal died with a little note sewn into his clothes: "From half past ten till half past twelve, Fire! 23rd November,1654."  In French, of course. On a morning much earlier in his life he'd written it down when awakened from an ecstatic experience during the night.  It made sense at the time he wrote it, but not next morning when it was the only evidence of what he'd gone through. 


Hugh.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20130712/60b55b04/attachment.htm