Polar bear attacks in Norway – I was right

Best avoid the yellow snow, too...

An expert agrees with my comments a few days ago about the fatal polar bear attack in Norway:

Norway polar bear attack: hikers need to be ‘armed to the teeth’

Modesty forbids any Sun-style boasting along the lines of “You read it here first, folks!” Merely consider it part of my ground-breaking worldwide news-gathering information service.

Horatio and polar bears

It is of course dreadful news about the 17-year-old British schoolboy Horatio Chapple and his terrible, fatal mauling by a polar bear while on a British Schools Exploring Society trip to a Norwegian island. It would be bad taste to say that Norway is probably not the safest place for 17-year-olds to have been hanging about at the moment for all sorts of reasons, so I won’t say it.

Of course, anyone with any sense knows that polar bears are among the most vicious animals on God’s earth, and one shouldn’t go anywhere near them if one could possibly help it. Well, anyone would know that apart from the ecoloons of deranged multi-million dollar “charities” such as Greedpeace or the World Wildlife Fraud or whatever, who for some years having been feeding false propaganda to our newspaper “environmental” churnalists (Hi Louise! Hi George!) and into our schools that polar bears are drowning or otherwise being frazzled to death by “man-made global warming” or some such nonsense. In fact the polar bear population is increasing, and has been for some time. But that, of course, doesn’t make them any cuddlier.

What struck me was the young schoolboy’s name: Horatio. Some centuries ago, a young Horatio also tackled a polar bear, coincidentally enough off the coast of Norway:

He was, I think, about 15 or 16 at the time. So despite the tragedy attached to young Chapple, it doesn’t seem to me that school trips to polar regions should be curtailed, despite what the mewling, puking babes of the BBC baby farm…sorry, I mean BBC News, may demand. Seems to me it may lead on to glorious things. Just be aware that polar bear numbers are growing, and they’re not cuddly. Oh, and it would probably be a good idea to arm the school trips with rifles, too, a la the young Horatio Nelson above…especially if they’re going to Norway.

Of Breivik, Norwegian Christmas trees and Special Brew

How Norway says thank you for our help....

One of my favourite bloggers is Norman Tebbit, not because I necessarily agree with what he says, but because he has a refreshingly old-fashioned take on blogging. Unlike most bloggers, he’s no drive-by merchant; it’s obvious he thinks seriously about what he writes before pressing the Publish button but, more rarely, he reads the commenters to his previous blogs and then comments on them: fans, pans, droles, trolls and all. Unlike some bloggers, he doesn’t respond to commenters in the comments themselves: he summarises  and answers them in his next blog. I think he’s got a better handle on this blogging lark than the cutting-throat, bleeding-edge show-off freaks at Comment is Free.

In his blog tonight, apropos the Breivik massacre, he says this:

 I thought that just as the Norwegian people send us a Christmas tree every year in thanks for our support during the War, the suggestion that we might send them a tree to symbolise our feelings for them at this time made sense.

Well, I thought: thank goodness this tragedy occurred in Norway and not in Denmark. Because the Danish thank-you present for our help in World War II was Carlsberg Special Brew.

...and how Denmark said thanks (pic: http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk)

Winston Churchill, who had strong and well-informed feelings about these matters, apparently expressed the opinion that no lager was strong enough for him. Come the fall of Hitler and the liberation of Europe, the Carlsberg brewery came up with a lager which met the old war-horse’s high standard of alcoholic toxicity.

Thus was the free world bequeathed the joys of Carlsberg Special Brew, which probably also helped boost post-war production of brown paper bags.

If Breivik had gone berserk in Denmark, what drink would have appropriately marked our feelings towards them in their hour of national grief? Buckfast (15% ABV)? Bruichladdich X4 (94%)? That scrumpy I bought from a farm gate down in Cornwall (don’t know what its ABV was but after a couple of pints it was so psychedelic I didn’t care)?

I think I shall post a comment on Lord Tebbit’s blog and see what he thinks. If he’s sober.