“……if any instrument of reporting or of comment or of both becomes the gramophone of a government, there is no depth to which it cannot sink.”
(Thelma Cazalet-Keir, 1899 – 1989)
John Lentell
22nd April, 1969
Month: November 2010
Monday’s Piece
“It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the importance of things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness which would do credit to any college student, but the moneky is serious because he itches.”
(Robert Maynard Hutchins, 1899 – 1977)
John Lentell
21st April, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“What is a communist? One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings.”
(Ebenezer Elliot, 1781 – 1849)
John Lentell
19th April, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“One suspects, indeed that ever since the emergence of Lloyd George as the national leader in the first world war the prevailing tendency has been towards the exaltation of the Prime Minister at the expense of his colleagues and of the House of Commons.”
(Max Beloff, 1913 – 1999)
John Lentell
19th April, 1969
Friday’s Piece
“Provided a premier can keep his party, his colleagues and parliament happy, there are no rules for the job.”
(From Anatomy of Britain by Anthony Sampson, 1926 – 2004)
John Lentell
18th April, 1969
Thursday’s Piece
“YOU cannot hope to bribe or twist
Thank God, a British journalist;
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”
(G.K. Chesterton, 1874 – 1936)
John Lentell
17th April, 1969
Wednesday’s Piece
“If you are to stand up for your government you must be able to stand up to your government.”
(Baron Caccia, 1905 – 1990)
John Lentell
16th April, 1969
Tuesday’s Piece
Someone should write an ‘Anatomy of Rhodesia’ and in the process try to trace its source of political and economical power.
John Lentell
15th April, 1969
Monday’s Piece
“No man has the right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation. No man has the right to say to his country ‘Thus far shalt thou go and no further.'”
(Charles Stewart Parnell, 1846 – 1891)
John Lentell
14th April, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“Si Dieu u’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.”
(If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him)
(Voltaire, 1694 – 1778)
John Lentell
13th April, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“The essence of Fascism consists in the subordination of the Legislature to the executive.”
(Bertrand Russell, 1872 – 1970)
John Lentell
12th April, 1969
Friday’s Piece (rejected)
(Rejected by Rhodesia Herald newspaper)
I think the Rhodesian Front might lose a vote or two if it came clean with the electorate about the extent to which we are involving ourselves with South Africa and the extent to which we will ultimately lose our identity to South Africa; economically, politically and in a hundred other frightening ways.
John Lentell
11th April, 1969
Friday’s Piece
“I tell ye wut, my judgement is you’re pooty sure to fail,
Ez long ‘z the head keeps turnin’ back for counsel to the tail.”
(James Lowell, 1819 – 1891)
John Lentell
11th April, 1969
Thursday’s Piece
I think the Rhodesian Front might lose a vote or two if it came clean with the electorate about the likelihood of an economic ‘long-haul’!
John Lentell
10th April, 1969
Wednesday’s Piece
In the best of times there is a gap between the intelligence information that a Prime Minister and his cabinet deal with daily and the public’s grasp of events as reported by the media but, in Rhodesdia, this gap has, in my view, become too wide.
John Lentell
9th April, 1969
Tuesday’s Piece
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
(Oscar Wilde, 1854 – 1900)
John Lentell
8th April, 1969
Monday’s Piece
“…..descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flag stones, and a little farther on still, these flag stones break beneath your feet.”
(Speech in the House of Commons 1938, 12 days after the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria by Winston Churchill, 1874 – 1965)
John Lentell
7th April, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“Papa, what is a traitor in politics?”
“A traitor is a man who leaves our party and goes over to the other one.”
“Well, than, what is a man who leaves his party and comes over to yours?”
“A convert, my boy.”
John Lentell
5th April, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“……….the never ending audacity of elected persons.”
(Walt Whitman, 1819 – 1892)
John Lentell
4th April, 1969
Friday’s Piece
“Amantium irae amoris integratio est.”
(The quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love)
(Terence, 195-159 B.C.)
John Lentell
3rd April, 1969
Lentell Soup 