The Year Without Summer

[marplerambler]

You Tube Glenda Jacksons House of Commons comments to Iain Duncan Smith



You Tube Glenda Jackson's comments to the House of Commons re the contribution of Margaret Thatcher to Britain:

[marplerambler]

It is astonishing sometimes that the most unlikely coincidences can occur. What is the connection between the current appalling cut in NHS mental health services in some parts of the country and the Hogarth painting brought to our attention in the ‘Give us back our Eleven Days’ painting: the link is tenuous but nevertheless sadly approropriate.

Mention Hogarth and one cannot fail to remember Glenda Jackson’s deeply perceptive analysis of Margaret Thatcher’s period in government in Jackson’s contribution to Thatcher obituary speeches to the Commons on 10th April 2013.

"Thatcherism wreaked the most heinous, social, economic and spiritual damage upon this country"… "It’s a pity she did not start building more and more social houses after she entered into the right to buy, so perhaps there would have been fewer homeless people than there were"... "During her era London became a city Hogarth would have recognised"…(re treatment of people suffering metal health problems) “We were told it was going to be called Care in the Community. What in effect it was was no care at all in the community"…"Everything I had been taught to regard as a vice - and I still regard them as vices - under Thatcherism was in fact a virtue"…"If we go back to the heyday of that era I think we will see replicated again the extraordinary human damage that we as a nation have suffered from”… "People knowing under those (Thatcher) years the price of everything and the value of nothing"…"I’m beginning to see possibly the re-emergence of that total traducing of what I regard as being the basis of the spiritual nature of this country, where we do care about society, where we do believe in communities, where we do not leave people to walk by on the other side"…"If we go back to the heyday of that era I think we will see replicated again the extraordinary human damage that we as a nation have suffered from”…"A woman (Thatcher) not on my terms".

And the link? Just a few days ago on 30th June 2015 was Glenda Jackson’s brilliant parliamentary speech in response to Ian Duncan Smith’s attempts to deny the sick entitlement to ESA (Employment and Support Allowance) , the current government’s attempt to destroy the National Health Service and strip those suffering from illness of the fundamental human rights of food and shelter. Ian Duncan Smith faced her with the impassivity of the Duke of Wellington abhorring those who managed to survive the Battle of Waterloo. If you voted Conservative for Marple at the last election do you have the courage to watch Jackson’s speech? One thing that has not changed in 200 years has been the Conservative Party’s lack of compassion for those who suffer illness and disability.

If you can attach YouTube clips of the Jackson speeches of 10th April 2013 and  30.06.2015, I would be most grateful.

[Condate]

Granted. I did assume @marplerambler was talking about the Kingdom of Great Britain so he was correct in his recollection of the year when the reform was implemented by Rome. The Julian/Gregorian reform took a long time to spread throughout the world which is why Great Britain lost eleven days instead of the ten days lost in 1582. The Russia used it until the 1917 revolution which is why the anniversary of the Great October Revolution takes place in November and the Russian ORthodox Church still uses it for their liturgical events.

The Inland Revenue still uses the Julian calendar. The GB change to the Gregorian calendar also changed the start of the year to 1st January, but the Inland Revenue keeps to the old start of year of 25th March and also keeps the Julian calendar, hence the Tax year starting on April 6th
 
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140109143644/http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/faqs/general.htm#7

[Howard]

In Great Britain true; but in Rome and other some other Catholic states, Gregory XIII's reform came into effect in October 1582.

Granted. I did assume @marplerambler was talking about the Kingdom of Great Britain so he was correct in his recollection of the year when the reform was implemented by Rome. The Julian/Gregorian reform took a long time to spread throughout the world which is why Great Britain lost eleven days instead of the ten days lost in 1582. Russia used it until the 1917 revolution which is why the anniversary of the Great October Revolution takes place in November and the Russian Orthodox Church still uses it for their liturgical events.

[Condate]

@marplerambler Actually you're nearly 200 years out as the year the calendar changed to Julian from Gregorian was 1750 not 1582.

In Great Britain true; but in Rome and other some other Catholic states, Gregory XIII's reform came into effect in October 1582.

[marplerambler]

Thanks for correcting my error Howard and for providing the correct information, and also for your diplomacy not mentioning that in 1750  the period was eleven days. Your knowledge of history is superior to my ability to extract  correct information from Wikipedia and as for the riots it is hardly surprising that a fact from a school history lesson fifty years ago has in fact turned out to be a myth, well I wonder just how many other incorrect details we were fed in history classes five decades ago?

What the heck?  I enjoy the unusual entries just as much as the more predictable topics.

[Howard]

[nipped for brevity] ...but the announcement in 1582 that Easter was coming later each year and that the change from the Julian to the new Gregorian calendar would result  in the clock being put back by four days sparked riots from peasants who believed that four days were being taken from their lives as a consequence of this change. I remember being taught that this led to rioting peasants who believed that their lives were being shortened by the implementation of the new calendar but nowhere can I find any record of this on Wikipedia. Any comments or any further interesting trivia to take our minds off the hot weather?

@marplerambler Actually you're nearly 200 years out as the year the calendar changed to Julian from Gregorian was 1750 not 1582. The rioting is a myth as mentioned in the article on Wikipedia which I have linked below, specifically I'm linking to the "Reaction and Effect" section where it discusses the mythology of the riots:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750#Reaction_and_effect

[marplerambler]

Thank you for a fascinating interlude into a period of unbearably hot weather which is only a few days old but which to me, already seems to be never ending. I can't sleep, I can't eat, (but very fortunately no longer need to get up for work). I have not bothered even to turn on my computer for two days but an article such as this is a little gem really does show that while we look on, cheer on the Stopfordian tennis player through the first round at Wimbledon, ponder about Greece and the Euro and worry about problems which could arise as a consequence of Tunisia that all kinds of other activity go on.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Marple Website is its eclectic mix of important and less-important but fascinating subjects on the site so thank you Basementlife for this fascinating article. Perhaps it should also be remembered that despite all the fears of global warming we never can be quite sure of just what the climate has in store for us in future years. The world is considerably warmer than it was when the glaciers retreated at the end of the most episode of the ice age 10,000 years ago but we really don't know if we have emerged from the most recent ice age - there were at least twenty advances and retreats of the ice during the most recent ice age and during the 1600s and 1700s global temperatures cooled considerably and led to the south of England being so cold that regular 'Ice Fairs' were held on the frozen River Thames during the 'Little Ice Age' and despite evidence to the contrary this week our ancestors could find that the current spell is just a warm blip preceding another episode of global cooling and continuation of an ice-age which may not be over.

One aspect which was omitted from the article about  1816 which did not get the coverage it deserved in the article was that the 1816 famine followed the success of British army at Waterloo in 1815: many of the soldiers who were injured in battle but who made it back to England did not survive for long when they arrived back to a famine-ridden Britain. The surviving injured English soldiers who were treated as cannon fodder on the battlefield by the Duke of Wellington were treated with equal contempt when they arrived back and were the first to starve in this famine

My addition to this interesting diversion from a few scorching days is to add more trivia in the form of 'The Year With an Extra Second'?

The time of orbit of the earth around the sun is changing and the BBC quite incorrectly told us on the One Show that we have had an extra second added to our lives (we are not going to live a second longer than our allotted years, days, minutes and seconds despite this second being added to our life) and the automatic response was a perhaps prolonged blink of the eyelids for that second proclaiming 'Big Deal!' but the announcement in 1582 that Easter was coming later each year and that the change from the Julian to the new Gregorian calendar would result  in the clock being put back by four days sparked riots from peasants who believed that four days were being taken from their lives as a consequence of this change. I remember being taught that this led to rioting peasants who believed that their lives were being shortened by the implementation of the new calendar but nowhere can I find any record of this on Wikipedia. Any comments or any further interesting trivia to take our minds off the hot weather? 

[Basementlife]

As the alcohol rises in the thermometer, and ice cream becomes as valuable as gold, next year will be the centenary of the Year without Summer, the summer of 1816...

"The Year Without a Summer was an agricultural disaster. Historian John D. Post has called this "the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world".The unusual climatic aberrations of 1816 had the greatest effect on most of New England, Atlantic Canada, and parts of western Europe. Typically, the late spring and summer of central and northern New England and southeastern Canada are relatively stable: temperatures (average of both day and night) average between about 68 and 77 °F (20 and 25 °C) and rarely fall below 41 °F (5 °C). Summer snow is an extreme rarity."

http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=gillen-darcy-wood-1816-the-year-without-a-summer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer